The Political Animal, Part XXIII

Despite a series of encyclicals clearly intended to reorient the social order back into conformity with the natural moral law, very few people seemed to understand what it was that Pope Leo XIII was trying to do. Such encyclicals as Arcanum Divinae ("On Christian Marriage"), Humanum Genus ("On Freemasonry"), Libertas Praestantissimum ("On Human Liberty"), Exeunte Jam Anno ("On the Right Ordering of Christian Life"), and Sapientiae Christianae ("On the Chief Duties of Christians as Citizens") all addressed various political issues from within the framework of the natural moral law as found in the philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas.

The purpose of these encyclicals was to restore respect for the dignity of each human person, manifested by rebuilding and restoring the institutions of the social order in a manner consistent with the sovereignty of the individual under God. Unfortunately, most people read their own opinions into the encyclicals, and constructed a private interpretation based in large measure on personal faith and a private system of morals. Consciously or unconsciously, they edited out anything that contradicted their deeply held beliefs, especially in the area of politics and economics. As Emmanuel Mounier noted in A Personalist Manifesto,

The moralizers are no less dangerous. Like the doctrinaires they are strangers to the living reality that is history [that is, the institutions of the social order, inextricably rooted in the past as well as existing in the present], and they oppose it, not by a rational system, but by moral demands of the widest generality. They do not try to influence living history by means of a strong spiritual structure which could give rise to a program of definite action through a profound knowledge of the needs and the techniques of the present day [a reference to "Catholic Action" as restructured by Pope Pius XI]. Instead they are content above all to spend their energies in a vigorous eloquence that is as full of good will as it is ineffective. Some of them try to go beyond moral preaching. They launch upon a sharp spiritual critique of the evil forces or tendencies. But when they enter upon a constructive technique, they seem to think of nothing but moral weapons and above all only of individual moral efforts. They harmonize the purest suppositions in a most naïve manner. They properly exhort individuals to cultivate the virtues which give strength to social life. But they forget that historical forces [institutions], freed from submission to the spiritual [the natural moral law], have created collective structures and material necessities [i.e., institutions and our social duties] that we must inevitably reckon with insofar as "the spiritual itself is embodied in flesh." Such men are a constant source of danger, since they tend to lead the spiritual forces, which we should like to inject into history [i.e., into our institutions], above or around the historical happenings without coming to grips with them. (Emmanuel Mounier, A Personalist Manifesto. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1938, 4-5)

Keeping in mind these common assumptions, it should come as no surprise that with the issue of Rerum Novarum ("On Labor and Capital") in 1891, many people assumed that the pope was doing something new and different. Blind to the fact that there are no teachings in Rerum Novarum that did not already appear in other encyclicals, most people seem to have missed the obvious point that the only difference between Rerum Novarum and previous documents is that Rerum Novarum gives an explicit remedy for the perceived conflicts in society: widespread direct ownership of the means of production. As the pope clearly explained, "We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners." (§ 46)

The first sentence in this quote contains no surprises. It simply restates what was said in previous encyclicals and stressed almost to the point of redundancy in Rerum Novarum itself. The cause of so many problems in the world is the rejection or redefinition of the natural moral law, particularly with respect to the institution of private property, one of the primary natural rights.

The second sentence, however, contains the "radical" part of Rerum Novarum. Previous teachings had simply exhorted the rich to distribute a measure of their surplus wealth to alleviate poverty. Now, however, here was an explicit command — not a "prudential suggestion" as some panic-stricken commentators, socialist in all but name, characterize it! — that it is not enough to distribute alms. The rich, the whole of society acting through its chief agent for the care of the common good, the State, is to reorganize itself so as to promote not simply the alleviation of poverty, but its elimination. How? By somehow opening up democratic access to the means of acquiring and possessing private property in the means of production so that ordinary people can participate to the fullest extent possible in the economic common good.

In the same paragraph, however, Leo XIII made a fatal error — or (at least) other people have fatally misunderstood just how far the pope's teaching authority and infallibility extends, and where an infallible teaching leaves off and prudential matter begins. The paragraph begins, "If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income."

That is, the pope appears to be telling us how capital formation is financed: cut consumption, save, then invest. This is, indeed, the manner in which the British Currency School claims is the only way that capital formation can be financed, and assumes as a given that "money" is correctly defined as a purchase order issued or authorized by the State. This understanding of money, as we have already seen, when taken to its logical conclusion effectively abolishes private property and is thus inconsistent with the natural moral law.

Fortunately (at least for those readers sufficiently astute to realize that the pope can be wrong on matters of science, even social science, without compromising his infallibility in matters of faith and morals), the important part of this paragraph is the goal of widespread ownership of the means of production, not the means by which it is achieved. As long as the means does not contradict the natural moral law, any program that assists the great mass of people in becoming owners of the means of production is legitimate. It is only a question as to which is the most effective and best suited to a particular time and place.

Setting aside for the moment the question of how best to assist ordinary people to become direct owners of a moderate stake of income-generating assets, we need to look at Leo XIII's vision of the best arrangement of the social order with respect to its political institutions. In what many people will no doubt regard as a shocking, possibly even blasphemous statement, Leo XIII appeared to see in the political institutions of the United States something unique and special. In possible agreement with the assessment of de Tocqueville and Brownson, Leo XIII seems to have concluded that the social order in America was based on a fundamental consistency with the Thomist understanding of the natural moral law.

There was a problem, however. Patriotic Americans, especially Catholics, had a tendency to want to extend the application of their democratic principles to every aspect of their lives, including their religious beliefs and practices. While the desire to apply democratic principles is a laudable ambition, even necessary when limited to the political and economic spheres, certain democratic principles tend to come into serious conflict with religious principles and teachings. Acceptance of revealed truth, for example, is not something that you can subject to a popular vote. You either accept it, or you don't. If you accept what the Catholic Church believes to be revealed truth in its fullness, you can honestly call yourself a Catholic. If you do not, you are not a Catholic, and cannot honestly call yourself one.

Consequently, in 1899 Leo XIII wrote an Apostolic Letter, Testem Benevolentia, "Concerning New Opinions, Virtue, Nature and Grace, with Regard to Americanism," to James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, the head of the Catholic Church in America. As Leo XIII explained the situation,

The underlying principle of these new opinions is that, in order to more easily attract those who differ from her, the Church should shape her teachings more in accord with the spirit of the age and relax some of her ancient severity and make some concessions to new opinions. Many think that these concessions should be made not only in regard to ways of living, but even in regard to doctrines which belong to the deposit of the faith. They contend that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of her teaching which are of lesser importance, and to tone down the meaning which the Church has always attached to them.

This is clear and straightforward. Unfortunately, a great many people even today see papal disapproval of something called "Americanism," and conclude that everything American — especially the quintessential American characteristic of exercising democratic initiative and organizing for the common good — has been condemned for all time. This is similar to the way that condemnations of liberalism (the belief that all religions are equally true) and modernism (a synthesis of ancient positivist heresies dredged up and given a new label) are condemnations of everything liberal and modern.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As Leo XIII took great pains to explain, "if by this name [Americanism] are to be understood certain endowments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to various other nations, and if, moreover, by it is designated your political condition and the laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take exception to the name."

In other words, at least as far as Leo XIII was concerned, the United States appeared to be in material conformity with the precepts of the natural moral law. There was no reason to condemn or criticize American civil society, only the inappropriate application of those necessary democratic principles, described in Immortale Dei, "On the Christian Constitution of States," to religious society. Keep in mind that the Catholic Church does not claim the authority to endorse any specific system of government, economics, or anything else outside religious society. A pope who declares that "there is no reason to take exception" to the American civil system is thus giving a virtual endorsement as far as it lies within his competence to do so.

The only question that remains is, at a time when the Catcholic Church was faced with extremely serious problems all over the world — notably the rapid spread of modernism, the "synthesis of all heresies," and the virtual abandonment throughout the world of the natural moral law as the foundation of the civil order — why would the pope take the time to correct what could reasonably be thought of as a relatively minor problem in one of the few countries that still conformed its essential institutions to the precepts of the natural moral law and explicitly promoted the dignity of the human person in its founding documents?

