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| Aristotle |
Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Despite what “politics” means to most people, it is not something to avoid. In the Aristotelian, philosophical sense, politics refers to the behavior of human beings as “political animals” having both individual and social aspects. In this broad sense, politics refers to the art of securing and maintaining fundamental human rights of all persons without harm to other individuals, groups, or the common good as a whole. Social justice is the particular virtue directed to the common good by means of which this social order is structured, reformed, and maintained.
In the narrower sense, politics refers to the relations between the human person and the State, the State being the organized group or institution having a delegated responsibility for the common good. Politics in this sense consists of those organized actions that require both servant leaders and a critical mass of educated and committed people to develop the formal political system. Generally, this is done by enacting good laws that will maintain good institutions, or reform flawed institutions.
Norman G. Kurland
It is when laws and institutions are unjust or flawed that the political nature of social justice and its role in establishing and maintaining the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism becomes essential. This is especially the case when leaders fail to act in correcting, or even acknowledging, defects in the system.
One of the goals of education should be the formation of a critical mass of change agents. This should start with a core of highly committed, disciplined, and articulate people who have internalized the principles of personalism and economic justice. These change agents should be organized into local groups all directed to the same general objective of the restructuring of the social order. (Norman G. Kurland, “How to Win a Revolution . . . And Enjoy It,” CESJ occasional paper, 1989 (revised), 13.)
Pope Pius XI
This was Pope Pius XI’s program for reformed Catholic Action. Although specifically not political in the limited, modern sense, this was primarily an effort to forestall interference from Mussolini’s government. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, although ostensibly organized to the point few other societies have achieved, permitted few institutions or activities not under the direct control of the State. This, as George Sabine noted, left the individual utterly unprotected from abusive State power. In general, and explaining why it is always the first natural right to be undermined, this degree of State power is only possible when private property has been eroded or abolished. (George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, Third Edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961, 915-921.)
Catholic Action was intended to be quintessentially political in the much broader, Aristotelian sense. It also seems evident, given Pius XI’s universal outlook, that he envisioned Catholic Action as the model for organized social action by Catholics as well as a model and prototype organization for those of other faiths and philosophies.
Well-organized groups should be formed in which the members have internalized the fundamental principles that define the group (solidarity), in order to develop and organize to implement an effective personalist program as an alternative to the disorder seen today in every sphere of life. This can have an effect far greater than the relatively small size of those groups might suggest, particularly when they focus on influencing key people in other groups, especially Academia and lawmakers. (Kurland, “How to Win a Revolution,” op. cit., 13-14.)
Servant leadership plays an important role in the Just Third Way. As individuals, persons are particularly or directly responsible for becoming virtuous. Organized into groups, persons as members of groups are particularly or directly responsible for the virtue of the institutions within which they subside. All persons, whether as individuals or members of groups, have a general or indirect responsibility for the whole of the common good.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Charged with particular or direct care of the common good, servant leaders are those individuals chosen by others to exercise authority to carry out this responsibility. Whether they lead particular institutions within the State or of the State itself, servant leaders guide the institution or State and the people in becoming virtuous within the structured environment of the common good.
As guided by the spirit of personalism in the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr., the 1960s civil rights movement in the United States provides a good example of how people without power can organize for peaceful social change to be embodied later in law. Although the movement limited its economic goals to jobs and welfare (rather than equal citizen access to money power and capital ownership opportunities), its application of peaceful “People Power” to achieve the political goal of “one person, one vote” demonstrated the strength of personalist principles and effectiveness of acts of social justice.
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