Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is

by Michael Novak

  It offended Karol Wojtyła mightily that the Soviets were determined to take away Poland’s literature, drama, and culture, and to show contempt for their language and deep Catholic faith (and for the Hebrew language and faith). It offended him mightily that the Socialists tried to coerce everyone into the worldview, architecture, and general homogenization of international socialism. Against the Nazis from 1939 to 1945, and against the Soviets from 1948 to 1989, Poles had to struggle daily to keep their own social subjectivity alive. It was the doggedness of millions of gnarled peasants, workers, and homemakers who struggled, prayed, and prevailed—those vulgar crowds at Czestochowa, along with some few journalists, artists, professors, and other professionals, who prevailed over one of the greatest military powers and most extensive mind-controlling systems in human history.

  There is power in the subjectivity of societies. In our time, we have witnessed it abundantly.

  3. Subsidiarity

  In the English-language encyclopedia of the Catholic Church, Sacramentum Mundi, prepared by some of the most eminent theological leaders of the Second Vatican Council, the entry on “subsidiarity” begins by quoting Abraham Lincoln on the principle of federalism and other intermediary societies of civil society, to the effect that the higher powers of the state ought not to intervene in matters in which the subsidiary, smaller societies practiced their own competencies. The higher power—the state—should step in only (and cautiously) where problems are too large for subsidiary societies to handle on their own. The principle of subsidiarity protects those social arrangements in which smaller groups, closest to everyday experience, make the maximum number of decisions. The reason for this arrangement is that authorities far away from immediate experience are too removed from facts on the ground. Their ignorance makes them a danger to the common good. Too often high officials insist on what seems rational to them, but in local circumstances is wildly inefficient, expensive, and even destructive.

  True, there are two poles in the definition of subsidiarity—the higher authorities and the lower. The Catholic bishops of the United States have at times put their emphasis on the role of the state, because it brings its power to help (subsidium) the smaller, local powers. John Paul II, however, usually placed emphasis on the opposite pole, the lower powers, and for good reason. Their rights, competencies, and closer connection with facts on the ground are more likely to lead to wise prudential judgments than judgments made from far away.

  Catholics who call themselves progressives sometimes make the same argument against the Vatican. They want more liberties and powers given to local authorities (national and lower), rather than held in the hands of the Vatican. At the same time, ironically, they have a tendency, particularly in regard to the social programs of the secular state, to favor the higher power over the lower. For instance, in the United States, decisions on school busing for racial purposes, authority over political elections, and laws promoting affirmative action were for a time entrusted to federal rather than local authorities.

  These examples show that sometimes the common good may be better served by exerting federal powers. Still, the general rule holds. Higher powers tend to be more ignorant of local realities. And higher powers tend toward self-aggrandizement and the arrogance of power. Costs tend to rise precipitously; rules set from afar play out irrationally and counter-productively on local ground; and the competencies of local authorities wane from disuse. In addition, the bureaucratization of social assistance greatly diminishes the scope for human sympathies and personal knowledge. Abraham Lincoln willingly helped his brother with a significant loan, but by painful experience learned how his brother misspent it, and in consequence he refused to contribute further to his brother’s dissipation by making another loan. He wanted to see a change in his brother’s behavior first.

  Neighbors know these behavioral tendencies in a way that distant welfare bureaucrats don’t. Under the latter, recipients of social assistance must be treated like clients, not like neighbors and loved ones. From such experiences comes section 48 of Centesimus Annus:

  Malfunctions and defects in the Social Assistance State are the result of an inadequate understanding of the tasks proper to the State. Here again the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.2

  Finally, there is a natural tendency for taxpayers to let government do it all and to stop caring for the poor on their own. The impersonal squeezes out the personal. From this, huge miscalculations are made about what works, and about the real consequences of social action, as distinct from good intentions.

  4. Solidarity

  By means of his work man commits himself, not only for his own sake but also for others and with others. Each person collaborates in the work of others and for their good. Man works in order to provide for the needs of his family, his community, his nation, and ultimately all humanity. Moreover, he collaborates in the work of his fellow employees, as well as in the work of suppliers and in the customers’ use of goods, in a progressively expanding chain of solidarity.

  (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §43.)

  In Poland after 1987, “solidarity” was an unavoidable word—and virtue and good method for human progress—for it was the name given by the electrician from Gdansk, Lech Walesa, to the labor union he helped to found, and to the broad circle of people who leapt to its assistance. In the early days of the free labor unions (before the arrival of National Socialist unions and Communist Party unions), the cry “Solidarity forever!” reminded unionists that their chances of survival and success depended above all on their unity. Each unionist alone was hopelessly weak, but all men and women working together in unbreakable solidarity—and only through solidarity—could prevail.

