Despite the
extended analysis of the errors inherent in the position of “Tom Steele,” the
distributist economist, and his associate, “Joe Wide” — pseudonyms we inserted
to avoid making things personal — Wide seems to have remained silent. Perhaps he was persuaded of the truth of our
position. Who knows?
 |
| Deacon John: "Steele has me utterly baffled!" |
Steele, however,
appears to have become somewhat outraged that we would dare question
anything he said. He sent a large number
of disjointed and somewhat incoherent messages to Deacon John, raging at him,
calling him a fool, etc., claiming
that Deacon John, an ordained clergyman, knows nothing about the Catholic
Church’s social teachings, and so on, so forth.
Given that, we decided to confine ourselves to the response he made to
Deacon John after the Reverend Mister J. sent our response to Steele.
From Steele’s
response (which we’ve published below, with editorial comments inserted), we got the distinct
impression that he either did not read our analysis, or completely
misunderstood it. He just kept repeating
his previous assertions, and added a number of ad hominem comments, some of which might be considered offensive in
certain circles. We’ll let the
distributist economist speak for himself, however:
I found this to be a very interesting document, not so
much because it gives anything new, but because it is exactly like all the
other documents he writes which purport to “answer” a critique; it bears some
common themes with all of his “answers”: [In other words, Steele claims that our
nearly 7,000-word response that quoted him and gave a detailed Just Third Way analysis
of his and Wide’s stated position did not respond to the issues he raised. We invite readers to go back and see if they
agree with Steele’s statement. — ed.]
 |
| "Boiler Plate? I resent that!" |
1. It is mostly a cut and paste of CESJ boilerplate. [Untrue. Except for the definitions of participative,
distributive, and social justice, which were taken and edited from the CESJ glossary of terms and that comprise
less than 5% of the text, our response was composed as a team effort from
scratch. All quotes were cited as to the
source. — ed.]
2. It mostly ignores what the critics say, preferring
to argue against a straw man. [Untrue.
The response addressed specific points in Wide’s communication
concerning leveraged ESOPs, quoting them and responding to them in full. No issues were addressed that were not
explicitly raised or implied in the quoted passages. The only critics answered were Steele and
Wide, as they were the only ones mentioned in their original statement. Asserting that we ignored a criticism that
was not made by someone who was not mentioned and raised a straw man is itself
a straw man. — ed.]
 |
| "All hail, Welter, Queen of de Nile!" |
3. In the rare cases he does actually address the
critique, he ends up conceding the point under a welter of denials. [Untrue.
We conceded no point, nor did we put any such concession “under a welter
of denials.” In any event, Steele fails
to specify anything in this comment, leaving Deacon John to try and figure out to
what it is that he, Steele, is referring. — ed.]
The first point speaks for itself, and if you are
familiar with CESJ literature, you will no doubt note a certain déja vu quality
to it. [We have no idea what he is talking about here, unless it is the fact
that we make our arguments based on consistent principles of economic and
social justice, or there is a certain consistency of style. — ed.]
 |
| "I CAN'T BE SILENCED IF I HAVEN'T SAID ANYTHING!!!!" |
As to the second point. I will let Joe Wide address the
allegations against him, [We made no
allegations, except to assume that Wide agrees with Steele, unless he
specifically stated otherwise. As Wide
himself said exactly the same thing, we fail to see in what way it is offensive.
— ed.] though those are not generally anything I’ve
heard Wide say. [Untrue. The
entire text on which we commented was quoted directly from Wide without
alteration. — ed.] But as for
me, no one need guess my position since I am published on these topics; if
anybody wants to know my opinion, it would be easy for them to check and hard
for me to lie. [Thereby implying
we are lying. — ed.] But Greaney
doesn’t check [Untrue. Cites were given for every quote; every fact
was checked (and it was a group effort, not only CESJ’s Director of Research).
— ed.] and always lies. [This appears to be a favorite accusation of Steele
whenever anyone disagrees with him. He
has repeatedly accused CESJ’s president and the Director of Research of lying,
and ran away when we demanded
to know what lies we have told, and what was his evidence that anything we said
was a lie. — ed.]. For example, not only have I never held that
production must be financed out of monetary savings, I have pointed out the
opposite: money is created out of credit and credits can be created in a
variety of ways. [Nor did we say that Steele
claims that production must be financed out of monetary savings. We said
(and we quote), “WE have been using the assumption that the only way to
finance anything is to cut consumption and accumulate money savings” (emphasis
added), and that WE assume that that he believes that past savings are essential. Steele has, in fact, disagreed — violently —
with our contention that future
savings permit someone to finance new capital formation without that individual
first having accumulated savings in any form.
Steele inserted the word “monetary” himself to create a straw man. As to Steele’s confusion over money and
credit, they are the same thing; money is credit, and credit is money. — ed.]
Again, I am published on this point, so if Greaney was interested he could, as
they say, “look it up.” And I will be speaking in Mexico City this fall to
address precisely this point. So to attribute this to me is a canard. [As
we never said it, we agree that it is a canard . . . on Steele’s part. — ed.]
 |
| "How did I get dragged into this?" |
And he also gets Keynes
wrong. Just as Greaney doesn’t read my stuff (which
is excusable) [Untrue. Greaney — CESJ’s Director of Research — has
read Steele’s writings, and was not impressed. — ed.] he
evidently hasn’t read The General Theory (which is not excusable). [Untrue. We
assume he means John Maynard Keynes’s General
Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). We have read it, in depth, as well as many of
Keynes’s journal articles, The Economic
Consequences of the Peace (1919) — the book that made his reputation — and
the Treatise on Money (1930), both
volumes, that Keynes intended as his magnum
opus. In any event, what is the
relevance of this comment? The only
reference to Keynes in our response was to mention that Dr. Harold Moulton’s
classic The Formation of Capital
(1935) was a refutation of Keynesian theory.
How, exactly, is this “get[ting] Keynes wrong”? — ed.] I’ll defer his errors on that to another day. [Inasmuch as we did not address anything Keynes
said in our response, to what errors is Steele referring? This is another of Steele’s straw men. — ed.] The point is that Greaney carries around a picture in his head
of his “opponent,” and always argues against that picture, and never against
the flesh-and-blood person in front of him. [This comment has all
of us completely baffled. In any event,
given Steele’s habit of running away, it is difficult to confront any
“flesh-and-blood person in front of [us].” — ed.]
. . . to be
continued on Monday!
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