Is Industrialization Evil?

A constant theme among people dissatisfied with modern civilization is that a return to the simple life in one form or another will solve most, if not all, of our problems, and that a stronger faith and personal virtue will restore society to something more human.  That, at least, seemed to be theme of an article that appeared recently in Catholic World Report, “Facing Industrial-Strength Problems In an Industrial-Driven Society” by James Kalb.  As he stated,

The Economic Dilemma

Back in the late seventeenth century, the first true central bank was established, the venerable Bank of England, “the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street,” as it is more or less fondly known.  Usually it is less these days as the Old Lady, along with virtually every other central bank in the world, gets ever-further away from its mission.

Cultural Marxism?

 

A recent article in Catholic World Report opined “On the Troubling and Growing Popularity of Cultural Marxism“ in global society, especially (as might be expected) among Catholics, many of whom seem to understand Christianity more in terms of, e.g., Henri de Saint-Simon’s “New Christianity” as Jesus as the first socialist than in the more traditional manner.  Many Catholics, in fact, seem completely oblivious of the fact that their own church’s “social teachings” came into being as a discrete area of study specifically to counter the threat posed by socialism, modernism, and esotericism (“New Age”) to the human-centered personalism of traditional Christianity.

JTW Podcast: Communism, Part 7: The Crucifixion of Fulton Sheen

Yeah, we’ve been going a “little” heavy on “Catholic” stuff in the blog and in the podcasts, but we’ve got a good excuse: that’s what we’re working on at the present time and to add more areas to write about on top of everything else is just too much.

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 37

 

What with the stock market bouncing up and down and interest rates sometimes at negative levels, people considering taking early retirement due to the pandemic are in a serious bind.  They may not have work (or it has become too much work to work), but their retirement provisions are far from adequate, especially when they are all based on past savings, and the global economy is based by and large on Keynesian economics that actively seeks to destroy the value of past savings and erode or eliminate the value of investments held by small investors.  This makes the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism all the more essential, especially considering this week’s news items:

How Everyone Can Win in November, Part III

As we saw in the previous two postings on this subject, there is a way that Joseph Biden can win the U.S. presidential race in a landslide in November, and there is a way that Donald Trump can win in a landslide.  All it takes is a new vision of leadership and a coherent plan where this country is going, respectively.  Now today we’re going to finish off this subject and look at what will happen if both candidates catch on and carry out campaigns in which everyone wins, even if he or she is not elected.

How Everyone Can Win in November, Part II

 

Imagine, if you will, a scene in the White House within a few hours of Joe Biden announcing that he is dropping his support for government funding of abortion, as suggested in the previous posting on this subject.  There is (as you might imagine) a great deal of consternation and wringing of hands.

How Everyone Can Win in November, Part I

      What with all the acrimony, even hysteria about the upcoming presidential election in the United States, we thought it might be useful to present a plan that would guarantee (as far as is humanly possible) that everybody would win, even people not voting and those residing in every country in the world.  Yes, and even the “losers,” who would lose nothing substantive under our proposal.

JTW Podcast: Norman Kurland Exclusive Interview

This week’s podcast has an exclusive interview with Dr. Norman Kurland, president of the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ), the first part of a presentation on the "Economic Democracy Act" (formerly "Capital Homestead Act"):

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 36

As has become usual, the economic situation gravitates between surreal and fantasy, with numerous side excursions into the ridiculous.  Nowhere is this more evident (or at least more obvious) than in the stock market, which continues to rise and fall in response to . . . whatever it is that it responds to, it certainly isn’t the economy.  Take, for instance, this week’s news items:

Building a Strategic Plan, Part II of II

As we noted in the previous posting on this subject, CESJ does not support or endorse any candidate for public office.  Any opinions expressed on these matters are personal and represent the views of people as individuals, not as members or representatives of CESJ.  The mention of any specific candidate(s) is purely expedient.

Building a Strategic Plan, Part I of II

As we noted in the previous posting on this subject, CESJ does not support or endorse any candidate for public office.  Any opinions expressed on these matters are personal and represent the views of people as individuals, not as members or representatives of CESJ.  The mention of any specific candidate(s) is purely expedient.

Need for a Strategic Plan

In the previous posting on this subject, we discovered that using the United States Supreme Court to create law and impose the views of one group on everyone else in the country is something of a double-edged sword.  Specifically, when the slave-owning “interests” in the American South succeeded in making human chattel slavery a federal issue instead of confining it to the individual states, they got what they wanted — legal justification to extend slavery anywhere in the United States, regardless whether or not it was legal in a specific state.

