“If by ‘capitalism’…”

Over the past sixteen years, Gallup has tracked Americans’ perceptions of capitalism and socialism. A year ago, some news was made when the percentage of Americans with positive views of capitalism fell to 54%, marking its lowest rating since the group began collecting data. At the same time, socialism was rated positively by 39% of Americans, a figure which has remained relatively stable since 2010.

Over the past year, Gallup did some follow-up research. Analysts sought to examine what aspects of capitalism and what aspects of socialism Americans find appealing and which they do not like. They also looked at why the term “free enterprise”–often used interchangeably with capitalism–appears to rate much higher at 81% favorable compared to capitalism’s 54%.

The results are interesting.

First, Americans view both capitalism and free enterprise as promoting economic opportunity, growth, and innovation. But they associate the term “wealth inequality” much more with capitalism than they do with free enterprise.

Second, when asked to name something good about socialism, the most common response to that question was “nothing.” A full 45% of Americans were either unable or unwilling to say anything positive about it. Of those who said something good about it, the most common responses referenced social safety nets and the perception of a more equal distribution of wealth.

Perhaps not surprisingly, on the question of socialism, responses varied by party affiliation and age. While a not-small percentage of Democrats and Independents refused to say anything positive about socialism (29% and 44%, respectively), that was the position of almost 70% of Republicans. Moreover, whereas 42% of Americans aged 55 and older refused to offer something good about socialism, only 13% of those aged 18-34 couldn’t or wouldn’t.

What can we make of all of this?

First, two hundred years of recorded history have taken a toll on socialism. Americans aged 50 and older were taught history, and many of them lived it themselves. They remember firsthand the Cold War. They had grandparents who fled Poland. And Czechoslovakia. And East Germany. And Hungary. And Bulgaria. And Romania. Some have met Vietnamese boat people who survived. Few forget the other 250,000 who didn’t. They have learned about China’s long legacy of state-directed political executions. And of the 80 million dead from forced labor or man-made famine there. These Americans don’t rely on today’s academies to relay socialism’s brutal truths.

Second, while over half a century of media messaging has succeeded in popularizing Che Guevara t-shirts on more than a couple of college campuses, the biggest toll it has taken is on capitalism. Hollywood and the academy—and professional pols’ villainization strategy against it—have enjoyed some success. The Wolf of Wall Street provided the caricature, Thomas Piketty provided the creed, and Zohran Mamdani provided the charisma.

And to the extent it has worked, it is because Americans are a compassionate people. We don’t respond well to the whiff of corruption. We don’t tolerate bullies. And we want to help victims. But Americans don’t accept incessant complaining devoid of effective solutions. That is the hard reality that Bernie, AOC, and their friends run up against. Whatever success socialists enjoy comes from railing against perceptions of inequality; it doesn’t come from the answers socialists are proposing.

Americans empathize with victims. We aren’t interested in becoming them.

It is said that politics is downstream of culture, which is, in part, because politics reflects culture. On the other hand, the rich tradition of Catholic social teaching does not reflect culture; it helps explain it.

None of the latest results from Gallup’s research should surprise faithful Catholics. Since Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum entered the fray between the tumult of Haymarket and Homestead over one hundred thirty-five years ago, the Catholic Church has been explaining the truth of the human person to anyone willing to listen.

Every human being is created in the loving image of God and called to share in God’s divinity. That calling includes our work. And our work not only contributes to the economy but has intrinsic value. As God’s creation, we have natural rights, which deserve protection, including a right to work, a right to a just wage, and a right to use that wage to acquire and own private property. Rerum Novarum declares private ownership “sacred and inviolable.”

To be clear: the Catholic Church has explicitly rejected socialism. Numerous times. Why? Because socialism is not compatible with the way we were made.

Rerum Novarum points out that we were designed to live in families, not communes; a point strongly reiterated by Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, an encyclical issued on the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. Quadragesimo Anno rejects socialism outright. It notes that true Catholic teaching cannot be reconciled with the socialist class struggle and the denial of private property. Echoing Pope Leo XIII’s charge that socialism is rooted in “confusion” and “disorder” and is “directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind,” Pope Pius XI called socialism’s concept of society “utterly foreign to Christian truth.”

Pope Pius XI goes on to emphasize the importance of subsidiarity–the principle that the individual and the family’s competence and judgment should not be subordinated to the state–and that only a solidarity rooted in an authentic understanding of the common good will fit with God’s creation. State socialism is anathema to God’s creation.

While the principle of subsidiarity is aimed at protecting the human person and families from the state, it is also a warning against unbridled corporate power. Across multiple encyclicals and within the Catechism of the Catholic Church itself, Catholic social teaching refers to the family as “the natural, primary cell of human society.” It can be supplanted by neither an all-powerful state nor by an all-powerful corporation. And this is again because human beings have dignity. Even powerful market players cannot diminish personal freedom, family stability, and the capacity for human flourishing, points reiterated most recently in Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas, released in May.

This emphasis on human freedom and flourishing may help explain Gallup’s finding that Americans respond better to the term “free enterprise” than they do to “capitalism.” Someone else felt the same: the late, great Saint John Paul II. Writing in his brilliant 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, which marked the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope JP II responds to the question of whether the Church supports capitalism this way:

If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy,” “market economy” or simply “free economy.” But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality and sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.

John Paul II understood, even thirty-five years ago, that “capitalism” was becoming a loaded term. Having himself suffered the ravages of socialism and discovered true freedom, he knew that “market economy” and “free economy” could not be bastardized.

Further evidence that while some say we are living in post-Christian times, the Catholic Church continues to have a pretty good understanding of humanity.

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