ABSTRACT
In the history of political and economic fanaticism, there are few fallacies nearly transparent than the central principle of Marxism. But the publication of Marx's Capital coincided with the decay of established opinions in the modern world, and with all the confusion which the culmination of the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of European influence had brought in their train. Christian thinkers always have known that man is a creature of mingled good and evil, frequently weak of will, easily misled, and in need of the guidance of good persons. The doctrinaire socialists and communists began to preach the new theory of justice—the dogma that every-thing belongs of right to everyone. The aim of social legislation must be the re-establishment of vocational groups. This encyclical, in general, urges the restoration of order, through the encouragement or resurrection of all those voluntary associations which once interposed a barrier between the Leviathan state and the puny individual.
