In 1647 Oliver
Cromwell (1599-1658) and his son-in-law Henry Ireton (1611-1651)
had a problem. They had succeeded in
their revolution but had no real idea what to do with their victory. They wanted to impose Presbyterianism but had
no program of political reform. Having
no plan, they did nothing.
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| Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector |
At the same time
parliament, somewhat taken aback by its triumph, was also uncertain how to
proceed. Lacking direction, it froze
into inaction.
King Charles I Stuart
(1600-1649), although defeated, was trying to divide parliament and the army
and start another civil war that would end in his favor. This was helped along by the fact that
parliament wanted to get rid of the army so that the legislature would be the
only power in the land.
Similarly, the
army — the only group with real power — did not trust the king or parliament to
secure them their rights and were beginning to waver in their loyalty to
Cromwell. They were afraid that he, too, might be
willing to compromise and surrender their rights in exchange for imposing his
religious views on the country.
It was in this
confused situation that the Levelers came into being. Regimental committees appeared, seemingly
spontaneously, their members drawn from rank and file soldiers; officers tended
to be conservative and favor parliament.
A number of pamphlets circulated, written mostly by the leaders of the
movement, John Lilburne (1614-1657) and Richard Overton (?-1664).
Discussions
ensued in the Army Council between the officers’ representatives under the
leadership of Cromwell and Ireton, and the regimental representatives,
the latter supported by a few of the higher-ranking officers. Talks bogged down in the conflict between the
interests of the affluent officers, and the middle-class farmers and tradesmen
who made up the rank and file.
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| Cardinal Bellarmine |
Mutiny became a
serious threat, and Cromwell finally acted in November 1647. He cut off negotiations with the king, and a
few years later the king’s head. This
restored the confidence of the ordinary soldiers, and discipline was
reestablished. Levelers reappeared as a civil political party a little
over a year later, but had the ground cut out from under them in early 1649
when the army adopted a policy of coercion against political opponents.
Astonishingly,
the Levelers’ program was remarkably
consistent with Catholic political theory as presented in the works of Roberto Francesco Romolo Cardinal Bellarmino,
S.J. (1542-1621) — Saint Robert Cardinal Bellarmine — astonishing
because they pleaded for religious toleration for everyone except
Catholics. In contrast, the totalitarian
philosopher Thomas Hobbes could have dictated their opponents’ political
theory.
Opponents claimed
that Levelers (the label was applied as a pejorative) wanted
to abolish private property and impose equality of rank, social position,
and economic condition on everyone. The
appeal to natural law, they insisted, meant that no
one would have any rights, for all rights in the Hobbesian view come from the
State, the person of the collective
that stands in for the people, a “Mortall God,” as it were. As Ireton declared, “If you will resort only
to the law of nature, by the law of nature you have no more right to this land
or anything else than I have.”
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| Algernon Sidney |
That was not at
all what the Levelers meant.
Ironically, had they been willing to rely on Catholic authorities as did
John Locke (1632-1704) and Algernon Sidney (1623-1683), they could have made a much
stronger case than they did.
The Levelers would certainly have made a more persuasive argument
by larding their proposals and pamphlets with the usual scriptural language and
quotes. Their opponents, in fact,
complained that the Levelers must be ungodly because they consciously seemed to
avoid dragging in religion.
Boiled down to
its essence, the Levelers’ program sounds very
reasonable today, except for the specified lack of toleration for
Catholics. Jews were not an issue, as
Cromwell would not readmit them into England after
their expulsion in 1290 until 1656.
As far as the
Levelers were
concerned, all men — by which they meant all adult males who were not paupers
or Catholics — have equal rights of life, liberty, and private property by nature.
This means that all men have an equal right to vote for political
representation, to have a say in what laws are passed, and to own capital and be secure in that ownership if they have employed lawful means to acquire and
maintain it.
Levelers insisted that they agitated only for political
and economic equality of opportunity, not economic equality of results. Further, they made it clear that they
considered human positive law not a true law unless it is consistent with the
law of nature.
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| Magna Charta based on natural law. |
Even Magna
Charta, so William Walwyn (cir.
