Editing Anarcho-Distributism (section)

==== Sympathy with communists ====
In the first years of the Catholic Worker, Day provided a clear statement of how her individualism contrasted with communism:


We believe in widespread private property, the de-proletarianizing of our American people. We believe in the individual owning the means of production, the land, and his tools. We are opposed to the "finance capitalism" so justly criticized and condemned by Karl Marx, but we believe there can be a Christian capitalism as there can be a Christian Communism.


She also stated: "To labor is to pray – that is the central point of the Christian doctrine of work. Hence it is that while both Communism and Christianity are moved by 'compassion for the multitude,' the object of communism is to make the poor richer, but the object of Christianity is to make the rich poor and the poor holy."


In November 1949, in the course of explaining why she had protested the recent denial of bail to several Communists, she wrote: "[L]et it be remembered that I speak as an ex-Communist and one who has not testified before Congressional Committees, nor written works on the Communist conspiracy. I can say with warmth that I loved the  people I worked with and learned much from them. They helped me to find God in His poor, in His abandoned ones, as I had not found Him in Christian churches." She identified points on which she agreed with the communists: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" and the "withering away of the State". Others she added with qualifications: "the communal aspect of property as stressed by the early Christians." And she identified differences: "we disagree over and over again with the means chosen to reach their ends." She agreed that "Class war is a fact, and one does not need to advocate it," but posed the question of how to respond:


The Communists point to it as forced upon them and say that when it comes, they will take part in it, and in their plans, they want to prepare the ground and win as many as possible to their point of view and for their side. And where will we be on that day? …We will inevitably be forced to be on their side, physically speaking. But when it comes to activity, we will be pacifists, I hope and pray, non-violent resisters of aggression, from whomever it comes, resisters to repression, coercion, from whatever side it comes, and our activity will be the works of mercy. Our arms will be the love of God and our brother.


Regarding Fidel Castro's Cuba, she wrote in July 1961: "We are on the side of the revolution. We believe there must be new concepts of property, which is proper to man, and that the new concept is not so new. There is a Christian communism and a Christian capitalism. …We believe in farming communes and cooperatives and will be happy to see how they work out in Cuba. …God bless Castro and all those who are seeing Christ in the poor. God bless all those who are seeking the brotherhood of man because in loving their brothers, they love God even though they deny Him."It was only in December 1961, after the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April of that year, that Castro, who had repeatedly repudiated communism in the past, openly declared that his movement was not simply socialist, but communist.