The Political Animal, Part XXI

In the previous posting in this series we discovered that a society had developed in the United States of the 1830s that appeared to adhere more closely to the natural moral law based on the divine Intellect (Nature) than any previous arrangement in history. As Alexis de Tocqueville analyzed the situation, "By the side of every religion is to be found a political opinion, which is connected with it by affinity. If the human mind be left to follow its own bent, it will regulate the temporal and spiritual institutions of society in a uniform manner, and man will endeavor, if I may so speak, to harmonize earth with heaven." ("Causes Which Tend to Maintain Democracy: Religion Considered as a Political Institution Which Powerfully Contributes to the Maintenance of a Democratic Republic Among the Americans," Volume I, Ch. XVII)

Surprisingly, perhaps even shockingly to today's liberal who detects a lurking and insidious evil in public displays or expressions of religion of any sect, but who singles out the Catholic Church as especially obnoxious in this regard, de Tocqueville professed to see in Catholicism a particular affinity for and support of the best in American democracy. According to de Tocqueville, the Catholic population of the United States, particularly those of Irish birth or descent, while a minority, provided the country with a solid core of citizens who were, at one and the same time, both independent minded, and submissive to good laws that promoted equality and social order. De Tocqueville claimed that in America, even where strict observance of Catholic practices according to the letter of the law faded or was non-existent (as among Protestants and adherents of other faiths), nowhere was there stronger adherence to the spirit of Catholicism, even among non-Catholics, particularly when conforming political institutions to the precepts of the natural moral law. (Ibid.)

Nor was de Tocqueville alone in his opinion that Americans had somehow reconciled humanity's social and individual natures. Immediately following the Civil War, Orestes Brownson published his own study of the United States, The American Republic (1865). Brownson, with Emerson and Thoreau considered one of the "top three" Transcendentalists in the United States until he converted to Catholicism in the 1840s and was swept under the rug of history, was even more explicit than de Tocqueville in his belief that America represented something genuinely new.

Once the country corrected (more or less) its "original sin" of chattel slavery with the bloodiest war in American history, the stage was set for America to fulfill its true purpose. Brownson believed that the United States was chosen by God to continue reconciling humanity's individual and social natures and provide, as far as humanly possible, the ideal environment within which man could become more fully himself. As Brownson put it in the introduction to the book that he considered his finest achievement,

The United States, or the American Republic, has a mission, and is chosen of God for the realization of a great idea. It has been chosen not only to continue the work assigned to Greece and Rome, but to accomplish a greater work than was assigned to either. In art, it will prove false to its mission if it do not rival Greece; and in science and philosophy, if it do not surpass it. In the State, in law, in jurisprudence, it must continue and surpass Rome. Its idea is liberty, indeed, but liberty with law, and law with liberty. Yet its mission is not so much the realization of liberty as the realization of the true idea of the State, which secures at once the authority of the public and the freedom of the individual — the sovereignty of the people without social despotism, and individual freedom without anarchy. In other words, its mission is to bring out in its life the dialectic union of authority and liberty, of the natural rights of man and those of society. The Greek and Roman republics asserted the State to the detriment of individual freedom; modern republics either do the same, or assert individual freedom to the detriment of the State. The American republic has been instituted by Providence to realize the freedom of each with advantage to the other. (Orestes Brownson, "Introduction," The American Republic, 1865)

Despite some vagueness in terminology regarding social rights, Democracy in America and The American Republic share common assumptions. Chief among these is that the human person and thus the State, a human artifact, are based on and must conform to God's Nature, even when not following someone's interpretation of what may (or may not) be God's Will. Where de Tocqueville focused on the sociological aspects of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, however, Brownson explored political philosophy and science.

De Tocqueville and Brownson are not in competition. Both Democracy in America and The American Republic should be read as necessary complements to each other. De Tocqueville, for example, appears to assume as a given that when he refers to "Catholic political philosophy" his predominantly French and presumably Catholic readers know what he is talking about. On the other hand, Brownson, addressing an audience composed largely of non-Catholics, went to great lengths to explain of what that philosophy consists and why the American republic embodies Catholic political philosophy to a greater degree than any previous State in history.

Similarly, Brownson's audience in 1865 consisted primarily of small landowners and other proprietors who were fully aware of the importance of private property as the chief support for other natural rights, such as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (i.e., the acquisition and development of virtue). Other than to explain some technicalities about property and its importance as a natural right and to condemn both socialism and capitalism, Brownson spent very little space on ownership and private property. Nevertheless, he clearly considered widespread direct ownership of the means of production critical to the survival of a healthy State and a moral social order — hence his devastating critique of what he considered the deadly poison of socialism:

It wears a pious aspect, it has divine words on its lips, and almost unction in its speech. It is not easy for the unlearned to detect its fallacy, and the great body of the people are prepared to receive it as Christian truth. We cannot deny it without seeming to them to be warring against the true interests of society, and also against the Gospel of our Lord. Never was heresy more subtle, more adroit, better fitted for success. How skillfully it flatters the people! It is said, the saints shall judge the world. By the change of a word, the people are transformed into saints, and invested with the saintly character and office. How adroitly, too, it appeals to the people's envy and hatred of their superiors, and to their love of the world, without shocking their orthodoxy or wounding their piety! Surely Satan has here, in Socialism, done his best, almost outdone himself, and would, if it were possible, deceive the very elect, so that no flesh should be saved. (Essays and Reviews Chiefly on Theology, Politics, and Socialism, 1852.)

Brownson, of course, didn't have to deal with today's modernists and positivists and their word games, or the circumlocutions employed by both capitalists and socialists to try and whitewash their dogmatic beliefs under different names, such as "democratic capitalism (or socialism)," "solidarism," or even "Christian socialism." No, Brownson knew exactly what socialism is, and defined it the same way as Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto: the abolition of private property in the means of production. In the America of Brownson's day, no person considered sane questioned the importance of private property in the means of production, whether or not he or she agreed that direct ownership of capital should be widespread.

De Tocqueville, on the other hand, wrote primarily for a French and English audience, both countries in which the tradition of small ownership had been eroded for centuries, as William Cobbett frequently pointed out in his polemical works. Consequently, de Tocqueville stressed far more than Brownson the importance of widespread direct ownership of the means of production as the chief support for other natural rights.

The problem, of course, is obvious, at least in hindsight. The Industrial Revolution had received a great impetus in the United States due to the Civil War. Many authorities, then as now, credited the Union victory to the industrial and commercial might of the North. In mid-century, however, relatively few people were directly engaged in industrial and commercial enterprises, even as wage earners. Contrary to the assertions of David Christy in Cotton is King (1855), even in the South before the war, relatively few people — including slaves — were employed on plantations engaged in the production of goods, services, and commodities for the international market. Most slaveholders owned less than a dozen slaves, usually only one or two, and were engaged in subsistence agriculture or production of goods and services for the local market. The vast majority of the population, North and South, were engaged in subsistence agriculture, artisan type production of goods, or kept small shops.

All of this changed with Abraham Lincoln's 1862 Homestead Act and the opening of the "Great American Desert" to settlement — and as a vast new market for the goods being produced in the increasingly industrialized East. The Homestead Act changed the essential character of American agriculture from subsistence farming supplemented with small "cash crops," to production primarily for market, with basic necessities purchased instead of being homegrown. (Laura Ingalls Wilder brilliantly chronicled this change in her "Little House" books.) [This assumption is so engrained in American tax and agricultural policy that in 1948, the decision in the landmark case Wickard v. Filburn (317 U.S. 111 (1942)), that greatly increased the economic power of the federal government, held that all agricultural production, even that which was consumed on the farm where it was produced, was subject to the interstate commerce clause, whether or not it was produced for market.] Similarly, as the settlement of the West opened up a new market, the pace of industrialization increased. Settlement and industrialization not only complemented each other, neither would have been possible — or, at least, as successful — without the other.

Unfortunately, while agricultural capital — land — was broadly owned, with the ownership base rapidly expanding due to the Homestead Act, ownership of the new and growing commercial and industrial enterprises was becoming increasingly concentrated. By 1905, when Judge Peter Stenger Grosscup, one of Theodore Roosevelt's "Trust Busters," wrote a series of articles addressing the situation, small ownership of commerce and industry had, for all practical purposes, disappeared as a feature of American life.

Concentration of ownership of what was becoming responsible for the bulk of production of marketable goods, services, and commodities built a serious conflict into the system. As Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler pointed out three-quarters of a century later (The Capitalist Manifesto, 1958, and The New Capitalists, 1961), concentrated ownership is not due to some law of nature, as both capitalists and socialists assume even to this day. On the contrary, concentrated ownership of the means of production is directly attributable to a profound misunderstanding of money and credit, and thus a misapplication of incorrect assumptions to the task of financing capital formation, whether that capital is in the form of industrial, commercial, or agricultural assets.

This misunderstanding about money and credit has a profound influence on how people view the political process. Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of two Englishmen, Walter Bagehot and Albert Venn Dicey. Briefly (for this is not the place to get into an in-depth analysis of the differences between the two), Bagehot, who expressed great disdain for the United States, was a firm adherent of State-controlled monopoly capitalism (described in his book, Lombard Street, 1873) — with the State itself controlled by "the money interests." Clearly taking the "law is will" position (lex voluntas), Bagehot advocated a form of "democracy" in which, consistent with the principles laid out by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, the commercial and financial elite rather than the hereditary monarchy or aristocracy controlled the country, as was the case in India before the Great Mutiny (The English Constitution, 1867). Not surprisingly, Bagehot was an adherent of the British Currency School, defining "money" essentially as a State-authorized purchase order.