JTW Podcast: Communism, Part 6: How to Change Doctrine

     Everybody likes DIY (“Do It Yourself”) videos, right?  Well, not everybody can whip out a mission-style house with all the furniture (unless your name happens to be Norm Abram, that is, and you have every power tool known to man or woman), but you can join in the feeding frenzy when it comes to undermining the fundamental principles of natural law and common sense:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 35

 

Today we have our second monthly “special edition” of the News from the Network that we hope you find as interesting as the first one:

Whence This Chaos?

 

In a recent article in Catholic World Report (“Why We Are Where We Are“), George Weigel opines that the increasing chaos we see around us these days is the result of the United States having lost its way after being cut loose from the liberal principles of its founding.  There is a good deal of merit in Weigel’s argument, but it doesn’t really explain how the U.S. lost its anchor.  As he says in this edited-for-length extract (since you can read the entire article by clicking on the link; it’s not long):

The First Principle of Finance

      As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, when people have an inadequate understanding of money and credit, they necessarily get themselves into a bind called “the Economic Dilemma”: that you can’t profitably finance new capital without increasing demand to justify it, but you can finance new capital at all if you don’t have the money savings accumulated from decreasing demand!

Resolving the Economic Dilemma

 As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the popular notion of finance — embodied in all three mainstream schools of economics (Keynesian, Monetarist/Chicago, and Austrian) — is that it is essential to cut consumption and accumulate money savings in order to finance new capital formation.  This, however, leads to a paradox that Dr. Harold Glenn Moulton of the Brookings Institution called “the Economic Dilemma.”

JTW Podcast: Communism, Part 5: Catholic Doctrine v. the New Things

     How did “the new things” of socialism, modernism, and esotericism (“New Age”) manage to become part and parcel of the political and economic thought of so many people?  After all, as we define it (abolition of private property in capital), socialism is not particularly social, modernism (not modernity, but a philosophical/theological shift from the human person to the abstraction of humanity) is not really all that modern, and esotericism or the New Age is not all that new.

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 34

On the face of it, it appears to be a paradox: unemployment continues to spread, but “the economy” seems to be doing well . . .if by “the economy,” you mean the stock market, which has as much to do with the real, productive and consumption economy as a television situation comedy has to do with real life.  One of the more bizarre concepts to come out of what seems to be a pervasive insulation from reality among business, political, and religious leaders is the notion of “stakeholder capitalism,” with which we lead off this week’s news items:

Savings and the Economic Dilemma

     With apologies to Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that anyone in possession of a good business, must be in want of savings.  As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, savings are essential to the process of new capital formation.  The only question is the source of the savings.  Is it to come from past reductions in consumption, or from future increases in production?

Keynes and the Slavery of Savings

     In the previous posting on this subject, we closed with the comment that John Maynard Keynes did not define savings properly, and this skewed his entire analysis to the point where it really wasn’t very closely connected with reality.  This is, in fact, why the eventual title of Louis Kelso’s third book was Two-Factor Theory: The Economics of Reality (1967).

How Keynesian Economics Violates Reason

    In the previous posting on this subject, we noted the fact that inflation-indexing capital gains would stop a rather shady practice that taxes people on income they never earned and never received.  As we noted in the first simple example we gave, if someone pays $10 for something, the value of the money drops by half, and then the thing is sold for $20, the seller realizes no actual gain at all, but is taxed as if there was a $10 gain.  This is unfair by any measure.

JTW Podcast: Communism, Part 4: Modernism Madness

Ninety years ago, the noted English writer G.K. Chesterton gave his opinion of socialism and modernism.  As he said, “anything can be called Socialism, . . . it seems to mean Modernism; in the sociological as distinct from the theological sense. In both senses, it is generally a euphemism for muddle-headedness.” (“There Was a Socialist,” G.K.’s Weekly, May 10, 1930.)