We can't know for certain, of course, but the following suggests itself. While "Americanism" in the Catholic Church was, all things considered, a relatively minor problem, Leo XIII, in common with subsequent pontiffs, seems to have assigned America a special role to play in the restoration of a global civilization solidly founded on the natural moral law. Thanks in no small measure to George Mason, and as analyzed by Alexis de Tocqueville and Orestes Brownson, the federal government of the United States was (and remains) the only government on earth that acknowledges the sovereignty of each person, and thus built respect for individual human dignity into the very foundation of the State.

There were and still are flaws in the application of the principles that underpin the "political condition and the laws and customs" of the United States, but the essential fact of respect for the dignity of the human person is explicit, both in the founding documents of America and in the institutions of the common good. There was, however, a constant danger that the United States, the only example of a human society built on explicit and inherent respect for human dignity, might fall prey to false notions of democracy. As de Tocqueville warned in the conclusion to the second volume of Democracy in America,

I am aware that many of my contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race, or from the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are false and cowardly; such principles can never produce aught but feeble men and pusillanious nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced byond which he cannot pass [i.e., the natural moral law]; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free; as it is with man, so with communities. The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness.

Thus, in common with Orestes Brownson, evidently the popes, too, saw a special mission for America: as a model for how to structure a society so as to respect the dignity of each person, and at the same time protect and maintain the common good. This was evident nowhere else in the world, making the United States, for all its admitted faults and flaws, humanity's last chance to build a world based on a solid foundation of the universal truths of the natural moral law.

One question, however, remained. Thanks to such astute commentators and analysts as de Tocqueville, Brownson, and Leo XIII, we now knew what: a society that embodies the four essential pillars of an economically and politically just society. These are, 1) a limited economic role for the State, 2) free and open markets as the best means for determining just wages, just prices, and just profits, 3) recognition and protection of the rights of private property, and 4) widespread direct ownership of the means of production. We also knew why: respect for the sovereignty and dignity of each human being.

What we still didn't know was how. Even the United States was having problems with maintaining the four essential pillars of an economically and politically just society. Within forty years, however, another pope would develop a social doctrine that embodied a profound breakthrough in moral philosophy that addressed this very issue. We will start to look at this breakthrough in the next posting in this series.

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The Political Animal, Part XXII

As we saw in the previous posting in this series, following the Civil War, the social order in the United States was more closely attuned to the natural moral law, and the country was better positioned to take advantage of this orientation than any previous nation or people in history. The four essential elements of an economically (and thus politically) just society were, to all appearances, firmly in place:

• A limited economic role for the State,

• Free and open markets as the best means for determining just prices, just wages, and just profits,

• Recognition and protection of the rights of private property, and (the "fatal omission" of many 19th century economies)

• Widespread direct ownership of the means of production.

There were some serious flaws, of course. The federal government was taking a more active role in the economy, due primarily to the increased power it had gained as a result of the war. Labor agitation, while a necessary counter to the growing power of concentrated ownership of the means of production in industrial and commercial assets in the hands of a relatively small class of capitalists, was focusing not on gaining power through ownership for the working classes, but on using the coercive power of the State to enforce better conditions and higher wages. The property rights of small owners were being rapidly eroded as the State and the new capitalist class joined forces to rebuild the economy and stabilize the currency after the war.

Perhaps most important, the widespread direct ownership achieved by means of the Homestead Act was not able to provide ownership opportunities for everyone, nor did it apply to anything other than land. This was due primarily to three factors. One, the amount of land available for homesteading was limited. Two, not everyone is cut out to be a farmer. Three, an increasing proportion of the production of marketable goods and services was coming not from agriculture (although agricultural production was phenomenal), but out of industry and commerce. The proportion of people making a living as farmers was decreasing even as farm ownership was rapidly expanding.

Thus, even though the Homestead Act was one of the greatest economic achievements in history, it came at a time when its effect was diluted by its lack of universal applicability. Ironically, the benefits of the Homestead Act would be almost completed negated in less than fifty years by the incredible expansion of industry and commerce in the United States — an expansion in which, unlike that of the agricultural sector, the great mass of people did not have any opportunity to participate.

Consequently, the doctrines of socialism began swiftly gaining ground, even in the United States. This was all the more insidious in that many adherents of what was and remains effectively socialism were honestly and sincerely convinced that what they advocated was not socialism, but a new, if extremely vague thing they called "social justice." A great deal of this confusion was caused by the virtually complete abandonment of the natural moral law based on Nature as the basis for the social order. Taking its place was either a weak and ineffectual natural law based on the Will, or one of the many theories of government that sought to remove God completely from the equation.

A great deal of the blame for the rapid growth of socialism, even when the socialism was not recognized as such, can be placed on the almost universal misunderstanding of the institutions of money, credit, and finance. Of all the misconceptions about these fundamentally simple concepts, however, two were more destructive than all the others. As we have already noted, these were (and remain) one, the idea that "money" is a purchase order issued by the State or a State-authorized individual or entity, and two, that existing accumulations of savings are necessary to finance capital formation. The first abolishes private property, while the second raises an almost insurmountable barrier against ownership of the means of production by people who are not already wealthy.

The reason for rejecting the first misconception we have already explained in Posting XIII of this series, when we demonstrated that the definition of "money" used by the British Currency School gave the State effective ownership of everything. The second, while asserted as dogmatically as the definition of money, is equally false — even though, in common with the tenets of the British Currency School, it is a cornerstone of Keynesian, as well as Monetarist and Austrian economics, and virtually everything in between.

This is because the assumption that only existing accumulations of savings can be used to finance capital formation necessarily results in the dogmatic assertion that wealth must therefore be concentrated in as few hands as possible, either in a private elite of capitalists, or in the hands of a presumably beneficent State or State-substitute. As Keynes asserted without any proof in The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), the book that established his reputation,

The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was divided equitably. (The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 2.III)

The reasoning behind this assertion is logical — once we accept the incorrect belief that only existing accumulations of savings can be used to finance capital formation. Savings in this paradigm is, as Dr. Harold Moulton pointed out in The Formation of Capital (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1935, 37-41), always defined as cutting consumption — always. This means that, in order to have sufficient savings to form new capital, we need a class of people who cannot consume all they produce, and who are forced to reinvest the excess in additional capital, thereby accelerating their accumulation of unconsumed and unconsumable wealth. As technology becomes increasingly complex and expensive relative to the earning power of the average citizen, ownership of the means of production becomes increasingly concentrated first in the hands of the rich, then the super rich, then the ultra rich.

Thus, as the 19th century entered its final quarter, increasing numbers of people, even in the United States, reacted to the obvious abuses of capitalism. More and more people began looking to the State not only as the secondary or backup guardian of a well-ordered common good, but as the primary provider and guarantor of all individual goods and personal wellbeing. This was a far cry from the attitudes and habits of Americans described by de Tocqueville and Brownson, and all in the space of less than a quarter century.

Nevertheless, the United States was, for all its faults, still seen by many people as the best hope of mankind. Nowhere was this more evident — or, to many people, more surprising — than in the writings of the popes, the heads of the Catholic Church, beginning with the pontificate of Leo XIII.

In his first "encyclical," as certain teaching documents issued by the popes are called, Inscrutabili ("On the Evils Afflicting Modern Society"), issued a short time after his election in 1878, Leo XIII blamed the terrible social and economic conditions on the virtual complete abandonment of the natural moral law as the guiding principle of government. As he explained,

Now, the source of these evils lies chiefly, We are convinced, in this, that the holy and venerable authority of the Church, which in God's name rules mankind, upholding and defending all lawful authority, has been despised and set aside. The enemies of public order, being fully aware of this, have thought nothing better suited to destroy the foundations of society than to make an unflagging attack upon the Church of God, to bring her into discredit and odium by spreading infamous calumnies, and accusing her of being opposed to genuine progress. They labor to weaken her influence and power by wounds daily inflicted, and to overthrow the authority of the Bishop of Rome, in whom the abiding and unchangeable principles of right and good find their earthly guardian and champion. (Inscrutabili, § 3.)