Dicey, Bagehot's most effective philosophical opponent, was a firm believer in the rule of law, and popularized the concept on both sides of the Atlantic. A great admirer of the United States (unlike Bagehot, who never visited America, Dicey paid an extended visit to the U.S. in the 1870s), Dicey unfortunately avoided the economic issue, focusing on purely political matters. This may have been as a result of the inevitable conflict between a democratic political system, and an absolutist economic system.

For whatever reason, Dicey, a firm adherent of the law is reason position (lex ratio), did not address the problems inherent in applying the elitist and undemocratic principles of the Currency School to a presumably democratic political system. Dicey's classic, An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1886), simply avoids the whole issue of economics, although he was appointed one of the first professors at the new London School of Economics in 1896. Dicey's Conflict of Laws, published that same year, concentrates largely on what is today known as "business law," and does not discuss the conflict between the two schools of monetary thought. On the other hand, Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century (1905) is a brilliant analysis of the principle of subsidiarity, and its relation to the sovereignty of the individual manifested through membership in groups.

Incorrect assumptions about money, credit, and finance were built into the American system following the Civil War. Part of this was due to Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase's controversial decision to finance the Union war effort primarily through borrowing instead of taxation. There was, however, also the problem of the chaotic banking system, a situation made infinitely worse by the President Andrew Jackson's pyrrhic victory in his war against the Second Bank of the United States in the previous generation.

The National Bank Act of 1864, modeled on the British Bank Charter Act of 1844, did bring a measure of order to the financial system. Unfortunately the National Bank Act, in common with Sir Robert Peel's Bank Charter Act, embodied two false assumptions about money, credit, and finance that were to have serious repercussions in the decades to come, culminating in the "Panic of 1907."

These were, one, that "money," contrary to the natural moral law based on the Intellect, is and can only be a purchase order issued by the State or a State-authorized individual or entity. Two, that capital formation can only be financed out of existing accumulations of savings. With this in mind, the subtitle of Kelso and Adler's above-referenced second book, The New Capitalists, is revealing: "A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of Savings."

These two assumptions, widely accepted even today, flatly contradict the true nature of money as anything that can be used in settlement of a debt, and the science of finance as based on a regulated system of secured promises, with or without existing accumulations of savings. These elitist assumptions about money and credit — the life's blood of the community — came into direct conflict with the democratic American political system, with results that became ever more destructive of political and social stability as the century wore on.

Unfortunately, as the damage increased, people began to forget or ignore the basic principles and "rules" of democracy in America as discerned by de Tocqueville, and the true origin and transmission of the sovereign power as described by Brownson. In view of the apparent helplessness of the individual seemingly trapped in an impersonal system, people began to look to the State as the agency that alone could ameliorate the increasing disorder in society. We will begin to look at some of the responses to this disorder in the next posting in this series.

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News from the Network, Vol. 3, No. 2

The big news for the week, of course, is the Haitian earthquake. Little more needs to be said about that, however, than (if you feel up to it) you should consider contributing something to the immediate relief effort. Please note, however, that CESJ is not accepting contributions for the relief effort. Please direct your contributions to the American Red Cross or other charitable or relief organization.

• Anyone involved in the Just Third Way should, however, consider in what way the principles of the Just Third Way can be applied to rebuilding Haiti, not just in meeting the immediate short term needs. Primary among the country's needs in the long term is fundamental institutional change that will allow all Haitians to participate fully in the common good as full persons, especially the economic common good. In this respect, the current disaster may be a blessing in disguise. We spoke with a university professor today who had formerly been with the World Bank and had spent some time in Haiti trying to convince the leaders to adopt certain structural reforms, but with no success. The need to rebuild almost everything from scratch, however, may open people's minds, both in Haiti and in the international community, to the need for such institutional changes.

• We received word early this week that Al Qaeda has called for the assassination of Dr. Ahmed Mansour, head of the International Quranic Center in Northern Virginia, and a world-renowned Quranic scholar. Dr. Mansour is a leading expert in the philosophy of the 14th century Aristotelian Ibn Khaldûn, who is in substantial agreement with Moses Maimonides, the great 12th century Jewish Aristotelian, and St. Thomas Aquinas, a contemporary of Maimonides and a correspondent, on the essential principles of the natural moral law. While the point of difference might seem esoteric, as an Aristotelian Dr. Mansour bases the precepts of the natural moral law common to all religions and philosophies on the divine Nature reflected in humanity, while Islamic, Jewish, and Christian fundamentalists base the precepts of the natural moral law on their own private interpretation of something they believe to be a revelation of the divine Will. Basing the natural law on Nature means that its precepts are discernable by everyone through human reason, while basing the natural law on Will means that its precepts are discernable only by faith to a self-appointed elite.

• A great many meetings have taken place this week, none of which make for interesting news reports, but which are nevertheless very important. A number of critical projects are moving forward, slowly but surely.

• Marie T. Kurland has begun a project to assist Mr. Robert Ngobito of Kenya, a school teacher, in teaching people in his district about the Just Third Way. His district has virtually no internet access, and there is an extreme scarcity of basic materials. Mr. Ngobito has indicated he would like to host a conference with Dr. Norman G. Kurland, president of CESJ, as the main speaker, but lacks the resources and outreach. If you are interested in helping to move this initiative forward, please send Marie an e-mail at thirdway [at] cesj [dot] org. This could be a very interesting as well as educational project for a high school or even junior high, as well as for individuals seeking meaningful ways to have a positive effect on the world community. This would also be ideal if you have a foundation that is seeking worthy objects for its efforts.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 46 different countries and 39 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, the UK, Brazil, Canada and the Philippines. People in the Netherlands Antilles, Taiwan, Malaysia, France, and Venezuela spent the most average time on the blog. The "News from the Network" postings are the most popular, followed by those on "The Political Animal."

Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.

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The Political Animal, Part XX

In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville published the first volume of what is generally considered the first major work of sociology, Democracy in America, a remarkable study that seems to be little appreciated today for its true worth. This was followed in 1840 by the second volume. Democracy in America is a work that many authorities agree paints an unparalleled portrait of the United States after the first rush of revolutionary ardor had burned itself out and the country got down to the work of building a new type of nation — one that respects the dignity of the individual as well as the demands of the common good.

While there are de Tocqueville Societies in the United States, their stated function is to encourage individual private charity for worthy causes, thereby obviating the presumed necessity for State assistance. This is a distant and foggy understanding of de Tocqueville's analysis of what American democracy meant in the 1830s. Taking de Tocqueville's observations about America as manifestations of personal philanthropy may even serve to blunt our full awareness of de Tocqueville's achievement, as well as our comprehension of how the people of the day understood what it meant to be an American.

We can appreciate de Tocqueville's analysis properly only by referencing George Mason's tacit reconciliation, in the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the U.S. Constitution, of humanity as both individual and social — that is, political — in nature. De Tocqueville took as his thesis that in America western civilization saw something entirely new on the stage of history, something that transcended the usual conflict between individualism and collectivism. In England, for example, government and great works were considered the bailiwick of individuals, while in France people looked to the State for virtually everything.

The distinctive manner in which Americans related to their institutions and to the common good as a whole is the subject matter of Democracy in America. This they did not purely as individuals, nor as mere cogs in the machinery of the State, but as something uniquely human: politically. Nor was this in the limited fashion that Aristotle assumed, a limited and indirect access to the common good. Americans somehow had what appeared to be full and direct access to the common good.

This was not the chaotic mess that many European commentators affected to observe in the United States. On the contrary, democracy in America appeared to operate by definite rules in conformity with the natural moral law, many of which de Tocqueville described. As he explained,

It may fairly be believed that a certain number of Americans pursue a peculiar form of worship from habit more than from conviction. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth. ("Causes Which Tend to Maintain Democracy," Volume I, Ch. XVII)

De Tocqueville discerned a number of "rules" by means of which democracy is maintained in America — or at least was maintained in the America of the 1830s. Many of these are intimately connected with the necessity of restoring the natural law and maintaining the freedom of association that de Tocqueville observed as the chief characteristic of American life, consistent with liberty, although inspired by the drive for equality. This, according to de Tocqueville, was a situation that, while in many respects superficially similar to what prevailed in Europe, was actually something new on the world scene, and something vital to the survival of democracy. As he declared,

The first of the duties that are at this time imposed upon those who direct our affairs is to educate democracy, to reawaken, if possible, its religious beliefs; to purify its morals; to mold its actions; to substitute a knowledge of statecraft for its inexperience, and an awareness of its true interest for its blind instincts, to adapt its government to time and place, and to modify it according to men and to conditions. A new science of politics is needed for a new world. ("Author's Introduction," Volume I)

First, an orderly society is of the utmost importance. That network of institutions within which each individual carries out even the most mundane aspects of life, thereby working to acquire and develop virtue, must be maintained. This is consistent with Aquinas's observation in De Regimine Principum that social order is a great good — so great, in fact, that we must be willing to submit to great injustice, even tyranny, if removal of the tyranny or correction of the injustice will cause material harm to the social order. This is because the business of daily life, of acquiring and developing virtue (whether at the lowest level of subsistence, or the highest of self-actualization), requires an orderly society. As de Tocqueville explains,

