So far we have seen that distribution on the basis of need
(or, more properly, redistribution of what belongs to others with a demonstrated
“superabundance” to those who lack basic necessities) can be justified as an
expedient under the principle of double effect.
That is, while redistribution is not just,
using the coercive power of the State to take from the “haves” for the benefit
of the “have nots” can be justified
due to the danger to the common good represented by the potential social
disruption resulting from unrelieved material distress.
Pope Francis recently noted that inequality is the root of
all social evil. He then recommended
redistribution. We covered this before,
explaining how redistribution must be regarded as a temporary expedient on the
way to a solution, not as a solution.
Unfortunately, many people seem to think that the individual teaching to succor the needy
is social justice, not charity or a
permitted exception to address an emergency. Having advocated increases in redistribution,
they think they have done all they need do; they have been “socially just.”
No, all they have done is mistake an emergency measure for a solution. The problem remains, and will continue to get worse, as we have seen since 1891. Why do the popes continue to stress redistribution and charity? Because many people think that is being advocated as a solution, and can see it won’t work, so they don’t do it. But it’s not intended to “work”! It’s intended to keep things going until the system can be fixed and works.
Because people keep confusing an expedient with a solution, things have gotten so bad that the popes are forced to remind us constantly what our immediate moral, charitable duty is, and the moral, just solution gets lost in the shouts of exultation from the socialists, and dismay from the capitalists. As a result, nothing gets done to effect a real solution, and the situation continues to deteriorate.
The problem with what Pope Francis said — actually a problem
with what most people heard — is that
he didn’t repeat the solution given by earlier popes: widespread capital
ownership. As Pope Leo XIII stated in §
46 of Rerum Novarum, “The law . . .
should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible
of the people to become owners.”
That Leo XIII believed widespread capital ownership to be a
solution, and not prudential matter or an expedient, is abundantly clear. As he explained in § 47 of Rerum Novarum, directly refuting
socialist claims that redistribution, or abolishing or redefining private
property would solve all problems,
“Many
excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will
certainly become more equitably divided. For, the result of civil change and
revolution has been to divide cities into two classes separated by a wide
chasm. On the one side there is the party which holds power because it holds
wealth; which has in its grasp the whole of labor and trade; which manipulates
for its own benefit and its own purposes all the sources of supply, and which
is not without influence even in the administration of the commonwealth. On the
other side there is the needy and powerless multitude, sick and sore in spirit
and ever ready for disturbance. If working people can be encouraged to look
forward to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf
between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the respective
classes will be brought nearer to one another. A further consequence will
result in the great abundance of the fruits of the earth. Men always work
harder and more readily when they work on that which belongs to them; nay, they
learn to love the very soil that yields in response to the labor of their
hands, not only food to eat, but an abundance of good things for themselves and
those that are dear to them. That such a spirit of willing labor would add to
the produce of the earth and to the wealth of the community is self evident.
And a third advantage would spring from this: men would cling to the country in
which they were born, for no one would exchange his country for a foreign land
if his own afforded him the means of living a decent and happy life. These
three important benefits, however, can be reckoned on only provided that a
man's means be not drained and exhausted by excessive taxation. The right to
possess private property is derived from nature, not from man; and the State
has the right to control its use in the interests of the public good alone, but
by no means to absorb it altogether. The State would therefore be unjust and
cruel if under the name of taxation it were to deprive the private owner of
more than is fair.”
Thus, because Pope Francis didn’t repeat a specific papal
teaching, even well-intentioned people were misled by increasingly hysterical
reactions in the media and by various “experts” to what they thought Pope
Francis was saying. The capitalists
thought they were hearing socialism and, frankly, so were the socialists. The direction of the hysteria was just
different.
Not that simply reiterating the teaching of Leo XIII would
have done all that much good, as Pope Francis is probably aware. Subsequent popes have stressed to the point
of redundancy the need for expanded capital ownership, and people have paid
even less attention to that solution than they have to the temporary expedient
of redistribution.
We think that this is because, while the three principles of
economic justice are implicit in the encyclicals and other teachings of the
Catholic Church (as they are in anything based on the Aristotelian-Thomism on
which Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler relied when developing the principles,
explained in Chapter 5 of The Capitalist Manifesto), they are not set forth plainly or with any particular emphasis
by the Catholic Church. It would,
therefore, be of immense help if they were stated explicitly, and carefully and
clearly explained, possibly in an encyclical dedicated exclusively to the three
principles of economic justice.
That, of course, begs the question: What are the “three
principles of economic justice”? That is
what we will cover in tomorrow’s posting, the final one in this brief series.