In Catholic belief, the pope has been granted a special gift to discern and teach the natural moral law "infallibly." This does not mean that no one else can discern the truths of the natural moral law — it is, paradoxically enough, an infallible teaching of the Catholic Church that the natural moral law can be known in its fullness by all human beings through the use of reason unaided by faith. The "fullness of truth" that the Catholic Church claims refers to matters of faith, not of morals exclusively — as is logical, if we think about it. After all, why would any organized religion claim to teach a revelation from God that it did not also claim was completely or fully true?

No, Leo XIII is clearly referring not to matters of faith, but of morals, the natural moral law, and the undermining of the natural law in part by attacking the institution that believes itself to be the chief teacher and defender of the natural moral law. Nor do we have to be Catholic or even Christian to appreciate the seriousness of the attack on the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Matters of faith are, as far as the civil order is concerned, a matter of opinion. As de Tocqueville pointed out, as long as the purely religious teachings — matters of faith — of a sect or religion do no harm to the common good and are consistent with the natural moral law, then the State has as much business interfering in the internal affairs of that religion as that religion has interfering in civil matters — that is, none at all.

The case is different with the precepts of the natural moral law. While taught in large measure by organized religion, the natural moral law is, as we have seen, the basis of a just social order. Prior to the shift away from the Aristotelian/Thomist understanding of the natural law that occurred in the 16th century, the precepts of the law were universally accepted in the west, and (in different forms) in the east as well, as C. S. Lewis demonstrated in The Abolition of Man (1943). Applications of the precepts of the natural law may vary, even widely at times, as people adapt the broad outline of the law to meet their particular needs, wants, social conditions, and so on. The basic precepts, however, remain unchanged. As Heinrich Rommen explains, using the institution of private property as an example,

Only the legal institutions of private property and inheritance are of natural law. That is to say, the natural law requires only that there be private ownership and the right of inheritance. It does not demand the property and inheritance institutions of feudalism, or of liberalist capitalism, or of a system in which private, corporate, and public forms of ownership exist side by side. These are positive-law determinations which spring from the diversity of peoples and which change with the socioeconomic evolution. (The Natural Law, 209)

To counter the anti-human effects of undermining the moral authority of the Catholic Church, Leo XIII advocated restoring the teaching of the natural law in the schools, especially to young children:

The more the enemies of religion exert themselves to offer the uninformed, especially the young, such instruction as darkens the mind and corrupts morals, the more actively should we endeavor that not only a suitable and solid method of education may flourish, but above all that this education be wholly in harmony with the Catholic faith in its literature and system of training, and chiefly in philosophy, upon which the foundation of other sciences in great measure depends. Philosophy seeks not the overthrow of divine revelation, but delights rather to prepare its way, and defend it against assailants, both by example and in written works. (Inscrutabili § 13)

Having identified the underlying cause of the evils of modern society, in Quod Apostolici Muneris (1878), his second encyclical, Leo XIII singled out specific evils — "Socialism, Communism, Nihilism" — as needing special attention. Nor should it come as a surprise, once we understand the reasons for this concern. As Leo XIII stated,

The natural union of man and woman, which is held sacred even among barbarous nations, they hold in scorn; and its bond, whereby family life is chiefly maintained, they slacken, or else yield up to the sway of lust. In short, spurred on by greedy hankering after things present, which is the root of all evils, which some coveting have erred from the faith (1 Tim. vi 10), they attack the right of property, sanctioned by the law of nature, and with signal depravity, while pretending to feel solicitous about the needs, and anxious to satisfy the requirements of all, they strain every effort to seize upon and hold in common all that has been individually acquired by title of lawful inheritance, through intellectual or manual labor, or economy in living. (Quod Apostolici Muneris § 3)

The balance of the encyclical is concerned with demolishing all the excuses used by socialists, communists, and nihilists to abolish private property, either by redefining it or by outright confiscation. There is an astonishingly brief exhortation to the rich to alleviate the distress of the poor by distributing alms out of their superabundance (§ 11), but also a reminder that it is God's part, not man's, to punish greed and the refusal to distribute superfluous wealth.

Leo XIII's third encyclical, Æterni Patris ("On the Study of Scholastic Philosophy"), 1879, was a strong reminder (just in case anyone still had any doubts) that the natural moral law as defined by Aquinas — that is, the natural moral law based on the Intellect (Nature), not the Will — is the only sound basis for a just social order.

The problem was that people still didn't appear to be "getting it." Clearly something had to be done. That "something" is what we will look at in the next posting in this series.

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The Political Animal, Part XXI

In the previous posting in this series we discovered that a society had developed in the United States of the 1830s that appeared to adhere more closely to the natural moral law based on the divine Intellect (Nature) than any previous arrangement in history. As Alexis de Tocqueville analyzed the situation, "By the side of every religion is to be found a political opinion, which is connected with it by affinity. If the human mind be left to follow its own bent, it will regulate the temporal and spiritual institutions of society in a uniform manner, and man will endeavor, if I may so speak, to harmonize earth with heaven." ("Causes Which Tend to Maintain Democracy: Religion Considered as a Political Institution Which Powerfully Contributes to the Maintenance of a Democratic Republic Among the Americans," Volume I, Ch. XVII)

Surprisingly, perhaps even shockingly to today's liberal who detects a lurking and insidious evil in public displays or expressions of religion of any sect, but who singles out the Catholic Church as especially obnoxious in this regard, de Tocqueville professed to see in Catholicism a particular affinity for and support of the best in American democracy. According to de Tocqueville, the Catholic population of the United States, particularly those of Irish birth or descent, while a minority, provided the country with a solid core of citizens who were, at one and the same time, both independent minded, and submissive to good laws that promoted equality and social order. De Tocqueville claimed that in America, even where strict observance of Catholic practices according to the letter of the law faded or was non-existent (as among Protestants and adherents of other faiths), nowhere was there stronger adherence to the spirit of Catholicism, even among non-Catholics, particularly when conforming political institutions to the precepts of the natural moral law. (Ibid.)

Nor was de Tocqueville alone in his opinion that Americans had somehow reconciled humanity's social and individual natures. Immediately following the Civil War, Orestes Brownson published his own study of the United States, The American Republic (1865). Brownson, with Emerson and Thoreau considered one of the "top three" Transcendentalists in the United States until he converted to Catholicism in the 1840s and was swept under the rug of history, was even more explicit than de Tocqueville in his belief that America represented something genuinely new.

Once the country corrected (more or less) its "original sin" of chattel slavery with the bloodiest war in American history, the stage was set for America to fulfill its true purpose. Brownson believed that the United States was chosen by God to continue reconciling humanity's individual and social natures and provide, as far as humanly possible, the ideal environment within which man could become more fully himself. As Brownson put it in the introduction to the book that he considered his finest achievement,

The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the State, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and surpass Rome. Its idea is liberty, indeed, but liberty with law, and law with liberty. Yet its mission is not so much the realization of liberty as the realization of the true idea of the State, which secures at once the authority of the public and the freedom of the individual — the sovereignty of the people without social despotism, and individual freedom without anarchy. In other words, its mission is to bring out in its life the dialectic union of authority and liberty, of the natural rights of man and those of society. The Greek and Roman republics asserted the State to the detriment of individual freedom; modern republics either do the same, or assert individual freedom to the detriment of the State. The American republic has been instituted by Providence to realize the freedom of each with advantage to the other. (Orestes Brownson, "Introduction," The American Republic, 1865)

Despite some vagueness in terminology regarding social rights, Democracy in America and The American Republic share common assumptions. Chief among these is that the human person and thus the State, a human artifact, are based on and must conform to God's Nature, even when not following someone's interpretation of what may (or may not) be God's Will. Where de Tocqueville focused on the sociological aspects of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, however, Brownson explored political philosophy and science.

De Tocqueville and Brownson are not in competition. Both Democracy in America and The American Republic should be read as necessary complements to each other. De Tocqueville, for example, appears to assume as a given that when he refers to "Catholic political philosophy" his predominantly French and presumably Catholic readers know what he is talking about. On the other hand, Brownson, addressing an audience composed largely of non-Catholics, went to great lengths to explain of what that philosophy consists and why the American republic embodies Catholic political philosophy to a greater degree than any previous State in history.