The passions that agitate the Americans most deeply are not their political, but their commercial passions; or, rather, they introduce the habits of business into their political life. They love order, without which affairs do not prosper; and they set an especial value upon regular conduct, which is the foundation of a solid business. ("Causes Which Tend to Maintain Democracy," Volume I, Ch. XVII)

Second, despite their oft-touted individualism, Americans had a strong tendency to subsume their private interests, join with others, and cooperate in order to achieve a desired end. As de Tocqueville explains,

When the members of a community are forced to attend to public affairs, they are necessarily drawn from the circle of their own interests and snatched at times from self-observation. As soon as a man begins to treat of public affairs in public, he begins to perceive that he is not so independent of his fellow men as he had at first imagined, and that in order to obtain their support he must often lend them his co-operation. ("That the Americans Combat the Effects of Individualism by Free Institutions," Volume II, Book II, Ch. IV)

Third, Americans had integrated into their social habits the principle that, in order to optimize one's particular good, they first had to secure the common good. That is, Americans had somehow concluded that each individual's primary particular good consisted of his or her place in the common good, and that the general welfare is, in a real sense, each person's particular welfare, for the complex network of institutions that make up the common good are the chief means by which each individual acquires and develops virtue, and so benefits him- or herself. As de Tocqueville explains,

A man comprehends the influence which the well-being of his country has upon his own; he is aware that the laws permit him to contribute to that prosperity, and he labors to promote it, first because it benefits him, and secondly because it is in part his own work. ("Advantages of Democracy: Public Spirit in the United States," Volume I, Ch. XIV)

Fourth, de Tocqueville noted that every American as a general rule believed him- or herself to be personally responsible for the condition of society. If something needed fixing, it was the individual's responsibility to do something, not sit around waiting for somebody else to undertake the task. In consequence, when a situation came up that required correction, the individual either handled it alone, or organized with his or her neighbors and got on with the job. As de Tocqueville described this tendency,

The citizen of the United States is taught from infancy to rely upon his own exertions in order to resist the evils and the difficulties of life; he looks upon the social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he claims its assistance only when he is unable to do without it. This habit may be traced even in the schools, where the children in their games are wont to submit to rules which they have themselves established, and to punish misdemeanors which they have themselves defined. The same spirit pervades every act of social life. If a stoppage occurs in a thoroughfare and the circulation of vehicles is hindered, the neighbors immediately form themselves into a deliberative body; and this extemporaneous assembly gives rise to an executive power which remedies the inconvenience before anybody has thought of recurring to a pre-existing authority superior to that of the persons immediately concerned. ("Political Associations in the United States," Volume I, Ch. XII)

Fifth, Americans had internalized what today is known as the "principle of subsidiarity." That is, they realized that the agency to handle social situations is not automatically the highest or the lowest level of society, but the one closest to the situation. Thus, the "higher" institutions, such as the state or the federal governments, should never take over the functions properly assigned to local institutions. Further (something de Tocqueville was to highlight later in The Old Régime and the French Revolution, 1856), neither should "lower" institutions take over the function of the "higher" ones. As de Tocqueville explains,

The township, taken as a whole, and in relation to the central government, in only an individual, like any other to whom the theory [sovereignty of the people] I have just described is applicable. Municipal independence in the United States is therefore a natural consequence of the very principle of the sovereignty of the people. All the American republics [de Tocqueville characterizes the individual states as "republics"] recognize it more or less, but circumstances have peculiarly favored its growth in New England.

In this part of the Union political life had its origin in the townships; and it may almost be said that each of them originally formed an independent nation. When the kings of England afterwards asserted their supremacy, they were content to assume the central power of the State. They left the townships where they were before; and although they are now subject to the State, they were not at first, or were hardly so. They did not receive their powers from the central authority, but, on the contrary, they gave up a portion of their independence to the State. This is an important distinction and one that the reader must constantly recollect. The townships are generally subordinate to the State only in those interests which I shall term social, as they are common to all the others. They are independent in all that concerns themselves alone; and among the inhabitants of New England I believe that not a man is to be found who would acknowledge that the State has any right to interfere in their town affairs. ("Townships and Municipal Bodies," Volume I, Ch. V)

Sixth, possibly the most striking characteristic of American life as far as de Tocqueville was concerned was the incredible proclivity to organize and form associations. As he observed,

In no country in the world has the principle of association been more successfully used or applied to a greater multitude of objects than in America. Besides the permanent associations which are established by law under the names of townships, cities, and counties, a vast number of others are formed and maintained by the agency of private individuals. ("Political Associations in the United States," Volume I, Ch. XII)

Seventh, and finally (at least for our limited purposes), this habit of forming associations was so great that Americans of the 1830s, according to de Tocqueville, couldn't even imagine doing things differently. If something needed to be done, and it was at all important, it was vital that people organize and form themselves into associations in order to accomplish whatever end they had in mind. Thus, as de Tocqueville explains,

The political associations that exist in the United States are only a single feature in the midst of the immense assemblage of associations in that country. Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they found hospital, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association. . . . The English often perform great things singly, whereas the Americans form associations for the smallest undertakings. It is evident that the former people consider association as a powerful means of action, but the latter seem to regard it as the only means they have of acting. ("Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life," Volume II, Book II, Ch. V)

It should therefore come as no surprise that the intellectual elite of Europe (at least those most closely in touch with the Thomist and Aristotelian concept of the natural moral law, such as Pope Leo XIII), saw in the United States a great sign of hope, even (as Abraham Lincoln was to characterize it in the next generation in his Second Inaugural Address), the last, best hope of mankind. We will begin to look at how the United States both lived up to that expectation and fell short of it in the next posting in this series.

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The Political Animal, Part XIX

In the previous posting in this series we saw that George Mason of Gunston Hall had somehow managed to weave together a consistent political philosophy from a number of disparate elements. These elements included the individualism of Locke and Sidney, the ultimate (and unconscious) collectivism of Bellarmine, and, especially, private property and man as a "political animal." Mason's synthesis was due to his adherence to an understanding of the natural law based on the Intellect — reason. Paradoxically, this was at a time when virtually all intellectuals were following Occam and Grotius and doing the very un-intellectual thing of basing the natural law on the Will. Only by basing the law on the Intellect, however (lex ratio — "law is reason"), can the natural dignity and sovereignty of the individual be protected, and natural rights remain sacrosanct.

Because it relates to economic life, the most immediate if not the most important aspect of daily life, the natural right to private property was an important factor in Mason's political thought — especially that property he regarded as illegitimate: chattel slavery. Mason had to proceed carefully, however. Calling an ancient institution like chattel slavery into question could very easily undermine the institution of private property itself, to say nothing of making him appear to be a hypocrite — as, in fact, his opponents were quick to claim.

Thomas Jefferson, an estimable, even great individual in many respects, was evidently unable or unwilling to deal with such a thorny issue. Jefferson avoided the issue of property in the Declaration of Independence, and allowed himself to be persuaded to drop a provision abolishing slavery. Otherwise, Jefferson closely followed Mason's lead with respect to the natural moral law.

The dangers associated with attacking chattel slavery (and, in our day, "wage slavery") and thereby undermining recognition of and respect for private property are not as farfetched as they might seem, as the case of Nathan C. Kouns demonstrates. Kouns, a devout Catholic, supported slavery and served as a Major in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He was evidently able to accept the equivocations of the southern American bishops in their anxiety to assure their flocks that the condemnation of chattel slavery by Pope Gregory XVI in the 1839 Constitution In Supremo ("Constitution" being a teaching, not a political document in this context) did not apply to slavery as practiced in the United States.

The southern American Catholic bishops assuaged their consciences and those of the faithful with the equivocation that the Papal Constitution only condemned the international slave trade, not slavery itself — as if employing slaves as labor, and dealing in them as a commodity were somehow morally different! Of course, an objective reading of the Constitution would have corrected this obvious error, as would reference to the numerous papal condemnations of slavery prior to that date. (See Rev. Joel S. Panzer, The Popes and Slavery. New York: Alba House, 1996.)

After the Civil War, Kouns seems to have become convinced that, because private property in human beings is wrong, all private property is wrong. Kouns then promoted socialism — the abolition of private property — as consistent with Catholic doctrine. He wrote two historical novels to present his case, Arius the Libyan, An Idyl [sic] of the Primitive Church (1883), and Dorcas, the Daughter of Faustina (1884), both of which enjoyed reasonably good sales into the 1920s.

The novels are competently written, and (if not exactly great literature) have convinced a number of critics and commentators that, despite their flat contradiction of Catholic doctrine, they detail authentic Catholic teaching regarding private property. It would not be too far-fetched to discover that Pope Leo XIII (who seems to have considered the United States something unique and special) was aware of the novels and the effect they had when he wrote Rerum Novarum. The 1891 encyclical is built around a series of explicit statements reaffirming private property as a natural right, the same as life, liberty, and "pursuit of happiness" (the acquisition and development of virtue).

As the draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights clearly demonstrates, however, Mason attempted to insert into the resolution a respect for the human dignity of every individual, not just a select majority or minority. It is thus probably due more to Mason than to Jefferson that the American Republic is based on the Thomist, rather than the Scotist concept of the natural law (that is, Intellect or Nature over Will or Revelation). Mason was instrumental in making certain that the new Constitution of 1787 included a bill of fundamental natural rights, although the effort was spearheaded by fellow Virginian James Madison, whom many Constitutional scholars thereby credit with the first ten amendments.

The problem was that Madison doesn't seem to have had an equal understanding with Mason of the need to make certain that the institution of private property has the same protections as every other natural right. This left a serious problem in place, giving an either/or aspect to the slavery issue: either immediate and full emancipation, or nothing. The problem was that disaster would result in either event. As Helen Hill explains the situation in her biography of Mason, describing a conversation between Jefferson and Mason and witnessed by Philip Mazzei,

Philip Mazzei's "Memoirs" give an intimate picture of the two arguing these contrasting aspects of the problem, taking sides, one suspects, chiefly to clarify the issues. Jefferson was advocating abolition, arguing that

It was demanded as much by humanity as by justice; that to keep in slavery beings born with rights equal to ours and who did not differ from us in anything but color, was an injustice not only barbarous and cruel, but even shameful, especially when they risked everything in helping us gain our freedom.

Mason and Mazzei dissented from this view:

Mr. George Mason said much more; and he showed the necessity of educating them before taking such a step, teaching them to make good use of their freedom. "Each one of us knows," he said, "that the negroes considered the work as punishment." He also convinced us that if they were not educated before being freed, the first use they would make of their liberty would be loafing, and hence they would become thieves out of necessity.

In the course of the Richmond debates, Mason fought the Constitution clause by clause, but his most effective oratory was reserved for the slavery provision. (Helen Hill, George Mason, Constitutionalist. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1938, 217-218)

Education and gradual emancipation might not satisfy the purists on either side, but it is the common sense approach, and had the potential to respect at least to some degree both the property of the slaveholders and the right of the slaves to liberty. Mason was punctilious in bringing property into the discussion; owners of slaves had acquired their property legally and, consistent with popular belief for thousands of years, legitimately. To dismiss this by mandating immediate emancipation, even with compensation offered to the slaveholders, could call property itself into question. By taking the expedient route, Madison managed to undermine a very important natural right.

Mason, however, understood that man is both social and individual — a political animal, who only reaches his full potential by associating with other individuals and groups of his kind in the polis, an organized and formally legislated community.

Still, Mason lived in a society that, while it paid lip service to the equality of all men, rejected that same equality in practice. Many of the Founding Fathers assumed, with Locke and Sidney, that society is not natural to man. The liberal theory is that you accept infringement of certain rights when you agree to enter society in order to protect what remains.

Paradoxically, the idea that man outside society has all rights and accepts infringement in order to gain some measure of protection abolishes the concept of natural rights in the same breath that purports to defend it. An infringement of a right that can presumably be exercised absolutely is not the same as a limitation on the exercise of a right that is possessed absolutely, that is, inalienably. The former constitutes a tacit admission that possession of the right is not, after all, natural or absolute, while the latter is the normal working of the politikos bios, the "life of the citizen in the State." This in part consists of properly defining and limiting (not infringing on) the exercise of absolute rights so that man can live together in peace . . . naturally.

The liberal position is that anyone who has not been admitted to society cannot be recognized as a person, that is, as having rights. Consequently, most of the Founding Fathers accepted the "state of nature" theory common to Locke and Sidney, and their chief opponent, Hobbes. Mason understood that this made true equality impossible, for if you wished to keep someone in an unequal state such as slavery, you merely had to assert that members of a particular group, or even the group itself had not entered society.

Further, asserting a state of nature in which man not only possesses natural rights absolutely, but has the absolute (that is, unlimited) exercise thereof argues that the unlimited exercise of all rights is natural. This we know is impossible, for one of the primary "laws" of the common good (that is, of social justice), after the demand that the common good itself remain inviolate, is that no right or power can legitimately be exercised in any way that harms the right holder, other individuals or groups, or the common good itself. Limitation of exercise, even of rights that are possessed absolutely, is thus inherent in human nature itself.

Man's political nature is exhibited by his membership in a single group or (in practical terms) many groups that, in part, make up the common good and demonstrate the organized structure of society; the mere fact of a group itself is sufficient proof that someone is a member of society and is, in the truest sense, political. The moment you make conditions, that is, once you declare that personality is due to something other than mere humanity, you are, essentially, denying that man is political by nature, as well as undermining the natural moral law.

Fortunately, however, Mason had an inherent understanding of the importance of groups, and realized that true political action consists of something more than simply passing and enforcing laws. Mason's remarkable accomplishment was to insert Aristotle's concept of man as a political animal into a supremely individualistic culture and intellectual framework. He was able to find a middle ground and develop a synthesis between liberal philosophy's state of nature and Cardinal Bellarmine's concept that God grants certain rights to the collective.

Mason's via media was not articulated. It is, however, powerfully evident in his draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, his insistence on a bill of fundamental natural rights in the U.S. Constitution, and, fortunately, in his influence on the founding document of the United States: the Declaration of Independence.

Mason can therefore be given credit for the way in which the American approach to government and politics developed immediately following the Revolution. As we will see in the next posting in this series, private property, free association, and the idea of groups were in America combined in a unique new way that developed not only a new science of politics, but gave hints of a new concept in moral philosophy, the idea of "social virtue," that is, legal justice as a particular, not merely a general virtue.

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The Political Animal, Part XVIII

In the previous posting in this series we concluded that the American and French Revolutions differed in at least one important area. That is, the American colonists went into rebellion to protect and defend what they saw as violations on the part of the British Crown of their natural rights as Englishman. In France, the citizens revolted in part in response to the growth of new views of the State and the promulgation of new rights that were not necessarily consistent with the natural moral law, but with "the will of the people."

The American revolutionaries used reason to discern the natural moral law and based their rights on that. The French revolutionaries based their assertion of new rights on "pure reason," without first basing reason itself on a sound foundation, even going to the unreasonable length of enshrining "Reason" as a goddess of the new State-established and maintained religion. The essential difference in orientation is clearly evident when we examine the principles of political science used in forming the United States of America.

When the Virginia Convention met in the spring of 1776, they adopted a resolution to draft a declaration of fundamental natural rights that they believed King George III and his parliament were violating. As George Mason of Gunston Hall in Northern Virginia (near Alexandria) had a reputation as the most experienced legal writer in Virginia, he was the obvious choice to draw up the draft for the discussion and approval of the other delegates. As was his habit, he included a provision that destroyed the legal justification of chattel slavery, even though he was himself a slave owner:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

As drafted, the Declaration states that all men have inherent (i.e., natural) rights, of which neither they nor their posterity can be deprived, regardless of the justification. All men have the right to live, to be free, and to acquire and possess private property: John Locke's famous triad of fundamental human rights of life, liberty, and property — but with a difference.

That difference is the fact that Mason (in common with Bellarmine, whom Mason appears to have studied) simply ignored "state of nature" theory and declared that all men have rights by nature, not as a result of entering into a social contract and agreeing to enter into society. Man is political by nature; he does not agree to enter society. He is already a member of society by nature unless he removes himself by the commission of a crime.

That man is naturally a member of society is not, however, a doctrine found anywhere in Locke or Sidney. They were firm adherents of the "state of nature" theory, virtually their sole point of agreement with Hobbes. That man is naturally a member of society, however, is found throughout Bellarmine's writings, notably in De Laicis.

If all men are naturally members of society, regardless of circumstances, it logically follows that this applies to slaves. The clear implication is that slaves — absent conviction of a crime for which the slave is actually and personally guilty — have the right to be free. If this sentence in the Virginia declaration passed unchallenged, the implication was that slave owners were themselves engaged in doing the very thing for which they were condemning George III and his parliament.

Even so, Mason might have gotten away with it . . . had he not had the reputation of making similar insertions in virtually every possible document at every opportunity. By having previously tipped his hand through his laudable habit of standing up to condemn an institution he despised, he made it impossible to slip it in where it would have done the most good. The "reluctant statesman" and even more reluctant slave owner outsmarted himself.

Being familiar with Mason's "tricks," the conservative ("aristocratic") delegates to the Virginia Convention were ready for him. As Robert Rutland describes the events surrounding the discussions leading up to the ratification of the Virginia Declaration,

After each delegate studied the proposals, the general debate opened on a sour note. Thomas Ludwell Lee [Mason's aide on the drafting committee] lamented in his nightly letter-writing sessions that "a certain set of aristocrats" had thrown up a line of defense in an effort to keep control of the Convention in conservative hands. Led by Robert Carter Nicholas, the old guard "kept us at bay on the first line" of the draft, Lee reported. Nicholas challenged the statement that all men are created equally free and independent. In a slaveholding society, the argument ran, all men were obviously not born free and equal. To pretend otherwise, the conservatives suggested, was to invite civil war on their own estates. (Robert A. Rutland, George Mason: Reluctant Statesman. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1961, 51-53)

Consistent with liberal political philosophy, the conservative members amended Mason's language. Raising the issue of slavery in the very first line of their Declaration could derail the entire Convention. As Florette Henri reports,

Those opening words of Mason tore the convention apart.

"'All men are born equally free and independent' — pray, what does that mean?" demanded the conservative Robert Carter Nicholas. "Does it include my slaves?"

Nicholas' supporters joined the outcry. Were slaves to be set free? They would not accept such a declaration. With one hand it guaranteed Virginians the right to hold property, and with the other it snatched that property away — slave property. What sort of radical document was this? Was it intended to abolish slavery?

Of course, Mason secretly hoped it might. (Florette Henri, George Mason of Virginia. New York: Crowell-Collier Press, 1971, 93.)

