He is led by this ambiguity to regard Communism as " a return to workers' ownership." But the point of Leo XII1's principle was that the workers should own property as individuals, and the point of Communism is that they should own them as a collectivity. And this distinction in logic makes an enormous difference in practice. No one knows better than Mr. Gill that State ownership of the means of production, which is what ownership by the proletariat must become, means admininstration by a centralised bureaucracy that need not give the workers any more real share in the status and functions of ownership than does a capitalist board of directors. And we have seen before our eyes Communism creating a proletariat where capitalism had not done so, in the process of collectivising agricultural production.
Ultimately, of course, the objection to Mr. Gill's position goes even deeper than this. For the faith and intention with which any economic organisation is devised and men play their part in it, is of supreme account. And however, atheistic capitalism may be in practice it does not require of those who teach or promote that they renounce God, the eternal moral law and the world of the spirit at the outset. But Marxist Communism does, and that is why there is an absolute barrier against a Catholic adhering to it.