In his Encyclical, Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope), Pope Benedict XVI writes: “His [Marx's] error lay deeper. He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man’s freedom. He forgot thst freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favorable economic environment” (50).

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