One of the problems with modern life is the extreme compartmentalization that has accompanied the development of what G.K. Chesterton called “the Double Mind of Man.” What Chesterton meant is the not-so-modern practice of accepting contradiction.
Believing two or contradictory things are both true at the same time violates “the first principle of reason.” This is called the law or principle of (non) contradiction: “nothing can both ‘be’ and ‘not be’ at the same time under the same conditions.”
Not even God can violate this principle, or by definition He wouldn’t be God. Contradiction is an imperfection, and “God” is defined as a “perfect being” in the Abrahamic faiths and a number of other faiths and philosophies, even pagan, e.g., Aristotle’s hypothetical “God of the Philosophers” based on reason that he needed to make his philosophical system work.
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| Aristotle |
What has this got to do with solidarism? Well . . . everything, once you take into account the possibility that terms such as personalism, social justice, and — of course — solidarity may have been misused or redefined in ways that either admit or rely on contradictions to make somebody’s pet scheme work.
Not surprisingly, as we saw in the previous two postings on this subject, “The Rise and Development of Solidarism” and “Solidarism, Personalism, and Social Justice”, that is precisely what has happened. Many of the presumed experts of the past have so garbled basic terms and concepts that what is promoted today as solidarism — or personalism or social justice — is nothing of the sort. It has become another term for one more variety of socialism.
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| Louis O. Kelso |
Nowhere is this more evident than when we look at the reception that the ideas of Louis Kelso have been given by individuals and groups that consider themselves to be personalist, socially just, or solidarist . . . and have no real idea even how to define their own basic terms.
As one extreme example, take the consistency of Kelso’s theories with Catholic social teaching. While rejected by a number of recent “experts” (mostly in the United States) in Catholic social teaching,” in the 1950s his ideas were integrated into the Solidarity Movement in Central and South America, and later acknowledged by Polish Solidarność.
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| Alberto Martén Chavarría |
In the late 1950s, Kelso corresponded with Señor Alberto Martén Chavarría, a student of the teachings of Heinrich Pesch, and founder of Solidarismo Costarricense. “Don Alberto,” named a national hero (“Benemérito de la Patria” (“Alberto Martén Chavarría,” https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Mart%C3%A9n_Chavarr%C3%ADa, accessed May 24, 2021; also Editorial Costa Rica, https://www.editorialcostarica.com/escritores.cfm?detalle=1184, accessed May 24, 2021.) — a “Worthy of the People”) by the Costa Rican legislature in 2009, realized that Kelso’s theories had the potential to make Catholic social teaching a practical reality for everyone. He therefore incorporated many elements of Kelso’s thought into his programs.
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| Fr. Heinrich Pesch, S.J. |
Rejecting recent interpretations of Pesch’s work that have turned the German Jesuit into a socialist and a modernist, Martén correlated Pesch’s theories with those of Kelso, putting special emphasis on the principles of economic justice as articulated by Kelso and Adler (Kelso and Adler, The Capitalist Manifesto, op. cit., 52-86.). These are, 1) Participation (Unión Soldiarista Costarricense (USC), Solidarismo: A Tool for Democracy, Justice and Peace. San Jose, Costa Rica: Unión Solidarista Costarricense, , 1985, 3.), 2) Distribution (ibid.), and 3) Limitation (ibid., 1, now “Social Justice”), and the “Four Pillars of an Economically Just Market Economy”:
· A limited economic role for the State, (This is largely through meeting workers’ needs through private sector initiatives instead of State action, and emphasizing popular support for democracy by integrating democratic procedures in corporate governance. USC, Solidarismo, op. cit., 5.)
· Free and open markets within a strict juridical order as the best means of determining just wages, just prices, and just profits (ibid., 2),
· Restoration of the rights of private property, especially in corporate equity and other forms of business organization (ibid., 1), and
· Widespread direct ownership of capital. (Ibid., 1, 2.)
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| President Ronald Reagan |
As a result, Solidarismo Costarricense became a model for the Central American Solidarity movement decades before its success in Poland helped bring down the Soviet Union. Although little known outside of Central America, Martén’s accomplishments and leadership were an integral, if largely unacknowledged, part of the efforts of President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II to counter the threat of Marxism in Central and South America and the Caribbean Basin. It may be time to take another look at authentic solidarism as an alternative to the Great Reset and similar proposals, especially in the lesser-developed countries or those suffering from the latest wave of neo-colonialism.
That was not all.
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| Presidential Task Force for Project Economic Justice |
In 1985, CESJ members mobilized bipartisan political support for Congressional legislation which established the “Presidential Task Force for Project Economic Justice” under President Ronald Reagan. First conceived in a strategy paper by Norman G. Kurland, the proposal offered a personalist alternative to military solutions to counter Marxism in Central America and the Caribbean.
Enacted as part of the International Security and Development Cooperation Act of 1985, the legislation created the first presidential task force funded entirely with private donations. It was supported by both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. John William Middendorf II, former Ambassador to the Organization of American States and the European Community, served as Chairman. Kurland, CESJ’s president, was Deputy Chairman.
High Road to Economic Justice, the Task Force’s 1986 report, was America’s first official endorsement of expanded capital ownership as a policy for achieving economic democracy, the essential precondition for reestablishing the natural law foundation of a stable political order. Some of the Task Force’s recommendations were adopted into U.S. foreign policy. They were also included as one of the World Bank’s “market based” options for debt-equity conversions through ESOPs.
Just Third Way supporters throughout the world praised the initiative, including Don Alberto Martén Chavarría (Letter to Norman G. Kurland, February 28, 1979.) of Solidarismo Costarricense, which also gave its endorsement. (Testimony Delivered by Arnoldo Nieto on Behalf of the Solidarista Movement of Costa Rica Before the Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice April 21, 1986.) Others included the controversial Jesuit Father Claudio Solano, founder of the John XXIII Social School in San José, Costa Rica. (Christopher Caldwell, “Organized Labor Without Unions,” Insight magazine, February 12, 1990, 34-35.)
On August 3, 1987, when CESJ delivered of the Task Force report at a White House ceremony, Reagan delivered a speech to Task Force members. He made special mention of the program of La Perla coffee plantation in Guatemala, where worker owners had taken arms against communist insurgents to protect their lives, liberty, and property. Previously, workers had either run away or joined the insurgents.
In addition to making a reference to Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 Homestead Act, Reagan declared, “what will change despair into confidence, deprivation into plenty, stagnation into upward mobility, is a commitment to human freedom and an understanding of how that relates to the economic progress of mankind.”
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| CESJ and Solidarność
meet with Pope John Paul II |
A copy of the Task Force report was later presented to His Holiness Pope John Paul II in a private audience at the Vatican in company with representatives of Polish Solidarność. It was on this occasion that the pope gave his personal encouragement of the work of CESJ. An unconfirmed report asserted that John Paul II later recommended the proposal on three different occasions to visiting heads of state.
In 1988, CESJ members and friends funded a Polish translation of the Task Force orientation book, Every Worker an Owner. Forty thousand copies were distributed throughout Solidarność channels prior to the dismantling of the Soviet Union. Copies (in English) were sent under cover letter in May 1988 to every USAID mission around the world.
Any individual or group seeking a financially feasible and morally just way out of the current seemingly hopeless world situation would do well to investigate the potential of the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism. More information can be found on the website of the interfaith think tank, the Center for Economic and Social Justice.
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