Intuitively, the case really does seem sound. Economically speaking, what we refer to as a “command economy,” a system in which the government decides everything about commerce, is the most ideal system. Being able to decide precisely how much to produce is the dream of any economy, and the case for one supervisory power naturally does make sense. But that the State in this role, with human nature so inclined to greed and selfishness, should know exactly how to do this — when firms concerned only with maximizing profits nevertheless still struggle—is questionable. And that it should be responsible for all production makes the skepticism all the more profound.

Is socialism dead? This question occurs to me as I look at my calendar and see that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the historical realization of Karl Marx’s indelible project. For reasons I cannot quite explain, the question is ominous. But it seems to me that its centennial year is as good a time as any to, at last, try and answer the question.

In the college setting, a debate on this question would not be hard to find. The average McGill student, even if not a determined, aspiring politico, more often than not has something to say, oftentimes, against capitalism. I should perhaps mention that this article is not meant as a defense of capitalism, but only to articulate that socialism does not work. Socialism is founded on a paradox, which when realized, makes clear not only why it does not work, but why it cannot work.

The socialist argues that in our current state of affairs — that is, a capitalist one — we as human beings are unable to actualize our true selves because the system does not work in our favor. Indeed it does not even work against it; it doesn’t care for us at all. In our current system, that migrants who work modest jobs in factories have no true control over their own lives is of no consequence, because the system does not even recognize them as human beings. Rather, they are treated merely as a means for profit, and their desires, interests, and pursuit of happiness are simply not relevant to the discussion. To this, socialism proposes the following solution: instead of allowing corporations to run themselves, the government should be given total control of society’s means of production.

But suppose that we follow that course of action — and, in fact, many parts of the world already have. To name but a few: the Leninist and Stalinist phases of the Soviet Union, Chavez’s Venezuela, and the late Fidel Castro’s Cuba. These examples make it clear that power is inherently corruptible. And this is a reality that the socialist cannot quite accept. What they have merely done is confer what was in the first place so detestable about the corporations onto a government that is only able to avoid abusing power for profit because it has no need to.

The danger here is that economic power invariably translates to political power. In our capitalist society, it is not unfamiliar to us to hear about the influence of the wealthy on politics. In their favor, the government allows for deductions on mortgage interest, tax-cuts, and even tax-exemptions. But suppose the government should have total economic power. These particular injustices will likely cease to exist, but at what cost? If we look to the twentieth-century for answers, it becomes clear that the cost is liberty. If the government controls all facets of the economy, it gains leverage over every person or group that would wish it ill. Consider Cuba, perhaps the only remaining truly socialist country today. To quote an article from the Havana Times, the government’s effort to have the country conform to one will is such that even the media does not “question decisions taken.”

In the socialist state, then, the government, having a monopoly on both political and economic power, can organize society as it sees fit, and with virtually no opposition. This cannot be the portrait of equality envisioned by the socialist. Intrinsically socialist society’s defining feature is not equality, but the government’s unrivaled capacity for coercion. And it is for this reason that societies which have descended down this path have by and large fallen into disarray, and have emerged from it bare.

The objectives of socialism—equality, efficiency, and true freedom for the working people are ones we all want to effectuate. But they are by no means exclusively socialist concepts. Although I have given only a vignette of its belying problems we see that, so from working towards their realization, socialism actually works counter to them. Its main problem is that, in its vision, it underestimates the capacity of power to corrupt even the noblest of ideals and individuals (we must remember that even the State comprises of human beings), and our limits. That is, that it does not follow from the fact that all people are altruistic some of the time, and that some people are altruistic all of the time, that all people are altruistic all of the time. But this is exactly what Socialism not only expects but requires. In these regards it turns a blind eye, and it is for this reason that not only does it not work, but also why it cannot work.

What is left, I believe, is to turn to the present, and reflect on how we can better our political and social condition, not from a socialist or capitalist, liberal or conservative perspective but from a rational, humanist one. Perhaps along the vein of a Rawlsian conception of justice as fairness, whereby some inequalities may be permissible if, and only if, they benefit the worst-off in a society. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, we must realize that there is a plurality of values and unavoidable trade-offs among them. Liberty is not equality, equality is not liberty, and the choice of either liberty or equality does not automatically make for a clear conscience. But I think we can all agree that any system founded on a paradox, that is too conducive to their negation because it is too ready to surrender too much to any government, should be — at long last — discarded.

