As we noted in
the previous posting on this subject, both capitalists and socialists managed
to reinterpret Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum to fit their
particular paradigms. The possibility
that what Leo XIII was talking about was something entirely different does not
appear to have occurred to many people.
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| Pope Leo XIII |
Nor was it only
capitalists and socialists who insisted on reinterpreting Rerum Novarum to conform to a political or economic agenda. Within the Catholic Church as well as among
the “separated brethren” (Quanto Conficiamur, §§ 7-9), since the early nineteenth
century and the spread of the “new things” fundamental religious doctrines as
well as civil institutions had been grossly distorted in an effort to modernize
Christianity and political theory and make them relevant to contemporary
society.
This caused a
great deal of acrimony. (Quadragesimo
Anno, § 40.) In
addition, strong voices among the socialists and modernists insisted the
message Christ came to deliver, and that Leo XIII affirmed in Rerum Novarum, was not the traditional
Gospel.
Rather, “true
Christianity” (As Dr. Julian Strube of Heidelberg
University has noted, there was and remains a “socialist fascination with a
tradition of true Christianity.” Strube,
“Socialism and Esotericism in July Monarchy France,” Socialism and
Esotericism in July Monarchy France,” History
of Religions, July 2016, 23) and the Social Gospel demand that the material
uplift of society, with a special focus on the poor, override all other
considerations whatsoever. This includes
dismissing even the absolutes of the natural law, which is to say God Himself,
if rights such as life, liberty, and private property get in the way of the
program.
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| Pope Pius XI |
Pius XI was not
the first to try and counter socialist efforts to establish the Kingdom of God
on Earth. He was, however, the first to
do so based on identifying “social justice” as a particular virtue with its own
“act” that has a direct effect on the common good.
Previous attempts
to counter socialism and modernism had assumed, consistent with the work of Monsignor
Luigi Aloysius Taparelli d’Azeglio, S.J. (1793-1862), that social justice is
not a distinct virtue. Rather, until Pius XI, social justice was
identified only as a principle under
the general virtue of legal justice. The
theory was that the principle of social justice guides the exercise of
individual virtues within the framework of the natural law, especially
commutative and distributive justice, by adding a good intention for the common
good.
Inevitably, some
commentators assumed they could add a collectivist aspect to individual virtue
and make up whatever is lacking with individual charity. Yes, charity fulfills justice and the other
cardinal virtues and makes up what is lacking, but not in the sense that
temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice are lacking as virtues.
Rather, it is
that the cardinal virtues are insufficient in and of themselves for
people to become children of God. (Cf.
Matt. 5:41, Luke 17:7-10.) Derived from
the terminology used by utopian and religious socialists of the 1840s (Adam Morris, American Messiahs: False Prophets of a Damned Nation. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2019, 82-83), the
idea that charity replaces justice turned the combination of individual justice
and charity — now called “distributive justice” (See John A. Ryan, Distributive
Justice.
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1916) — into a new form of legal justice
called social justice which meant redistribution.
When
redistribution was voluntary, it was called philanthropy. Involuntary redistribution by use of the
legal system was called distributive justice.
Both were called social justice, a term then used more or less
interchangeably with the redefined distributive justice, which then nullified
or redefined the natural law. Coercive
redistribution on the basis of need was transformed from an allowed expedient
in an emergency, to a mandatory program that would establish the Kingdom of God
on Earth.
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| David Émile Durkheim |
Attempting to
list, much less analyze, all the different socialist and modernist schools of
thought in this study would be impossible.
There are, however, three in particular that have had not merely a
profound effect on the modern understanding of social justice, but have proved
especially resistant to correction, even by the most rigorous scholarship. These are Fabian socialism, the solidarism of
David Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), and the “Living Wage” paradigm of Monsignor
John Augustine Ryan (1869-1945).
Chesterton’s and
Belloc’s refusal to propose a specific means of attaining the Distributist
State was unavoidable in their framework if they wanted to preserve the
integrity of the natural law, especially private property. By relying on past savings as the source of
financing and existing assets as the only available capital, they could neither
go back nor forward.
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| George Bernard Shaw |
Nor was Fabian socialism
any better at identifying specifics, except that it set aside natural law. As George Bernard Shaw admitted, the Fabian
program was amorphous, and not understood either by people outside the
organization or by the Fabians themselves. (“The Fading Fabians,” The Boston Evening Transcript, November
27, 1908, 10.) It therefore could
not be countered by anything short of overwhelming force in the form of a
program that combined financial feasibility with respect for human dignity and
the natural rights of life, liberty, and private property.
