Dorothy Day was *not* a Marxist. She was a Distributist - an economic view championed by G K Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc - hardly Marxists.
Yes. Shame that all the operative words (liberalism, distributism, capitalism, socialism, and so many others) have “evolved.” The Molly Maguires are no longer necessary to confront the early evils of America’s Industrial Revolution. Funny though—Three Acres and a Cow came well after Five Acres and a Mule.
For Dorothy Day “distributism” meant that property should be “distributed” equitably, transferred from those who have “too much” to those who have “too little”—no wonder Obama called Day one the “great social reformers” at the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast. Carol Byrne, in “The Catholic Worker [CW] Movement (1933-1980): A Critical Analysis” (2010, p. 198) states: “Clearly, Day was only interested in what she termed ‘the communal aspect of property.’ As far as dwellings were concerned, Day advocated OCCUPANCY rather than private ownership. She accepted Kropotkin’s idea of the ‘right’ of needy people to enter family homes and occupy spare rooms in them.” In the November 1964 “CW,” Day declared: “It seems to me that anything that threatens money or property, anything that aims at a more equitable distribution of this world’s goods, has always been called communism. I like the word myself; it makes me think of the communism of the religious orders.” In the July-August 1969 “CW,” Day had more to say: “’The more property becomes common—the more it becomes holy.’... But to do away with private property is a mortal sin in our system.... Certainly the Catholic [religious communities] have always profited by an increase of land and wealth so that persecution has come over and over again. The corporate wealth is then taken away, but later accumulates again. Fortunately, the Papal States were wrested from the Church in the last century, but there is still the problem of investment of papal funds. It is always a cheering thought to me that if we have good will and are still unable to find remedies for the economic abuses of our time, in our family, our parish, and the mighty church as a whole, God will take matters in hand and do the job for us. When I saw the Garibaldi mountains in British Columbia . . . I said a prayer for his soul and blessed him for being the instrument of so mighty a work of God. May God use us!”
I suppose. But her sympathies were all over the map, extending at various times to anarchism, communism, pacifism.
People who have gotten used to routinely labeling their political opponents Marxist may have a better case with Day than with today's run-of-the mill US politicians given her sympathy with Castro and Guevara, even though her theism and Marx's atheism excluded each other.