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Graduating high school at the time of President Rodrigo Duterte was a peculiar thing. School was out, friends started packing for their Eurotours, some stayed behind for their summer internships, and the Philippines was amidst a purging.  

President Rodrigo Duterte had not even been inaugurated last May when police around the country started to mobilize, taking kids and drunkards off the streets, determined to prove their resolute fealty to the president-elect. Fast-forward a couple of months later, and extrajudicial killing has become the name of the game, a normalcy, the status quo. And with just a little over half a year in office, more than three-thousand and counting have been unlawfully disposed of under his name.

Mr. Duterte, endearingly referred to by the public as righteous “Rody,” remains an odd apple on the country’s political tree. Whereas most scale the political hierarchy by way of nepotism and favor-granting, of which our political spheres are replete, Rody found himself in the provincial city of Davao: First, as its mayor; second, as a backer of its vigilante death squads—though the two are interchangeable depending on who you ask—garnering him another moniker, this time not quite so endearing: The Punisher. Reports estimate the lynching of about 1400 people during Mr. Duterte’s tenure as mayor of Davao city, none of which were afforded the provisions of justice entailed by a trial in court.

We see this similar and striking lack of regard for the rule of law in Mr Duterte’s newfound vocation in his new office. Generally well received by the populace, he has endeavored to name and shame figures in government and in the military allegedly linked to the country’s illegal drug trade—what would be a noble cause if not for the accompanying ultimatum: surrender or risk being killed.

Indeed, the keyword here is allegedly. Due process does not seem to be part of the agenda, and the suborning of injury and murder, without any regard for the rule of law, is of no consequence. In this narrative, which is the narrative Mr. Duterte prefers, the means justify the ends. Calling us ordinary citizens to arms, the commander-in-chief beseeches us, “Go ahead and kill them yourself.” Call him old-fashioned, if you will.

The scary thing is that people take him up on his challenge. Our President, in all his misogyny and underhandedness, has actually convinced the country that he is the solution to all its problems. People love Big Brother. One salient example, if only because it has been one of the few to have been documented ragingly on social media, was in mid-July when a body wrapped inside a garbage bag was found along a highway. Written on the masking tape binding cadaver to plastic: “Don’t imitate me, I’m a snatcher!” The point of reflection, besides the obvious moral and ethical implications, are political. Who’s to say that this wasn’t just another murder, and that Mr. Duterte has not become a criminal’s scapegoat? Such is the result of completely, and unabashedly, bypassing the law.

We see that he has set himself up as someone who can say what he pleases with impunity.

In early August, then Philippine Chief Justice Sereno (who has since been ousted) issued a public letter to the President reprimanding him for his subversion of basic human rights. She closed her remarks by imploring court judges, who had recently been shamed by Rody, “against ‘surrendering’ or making themselves physically accountable to any police officer in the absence of any duly-issued warrant of arrest that is pending.” Taking the statement as a challenge, the president replied “Please, don’t push me, hindi ako gago (I’m not stupid). If the illegal drug trade continues, would you rather that I declare martial law?”

From this we see that Mr. Duterte has set himself up as someone who can say what he pleases with perfect impunity. He is able to trivialize a perfectly valid point on legal procedure and human dignity, threaten martial law, and in spite of all of this, get away with it (his approval rating a historic 91% in mid-August) without so much as a flinch.  Although democracy has resulted in Mr. Duterte’s victory, it is unsettling—at least it ought to be—to see how he treats our freedom with such levity. In a country like the Philippines, the threat of martial law is not to be tossed around so lightly. In 1972, the Philippines underwent unconceivable injustice and suffering when it was turned into a police state by Ferdinand Marcos, a dictator who plundered billions from our economy. And as a result, many today live without husbands, children, and even entire families—a reality our current President dismisses in order to serve the next punchline.

Now, the problem with authoritative, powerful men is that they attract an equally vociferous following. But while Duterte, I suspect, can never go too far, being as often as he is under the spotlight, his following is much more unpredictable. In the face of the country’s war on crime and drugs, Duterte has promised to pardon those who would take burden of justice on their shoulders. What has thus resulted is a sort of tacit agreement between the lynchers next door and an unaccountable president that becomes ever brazen with the results.

