Is Thomas Woods A Dissenter? A Further Reply, Pt. 1
by Thomas Storck
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Almost five years ago I wrote for ChroniclesMagazine.org a piece attacking Thomas Woods’ views on the relationship between Catholic social teaching and the science of economics. In brief, my complaint was against Woods’ contention that certain teachings of the popes on social matters overstep the boundaries of legitimate Church teaching because they contradict the findings of economics, as Woods conceives them to be. In other words, Woods claimed that a subject, whose conclusions are based merely on human reasoning, is able to trump teachings which more than one pope claimed were a part of his legitimate teaching office. Well, back in 2004 Dr. Woods replied to me at LewRockwell.com, and I replied to him again here. In addition, the exchange generated a large response by ChroniclesMagazine.org readers. A couple years later I submitted a scholarly paper to the Catholic Social Science Review on the separate but related question of what kind of economic analysis is implied or assumed by the popes in the exercise of their teaching on social matters. For although the Church does not claim the authority to set forth the correct principles of economics, or of any other human science for that matter, inevitably the papal social encyclicals make use of certain economic principles and modes of analysis which imply a certain understanding of how an economy operates, just as the popes assume a certain understanding of philosophy, without thereby setting forth a detailed philosophic system. Incidentally, my paper was not primarily an attack on Woods, and I mention him only in a note.
The editors of the Review (with my permission) created a symposium in the journal based on my article, with the chief response by Dr. Woods and four subsidiary replies, Woods and I each selecting two of the respondents. Although, as I said, my paper mentioned Woods only briefly and hardly adverted to the question of dissent from papal teaching, Woods chose to make that point an important part of his reply. All this appeared a couple of months ago in the 2009 issue and I was content to let the matter rest there for the time being. But now Dr. Woods has taken his reply and posted it on LewRockwell.com. Since he has chosen to widen the conflict, as it were, I am taking advantage of the kindness of the ChroniclesMagazine.org editors to reply to him.
In the first place, before I begin to examine Woods’ article, why is this controversy important? It is important for two reasons, the more fundamental of which is that if adherents of a certain form of economics are able to relegate certain parts of papal teachings to merely unfortunate expressions of opinion on the part of popes, why stop with economics? Why cannot adherents of psychology, sociology, philosophy do the same? Although it is true that the Church has not been given the mission from our Lord of elaborating the principles of any of the sciences that are based on human reason and experimentation, she is in the position of stating when the various human sciences impinge on moral or dogmatic questions. It is not the business of economics or psychology, at least as conducted by faithful Catholics, to tell the popes that they have strayed beyond their teaching office into other domains. If the Church cannot say that certain conclusions of the various sciences are sometimes simply wrong, what are we to say to a psychologist who claims that his research shows that sexual promiscuity is necessary for healthy human development? Or to a philosopher who asserts that it is nonsense to talk of entities such as God or angels and that such words are merely meaningless utterances that refer to nothing real?
The second reason that Woods’ project is so unfortunate is that Catholic social teaching is important, indeed very important. Although the Church has been teaching in the area of economic and social morality from her beginning, since Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum every pope has seen this explicit attention to the “social question” as a worthy and appropriate exercise of the authority which Jesus Christ entrusted to the Apostle Peter and his successors. Any Catholic, I would think, who regards the Church as God’s voice in the midst of sinful and fallible mankind would welcome such teaching on the part of the Vicars of Christ. I am aware, of course, that their exercise of infallibility is limited to the most solemn statements, and that some of their utterances do not even rise to the level of magisterial teaching. But when we encounter a certain doctrine, the right of the worker to a living wage, for example, repeated over and over again since Leo XIII as the teaching of the moral law, we would be very foolish to look upon this as anything but the exercise of that authority which Pius XII spoke of in his encyclical, Humani Generis. Pope Pius wrote,
20. Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: “He who heareth you, heareth me”; and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.
So to summarize, a faithful and orthodox Catholic ought to be suspicious of any argument tending to set limits on papal teaching, limits more narrow than those set by the popes themselves, especially when these arguments depend upon some science whose conclusions ultimately rest on man’s fallible reasoning power. This is not to denigrate reason, but to point out its limits and imperfections and that it is not the final authority for a Catholic on matters of faith or morals. After this general introduction let me turn my attention to Woods’ article.
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1 Comment by Rob on 18 January 2010:
This is a discussion worth having. We must be very careful when the defenders of papal authority wish to insist on the importance of papal teaching save when it goes against their own political and economic thought. I’m not really thinking about Woods to be honest but the neocons like Weigel. I honestly have not read much about Catholic economics (though I am currently slogging through the two volumes IHS released-Distributist Perspectives). I will be following this conversation with great interest.
2 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 18 January 2010:
Very good to reignite this debate.
A question for Mr. Storck, whose I opinion share. How does he respond to Mr. Woods’ example of the policy prescriptions in the papal encyclical Populorum Progressio, policy prescriptions that, when followed, led to the disasters associated with Third World foreign aid?
Is Mr. Woods right about that, and if he is, what is your response to it?
3 Comment by Thomas Storck on 18 January 2010:
Dear Mr. Kirkwood:
Thanks for your word of agreement. As the person who commented right above you noted, we do have to be careful to distinguish between levels of authority in Catholic teaching, including in papal teaching. In the corpus of papal social teaching the things we should especially pay attention to are those that are reiterated over and over. I would say there are even several that seem to me to rise to the level of infallibility by virtue of the ordinary magisterium, and include the right of the worker to a living wage, the fact that free competition is not an adequate way in which to regulate the economy and the duty of the state to go beyond classical liberalism in its approach to the economy. Beyond that we have various levels of authority, down to mere observations. John Paul II in Centesimus said that some of the statements in that encyclical were his personal reflections and not part of magisterial teaching, at any level. (See the last paragraph of section 3.) However, I would be careful about saying that such and such a policy advanced by a pope was a failure, since one seldom knows whether it was implemented according to the pope’s intentions, efficiently, etc. To realize that sometimes foreign aid was less than helpful is not to condemn the idea itself.
But I would stress that as the body of papal social teaching continues to grow, we have to look for common themes and realize that there are certain matters which were simply judgments and not really part of magisterial teaching or which applied to the situation at the time of writing. Pius XI is pretty good, I think in Quadragesimo Anno, at distinguishing between his opinions on some matter and what he set forth as Catholic teaching. Most importantly, we should try to make our thinking on the social question, as it was once called, conform to the general approach taken by all the popes since Leo XIII, an approach that avoids both classical liberalism and statism.
4 Comment by Marty on 19 January 2010:
Wilhelm Ropke was the best non Catholic, Catholic economist. I don’t think we have to choose between a more state run distributism or minarchist/anarchist captialism.
We can have a free market based on Catholic and Austrian School principles with limited state interference.
5 Comment by Brent on 19 January 2010:
Mr. Storck,
You play a dangerous game when you offer the defense “it was a good idea, it just wasn’t implemented right.” That is the defense of every wrongheaded action offered by intellectuals when a “good idea” has disastrous results.
I have no expertise in this matter and cannot productively comment further, but your assertion in 3) is not a sufficient rejoinder to Mr Kirkwood’s question or Dr Wood’s assertion.
6 Comment by Redman on 19 January 2010:
“limits more narrow than those set by”. Please; and this by a ’scholar’?
nar⋅row
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–adjective
1. of little breadth or width; not broad or wide; not as wide as usual or expected: a narrow path.
2. limited in extent or space; affording little room: narrow quarters.
3. limited in range or scope: a narrow sampling of public opinion.
4. lacking breadth of view or sympathy, as persons, the mind, or ideas: a narrow man, knowing only his professional specialty; a narrow mind.
5. with little margin to spare; barely adequate or successful; close: a narrow escape.
6. careful, thorough, or minute, as a scrutiny, search, or inquiry.
7. limited in amount; small; meager: narrow resources.
8. straitened; impoverished: narrow circumstances.
9. New England. stingy or parsimonious.
10. Phonetics.
a. (of a vowel) articulated with the tongue laterally constricted, as the ee of beet, the oo of boot, etc.; tense. Compare lax (def. 7).
b. (of a phonetic transcription) utilizing a unique symbol for each phoneme and whatever supplementary diacritics are needed to indicate its subphonemic varieties. Compare broad (def. 14).
11. (of livestock feeds) proportionately rich in protein.
–verb (used without object)
12. to decrease in width or breadth: This is where the road narrows.
–verb (used with object)
13. to make narrower.
14. to limit or restrict (often fol. by down): to narrow an area of search; to narrow down a contest to three competitors.
15. to make narrow-minded: Living in that village has narrowed him.
–noun
16. a narrow part, place, or thing.
17. a narrow part of a valley, passage, or road.
18. narrows, (used with a singular or plural verb) a narrow part of a strait, river, ocean current, etc.
19. The Narrows, a narrow strait from upper to lower New York Bay, between Staten Island and Long Island. 2 mi. (3.2 km) long; 1 mi. (1.6 km) wide.
Origin:
bef. 900; ME; OE nearu; c. OS naru narrow, D naar unpleasant; akin to G Narbe scar, lit., narrow mark
7 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 19 January 2010:
Redman, it seems to me that you’ve tried to attack Mr. Storck because you cannot respond to his argument. As for those of us who make our living writing and editing, we have no trouble understanding what “limits more narrow than those set by” means. Clearly Mr. Storck means limits that have been reduced in range or scope (your definition 3).
Now, if you have something substantial to contribute to this discussion, please do, but leave the pedantry to those who run this website.
8 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 19 January 2010:
Brent, it’s disingenuous to reduce Mr. Storck’s response in comment 3 to one line that he placed after a “However.” The rest of his comment sets forth a way to help determine what is essential in a papal document and what might be mere “policy.” Even if Mr. Storck believes that the policy has not been (to paraphrase Chesterton) tried and found wanting but never properly tried, he is not suggesting that the policy is essential, much less something that rises to the level of infallibility by virtue of the ordinary magisterium (as other elements of the encyclicals may).
9 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 19 January 2010:
Marty, one principal question of this discussion is whether Austrian School principles are compatible with Catholic social teaching. I know that you are partial to Mises, as well as a devout Catholic, but your statement doesn’t answer the question.
10 Comment by robert on 19 January 2010:
“The important point is that the political ideals of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives. This means, among other things, that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit.” Hayek
In his 1913 book, The Servile State, Hilaire Belloc writes, “…the effect of Socialist doctrine on Capitalist society is to produce a third thing different from either of its two begetters–to wit, the Servile State.”
De Tocqueville described the two horns on this devil’s head like this: “Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restrict it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere member. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
Recently the Catholic commentator and popularizer, George Wiegel, remarked in a column concerning economics that “there is no third way.” (Well as finer minds have demonstrated there will be a third way either “the way down and out” or the way back to some normal living as experienced by the majority of mankind for the last five thousand years.) It his Wiegel’s rhetorical way of marginalizing folks like, Hilaire Belloc, Catholic Popes he finds irrelevant, Christian Philosophers such as The Southern Agrarians and more recently writers such as the late Brent Bozell Sr. and Wendell Berry who all commented on the train wreck which occurs when ordinary humans are divorced in daily life from their faith, work and intellectual convictions. Thomas Storck has probably fought the best fight of my generation in attempting to shed light on the pressing and intractable question of how to make a living,and raise a family, while keeping faith. The Chronicles article a few months ago by Tom Landess , which was a little snap shot of the ordinary financial strife for independent farmers of his father’s generation, was priceless. In fact Dr. Landess has been doing some great work in the last few years by simply remembering the stories for his generation of traditionalists, all that they have endured at the hands of destroyers and then simply telling the truth about those memories. His talk a few summers back at the Rockford Summer School about how Mel Bradford was treated by the movers and shakers of the Republican Party was simply priceless. Thanks to Mr. Storck for his relentless efforts at passing on what he has been given.
11 Comment by James Kabala on 19 January 2010:
Could anyone be so kind as to expound further on that remark by Pope Pius XII? If taken literally it seems to require Catholics to believe every utterance in an encyclical, no matter how small the matter or however made obsolete the remark by subsequent events. This differs from my previous understanding that papal infallibility was strictly limited to ex cathedra remarks. Mr. (Dr.?) Storck goes some way toward explaining the remark in comment #3, but I would like a bit more.
P.S. I am NOT trying to find a way to evade believing the teachings on contraception, women’s ordination, etc., all of which I believe, but I am concerned about the idea that every word in the volumes upon volumes of encyclicals is required belief. Pius XII himself, from what I understand, was a bit prone to issue encylicals on passing political matters, and I was wondering to what degree those would be binding either on his contemporaries or subsequent generations.
12 Comment by Ariosto on 19 January 2010:
During the controversies of 2004, Thomas Fleming wrote an article discussing the impossibility of “economic science,” “economic law” and the like. I believe the article touched upon the thought of Mises and Rothbard, as well. I cannot find this article and hope that chroniclesmagazine.org is able to repost it or supply the link.
13 Comment by John Marino on 19 January 2010:
The Pope has a right to demand that the rich help the poor to the best of their ability. That is the Gospel of Jesus. Dr. Woods in his book on the ‘ The Church And The Market’ shows a profound respect for traditional church teachings on free markets. I believe Austrian economics when used by Christians with a deep commitment to private charity are basic to the doctrine of Subsidiarity.
How many Catholics here agree with the Pope and his writings on immigration and foreign aid? How many agree with his teaching on the enviroment? The great apostles of free trade and European unity were all very committed Catholics. Men like Conrad Adenauer had the full backing of the Pope. The Pope claims no infallibility on economics and the other sciences. All he demands is that proper respect be placed on Christion teachings and tradition. I think people like Weigal and Novak, with their disrespect for the Just War Doctrine are far more out of sync with the last 2 Popes.
The Church has always allowed the fullest discussion of subjects important to the future of mankind. It is no sin to have a disagreement about economic methods and how to best be a Christian.
14 Comment by Thomas Storck on 19 January 2010:
Let me attempt if not a complete answer to Mr. Kabala, at least some remarks that might contribute to an answer.
Social encyclicals are by their nature somewhat different from encyclicals dealing with matters of faith, since the actual facts of the social order are so varied in both time and place, and there are so many possible ways of seeking a solution to social questions. Even encyclicals dealing with other types of moral questions, e.g., sexuality, can be more straightforward, since for the most part the possible permutations of the moral question are fewer. I suspect that Pope Pius XII in the passage I quoted primarily had in mind dogmatic statements, but that does not mean that he excluded questions of social morality either.
A good example of the application of Pius XII’s statement, in my opinion, can be seen in his predecessor, Pius XI. In Quadragesimo Anno he makes clear that certain things he is saying he understands to be matters of morality, e.g., the just wage, the insufficiency of free competition, the impossibility of a true Catholic being a real socialist, etc. He speaks of them as laying down a principle that is binding. On the other hand, he also offers suggestions about how to implement things, careful comments on current and local situations (e.g., the Italian Fascist economy) and is clearly aware of the complexity of the world’s economy. (E.g., at one point he notes that much of the agrarian economy was as yet little influenced by international capitalism.) I admit to liking this encyclical very much, both for its content and because I think it was carefully drafted to eliminate some of the concerns that Mr. Kabala rightly evinces.
The more recent social encyclicals do sometimes seem to distinguish less clearly than Pius XI between levels of authority. What should our response to that be? Well, I repeat what I said in an earlier post here, we should look for perennial doctrine and principles that are repeated. If we do so I think we will have fewer difficulties in ascertaining what the fundamental principles of Catholic social morality are.
15 Comment by robert on 19 January 2010:
Foriegn aid as used today by most governments is based on bribery by the giver and corruption by the taker. It has nothing to do with the Papal observation of the need for rich nations to share their substance with the poor, or with the Gospel message. Some soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan need arms and legs, capable doctors and prosthesis. They may also deserve, in justice, our respect for their desire to serve, but also our courage in holding their leaders accountable for sending them to war unnecessarily. Charity is not an abstraction, it is like mercy that is twice blessed—blessing him that gives and him that accepts. It is a personal sacrifice described by the poet as descending on one “like a gentle rain from heaven on the place beneath.” It cannot be performed in the abstract and those who foster abstract forms of “charity” are charlatans, con-men or politicians. In the strict sense, international efforts at performing charitable acts are called religious orders, such as Mother Theresa’s Sisters of Charity, St Francis and his friars, etc.. I can’t imagine any circumstance in which such efforts would rightly be called charitable, while performed by a secular arm of the government. Sanctions of course are another matter as they involve hurting another group or race of humans to the point of breaking their will power –starving, depriving, killing, enslaving, etc.. all proper political acts as Dr. Wilson has mentioned many times before but most recently when he observed — ” The American people would profit if they learned not to believe that politics is the realm of doing good. Politics is the realm of vanity, greed, lust, deception, and force.”
16 Comment by Theodore M. Van Oosbree on 19 January 2010:
I think the papal concern for a living wage is a critical insight. America in the 1950s came as close as it ever has to providing a living wage for the ordinary Joe and we who remember that time fondly do so chiefly for that reason. A living wage for husbands meant women looked after their families and their communities. Husbands and wives depended upon one another because of their complementary functions. “Free market” ideologues favor policies that undercut the living wage: free trade (a euphemism for sending jobs overseas), mass immigration and hostility to organized labor.
17 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 19 January 2010:
Responding to Mr. Marino #13:
“The Pope has a right to demand that the rich help the poor to the best of their ability. That is the Gospel of Jesus.”
Yes, he does, and yes, it is, but as Chronicles contributor Joe Sobran once observed, Jesus admonished you to help the poor by giving of yourself in such things as food or money. Jesus did not say to vote for a politican to take money from someone else and give it someone you have never met, using the police power of the state.
18 Comment by oil can harry on 19 January 2010:
Just what is a “living wage” anyway? Pope Leo described it as “a wage sufficiently large to enable [a worker] to provide comfortably for himself and his children.” A family of how many children? And isn’t “comfortably” a somewhat nebulous term?
During my teen years I worked a number of minimum wage jobs that certainly could not support a family, yet I was grateful to have them. Were my employers immoral for not paying more? Please remember that some struggling businesses can’t afford to pay their employees much more than the minimum wage.
19 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 19 January 2010:
By a happy and undoubtedly Divinely-guided coincidence, I came upon this in today’s reading from Rev. Francis Fernandez’ “In Conversation with God.” Today’s reading is about “Dignity Of The Person,” and the section I will quote from is specifically about labor and management and economics. It should answer Messers Kabala, Marino and Oil Can Harry.
I hope no one minds that this is a little lengthy:
“We need to examine ‘whether the structure, the functioning, the environment of an economic system, are such that they curtail the human dignity of all those who expend their energy on it’ (John XXIII, “Mater et Magistra”). We have to keep ever in mind that the supreme criterion in the use of material goods must be ‘that of facilitating and promoting the spiritual perfection of human beings, in both the natural and supernatural order,’ beginning, as is logical, with those who produce goods (Ibid)
“This is why the intimate connection between work and ownership demands, for its own perfection, that the person who carries out the work can consider in some way that ‘he is putting his labour into something which is to some extent and in a very real sense his own.’ (John Paul II, “Laborem Exercens”)
“The dignity of work is given expression in the just wage, the basis of all social justice, even where it is a matter of a free contract, for although the stipulate salary may be in accordance with the letter of the law, this does not legitimise any recompense that may be agreed upon. If the contractor, the head of a company, the builder, the owner, the mistress of the house … wants to take advantage of a situation where there is a surplus of labor, for example, so as to pay salaries incommensurate with the worker’s dignity as a human being, it would be an offense against the men and women concerned (as well as being against their Creator) because they have an inalienable natural right to sufficient means for the support of themselves and their families, which takes precedence over the right of free contract. (Paul VI “Populorum Progressio”) Another ‘logical consequence is that we all have a duty to do our work well … We cannot neglect our duty or be satisfied with working in a half-hearted manner. (John Paul II, Address).
“We need to bear in mind that the principal aim of economic development ‘does not consist merely in the increased volume of goods produced, any more than it consists in profit, or in the enhancement of the employer’s prestige; it is directed to the service of man, of man, that is, in his totality, taking into account his material needs and the requirements of his intellectual, moral, spiritual and religious life.’ (Second Vatican Council). This does not deny the sphere of legitimate autonomy to economics, an autonomy that is proper to the temporal order, which will lead men to study the causes of economic problems, suggest technical and political solutions, etc. But these solutions must always be subject to a higher criterion, of a moral order, for they are not absolutely independent and autonomous; and we must not trust purely technologically-provided solutions when we come up against problems that have their root cause in some moral disorder.”
20 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 19 January 2010:
To answer Oil Can Harry (#18)
No, your employer was not immoral to pay minimum because you were not supporting a family.
But I know where you are going with this and see your point.
The minimum is not meant to support a large family, and it must be remembered that a man has an obligation to ensure he can support a family before he starts one. He also has an obligation to stop having children if he cannot support them. As well, he has an obligation to educate himself properly so can get some kind of work.
In other words, everything is not up to the employer. If a man has a large family, he has an obligation to seek employment that can support it, and an obligation to ensure he has the know-how to get that employment.
On the other hand, an employer also has the obligation not to hire an employee he cannot compensate adequately.
If any of the Catholic minds superior to mine out there think I am wrong in this, please correct me.
21 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 19 January 2010:
I ask Mr. Storck to comment on my last two posts.
22 Comment by Marty on 20 January 2010:
@Scott, I am more attracted to Ropke than Mises. I don’t think Mises’ thought is compatible with Catholic teaching. I think some, have more faith in praexology(sp) than the true Faith as taught by the Church in social matters. Distributism seems to rely on the state too much.
I have more questions than answers. I just thought there might be a way to tweak or Baptize the Austrian school .
Thank you for taking the time to post on these issues at Chronicles I do hope this type of discussion will continue.
23 Comment by Thomas Storck on 20 January 2010:
Some general comments, including in response to Mr. Kirkwood.
First, Robert wrote, “The American people would profit if they learned not to believe that politics is the realm of doing good. Politics is the realm of vanity, greed, lust, deception, and force.”
Such an attitude is far from the Catholic tradition of politics, even from that of Aristotle who rightly saw politics, not as the log-rolling and bribery, etc. that too often in fact do constitute our political life, but as the architectonic science which guides the affairs of the polis. That is, even though our own political life is extremely degraded and no doubt this has been the state of most nations throughout history, this is not the correct way of looking at the matter, for this is basically to turn it over to the Devil, as Martin Luther wanted to do. Instead, despite what the situation is, we have to proclaim over and over again, No, this is not what politics is supposed to be. The state is supposed to seek the common good. I’d recommend a reading of some of Leo XIII’s other encyclicals, such as Sapientia Christiana or Diuturnum for a discussion of the role of the state. And there is nothing wrong with a state offering aid along with private charity. The state is not an evil, even if most governments today are filled with evil men, including our own policy makers.
An analogy might be with marriage. Most American couples contracept, divorce is at least 50%, abuse of spouses, pornography use is common, etc. But these facts can never permit us to say, well, that’s the realm of these sorts of things, Satan rules over the realm of sexuality. No, we have to proclaim that this is not what God wants in marriage, just as we have to do with regard to politics.
As to a living wage, despite what oil can harry said, a living wage is not that difficult to calculate in a rough and ready way. Dr. Rupert Ederer has pointed out that the government used to publish two budgets, calculated separately, and that they were pretty much in agreement. If I remember correctly, they had three levels, minimal, “full” or something like that, and “fuller,” but those weren’t the terms used. I can’t remember them now, but for several decades they were issued and gave some idea of what a living family wage would be. Obviously one would have to take into account number of children, locality, etc., but it’s not an impossibility.
The question of paying less than a living wage to unmarried employees is complex. Msgr. John A. Ryan, the greatest American moral theologian who wrote on social doctrine, in his work on the living wage back before World War I argued that since most men would get married it was necessary to pay them a family wage even before they actually married. I’m not necessarily endorsing this opinion – I’m not sure. Also, there is a very interesting discussion in Heinrich Pesch’s Lehrbuch on industries that in order to survive must pay substandard wages. He points out that in doing so they are putting their employees in the position of not having the buying power to participate fully as consumers. In a sense, the industry is bribing its customers by selling its goods for less than they should – that is, by not paying their workers what they should they are cutting their costs below their true cost. You can compare it with a situation of slavery. Goods produced by slave labor might be cheaper, but they would be sold at less than their true cost since slaves are not given anything beyond the minimum to survive. Pirates might be able to sell their good very cheaply because they have stolen them. Firms paying substandard wages can sell their goods at less than they are truly worth because they’ve failed to make into account all real costs.
Mr. Kirkwood, have I left out anything?
24 Comment by robert on 20 January 2010:
Tom,
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my unseemly and off the cuff remarks. Chesterton once remarked that the saint is a medicine usually mistaken as a poison who will usually be found restoring the world to order by exaggerating whatever the world neglects. That is alot how I have viewed your own work over the years. There is no loss of confidence in our times in the value of government –large or small — but there is a tremendous loss of confidence in local communities and the kingdom of heaven that exists and awaits recognition within every living soul. There is way too much energy expended today by bright young minds heading to D.C. to work for change and republican party politics under the disguise of “doing good” at the expense of the real good such as pursuing a vocation, rearing a family,learning some Latin, and the traditional life of work, prayer and simply becoming less so those one is responsible for can become more. Sure, no serious Catholic can belittle politics as understood by Aristotle or St. Thomas and its noble ends. But neither can any serious man, such as yourself, simultaneously mistake the current duopoly or what passes as national politics for the common good.
25 Comment by Thomas Storck on 20 January 2010:
Robert, thanks for the kind words. You can heap abuse on the current politicians as much as you like, and I’ll reply Amen with gusto – so long as we keep our principles straight.
26 Comment by oil can harry on 20 January 2010:
To Mr. Kirkwood (#20):
I agree w/your post except for the line about the employer having a moral obligation to not hire someone he can’t compensate adequately.
In my view if the employee knows upfront what the pay and benefits will be then it’s his responsibility for choosing that job.
27 Comment by oil can harry on 20 January 2010:
Mr. Storck, since you feel “a living wage is not that difficult to calculate” perhaps you can give us a ballpark figure of what it should be.
Here in NYC the politicians feel it’s around $11/hr and as a result last month the NY City Council stopped a developer from opening a mall in the Bronx that would have created 2,000 jobs in the midst of a recession. The reason? The developer could not promise that all of the new jobs would pay at least $11/hr and the liberals feel that having no job is better than a job below the “living wage”.
This same scenario has taken place in other parts of the country like California. Thank heaven these pols didn’t save me from being “exploited” back in the 80’s when I happily worked as a teen for scant pay.
While Pope Leo was a virtuous man whose heart was in the right place, the Left has taken his concept of a “living wage” and made much mischief out of it.
28 Comment by Jonathan Liem on 20 January 2010:
The living wage is a principle that must also exist with other principles such as subsidiarity. However, these principles cannot become reality unless the Church starts using the pulpit to impress them on minds. I think to much emphasis both from the pulpit and politcally has been focused on governmental solutions – specifically central government’s involvement. Until the culture changes, these necessary changes will not see the light of day. Change the culture, and everything else will change. What we need is for the Church to return to orthodoxy – the spiritual as opposed to the material. In turn I believe we will see a return of subsidiarity with pluralism in authority, and the lower orders of authority responsible for supplying living wages, supplying them.
As a side note, what is a living wage? I submit, not much more than food on the table, a roof over your family’s head, and medical care within reason.
29 Comment by J.D. Salyer on 20 January 2010:
@26:
“In my view if the employee knows upfront what the pay and benefits will be then it’s his responsibility for choosing that job.”
I think Mr. Storck may have raised a point in one of his previous essays which is pertinent to your view:
“The fact of the matter is that the supposed freedom provided by free-market capitalism is a pseudo-freedom. Those with economic power will dictate to those without economic power. ‘Work at this wage or starve.’ ”
A (very loose) analogy might be to gravity — in calculating and studying the interactions of small objects (analogous to you or me as economic actors), their respective gravitational fields may be ignored.
Celestial-scale objects, however, create a distortion in the surrounding space which is non-negligible.
Likewise, corporations are not merely “players” in an economy and culture — rather, by their very size they influence the underlying cultural & economic structure itself.
The most obvious example is education. Our education system is explicitly *geared* toward providing workers for “the global economy”.
30 Comment by John Seiler on 20 January 2010:
Catholic social thought, as advanced by popes, theologians, and saints, is the basis for the health and prosperity of Christendom, and now of the world. To cite just one area: As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, all our beliefs in freedom are based on the popes’ insistence on free will, rejecting Calvinist predestination. The popes are thus not chastising old men, but the truest defenders of freedom, including economic freedom.
With that in mind, allow me to advance a few considerations:
1. Gold. Although a magisterial statement on the gold standard is unlikely, Catholic though should embrace it. Gold is the only real money. The Austrians, whatever else one many think of them, are right on this. Many supply-siders, such as the late Jude Wanniski, have also backed gold.
Paper money depends on the whims of governments, as we’ve seen the past nine years of the Bush-Greenspan-Obama-Bernanke inflation, and during the 1970s. The theories used were based on Keynesianism and Monetarism. Paper money, sooner or later, breeds inflation, which means robbing most people to benefit a few bankers and speculators. It’s the same as the king clipping coins in the days before paper money. Inflation violates the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.”
Before Nixon took America – and the world – off the gold standard in 1971, a “family wage” actually did exist in America. Any man could find a decent job in which, with hard work, he could support his family. After 1971, inflation chewed up the value of the dollar for a decade, and worse, pushed middle-income taxpayers into upper-income tax brackets. Reagan’s 1984 indexing of the income tax helped, but was not made retroactive. The middle-class still pays upper-income tax rates.
In the inflationary Bush 2000s, real incomes actually declined (see Shadowstats.com). The inflationary boom/bust – which the Austrians rightly tag as the main cause of the Bush Depression – devastated millions of middle-income and poor families.
2. Subsidiarity. The Catholic principle of subsidiarity is similar to the American principle of federalism. There can be no American “family wage,” only a “family wage” for Mississippi, California, Iowa, etc. In Southern California, the median price for a house is $550,000; in most parts of the Midwest, it’s around $120,000; in Detroit, it’s $6,000. To insist on the same wage policies for each area is the same as insisting that people in Zimbabwe be paid the same as those in Zurich.
3. Taxes. The best way to increase the family wage is to decrease the immense burden of government on the head-of-family’s income. The Washington, D.C. area now is the richest metropolitan area in America because it is sucking in the wealth from the rest of the country. As mentioned in No. 1, it is the federal government that has debased our currency and ravaged our workers with higher taxes. Giving it even more power would only further hurt families.
3. Minimum wage. The “family wage” is not the minimum wage. To cite California again, for a man to support his family in even a modest, rented home and send his children to decent schools – taking them out of the wretched government schools – he needs an income of at least $100,000. For a 40-hour work week, that comes to $48 an hour. But that’s 6 times the current minimum wage, set by the state, of $8. A $48 minimum wage would make the whole economy leave or go underground.
Thirty years ago Walter Williams showed how, since the 1940s, the establishment of the minimum wage has devastated employment among blacks, especially black youth. White-dominated unions favored the minimum wage to suppress competition. Current minimum-wage law prohibits an employer from making a distinction between a man who needs a family wage to support his family and a teenager earning money to buy iPod songs.
The only way to bring about a “family wage” is not through government mandates, but by lifting government-imposed impediments to economic growth.
5. Medical care debate. The Catholic bishops of America are to be credited with defeating (so far) Obamacare over abortion. But for that, Obamacare would be law now. Unfortunately, the bishops also favor national provision of medical care for everyone – that is, socialized medicine – a violation of subsidiarity.
This whole debate is an illustration of Belloc’s “Servile State,” in which rich capitalists (insurance companies, HMOs) conspire with socialists (Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts) to enslave workers and their families. Fortunately, our younger priests seem more savvy on this matter, which may result in wiser future bishops.
6. Foreign aid. Pope Benedict XVI is a great pope who is doing so much for Catholics, indeed for the world. But it didn’t help anyone for him to call, in “Caritas in Veritate,” for more money to be spent on foreign aid. This is not the 1960s. As Lord Peter Bauer and others have shown, except in cases of emergency after a disaster or immediate starvation, foreign aid has proven disastrous. (And even there, private aid is much more efficient than government aid, as the Haiti earthquake is showing.) The money goes to local kleptocrats, who dump the dollars and euros and yen in Swiss bank accounts. In “Africa in Chaos,” Ghanian George Ayittey detailed how foreign aid disrupted ancient African trading routes and practices.
This is a mature area of study. Catholic social thought should not ignore 40 years of scholarship and experience on foreign aid.
7. What’s needed. Catholic scholars need to delve more into economics to harmonize that field with Catholic social thought. Austrian economics has many different schools, some compatible with Catholic thought, some not. There are fierce debates among the Austrians. But Tom Woods and other Catholics in the Austrian vein should be debated, not branded dissenters. For one thing, his “Meltdown” is the best explanation we have so far of the causes of the Bush Depression. The Austrians’ prediction of this disaster, in which they were virtually alone, should count for something.
Fortunately, the Austrians, like the supply-siders, avoid the mathematical gobbledegook of the Keynesians and Monetarists, so even laymen can get the gist of their thought and argue with it. As mentioned above, Keynesian inflationism is simple robbery; but how can one argue with their graphs and mathematical formulae?
Maybe what’s needed most is a Catholic equivalent of the Austrians’ “Human Action” and “Man, Economy, and State” – a rigorous and comprehensive presentation of Catholic political economy. The last one seems to have been Lehrbuch der Nationalökonomie (Teaching Guide to Economics), by Heinrich Pesch, who died in 1926. (A review by Thomas Storck in the February 2005 New Oxford Review is online). But that was before the Great Depression, Keynesianism, Monetarism, World War II, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the centralized, monolithic American state, dozens of papal encyclicals on social matters, and so much more.
There is work do be done.
31 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 20 January 2010:
Is “social democracy” a fair way of describing traditional Catholic social teaching? When I described myself as a social democrat some months ago, I had the distinct impression that, in the minds of the appalled onlookers, I had just confessed to creeping socialism. I would be interested in knowing if Mr. Storck agrees, for example, that the recently proposed regulations of the financial industry are a good thing.
32 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 20 January 2010:
“Awaiting moderation”? Consider that my last comment at this site. Adios.
33 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 20 January 2010:
Ken, you’re awfully touchy. Our default setting is to put new commenters into moderation. The commenter’s status is determined by the e-mail address he uses. You threw yourself into moderation by mistyping your e-mail address (you typed hotnmail.com rather than hotmail.com).
34 Comment by robert on 21 January 2010:
Ken,
Don’t take offense it happens all the time. Every time I clean up one computer I wait in line with all the other immigrants until my e-address is re-established. I enjoy your comments as I am sure other readers do as well but remember this is virtual reality not friendship itself. Here we see through the glass darkly,but at the gatherings — Schools, conferences, trips, etc. — we see face to face — with modesty of course but without moderation. Keep’em coming.
35 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 21 January 2010:
@ Oil Can Harry (#26)
“In my view if the employee knows upfront what the pay and benefits will be then it’s his responsibility for choosing that job.”
You must have missed a key part of the quote I took from Rev. Fernandez:
“If the contractor, the head of a company, the builder, the owner, the mistress of the house … wants to take advantage of a situation where there is a surplus of labor, for example, so as to pay salaries incommensurate with the worker’s dignity as a human being, it would be an offense against the men and women concerned (as well as being against their Creator) because they have an inalienable natural right to sufficient means for the support of themselves and their families, which takes precedence over the right of free contract.”
In other words, a man’s willingness to sign a contract for a wage that cannot support him does not morally entitle an employer to pay him that wage, anymore than a mother’s willingness to sell her child entitles a buyer to purchase the child.
This last analogy is not rhetorical. A very prominent member of the Austrian school believes that mothers have property rights over their children.
That’s where the anti-Christian libertarian philosophy, the cornerstone of which is “self-ownership,” ultimately takes you.
36 Comment by robert on 21 January 2010:
Kirkwood,
I am pleased you are posting over here at Chronicles more often. I have read a few of your pieces over the last few years and have quite enjoyed them. It pleases me to know there are still some younger fellows like you still around who have acquired or are now acquiring what the oldtimers down South once called a “good bar-room upbringing.”
37 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 21 January 2010:
Thanks, Robert (if I may)!
And thanks for reading my work and your kudos.
38 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 21 January 2010:
Scott and Robert,
I take that back! Didn’t know about the default setting, and the particular wording it came with was interpreted by me as one of the editors’ ways of getting in his digs once more, and with a vengeance. My presumption led to my pratfall.
39 Comment by Thomas Storck on 21 January 2010:
Oil can harry (#27) asked about the following wage scenario:
“Here in NYC the politicians feel it’s around $11/hr and as a result last month the NY City Council stopped a developer from opening a mall in the Bronx that would have created 2,000 jobs in the midst of a recession. The reason? The developer could not promise that all of the new jobs would pay at least $11/hr and the liberals feel that having no job is better than a job below the “living wage”.
The fact that many people were willing to take a job at $11.00 an hour or even less does not mean that that is a living wage, as Mr. Kirkwood pointed out, as indeed Leo XIII did a long time ago. I do not live in New York. Would you be willing to take a job there at $11. an hour and support a family on that?
For everyone who think that “Pope Leo was a virtuous man whose heart was in the right place, the Left has taken his concept of a “living wage” and made much mischief out of it,” I’d advise reading the social encyclicals, especially Quadragesimo Anno of Pius XI. It’s criticisms of capitalist greed are the equal of what socialists have said.
As for Mr. Zaretzke’s question about financial regulation, I’m, not familiar in any detail with the proposed regulations he’s speaking of, but I’m certainly in favor of more financial regulation, in particular the reimposition of the Glass/Stiegal rules. People may have a right to gamble away their money, but they don’t have a right to do so in a way that helps bring down the real economy.
40 Comment by Michael Hardesty on 23 January 2010:
Storck has the better of the argument as the whole Judaeo-Christian-Islamic ethics are much more compatible with statism-collectivism than laissez-faire capitalism. Rockwell is playing a dangerous game at LRC
plugging anti-abortion, belief in “god,” viciously trashing our leading philospher Ayn Rand and pandering to the most retrograde elements of the religious right. One of the LRC clones , Gary North, has written thousands of pages allegedly proving that the bible is pro-capitalist. All of it utter nonsense. People should read Murray Rothbard, George Reisman, Ludwig Von Mises and especially Ayn Rand, whom the conservative movement has been unsuccessfully attempting to bury for 53 failed years.
41 Comment by Allen Wilson on 23 January 2010:
I was learning a lot until I came upon Mr Hardesty’s post @40………
Perhaps MR Hardesty can step aside and let the rest of the preceding debaters continue so that the rest of us can continue to learn, instead of wasting our time ignoring silly posts like his?
42 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 24 January 2010:
Yeah right Mr Hardesty @40. Ayn Rand, with her appeals to whoop up war fever and the killing of Arabs for the infallible Israel isnt statist-collectivist at all. Nope.
43 Comment by R J Stove on 24 January 2010:
Well, thank you, Mr. Hardesty, for giving me the best laugh I have had all weekend. “Our leading philosopher Ayn Rand”? And whom would “our” denote? Americans’? Israelis’? Anarcho-capitalists’? Richard Dawkins’s? Christopher Hitchens’s? Teenage male hornbags’? All of the above?
44 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 24 January 2010:
Dr. Storck @39,
….”I’d advise reading the social encyclicals, especially Quadragesimo Anno of Pius XI. It’s criticisms of capitalist greed are the equal of what socialists have said.”
Sir, are you saying that Pius XI was a socialist? I confess I know very little of pre-Vatican II popes. And the line between advocating a less selfish approach to economic activity and promoting socialistic policies has been so badly blurred by rhetoric from opposing camps that I scarcely know what to think at times. But I am learning, belatedly, from this discussion, that the pope’s teachings may provide me some much needed clarity. Thank you for taking on this subject.
45 Comment by Thomas Storck on 24 January 2010:
Mr. Jacobi,
I certainly was not suggesting that Pius XI, or any pope, was a socialist. In fact, it was Pius XI who said that no true Catholic could be a real socialist. But at the risk of writing too long a post, I’ll go into this matter at more length.
In Quadragesimo Anno Pius XI characterized capitalism as “that economic system, wherein, generally, some provide capital while others provide labor for a joint economic activity.” In other words, under capitalism some labor for wages using the property of those who own the capital. Now, some distinctions are in order.
First, such a system is not in itself unjust. But Pius XI recognizes that as a matter of fact, both historically and at the time he was writing, capitalists behaved unjustly and exploited workers extensively. This doesn’t mean that capitalism is unjust (which I never said in my earlier post), simply that capitalists often behave badly. What was Pius’ solution? Briefly put, he did not mandate capitalism (more on that later), but basically said that as long as we have capitalism we have to have considerable regulation, best done not by the central government, but by intermediate bodies which represent both capitalist owners and workers. The state has a role, to be sure, but as much regulation as can conveniently be done should be done by these lower bodies, which are akin to the medieval guilds in their function and membership. Ok, this pretty much summarizes Pius XI’s attitude toward the capitalist system.
Here, btw, is a link to Quadragesimo Anno. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19310515_quadragesimo-anno_en.html
Now, what of alternatives? Just because capitalism, as regulated according to papal social teaching, is not unjust, does not mean that it is required. There are many alternatives to capitalism besides socialism. I myself think that distributism is the best alternative. I won’t go into this here, and you can find much in favor of distributism by me and others via Google. I’ll just note that while distributism is not mandated by papal social teaching, it is fully in accord with it and it seems to me that it eliminates the inconveniences and many of the temptations to injustice that even a just capitalist system would have.
Other systems championed by important Catholic thinkers include Fr. Heinrich Pesch’s Solidarism and what was widely known as corporatism, a confusing name which does not denote the business corporation (a corporation here is pretty much the same as a guild. In fact in the middle ages the proper name for a guild was corporatio in Latin.) You might also look into the German social market economy, which was an attempt to modify capitalism along the lines of Catholic social teaching by trying to break down the class divide and provide for more joint control over the enterprise by capital and labor.
To recapitulate, to criticize capitalist greed is not the same as to assert that capitalism is always unjust, still less to advocate socialism. But I’ll add, that our present capitalist system as we have it here in the U.S. seems to me to stand condemned by the teaching of the popes.
46 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 24 January 2010:
Dr. Storck@45,
Thank you for your generous and informative reply. I have already begun to read Quadragesimo Anno and look forward to reading Leo XIII’s encyclical On the Condition Of Workers as well. Right off I saw that the popes rejected socialism, so I breathed a sigh of relief.
This has been such a vexatious argument for as long as I can remember. The fate of those of us born near the mid-point of the 20th century, it seems, has been to be deprived of any middle ground, any safe rear area behind the battle lines, both ideological and literal, in the great contest between economic and moral systems usually described as communism/socialism vs. capitalism. No amount of reading, arguing, contemplation or obliviousness, fleeing or fighting has sufficed to bring my conscience to rest in this matter. It is therefore no small comfort to me to find, at last, that I can turn to these our great stalwarts of truth for guidance that has been cleansed of man’s impurities.
47 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 24 January 2010:
To avoid any misunderstanding, I did not mean to say above that it is a contest between a strictly economic and a strictly moral system. Neither socialism/communism nor capitalism, of course, are restricted to any one realm.
48 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 26 January 2010:
I have no problem with the church teaching on economic issues for tow reasons. First, the Scriptures teach about money. In fact the only subject that gets more references is Love. And second, when European cities erected cathedrals they were not merely houses of worship, but also government and economic issues were discussed within those walls. The church was not to be excluded from any legitimate function of society. In those days there was no separation of church and state, and it’s still foolish to believe that any peaceable and orderly civilization can continue to function without her.
So I pose a rhetorical question, would we have a fiat economy like the one run by today’s Wall Street Shylocks if the Church was not excluded?
49 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 26 January 2010:
*two reasons
50 Comment by Michael Hardesty on 26 January 2010:
R.J. Stove, your comments are a nonsequitur.
Rand has no relation to Hitchens, thankfully !
And she repudiated Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism.
And she had much better arguments than Dawkins.
Israel is a racist, collectivist, statist state.
It has zero relation to Rand’s philosophy, George
Gilder notwithstanding. I don’t think Rand was into
teenage males either.
Daniel Maxwell, I strongly disagreed with Rand and
the current ARI on Israel. I think it contradicts
her philosophy of Objectivism.
Allen Wilson, your post gave no specifics, I found
it cognitively empty. But I’m glad I made your day.
51 Pingback by Contra Thomas Woods « Caelum Et Terra on 26 January 2010:
[...] Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four [...]
52 Comment by Allen Wilson on 26 January 2010:
Good, Mr Hardesty, now leave.
53 Comment by oil can harry on 27 January 2010:
To Mr. Storck (#39):
In answer to your question, I would not take a job that paid $11/hr (unless there were no others available) because I have a family to support, but 25 years ago as a high schooler I would have jumped at the chance.
And that’s why I was outraged by the NY City Council killing off those 2,000 jobs- during a recession yet. Those jobs would have been in the Bronx, the NY borough w/the highest unemployment rate.
Why not let the locals, particularly the teens looking for “starter jobs”, decide if they wanted to be employed there?
Or do you agree w/the Left that having no job is better than having one that pays below the “living wage”?
54 Comment by Thomas Storck on 28 January 2010:
Oil can harry,
If we could be sure that it was only high schoolers who would be interested in these jobs and that it would not take away jobs from adults, then, yes, I agree with you.