A symphony turned into a political text, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte declared that the memory of dead generations haunted the minds of the living. Transformed into “the weight of history,” the past sprang into the present, shaping words, speeches, and actors. Marx was describing that period of transition in the mid-19th century, after the revolutions of 1848, which Alain Brossat defined as “the no more of the bourgeois revolution, the not yet of the proletarian revolution.” An uncertain time of unfinished and failed revolutionary uprisings; a definitive passage of the capitalist class to the terrain of social and political conservatism.
Ontologically conservative, the Catholic Church likewise constantly echoes the memory of dead generations. Robert Prevost , the new pope, went back a century and a half to choose his name. Linking traditions, Leo XIV revived the tradition of Leo XIII, the so-called “worker pope,” author of the encyclical Rerum Novarum (On New Things) and putative father of Vatican social doctrine.
Published in 1891, Rerum novarum is, from its outset, both a critique of the evils engendered by social inequality and an explicit condemnation of the ideas of socialism and revolution. Calling for “social peace,” it also argues for a flat rejection of “that fantasy of socialism of reducing private property to common ownership, because it harms those whom it purports to assist, is repugnant to the natural rights of individuals, and disrupts the functions of the State and public tranquility (…) when the problem of improving the condition of the lower classes is raised, the principle that private property must be preserved inviolable must be taken as fundamental.”
By converting private property into part of a natural order created by God, the encyclical offers up the Church as the mediator of that social peace that guarantees capital’s domination. Warning of the dangers of “the workers’ greater self-confidence and closer cohesion among themselves,” the text also states that “neither capital can subsist without labor, nor labor without capital… To end the struggle and cut it off at its very roots, the power of Christian doctrines is admirable and varied… The entire doctrine of the Christian religion, of which the Church is the interpreter and custodian, can greatly reconcile and unite the rich with the proletarians, that is, by calling both classes to the fulfillment of their respective duties and, above all, to the duties of justice.”
The encyclical was published in May 1891, two decades after that enormous revolutionary feat which, taking the name of the Paris Commune, shook Europe. It also coincided with the organizational and political rise of the working class. Four years later, in a famous and much-discussed Introduction, Friedrich Engels celebrated the political and electoral strengthening of the working class and its organization within the ranks of socialism.
The late 19th century and early 20th century was another time of transition. In the figure of Leo XIII, the Church was betting that the strengthening of the working class would not push it toward social revolution. Instead, the subaltern classes would walk a path of class conciliation, not one of anti-capitalist radicalization.
Partially recovering the prestige diminished in previous decades, the recently-deceased Francis positioned the Church as a key player in the ongoing “polycrisis” (economic, political, cultural, and environmental). Therein lies the essential content of the “legacy” that Leo XIV wants to carry on. A pontiff to continue bringing the Church closer to the most humble; a spokesperson for peace among nations.
His long stay in Peru allowed him to be presented as a “Latin American pope”; another pontiff from the “end of the world.” His North American origins make him a direct link to the Vatican’s largest source of income: the Catholicism of the United States. In other words, Leo is a Pope to connect the Global South with the main imperialist power and with the old Catholic world inhabited by Europe and the Vatican, to attempt to unite what is divided by wars and rising militarism. To religiously alleviate the suffering of billions , who suffer deeply from the poverty and misery engendered by declining neoliberalism.
The agony of the neoliberal cycle has been going on for a decade and a half. This is where we must look for the roots of the “monsters” — as Gramsci would say — embodied in the global far right; Trump, Milei, Bolsonaro, Meloni, and Bukele are the aberrant expressions of these economic, political, and social tensions, which are pushing millions toward open discontent.
On the left, the class struggle also delivered its verdict: in the multiple revolts, rebellions, and general strikes that have shaken France in recent decades; in the massive workers’ rebellion that, just months ago, defeated the far-right coup attempt in South Korea; in the union organizing process sweeping across broad swathes of the labor movement in the United States; in the youthful rebellion in the central countries denouncing and confronting the Israeli massacre in Gaza .
Recently, in Foreign Affairs , Jennifer M. Harris described “a new centrism,” critical of what “neoliberalism failed to deliver.” It’s debatable whether the growing political and ideological polarization is “centrism.” The concern is understandable: “Returning to the neoliberalism that helped create these problems is not an option. However, moments of transition are dangerous (…) there are many possible versions of post-neoliberalism that could take hold, not all of them good. Much depends on how societies shape what comes after neoliberalism and how they navigate the turbulence along the way.”
“Systemic chaos,” however, seems assured, as are social and political tensions. A millennia-old guarantor of social order, under the leadership of Leo XIV, the Church aims to prevent post-neoliberalism from eventually taking the course of revolution and socialist struggle.
Originally Published in Spanish in La Izquierda Diario on May 9