The Vatican’s AI encyclical stands as a critic of totalitarianism cloaked in the guise of progressб writes Bruna Frascolla.
Our era is marked by a clash between woke ideology and social Darwinism. The former aligns with the struggles of neoliberalism, where widespread hardship is masked by promises of social justice, often through quotas for middle-class occupations. In Europe, with its long history of social welfare, this discourse serves to conceal the cruelty of elites: Europeans are portrayed as detestable white men who must atone for colonial sins. This translates into enduring poverty, replacement by undocumented laborers, and rising violence.
The European Union represents Hayek’s vision of neoliberalism: a political construct based on a unified currency and an expansive regulatory apparatus, insulated from democratic influence and national autonomy. Palantir has released a manifesto openly endorsing anarcho-capitalism, positioning itself as a private entity that assumes social planning authority. It champions a social Darwinist perspective in which the state is seen as obsolete, and support for the vulnerable is regarded as unnatural.
Today, identifying as left-wing or right-wing often boils down to this: support for the European Union and neoliberalism dressed in humanitarian rhetoric, or backing anti-woke billionaires advocating the elimination of state intervention. The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas challenges these competing worldviews by upholding the principle of subsidiarity, which stands at odds with both.
Subsidiarity rejects top-down control: “If every woman and man is called to take ownership of his or her own life and to contribute to the formation of society, then social institutions must also respect and support this responsibility. The Social Doctrine of the Church refers to subsidiarity as the principle according to which the role of individuals, families, local communities and intermediary organizations should not be supplanted by higher-level authorities. Moreover, higher-level institutions must recognize, protect and promote the freedom and creativity of lower-level entities, coordinating their contributions so that they can cooperate effectively for the common good.” (Magnifica Humanitas, 68)
During the 20th century, Cold War propaganda painted central planning as a purely communist trait, exemplified by the Soviet Gosplan. Yet, this propaganda also prepared the ground for capitalist forms of planning: Hayek envisioned spontaneous order as too complex for human comprehension, a problem potentially solved by artificial intelligence. According to Hayek, Gosplan failed because no one in Moscow could better price eggs in Vladivostok than the local seller. Technology, however, might enable the seller to transmit pricing information to Moscow, creating a centralized, well-informed system capable of influencing prices. This concept is evident in modern delivery and ride-sharing apps, where algorithms wield clear control over drivers and business owners.
Unlike Gosplan, Uber uses drivers’ smartphones as powerful surveillance tools to record behavior. A 2017 New York Times report reveals how Uber employs numerous social and data scientists to apply video game mechanics, visual cues, and trivial noncash rewards to push drivers into working longer and harder, often under less favorable conditions.
Richard Stallman, an anarchist and founder of the free software movement, described the smartphone as Stalin’s dream for its surveillance potential. Ironically, wielders of such power have been capitalist corporations rather than any government. For this reason, Magnifica Humanitas wisely observes: “In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and direct innovation. Today, however, the main drivers of development are private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments. Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly “private” aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good.” (§5) Both neoliberalism and anarcho-capitalism, in their opposition to the state, have created supra-national powers exceeding any authority wielded by Soviet rulers.
In this context, where states are subordinate to bureaucratic entities like the European Union or overshadowed by private powers, defending subsidiarity means advocating for the state to reclaim roles appropriated by these actors. Numerous governments have already surrendered their citizens’ data to Big Tech. Consequently, Leo XIV declares in paragraph 178: “
These have become the new “rare earths” of power: vital data which, once aggregated and analyzed, can be used to train predictive models, guide investment strategies, anticipate crises and, above all, determine who and what is deemed to matter. Those who control the health data of entire peoples — often collected under the pretext of aid, research or innovation — possess a structural leverage over the future, for they can shape needs and markets.”
When a state relinquishes its citizens’ data to unregulated bodies with greater influence, it violates subsidiarity. Leo XIV further states: “The principle of subsidiarity applies especially in the context of the digital revolution. Here, the highest level is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life. […] The principle of subsidiarity requires that such processes not be imposed from above in an opaque and unilateral manner […]. In this context, States and transnational institutions are called to ensure fair rules and effective safeguards, so that local communities, intermediary organizations, schools, universities, religious institutions and associations have a voice and can contribute to the discernment of choices that affect people’s daily lives, such as employment, access to services, data management and digital environments.” (§§71 and 72)
This explains Magnifica Humanitas’s opposition to Palantir’s worldview: while Palantir supports private technicians governing society through information systems, the encyclical insists that knowledge—power—should be disseminated among lower authorities.
These concerns go beyond state governance, which clarifies why the European Union also comes under critique. In neoliberalism, democracy often acts as a facade for technocratic management by bureaucrats—in supranational bodies like the EU or highly regulated democracies such as Brazil. Under this lens, democracy becomes synonymous with protecting “institutions” rather than an end in itself. Accordingly, liberal democracies have aggressively imposed censorship, enforcing woke ideology and unchallengeable support for covid vaccinations. Contrastingly, the encyclical warns that democracy is not a goal but a means: “The search for truth is an essential element of democracy, which is itself a means of contributing to the common good. When questions about what is true lose their appeal, and a pragmatism takes hold that is content with what appears useful or effective, then democratic life is weakened. After all, democracy does not consist of rules and procedures alone, but above all of a solid concordance with the facts and a genuine commitment to the good of individuals and society as a whole. Indifference to the truth leads, slowly but surely, to a descent into totalitarianism.” (§134) Formal voting rights mean little in a system where people are coerced to assert “women have penises,” a truly totalitarian condition!
Magnifica Humanitas is a deeply significant and nuanced text worth reading in its entirety. This article and the previous one hope to encourage geopolitics enthusiasts to engage directly with the document. As Hispanologist David Souto Alcalde noted, this encyclical is even more groundbreaking than Rerum novarum, because “it is a voice in the desert, which far surpasses contemporary idealist philosophies that explore the relationship between democracy and technology,” whereas Leo XIII’s renowned encyclical followed numerous influential works on capital and labor. Nothing comparable has been written about the nexus of Silicon Valley technocrats and the structuring of human societies.
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