1600-1681) and Overton declared, was a “beggarly thing” if it was not
understood in light of natural law. This early instance of original intent
profoundly shocked their opponents, as they held by the positivist theory that
laws made by the State are the only legitimate laws.
This history
lesson is just a way of introducing the question of equality: what does it
really mean to say that all men are created equal? In the Just Third Way, with its emphasis on
the human person, we think it means equality of opportunity, equality before
the law, and equality of access to the institutions of the common good,
especially the means of acquiring and possessing private property in capital.
Obviously, for
equality of opportunity to mean something, there must first be opportunity to
equalize. If the institutions of the common good are such that they prevent or
inhibit equality of opportunity instead of encouraging and protecting it, not
the State, but the people have the obligation to take
matters into their own hands and organize to work to restructure those
institutions so that they operate within acceptable parameters.
This is the
principle of subsidiarity. The State, after all, is primarily charged with care
of the common good, not the individual good of each citizen. The
attainment of individual goods is the job of the citizen, individually or in
free association with others, not the State. The State is there to ensure that
in the process of attaining individual goods the citizens do not harm
themselves, others, or the common good as a whole.
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| Alexis de Tocqueville |
If, therefore,
the institutions of society are badly structured so that they actually inhibit
or prevent citizens from attaining their individual goods, the first recourse
is for individual citizens to try and correct the situation.
If individual
action fails, citizens at the affected level of the common good should organize
and work to reform the institutions of society that are adversely affecting
them. This is, in fact, what de Tocqueville claimed was the chief
characteristic of American life. If organized action fails, they may seek the
help of other levels of the common good.
If citizen action
fails completely or proves inadequate, only then should the State act, and then
only as long as is required to meet the immediate need. The primary care of the
common good is not the responsibility of the State, but of the people who,
individually or organized in institutions, comprise the common good and provide
the social environment within which ordinary people carry out the business of
living and more fully developing their humanity.
There is no doubt
that the United States — the world — was in deadly peril in the early years of
the twentieth century. The last safety valve for the human race, the chance to
own landed capital in America by taking advantage of the Homestead Act, had
been shut off in the closing years of the nineteenth century.
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| Panic of 1873 |
The antiquated,
even reactionary financial systems based on past savings in place throughout
much of the world ensured that few, if any people would be able to gain a stake
in the commercial and industrial frontier to replace the disappearing land
frontier. Even where the financial system was advanced, as in the German Reich
(the Second Reich, obviously), the
tax system, and the universal collateralization requirement ensured that future
opportunities to own new capital would be restricted, as a rule, to the
already-wealthy.
The Panic of 1873
and the resulting depression had been a temporary adjustment in the economy as
consumption power caught up to productive capacity. The Panic of 1893 and the
Great Depression of 1893-1898 revealed much more serious problems that were,
nevertheless, ignored with the return of prosperity. The Panic of 1907, while
more limited in scope and with effects of much shorter duration, revealed
problems in the financial system that would have to be corrected if the United
States was to be put on a sound foundation that would “secure the blessings of
liberty to . . . posterity.”
The financial and
economic situation was not, of course, the only problem. Money, credit,
banking, and finance are, however, essential elements to a just social order.
They are the means by which people acquire and possess private property in
capital. If most people do not have access to these institutions, most people will
not own capital.
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| Pope Pius XI |
Without capital
ownership, most people will remain powerless, under the control of a private
sector elite, or a public State bureaucracy. As Pius XI would put it a
generation later,
In the first
place, it is obvious that not only is wealth concentrated in our times but an
immense power and despotic economic dictatorship is consolidated in the hands
of a few, who often are not owners but only the trustees and managing directors
of invested funds which they administer according to their own arbitrary will
and pleasure.
This dictatorship
is being most forcibly exercised by those who, since they hold the money and
completely control it, control credit also and rule the lending of money. Hence,
they regulate the flow, so to speak, of the life-blood whereby the entire
economic system lives, and have so firmly in their grasp the soul, as it were,
of economic life that no one can breathe against their will.
The conclusion is
inescapable. As Grosscup understood, economic democracy must precede, or at
least accompany, political democracy. Political democracy is otherwise a hollow
shell. As de Tocqueville said,
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. (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America,
II.4.viii)
