We were going to title this posting “The Problem with Personalism,” except that would imply that there is something wrong with personalism. There is nothing wrong with personalism, although the same can’t be said of some of its interpreters. The fact is that if we take the personalist movement as generally understood, it is incomplete.
 |
| Thomism IS personalism. |
As
we saw in the
previous posting in this series, Pope John Paul I clearly had the
“personalist perspective” — a focus on the inherent dignity and sovereignty of
each human person under God. He also had
much more of a grounding in basic Thomist philosophy than most people concerned
with social justice issues, who tend to concentrate on applications of
individual justice and individual charity that they call social justice without
realizing it is nothing of the sort; social justice is the virtue that makes
the individual virtues possible, it does not substitute for or replace them.
What
John Paul I lacked, however, was an effective means to implement the essential
reforms of the system that constitute the “matter” of social justice. That limited his positive recommendations to
those ameliorative measures so many mistake for social justice, although at the
same time he was very strong in his reminders that the end does not justify the
means, which is one of the fundamental principles of socialism. As he said in his “Urbi et Orbi” (“The City
and the World”) address with which he opened his pontificate on August 27,
1978,
 |
| "We are all obliged to work for justice!" |
[W]e place ourselves interiorly, putting all of our physical
and spiritual strength at the service of the universal mission of the Church,
that is to say, at the service of the world. In other words we will be at the
service of truth, of justice, of peace, of harmony, of collaboration within
nations as well as rapport among peoples. We call especially on the children of
the Church to understand better their responsibility: “You are the salt of the
earth, you are the light of the world” (Mt 5:13). Overcoming internal tension which
can arise here and there, overcoming the temptation of identifying ourselves
with the ways of the world or the appeal of easily won applause, we are,
rather, united in the unique bond of love which forms the inner life of the
Church as also its external order. Thus, the faithful should be ready to give
witness of their own faith to the world: “Always be prepared to give a reason
for the hope that is in you” (1 Pt 3:15).
My brothers and sisters — all people of the world! We are all
obliged to work to raise the world to a condition of greater justice, more
stable peace, more sincere cooperation. Therefore we ask and beg all — from the
humblest who are the connective fibres of nations to heads of state responsible
for each nation—to work for a new order, one more just and honest.
A dawn of hope spreads over the earth, although it is
sometimes touched by sinister merchants of hatred, bloodshed, and war with a
darkness which sometimes threatens to obscure the dawn. This humble Vicar of
Christ, who begins his mission in fear yet in complete trust, places himself at
the disposal of the entire Church and all civil society. We make no distinction
as to race or ideology but seek to secure for the world the dawn of a more
serene and joyful day. Only Christ could cause this dawn of a light which will
never set, because he is the “sun of justice” (cf. Mal 4:2). He will indeed
oversee the work of all. He will not fail us.
 |
| "As many people as possible should own capital." |
There
are clear references to reforming the system here, e.g., “work for a new order, one more just and honest,” and so on .
. . but nothing as definite as Leo XIII’s or Pius XI’s admonition to work
specifically for widespread capital ownership.
It is all generalities — sound morality, of course, and obviously
motivated by enormous goodwill, but nothing tangible to grasp and enable people
to say, “Yes — that is what we must do!”
This
is understandable. By 1978 it had become
more than a little obvious that the means that Leo XIII and Pius XI had
mentioned to enable people to become capital owners — an increase in wages to
enable people to save — was not merely inadequate, it was inconsistent with the
way finance is practiced in an advanced economy.
Reducing
consumption below one’s income level to save and finance new capital formation
is even counterproductive, as Dr. Harold G. Moulton explained in The Formation of Capital (1935), his
classic refutation of the monetary policies of the Keynesian New Deal. As Moulton pointed out, if people reduce
consumption in order to save to finance new capital to increase production,
there is no reason to increase production because consumption has
decreased! After all, as Adam Smith pointed
out in The Wealth of Nations (1776)
as the first principle of economics, “Consumption is the sole end and purpose
of all production.”