Similarly, Brownson's audience in 1865 consisted primarily of small landowners and other proprietors who were fully aware of the importance of private property as the chief support for other natural rights, such as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (i.e., the acquisition and development of virtue). Other than to explain some technicalities about property and its importance as a natural right and to condemn both socialism and capitalism, Brownson spent very little space on ownership and private property. Nevertheless, he clearly considered widespread direct ownership of the means of production critical to the survival of a healthy State and a moral social order — hence his devastating critique of what he considered the deadly poison of socialism:

It wears a pious aspect, it has divine words on its lips, and almost unction in its speech. It is not easy for the unlearned to detect its fallacy, and the great body of the people are prepared to receive it as Christian truth. We cannot deny it without seeming to them to be warring against the true interests of society, and also against the Gospel of our Lord. Never was heresy more subtle, more adroit, better fitted for success. How skillfully it flatters the people! It is said, the saints shall judge the world. By the change of a word, the people are transformed into saints, and invested with the saintly character and office. How adroitly, too, it appeals to the people's envy and hatred of their superiors, and to their love of the world, without shocking their orthodoxy or wounding their piety! Surely Satan has here, in Socialism, done his best, almost outdone himself, and would, if it were possible, deceive the very elect, so that no flesh should be saved. (Essays and Reviews Chiefly on Theology, Politics, and Socialism, 1852.)

Brownson, of course, didn't have to deal with today's modernists and positivists and their word games, or the circumlocutions employed by both capitalists and socialists to try and whitewash their dogmatic beliefs under different names, such as "democratic capitalism (or socialism)," "solidarism," or even "Christian socialism." No, Brownson knew exactly what socialism is, and defined it the same way as Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto: the abolition of private property in the means of production. In the America of Brownson's day, no person considered sane questioned the importance of private property in the means of production, whether or not he or she agreed that direct ownership of capital should be widespread.

De Tocqueville, on the other hand, wrote primarily for a French and English audience, both countries in which the tradition of small ownership had been eroded for centuries, as William Cobbett frequently pointed out in his polemical works. Consequently, de Tocqueville stressed far more than Brownson the importance of widespread direct ownership of the means of production as the chief support for other natural rights.

The problem, of course, is obvious, at least in hindsight. The Industrial Revolution had received a great impetus in the United States due to the Civil War. Many authorities, then as now, credited the Union victory to the industrial and commercial might of the North. In mid-century, however, relatively few people were directly engaged in industrial and commercial enterprises, even as wage earners. Contrary to the assertions of David Christy in Cotton is King (1855), even in the South before the war, relatively few people — including slaves — were employed on plantations engaged in the production of goods, services, and commodities for the international market. Most slaveholders owned less than a dozen slaves, usually only one or two, and were engaged in subsistence agriculture or production of goods and services for the local market. The vast majority of the population, North and South, were engaged in subsistence agriculture, artisan type production of goods, or kept small shops.

All of this changed with Abraham Lincoln's 1862 Homestead Act and the opening of the "Great American Desert" to settlement — and as a vast new market for the goods being produced in the increasingly industrialized East. The Homestead Act changed the essential character of American agriculture from subsistence farming supplemented with small "cash crops," to production primarily for market, with basic necessities purchased instead of being homegrown. (Laura Ingalls Wilder brilliantly chronicled this change in her "Little House" books.) [This assumption is so engrained in American tax and agricultural policy that in 1948, the decision in the landmark case Wickard v. Filburn (317 U.S. 111 (1942)), that greatly increased the economic power of the federal government, held that all agricultural production, even that which was consumed on the farm where it was produced, was subject to the interstate commerce clause, whether or not it was produced for market.] Similarly, as the settlement of the West opened up a new market, the pace of industrialization increased. Settlement and industrialization not only complemented each other, neither would have been possible — or, at least, as successful — without the other.

Unfortunately, while agricultural capital — land — was broadly owned, with the ownership base rapidly expanding due to the Homestead Act, ownership of the new and growing commercial and industrial enterprises was becoming increasingly concentrated. By 1905, when Judge Peter Stenger Grosscup, one of Theodore Roosevelt's "Trust Busters," wrote a series of articles addressing the situation, small ownership of commerce and industry had, for all practical purposes, disappeared as a feature of American life.

Concentration of ownership of what was becoming responsible for the bulk of production of marketable goods, services, and commodities built a serious conflict into the system. As Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler pointed out three-quarters of a century later (The Capitalist Manifesto, 1958, and The New Capitalists, 1961), concentrated ownership is not due to some law of nature, as both capitalists and socialists assume even to this day. On the contrary, concentrated ownership of the means of production is directly attributable to a profound misunderstanding of money and credit, and thus a misapplication of incorrect assumptions to the task of financing capital formation, whether that capital is in the form of industrial, commercial, or agricultural assets.

This misunderstanding about money and credit has a profound influence on how people view the political process. Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of two Englishmen, Walter Bagehot and Albert Venn Dicey. Briefly (for this is not the place to get into an in-depth analysis of the differences between the two), Bagehot, who expressed great disdain for the United States, was a firm adherent of State-controlled monopoly capitalism (described in his book, Lombard Street, 1873) — with the State itself controlled by "the money interests." Clearly taking the "law is will" position (lex voluntas), Bagehot advocated a form of "democracy" in which, consistent with the principles laid out by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, the commercial and financial elite rather than the hereditary monarchy or aristocracy controlled the country, as was the case in India before the Great Mutiny (The English Constitution, 1867). Not surprisingly, Bagehot was an adherent of the British Currency School, defining "money" essentially as a State-authorized purchase order.

Dicey, Bagehot's most effective philosophical opponent, was a firm believer in the rule of law, and popularized the concept on both sides of the Atlantic. A great admirer of the United States (unlike Bagehot, who never visited America, Dicey paid an extended visit to the U.S. in the 1870s), Dicey unfortunately avoided the economic issue, focusing on purely political matters. This may have been as a result of the inevitable conflict between a democratic political system, and an absolutist economic system.

For whatever reason, Dicey, a firm adherent of the law is reason position (lex ratio), did not address the problems inherent in applying the elitist and undemocratic principles of the Currency School to a presumably democratic political system. Dicey's classic, An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1886), simply avoids the whole issue of economics, although he was appointed one of the first professors at the new London School of Economics in 1896. Dicey's Conflict of Laws, published that same year, concentrates largely on what is today known as "business law," and does not discuss the conflict between the two schools of monetary thought. On the other hand, Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century (1905) is a brilliant analysis of the principle of subsidiarity, and its relation to the sovereignty of the individual manifested through membership in groups.

Incorrect assumptions about money, credit, and finance were built into the American system following the Civil War. Part of this was due to Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase's controversial decision to finance the Union war effort primarily through borrowing instead of taxation. There was, however, also the problem of the chaotic banking system, a situation made infinitely worse by the President Andrew Jackson's pyrrhic victory in his war against the Second Bank of the United States in the previous generation.

The National Bank Act of 1864, modeled on the British Bank Charter Act of 1844, did bring a measure of order to the financial system. Unfortunately the National Bank Act, in common with Sir Robert Peel's Bank Charter Act, embodied two false assumptions about money, credit, and finance that were to have serious repercussions in the decades to come, culminating in the "Panic of 1907."

These were, one, that "money," contrary to the natural moral law based on the Intellect, is and can only be a purchase order issued by the State or a State-authorized individual or entity. Two, that capital formation can only be financed out of existing accumulations of savings. With this in mind, the subtitle of Kelso and Adler's above-referenced second book, The New Capitalists, is revealing: "A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of Savings."

These two assumptions, widely accepted even today, flatly contradict the true nature of money as anything that can be used in settlement of a debt, and the science of finance as based on a regulated system of secured promises, with or without existing accumulations of savings. These elitist assumptions about money and credit — the life's blood of the community — came into direct conflict with the democratic American political system, with results that became ever more destructive of political and social stability as the century wore on.

Unfortunately, as the damage increased, people began to forget or ignore the basic principles and "rules" of democracy in America as discerned by de Tocqueville, and the true origin and transmission of the sovereign power as described by Brownson. In view of the apparent helplessness of the individual seemingly trapped in an impersonal system, people began to look to the State as the agency that alone could ameliorate the increasing disorder in society. We will begin to look at some of the responses to this disorder in the next posting in this series.