When things like vigilantism—romanticized in cinema and literature—occur in reality, ethics and morality become painfully lucid. Authors and directors alike glorify the man who rises above his times and takes the burden of justice on his shoulders, and oftentimes for good reason. But vigilantism mandated on the governmental level—to the extent that one individual can kill his neighbor and vice versa merely because they are in possession or involved in the drug trade—is somewhat difficult to relish. Especially so in the Philippines. Firstly, because one suspects the motives of the government (it may well be justice, but one can’t in this case dismiss the misogynistic president’s interest to maintain his machismo persona). Secondly, and more difficult to assess, one suspects the motives of the individual citizen (it may very well also be justice, but it might also be brashness or impulse). Either way, it doesn’t make for a very nice picture, nor does it make for a truly just society that one can be proud to one’s children about.

Last May, friends of mine, before starting to leave the country, soon to pursue their educations abroad, jested that gone were the days of fooling around. How unlucky, so to speak, were the upcoming seniors, our successors. After all, adding to the turbulence, Mr. Duterte had already been pushing for a nationwide curfew on minors, not to mention a raise on the drinking age. We had graduated high school at the right time, as it were.

Jests will be jests. But Mr. Duterte has just been in power for six months, and has five-and-a-half years more ahead of him. And given the current state of things, I lie awake every night with but one question: Who’s to say that there is no truth to be found in jests?

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In recent years, atheism has evolved into what is now commonly referred to as “New Atheism.” Championed by academics including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, as well as polemical journalists such as the late Christopher Hitchens, New Atheism advocates not only that religion should not be believed, but that we would be far better off without it. Whereas conventional atheism is characterized as a state of unbelief in the Judeo-Christian gods due to a lack of evidence, New Atheism takes it a step further and relishes this lack of scientific evidence.

A common point often made by proponents of New Atheism is that if god is real, there is no discernible indication of him being merciful, much less benevolent. New Atheists cite, for example, the case of the some 29,000 children, under the age of five, that die every year from preventable diseases like pneumonia and malaria. They would argue that any god that allows children to suffer and die, as well as subject their parents to unimaginable misery, either is unable to do anything about it or can’t be bothered to—in which case god would be either impotent or evil.

New Atheism then goes on to claim that religion is one of, if not the most, widespread causes of intolerance, censorship, and bigotry in society today. This refers to the abject treatment of marginalized peoples, which is often conducted under the pretense of claiming to do ‘god’s work.’ Historical arguments bringing up the Salem witch trials or the Spanish Inquisition, are joined by contemporary fearmongering about the threat of ‘terrorism’ to rationalize this. However, although there have been times when religion has been used to justify violence, this does not seem to make the arguments of New Atheism any more convincing. This is because atrocities are founded on ideas—and ideas, religious or not, can always be bent and manipulated for political accommodation. Religion itself doesn’t kill people – people do, and would more than likely use some other rationale to justify it if religion did not exist.

A recurring theme in many of these arguments is that religion, both on moral and socio-political grounds, has no place in the 21st century. In this way, New Atheism is not so much an atheistic movement as it is a staunch, anti-theistic one. I believe the notion that society must strive to make religion a thing of the past is not just an overstatement—but very wrong indeed. For all New Atheism’s arguments that seem to appeal to a common humanism, they fail to provide any convincing argument to eradicate such a central part of the lives of many people.

The fact of the matter is that religion offers something that a completely secularist society, as envisaged by the New Atheists, cannot. This is because there are a great many things that atheism, much to its discontent, fails to address. Hypothetically, if religion were to be entirely purged from society, fundamental questions shared by most, if not all, people would go unanswered and neglected. Questions of the divine, of moral standards, and of peace. While secularism and atheism do have many truths to argue for, their voices remain extremely quiet on matters that are profoundly important to many people – matters like death, suffering, reconciliation, and forgiveness. Religion has to an extent attempted to provide answers for these questions and where it cannot provide answers, it at least provides comfort and consolation to those looking for something to believe in. Depriving the world of that doesn’t seem all that alluring to me. So, while one might disagree with the origins and teachings of a religion, denying its importance and utility is a very bold claim to make, and one that I believe is misguided.

