Taking a break in our series
of postings on the laws and characteristics of social justice, we thought we’d look
at what many people presume to be the task of social justice: creating a
perfect society here on earth, instead of one that is just for as many people
as possible.
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| Henri de Saint-Simon |
To many people, however, “social
justice” means nothing less than the perfection of human society by any means
necessary — the stated goal of one of the founders of “Christian socialism,”
Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825). As his
fundamental principle is expressed, “The whole of society ought to
strive towards the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the
poorest class; society ought to organize itself in the way best adapted for
attaining this end.”
As Dr. Julian Strube
of Heidelberg University has characterized this overriding principle of the
socialist movement from the earliest time, there is an obsession with creating
the “Kingdom of God on Earth.” No other
consideration is to have any weight whatsoever.
Individual rights, traditions, customs, laws, traditional religions, even
God must go down before this one principle that justifies everything.
That is what “social
justice” is all about to the socialists, and why social justice and socialism
are equivalent terms. That is, unless you’ve
been reading the blog series on the laws and characteristics of social justice,
or dipped into CESJ co-founder Fr. William Ferree’s pamphlet, Introduction
to Social Justice (1948).
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| Henry George |
While it might
seem paradoxical, the modern understanding of social justice came out of the
theories of the agrarian socialist Henry George (1839-1897), who strongly
influenced the thought of Monsignor John A. Ryan (1869-1945) and the founders
of the Fabian Society.
Briefly — which
is all we have time for this fascinating subject — the influence of the Fabian Society continues
to be pervasive down to the present day.
Aiming at the revision of traditional Christianity as part of its
program of uplifting society, Fabianism is an offshoot of the New Age “Fellowship
of the New Life.”
Founded in
England in 1883, the Fellowship of the New Life was part of the greater New
Life movement that evolved out of the “New Christianity” of Henri de
Saint-Simon and other early socialists.
Reflecting a distorted understanding of human nature, the group sought
to attain “the cultivation of a perfect character in each and all” in this life
through pacifism, vegetarianism, and simple living. (Colin Spencer, The
Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism. London: Fourth Estate Classic Publisher,
1996, 283)
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| Edward R. Pease |
Soon after the
founding of the Fellowship, members wanted to begin using the power of the
State to transform Christianity and bring society around
to their views; “Christianity and Socialism are said to be convertible terms.”
(Edward R.
Pease, A History of the Fabian Society. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.,
1916, 25.) There was also
a desire to get away from the subordination of the material to the spiritual
that, as they saw it, characterized traditional concepts of religion and
interfered with progress. (Ibid.,
39.)
The Society was
inspired in large measure by the shared enthusiasm of co-founders Edward
Reynolds Pease (1857-1955) and Frank Podmore (1856-1910) for the theories of
Henry George,
and skepticism about spiritualism. (Ibid., 28) After a number of organizing meetings, members of the
Fellowship founded the Fabian Society as their political arm on January 4,
1884. (Ibid., 28-33.)
As Pease related,
To George belongs the extraordinary
merit of recognising the right way of social salvation. The Socialists of earlier days had proposed
segregated communities; the Co-operators had tried voluntary associations; the
Positivists advocated moral suasion; the Chartists favoured force, physical or
political; the Marxists talked revolution and remembered the Paris Commune. . . . George recognised that in the
Western States political institutions could be moulded to suit the
will of the electorate; he believed that the majority desired to seek their own
well-being and this could not fail to be also the well-being of the community
as a whole. From Henry George I think it may be taken that
the early Fabians learned to associate the new
gospel with the old political method. (Ibid.,
20-21.)
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| Frank Podmore |
George shared with the Fabians “a desire to explore the possibilities, within
existing economic theory, of using legislation to regulate the economy for the
general good.” (George H. Sabine, A
History of Political Theory, Third Edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston, 1961, 693; cf. Harold G. Moulton,
The New Philosophy of Public Debt.
Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1943, 71-89.) As Sabine commented, “Fabian economics
was for the most part not Marxian but an extension of the theory of economic
rent to the accumulation of capital, on lines already suggested
by Henry George. Fabian policy was
based on the justice and the desirability of recapturing unearned [i.e., non-labor] increment for social
purposes.” (Sabine, A History of Political Theory, op. cit.,
740.)
Within this
framework, ultimately nothing matters but the material welfare (as defined by
those in power or who wish they had had power . . . over others) of the
greatest number . . . of those who qualify for beneficiaries of that welfare (as
defined by those in power or who wish they had had power . . . over others).
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| Msgr. Ronald A. Knox |
As for the rights
of others? No need to concern yourself
about the lives, liberty, or private property of those whose consciousnesses
have not been raised. They are of the
unenlightened, the ungodly (regardless what those in the know worship as God)
and may safely be ignored or treated as the legitimate prey of the godly or the
enlightened. As Msgr. Ronald Knox
explained,
To be born again makes you a new creature; the seed of grace,
ransomed from a drowning world, must not be confused with the unregenerate;
they are (so to say) a different kind of animal. They alone, and not the ungodly, have legal
rights.
(Msgr. Ronald Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter
in the History of Religion. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1961, 584.)
The problem, of
course — actually a couple of problems — is that this belief violates the first
principle of reason by assuming that some people are somehow inherently better
than others. It also implies that God is
at the service of man instead of the other way around, as Fulton Sheen
explained in his first book God and
Intelligence in Modern Philosophy (1925).
All in all, it
seems that there is a basic misunderstanding of the social tool of the State
and its proper role . . . which boils down to the meaning and purpose of life .
. . which we will look at next week.
#30#