The word is
out. Eight people in the world own more
wealth than half the human race combined.
Given Adam Smith’s first principle of economics (“Consumption is the
sole end and purpose of all production”), that means less than a dozen people
each have the potential to consume 430,000,000,000 times what it takes to
support one individual at a minimum — give or take a few million.
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| There's a reason it's called "the Staff of Life." |
To oversimplify
quite a bit, that means that if it takes one loaf of bread a day to stay alive,
the Eight Oligarchs have on the average enough wealth to fill their stomachs
430 billion times a day. So what are we
supposed to do about it?
Let’s take a look
at the socialist solution. If some
people have too much, obviously they got it dishonestly. Kill them and redistribute their ill-gotten
gains to the people who deserve it.
And what’s wrong
with that?
Mathematics, for
one. If all eight Oligarchs were slain,
even in an amusing manner (something with boiling oil in it) and all their
wealth redistributed equally among the 7 billion people in the world, it would
only meet consumption needs for three days, four tops.
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| "We are at the beginning of a new fashion in men." |
And that’s aside
from the fact that socialism is based on an unsound idea of society, viz., that humanity in general has
rights that individuals do not, a “concept of society . . . utterly foreign to
Christian truth” (Quadragesimo Anno,
§ 117). This, as the late Fulton J.
Sheen pointed out, puts Collective Man at the center of things, not God, and
turns the State into the source of all good (and evil, too). As he identified the principal error of the
modern age,
Now [1943] we are at the
beginning of a new fashion in men. With
increases of taxes, decline in income, blind men discovered man lived in a
State and was dependent on it for his ideas, his values, and thus was born the
political man who has rights because the new lawyers told him the State gave
him rights. (Fulton J. Sheen, Philosophies at War. New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1943,
84.)
Adding to the
problem is the strange creature known as the “Christian socialist.” Never having learned to think very clearly,
and often basing even his understanding of science and philosophy on faith
instead of reason, this living contradiction insists on combining the natural
with the supernatural — “because God said so.”
The Christian
socialist doesn’t realize that something is right and good not because he
believes believe God said so, but
because it can be shown by reason that God is
so. This is because the natural law is
based not on something accepted by faith as God’s Will, but on what people
discern as good “by the force and light of human reason” (Humani Generis, § 2).
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| When the State takes care of you. |
In this
framework, something the Christian socialist calls “social justice” demands
that everybody receive what he or she needs from the State From Which All
Blessings Flow. After all (as one such
enthusiast put it), “The State is the sole intercessor available to the
poor.” (Dr. Rupert J. Ederer, “Solidaristic
Economics,” Fidelity magazine, July
1994, 9-15.) Of course it is . . . if
you don’t mind turning everyone into “mere creatures of the State.”
Again as Fulton Sheen pointed out, the problem here is that the
Christian socialist is mixing the natural and the supernatural into some nearly
incoherent and unholy mix. This, as
Sheen explained, accounts for the drift into totalitarianism and worship of the
tool of the State. After all, if
charity, a supernatural virtue, replaces justice, a natural virtue, then the
State can force people to be “good” . . . however it happens to define “good”
at that time, e.g., human sacrifice,
abortion, abolition or redefinition of marriage — whatever expedience dictates or
the will of the majority or powerful minority demands.
The actual case is somewhat different. Charity does not replace or substitute for
justice. Instead, as the “soul” of
justice, charity completes and fulfills — perfects — justice. If the demands of justice are not first met,
then what is called “social justice” or “charity” is nothing of the sort. It is merely an elaborate and disguised form
of injustice. As Leo XIII explained,
[N]o one is commanded to
distribute to others that which is required for his own needs and those of his
household; nor even to give away what is reasonably required to keep up
becomingly his condition in life, “for no one ought to live other than
becomingly.” But, when what necessity demands has been supplied, and one's
standing fairly taken thought for, it becomes a duty to give to the indigent
out of what remains over. “Of that which remaineth, give alms.” It is a duty,
not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity — a duty not
enforced by human law. (Rerum Novarum, § 22.)
“But,” the
Christian socialist protests, “the super-concentration of wealth in so few
hands is an ‘extreme case.’ Clearly we are obligated to redistribute
wealth, and it is justice, not charity, and the State can enforce it! God’s Will
demands it! That’s social justice!”
That, of course,
begs the question as to whether confiscating everything the rich currently own
and redistributing will do anything other than gratify some need for revenge. We saw above that the math doesn’t appear to
work.
Setting aside the
arithmetic, redistribution is not charity, because the demands of justice have
not been met . . . and it’s not social justice because that’s not what social
justice is. Social justice is the
particular virtue directed to the common good, not any individual good.
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| Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas |
Voluntary
redistribution comes under charity.
Involuntary redistribution comes under justice in extreme cases as an
expedient in an emergency — and it must not be instituted as a regular thing or
last one moment longer than absolutely necessary. Otherwise you’re forcing some people to
produce for the benefit of others, which is the definition of slavery, at least
as Abraham Lincoln understood it:
That
is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when
these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the
eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout
the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the
beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common
right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same
principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that
says, “You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what
shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the
people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race
of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical
principle. (Debate
with Stephen Douglas at Alton, Illinois, October 15, 1858.)
And that is the
problem with the socialist solution, Christian or otherwise, regardless how you
dress it up. It seeks to enslave one set
of people for the benefit of others, usually in revenge for the enslavement
(real or imagined) of the others by the first set.
But is the
capitalist solution any better?
#30#