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News from the Network, Vol. 3, No. 2

The big news for the week, of course, is the Haitian earthquake. Little more needs to be said about that, however, than (if you feel up to it) you should consider contributing something to the immediate relief effort. Please note, however, that CESJ is not accepting contributions for the relief effort. Please direct your contributions to the American Red Cross or other charitable or relief organization.

• Anyone involved in the Just Third Way should, however, consider in what way the principles of the Just Third Way can be applied to rebuilding Haiti, not just in meeting the immediate short term needs. Primary among the country's needs in the long term is fundamental institutional change that will allow all Haitians to participate fully in the common good as full persons, especially the economic common good. In this respect, the current disaster may be a blessing in disguise. We spoke with a university professor today who had formerly been with the World Bank and had spent some time in Haiti trying to convince the leaders to adopt certain structural reforms, but with no success. The need to rebuild almost everything from scratch, however, may open people's minds, both in Haiti and in the international community, to the need for such institutional changes.

• We received word early this week that Al Qaeda has called for the assassination of Dr. Ahmed Mansour, head of the International Quranic Center in Northern Virginia, and a world-renowned Quranic scholar. Dr. Mansour is a leading expert in the philosophy of the 14th century Aristotelian Ibn Khaldûn, who is in substantial agreement with Moses Maimonides, the great 12th century Jewish Aristotelian, and St. Thomas Aquinas, a contemporary of Maimonides and a correspondent, on the essential principles of the natural moral law. While the point of difference might seem esoteric, as an Aristotelian Dr. Mansour bases the precepts of the natural moral law common to all religions and philosophies on the divine Nature reflected in humanity, while Islamic, Jewish, and Christian fundamentalists base the precepts of the natural moral law on their own private interpretation of something they believe to be a revelation of the divine Will. Basing the natural law on Nature means that its precepts are discernable by everyone through human reason, while basing the natural law on Will means that its precepts are discernable only by faith to a self-appointed elite.

• A great many meetings have taken place this week, none of which make for interesting news reports, but which are nevertheless very important. A number of critical projects are moving forward, slowly but surely.

• Marie T. Kurland has begun a project to assist Mr. Robert Ngobito of Kenya, a school teacher, in teaching people in his district about the Just Third Way. His district has virtually no internet access, and there is an extreme scarcity of basic materials. Mr. Ngobito has indicated he would like to host a conference with Dr. Norman G. Kurland, president of CESJ, as the main speaker, but lacks the resources and outreach. If you are interested in helping to move this initiative forward, please send Marie an e-mail at thirdway [at] cesj [dot] org. This could be a very interesting as well as educational project for a high school or even junior high, as well as for individuals seeking meaningful ways to have a positive effect on the world community. This would also be ideal if you have a foundation that is seeking worthy objects for its efforts.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 46 different countries and 39 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, the UK, Brazil, Canada and the Philippines. People in the Netherlands Antilles, Taiwan, Malaysia, France, and Venezuela spent the most average time on the blog. The "News from the Network" postings are the most popular, followed by those on "The Political Animal."

Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.

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The Political Animal, Part XX

In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville published the first volume of what is generally considered the first major work of sociology, Democracy in America, a remarkable study that seems to be little appreciated today for its true worth. This was followed in 1840 by the second volume. Democracy in America is a work that many authorities agree paints an unparalleled portrait of the United States after the first rush of revolutionary ardor had burned itself out and the country got down to the work of building a new type of nation — one that respects the dignity of the individual as well as the demands of the common good.

While there are de Tocqueville Societies in the United States, their stated function is to encourage individual private charity for worthy causes, thereby obviating the presumed necessity for State assistance. This is a distant and foggy understanding of de Tocqueville's analysis of what American democracy meant in the 1830s. Taking de Tocqueville's observations about America as manifestations of personal philanthropy may even serve to blunt our full awareness of de Tocqueville's achievement, as well as our comprehension of how the people of the day understood what it meant to be an American.

We can appreciate de Tocqueville's analysis properly only by referencing George Mason's tacit reconciliation, in the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the U.S. Constitution, of humanity as both individual and social — that is, political — in nature. De Tocqueville took as his thesis that in America western civilization saw something entirely new on the stage of history, something that transcended the usual conflict between individualism and collectivism. In England, for example, government and great works were considered the bailiwick of individuals, while in France people looked to the State for virtually everything.

The distinctive manner in which Americans related to their institutions and to the common good as a whole is the subject matter of Democracy in America. This they did not purely as individuals, nor as mere cogs in the machinery of the State, but as something uniquely human: politically. Nor was this in the limited fashion that Aristotle assumed, a limited and indirect access to the common good. Americans somehow had what appeared to be full and direct access to the common good.

This was not the chaotic mess that many European commentators affected to observe in the United States. On the contrary, democracy in America appeared to operate by definite rules in conformity with the natural moral law, many of which de Tocqueville described. As he explained,

It may fairly be believed that a certain number of Americans pursue a peculiar form of worship from habit more than from conviction. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth. ("Causes Which Tend to Maintain Democracy," Volume I, Ch. XVII)

De Tocqueville discerned a number of "rules" by means of which democracy is maintained in America — or at least was maintained in the America of the 1830s. Many of these are intimately connected with the necessity of restoring the natural law and maintaining the freedom of association that de Tocqueville observed as the chief characteristic of American life, consistent with liberty, although inspired by the drive for equality. This, according to de Tocqueville, was a situation that, while in many respects superficially similar to what prevailed in Europe, was actually something new on the world scene, and something vital to the survival of democracy. As he declared,

The first of the duties that are at this time imposed upon those who direct our affairs is to educate democracy, to reawaken, if possible, its religious beliefs; to purify its morals; to mold its actions; to substitute a knowledge of statecraft for its inexperience, and an awareness of its true interest for its blind instincts, to adapt its government to time and place, and to modify it according to men and to conditions. A new science of politics is needed for a new world. ("Author's Introduction," Volume I)

First, an orderly society is of the utmost importance. That network of institutions within which each individual carries out even the most mundane aspects of life, thereby working to acquire and develop virtue, must be maintained. This is consistent with Aquinas's observation in De Regimine Principum that social order is a great good — so great, in fact, that we must be willing to submit to great injustice, even tyranny, if removal of the tyranny or correction of the injustice will cause material harm to the social order. This is because the business of daily life, of acquiring and developing virtue (whether at the lowest level of subsistence, or the highest of self-actualization), requires an orderly society. As de Tocqueville explains,

The passions that agitate the Americans most deeply are not their political, but their commercial passions; or, rather, they introduce the habits of business into their political life. They love order, without which affairs do not prosper; and they set an especial value upon regular conduct, which is the foundation of a solid business. ("Causes Which Tend to Maintain Democracy," Volume I, Ch. XVII)

Second, despite their oft-touted individualism, Americans had a strong tendency to subsume their private interests, join with others, and cooperate in order to achieve a desired end. As de Tocqueville explains,

When the members of a community are forced to attend to public affairs, they are necessarily drawn from the circle of their own interests and snatched at times from self-observation. As soon as a man begins to treat of public affairs in public, he begins to perceive that he is not so independent of his fellow men as he had at first imagined, and that in order to obtain their support he must often lend them his co-operation. ("That the Americans Combat the Effects of Individualism by Free Institutions," Volume II, Book II, Ch. IV)

Third, Americans had integrated into their social habits the principle that, in order to optimize one's particular good, they first had to secure the common good. That is, Americans had somehow concluded that each individual's primary particular good consisted of his or her place in the common good, and that the general welfare is, in a real sense, each person's particular welfare, for the complex network of institutions that make up the common good are the chief means by which each individual acquires and develops virtue, and so benefits him- or herself. As de Tocqueville explains,

A man comprehends the influence which the well-being of his country has upon his own; he is aware that the laws permit him to contribute to that prosperity, and he labors to promote it, first because it benefits him, and secondly because it is in part his own work. ("Advantages of Democracy: Public Spirit in the United States," Volume I, Ch. XIV)

Fourth, de Tocqueville noted that every American as a general rule believed him- or herself to be personally responsible for the condition of society. If something needed fixing, it was the individual's responsibility to do something, not sit around waiting for somebody else to undertake the task. In consequence, when a situation came up that required correction, the individual either handled it alone, or organized with his or her neighbors and got on with the job. As de Tocqueville described this tendency,

The citizen of the United States is taught from infancy to rely upon his own exertions in order to resist the evils and the difficulties of life; he looks upon the social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he claims its assistance only when he is unable to do without it. This habit may be traced even in the schools, where the children in their games are wont to submit to rules which they have themselves established, and to punish misdemeanors which they have themselves defined. The same spirit pervades every act of social life. If a stoppage occurs in a thoroughfare and the circulation of vehicles is hindered, the neighbors immediately form themselves into a deliberative body; and this extemporaneous assembly gives rise to an executive power which remedies the inconvenience before anybody has thought of recurring to a pre-existing authority superior to that of the persons immediately concerned. ("Political Associations in the United States," Volume I, Ch. XII)

Fifth, Americans had internalized what today is known as the "principle of subsidiarity." That is, they realized that the agency to handle social situations is not automatically the highest or the lowest level of society, but the one closest to the situation. Thus, the "higher" institutions, such as the state or the federal governments, should never take over the functions properly assigned to local institutions. Further (something de Tocqueville was to highlight later in The Old Régime and the French Revolution, 1856), neither should "lower" institutions take over the function of the "higher" ones. As de Tocqueville explains,

The township, taken as a whole, and in relation to the central government, in only an individual, like any other to whom the theory [sovereignty of the people] I have just described is applicable. Municipal independence in the United States is therefore a natural consequence of the very principle of the sovereignty of the people. All the American republics [de Tocqueville characterizes the individual states as "republics"] recognize it more or less, but circumstances have peculiarly favored its growth in New England.

In this part of the Union political life had its origin in the townships; and it may almost be said that each of them originally formed an independent nation. When the kings of England afterwards asserted their supremacy, they were content to assume the central power of the State. They left the townships where they were before; and although they are now subject to the State, they were not at first, or were hardly so. They did not receive their powers from the central authority, but, on the contrary, they gave up a portion of their independence to the State. This is an important distinction and one that the reader must constantly recollect. The townships are generally subordinate to the State only in those interests which I shall term social, as they are common to all the others. They are independent in all that concerns themselves alone; and among the inhabitants of New England I believe that not a man is to be found who would acknowledge that the State has any right to interfere in their town affairs. ("Townships and Municipal Bodies," Volume I, Ch. V)

Sixth, possibly the most striking characteristic of American life as far as de Tocqueville was concerned was the incredible proclivity to organize and form associations. As he observed,

In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used or applied to a greater multitude of objects than in America. Besides the permanent associations which are established by law under the names of townships, cities, and counties, a vast number of others are formed and maintained by the agency of private individuals. ("Political Associations in the United States," Volume I, Ch. XII)

Seventh, and finally (at least for our limited purposes), this habit of forming associations was so great that Americans of the 1830s, according to de Tocqueville, couldn't even imagine doing things differently. If something needed to be done, and it was at all important, it was vital that people organize and form themselves into associations in order to accomplish whatever end they had in mind. Thus, as de Tocqueville explains,

The political associations that exist in the United States are only a single feature in the midst of the immense assemblage of associations in that country. Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospital, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association. . . . The English often perform great things singly, whereas the Americans form associations for the smallest undertakings. It is evident that the former people consider association as a powerful means of action, but the latter seem to regard it as the only means they have of acting. ("Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life," Volume II, Book II, Ch. V)

It should therefore come as no surprise that the intellectual elite of Europe (at least those most closely in touch with the Thomist and Aristotelian concept of the natural moral law, such as Pope Leo XIII), saw in the United States a great sign of hope, even (as Abraham Lincoln was to characterize it in the next generation in his Second Inaugural Address), the last, best hope of mankind. We will begin to look at how the United States both lived up to that expectation and fell short of it in the next posting in this series.

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The Political Animal, Part XIX

In the previous posting in this series we saw that George Mason of Gunston Hall had somehow managed to weave together a consistent political philosophy from a number of disparate elements. These elements included the individualism of Locke and Sidney, the ultimate (and unconscious) collectivism of Bellarmine, and, especially, private property and man as a "political animal." Mason's synthesis was due to his adherence to an understanding of the natural law based on the Intellect — reason. Paradoxically, this was at a time when virtually all intellectuals were following Occam and Grotius and doing the very un-intellectual thing of basing the natural law on the Will. Only by basing the law on the Intellect, however (lex ratio — "law is reason"), can the natural dignity and sovereignty of the individual be protected, and natural rights remain sacrosanct.

Because it relates to economic life, the most immediate if not the most important aspect of daily life, the natural right to private property was an important factor in Mason's political thought — especially that property he regarded as illegitimate: chattel slavery. Mason had to proceed carefully, however. Calling an ancient institution like chattel slavery into question could very easily undermine the institution of private property itself, to say nothing of making him appear to be a hypocrite — as, in fact, his opponents were quick to claim.

Thomas Jefferson, an estimable, even great individual in many respects, was evidently unable or unwilling to deal with such a thorny issue. Jefferson avoided the issue of property in the Declaration of Independence, and allowed himself to be persuaded to drop a provision abolishing slavery. Otherwise, Jefferson closely followed Mason's lead with respect to the natural moral law.

The dangers associated with attacking chattel slavery (and, in our day, "wage slavery") and thereby undermining recognition of and respect for private property are not as farfetched as they might seem, as the case of Nathan C. Kouns demonstrates. Kouns, a devout Catholic, supported slavery and served as a Major in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He was evidently able to accept the equivocations of the southern American bishops in their anxiety to assure their flocks that the condemnation of chattel slavery by Pope Gregory XVI in the 1839 Constitution In Supremo ("Constitution" being a teaching, not a political document in this context) did not apply to slavery as practiced in the United States.

The southern American Catholic bishops assuaged their consciences and those of the faithful with the equivocation that the Papal Constitution only condemned the international slave trade, not slavery itself — as if employing slaves as labor, and dealing in them as a commodity were somehow morally different! Of course, an objective reading of the Constitution would have corrected this obvious error, as would reference to the numerous papal condemnations of slavery prior to that date. (See Rev. Joel S. Panzer, The Popes and Slavery. New York: Alba House, 1996.)

After the Civil War, Kouns seems to have become convinced that, because private property in human beings is wrong, all private property is wrong. Kouns then promoted socialism — the abolition of private property — as consistent with Catholic doctrine. He wrote two historical novels to present his case, Arius the Libyan, An Idyl [sic] of the Primitive Church (1883), and Dorcas, the Daughter of Faustina (1884), both of which enjoyed reasonably good sales into the 1920s.

The novels are competently written, and (if not exactly great literature) have convinced a number of critics and commentators that, despite their flat contradiction of Catholic doctrine, they detail authentic Catholic teaching regarding private property. It would not be too far-fetched to discover that Pope Leo XIII (who seems to have considered the United States something unique and special) was aware of the novels and the effect they had when he wrote Rerum Novarum. The 1891 encyclical is built around a series of explicit statements reaffirming private property as a natural right, the same as life, liberty, and "pursuit of happiness" (the acquisition and development of virtue).

As the draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights clearly demonstrates, however, Mason attempted to insert into the resolution a respect for the human dignity of every individual, not just a select majority or minority. It is thus probably due more to Mason than to Jefferson that the American Republic is based on the Thomist, rather than the Scotist concept of the natural law (that is, Intellect or Nature over Will or Revelation). Mason was instrumental in making certain that the new Constitution of 1787 included a bill of fundamental natural rights, although the effort was spearheaded by fellow Virginian James Madison, whom many Constitutional scholars thereby credit with the first ten amendments.

