The halls of justice (or should that be “the howls of justice”?) rang recently with protests to the effect mentioning economic and social justice — at a meeting of the Center for Economic and Social Justice(!) — is “too complicated” and turns people off (“they just roll their eyes”). The complaints got louder when some of us tried to explain why you just can’t say “you’ll have more money” to explain economic justice and ignore social justice altogether as having been hijacked by the socialists.
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| Louis O. Kelso |
In other words, we should not abandon years of work, the thought of leaders in the field (Louis Kelso for economic justice and Pope Pius XI for social justice), and the guidance of the founders of CESJ to oversimplify economic justice to the point of meaninglessness (“Show me the money!!”) or unconditional surrender (let the socialists have what they stole).
The problem is that if you boil down economic justice to just saying “You’ll have more money,” you’re ignoring the key issue of where that money comes from and how it got to you. It sounds like a great giveaway, i.e., socialism.
Nor is just “having more money” necessarily a good thing. Frankly, people today have more money than their ancestors ever dreamed of having — and things are in some respects much worse than they ever were. In 1900, $438 a year was the average pay for all industries. Nowadays, that’s not even a good week’s wages, working out to less than $23,000 a year. Some people spend that much on a single meal at a restaurant.
As for social justice, ignoring it does no good. You won’t win over the people who “roll their eyes” at you for mentioning it, since all you’re doing is tacitly agreeing that what they’re doing now is A-O.K. You will, however, fail to win over or even gain a hearing from people who are troubled by the current system, but who also reject the socialist version of social justice.
You also fail to convert sincere socialists, those who are genuinely concerned about the other guy, and don’t see any alternative to redistribution. (Forget about those on both sides of the aisle who use capitalism or socialism to control others — they’re the reason, e.g., the so-called “Great Reset” has been characterized as “capitalism for the rich and socialism for the poor.”)
So, how should we talk about economic and social justice?
Let’s take economic justice first, as it is more complicated than social justice, but still not the bogeyman the simplifiers want it to be. In the “CESJ Glossary,” we define economic justice as,
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| Mortimer J. Adler |
Economic justice is a subset of social justice. It encompasses the moral principles that guide people in creating, maintaining and perfecting economic institutions. These institutions determine how each person earns a living, enters into contracts, exchanges goods and services with others and otherwise produces an independent material foundation for economic subsistence. The ultimate purpose of economic justice is to free each person economically to develop to the full extent of his or her potential, enabling that person to engage in the unlimited work beyond economics, the work of the mind and the spirit done for its own intrinsic value and satisfaction.
The triad of interdependent principles of economic justice that serve as the moral basis of binary economics are: Participative Justice (the input principle), Distributive Justice (the out-take principle), and Social Justice (the feedback and corrective principle). This third principle, as it pertains here to economic systems, encompasses and operates at all levels, from the macro-level of a global economy to the micro-level of every institution and enterprise, and every member within them. Social Justice places a personal responsibility on every individual to organize with others to correct their economic institutions when there is a barrier to, or violation of, participative justice and/or distributive justice. Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler, in their book The Capitalist Manifesto, referred to the feedback principle as the “principle of limitation” (or “anti-monopoly” or “anti-greed” principle). This refers to the limitation on the exercise of a person’s property, such that one’s property may not be used to harm the person or property of another, violate participative or distributive justice, or harm the general welfare. “Economic harmony” exists when participative and distributive justice are working fully for every person within a free and just marketplace.
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| Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D. |
More simply put, economic justice is the virtue guiding how we structure economic institutions (institutions being “social habits,” or organized ways of doing things) to ensure as far as humanly possible full and equitable participation on the part of every child, woman, and man in the production, distribution, and consumption of marketable goods and services.
In comparison to economic justice, social justice is very simple. Despite nearly two hundred years of socialists’ mis-defining the term, it does NOT mean redistribution of wealth. Social justice is not a substitute for or replacement of any other virtue, whether justice, charity, or something else. It means this, and only this: enabling other virtues to function properly for the benefit of everyone by reforming institutions, institutions being ways of doing things in an organized manner, or “social habits.”
