As
we mentioned a short time ago, we seem to be getting more and more questions
from distributists. Not from the
official organizations, of course. They
have their Party Line and they’re sticking to it. There are, however, a growing number of
people interested in the subject who seem to be increasingly dissatisfied with
the Party Line, which bears a strong resemblance to a somewhat skewed or off-center
version of social justice. As CESJ
co-founder Father William Ferree put it,
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| Fr. William J. Ferree, S.M., Ph.D. |
The favorite “social technique” of our own time is the “peaceful”
demonstration, especially when media coverage is likely or can be arranged.
Subsidiary aspects of the demonstration are boycotts, sit-ins, organized
lobbying pressures, single-issue “advocacy” and then — crossing an invisible
line which is hard to define and harder still to hold — civil disobedience,
violent demonstrations, and, ultimately, terrorism!
Despite the social intent of all such techniques, and their almost
universal arrogation to themselves of the terms “Social Justice” or “Justice
and Peace,” these techniques are all radically individualistic. There are several criteria which can be applied to
test this:
1) They are directed
immediately to some specific solution
already determined in the mind of the “activist”; they are never a willingness
to dialogue with other and differing opinions on what the problem really is.
2) They are always intensely
concerned with the methodologies of pressure,
not with those of competence in the
matter in question.
3) They all require “time out” from the day-to-day social
intercourse of life, and raise the
question of how many objects one can juggle at any one time without dropping
some or all.
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| "SOMEBODY (else) SHOULD DO SOMETHING!!" |
4) Any “demonstration” is by
definition a demand on someone else
to do something. It takes for granted
that whatever is wrong is the personal work of someone else, not the common agony of all; and it always knows
exactly who and where the someone is.
All this can be summed up in the observation that the “social
activist” as we have seen them so far, is an earnest amateur by profession.
This is not to say
that such “professional amateurism” is always wrong. It is wrong as a normal methodology. If it obeys the same
principals which would permit a just war, or the insurrection against an
entrenched tyrant, more power to it! But it is a hopeless and hence unjust
substitute for the patient and full-time organization of every aspect of life
which we have seen in the necessary implementation of Social Justice.
That,
in a nutshell, is the attitude of the Just Third Way to the sort of “social
justice” practiced by those who have become ridiculed as “Social Justice
Warriors,” or “SJWs.” The SJW is defined
as “a pejorative
term for an individual promoting socially progressive views; including feminism,
civil rights, multiculturalism, political correctness, and identity
politics. The accusation of being an SJW carries implications of pursuing
personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction, and being engaged
in disingenuous social justice arguments or activism to raise personal
reputation.” Anyway, the question was,
From
what I understand about economics it seems like there has been a bit of
revisionist history. Perhaps I am wrong, so please tell me if I am. It seems
that any time in the past when people bought or sold their goods to others was “Capitalist.”
Thus, in Tom Woods’s book, How the Church Built Western Civilization,
the argument is that during the Middle Ages religious orders engaged in commerce,
and therefore invented Capitalism. I
tried looking up the history of different economic systems, and the claim is
always made that any economy in which goods and services are sold at a profit
is and has always been Capitalist. Yet
if Capitalism is so old why am I under the impression it’s so new? When I try
to look any of this up I can find nothing.
Here’s
how we answered the question:
“Capitalism”
is a term invented by socialists as a pejorative in the early nineteenth
century to describe a system in which a relatively few people own capital, and
everybody else works for them for wages. It was contrasted with socialism in
which private property in capital is abolished as a natural right, and either
the State or delegated private individuals own, and everybody else works for
them for wages.
As
Chesterton and Belloc understood, there is thus really very little difference
between capitalism and socialism for the wage worker. He or she doesn’t own capital in either
system, and derives all income from wages. In both capitalism and socialism, capital
ownership is concentrated in relatively few hands.
Just
as the socialists hijacked language, however, so did the capitalists. They made
a great effort to turn the word “capitalism” from a curse word into a good
thing.
Unfortunately,
this did nothing to clarify matters, for there were (and remain) as many
definitions of capitalism as there are people who consider themselves
capitalists. It has been used to describe anything and everything from economic
anarchy to rigid State control of the economy.
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| "Say wuh?" |
Amusingly,
Michael Novak claimed that what he meant by “Democratic Capitalism” is exactly
what Chesterton meant by distributism . . . and Martin Gardner declared that
what he meant by “Democratic Socialism” is exactly what Chesterton meant by
distributism. Thus, capitalism, socialism, and distributism are all the same
thing!
In
reality, you can oversimplify somewhat by saying that, while socialism is one
thing under many names, capitalism is many things under one name.
Thus,
in his book, How the Church Built Western
Civilization, Tom Woods, an Austrian economist, discerned elements common
to Austrian economics and to a Medieval economy, and concluded — honestly, if
incorrectly — that they could both be termed “capitalist,” at least by his
definition of capitalism. If we
understood him accurately, Woods’s definition of capital is a generally free
market restrained by individual ethics and characterized by private ownership
of capital and a minimal economic role for the State.
The
problem is that Austrian economics is “Currency School.” That means the amount of money in an economy
determines the velocity of money (i.e.,
the average number of times each unit of currency is spent in a year), the
price level, and the number of transactions.
The main bone of contention (or so it seems to us) between Austrian
economics and Keynesian economics is that Austrians demand an asset-backed
currency, with the amount of currency determined by the amount of gold, while
Keynesians allow the State to issue all currency, backed with its own debt, and
manipulate the amount of currency to achieve political ends.
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| Ludwig von Mises (horns and tail surgically removed) |
From
the perspective of binary economics, both the Austrians and Keynesians are
wrong. While the Austrians could easily be corrected by a few simple (though
not necessarily easy) additions and changes of course, however, the Keynesians
are so far wrong that it is unlikely that they will ever find their way back to
anything resembling common sense. The
problem is that Keynes told the politicians what they wanted to hear, while von
Mises did not. Hence, virtually every
economy on earth is Keynesian, not Austrian.
Our
mention of Ludwig von Mises led to a follow up question:
Several
years ago, a friend who was interested in such things told me he liked a Market economy, but not a Capitalist one in which you must sell in
the market what you produce. My friend
would go on and on about Von Mises being evil and how he believed the German
school to be correct (i can’t remember the name associated with that school).
Do you know what that would be about?
That
one was a bit vague, since we couldn’t figure out what “the German school”
might be. Nevertheless, we gave it a
shot. First, however, we admitted that
we couldn’t really answer the question, at least without more information. Frankly, it’s always easier to admit you
don’t know the answer than to make one up or engage in doubletalk to sound
intelligent but meaningless.
We
do know, however, that a number of distributists consider von Mises and the
other Austrians to be virtual demons in semi-human form. Trying to sift through the vitriol, this
attitude seems to be an application of the widespread belief among Catholics
influenced by Msgr. John A. Ryan that the primary care for the poor rests not
with private individuals under charity, but with the State under an egregiously
misunderstood “social justice” . . . which has next to nothing to do with
genuine social justice as we understand it.
#30#