The problem was that Madison doesn't seem to have had an equal understanding with Mason of the need to make certain that the institution of private property has the same protections as every other natural right. This left a serious problem in place, giving an either/or aspect to the slavery issue: either immediate and full emancipation, or nothing. The problem was that disaster would result in either event. As Helen Hill explains the situation in her biography of Mason, describing a conversation between Jefferson and Mason and witnessed by Philip Mazzei,

Philip Mazzei's "Memoirs" give an intimate picture of the two arguing these contrasting aspects of the problem, taking sides, one suspects, chiefly to clarify the issues. Jefferson was advocating abolition, arguing that

It was demanded as much by humanity as by justice; that to keep in slavery beings born with rights equal to ours and who did not differ from us in anything but color, was an injustice not only barbarous and cruel, but even shameful, especially when they risked everything in helping us gain our freedom.

Mason and Mazzei dissented from this view:

Mr. George Mason said much more; and he showed the necessity of educating them before taking such a step, teaching them to make good use of their freedom. "Each one of us knows," he said, "that the negroes considered the work as punishment." He also convinced us that if they were not educated before being freed, the first use they would make of their liberty would be loafing, and hence they would become thieves out of necessity.

In the course of the Richmond debates, Mason fought the Constitution clause by clause, but his most effective oratory was reserved for the slavery provision. (Helen Hill, George Mason, Constitutionalist. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1938, 217-218)

Education and gradual emancipation might not satisfy the purists on either side, but it is the common sense approach, and had the potential to respect at least to some degree both the property of the slaveholders and the right of the slaves to liberty. Mason was punctilious in bringing property into the discussion; owners of slaves had acquired their property legally and, consistent with popular belief for thousands of years, legitimately. To dismiss this by mandating immediate emancipation, even with compensation offered to the slaveholders, could call property itself into question. By taking the expedient route, Madison managed to undermine a very important natural right.

Mason, however, understood that man is both social and individual — a political animal, who only reaches his full potential by associating with other individuals and groups of his kind in the polis, an organized and formally legislated community.

Still, Mason lived in a society that, while it paid lip service to the equality of all men, rejected that same equality in practice. Many of the Founding Fathers assumed, with Locke and Sidney, that society is not natural to man. The liberal theory is that you accept infringement of certain rights when you agree to enter society in order to protect what remains.

Paradoxically, the idea that man outside society has all rights and accepts infringement in order to gain some measure of protection abolishes the concept of natural rights in the same breath that purports to defend it. An infringement of a right that can presumably be exercised absolutely is not the same as a limitation on the exercise of a right that is possessed absolutely, that is, inalienably. The former constitutes a tacit admission that possession of the right is not, after all, natural or absolute, while the latter is the normal working of the politikos bios, the "life of the citizen in the State." This in part consists of properly defining and limiting (not infringing on) the exercise of absolute rights so that man can live together in peace . . . naturally.

The liberal position is that anyone who has not been admitted to society cannot be recognized as a person, that is, as having rights. Consequently, most of the Founding Fathers accepted the "state of nature" theory common to Locke and Sidney, and their chief opponent, Hobbes. Mason understood that this made true equality impossible, for if you wished to keep someone in an unequal state such as slavery, you merely had to assert that members of a particular group, or even the group itself had not entered society.

Further, asserting a state of nature in which man not only possesses natural rights absolutely, but has the absolute (that is, unlimited) exercise thereof argues that the unlimited exercise of all rights is natural. This we know is impossible, for one of the primary "laws" of the common good (that is, of social justice), after the demand that the common good itself remain inviolate, is that no right or power can legitimately be exercised in any way that harms the right holder, other individuals or groups, or the common good itself. Limitation of exercise, even of rights that are possessed absolutely, is thus inherent in human nature itself.

Man's political nature is exhibited by his membership in a single group or (in practical terms) many groups that, in part, make up the common good and demonstrate the organized structure of society; the mere fact of a group itself is sufficient proof that someone is a member of society and is, in the truest sense, political. The moment you make conditions, that is, once you declare that personality is due to something other than mere humanity, you are, essentially, denying that man is political by nature, as well as undermining the natural moral law.

Fortunately, however, Mason had an inherent understanding of the importance of groups, and realized that true political action consists of something more than simply passing and enforcing laws. Mason's remarkable accomplishment was to insert Aristotle's concept of man as a political animal into a supremely individualistic culture and intellectual framework. He was able to find a middle ground and develop a synthesis between liberal philosophy's state of nature and Cardinal Bellarmine's concept that God grants certain rights to the collective.

Mason's via media was not articulated. It is, however, powerfully evident in his draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, his insistence on a bill of fundamental natural rights in the U.S. Constitution, and, fortunately, in his influence on the founding document of the United States: the Declaration of Independence.

Mason can therefore be given credit for the way in which the American approach to government and politics developed immediately following the Revolution. As we will see in the next posting in this series, private property, free association, and the idea of groups were in America combined in a unique new way that developed not only a new science of politics, but gave hints of a new concept in moral philosophy, the idea of "social virtue," that is, legal justice as a particular, not merely a general virtue.

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The Political Animal, Part XVIII

In the previous posting in this series we concluded that the American and French Revolutions differed in at least one important area. That is, the American colonists went into rebellion to protect and defend what they saw as violations on the part of the British Crown of their natural rights as Englishman. In France, the citizens revolted in part in response to the growth of new views of the State and the promulgation of new rights that were not necessarily consistent with the natural moral law, but with "the will of the people."

The American revolutionaries used reason to discern the natural moral law and based their rights on that. The French revolutionaries based their assertion of new rights on "pure reason," without first basing reason itself on a sound foundation, even going to the unreasonable length of enshrining "Reason" as a goddess of the new State-established and maintained religion. The essential difference in orientation is clearly evident when we examine the principles of political science used in forming the United States of America.

When the Virginia Convention met in the spring of 1776, they adopted a resolution to draft a declaration of fundamental natural rights that they believed King George III and his parliament were violating. As George Mason of Gunston Hall in Northern Virginia (near Alexandria) had a reputation as the most experienced legal writer in Virginia, he was the obvious choice to draw up the draft for the discussion and approval of the other delegates. As was his habit, he included a provision that destroyed the legal justification of chattel slavery, even though he was himself a slave owner:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

As drafted, the Declaration states that all men have inherent (i.e., natural) rights, of which neither they nor their posterity can be deprived, regardless of the justification. All men have the right to live, to be free, and to acquire and possess private property: John Locke's famous triad of fundamental human rights of life, liberty, and property — but with a difference.

That difference is the fact that Mason (in common with Bellarmine, whom Mason appears to have studied) simply ignored "state of nature" theory and declared that all men have rights by nature, not as a result of entering into a social contract and agreeing to enter into society. Man is political by nature; he does not agree to enter society. He is already a member of society by nature unless he removes himself by the commission of a crime.

That man is naturally a member of society is not, however, a doctrine found anywhere in Locke or Sidney. They were firm adherents of the "state of nature" theory, virtually their sole point of agreement with Hobbes. That man is naturally a member of society, however, is found throughout Bellarmine's writings, notably in De Laicis.

If all men are naturally members of society, regardless of circumstances, it logically follows that this applies to slaves. The clear implication is that slaves — absent conviction of a crime for which the slave is actually and personally guilty — have the right to be free. If this sentence in the Virginia declaration passed unchallenged, the implication was that slave owners were themselves engaged in doing the very thing for which they were condemning George III and his parliament.

Even so, Mason might have gotten away with it . . . had he not had the reputation of making similar insertions in virtually every possible document at every opportunity. By having previously tipped his hand through his laudable habit of standing up to condemn an institution he despised, he made it impossible to slip it in where it would have done the most good. The "reluctant statesman" and even more reluctant slave owner outsmarted himself.

Being familiar with Mason's "tricks," the conservative ("aristocratic") delegates to the Virginia Convention were ready for him. As Robert Rutland describes the events surrounding the discussions leading up to the ratification of the Virginia Declaration,

After each delegate studied the proposals, the general debate opened on a sour note. Thomas Ludwell Lee [Mason's aide on the drafting committee] lamented in his nightly letter-writing sessions that "a certain set of aristocrats" had thrown up a line of defense in an effort to keep control of the Convention in conservative hands. Led by Robert Carter Nicholas, the old guard "kept us at bay on the first line" of the draft, Lee reported. Nicholas challenged the statement that all men are created equally free and independent. In a slaveholding society, the argument ran, all men were obviously not born free and equal. To pretend otherwise, the conservatives suggested, was to invite civil war on their own estates. (Robert A. Rutland, George Mason: Reluctant Statesman. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1961, 51-53)

Consistent with liberal political philosophy, the conservative members amended Mason's language. Raising the issue of slavery in the very first line of their Declaration could derail the entire Convention. As Florette Henri reports,

Those opening words of Mason tore the convention apart.