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 33

It appears that some people might be waking up to the potential of expanded capital ownership for spearheading an economic recovery, especially since it not only enables more people to be productive, it empowers them with the ability to consume without redistribution.  Of course, at present all the proposals apply only to people who are employed by for-profit companies, and to make expanded ownership truly effective as an economic force requires that everyone be a capital owner, especially anyone who doesn’t work for a for-profit enterprise or who can’t work at all, but it’s a step in the right direction:

Inflation’s Hidden Tax Hurts You

In the previous posting on this subject, we asked why the current system of financing new capital formation would cause the lid to blow off the economy or society as a whole.  The quick answer?  Because relying on past savings gives the rich or the State control over the economy, and the Keynesian reliance on inflation to control economic growth and finance new capital is a way of stealing from the non-rich.  It works like this:

Backwards Capital Finance to How

      For those of you used to doing things the right way instead of getting everything all turned around, the title of this blog is “How to Finance Capital Backwards,” which is what the world has been doing for the last two centuries or so . . . or thinks it has, which amounts to the same thing.

Do We Need a Theocracy?

We’ve been looking into the roots of socialism, and how socialism and social justice became confused.  One of the things that struck us that we had never noticed before was the insistence of the early socialists that, one, what became known as socialism was originally not intended as an alternative to capitalism, but to Christianity, especially the most organized and hierarchical form of Christianity, Catholicism.

JTW Podcast: Communism, Part 3: Putting on the Socialist Spin

This week we have another video from the “Sensus Fidelium” YouTube channel.  Yes (as we’ve said before), it’s a “Catholic channel,” and if you search through the thousands of hours of programming on the channel, you will find a great deal of material oriented to Catholics.  There’s a bit of that in these videos, too (of course), but the primary emphasis is on the “natural law” aspect of Catholic social teaching, so you can mentally filter out the explicitly Catholic material if you’ve a mind to, and you won’t miss anything.

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 32

 We wish we had better news than we have, but we don’t, but here goes, anyway:

A Way to Finance “Green” Infrastructure

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, one way to “lure” people back to work when they are (at least temporarily) better off not working, is to make them an offer they can’t refuse, or at least would be extremely foolish to turn down.  The offer we suggested, of course, is that it would be beneficial to offer workers a piece of the action, that is, part ownership of the companies that employ them.

Would the Unions Go For It?

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked briefly at the problem of how things like the UBI, welfare, and unemployment compensation can act as a disincentive to work.  The bottom line is, if you pay people not to work, they tend not to work.  The only way a basic income of some kind is not a disincentive to take gainful employment is if you get it in addition to, not instead of, gainful employment, and that is something that it would be complete and total disaster for a government to do.

To Work, or Not to Work?

. . . but is that the question?  Quite a few people have noted over the past several months that the enhanced unemployment benefits have persuaded a number of people not to return to work.  It seems that some people are actually getting more income by not working than they did when they were employed.  As noted in yesterday’s (August 3, 2020, p. A-16) Wall Street Journal,

JTW Podcast: Communism, Part 2: The Road to Rerum Novarum

This week we have another video blog from "Sensus Fidelium," hosted by Steve Cunningham.  Again, we issue the caveat that this is a "Catholic" show, but the subject (the origin of the encyclical Rerum Novarum) has a direct bearing on the Just Third Way of economic personalism.  As you listen, you will start to realize just how the antics of politicians and economic conditions affect general understanding of such inalienable natural rights of life, liberty, and private property:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 31

This week, instead of the usual format for “News from the Network,” we’re trying out what we hope will be a regular monthly feature: an expanded posting with more of the character of a typical newsletter.  Instead of just a brief introduction and a list of news items, we’re including links to feature articles, quotes, definitions, videos and — if those of you who are artistically inclined are moved by the spirit — perhaps some cartoons or more serious artworks.  We’ve also included some suggested action items if you want to know what you can do to help advance the Just Third Way.  (This, by the way, is the 3,200^th posting on this blog!)

Left or Right, What’s the Difference?

Frequently in our research we’ve come across claims such as Marxist communism and Fabian socialism are two different things, that Nazism isn’t/wasn’t real socialism, that fascism and Nazism were/are right wing, and so on, so forth, etc., etc.  Of course, it might be helpful to define what we mean by “left,” “right,” and “center.”

A Language Lesson

No, this isn’t a “real” language lesson, a sort of “Latin pro populo” (“Latin for everybody”) that you can use as a handy phrase book when ordering dinner at the Vatican.  It’s just that we got into a discussion about singing in Latin the other day, and one of the participants in the conversation happened to mention that singing “Church Latin” is much easier than singing “Germanic Latin.”  That started us off on our “Latin Pronunciation Lecture,” which — bear with us — does have a bearing on the Just Third Way.  Of course, everything does, but it might not be obvious at first glance.