Mason was forced to let it pass. As Rutland reports,

As finally approved, the first sentence read "That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; . . ." The italicized phrase, with its implicit proposition that slaves are not members of society, placated the opposition. (Rutland, op. cit., 54)

While important, however, the focus on slavery and the natural right to be free overshadowed another natural right, "the means of acquiring and possessing property." Unfortunately, property was inextricably tied in with the slavery issue. The institution of black chattel slavery in the United States consisted of owning human beings as private property. To assert a natural right to be free for all men, and then equivocate by keeping some in bondage without the justification that they were criminals was a question not too many people had either the inclination or the ability to deal with. The issue at hand was political freedom for the American colonists, not natural freedom for people held in slavery.

When you added in the fact that a slave owner believed that his or her economic survival was tied to slavery just as much as to his or her ownership of large tracts of land, discussing slavery and private property at the same time made for an extremely volatile mix. If you asserted that private property in human beings — slavery — was illegitimate, it was a short leap to maintaining that all private property in anything was equally illegitimate.

The important issue here, however, is that Mason laid the groundwork for reconciling the collectivist and individualist positions. He somehow managed to insert the fact that the human person is both individual and social — political — into the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Even though it did not survive unedited, the fact that the idea was there is important — and that it made its way into the underlying political philosophy of the new country via Mason's influence through Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence. How Mason tied private property, slavery, and man as a political animal into a consistent whole will be examined in the next posting in this series.

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The Political Animal, Part XVII

In the previous posting in this series, we discovered that, regardless which political theory we adopt, we seem to fall into one of two traps, individualism or collectivism, either of which is unacceptable. If we admit humanity's social nature, we evidently have to accept that the State or the collective, something that is not a natural person, can somehow receive a grant of rights directly from God, or itself be God. Ultimately, this denies the sovereignty of the human person under God. If, on the other hand, we recognize humanity's individual nature, then the State itself (an artifact that, while man-made like other tools, is natural and essential to human development), seems to acquire a degree of illegitimacy, if only by serving as the agency by means of which what would otherwise be the absolute exercise of our natural rights is limited.

While Europe was struggling between the Scylla and Charybdis of individualism and collectivism, however, something new was growing up in the New World — or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that an ancient ideal was finally achieving practicable existence. The case of the Spanish and French colonies was different, but the British colonies in North America had been for the most part left to their own devices.

This may have been due to the unique situation of Great Britain at a critical time in the formation of the colonial culture. The English Civil War, the Great Rebellion, the "Glorious Revolution," the advent of a foreign dynasty (the Hannoverians), and so on, all tended to distract the government in London from the situation "across the pond." For our purposes we do not have to examine the reasons why the American colonies developed the way they did in any depth — although it is interesting to note that, because king and parliament seemed to spend so much time trying to bring Ireland to heel that they had little time to spare for the American colonies. We only need to appreciate the fact that America represented something new on the world scene, socially, economically — and politically; the vision of "the City on the Hill," in which man could conform himself most closely to his true nature.

Socially, despite the fact that a nobility was grafted on to the social structure (to this day there is a "Duke of New York" in exile in Canada), the British colonies of North America probably came closer to a classless society that had developed naturally (as opposed to being imposed artificially by force) than anything that had developed previously in history. This was probably due to the fact that most of the people in the colonies were originally from the middle class. The very poor and the very rich tended not to emigrate. The majority of colonists were drawn from people who wished to obtain ownership of land or other capital, or to better themselves in some other way.

Economically, while there were a significant number of individuals in the southern colonies who were regarded as aristocrats with vast holdings of land, the fact remained that colonial estates were by no means the equal of anything of commensurate size in England, nor were their owners considered all that different from their neighbors. Further, the tone of society was set not by the relatively few wealthy landowners, but by the much larger number of subsistence farmers and small artisans. The largest landowner lived in a fashion little different from his neighboring small proprietor.

In addition, the large landowners were in a condition that later generations would describe as "land poor." That is, virtually all of their wealth was in the form of land, and was difficult to turn into cash, even by mortgage or outright sale. The British colonies, unlike those of Spanish America, had virtually no official circulating media. Most of what existed in the form of coinage found its way into New England in the form of Spanish colonial "Pieces of Eight" — dollars. These usually came into the colonies as "boot" from the "Triangle Trade": molasses, to rum, to slaves. Had it not been for slavery, the final leg in the Triangle, British America would have been one of the most egalitarian societies in history.

It was, however, in politics that the situation in the colonies of British America differed most significantly from conditions that prevailed in Europe. Having been on their own during their formative period, the colonies had a tradition of self-government. They developed appropriate institutions to support the demands put on the social order by the growth of an egalitarian and largely economically classless society.

As a result, when the British government finally got around to taking a more direct interest in colonial affairs (largely as a potential source of tax revenue as well as a necessary adjunct for mercantilist policies), the colonists tended to view the increased administrative control as an unwarranted infringement of their rights and liberties as Englishmen. The fact that the English in England had far fewer effective rights than their American cousins was irrelevant. The colonists were used to being on their own, and doing for themselves. They resented being regarded as a virtual financial milch cow for British commercial and political interests, receiving no perceived benefit in return.

They had been in the habit in many cases of freely assembling and organizing for the common good without interference by or even the sanction of whatever governing authority existed. Public works were often private undertakings, funded and carried out without State assistance. Even the common defense was in many cases much less formal than in Europe, with local militias and the posse comitatus taking the place of a standing army or police force.

Now these activities, especially for the common defense in light of the Jacobite Rebellion in the 1740s in which "Bonnie Prince Charlie" came very close to regaining the throne for the Stuarts with the support of the Highland clans bearing personal arms, were viewed by King George III and his parliament not only as infringing on Royal prerogatives, but were believed to represent an actual danger to the State. It didn't help any that the British government was in desperate need of money, having managed to get itself involved in too many European wars at the same time it was trying to expand its colonial empire, and the nascent Industrial Revolution was starting its generations-long and completely unnecessary social and economic upheaval. Consequently, many traditional practices that the American colonists had long regarded as fundamental rights were limited, abolished, or suspended indefinitely.

The colonists protested, and (in a story too well known to relate here) went into revolt to protect and maintain those natural rights that they regarded as essential to their dignity as freeborn Englishmen. They had been schooled in these rights by events in the mother country, especially the "Glorious Revolution" at the edge of living memory. The Declaration of Independence was, in fact, closely modeled on the twelve charges by means of which parliament justified taking the throne away from James II Stuart and handing it over to William and Mary. As William Cobbett remarks in his History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland (1826),

In short, they drew up, à la "glorious," charges against their Protestant king, his late Majesty; and as the charges against James II. are found in an Act of Parliament, so the charges against George III. are found in an Act of Congress, passed on the memorable 4th of July, 1776. (§ 425)

In this, the American Revolution differed significantly from the later French Revolution, due in large measure to the completely different understanding of the rights of man and the view of sovereignty. The American colonists went into revolt to defend themselves against infringement of their natural rights that they had long been in the habit of exercising.

The French Revolution (to oversimplify) was, in contrast, the application of new ideas of sovereignty and the nation State, and the actual institution of a new world order. Despite the repeated statements, possibly even sincere beliefs of America's Founding Fathers, however, the realization of a long-held ideal is not a new world order in the same sense as that represented by the French Revolution, as we will see in the next posting in this series.

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News from the Network, Vol. 3, No. 1

According to the Associated Press, in Switzerland, a wealthy man convicted of speeding has been levied a fine of almost $300,000 for going approximately 35 mph over the posted speed limit. The previous record fine was approximately $107,000. ("Swiss Court Fines Speeding Millionaire $290,000") The fine was not based on the objective gravity of the offense, but on the offender's net worth. To be consistent, then, had the offender had a negative net worth, would the court have awarded him a cash prize or given him a government subsidy? Would a millionaire who murders a man with one dollar be hanged a million times, while the man with nothing who murders a millionaire not be punished at all?

No doubt such a glaring example of "envy jurisprudence" that violates the most essential precepts of human law will cause outrage among people with even a rudimentary moral compass. Is it any different, however, from the United States government that punishes companies for being productive by taxing profits two or three times at confiscatory rates, and then hands out massive subsidies to proven losers, bankrupts, and criminals? All this does is give strong incentives for dishonesty and incompetence, and promote the worship of the State as the source of all good.

A rational course of action would be to offer rewards for being productive, and to punish — or, better, refrain from rewarding — criminals and the incompetent. A few simple changes in the tax laws would accomplish a great deal to change public and government attitudes toward individuals and enterprises that generate the production on which the economy runs. For example, make dividends tax deductible at the corporate level if used by the recipient to make debt service payments on the loan used to purchase the shares in the first place, or if used for consumption. If used for consumption, the dividends would be taxable at the individual level. If retained in the corporation for reinvestment, the profits would be subject to a heavy and progressive income tax to "punish" the corporation for withholding income that belongs by natural right to the shareholders, thereby working to undermine private property. This would encourage many more people to become owners of corporate equity, both by providing tax benefits for ownership as well as the means of acquiring and possessing private property.

Of course, tax deductibility of dividends is only a small part of the overall proposal for economic reform called the Capital Homestead Act. To be as just as possible, the entire package should be enacted, preferably before we go any further down the path of total State control.

Due to the exigencies of the Gregorian calendar, we have not posted any news items for the past two Fridays — but due to the holidays, there was a great deal going on, but little of it in "reportable form." The major events of which we're aware are,

• There is a growing awareness of the Capital Homestead Act as the most promising proposal to revive the economy and enhance and protect the dignity of every human being. Designed to build sovereignty from the ground up (that is, starting with the individual), the Capital Homestead Act is, as far as we know, the only economic recovery program that relies primarily on the people it is designed to help, with the role of the State reduced to passing the necessary legislation, ensuring equal opportunity to participate, and policing the abuses that inevitably crop up in any system designed by fallible humanity.

