Middle Ground Between Storck and Sirico?
This essay I wrote today is a much more developed treatment of the libertarian-distributist alliance I proposed not long ago. It was inspired by a critique of the Acton Institute and it’s Fr. Sirico by distributist Thomas Storck, linked through the essay.
My hope is that it can be an opening move in a real dialogue between libertarians and distributists. Comments are welcome.
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Distributionism is always wrong. You don’t have any right to take from those who have wealth and give to anyone else, regardless of their need. The giving must always be voluntary. That’s the whole point of the story of Jesus and the rich man. Jesus never told his disciples to take from the rich man forcibly and give to the poor. He never said that Caesar had to take the rich to care for the poor. he said that the rich man had to voluntarily do it. And it wasn’t so that the poor could be fed, but so that the rich man’s soul could be saved.
Distributionism is inherently immoral – just as immoral as the rich man’s decision to walk away from Jesus.
Uh… Paul, he’s writing about distributism (the idea that the maximum number of people should be owners, rather than wage workers) not “distributionism”.
I left a more substantive comment over on Joe’s blog, but I would strongly recomment this essay to interested parties. It is a well thought out and interesting piece.
Paul – You obviously don’t understand distributism. There is no “taking” involved, it is merely about the widest distribution of ownership of the means of production. In other words the workers are the shareholders rather than outside speculators. In a new firm that would take place from it’s beginning – built into the very fabric of the company. For an existing firm (such as a large manufacturing firm) it could take place through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) or a variety of other means – NONE of which involve “taking” from one to give to the other.
Here is a real live example of it working right here in the USA
The SRC Story
Learn how Jack Stack and his fellow employees transformed a failing division of International Harvester into one of the most successful and competitive companies in America using the principles of Open-Book Management.
Incidentally, Ronald Reagan was a proponent of worker ownership:
Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Project Economic Justice
I already left this as a comment on Joe’s blog, but I might as well repeat myself:
In general, I’ve found that libertarians tend to be right when it comes to questions of public policy, and tend to be wrong when it comes to questions of moral philosophy.
The analogy I would draw here is to cold fusion. There’s nothing immoral about using cold fusion as a cheap, clean energy source, and indeed if you could replace our current reliance on other more costly forms of energy with cold fusion that would be a wonderful thing. The only problem with cold fusion is that it doesn’t work. Similarly, the only problem with the minimum wage, OSHA, government run health care, and on and on is that they don’t work.
Paul Primavera,
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2403 The right to private property, acquired by work or received from others by inheritance or gift, does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind. the universal destination of goods remains primordial, even if the promotion of the common good requires respect for the right to private property and its exercise.
2406 Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good.
Nothing Joe Hargrave or Thomas Storck have suggested conflict in any way with the seventh commandment.
The political authority has a legitimate role to play.