As part of our research into the area of economic justice,
we’ve been reading recently how the Knights of Labor, the nineteenth century
labor organization (whether it was ever an actual union seems to be a bone of
contention among labor historians) never managed to come together as an
organization, and eventually dissolved due to going through what amounted to an
identity crisis. Ultimately, no one
seemed to know what the organization was, with factions and different leaders
pulling it every which way until it finally collapsed.
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| "The natural law is discerned by reason guided by faith, not faith alone." |
That’s the thesis of Robert E. Weir in his book, Knights Unhorsed: Internal Conflict in a
Gilded Age Social Movement (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University
Press, 2000), anyway. We won’t know
whether or not we agree with Weir’s thesis until we finish the book, but it
makes a good intro to the “Second Law of Social Justice”: Cooperation, Not
Conflict. First,
however, let’s review the basic understanding of social justice we’re using in
these discussions.
Social justice is
not a virtue that any institution, group, or society as a whole has. Only actual people — individuals — can have
virtues, at least in the Aristotelian-Thomist sense of the term (i.e., the sense used by Aristotle and
Thomas Aquinas).
The difference
between individual virtue and social virtue is the “end” to which the act of
the virtue is “directed” — it’s focus, so to speak. In individual virtue, the individual performs
a virtuous act for his or her own benefit and that of the other individuals
directly dependent on him or her. In
social virtue, the individual performs a virtuous act in association with
others (in an “organized way”) for the benefit of a specific group,
institution, or the whole of the common good.
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| Fr. William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D. |
Do you see the
difference? In both individual and
social virtue, individuals are acting — but they are acting (directing their
efforts) to different things, depending on the type of virtue they are dealing
with. Individual virtue is directed to
the good of individuals, while social virtue is directed to the good of
institutions, those “social habits” that make up the common good.
Thus, we say that
individual virtue is directed to the individual good, while social virtue is
directed to the common good.
Consequently, social justice is not a replacement or substitute for
individual justice or charity, but a “particular” virtue in its own right and
with its own focus (“directed object”).
That focus is to restructure society’s institutions (it’s “social
habits”) to make individual justice and charity possible, not to try and focus
on that to which the individual virtues are supposed to be directed.
An important part
of all social virtue is organization. In
order to carry out acts of social virtue, people cannot act alone on their own
initiative. That’s individual virtue,
which only has an indirect effect on the common good. No, they must organize in solidarity with one
another, which means on the basis of shared understanding and acceptance of the
principles that define a group or institution as that particular group or
institution and no other.
And that means
people must cooperate with one another when engaged in acts of social justice,
not dissolve in factionalism or promoting one’s personal interests at the
expense of the group. As Father Ferree
explained,
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| "The unity of human society cannot be founded upon opposition." |
“The unity of human society,” says Pope Pius XI in Paragraph 88 of Quadragesimo Anno, “cannot be founded
upon opposition.” The only alternative to building a society upon the Common
Good, is to try to build it upon some particular good. But the particular good
of each individual is different, and any particular good which is falsely made
into an ultimate principle must necessarily be in conflict with every other particular good.
Two kinds of such conflict are possible: free competition, which doesn’t care if others are wiped out; and dictatorship, which makes sure they are
wiped out. Free competition as a principle of society can only lead to greater
and greater conflicts of interests, until finally the society itself is
destroyed. Dictatorship is a refinement of the same system, by which one kills
off one’s competitors at the beginning instead of at the end, thus making sure
(it is hoped) that one at least will survive.
People who advocate such courses have missed the great law of Social
Justice that not conflict in any form, but only co-operation, organization for
the Common Good, can make a real society.
The catch, of
course, is that the cooperation — to be truly socially just, that is, virtuous
— must be free. It cannot be coerced, or (as is the case with
all virtue) it is not truly virtuous.
Someone may do the right thing because you are holding a gun to his
head, but is he being virtuous? No. He is being frightened, not virtuous, and
even more likely to revert to unvirtuous behavior the moment you take the gun
away than he was to do it in the first place, if only to reassert his dignity
that you offended by coercing him.
That is why true
solidarity is such an important concept in social virtue. Fundamental principles must be accepted
freely, or they haven’t really been accepted at all. If people who are members of a group only do
things because they are forced to do them, is there true solidarity, and is
there true virtue? Obviously not.
No, and that is
why the Second Law of Social Justice is “Cooperation, Not Conflict.”
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