Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Social Justice and the Common Good


In the previous posting on this subject we asked whether a society can maintain itself when the vast majority of people are cut off from participation in the common good by lack of capital ownership — and answered our own question with a “no.”  Some people will object to this, citing the fact that there have been many societies throughout history in which the great mass of people owned nothing but their labor.

Labor used to be the predominant input to production.
That’s perfectly true, but it closes an eye or two to the fact that we are living in modern times, not history, and there have been some significant changes over the past couple of centuries or so that have altered the scenario at the most basic level.  Specifically, until about two or three hundred years ago human labor was the predominant input to production.  If you owned labor (and it’s generally considered that if you are alive and free you own your own labor), you could produce enough to maintain yourself and your dependents reasonably well, and thus participate fully in society, which you cannot do if you are a dependent, such as a slave or a child.
Man is by nature a political animal.
This is important because (as Aristotle noted), “man is by nature a political animal.”  As such, human beings ordinarily require a social environment — the common good — to be able to exercise rights and acquire and develop virtue.  Thus, we have as the eighth item on the list of the Core Values of the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ),
People also create and maintain social institutions as highly specialized “invisible tools” designed to serve highly specialized social functions within a just social order. Institutions, as organized expressions of society’s values and goals, largely determine the quality of each person’s individual and social life. As historical creations of humanity carrying within themselves the wounds of history, institutions are continually in need of healing and perfecting.
It is important to realize that human beings are not only rational and political, but tool makers and users.  There is, of course, also the irrational and emotional side of human beings, but since we are discussing personalism and the primacy of reason over irrationality, we will ignore it for the sake of the argument.
Pius XI: the common good is a network of institutions.
Consistent with human nature, then, we consciously structure and maintain our environment in both its physical and its social aspects to provide the opportunity and means to secure our wellbeing.  Our physical environment, including the natural world around us, also consists of infrastructure, houses, factories, stores, roads, dams, bridges, and so on, that we possess individually or in association with others.
Our social environment — the common good — consists of a vast network of invisible structures comprising the common good that each person possesses in its entirety.  This network includes laws, customs, traditions, and other institutions (“social habits”) such as money and credit, tax systems, even language and the State.
Both the physical and the social environment are tools by means of which the human person carries on the process of living.  Primarily the process of living consists of acquiring and developing virtue, thereby becoming more fully human.
It is by means of these social tools that each person as a political animal satisfies not only his individual wants and needs, but his social wants and needs (i.e., domestic and civil interpersonal relationships).  Preferably this is done in a way that also assists each person in becoming virtuous, that is, more fully human.
In satisfying individual wants and needs within a social framework there must also be no harm done to others or to the common good, and ideally what is done should indirectly benefit the whole of society.  To participate fully in society, then, each person must have full access to those invisible structures of the common good, the tools for living in society.
The act of social justice is directed at repairing the institutions of society so that everyone has full access to them.
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