• State Representative Anastasia Pittman of Oklahoma City has been studying the CLC ("Citizens Land Cooperative") legislation that passed the Illinois House 114-0, and was introduced into the Virginia House by Representative Bob Marshal of Manassas. Dr. Norman Kurland has been working on incorporating some of the refinements that are continually being made in any Just Third Way approach into the model legislation. Given that human society is in a constant state of flux, an important aspect of the act of social justice (and thus the Just Third Way) is to monitor conditions constantly, and introduce beneficial changes and improvements as necessary in order to bring our institutions into closer conformity with our basic principles. Representative Pittman has expressed great enthusiasm for the potential of the CLC, which can easily provide a foundation for implementation of the basic concepts nationwide in a Capital Homestead Act, and is keeping a close watch on developments in East St. Louis.

• A number of meetings have been held by the CESJ core group to refine the basic door-opening strategy, an important tactic in surfacing new "prime movers" of the caliber of the late Senator Russell Long of Louisiana. It is a basic principle of sound marketing that you cannot sell yourself and the product at the same time. Consequently, we need "third party endorsements," especially in arranging meetings with Congressmen and Senators for Dr. Norman Kurland to be able to sell the ideas rather than himself. As a "door opener" your job would be to get a meeting for Dr. Kurland by whatever (ethical) means necessary, then, having "scored," accept the gratitude of both CESJ and the politician, and let Norm sell the concept. In "biz-speak," your job is to sell Norm to the politician or other potential prime mover, and let Norm sell the idea. The technique works — and works very well, as Madison Avenue has known for generations.

• It is important to realize that one of the most effective door opening tactics is not (necessarily) to know the politician or other prime mover directly, but to know somebody who knows him or her. That is, be a "door opener to a door opener." The method then is to persuade those "people who know people" to use their contacts to advance the Just Third Way. The technique, however, remains the same: open the door so that Norm can "sell" himself to the potential door opener, then have the door opener sell Norm to the potential prime mover so that Norm can then sell the idea. The "door opener to a door opener" approach is thus analogous to the act of social justice itself, which does not work to bring about the desired individual results directly (e.g., just wages, just profits, just prices), but works on the institutional environment to arrange matters so that the desired individual results become possible — that is, equality of opportunity, not equality of results. The door-opener-to-the-door-opener technique is designed to provide Norm with the equal opportunity to present the ideas to potential prime movers, not to present the ideas as part of the door opening process. If that is unclear, read Father Ferree's Introduction to Social Justice, especially the "Commentary" on pages 12-13.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 47 different countries and 40 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, the UK, Brazil, Canada and France. People in Aruba, Malaysia, Netherlands Antilles, France, and Venezuela spent the most average time on the blog. The "News from the Network" postings are the most popular, followed by those on "The Political Animal."

Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.

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The Political Animal, Part XVI

In the previous posting in this series we decided (in common with John Locke and Algernon Sidney), for the sake of the argument and to get around the difficulties posed by Cardinal Bellarmine's insertion of the collective between God and man, and between man and the State, to assume the existence of a "state of nature." This would remove, at least in part, the presumed necessity of the existence of rights that God grants to something that is not a natural person. As Locke explains in his Second Treatise on Government,

Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society, as to quit every one his executive power of the law of nature, and to resign it to the public, there, and there only, is a political, or civil society. And this is done wherever any number of men, in the state of nature, enter into society to make one people one body politic, under one supreme government, or else when any one joins himself to, and incorporates with, any government already made. For hereby he authorizes the society, or, which is all one, the legislative thereof, to make laws for him, as the public good of the society shall require, to the execution whereof his own assistance (as to his own decrees) is due. And this puts men out of a state of nature into that of a commonwealth. . . (Second Treatise on Government, § 89)

Where the ruler or group charged with the rule is carrying out its mandate to conform to the natural moral law and promote the common good, the consent of the governed, after the initial establishment, is assumed to have been given automatically. No single individuals or groups, acting on their own authority, can decide that the current government is illegitimate, and work for its overthrow or go into rebellion. This would be merely to participate in criminal acts, contrary to the common good.

When, however, the government is engaged in egregious violation of the natural moral law, or is acting directly contrary to the common good in an obvious and material fashion, there may then be just cause to revoke the grant of political sovereignty made to the present government, and vest it in another group or form of government. As Aquinas states, "If any society of people have the right of choosing a king for itself, it is not unjust if he be deposed by the same, or if his power be curbed, when by a royal tyranny he abuses his power." (De Regimine Principum ("On the Rule of Princes"), Book I, Chapter vi) This was echoed by John Locke in the 19th chapter of his Second Treatise on Civil Government, "There is therefore secondly another way whereby governments are dissolved, and that is when the legislative or the prince, either of them, act contrary to their trust." As Locke continued,

First, the legislative acts against the trust reposed in them when they endeavour to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves or any part of the community masters or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people. . . .What I have said here concerning the legislative in general, holds true also concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in the legislative and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He acts also contrary to his trust when he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly pre-engages the electors, and prescribes to their choice such whom he has by solicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise won to his designs, and employs them to bring in such, who have promised beforehand what to vote and what to enact. (Second Treatise on Government, §§ 221-222)

Anyone familiar with the Declaration of Independence of the United States, as well as the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted nearly a month earlier, will recognize the basis and justification of the English colonies in America joining together and repudiating the governance of the King of Great Britain by revoking the grant of sovereignty:

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government. . . .Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.

(See also the Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 12, 1776, "When government fails to confer common benefit, a majority of the people have a right to change it." Also Bellarmine, De Laicis, Ch. VI, "For legitimate reason [the people] can change the government to an aristocracy or a democracy or vice versa. . . . It depends upon the consent of men to place over themselves a king, consul, or magistrate.")

What are the conditions that justify a change in government? First, oppression must be habitual, tyrannical, and intolerable. Second, other remedies must have failed, legal and peaceful means must have been ineffective. Third, there must be reasonable probability of success. As Aquinas says, "If indeed a tyranny is not excessive, it is better to bear it for a time, than, by acting against the tyrant, to be involved in many perils, which are worse than tyranny. For it may happen that they who rise against a tyrant do not prevail against him; and so the tyrant, being incensed, rages the more violently." (De Regimine Principum, Book I., Ch. vi) Fourth, and finally, the revolt ought to be approved by the majority and by the best men of the land.

Although the work of Bellarmine, Locke, and Sidney in some measure discredited divine right theory, it left two problems in place. One, Bellarmine, due to his insertion of the collective, inadvertently gave ultimate power to the State — although that was clearly not his intention. The State, as Father Heinrich Pesch, S.J., was to note later, is presumed to be the mediate, that is, the indirect cause of individual welfare. This is chiefly through the State's care of the general welfare. In extraordinary cases, however, and on a temporary basis, the State is justified taking over direct care of individual welfare.

In the nature of things, however, the State inevitably moves to take over control of as much of everything as possible by becoming the immediate cause of individual welfare. To paraphrase the old saying, give the State an inch, and it will take a mile. All rights, even life, liberty, and property, become interpreted as "prudential matter," to be exercised or even granted solely at the discretion of the State. As far as the bottom line goes, this was not an improvement over basing the natural moral law on the Will — and falls into the "law is will" category by default.

Two, if we go the other way and base our understanding of sovereignty on the "state of nature" argument, we secure recognition of humanity's individual inalienable natural (that is, absolute) rights . . . but we tend to lose sight of the fact that no right is or can be absolute in its exercise. The nature of the human person and of society itself demands that the exercise of all rights be defined in a way that not only respects the human dignity of the individual right holder, but of all others in society, as well as the common good itself. Unfortunately, when we base our argument on the assumption of a state of nature, we tend to define possession of natural rights correctly as absolute, but also (and incorrectly) include the exercise of rights as absolute as well.

Thus, by claiming that all rights come from the State, the collectivist puts the State in the place of God. By claiming absolute exercise of rights, the individualist usurps the place of God.

The situation was not, however, hopeless — only confused. We will start to look at how these problems were resolved in the next posting in this series.

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The Political Animal, Part XV

In the previous posting in this series we saw that Cardinal Bellarmine refuted the theory of divine right of kings, and defended the essence of democracy: that sovereignty resides primarily in the people, who then grant a portion of it to their chosen ruler or rulers, just as Aquinas had claimed a few centuries previously in De Regimine Principum. Bellarmine reaffirmed the essential tenet of Scholastic philosophy that God grants sovereignty exclusively to natural persons, not to offices, that is, individuals in their "official capacities."

Unfortunately, Bellarmine's analysis assumed that there are certain rights, unlike life, liberty, and private property, that are granted not to individual human beings, but to the collective, the "assembled mass" of the people, such as waging war or administering justice. The collective, however, is not a natural person, and therefore God cannot by Nature — Intellect — grant the collective any kind of right or rights. As Pope Pius XI reminded us in Divini Redemptoris, "Only man, the human person, and not society in any form, is endowed with reason and a morally free will." The answer to the question whether there is anything God cannot do is, "Yes: not be God." By definition, as a perfect Being, God cannot contradict Himself, or He would not be God. Thus He cannot do anything contrary to His own Nature — such as endow anything that is not a natural person (such as the collective) with inherent rights.