Noam Chomsky, I believe, put it rather well in an interview with physicist and renowned atheist Lawrence Krauss, where he made the case that it is not our concern to tell other people what to believe. He gives an anecdote alluding to a Peruvian immigrant whom he knows, who has prayer groups every evening, visits homes for the sick to pray with them, and does in fact find meaning and happiness in her religion. Despite his own beliefs, it is not for him, he says rather humorously, to give her a lesson on epistemology. It is this point that eludes many of the New Atheists, and is a telling one of their self-contradiction. Just as they oppose religious extremists that enjoin their followers into believing in a certain dogma, are they not—in their own aim of eradicating religion as a social institution—doing the same thing? Divine or otherwise, it is the right of an individual to choose what he or she believes, and the New Atheist objection only serves as a betrayal of freedom, a principle they would probably consider secular.

I believe religion can be, and often times is, a source of unity.. Only within places of worship have I seen people who might otherwise have nothing in common, interact with a form of common humanity. I have seen people create bonds with those outside of their socio-economic circumstances, with whom they might disagree on matters of politics, or whom they may have otherwise never met. Contrast this dynamic with that of our current primary tool for socialization—Facebook—where it is effortless to find and join groups of people that already have the same views and interests as you do. Finding and socializing with people who are already very much like you has become an easy task. And while it is a great tool for creating human connections, this form of networking is very different from the kind that religion provides. In the churches that the New Atheist despise so much, I have seen people, with nothing in common other than their faith, sit side-by-side with a common aim – I think this phenomenon is worth preserving, rather than eliminating for the sake of what I believe to be is a misplaced secular fervor.

My favourite poem in the English language is a poem called “Church Going” by Philip Larkin, which is in many ways the reason I consider myself an agnostic rather than an atheist. It tells the story of a man, whom the reader can only assume is an atheist (as Larkin was), who visits a church where he ponders on what a world without religion would look like. He begins to question whether or not his sojourn was worth it, and for a reason he can’t quite puzzle out, soon acknowledges that it was. As he has many, many times before. At the end of the poem, the man stands in the middle of the church, sobered, as he recognizes that it is because the church is and always has been a place of, and for, serious questions. To treat it as though it were anything but, and as though it were disposable, would be a great ignorance.

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However, upon critically examining her life’s work from a different perspective, this common impression can in fact, be contested. Examining the dualities between Mother Teresa’s life and her public image can reveal her to be a figure who was just as much a friend of poverty as she was believed to be a friend of the poor.

Born in 1910 as Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa spent her first eighteen years in the city of Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia – then part of the Kosovo Vilayet, an administrative division controlled by the Ottoman Empire. At eighteen she left for Ireland to train with missionary nuns, after which she arrived in India and began teaching at the St. Teresa School in Kolkata. By 1931, Anjezë had taken her first vows as a nun.

One fateful day in September 1946, a train ride to the Loreto Convent from Kolkata would prompt the charity work that she would continue to do in the next half-century. In what she would later describe as a “call within a call,” Mother Teresa decided to leave the convent to help and live with those inhabiting the poorest parts of Kolkata. This charity work would subsequently garner her the praise of members of the Indian government, and, in 1950, the permission of the Vatican to solidify the Catholic Church’s influence in the country by establishing a diocesan congregation that would later be known as the Missionaries of Charity.

Despite its name, it was through this congregation that Mother Teresa would become an agent for the poverty that she claimed to be against. While most people would see a charitable woman on a mission, one could alternatively see a person who received her funding from politically immoral and dubious sources, perpetuated the suffering she was believed to have addressed, and frequently did more harm than good.

In 1981, Mother Teresa flew to Haiti to receive the Legion d’Honneur, the highest French order for military and civil merits, from Jean-Claude Duvalier, the country’s dictator. It would have otherwise been a one-off encounter – only it wasn’t just the honour she intended to receive. Also included, courtesy of the Duvalier family, was money in the hundreds of thousands of dollars that they had wrung from the Haitian poor and from the country’s illicit drug trade. And all this, according to Christopher Hitchens’ book The Missionary Position, was in exchange for an endorsement from the late mother to further the facade of good relations between the family and the impoverished population, which was gladly given.

