When everything is up for grabs, and there is no concept of
anything resembling an absolute, then society will dissolve in chaos. This can be gradual, as we have seen in the
United States, or almost in the blink of an eye, as we saw in post-World War I
Germany and Austria-Hungary. Once the
solid anchor of private property is gone from a society, pure moral relativism
always takes over, especially if order is restored by someone or a group that
forces its personal vision on the rest of society, as Hitler and the Nazis did
in the 1930s.
That is why the only truly viable option for restructuring
the social order “according to the principles of
sound philosophy and to its perfection according to the sublime precepts of the
law of the Gospel” (Quadragesimo Anno,
§ 76) in light of such massive confusion is, first, to clarify the three
principles of economic justice:
•
Participation or “Participative Justice.” “Participation” is the
input principle that all people have a right to live in a culture that offers
them equality of dignity and opportunity to contribute their labor as well as
their capital, to the production of marketable goods and services by removing
barriers that inhibit or prevent equal opportunity for all. This requires equal
access to the means of acquiring property in income-producing capital. As
technology displaces or replaces labor, the ownership of capital becomes
essential for a person in the modern world to earn a living. Such social means
are necessary for all members of a society or wealth-producing institution to
exercise their fundamental rights to become empowered to contribute to the
success of the whole and to their personal success.
• Distribution or “Distributive
Justice.” “Distribution”
is the out-take principle — based on the exchange value of one’s
economic contributions — that all people have a right to receive a
proportionate, market-determined share of the value of the marketable goods and
services they produce with their labor, their capital, or both. Under Kelso’s binary theory of economics,
every person is entitled to earn both from their human or “labor” contributions
and from their capital contributions (non-human things in the form of productive
land and humanly-created capital assets) that combine to produce all goods and
services sold in the market. Kelso
rejected the “Labor Theory of Value,” which ignores the reality of
ever-advancing technologies that continue to eliminate many jobs throughout the
world. Further, distribution based on need, rather than on contribution, is
valid for charity. Charity, however, should never be a substitute for justice
that could reduce the need for charity.
• Feedback or “Social
Justice” (formerly
“Limitation”). “Social justice” is the
feedback principle that balances “participation” and “distribution” when either
essential principle is violated by the system.
Social justice includes a concept of limitation that discourages
personal greed and prevents social monopolies.
It holds that every person has a personal responsibility to organize
with others to correct their organizations, institutions, laws and the social
order itself at every level whenever the principles of “participation” or “distribution”
are violated or not operating properly.
Only when the three principles of economic justice are
clearly understood will it be possible to organize to carry out acts of social
justice directed toward removing barriers that inhibit or prevent full and
equal opportunity to participate in the institutions of the common good —
particularly access to the means of acquiring and possessing private property
in capital.
Can widespread capital ownership truly be that
important? Yes. “Power,” as Daniel Webster observed during
the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1820, “naturally and necessarily
follows property.”
If society is to be restructured to conform to the precepts
of the natural law and guided by the precepts of the supernatural law, then
ordinary people must have the power to act in conformity with their own nature
— which is rational, that is, reasonable.
This power may sometimes be gained by pure “people power,” as it was in
the civil rights movement, but it cannot be sustained or maintained without “ownership
power.”
Thus, as Leo XIII declared, “We have seen that this great
labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private
ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor
ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people
to become owners.” (Rerum Novarum, § 46.) Yes,
Leo XIII specified “labor question,” but it is clear from the context that he
was addressing the whole of the “social question”: how to restore a just social
order, and thus respect for the dignity of the human person under God.
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