Karl Marx, the Great Reductionist

A short time ago we got a request to comment on Karl Marx as “the second economic reductionist.”  In the context of the discussion this referred to the socialist movement which, to make a very long story short and oversimplify greatly, began in the early nineteenth century with Henri de Saint-Simon’s declaration in his posthumous book, Le Nouveau Christianisme (1825) that what would in a few years be known as “socialism” was “the New Christianity.”

JTW Podcast: Communism, Part I: The Groundwork

This week we have a video blog from "Sensus Fidelium," hosted by Steve Cunningham.  Yes, it's a "Catholic" show, but don't let that fool you.  The topic — the origin of socialism — is actually a discussion of natural law that applies to everyone.  It just so happens that the origins of socialism and of Catholic social teaching are related: Catholic social teaching developed in response to the rise of socialism, and socialism was first presented as a replacement for traditional Christianity.  Anyway, here goes:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 30

Yes, most of the news is related one way or another to the pandemic, but it also relates to the Just Third Way.  The one news item we don’t see that we’d like to is an announcement that the powers-that-be have finally figured out that a strong economy depends on making ordinary people productive, which in a modern advanced economy (or any other, for that matter) means ownership of whatever is producing marketable goods and services, be it technology or human labor:

What Do You Mean By “Distributism”?

Somewhat to our surprise, we seem to have become something of a “distributist guru.”  Of course, that could just be an impression, but if it’s true, it might be because we seem to be able to give consistent specifics instead of vague and contradictory generalities.  Not that G.K. Chesterton or Hilaire Belloc gave out anything contradictory, or at least, not that they intended to be contradictory, but that’s not our point.  Our point is where Chesterton and Belloc wanted to go, not necessarily how they thought it expedient to get there.

Interfaith Catholic Action? Why Not?

In a recent article, His Auxiliary Excellency Bishop Robert Barron opined (how do you like that word?) that if the laity want something done — such as protecting religious statues — they should stop asking the bishops to do something, and start thinking about doing it themselves.  That’s something of an oversimplification of a rather more involved argument, but that’s the message most people took from it . . . and they were not pleased.

The Quest for Utopia

We’re having trouble keeping up with what various commentators are proposing as their respective solutions to the pandemic, racism, the economy, the politicians, the academics, the guy next door, and can you believe the price of [fill in the blank] these days?  Case in point: a few weeks ago (or was it months? it’s getting hard to tell . . .), an article appeared in Catholic World Report, a webzine, “America’s Utopian City Wreckers.”

JTW Podcast: Intro to Thomistic Personalism

Continuing our videos/podcasts on personalism, today we bring you another video which — while it is not one of ours — seems to be okay.  Frankly, at this point, anything is good that helps shake people loose from the individualism/collectivism shtick, you know, in which people assume as a given that only collectivism/socialism or individualism/capitalism does exist or can exist.  So today we're looking at a video (with which we don't completely agree, but so what?) on certain aspects of Thomistic personalism:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 29

If you’re worried about the way things are going in the world, you might want to skip the first half of this edition of News from the Network and go down to the good news (qualified good news, anyway) near the bottom.  Yes, there actually are a few rays of hope, notably the success of the “Sensus Fidelium” videos about the origins and effects of the “new things” of socialism, modernism (probably not what you think it is), and esotericism, so tolle lege (Latin for “take and read):

The REAL Story of the First Social Encyclical

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at how a social encyclical should be read.  That, however, was not the point we set out to make, but an introduction to the main point.  We just wanted to be sure that our faithful readers understood that when we talk about a “social encyclical,” they know what we are talking about: a document on a natural law teaching that, while it may be expressed in religious terms, applies to the whole of society, not just Catholics.

“The Jobs We Need”

A while back, toward the end of June (the twenty-fourth, to be exact), the New York Times ran an editorial on “The Jobs We Need,” although it was evident from the fact that the piece was written by staff that they didn’t include themselves as part of us.  Anyway, we got to work and sent a letter to the editor that was never published, a slightly edited version of which we post here today:

An Eternal Question

One of the things we’ve noticed about people who call themselves capitalists or socialists is that far too often those who advocate or defend a system seem to have trouble defining it consistently, and sometimes at all.  It calls to mind what Alexis de Tocqueville said about socialism during the 1848 Revolution in France:

JTW Podcast: A Few Words on Personalism

Today we thought we'd try something a little different . . . rather than a whole lot different as we usually end up doing.  Seeing as how we have a book on "economic personalism" coming out soon, we thought we'd blogcast a video on personalism.  Don't be alarmed, however.  While we use the personalism of Pope John Paul II as the basis of our economic personalism, it's not a Catholic thing or even a religious thing, properly speaking.  You can either filter out the religious talk and opinions, or wait until we get the funding to do our own videos on personalism. . . .

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 28

We admit that much of what is happening these days does not lend itself to brief news items.  Making matters worse, those events that are genuinely brief are not infrequently completely unrelated to the Just Third Way.  We did, however, manage to find a few things:

Citizens Land Cooperative

As we noted in the previous posting on this subject, distributism as presented by G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc had the right idea: a wide distribution of private property in capital, by which they did NOT mean a redistribution of what belongs to someone else.  (See the final comment in What’s Wrong With the World (1910).

Feudalism v. Distributism

Someone asked us recently whether we thought distributism and feudalism are pretty much the same thing.  Off the top of our head (or is that “heads”?) our first response is “no.”  After all, feudalism meant that most (if not all) land was “public” land, and people “held” the land in return for specified service(s) to the State, usually military service.  Land was not private property.

Job Security for (Personalist) Revolutionaries

A while back in response to an item touting Capital Homesteading as a possible way to bring people together and turn the economy around in our weekly Just Third Way news roundup, someone posted a comment to the effect that the original 1862 Homestead Act was (wait for it) . . . racist!  As a way of refuting our promotion of Capital Homesteading as a way of possibly establishing a little racial harmony and putting the economy back on a sound footing, the Righteous One went on to explain that the 1862 Act was “Whites Only,” and Black homesteaders were completely unheard of.

JYW Podcast: Stevenson on the Just Third Way

This week, as sort of a belated Independence Day celebration (very "sort of"), we have a video presentation of Just Third Way stalwart Guy "the Fulton Sheen Guy" Stevenson.  Sit back, watch, and enjoy:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 27

Frankly, we don’t know what to think.  On one hand the “June Jobs Report” makes it sound as if the economy is booming, and the stock market is rising.  There is also the bit that there is an actual “worker shortage” as people refuse to take jobs as long as their unemployment benefits are paid; it seems that they are better off economically not working at all . . . at least, not that the authorities know about.  At the same time, we’re told the “jobs market” won’t recover for at least ten years.  What are we to believe, and what are we supposed to do?  Well, why not go the Just Third Way:

Was the State Made for Man, or Man for the State?

In the previous posting on this subject, we addressed the question whether the United States was founded as a “Christian nation,” and came up with the non-answer that it depends on what you mean by “Christian nation.”  We decided — that’s us, not you — that, yes, you could use that term if you didn’t mind saying something misleading, but it would be better to say that the United States was founded as a country that — with certain rather key exceptions — embodied respect for the dignity of the individual human person.

What Do You Mean By “Christian Nation”?

A couple of weeks ago an article appeared in The Christian Post on how America was departing from the values of the Founding Fathers of the United States.  The idea was that the principles espoused by the Founders were essentially Christian, and that therefore the United States is properly a “Christian nation.”

How to Read a Social Encyclical

Contrary to popular opinion, Rerum Novarum was not the first social encyclical, nor did Catholic social teaching as such begin with Pope Leo XIII.  The social doctrine of the Catholic Church, of course, is as old as the Church itself.  It was not until the early nineteenth century, however, that social teachings were treated as a specialized area of study.

JTW Podcast: Our Global Justice Movement

 

This week host Dave Hamill has a conversation with Dan Parker of the Global Justice Movement . . . you know, the “Global Justice Movement” we mention once or twice on this blog.  Dan hails from Whitecourt in Alberta, Canada, where he comes out of the social credit movement.

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 26

Are you ready yet for a sane economy and social order?  Or do you think you can stick it out with the status quo a little longer?  If your mind still isn’t made up, maybe this will help bring you to a more reasonable frame of mind:

Distributism and Economic Personalism, Part II

In our last episode (i.e., the previous posting on this subject) we mentioned that when we got around to addressing this subject again that we’d try and get to the point.  So, let’s ask again, “Are distributism and the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism compatible?”  Our starting point for today’s discussion is G.K. Chesterton’s description of distributism as a policy of widely distributed private ownership of capital, with a preference for small, family-owned farms and artisan businesses.