Mother Teresa would also have a similar exchange with Charles Keating, who was convicted in the United States in the early 1990s on multiples account of fraud and racketeering, and who was personally responsible for – among other things – the loss of more than 21,000 elderly Americans of their life savings. During his trial, Mother Teresa described Keating as having “always been kind and generous to God’s poor” in a letter she wrote to the judge on his behalf. In exchange for her kind words, Keating gave more than $1 million to  her charity. When called upon by Californian courts to return Keating’s donation, she refused.

Unfortunately, the danger of giving off a charitable impression is that it appeals to credulity. It instills an almost automatic mechanism for justifying even the most suspicious acts. Supporters of Mother Teresa may defend her against this charge by arguing that taking money from bad people, to use for good, is an honourable thing. After all, who better to take it from? However, if one were to follow these funds, one would immediately discern that it was not spent on the poor, nor the building of shelters or hospices, but on nunneries and brothers’ homes. Surely, it was not to that end that people, even criminals, were making their donations.

Moreover, Mother Teresa’s actions came under criticism for their inefficacy as well. Her shelters and hospices in Kolkata were not purely havens for the poor, as they were often touted, but were instead aptly named “dying shelters” where suffering was venerated as a kind of blessing. Speaking on the suffering in Kolkata, Mother Teresa  once said, “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.” There have also been several claims that in the dying shelters, Mother Teresa and her fellow nuns would baptise non-Catholics on their deathbeds, without their knowledge or consent.

In 1991, Robin Fox, editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, visited Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying Destitutes (the name has since changed to the friendlier “Home of the Pure Heart”). His investigation condemned the home’s lack of medical expertise and the blatant disregard for pain by the attending sisters. There have been multiple reports of negligent medical care, including the reuse of unsterilized needles, administration of expired medicine, and confinement of ill people to small spaces where the risk of cross-contamination increases. In 2013, a similar investigation by faculty members of the University of Montreal concluded that Mother Teresa’s institutions “[cared] for the sick by glorifying their suffering instead of relieving it.”

The greatest detriment to Kolkata, where Mother Teresa spent most of her “charitable” time, was perhaps that she spent her entire career campaigning against family planning and birth control under the notion that AIDS may be bad – but not as bad as condoms. Moreover, she also advocated relentlessly against abortion rights, stating when she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 that, “the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion.” This was during the height of the Cold War, yet it seems that abortion posed more of a threat to peace than nuclear warfare.  Throughout her lifetime, she stood in staunch opposition to reproductive rights for women, thereby denying  them the means by which they could assert bodily autonomy. The right to family planning, along with access to education, is a fundamental necessity for generations of women to move forward from the patriarchal conditions of the past – to deny women this is to perpetuate one of the causal factors of millennial poverty around the world.  

We judge people by the fruits of their labor, as we ought to, and Mother Teresa should be no exception. An important question is why it is so difficult to open Mother Teresa’s life to criticism. The answer is two-fold. The first reason is because Mother Teresa provides, as author Vijay Prashad puts it, “the quintessential image of a white woman in the colonies, working to save the dark bodies from their own temptations and failures.” It is this white saviour complex that titillates media coverage – all the while ignoring the often more important work done by an ex-colony’s own people – and cushions the blow of any criticism levelled against the white saviours themselves.  

The second reason is because one’s instinct is often to trust figures who, even if they may be acting out of their own personal agendas, are able to do so under the guise of altruism and charity. Mother Teresa’s presence in the colonies occurred at a time when many struggled with disease, poverty, and oppression in the aftermath of colonial settlement – she was, for many, a reinstatement of the ideals of faith and kindness. We tend not to scrutinize those who thus capture our imaginations, but nonetheless it is crucial that we hold them accountable for their actions, whether it be for the sake of reminding them of their moral duties, or for the good of the people they are to serve. This can be said not only of religious figures, but of all who fall under the public eye: politicians, celebrities, creators, and the like.  

Preconceptions are a dangerous business. Words like ‘charity’ and ‘faith’ appeal to softer sides and elicit praise, but it is necessary for us not to let the goodwill associated with these words impair our ability to think critically about those who we hold up as pillars of our communities. For better or worse, they should still be held accountable and judged by the fruits they bear.

The life of Mother Teresa is a controversial one, and her canonization begs a re-evaluation of our perceptions of charity. The question arises of whether we shall exercise our skepticism, as we should, or allow the notion of ‘charity’ to fray unnoticed, as it will, until it is too late.

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