Respect for human
dignity was something G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc had in abundance. What they did not have was a means by which
ordinary people could become capital owners in a way that respects the rights
of others. All evidence to the contrary,
recent commentators have therefore tended to assume that distributism is simply
a Christianized Fabian socialism.
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| Henri de Saint-Simon |
Durkheim is
credited with the first scientific treatment of solidarism. This was a collectivist concept he derived
from his studies of Saint-Simon as further developed by Saint-Simon’s secretary,
Auguste Comte (1798-1857),
the founder of positivism and “the Religion of Man,” and Saint-Simon’s
disciple, Pierre Leroux (1797-1871). (Julian
Strube, “Socialist Religion and the Emergence of Occultism,” Religion, 2016, 46:3, 264.)
Leroux, in fact,
coined the term socialisme
(“socialism”) in 1833/1834. This was in the October 1833 issue of Revue Encyclopédique, published in
1834. This was explained by Jacques Gans
in “L’Origine du mot ‘socialiste’ et ses
emplois les plus anciens,” Revue
d’histoire économique et sociale 30 (1957), 79-83; cf. Carl Grünberg, “Der Ursprung der Worte ‘Sozialismus’ und
‘Sozialist’,” Archiv für die
Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung 2 (1912), 372-379
[cited by Strube].
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| Pierre Leroux |
Leroux also
influenced Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876) during Brownson’s socialist
period. (Patrick W. Carey, Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious
Weathervane. Grand Rapids, Michigan:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004, 97-133.) Durkheim’s solidarism was a fascist and
socialist — “entirely positivist” — form of corporatism. (Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1954, 413.)
Fulton Sheen
characterized Durkheim’s view of God as “a divinized society.” (Fulton J. Sheen, Religion Without God. New
York: Garden City Books, 1954, 54.) As Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) put it,
for Durkheim, “religion is the group’s worship of itself.” (Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, op. cit., 794.) This is a logical conclusion from Durkheim’s theory
that religion is a social, rather than a spiritual phenomenon.
Father Heinrich
Pesch, S.J., (1854-1926) worked to bring Durkheim’s concepts into conformity
with the principles of Aristotelian-Thomism, particularly private property as a
natural right. He thereby transformed
solidarism from a statist/totalitarian philosophy, into a natural law, “person
centered” system, but without making it a form of individualism. (Richard E. Mulcahy, S.J., The Economics of Heinrich Pesch. New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 1952, 6.)
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| Rev. Heinrich Pesch, S.J. |
Assuming that
“social justice” was just a new term for “legal justice,” Pesch did not
recognize social justice as a particular virtue, and therefore concluded the
common good is not directly accessible. (Rev. William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., The Act of Social Justice. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1942, © 1943, 86-87.) A number of subsequent
commentators made similar errors and compounded them by assuming an equivalence
between Durkheim’s thought and Pesch’s reformed system.
In Pesch’s
solidarism, the human person is at the center of the social system, and thus
also at the center of economic activity.
Society is therefore not a mere voluntary aggregation of individuals,
nor an amorphous collective independent of the individuals who compose it (Alfred Diamant, Austrian Catholics and the First Republic: Democracy, Capitalism, and
the Social Order 1918-1934.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1960, 161), but
a union of individuals all working toward common goals.
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| Rev. Oswald von Nell-Breuning, S.J. |
Having common
goals, however, does not mean that the human person is subsumed into the
collective. Pesch carefully defined
solidarism as “[t]he reciprocity and mutuality of human interests . . . based
on the rational nature of the human personality and ultimately on God’s will.”
(Ibid.)
Pesch’s thought,
however, stressed the importance of widespread capital ownership without
suggesting a means whereby it could be achieved. Nevertheless, his theory of groups as
communicated through members of the Königswinterkreis
discussion group composed predominately of Pesch’s students was critical to the
development of Pius XI’s social doctrine.
Pius XI called Father Gustav
Gundlach, S.J. (1882-1963), and Father Oswald von Nell-Breuning, S.J.
(1890-1991), both members of the Königswinterkreis,
to Rome in 1931 to consult on the writing of Quadragesimo Anno.
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