Thus, what "saves" Bellarmine from Hobbesian State absolutism is a firm reliance on the primacy of the Intellect over the Will as the basis of the natural law, as Rommen points out (Rommen, op. cit., 53). If God (or the State) appears to give a command or passes a law that seems to contradict Nature, we are either misunderstanding God's command, or the State may be acting beyond its competence, respectively. It is our job as faithful creatures or good citizens to discern the underlying reality or principle in conformity with Nature, and apply it properly. The State cannot, therefore, be supreme in the way that Hobbes or Filmer declared, because State absolutism is itself contrary to the law of Nature and of Nature's God, violating the sovereignty of the individual and the dignity of the human person.

The necessity of the collective for Bellarmine's argument comes from his assumption that the State or the ruler (both "artificial persons") have legitimate powers that individuals lack, such as carrying out a just war and judging criminals. He did not consider the possibility of what Pope Pius XI was to discover and at which Aquinas hinted: that individuals have certain rights that they cannot exercise as individuals. Bellarmine assumed the necessity of the collective because he rejected the possibility of what John Locke, for example, referred to as "the state of nature," wherein there was absolutely no civil society because there was no civil intercourse. Bellarmine looked on this assumption as purely imaginary, and unworthy of consideration. From the creation of Adam, man has lived in social intercourse with his fellows ("It is not good for man to be alone. . . ."). Civil society, therefore, existed the moment there was more than one person.

. . .the statement is false which Cicero makes, namely, that there was formerly a time when men wandered about in the manner of beasts, then, through the eloquence of some wise orator, they were induced to assemble, and to live together. [Cicero, De Inventione, Book I.] Indeed, whoever undertakes the praise of eloquence usually makes this statement even now. But that state of affairs never existed, nor could it have existed at any time. For Adam was a very wise man, and without doubt did not allow men to wander about like beasts, and Cain, his son, even built a material city; before Cain and Adam, man did not exist. (De Laicis, Ch. V.)

Locke, however, while in most cases following Bellarmine's arguments closely (at the same time that he claimed to be rejecting them — it's complicated), had no problem with positing a time in which men had no social intercourse with one another. There was, therefore, a time when each individual person retained both full individual sovereignty and full political sovereignty within himself.

For our purposes, let us assume for the sake of the argument that the state of nature would be a purely hypothetical situation (as exampled by the case of slavery, which, while Locke refused to admit that anyone could be a slave legitimately — i.e., completely deprived of rights — the notion of slavery was a useful concept, and was, at least, intellectually conceivable, even if absolutely impossible). Hypothetically, then, a state of nature could exist antecedent to the existence of civil society, where only one person was around, with no one else within his sphere, even if that state of nature disappeared instantaneously with that individual's creation due to the existence of others within his sphere.

Where that single individual was all alone, he would be a completely independent and politically sovereign entity. This assumption, added to the additional assumption that man retains full individual and political sovereignty in each person, even with others around, is the basis for anarchy as a political system (as distinct from mere social chaos). Bellarmine (and probably Locke as well) would have denied the possibility that genuine anarchy could exist where there was more than one person, since the existence of society obviated the possibility of anarchy, and society existed immediately where there was more than one person.

The moment another human being shows up, a society exists, and an individual loses those rights of political sovereignty that he formerly had, of carrying out a just war, or judging the guilty, for example. You would thus have the paradox where man in the state of nature has full political sovereignty, but only as long as he did not have the opportunity of exercising it (i.e., there would be no one else around against whom to exercise the rights exclusive to political sovereignty). Individuals, the moment they enter society (whether or not that action is voluntary or even conscious), commit by that action an automatic grant of their political sovereignty to duly constituted authority. Since society exists the moment there is more than one person, the "state of nature" can be taken as completely and purely hypothetical, a useful fiction for determining the method of transmission of political sovereignty.

Locke probably did not seriously consider the possibility of anarchy ("the state of nature") as an actual state of affairs (and would probably have looked on today's anarchists as lunatics). In common with Bellarmine and virtually every other thinker throughout history, Locke viewed man as a social creature, whose interaction with his fellows as beings with something in common with himself was the only rational arrangement. The insertion of a period in which a state of nature existed was for Locke probably only a useful contrivance.

Our assumption of a hypothetical state of nature, however, is also extremely useful in getting around Bellarmine's difficulty about the State or the collective having rights that individuals lack. Bellarmine assumed the existence of society from the very creation of man. We can assume the hypothetical existence of a state of nature that disappeared immediately upon the first instance of social interaction. This, as far as Bellarmine was concerned, was virtually instantaneous, making the actual existence of the "state of nature" impossible, however useful Locke found it in deriving arguments.

How this ties together is what we will examine in the next posting in this series.


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The Political Animal, Part XIV

After the Reformation, the "right" political theory that went along with the new views on religion was divine right. This fit in perfectly with the new idea of the State that developed as the Middle Ages faded. The head of State was now also considered the head of the local church, holding both positions by heavenly fiat. Ordinary people were made solely to serve God by serving the State and its divinely appointed head. Man was made for the State, not the State for man. The democratic ideal inherited from Rome that underpinned Medieval political theory was completely overthrown.

The innovation of divine right was one of many "new things" that came out of a rejection of Aristotelian philosophy and Thomism. It was perhaps best stated by Sir Robert Filmer, the chief theologian of James I of England (James VI of Scotland), in Patriarcha, or, The Natural Power of Kings, written sometime in the early 17th century, but not published until 1680. As Filmer proclaimed in the first sentence of his work,

Since the time that school divinity began to flourish there hath been a common opinion maintained, as well by divines as by divers other learned men, which affirms:

"Mankind is naturally endowed and born with freedom from all subjection, and at liberty to choose what form of government it please, and that the power which any one man hath over others was at first bestowed according to the discretion of the multitude."

This tenet was first hatched in the schools, and hath been fostered by all succeeding Papists.

Filmer then spent the rest of his short work ridiculing the idea of the sovereignty of the individual under God. He also made arguments that later political scientists, such as John Locke and Algernon Sidney, were able to shred, more or less with ease, through the application of a modicum of common sense.

Locke and Sidney, however, came some time after Filmer's death. During Filmer's lifetime, his chief adversary was a cardinal of the Roman Curia from the obscure Italian mountain village of Montepulciano, Robert Bellarmine, possibly one of the most learned men of his age. (He taught himself Hebrew in a matter of weeks and composed a grammar for that language that was adopted by the Rabbis of Eastern Europe and used for the next couple of centuries.)

Bellarmine was so effective an adversary of the new theories in politics and religion that a rumor spread that "Robert Bellarmine" was actually the pseudonym of a group of highly trained scholars. As John Clement Rager recounts in his book, The Political Philosophy of Blessed Robert Bellarmine (1926),

The learned Englishman Whitaker (d. 1595) said: "Until now we were ignorant of the true position of the Roman Church. Since Bellarmine has come forward we know exactly what that Church teaches upon every article of faith." Some were unwilling to believe that one man could have been the author of so voluminous and powerful a work. They began to suspect that under the name "Robert Bellarmine" was concealed the whole army of Jesuit theologians. Robert, they said, stood for "robur" — strength; Bellarmine, for "belle" — wars, "arma" — weapons, "minae" — threats. (Rager, 14)

This sort of accusation is actually far more common than we might suspect. It is certainly easier to blame a secret conspiracy for the fact that you don't have a response to what someone else proposes, than to develop a counter argument. Even this writer, while certainly not in the class of Robert Bellarmine, was once "accused" of being a front for "a large staff of conservative economists" for presenting some of the basics of binary economics and demonstrating the consistency of binary economics with the natural moral law. More to the point, though, how did Bellarmine counter the newly arisen divine right of kings theory of political sovereignty?

Bellarmine wrote extensively on the source, transmission, and application of the civil power, that is, of political sovereignty. In his remarkably short work, De Laicis, or, The Treatise on Civil Government, written to oppose the Protestant doctrine of the "Divine Right of Kings" and defend the legitimacy of civil authority, Bellarmine succinctly presented the case for government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Taking his arguments and proofs from Scripture, the examples of the saints, from purpose or necessity, from considerations of the efficient cause, and from considerations of the source of secular power, Bellarmine declared that the legitimacy of political power is demonstrated by the fact that it is necessary, man being social. Civil government would thus be legitimate even if the sin of Adam had never occurred: "For even if servile subjection began after the sin of Adam, nevertheless there would have been political government even while man was in the state of innocence. And this is proved, firstly, because even then man would have been by nature a political and social animal, and hence would have had need of a ruler." (De Laicis, Ch. VII.) [Note Bellarmine's distinction between political and social.]

This power is not, according to Bellarmine, vested in a particular ruler or class, but in the people as a whole:

Political power considered in general, not descending in particular to Monarchy, Aristocracy, or Democracy, comes directly from God alone; for this follows of necessity from the nature of man, since that nature comes from Him Who made it; besides, this power derives from the natural law, since it does not depend upon the consent of men; for, willing or unwilling, they must be ruled over by some one, unless they wish the human race to perish. . . .

Note, secondly, that this power resides, as in its subject, immediately in the whole State, for this power is by Divine law, but Divine law gives this power to no particular man, therefore Divine law gives this power to the collected body. Furthermore, in the absence of positive law, there is no good reason why, in a multitude of equals, one rather than another should dominate. Therefore, power belongs to the collected body. (Ibid., Ch. VI)

There are those who will protest that this inserts the collective between the government and the individual people — which it does. Whether we posit the existence of the collective, or whether we assume that political power is transmitted directly from God through the individuals who make up the nation makes no essential difference to the point Bellarmine is making: that political power — political sovereignty — comes to the ruler not directly from God, but from God through the people, and that the ruler only governs with their consent.

