A “spirit of revolutionary change” was reshaping the world economy, Pope Leo XIII wrote in 1891.
“The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable.” He cited: “the vast expansion of industrial pursuits and the marvelous discoveries of science,” “the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses,” along with “the prevailing moral degeneracy.”
The “momentous gravity” of the crisis, the Pope wrote in a letter entitled Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), “fills every mind with painful apprehension.”
“Some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class…”
The urgency of the Pope’s language and the universality of his approach bring to mind a very different document of the 19th Century: the 1848 Communist Manifesto, by Marx and Engels. It spoke of “constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation”…
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