Too complicated? Let’s make that even simpler: social justice doesn’t mean doing stuff. It means making it possible to do stuff.
Tough concept, that, right? Yet that is how Pope Pius XI described it . . . more or less (“but rather less than more”). As he noted in § 71 of Quadragesimo Anno, his 1931 encyclical on “The Restructuring of the Social Order”,
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| Pope Pius XI |
Every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet ordinary family needs adequately. But if this cannot always be done under existing circumstances, social justice demands that changes be introduced as soon as possible whereby such a wage will be assured to every adult workingman.
The pope reiterated this point in § 53 of Divini Redemptoris, his 1937 encyclical on “Atheistic Communism”,
It happens all too frequently, however, under the salary system, that individual employers are helpless to ensure justice unless, with a view to its practice, they organize institutions the object of which is to prevent competition incompatible with fair treatment for the workers. Where this is true, it is the duty of contractors and employers to support and promote such necessary organizations as normal instruments enabling them to fulfill their obligations of justice. But the laborers too must be mindful of their duty to love and deal fairly with their employers, and persuade themselves that there is no better means of safeguarding their own interests.
Now, as Father William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D., one of CESJ’s co-founders, explained these passages in his pamphlet, Introduction to Social Justice (1948), they don’t mean exactly — or even remotely — what the casual reader or learned academic might think at first glance. Father Ferree said, “Let us give an example of how the Encyclical’s great message can be misunderstood,” and quoted § 71 of Quadragesimo Anno. He then went on to say,
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| NO! It's making a fair division POSSIBLE. |
Now if we were to hand this quotation to a number of people, and ask each one of them what Social Justice demands in it, almost every one of them would answer, “A family wage.”
They would all be wrong! Look again at the syntax of the sentence: the direct object of the predicate “demands” is the clause “that changes be introduced into the system.” The Pope’s teaching on the family wage is that it is due in commutative or strict justice to the individual worker; — what Social Justice demands is something specifically social: the reorganization of the system. For it is the whole system which is badly organized (“socially unjust”) when it withholds from the human beings whose lives are bound up in it, the power to “meet common domestic needs adequately.”
Father Ferree continued his understanding of the “very clear teaching” by noting, “The Holy Father later summarized the teaching of Quadragesimo Anno in several paragraphs of Divini Redemptoris (‘On Atheistic Communism’), and quoted § 53 of that encyclical, going on to say,
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| Father Ferree |
Here the two levels of justice are clearly distinguished. On the level of commutative or individual justice the employer is helpless, and note that this happens “all too frequently.” Now evidently, if he is really helpless to do full justice, he does not sin when out of sheer necessity he falls short of justice. In individual justice the case is closed, for the employer can do nothing about it; and the injustice must be allowed to continue out of sheer inability to stop it.
Above this field of individual justice, however, there is the whole field of Social Justice, and in this higher field the case is never closed. The “helplessness” of individuals comes from the fact that the whole industry is badly organized (“socially unjust”). Social Justice demands that it be organized rightly for the Common Good of all who depend upon it for their welfare and perfection. Therefore employers have the duty — the rigid duty of Social Justice which they cannot disregard without sin-to work together (socially) to reorganize their industry. Once this reorganization (act of Social Justice) has been accomplished by group (social) action, then the employers will no longer be helpless in the field of individual justice, and will be under obligation to meet their strict duties in this latter field.
As Father Ferree concluded his discussion, “From the example given by the Holy Father, it will be seen immediately that Social Justice is not at all the vague and fuzzy ‘blanket word’ that gets into so many popular speeches. It is an absolutely clear and precise scientific concept, a special virtue with definite and rigid obligations of its own.”
Are economic and social justice “too complicated” to explain to ordinary people? You decide. If people think economic justice means just giving people money or are “rolling their eyes” when you mention social justice, maybe you aren’t explaining it very well.
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