  In June 1979, after Pope John Paul II’s “nine days that changed the world,” his first official visit to his native land, in crowds estimated at places to be in the millions, Polish citizens who despised communism saw quite visibly that “there are millions more of us than there are of them.” They began to develop confidence in their own power, provided they stuck together. In facing down the Communist machine, they now knew they had more power than they ever had before. While Pope John Paul II was there in Poland, the Polish government and its police and army were visibly helpless to intervene. The Polish people knew that the pope was de facto the greatest power in Poland; or, rather, they themselves were. The pope would protect them by drawing universal attention to the depredations committed by their Communist government.

  Reflecting on these things, Pope John Paul II began to grasp of the immense social power in unity of soul. By this he did not mean mass hysteria, or the drunken feeling of a mob sensing its capacity for violence. No, he meant the power of God’s own caritas to unite free persons into one human family. The human race is one.

  For Pope John Paul II solidarity did not mean a virtue of bonding together blindly at all costs, in order to act as a mob hot to coerce others. Rather, it meant the self-sacrificing cooperation of free women and free men, recognizing their mutual love as sisters and brothers of one same Father. It meant reaching out globally to help one another. It meant a new commitment to mutual concern for one another.

  In December 2012, I was invited to Poland by President Bronisław Komorowski to receive an award for working for the liberty of the Polish people three decades earlier, in the days when they felt in extremis, when martial law was declared in 1981. Army troops and police struck suddenly and trucked hundreds of Solidarity leaders into prison camps. In December of that year, President Ronald Reagan went on television to ask Americans to put lights in their front windows to support the liberty of the Polish people. He put such lights in the White House windows himself. Now, said the Polish president thirty-one y
ears later, it is the turn of the Polish people and other free peoples to put lights in their own windows on behalf of those in Ukraine and Belarus and other nations that do not yet enjoy basic freedoms. He invited me to accompany him downtown to light candles in front of the bronze statue of Ronald Reagan on a broad boulevard across from the U.S. embassy, to join in solidarity with Reagan’s candle lighting thirty-one years earlier. He wanted to broadcast this humble ceremony on international television, to spread the candlelight of hope into the places around the world that still remained dark.

  That evening was, I thought, a lovely visualization of the global virtue John Paul II so eloquently introduced into papal social thought in contemporary terms and symbols, following the model of Saint Augustine’s City of God, Paul VI’s “Civilization of Love,” and other such longings—and actions—around the world. Solidarity. Yes, solidarity as an appeal for the freedom and dignity of all individuals everywhere.

  5. The Social Destination of All Created Goods

  The original source of all that is good is the very act of God, who created both the earth and man, and who gave the earth to man so that he might have dominion over it by his work and enjoy its fruits (Gen 1:28). God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favouring anyone. This is the foundation of the universal destination of the earth’s goods.

  (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §31.)

  In chapter five above, in the section on the common good, I noted that the Lord God Creator intended all the goods of the earth for all his human family. Down through history, this same theorem has been embraced by philosophers in many countries and over many centuries. Closer to our own time, John Stuart Mill grounded the right to private property on the working condition that the temporary owner improve that property for the future inheritance of all. He noted that a field of strawberries put into attentive cultivation produced many times more strawberries than the same field left untended. In this way, private care improved the common inheritance of all. (He did not notice that the converse of this theorem was also verified in practice: fields left to collectivist cultivation kept falling in yield. Contrariwise, the 2 percent of Soviet fields left in private cultivation grew over 25 percent of all produce in all Soviet lands.3)

  The destination of the earth’s goods is the well-being of all humankind, both now and in the future. But the means for reaching that goal, as history shows over and over, is attentive cultivation by private owners. The moral template is this: No one may be excluded from the social benefits. All must be included. In emergencies of famine, disease, disastrous storms, floods, and the like, people around the world properly prompt their governments to intervene with often massive assistance. Recent experience also shows that the greatest success in reducing poverty is achieved by including the poor within the circle of global trade; education in the arts of enterprise and personal initiative; transferring knowledge, know-how, and skills; and expert counseling on how to do more fruitfully things already being done. The cause of wealth is human capital. Raising the level of human skills, desire, and inventiveness heightens that capital. The universal improvement of human capital is the best route to spreading human goods universally. For the last 150 years, under the influence of Communism and Socialism, distribution has been tried. It does little for the improvement of human capital, and what do nations that follow that route have to show for it?

  It is morally right that attentive and hardworking owners should be significantly rewarded for all the good they bring to others. Such incentives are a realistic spur to great efforts in each succeeding year, and to sound preparations for activities still to come, many decades (even generations) in the future.