A Commons Question

A few weeks ago we had a question about “the Commons” that, prior to the Industrial Revolution and the enclosure movement, were a (if you’ll excuse the term) common feature of everyday life for many people.  We get different forms of this question periodically, so we figured it would be a good time to answer it in a blog posting.  The question?  Were the Commons an example of agrarian socialism, i.e., land owned in common by every member of a town or village?

Distributism and Economic Personalism, Part I

Every once in a while those of us who promote what we call the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism are asked whether what we’re talking about is compatible with “distributism.”  The quick and easy answer is, “That depends on what you mean by distributism.”  Frankly, quite a few people see no difference between distributism and Fabian, democratic, or Christian socialism.

Just Third Way Podcast: Economic Democracy

One of the problems associated with the continued lockdown of life (we mean, aside from all the other problems too numerous to mention. . . .) is the difficulty of trying to come up with something new and interesting for the weekly Just Third Way podcast . . . or reasonable facsimile thereof.  Obviously, we'd prefer all new material each week, but that ain't gonna happen with the resources at our disposal.  Fortunately, however, we do have a good supply of interesting material that, if not spot-on the Just Third Way, is related to it.

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 25

It is extremely difficult, but we will try to confine our weekly news items to “Just Third Way-specific” matter.  We realize it’s becoming increasingly popular to speak in despairing terms of “the New Normal” and moan about how bad things are going to be from now on, but that’s because people keep insisting on addressing the same old problems in the same old ways, instead of implementing the Just Third Way:

How Not to End Racism or Be Socially Just

As regular readers of this blog are aware, we have examined the thought and works of noted social justice advocate Msgr. John A. Ryan (1869-1945) of the Catholic University of America.  We wanted to measure the consistency of Msgr. Ryan’s social justice doctrine with the Just Third Way understanding of social justice.  We also looked at Msgr. Ryan’s activities in regard to Ven. Fulton J. Sheen, who seems to have been a special object of attention by Msgr. Ryan.

Eternal Vigilance Committees?

Although it’s still being hashed out, the whole “Defund the Police” movement demands some kind of response.  At first glance, it sounds like a typical hysterical overreaction to an injustice or some kind of immoral behavior, i.e., “throwing the baby out with the bath.”  In response to the abuses of private ownership in capitalism, socialism calls for the abolition of private property.  Because some people abused alcohol, the 18^th Amendment and the Volstead Act banned alcohol after nearly a century of effort.

The Dignity of Ownership

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, we began this discussion a month ago after seeing an article in a webzine about the dignity of work, phrased in such a way as to suggest that it was work itself, rather than the human person doing the work, that takes priority.

JTW Podcast: The Challenge with Russell Williams

For today's Just Third Way podcast we have a special treat in store for you.  Today we have an episode of The Challenge with your host Russell Williams from December 27, 2012 featuring Dr. Norman Kurland, president of the Center for Economic and Social Justice as his guest.  Enjoy!

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 24

We are tempted to form a “Capital Homesteading Pool” to gamble on which leader(s) in which country(ies) will wise up first and implement Capital Homesteading or some other form of economic empowerment legislation instead of figuring out ways to spend more money that doesn’t exist.  We’re not against gambling — as recreation — but the idea of linking proposals for genuinely productive activity in any way to gambling is more than a little off-putting.  After all, we already have Wall Street and Congress, so why have another way to gamble?  Instead, here’s what this week has brought in the way of the Just Third Way:

The War Against Fulton Sheen (Continued)

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, Msgr. John A. Ryan was the instigator behind the sabotage of the academic career of Fulton J. Sheen at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  Nor (as we shall see) did Msgr. Ryan confine his campaign against Sheen to Academia.  As time went on, he was active in extracurricular activities intended to blacken Sheen’s name.

Getting Down to Solutions

A while ago on June 3 there was an interesting piece on the causes of the “civil unrest” following the death of George Floyd.  An article titled “The Solution” by Dale Ahlquist of “The Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton” appeared in Catholic World Report.

The War Against Fulton Sheen

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, there were two important stages in the development of social justice as understood in Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy.  The first was in the 1830s when, in response to the “new things” of socialism, modernism, and esotericism, Msgr. Aloysius Taparelli developed a principle of social justice.