"'All men are born equally free and independent' — pray, what does that mean?" demanded the conservative Robert Carter Nicholas. "Does it include my slaves?"

Nicholas' supporters joined the outcry. Were slaves to be set free? They would not accept such a declaration. With one hand it guaranteed Virginians the right to hold property, and with the other it snatched that property away — slave property. What sort of radical document was this? Was it intended to abolish slavery?

Of course, Mason secretly hoped it might. (Florette Henri, George Mason of Virginia. New York: Crowell-Collier Press, 1971, 93.)

Mason was forced to let it pass. As Rutland reports,

As finally approved, the first sentence read "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; . . ." The italicized phrase, with its implicit proposition that slaves are not members of society, placated the opposition. (Rutland, op. cit., 54)

While important, however, the focus on slavery and the natural right to be free overshadowed another natural right, "the means of acquiring and possessing property." Unfortunately, property was inextricably tied in with the slavery issue. The institution of black chattel slavery in the United States consisted of owning human beings as private property. To assert a natural right to be free for all men, and then equivocate by keeping some in bondage without the justification that they were criminals was a question not too many people had either the inclination or the ability to deal with. The issue at hand was political freedom for the American colonists, not natural freedom for people held in slavery.

When you added in the fact that a slave owner believed that his or her economic survival was tied to slavery just as much as to his or her ownership of large tracts of land, discussing slavery and private property at the same time made for an extremely volatile mix. If you asserted that private property in human beings — slavery — was illegitimate, it was a short leap to maintaining that all private property in anything was equally illegitimate.

The important issue here, however, is that Mason laid the groundwork for reconciling the collectivist and individualist positions. He somehow managed to insert the fact that the human person is both individual and social — political — into the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Even though it did not survive unedited, the fact that the idea was there is important — and that it made its way into the underlying political philosophy of the new country via Mason's influence through Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence. How Mason tied private property, slavery, and man as a political animal into a consistent whole will be examined in the next posting in this series.

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The Political Animal, Part XVII

In the previous posting in this series, we discovered that, regardless which political theory we adopt, we seem to fall into one of two traps, individualism or collectivism, either of which is unacceptable. If we admit humanity's social nature, we evidently have to accept that the State or the collective, something that is not a natural person, can somehow receive a grant of rights directly from God, or itself be God. Ultimately, this denies the sovereignty of the human person under God. If, on the other hand, we recognize humanity's individual nature, then the State itself (an artifact that, while man-made like other tools, is natural and essential to human development), seems to acquire a degree of illegitimacy, if only by serving as the agency by means of which what would otherwise be the absolute exercise of our natural rights is limited.

While Europe was struggling between the Scylla and Charybdis of individualism and collectivism, however, something new was growing up in the New World — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that an ancient ideal was finally achieving practicable existence. The case of the Spanish and French colonies was different, but the British colonies in North America had been for the most part left to their own devices.

This may have been due to the unique situation of Great Britain at a critical time in the formation of the colonial culture. The English Civil War, the Great Rebellion, the "Glorious Revolution," the advent of a foreign dynasty (the Hannoverians), and so on, all tended to distract the government in London from the situation "across the pond." For our purposes we do not have to examine the reasons why the American colonies developed the way they did in any depth — although it is interesting to note that, because king and parliament seemed to spend so much time trying to bring Ireland to heel that they had little time to spare for the American colonies. We only need to appreciate the fact that America represented something new on the world scene, socially, economically — and politically; the vision of "the City on the Hill," in which man could conform himself most closely to his true nature.

Socially, despite the fact that a nobility was grafted on to the social structure (to this day there is a "Duke of New York" in exile in Canada), the British colonies of North America probably came closer to a classless society that had developed naturally (as opposed to being imposed artificially by force) than anything that had developed previously in history. This was probably due to the fact that most of the people in the colonies were originally from the middle class. The very poor and the very rich tended not to emigrate. The majority of colonists were drawn from people who wished to obtain ownership of land or other capital, or to better themselves in some other way.

Economically, while there were a significant number of individuals in the southern colonies who were regarded as aristocrats with vast holdings of land, the fact remained that colonial estates were by no means the equal of anything of commensurate size in England, nor were their owners considered all that different from their neighbors. Further, the tone of society was set not by the relatively few wealthy landowners, but by the much larger number of subsistence farmers and small artisans. The largest landowner lived in a fashion little different from his neighboring small proprietor.

In addition, the large landowners were in a condition that later generations would describe as "land poor." That is, virtually all of their wealth was in the form of land, and was difficult to turn into cash, even by mortgage or outright sale. The British colonies, unlike those of Spanish America, had virtually no official circulating media. Most of what existed in the form of coinage found its way into New England in the form of Spanish colonial "Pieces of Eight" — dollars. These usually came into the colonies as "boot" from the "Triangle Trade": molasses, to rum, to slaves. Had it not been for slavery, the final leg in the Triangle, British America would have been one of the most egalitarian societies in history.

It was, however, in politics that the situation in the colonies of British America differed most significantly from conditions that prevailed in Europe. Having been on their own during their formative period, the colonies had a tradition of self-government. They developed appropriate institutions to support the demands put on the social order by the growth of an egalitarian and largely economically classless society.

As a result, when the British government finally got around to taking a more direct interest in colonial affairs (largely as a potential source of tax revenue as well as a necessary adjunct for mercantilist policies), the colonists tended to view the increased administrative control as an unwarranted infringement of their rights and liberties as Englishmen. The fact that the English in England had far fewer effective rights than their American cousins was irrelevant. The colonists were used to being on their own, and doing for themselves. They resented being regarded as a virtual financial milch cow for British commercial and political interests, receiving no perceived benefit in return.

They had been in the habit in many cases of freely assembling and organizing for the common good without interference by or even the sanction of whatever governing authority existed. Public works were often private undertakings, funded and carried out without State assistance. Even the common defense was in many cases much less formal than in Europe, with local militias and the posse comitatus taking the place of a standing army or police force.

Now these activities, especially for the common defense in light of the Jacobite Rebellion in the 1740s in which "Bonnie Prince Charlie" came very close to regaining the throne for the Stuarts with the support of the Highland clans bearing personal arms, were viewed by King George III and his parliament not only as infringing on Royal prerogatives, but were believed to represent an actual danger to the State. It didn't help any that the British government was in desperate need of money, having managed to get itself involved in too many European wars at the same time it was trying to expand its colonial empire, and the nascent Industrial Revolution was starting its generations-long and completely unnecessary social and economic upheaval. Consequently, many traditional practices that the American colonists had long regarded as fundamental rights were limited, abolished, or suspended indefinitely.

The colonists protested, and (in a story too well known to relate here) went into revolt to protect and maintain those natural rights that they regarded as essential to their dignity as freeborn Englishmen. They had been schooled in these rights by events in the mother country, especially the "Glorious Revolution" at the edge of living memory. The Declaration of Independence was, in fact, closely modeled on the twelve charges by means of which parliament justified taking the throne away from James II Stuart and handing it over to William and Mary. As William Cobbett remarks in his History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland (1826),

In short, they drew up, à la "glorious," charges against their Protestant king, his late Majesty; and as the charges against James II. are found in an Act of Parliament, so the charges against George III. are found in an Act of Congress, passed on the memorable 4th of July, 1776. (§ 425)

In this, the American Revolution differed significantly from the later French Revolution, due in large measure to the completely different understanding of the rights of man and the view of sovereignty. The American colonists went into revolt to defend themselves against infringement of their natural rights that they had long been in the habit of exercising.

The French Revolution (to oversimplify) was, in contrast, the application of new ideas of sovereignty and the nation State, and the actual institution of a new world order. Despite the repeated statements, possibly even sincere beliefs of America's Founding Fathers, however, the realization of a long-held ideal is not a new world order in the same sense as that represented by the French Revolution, as we will see in the next posting in this series.

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