It is all very
well to say that social justice is better than socialism. We could even come up with a “Top Ten List”
of reasons why, and try to make something appallingly serious — the
infiltration of socialist principles and the concept of society into virtually
every aspect of life — a trifle less ghastly.
We’ve decided to
do better than that, though: an alternative to both capitalism and socialism
that has the potential to deliver for everyone what these other systems only
promise or restrict to an élite. This is the Just Third Way, which we
define as a free
market system that economically empowers all individuals and families through
the democratization of money and credit for new production, with universal
access to direct ownership of income-producing capital — “capital” being
defined as all non-human factors of production.
It is in this definition of
the Just Third Way that we begin to realize the importance of private property in capital, and why, e.g., Pope Leo
XIII declared, “The law . . . should favor ownership, and its policy
should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.” (Rerum Novarum, § 46.) We can sum it up in one word: power.
·
Not income?
No. If an adequate and secure income was the
exclusive goal of the Just Third Way, we would probably be relegated to
supporting such things as Keynesian full employment, Major Douglas’s “social
credit,” or any one of the seemingly countless ways people have devised of
moving wealth from one person to another without producing anything or getting anything
in return, in short, socialism.
·
Not the uplifting of humanity, society, the
common good, or any other way of expressing the abstraction of the collective?
Sidebar: this does
not refer to the Just Third Way definition of common good, but to the popular
notion of aggregate individual wellbeing or general welfare. Our definition of the common good is the
institutional (that is, social) environment within which people carry out the
business of living. Individualists tend
to view the Just Third Way definition of the common good as collectivist, while
collectivists view it as individualistic.
It is neither, recognizing that human beings are individuals who by
nature associate in a social environment, i.e.,
“political.” This is what Aristotle
meant when he said that man is by nature a political
animal.
No. “Humanity” and all those other things and
more are abstractions: human intellectual constructs derived from reality, but
not existing apart from the human mind.
(For you philosophers, we reject Plato’s theory that ideas have
independent existence and human beings go from the general to the particular,
and go with Aristotle’s theory that we go from the particular to the
general.) Abstractions are “mental
fictions” that enable human beings to deal with the infinite without being
overwhelmed.
Socialism, by the
way, is inherently Platonic, having the image of an ideal completely separate
from individual human reality as the goal toward which to strive. This can be either “scientific” (atheist) or
“religious” (society is God), but both reject individual human dignity and
sovereignty.
For the general
norms of the natural law derived from observations of individual — that is,
particular — human nature, scientific socialism asserts the Will of the People as
interpreted by the strongest, while religious socialism substitutes the Will of
God . . . as interpreted by the strongest.
Might makes right in both cases, and individuals are stripped of all
power. Both scientific and religious
socialism end up eliminating God as God, and put Collective Man at the center
as the new deity.
Nor is capitalism
much better. As far as the propertyless
individual is concerned, whether capital ownership is concentrated in the hands
of a private sector élite
(capitalism), or a State bureaucracy (socialism), he is still stuck with wages
and welfare as the sole source of income.
In plain terms, anyone without ownership is dependent on a powerful private
sector élite for wages, or a powerful
public sector élite for welfare.
The Just Third
Way is only after power.
Not power over
others. Capitalism and socialism are
systems built on the ability to control others.
We have seen (and lived in) that future, and it doesn’t work.
No, the Just
Third Way seeks to empower each and every individual with power over his or her
own life, thereby enabling each person to acquire and develop virtue and become
more fully human.
And how do we
propose to do that? By making it
possible for as many as possible of the people to become capital owners.
Why?
Because, as
Daniel Webster pointed out nearly two centuries ago, “Power naturally and
necessarily follows property.” If you
want control over your own life, you had better own capital, or you are
dependent on someone who does. As
William Cobbett commented at about the same time as Webster,
 |
| William Cobbett |
Freedom is not an
empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it is not a thing that nobody can feel.
It means, — and it means nothing else, — the full and quiet enjoyment of your
own property. If you have not this, if this be not well secured to you, you may
call yourself what you will, but you are a slave.
It all boils down
to a simple choice: Own, or be owned.
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