This
sets up an “economic dilemma,” viz.,
 |
| Dr. Harold Glenn Moulton |
The dilemma may be summarily stated as
follows: In order to accumulate money savings, we must decrease our
expenditures for consumption; but in order to expand capital goods profitably,
we must increase our expenditures for consumption. . . .
[In addition,] when the managers of modern
business corporations contemplate the expansion of capital goods they are
forced to consider whether such capital will be profitable. They must begin to
pay interest upon borrowed funds immediately and they must hold out the hope of
relatively early dividends on stock investments. . . .
Now the ability to earn interest or
profits on new capital depends directly upon the ability to sell the goods
which that new capital will produce, and this depends, in the main, upon an
expansion in the aggregate demand of the people for consumption goods. . . .
[I]f the aggregate capital supply of a nation is to be steadily increased it is
necessary that the demand for consumption goods expand in rough proportion to
the increase in the supply of capital.
In
other words, if people save to invest, they can’t consume, but if they don’t
consume, the investment will not be profitable.
The bottom line? When added to
the fact that income from labor tends to decrease relative to income from
capital when technology is advancing and displacing labor (further lowering the
relative value of labor), not only are most people prevented from saving, it
does them little good if they can!
That
being the case, the best John Paul I could do was to tell people to start
looking for ways to restructure the social order, and in the meantime make
certain that acts of individual justice and charity do as much as is humanly
possible.
That,
in fact, is the great lesson to be learned from John Paul I: not to assume that
because you don’t have the answer or even an answer at the moment there is no
answer. Too many people have fallen into
that trap and, e.g., rejected the Just Third Way simply because they never
heard of it before, somebody told them it wouldn’t work, or they just don’t “get”
it.
 |
| Emmanuel Mounier |
That
seems to have been the problem that afflicted Emmanuel Mounier, generally
(if not accurately) regarded as the founder of personalism. He
seems even to have rejected philosophy itself because it didn’t give an
immediate answer to the problem of the loss of human dignity he saw in the
modern age.
Mounier
somehow failed to grasp the fact that philosophy — in common with religion or
education — doesn’t actually give you an answer, but the “tools” you need to
develop your own answer. That is why it
is the utmost importance that a religion or a philosophy be true, so that the
answers each person develops from the principles has a better chance of being
true as well if it is in conformity with those principles.
That
may be why Mounier refused to call personalism a philosophy, insisting it was
only a movement. Jacques Maritain had
some influence on him, but Mounier seemed suspicious of “philosophy” and
anything else that did not seem directed to respect for human dignity. He seemed to shy away from absolutes at the
same time that he relied on them as the basis of his personalist ethos.
Thus,
although Mounier was “a man of remarkable good will and unusual honesty toward
even his worst enemies” (R. William Rauch, Jr., Politics and Belief in Contemporary France: Emmanuel Mounier and
Christian Democracy, 1932-1950. The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972, 5), he had an unfortunate almost total blindness
to the importance of institutions. His
inherent kindliness was directed exclusively at human persons, not to
abstractions.
 |
| Pope John Paul II |
Nor
was Mounier alone in his focus on the immediate to the exclusion of the
important. It may be that the so-called
decline in attendance at religious services, civil groups, social clubs,
fraternal orders, and such like is due more to many people today not being able
to see beyond the immediate concern than any real lack of relevance. Thinking institutionally or systemically in a
socially just manner automatically means thinking beyond the immediate — which
many people no longer do, and thereby confuse the immediate things of
individual justice and charity (food, clothing, and shelter, for example) with
the important things of social justice (the institutions that determine how
people obtain food, clothing, and shelter).
Obviously,
John Paul I had moved beyond Mounier’s restricted concept of personalism and
toward something approaching — or identical to — the actual personalist philosophy
of Pope John Paul II, his guide and mentor in many things. He (that is, John Paul I) had not yet seen
how to reform the system, although he clearly saw the system needed reforming. The technique of social justice was there to
complete the theory of personalism, the specific end (widespread capital
ownership) had already been articulated . . . but how are people without
savings supposed to become capital owners without harming the rights of
existing owners of capital?
That
is what we will look at in the next posting in this series.
#30#