This critique is not just relevant to extreme forms of socialism but to all forms where individuals and families are subjected to control by the state. Indeed, John Paul goes on to deal with the specific issue of the welfare state. "In recent years, the range of such intervention has vastly expanded, to the point of creating a new type of state, the so-called ‘welfare state'...[E]xcesses and abuses, especially in recent years, have provoked very harsh criticisms of the welfare state, dubbed the ‘social assistance state'. Malfunctions and defects in the social assistance state are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the state."

In fact, there is little in formal Catholic teaching to give much comfort to those who believe, in principle, that the state should play the primary role in economic life. But, if the Church rejects socialism does that mean she embraces the opposite? Of course, it does not. The opposite economic system may be flawed too. As the old Polish joke goes, "socialism is the exploitation of man by man; capitalism is the opposite."

Catholic social teaching has criticised capitalism at various times - sometimes in very strong language. Normally, though not always, those criticisms relate to the culture of consumerism which the Church has perceived is rooted in Western societies. The accumulation of material goods for their own sake must be condemned. But the enemy here should be the sin of materialism and not structure of the market economy.

State intervention in the economic sphere does not save us from materialism as socialism is intrinsically materialistic. It seeks to raise the human condition through increased production and the redistribution of material wealth. So a debate about materialism does not get us very far in the debate between socialism and capitalism.