The Catholic Church and the Comintern

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I began my adult life as an activist in the IMG, the British Section of the Fourth International and successor to the Comintern, immersed in the rituals of Marxist politics, endless meetings, and the promise of a transformed world. Decades later, I now find myself an activist in the Catholic Church (parish treasurer and project manager for our facilities) and I am struck by how familiar it all feels. These two great global organisations, one secular and revolutionary, the other religious and traditional, are oddly similar in their institutional life, with the activists still complaining about the passivity of most of the ordinary members...

Both claim to speak a universal truth. For the Comintern it was Marxism-Leninism, the scientific doctrine of history; for the Church it is the legacy of faith handed down from the Apostles. If you hold the key to human destiny, then errors and deviations should not be tolerated.

Hence orthodoxy, hence heresy, hence the long shadow of discipline.

For both rest on centralised authority. The Party had the Central and Political Committees - and the Control Commission; the Church has the Pope and the Magisterium. Democratic centralism vs. (in extremis) papal infallibility. Different idioms, same structural necessity: following discussion, unity is determined by a final arbiter.

Both manage conscience. In the Comintern, members were subjected to criticism and self-criticism (in the IMG not so much). In the Church, we have the confessional, the insistence on recognising fault and reaffirming commitment. In both settings, the ethos is interiorised, made personal (and thus more effective).

Both are missionary - universal in scope. The Comintern aspired to world revolution; the Church, to universal salvation. Both sprawl across cultures, nationalities, and centuries, and both face the constant problem of cohesion in the face of secular challenge.

Any institution that combines (1) a monopoly on truth, (2) a universal mission, and (3) a fragile global reach will converge on the same logic: central authority, discipline, self-examination, orthodoxy and exclusion. Whether the foundation is transcendental revelation or historical materialism, the organisational necessities are much the same.

Inside both, there is reward for those signed-up. In the Party it was the intoxicating sense of being active on the side of history. In the parish it is the palpable commitment of people who give their time, energy, and skill for something beyond themselves. Work can be mundane but has its life-affirming qualities. You are sustained by a sense of purpose and by the comradeship of those around you.

So from the Comintern to the Catholic Church, structures resemble while ideologies diverge. But in the lived experience of the activist core, the resemblance is remarkably similar, and the reward is the same: a life shaped by shared labour in service of a mission that transcends the individual.

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