Podcast: Getting (Meta) Physical, Part II

For today's podcast (or videocast), we present the second part of Mortimer Adler's talk on Aristotle's Metaphysics.  It's not very long and you might learn something:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 23

Can anyone explain to us why, when the economy has been shut down, unemployment is at an all-time high, cities are being torn apart by rioting, looting, and burning, that the stock market is rocketing skyward?  We just checked: as of a moment ago as of this writing, the Dow was up 750 points.  No, you read that right, it’s not a typo.  And yet:

Interlude: A Short History of Social Justice

As described in the Wikipedia — which, despite its reputation, has its moments . . . this not being one of them — Msgr. John A. Ryan (1869-1945) of the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC “was a leading Catholic priest who was a noted moral theologian, professor, author and advocate of social justice.”

A Baffled Response

While the most frequent justification given for the explosion of violence accompanying the protests over the murder of George Floyd is a concern for racial justice, it is difficult for some of us to understand what looting and destroying black- (and white- and yellow- and green- and purple- and . . . ) owned businesses, burning churches, desecrating memorials, etc., etc., etc., has to do with racial justice, or anything else except rage.

“A Time of Great Trial”

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the rise of Fulton Sheen at the Catholic University of America in the 1920s could only be called meteoric.  Not surprisingly, the advent of someone so obviously intellectually gifted not only shook up the faculty, it seems to have been taken as an actual threat, especially by those of a less orthodox and more modernist bent, such as Msgr. John A. Ryan.

JTW Podcast: Let's Get (Meta) Physical

In today's Just Third Way pod/videocast, we get metaphysical with Mortimer J. Adler, part one of two in which he discusses Aristotle's Metaphysics.  If all goes well, we will have part two of two next week.

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 22

It seems the worse things get, the higher the stock market goes.  That’s as may be, however.  What we’re interested in is what’s going on in the real world:

How Fulton Sheen Viciously Attacked Msgr. Ryan (Not)

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, Fulton J. Sheen left the Catholic University of America and transferred to the Louvain two years into a three year doctoral program due to the rapidly degenerating level of academic standards under the auspices of the noted Msgr. John A. Ryan.  Not surprisingly for one of his temper, Msgr. Ryan appears to have taken Sheen’s move as an insult or a personal attack of some kind.

The American Chesterton Annoys Msgr. New Deal

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that the Catholic Church’s so-called “Living (or Just) Wage Doctrine” of Msgr. John A. Ryan (or anyone else) is not exactly, er, kosher.  There is, of course, a “Living (or Just) Wage Discipline,” but not a doctrine.  You see, a doctrine is an unchanging principle, while a discipline is a changeable application of a doctrine.

The Living Wage and Social Justice

According to the Wikipedia entry on him, Msgr. John A. Ryan (author of A Living Wage, whom we met in the previous posting on this subject) was “a leading Catholic priest who was a noted moral theologian, professor, author and advocate of social justice.  Ryan lived during a decisive moment in the development of Catholic social teaching within the United States.”

JTW Podcast: Dr. Marwane El Alaooui

Today we have a very special Podcast from a CESJ "Fellow" who came to us from the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship program after he decided that CESJ offered the best "professional affiliation" — as did six other Fellows and a student intern from William and Mary!

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 21

The Big News this week seems to be the debates about more “stimulus” in the trillions of dollars.  We keep wondering why when we first proposed allocating $2 trillion worth of capital credit to finance new capital formation to be broadly owned and in a non-inflationary way, it was called insanely risky.  Not like issuing $6 trillion or more of new money backed only by future tax collections that might never materialize.  And then there’s this:

Monsignor New Deal

To hear some people tell it, Monsignor John Augustine Ryan (1869-1945) was not only the greatest social justice advocate who ever lived, he saved the world by inspiring and instituting the New Deal in the 1930s.  Neither claim bears up on even the most cursory examination.  As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, public, academic, and political opinion had shifted away from an ownership system, and was firmly entrenched in the wage system.

Some Labor Problems

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that where Adam Smith said a thing is worth what the customer is willing to pay for it, David Ricardo said a thing is worth the labor it cost to produce it combined with its scarcity.  We then asked the forbidden question, What if it takes immense labor to produce a unique item that nobody wants?  That’s where the “labor theory of value” gets more than a little dicey.

