The Just Third Way
continues to move forward. There have
been a number of events this week suggesting that the ideas may be starting to
work into the general consciousness, and may soon start stirring up some
enquiries about solutions to some of the more pressing world problems.
• On Monday of this
week the CESJ core group had a very good lunch meeting with Will Bullock of the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA). Arranged by Joseph Recinos, the discussion
focused on the importance of widespread ownership in a “living” economy. Ownership is not just for the rich and
workers, but for everyone, especially in an economy where technology displaces
human labor at an accelerating rate.
Production alone does no good, unless it generates consumption power at
the same time by the operation of Say’s Law of Markets. The NCBA is interested in discussing “new
directions” for the expanded ownership movement, and Mr. Bullock was intrigued
by the potential of the Just Third Way.
• A law professor
at the Catholic University of Argentina sent us a link to the
message Pope Francis sent to the recent Plenary Session of the Pontifical
Academy of Social Sciences held April 28 through May 2, 2017 that had the
theme, “Towards a Participatory Society: New Roads to Social and Cultural
Integration.” While the message makes no
mention of widespread capital ownership as the best means of delivering justice
and for most people to participate in society — something Aristotle, Leo XIII,
Pius XI, and many, many others stressed almost to the point of redundancy — there
is language that can be understood in a “Just Third Way way” as coming up to
the brink, but not quite managing to make the final leap. That is, there is language that paves the way
for acceptance of the
three principles of economic justice, but does not mention the principal
application of those principles, widespread private property in capital, which
is absolutely essential to their successful implementation. Conclusion: Pope Francis has made an excellent
start, now he needs to get down to brass tacks and give guidance on some
specifics, e.g., Capital Homesteading.
• Mark Reiners alerted
us that, “[t]here are very
important Congressional Committee hearings currently underway as part of
the assessment for prospective major tax reform. It might be very
constructive for the network of binary economists and Just Third Way advocates
to join [him] in sending the excellent blog installment, ‘The
Ronald Reagan of France,’ to key members of both parties. I plan to
make some time in the coming days to do just that.” Mark cautions, however, that “any binary
economics or Just Third Way proponent is likely to find it extremely
frustrating to listen to this back-and-forth predicated on conventional wisdom
with respect to ‘productivity’, capital expansion, and jobs.” Norman Kurland suggested that since most
members of Congress won’t understand why their focus on productivity that
ignores who or what is producing, capital expansion without bothering about who
owns the expansion, and jobs created only to generate income is off base,
people try to get them to focus on the issue of power: people who own have
power (and votes), while people who do not own do not have power . . . and tend
to use their votes to take property and power away from others, promoting
conflict and disharmony. Politicians
should be confronted with the fact that happy people elect good
representatives, while angry people elect demagogues.
• Some recent
postings on this blog seem to have been stirring up some excitement. In particular, “The Ronald Reagan of France”
(above) about President Macron of France, generated quite a bit of interest,
especially in Poland, thanks to a shared comment by an official with the
National Bank of Poland (the central bank of Poland). We have moved
the translation gadget (Google’s term) up to the top of the webpage to make it
easier for people whose first language isn’t English to get something out of
the blog, although we can’t vouch for the quality of the translation (to say
the least).
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| François Marie Charles Fourier |
• “The New
Christianity” also seems to have sparked a bit of controversy, especially
among people who think that “New Christianity” or “Neo-Catholicism” actually
have anything to do with Christianity or Catholicism, since both were
recognized euphemisms for utopian or religious socialism in the nineteenth
century. In fact, the founders of the
New Christian movement, Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Father Félicité
Lamennais, and others, were quite explicit that the day of Christianity,
especially Catholicism, was past, and it was now time for it to give way to
what was variously called “the Third Dispensation,” “the Religion of Humanity,”
and (of course) “the New Christianity,” “Neo-Catholicism,” and many, many,
others, with new terms being invented constantly, down to the present day. Common to all of them is the subordination of
everything (God and the natural law included) to whatever specific goal they
worked to attain, which goal changed constantly, according to what was most
strongly desired at the time.
Interesting historical note: Charles Fourier, whose brand of socialism
was particularly strong in the United States thanks to his disciple Albert
Brisbane, believed that once socialism was triumphant, the oceans would lose
their salinity and turn to lemonade.
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| E.F. Schumacher, Fabian socialist. |
• Then there is the
currently running series on the wage system and what to do about it, which
kicked off with “Wage
and Other Slavery” yesterday, and which Dr. Samuel Nigro immediately shared
with his entire network. Surprisingly,
while most people found it interesting, especially the historical background
that gave some of them new insights into the “Parable of the Talents” in the
Bible, a few (very few) seemed outraged that we would dare use their religion
to make a point about a non-religious issue.
The bizarre idea that what is true in one area or at one level of
consciousness isn’t necessarily true in another area or at another level of
consciousness — what G.K. Chesterton called “the Double Mind of Man” — seems to
be the prevalent philosophy today, as seen in moral relativism and “situational
ethics.” It accounts for the popularity
in some circles of books like the Fabian socialist E.F. Schumacher’s Guide for the Perplexed, which builds on
the assumption that truth isn’t necessarily true.
• Here’s the usual announcement
about the Amazon Smile program,
albeit moved to the bottom of the page so you don’t get tired of seeing
it. To participate in the Amazon Smile
program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift
through. Once you’ve typed (or copied
and pasted) “Center for Economic and
Social Justice Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you
will be taken to the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• We have had
visitors from 28 different countries and 40 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the
United States, South Africa, Poland, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were “The Ronald Reagan of
France,” “The New Christianity,” “The Purpose of Production,” “News from the Network,
Vol. 10, No. 22,” and “What is Socialism?, Why It’s Wrong.”
Those are the happenings for this
week, at least those that we know about.
If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a
note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into
the next “issue.” If you have a short
(250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the
blog — do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#