As the result of
what are perceived as inadequacies in the disaster relief efforts of the
American Red Cross (ARC), some authorities are urging people not to contribute
to the organization. Granted that
serious mistakes have been made, and that this writer has personal reasons for
not contributing to the ARC, attempting to undermine the institution is itself
a serious error, and the antithesis of social justice.
This does not
refer to “all the good work” that the organization carries out. That is not social justice, but individual
charity, and the two must not be confused.
Nor does it refer to the fact that the Geneva Conventions require all
signatories to maintain a national Red Cross organization and affiliation with
the international body.
No, there is a
far more compelling reason for correcting errors and flaws in an institution
instead of demanding its dissolution or takeover by the State.
First and
foremost, what social justice demands in the current situation in which an
institution is demonstrating serious flaws and making bad mistakes is not hate,
but charity — social charity. Social
charity is not widespread or universal almsgiving or redistribution, but the
virtue that commands people to love their institutions as they love themselves. It may be “tough love,” and result in acts of
social justice that bring about a revolutionary overhaul and reform of the
institution, but it still must be love, and not the hate that calls for its destruction.
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| Clara Barton (1821-1912), American Red Cross Founder |
This is, in fact,
what social justice is all about. Social
justice is not concerned with making up for the lack of individual justice and
charity, but making it possible for individual justice and charity to function. If the ARC is failing in its mission to aid
and succor people in distress — individual charity — then what social justice
demands in such a case is to carry out reforms to ensure as far as humanly
possible that the ARC can once again carry out its mission. This may require a housecleaning of
management and staff, better screening and training of volunteers, adequate
supervision in the field, and so on — whatever an honest and objective
self-appraisal deems necessary to restore the organization.
That much is
obvious. Not so obvious is the essential
role that non-government associations and institutions, such as the ARC,
churches, schools, associations, clubs, unions, and so on, play in a just
social order by the mere fact of their existence. Every “corporation” (using the term in its
general sense of an organized group that has a social identity) that is not
directly controlled by the State prevents the State from having a monopoly over
social life.
The totalitarian
urge of the modern Nation State naturally leads it to undermine, eliminate, or
subsume every potential rival to its power.
Usually this has been directed at organized religion, but any “suspect
conventicles” (as the totalitarian philosopher Thomas Hobbes called them),
meaning any group not under the direct control of the State, must be abolished,
or the State is in danger of losing its position as “the Mortall God” that must
be obeyed on earth as the Immortal God is (presumably) obeyed in heaven.
Removing all
intermediate institutions leaves the individual at the mercy of the State, a
goal of every totalitarian government that has ever existed. As political commentator George Holland Sabine
described this condition in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy,
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| Nazi Germany and Facist Italy eliminated intermediate institutions. |
Totalitarianism
undertook to organize and direct every phase of economic and social life to the
exclusion of any area of permitted privacy or voluntary choice. But it is
important to observe what this type of organization concretely meant. First and
foremost it meant the destruction of great numbers of organizations that had
long existed and that had provided agencies for economic and social activities.
Labor unions, trade and commercial and industrial associations, fraternal
organizations for social purposes or for adult education or mutual aid, which
had existed on a voluntary basis and were self-governing were either wiped out
or were taken over and restaffed. Membership became virtually or actually
compulsory, officers were selected according to the “leadership principle,” and
their procedures were decided not by the membership but by the outside power
that the leader represented. The “leadership principle” meant merely personal
power or the power of a clique, so that organizations which had been
self-governed were subjected to regimentation and manipulation. The result was
a paradox. Though the individual was “organized” at every turn, he stood more
alone than ever before. He was powerless in the hands of organizations of which
he was nominally a member and that claimed to speak for him and to protect his
interests. But with respect to those interests he had nothing to say. National
socialism poured scorn on democracy and capitalism as forms of “atomic
individualism,” but totalitarian society was truly atomic. The people were
literally the “masses,” without information except what propaganda agencies
chose to give them and without power to combine for any purposes of their
own. (George H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory, Third Edition.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961, 918-919.)
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| Pius XI's social doctrine gives an answer. |
There is also a
practical aspect of this. When the State
does manage to establish a monopoly over the whole of social life, including
economic and religious life, it inevitably happens that it has only managed to
set the stage for its own corporate suicide.
No one institution, especially the extremely specialized social tool of
the State, can do everything.
If ancillary or
intermediate institutions such as the ARC are flawed or performing badly, the
goal should be to correct and reform them, not abolish them or turn them over
to the State to run or administer. As
Pope Pius XI explained in the encyclical in which he presented his social
doctrine centered on the act of social justice,
When we speak of
the reform of institutions, the State comes chiefly to mind, not as if
universal well-being were to be expected from its activity, but because things
have come to such a pass through the evil of what we have termed
“individualism” that, following upon the overthrow and near extinction of that
rich social life which was once highly developed through associations of
various kinds, there remain virtually only individuals and the State. This is
to the great harm of the State itself; for, with a structure of social
governance lost, and with the taking over of all the burdens which the wrecked associations
once bore, the State has been overwhelmed and crushed by almost infinite tasks
and duties. (Quadragesimo Anno, §
78.)
If you do not
donate to the ARC out of personal choice or preference, fine. That is the American way. If you’re doing it out of dissatisfaction
with the way the organization is performing, consider first organizing with
others to reform the institution. Only
if that fails have you fulfilled your obligation under social justice.
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