Yesterday
we looked at the role of free and open markets in solidarism and the Just Third
Way. We found that Father Pesch and CESJ
are in substantial agreement that the free market and fair competition are
fully compatible with the demand for justice and morality in daily life.
The
question, of course, is how to ensure that everyone has the essential equality
of status that makes the free market and fair competition possible? We find the answer in a pillar common to both
solidarism and the Just Third Way: private property in both labor and all forms
of capital.
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| Private property is the right to exclude others from use within limits. |
That’s not
socialism, i.e., the State or the
collective is the ultimate owner. No, it
means that property must never be used to harm other individuals, groups,
institutions, or the common good as a whole.
This is probably better stated as the concept of stewardship, but nobody asked for our input when coming up with
these things.
Thus (for
example), someone is starving to death and all other recourse has been
exhausted (and we do mean all,
including groveling), the starving person is morally (but not legally)
justified in stealing what he or she needs to survive. The necessary food becomes in a sense “common
property,” and the thief incurs no moral guilt, although still guilty under
human law. (For Herman Melville fans,
moral v. legal guilt is the subject of his novella, Billy Budd, Foretopman. It’s
way too involved to get into here.)
Obviously, that’s
an “extra extreme” case. Ordinarily,
even in extreme cases, duly constituted authority will levy an additional tax
of some kind to redistribute what is necessary to keep people alive until the
emergency passes.
Thus we can say
that the third pillar of the Just Third Way, restoration of the rights of
private property, particularly in corporate equity, also has a counterpart in
Father Pesch’s economic theories. There
is, of course, the idea that private property is essential to the maintenance
of “marriage and family” found in Father Pesch’s own “three pillars.”
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| Only natural persons (human beings), not things, have inherent rights. |
Father Pesch is,
however a little unclear when it comes to distinguishing the right to property from the rights of property. Property, again, is not the thing itself, but
the rights an owner or potential owner has to own something, and what he may do
with the thing once he owns it, including the right of control and the disposal
of the income, the “fruits of ownership.”
Property is important in sum because, as Daniel Webster observed, “power
naturally and necessarily follows property.” (Daniel Webster, “Speech Before
the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1820.”)
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| Daniel Webster: "Power follows property." |
Private property
was instituted that the goods of this earth may attain the purpose for which
they were created, i.e., of serving
the needs of man, of all men, and giving them the opportunity to live as free
and self-dependent persons. Accordingly
all men have the strict right by natural law to as much of these goods as they
need for attaining the purpose of their creation by God. And this in turn means a strict right to some
degree of private ownership, which right no one can lawfully take away from any
man against his will.
No one may
exercise property in such a way as to harm others or the common good, nor may
anyone accumulate so much that it prevents others from exercising their rights
to acquire, possess, or exercise property.
We find these ideas in Father Pesch’s thought as well, but it takes a
little digging — and his lack of clarity leaves room for interpretations by
others at variance with natural law, despite Father Pesch’s firm adherence:
An example of the application of
these general principles of social organization may be seen in the question of
private property. Like individualism,
solidarism recognizes the right of private ownership of property. But it is opposed to an absolute,
irresponsible concept of private ownership, just as it rejects the socialistic
concept of the state ownership of all the means of production or the
communistic state ownership of all property.
Solidarism clarifies the limits of private ownership by introducing the
requirements of social duty. The central
notion of property is that “the goods of the earth should serve all mankind.” (2, 243)
And it is recognized that this goal is best attained through private
ownership, subordinate to higher rights.
Thus solidarism holds: 1.
Property signifies power, but limited power, subordinate to the moral and legal
order. 2. Property is a right, but not
the highest right that would place the material world above the world of
men. 3.
Property is not an end in itself, but a means to an end — namely, the
ordered providing for the needs of all men living in society. (2, 242 – 43)
The social duty referred to embraces more than charity, which provides
for the individual needs of the poor, or the obligation to pay taxes. It also implies the duty to use one’s
property for the furthering of the common welfare. (Mulcahy, op. cit., 166.)
There are just
(barely) enough technical inaccuracies and sufficient vagueness in Father Pesch’s
concept of private property and the role it plays to make it relatively easy
for someone to put some wonderfully heterodox interpretations on his
ideas. It is, of course, also possible
to interpret his words in perfectly orthodox fashion. The vagueness, however, makes it easier for a
less than orthodox commentator to read socialism or capitalism into them, and
insert an unwarranted collectivism or individualism, depending on the
commentator’s orientation.
#30#