  6. Social Justice

  The condition of the working classes is the pressing question of the hour, and nothing can be of higher interest to all classes of the State than that it should be rightly and reasonably settled. But it will be easy for Christian working men to solve it aright if they will form associations, choose wise guides, and follow on the path which with so much advantage to themselves and the common weal was trodden by their fathers before them. Prejudice, it is true, is mighty, and so is the greed of money; but if the sense of what is just and rightful be not deliberately stifled, their fellow citizens are sure to be won over to a kindly feeling towards men whom they see to be in earnest as regards their work and who prefer so unmistakably right dealing to mere lucre, and the sacredness of duty to every other consideration.

  (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, §60.)

  It is most necessary that economic life be again subjected to and governed by a true and effective directing principle. This function is one that the economic dictatorship which has recently displaced free competition can still less perform, since it is a headstrong power and a violent energy that, to benefit people, needs to be strongly curbed and wisely ruled. But it cannot curb and rule itself. Loftier and nobler principles—social justice and social charity—must, therefore, be sought whereby this dictatorship may be governed firmly and fully. Hence, the institutions themselves of peoples and, particularly those of all social life, ought to be penetrated with this justice, and it is most necessary that it be truly effective, that is, establish a juridical and social order which will, as it were, give form and shape to all economic life.

  (Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, §88.)

  Following the destruction caused by the war, we see in some countries and under certain aspects a positive effort to rebuild a democratic society inspired by social justice, so as to deprive Communism of the revolutionary potential represented by masses of people subjected to exploitation and oppression. In general, such attempts endeavour to preserve free market mechanisms, ensuring, by means of a stable currency and the harmony of social relations, the conditions for steady and healthy economic growth in which people through their own work can build a better future for themselves and their families. At the same time, these attempts try to avoid making market mechanisms the only point of reference for social life, and they tend to subject them to public control which upholds the principle of the common destination of material goods. In this context, an abundance of work opportunities, a solid system of social security and professional training, the freedom to join trade unions and the effective action of unions, the assistance provided in cases of unemployment, the opportunities for democratic participation in the life of society—all these are meant to deliver work from the mere condition of “a commodity,” and to guarantee its dignity.

  (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, §19.)

  These are some key founding insights of the concept of social justice. While it is important to note that social justice does not dominate the entire field of Catholic social teaching, it is, nonetheless, one of its central operating dynamisms. As we have done in these first seven chapters, so we will continue throughout this book to bring to light everything that social justice isn’t, and what it is. In the Catholic tradition, social justice is a concept (a strategy, too) invented to block the domination of totalitarian states over all of civic life. The term is also a guide for inventing rival institutions, particularly a multiplicity of associations created by citizens of ingenuity, initiative, and leadership, to solve as many social problems as possible without falling into dependency on the state. It is, finally, a spur to a new humanism, based on assisting the development of human capital in all countries and within all sectors of those countries.

  We will turn now to brief accounts of the crucial discoveries made by the three popes most prominent in sharpening the meaning of social justice: Leo XIII, Pius XI, and John Paul II, along with their successors Benedict XVI and Francis. From there, we conclude Part One of the book with two further considerations. The first concerns the new specialization in theological method introduced by the invention of the new theology of social justice, the specialization of the scout and the explorer. The second concerns the urgent need for a much more realistic and detailed account of the reality of human s
in. For it is human sin that most undermines all efforts to build a genuine humanism among the world’s many peoples.

  [CHAPTER 8]

  Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum

  AS WE NOTED AT THE OUTSET, DESPITE THE IMPORTANCE OF social justice, precise statements about its nature are hard to find. The index of the famous post–Vatican II encyclopedia Sacramentum Mundi lists only one reference, a single paragraph alluding to the concept, but no specific entry.1 Rodger Charles, S.J., in The Christian Social Conscience does not even mention the term, but relies on the classical distinctions among commutative, distributive, and legal justice.2 The discussion in Johannes Messner’s magisterial thousand-page text, Social Ethics (1949), is disappointingly brief; he treats the concept on only one page.3

  Aside from Nell-Breuning’s commentary (mentioned earlier, but treated more thoroughly in the next chapter), the best treatments I have discovered agree that the term “social justice” came into contemporary usage with an unusual lack of clarity. Two of these treatments offer a brief history of the term and, in the main, complement one another. One of these speaks of the term with considerable disparagement (Ernest Fortin), while the other (by Jean-Yves Calvez and Jacques Perrin) puts the term in the best light it can muster—but still lacking a clear definition.

  The third treatment, by William Ferree, Marianist Father at the University of Dayton, offers a highly stimulating interpretation, quite novel and sadly neglected.4 Indeed, from him I have learned my basic insight, namely, that social justice is in fact a virtue of individual persons. More recently, Patrick Burke has published a detailed study reinforcing this view.5

  Fortin dryly spells out the confusion surrounding the term “social justice” in this brief description of the way most people speak of social justice—what might be called the “vulgar” view of social justice: