As we saw in the previous posting in this series, there is a very big difference between social Christianity and Christian socialism. Christianity (as is all organized religion) is necessarily social, the human person being by nature a political animal. He — or she — however, is not necessarily socialist. Thus, while an organized religion may be socialist, it is contrary to human nature for it to be so. Private property is a natural right which in part defines people as human.
“But!” you say, “what about all those religious people who take vows of poverty? Doesn’t that prove private property is not a natural right, and that Jesus was the first socialist?”
By no means. Owning things is good, but (as St. Paul noted with respect to marriage in 1 Cor. 7) in spiritual terms not owning is better. That doesn’t make private property evil or anything like that. Greed and theft are distortions and violations of private property, respectively, not proofs against its validity.
Voluntary poverty, like voluntary celibacy and obedience for religious purposes, are “counsels of perfection.” They presumably make it easier to get to Heaven, but do not preclude the rich, the married, or those who rely on their own counsel from getting to Heaven; “With God, all things are possible.” (Matt. 19:26, Mark 10:27, Luke 18:27.) There is your theology lesson for this week.
So, what about when the social order is arranged unjustly, and prevents or inhibits people from owning? Well, at least according to Fulton Sheen, such a society is in bad shape. As he hints, we can trace the moral decay of society and the decline of civilization to the growing economic displacement of ordinary people resulting from the failure to adhere to the principles of economic justice. The primary cause of this failure is ownership and control by a tiny elite of labor-displacing physical and social technologies and natural resources. This imposes on propertyless people throughout the world “a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.” (Rerum Novarum, § 3.)
The displacement of most people from capital ownership prevents or inhibits their full participation in economic activity or even, as with actual slavery, the whole of social life. The existence of artificial financial and legal barriers to equal ownership opportunities prevents or inhibits most people in the world from acquiring and developing virtue through the exercise of humanity’s natural rights to life, liberty, and property.
Many people are cut off from the “economic common good.” This economic common good is composed, in part, of democratic access to money and credit for productive purposes, the rights to and of private property, access to free market competition, and the sanctity of contract (free association/liberty).
The economic common good should be circumscribed (as Pope John Paul II reminded us) “within a strong [albeit limited] juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious.” (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus (“On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum”), 1991, § 42.) Most important, ownership of capital must be democratically distributed (not redistributed) throughout society as the chief support for both individual freedom and institutional integrity.
We can summarize these “four pillars of an economically just society” as:
1. A limited economic role for the State, confining the State to enforcing contracts, setting standards, and protecting property rights of everyone, as well as lifting all economic and legal barriers to universal ownership participation as a fundamental human right. This is consistent with Paragraph 17(1) of the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”: “Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.”
2. Free and open markets within an understandable and fair system of laws as the most objective and democratic means for determining just prices, just wages and just profits (i.e., the “bottom line” or residual after meeting all costs for producing marketable goods and services),
3. Restoration of the rights of private property, especially in corporate equity and other forms of business organization, including the right of corporate owners to receive their proportional share of profits, and share in the governance of an enterprise, and
4. Widespread capital ownership, individually or in free association with others.
The question then arises, if the rich have a virtual monopoly on existing accumulations of savings, how are the non-rich to become owners of the capital they need so desperately?
The answer is to shift the financing of new capital from past savings (the present value of past reductions in consumption), to future savings (the present value of future increases in production). Future savings can be accessed, when past savings cannot, by entering into a contract — a promise to be redeemed at some future date.
The problem then becomes how to do it, which we will address in the next and final posting on this subject.
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