On the 23rd of August, 1973, a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden went south, descending into a hostage situation lasting two days. What was odd was that the hostages apparently began to sympathize with their captors – whose last names were Olsson and Olafsson – and refused to cooperate with the police. The situation was eventually defused by tear gas, after which the two perpetrators surrendered, and no one was permanently injured. It’s from this episode that the term ‘Stockholm syndrome’ derived.
Socialism does much the same, in which citizens are increasingly constrained by their government, which takes over more and more aspects of life, gradually and almost imperceptibly. There is almost a sense of relief for many, as the state does things for us, which would normally require much work and sacrifice, such as, say, educating our children, or setting up health care centres, or providing for the poor and disadvantaged, or even providing for ourselves. The state, like that old 70’s commercial for McDonald’s restaurant, ‘does it all for you’.
Pope Leo XIII warned of this in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, reinforced by most popes who followed him, and verified by events: Socialism vitiates the human spirit – the thumos that Plato taught was proper to human striving. One would think that we would resist such, and some do, but many will go along to get along, and begin thinking that this is a grand idea. Why not let government take care of things, while we enjoy ourselves? As Marx put it, we can hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner.
The problem is that people don’t do all these things. Why ‘hunt’, ‘fish’ and ‘rear cattle’ (much more difficult than they may seem in a storybook) when the state provides all your food for you? And what is there to criticise, when in every socialist state ever instantiated books and information are strictly censored, and such criticism deemed illegal?
Rather, to return to Leo XIII, without a motive to fend for ourselves, to be properly provident as befits rational creatures made in God’s image, our souls shrivel and die. Humans are not cattle, to be ‘watered and fed’, but immortal beings destined for eternity, and we work out that eternity here and now by fulfilling our God-given vocations, to save our own souls and those under our authority and whom we may influence.
As Pius XI put it, no one can be at the same time a Catholic and a socialist. Freedom is a gift from God, that must be fought for, day in and out, not only against an encroaching totalitarianism (which, as de Tocqueville warned, is the tendency of every government), but also against our own sinful, lazy and entropic tendencies. Like the hostages on that fateful day in Stockholm, we identify and even begin to love our captors, excusing and defending their actions, thinking they have our best interests at heart.
Too often, and more increasingly of late, they don’t. There may be some apparent or alleged ‘good’ in recent draconian decrees – safety, comfort, health! – but that good masks a deeper and abiding evil, a subtle and surreptitious slavery, to which we must not surrender.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Gal 5:1)