Still, that leaves us with the dangerous idea of the collective inserted between God and man. As Pope Pius XI reminded the world a few centuries later, "Only man, the human person, and not society in any form, is endowed with reason and a morally free will." (Divini Redemptoris, § 29) In the next posting in this series we will look at how later political scientists, particularly John Locke and Algernon Sidney, tried to get around this problem.

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The Political Animal, Part XIII

In the previous posting in this series we looked at an understanding of money and credit based on an approach to the natural moral law derived from the Intellect rather than the Will. We saw that this understanding of
money was summarized by the late 18th, early 19th century political economist Jean-Baptiste Say. This "Say's Law of Markets" can briefly be stated as "production equals income." Thus, in the aggregate, "supply generates its own demand, and demand its own supply."

Unfortunately, there is another understanding of money and credit, one that has become accepted as economic orthodoxy, despite the fact that it contradicts both common sense and sound philosophy, to say nothing of the natural moral law. Nor was Say unaware that there were economists and others (notably Malthus) who disagreed with his analysis. As Say explained,

I am aware that this proposition has a paradoxical appearance, which creates prejudices against it; I know that common prejudices are more likely to support the opinions of those who maintain that there is too much produce, because every body is engaged in creating it: that instead of constantly producing, we ought to increase unproductive consumption, and devour our old capitals instead of accumulating new ones. This doctrine has indeed appearances on its side: it may be supported by arguments; and may interpret facts in its favour. But, Sir, when Copernicus and Galileo first taught that the sun (although it was daily seen to rise in the east, ascend majestically to the meridian, and decline at evening in the west) never moved from its station, they also had to contend with universal prejudice, the opinion of antiquity, the evidence of the senses: ought they to have renounced the demonstrations resulting from sound philosophy? I should wrong you, were I to doubt of your answer. (Jean-Baptiste Say, Letters to Mr. Malthus on Several Subjects of Political Economy and on the Cause of the Stagnation of Commerce. London: Sherwood, Neely & Jones, 1821, 3.)

The crux of the issue, and the basis for the misunderstanding between Say and Malthus, is that each used a different definition (and thus understanding) of "money." As we might expect, these different definitions of a concept as fundamental as money have been evocative of much confusion about the science of political economy, particularly where it overlaps into the moral philosophy, which necessarily provides the foundation of all the social sciences.

To Say, "money" is anything that can be used in settlement of a debt. As previously noted, this includes anything and everything that people use as a medium of exchange, regardless whether a third party has put some kind of stamp of approval on it. This is, essentially, the basic principle of the "British Banking School." As long as something can be used in settlement of a debt in a free exchange, it counts as "money," regardless who issued it, or even what it is.

To Malthus and those who take the position at odds with that of the Banking School, "money" is limited to that which is recognized by the State as the official medium of exchange. To be legitimate, it must have the sanction of the State. No transaction is legitimate unless it is carried out by means of whatever the State has authorized to be used as money. This is the basic principle of the British Currency School. It assumes a State so powerful that, like a god, it can presumably command changes in the natural law itself by claiming the right to define not just the exercise of rights, but the substance of rights, the very essence of reality. Perhaps John Maynard Keynes, the architect of modern economics, described it best in his Treatise on Money:

It is a peculiar characteristic of money contracts that it is the State or Community not only which enforces delivery, but also which decides what it is that must be delivered as a lawful or customary discharge of a contract which has been concluded in terms of the money-of-account. The State, therefore, comes in first of all as the authority of law which enforces the payment of the thing which corresponds to the name or description in the contract. But it comes in doubly when, in addition, it claims the right to determine and declare what thing corresponds to the name, and to vary its declaration from time to time — when, that is to say, it claims the right to re-edit the dictionary. This right is claimed by all modern States and has been so claimed for some four thousand years at least. It is when this stage in the evolution of Money has been reached that Knapp's Chartalism — the doctrine that money is peculiarly a creation of the State — is fully realized. (John Maynard Keynes, A Treatise on Money, Volume I: The Pure Theory of Money. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930, 4.)

According to Keynes, then, the State is effectively God — for nothing other than a Supreme Being has or could have the power to redefine the substantial nature of a thing and thereby transubstantiate one thing into another. Keynes claims for the State as something ordinary the extraordinary ability to change reality itself: "the right to re-edit the dictionary"! We can only pause in wonder, even awe, at the ready and unquestioning acceptance of such a claim and statement in the realm of political science on the part of the State, when, e.g., Christian bodies that maintain a belief in the "Real Presence" have been subject to abuse and ridicule for claiming that, as an extraordinary favor and purely a matter of faith (although considered no less real for all that), the bread and wine presented at the altar is transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ by God acting through the minister.

According to Keynes, then, "money" does not consist of anything that can be used in settlement of a debt, but is a purchase order issued by the State, or by a State-sanctioned individual or organization. Just as Hobbes claimed in Leviathan, the State is presumed to be the ultimate owner of everything. Nothing else can be used as the medium of exchange; by no other means can contracts be entered into or fulfilled; freedom of association is abolished, and even the substantial nature of reality has been altered.

Keynes's explanation, however, while superficially plausible once you accept the idea of divine right or an all-powerful State (and, in fact, reflects what many people today firmly and sincerely believe), is completely wrong. It is a declaration of pure legal and moral positivism, the sort of thinking that the noted German jurist Heinrich Rommen declared leads ultimately to nihilism, and to which he traced the rise of Nazism. Contrary to the statement that absolutism has been "claimed by all modern States and . . . so claimed for some four thousand years at least," Keynes's belief and faith in absolute State power is (as we have seen already in this blog series) actually of relatively recent appearance on the political stage — and is not, in any event, "claimed by all modern States." Contrary to Keynes's declaration, the United States of America explicitly vests sovereignty not in the State, but in the people.

This is nothing more than the Medieval argument as to whether God's Intellect (Nature/Reason) has the primacy, or whether God's — or the State's — revealed Will is supreme. We can easily see, then, that Keynes's concept of "money" is directly contrary to the Thomist understanding of the natural moral law. It assumes as a given that "law is will" (lex voluntas) instead of "law is reason" (lex ratio). (Rommen, op. cit., 36) In Keynes's and the Currency School's positivist orientation, money, like law, is whatever the State says it is. This is claimed to be so, regardless of the underlying principle, whether it be actual value represented, or the dictates of justice as discerned by reason, respectively. As Rommen explains,

Natural law is the consequence of the doctrines of the priority of the intellect over the will (law is reason) in both God and man, of the knowability of the essences of things and their essential order, their metaphysical being and the ordered hierarchy of values. Positivism, on the other hand, is the consequence of the doctrine of the primacy of the will with respect to the intellect in both theology and human psychology. Besides, voluntas here means more than mere will: it denotes passion, irrational appetite, and so on. Positivism signifies the renouncing of all efforts to know the essences of things (nominalism), the repudiation of the metaphysics of hierarchized being and value. Accordingly it is also found in the same conceptual pattern in the things of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, even though it is concealed under different names. (Ibid.)

The idea that money is anything that can be used in settlement of a debt is consistent with the understanding of the natural law based on reason (lex ratio), while the belief that money is and can only be what the State declares to be money is an application of pure moral positivism, indeed, even tyranny — as Keynes admits.

Modern political absolutism, such as Keynes erroneously declared has been around for "some four thousand years," is rooted in the theories of "divine right" that followed hard on the heels of the Reformation, as John Neville Figgis noted, and the growth of the idea that the natural moral law is based not on the Intellect, but on the Will, that is, personal opinion and (ultimately) the belief that "might makes right." As we saw, it reached its highest (or, depending on your point of view, its lowest) development in Stuart England with the totalitarian political philosophies of Sir Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes. Far from being unchallenged and pervasive for thousands of years as Keynes claimed, State absolutism was countered by political philosophies at least as far back as Aristotle in The Nichomachean Ethics, The Politics and The Athenian Constitution, and Aquinas in De Regimine Principum.

Not that any refutation of the modern mania for legal and moral positivism and State absolutism has made any difference in the modern world, absolutely convinced that the State is the sole means of effecting changes in the common good, even in reality itself. Aristotle's idea persists that the individual is helpless in the face of existing social structures or conditions. Only a divinely instituted State or one that exists on its own authority (so modern political scientists and economists assume) has the power to act on the common good, and that only indirectly.

The implications of the claim that the State alone has the power to define what can be used as money and by whom are thus, to put it mildly, breathtaking. This has led to the situation so ably described by Pope Pius XI in his landmark encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno, "On the Restructuring of the Social Order," issued in 1931. As Pius XI observed,

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. (§§ 105-106)

Although Keynes's view of money and the role of the State is admittedly the prevailing view in the modern world, it did not (despite Keynes's claim that it had developed out of the accepted theory of State absolutism for "four thousand years") go unchallenged. Aquinas opposed the theory after it made its first appearance in the 12th century. In the 16th century, when the belief that the natural moral law is based on the Will rather than the Intellect gained new momentum from the Reformation, the argument in support of the Intellect was strengthened, notably through the work of Cardinal Bellarmine.

We will start to look at the work of Cardinal Bellarmine in the next posting in this series.

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