The Labor Theory of Value

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good wife, must be in want of a job.”  That, of course, is the famous opening line from fictional author Gianny Austin’s apocryphal novel, Property and Prejudice, a comedy of manners in which ownership of the means of production (except for an economic or political élite) is depicted as being not quite polite, and the characters spend all their time cleverly positioning themselves for higher wages and fixed benefits, and then wondering why prices are so high and why other people keep telling them what to do.

R.M. Hutchins & M.J. Adler on "the Great Books"

Okay, this is not a video with Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler, it's a video about Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler and the "Great Books" program.  Enjoy!

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 20

The latest news is that “the government” (meaning desperate politicians) are considering pumping another $3 trillion so people have something to spend.  Of course, we’re still baffled why an additional $3 trillion backed by government debt that is rising skyward is more secure than the $2 trillion backed by private sector hard assets we propose for Capital Homesteading, but then, we’re not politicians or academics.  All we can do is talk what seems to be common sense:

Socialism v. Capitalism v. . . . What?

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that the phrases “the dignity of labor” and “the dignity of work” might be a little ambiguous, even misleading on occasion.  For example, what do we mean by “labor”?  Do we mean work . . . or do we mean the worker?  The dignity of work is substantially different from the dignity of the worker, so it makes a great deal of difference what we mean by “labor.”

Dignity of Work or Labor v. Human Dignity

Earlier this week, Catholic World Report, a webzine, ran an article, “Nonessential Workers” and the Essential Dignity of Work.”  Reading through the article, there seemed to be some confusion about different types of work, and even work as work, as well as the concept of dignity.  It seemed to paint the situation as a single issue in black and white, while in reality it is a number of issues that get into some very gray areas.

A Measure of Reform

In the previous posting on this subject, we posted another section of our recent CESJ position paper, “Universalizing Capital Ownership.”  Today we get to the final section of the paper, dealing with the short-term emergency measures we believe to be necessary, and a brief outline of the long-term reforms to the system that need to be carried out.  Of course, if you want to read the entire paper without having to go back and read the individual postings, just click on the link above to the full paper.  It’s pretty short.

The Theory of Happiness

In today's video cast, the "Great Books" philosopher Mortimer Adler discusses Aristotle's "theory of happiness" found in Book I of the Nichomachean Ethics.  And what has this got to do with the Just Third Way?  You'll see. . . .

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 19

As the lockdown, shutdown, quarantine, or whatever you want to call it continues, so does the scarcity of real and workable ideas on what to do about it.  For example:

A New Monetary Paradigm

In the previous posting on this subject, we continued posting sections of our recent CESJ position paper, “Universalizing Capital Ownership.”  As we said before, of course, .  Of course, if you want to read the entire paper without waiting for the parts to be posted, just click on the link.

The Unacknowledged Right

In the previous posting on this subject, we started posting a recent CESJ position paper, “Universalizing Capital Ownership,” as a series.  Of course, if you want to read the paper in one go, just click on the link; it’s not very long, although putting up the whole thing as a blog posting is a bit much at one time.

Possible Steps to Restart the Economy

Okay, when we last addressed this subject in a posting, we were in the middle of helping prepare a “subject paper” (or whatever you want to call it) on the Covid-19 virus and its economic impact.  The preparation of the paper proved to be a bit more involved than originally anticipated (although well worth the effort), so instead of closing this particular series of blog postings with a summary of the paper, we’ll end by serializing the paper itself.  Of course, if you want to read the whole paper at one go (it’s actually pretty short), you can do so by clicking on this link.

Just Third Way Podcast (Sort Of): Natural Law Theory

Today we have a short (ten minute) video on "natural law theory" which isn't bad, but it's not the best.  For one thing, it's poorly edited, with all pauses between thoughts edited out.  It tends to come off like a G&S patter trio after a bit.  There are also a number of factual errors, such as man being a social animal . . . no, political animal; we have determinable, not determinate natures.  On the whole, however, it's not bad, if you ignore the cutesy and clever language and edit out the oversimplifications and errors:

News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 18

Purely by coincidence, most of the news items this week relate to the benefits of worker ownership.  We say “by coincidence,” for today is the “feast” (holiday in honor of) “Saint Joseph the Worker,” which was instituted in 1955 to counter the communists Numero Uno holiday in the workers’ calendar.  What the communists and everyone else seemed to forget, however, is that Saint Joseph was not just a worker, he was a worker-owner.  He may have been poor, but poor people can own capital, too: