A Challenge to the Left
Writing at Balloon Juice, Freddie deBoer challenges a form a liberalism that focuses on social safety nets at the expense of the empowerment of workers and the poor. “The idea” says Freddie, “is that, if you get the economy going well enough, you can redistribute enough money to the poor that they’ll be alright, even while you’ve undermined their ability to collectively bargain, raise the value of their labor, and exercise power.” He doesn’t think this idea works, in part because establishing a long-term welfare state isn’t politically feasible in our political culture, and also because it results in an obscene dependency. He writes:
Even if you could guarantee a certain minimal welfare state, the idea of poor and working people depending on the largesse of the rich and powerful is obscene. Sometimes, people have to live under the charity of others. But nobody wants to in perpetuity, because they then are not in control of their own lives, and because having to do so leaves many feeling robbed of personal dignity. As long as economic security is a gift of those at the top, it can be taken away. And if the last several decades have shown us anything, it’s that for the richest, what they already have will never be enough. No matter how income inequality spirals out of control, no matter how absurd the gap between those on top and everybody else grows, they’ll look to take more. And the more that you make the people on the bottom dependent on charity, the less they’re able to protect their own interests.
Forgive the Marxian cant, but politics is about the competition for power, and economics the competition for scarce resources. Democracy doesn’t presume some cordial relationship between people of different social classes and levels of power; it sets them against each other in balance so that no group captures the process. Giving up all checks on the moneyed classes won’t satisfy them. It will only ensure that there is nothing to stop them when they decide to take more.
I particularly liked this bit: “If the left is not fundamentally in the business of empowering workers and the poor, as well as improving the material condition of their lives, it not only has no business calling itself the left; it has no business, at all. It might as well close up shop.” Freddie’s answer to the charge that the welfare state can result in dependency isn’t to deny the charge or to abandon redistributive programs and systems, but rather to see to the empowerment of the poor and the oppressed so that they can exercise self-determination, share the means of production, and have power over their livelihood. He’s calling for something much more radical than permanent well-funded social safety nets.
As a postscript, I note that Freddie’s vision of liberalism is pretty consistent with Catholic Social Teaching, which shouts to the heavens in support of both the universal destination of goods and the dignity of the worker. It proclaims both that “political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good” (redistribution of wealth!) and that “everyone has the right of economic initiative; everyone should make legitimate use of his talents to contribute to the abundance that will benefit all and to harvest the just fruits of his labor.”
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“But nobody wants to in perpetuity, because they then are not in control of their own lives, and because having to do so leaves many feeling robbed of personal dignity.”
Well said. And one need look no further than the social welfare states of Europe for the sad truth of how dependence has played out in this regard.
This stuff about the rich being wickedly greedy and the poor being helpless, innocent victims, is getting old. MZ asked in his recent post (http://vox-nova.com/2011/04/12/view-of-success/) whether people associate virtue with wealth. Around here it’s clearly the opposite (at least among posters; the commenters on MZ’s post mostly agreed that there are good and bad among both rich and poor).
Let me ask this: Is it the mere fact of their being rich that causes them to be presumed wicked?
In any event, I certainly agree that “permanent well-funded social safety nets” are not sufficient. But I think I disagree with deBoer (and Cupp) to the extent that I think culture is the key. Poor people from other countries, and for that matter poor people from this country, have raised themselves up from poverty before, and will keep on doing it. Studying and imitating what they do would take the poor a lot farther than drilling it into their heads that they are helpless victims of the rich. There is no high wall with locked gates that keeps the poor poor. People pass from here to there and from there to here constantly.
Neither I nor Freddie deBoer speak of the poor as being helpless victims. From Freddie’s post:
“Check the record: on every issue of worker rights and protections, workers went first. They didn’t ask politicians to give them safer conditions, cleaner conditions, higher wages, shorter hours, more bargaining power, and a better system to redress their grievances. They demanded those things from the bosses, and they did so with the threat of shutting the whole operation down. Only after they had won those things did they eventually become codified in law.”
I don’t presume the rich are wicked, though, with the Gospels, I presume that great wealth makes it more difficult to get to heaven.
Speaking only for myself, I’m not really a determinist. I don’t come from a lens presuming there must be a why. I do reject the belief that if you work hard, don’t drink, and don’t have sex you’ll be successful.
As for DeBoer, I don’t think he really knows what he’s talking about. I think he is accepting a narrative that proposes among other things that black people chose to live in the ghetto because they liked being poor. It is a meme that suggests that there is a large class of people that are content to be fed, housed, get medical treatment, and watch cheap entertainments. If one looks at countries with wide safety nets like Sweden, one doesn’t see people living off the rich.
Such isn’t to say that there isn’t merit to strengthening labor laws and the ability to unionize.
I didn’t detect that narrative in his post.
The law of gleaning describes the Bible’s form of welfare: give the poor an opportunity to work; leave your excess for them; don’t take everything that is rightfully yours, but leave something for the poor and the aliens. The only reason given is because God is the Lord, i.e., it is his nature to give graciously of his bounty to others who do not deserve it.
So maybe we can convice the world to take up figuring out ways to give up their gleanings in this modern day and age. I dont think it was required that you work in order to glean from someone else’s land. Sharing freely and expecting nothing else in return. What a concept.
“…but politics is about the competition for power, and economics the competition for scarce resources. Democracy doesn’t presume some cordial relationship between people of different social classes and levels of power; it sets them against each other in balance so that no group captures the process.”
“As a postscript, I note that Freddie’s vision of liberalism is pretty consistent with Catholic Social Teaching…”
I think the former is not consistent with CST.
Care to elaborate?
Clearly CST talks about politics as the pursuit of the common good and not power. As someone else also noted, and to my understanding, there is no endorsement in CST of an understanding of economics as a zero sum game where one who has wealth necessarily has this through taking from another. These may be Malthusian and Marxist concepts, but these are also, in general, contrary to CST. Rather they are disordered concepts, it seems, of the Enlightenment.
And while Democracy may not ask for cordial relations between the classes (something I suspect which is questionable) CST does. CST does not rule out classes “conflicting” in the sense of seeking their rights and doing so through politics. However, it does so in the sense that all classes may seek their rights and not one unjustly taking from another either through the economic or political order. Implicit in this, and perhaps again contra deBoar, CST does not seek ending all class divisions.
That politics should be about the pursuit of the common good doesn’t mean that, in practice, it doesn’t end up being about power. Maybe I’m mistaken, but deBoer’s description of democracy seems not a wish for what it should be, but rather acknowledgment of what it is.
I suspect there are many things that are. But that’s not what CST is about.
No one is claiming that CST is about power (though, of course, what it says applies to relations of power).
I missed that part. Where can you point me to what it says about relations of power.
Pacem in Terris is a good place to start, but, without delving into a text, it’s safe to conclude that “social” teaching will touch on the relations of power that are an aspect of humanity’s social relationships.
As such, it seems its not so much about power as truth and charity as evidenced by collaboration of different peoples.
I’m a little lost. What are you referring to by “it”? Politics? CST?
That is part of the question. One can claim politics is the process to gain political office. Alternatively, one can claim that that office, and all that goes with it (legislative battles etc.) is political. Either way I think the claim that politics (however defined) is about power is not a Christian perspective and contrary CST.
Politics is about power, not necessarily as an end, but in every case as a means. When I say that politics is about power, I don’t mean that power is the end goal of politics, but that politics involves power relations. Politics, like power, can be used for good or ill. The Christian believes that politics, the use of power, should be used for the common good.
Actually I think politics is more appropriately summed up by this:
“The political community originates in the nature of persons, whose conscience “reveals to them and enjoins them to obey” the order which God has imprinted in all his creatures: “a moral and religious order; and it is this order — and not considerations of a purely extraneous, material order — which has the greatest validity in the solution of problems relating to their lives as individuals and as members of society, and problems concerning individual States and their interrelations”. This order must be gradually discovered and developed by humanity. The political community, a reality inherent in mankind, exists to achieve an end otherwise unobtainable: the full growth of each of its members, called to cooperate steadfastly for the attainment of the common good, under the impulse of their natural inclinations towards what is true and good.”
And all that requires power. I think we’re talking past one another here.
How do you define power?
But again, as per the article cited, politics is about the “competition for power.” I think this is clearly contra CST.
An exercise of control.
So, what, CST doesn’t acknowledge that politics as practiced involves the competition for power?
As noted above, politics is the collaboration of people and not an exercise of control. This includes the truth that “The political community, a reality inherent in mankind, exists to achieve an end otherwise unobtainable: the full growth of each of its members, called to cooperate steadfastly for the attainment of the common good, under the impulse of their natural inclinations towards what is true and good.”
This is perhaps elaborated upon by this:
“The profound meaning of civil and political life does not arise immediately from the list of personal rights and duties. Life in society takes on all its significance when it is based on civil friendship and on fraternity. The sphere of rights, in fact, is that of safeguarded interests, external respect, the protection of material goods and their distribution according to established rules. The sphere of friendship, on the other hand, is that selflessness, detachment from material goods, giving freely and inner acceptance of the needs of others. Civil friendship understood in this way is the most genuine actualization of the principle of fraternity, which is inseparable from that of freedom and equality.”
It is a cooperation of interrelated persons aimed for the common good and not an exercise in control. Rather, it an exercise in fraternity – an intercommunion of persons.
A collaboration of people in society can’t do squat without power, without an exercise of control, especially as no collaboration will ever be universal. Those collaborating to enact the common good will still have to compete for power with those whose idea of the common good differ or those who use power for ends other than the common good. Even the most holy and just of collaborations, having the most loving bonds of fraternity and friendship, will still have a power structure. You take away power, and you take away the capacity to do anything.
Of course no collaboration will ever be universal. But that is the limit of the polis. But the failure of a perfect realization of the universal does not detract from the nature of politics which, according to CST, is about collaboration and not competition. It is not that the achievement of goals in the polis will be perfect, but that, through the collaboration of persons in communion, through the use of reason in truth and charity, the common good will be pursued to the best understanding possible.
If you will, that truth in charity and charity in truth through fraternal collaboration is Christian “power.”
Perhaps this quote puts my last comment in context:
“Authority must be guided by the moral law. All of its dignity derives from its being exercised within the context of the moral order, “which in turn has God for its first source and final end”. Because of its necessary reference to the moral order, which precedes it and is its basis, and because of its purpose and the people to whom it is directed, authority cannot be understood as a power determined by criteria of a solely sociological or historical character. “There are some indeed who go so far as to deny the existence of a moral order which is transcendent, absolute, universal and equally binding upon all. And where the same law of justice is not adhered to by all, men cannot hope to come to open and full agreement on vital issues”. This order “has no existence except in God; cut off from God it must necessarily disintegrate”. It is from the moral order that authority derives its power to impose obligations and its moral legitimacy, not from some arbitrary will or from the thirst for power, and it is to translate this order into concrete actions to achieve the common good.”
“It proclaims both that “political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good” (redistribution of wealth!)”
Good thing wealth redistribution does take place in America. I guess the question for us is how much is just.
The more I think about it, the more I think that the problem of inequality is bigger than can be addressed by taxation and redistribution properties.
By now we’re familiar with the dialog. Someone recommends raising taxes with the rich, and someone else responds that the top x% already pay Y% of taxes, and Z% of people pay no taxes at all!
Well, yeah. But that’s not quite the point.
And one need look no further than the social welfare states of Europe for the sad truth of how dependence has played out in this regard.
How so? Western Europeans seem very content people, with feelings that they are in control of their lives.
Kyle writes, “That politics should be about the pursuit of the common good doesn’t mean that, in practice, it doesn’t end up being about power. Maybe I’m mistaken, but deBoer’s description of democracy seems not a wish for what it should be, but rather acknowledgment of what it is.”
For me, saying that “politics is about power” is like saying “professional sports is about performance-enhancing drugs”. You can’t define a thing by the things people do to abuse it.
False analogy. Saying “politics is about power” isn’t the same thing as saying “politics is about the abuse of power.”
Moreover, you can define a thing by its abuses if the thing is itself abusive.
Kyle writes, ‘False analogy. Saying “politics is about power” isn’t the same thing as saying “politics is about the abuse of power.’
I didn’t say power was the thing being abused, but politics.
In other words, I submit that making politics about power is an abuse of politics; therefore saying “politics is about power” is defining (or describing if you prefer) politics based on an abuse.
When I say that politics is about power, I don’t mean that power is the end goal of politics, but that politics involves power relations. Politics, like power, can be used for good or ill.
In any case, I’m not really defining so much as describing.
Come on people, this Left-Right debate is just silly.
Social Credit.
“All members of society are co-capitalists of a real and immensely productive capital.”
“We said above, and we could never repeat it enough, that financial credit is, at birth, the property of all of society. It is so because it is based on real credit, on the country’s production capacity. This production capacity is made up partially of work, and the competence of those who also take part in production. But it is mainly made up of other elements which are the property of all.
There are, first of all, natural resources, which are not the production of any man; they are a gift from God, a free gift that must be at the service of all. There are also all the inventions made, developed, and transmitted from one generation to the next. It is the biggest production factor today. No man can claim to be the only owner of progress, which is the fruit of many generations.
No doubt that one needs men of our present times to make use of this progress — and they are entitled to a reward: they get it in remuneration: wages, salaries, etc. But a capitalist who does not personally take part in the industry where he invested his capital is entitled to a share of the result just the same, because of his capital.
The largest real capital of modern production is, in fact, the sum total of the progressive inventions, i.e. discoveries, which today give us more goods with less work. And since all human beings are, on an equal basis, coheirs of this immense capital that is always increasing, all are entitled to a share in the fruits of production.
The employee is entitled to this dividend and to his wage or salary. The unemployed person has no wage or salary, but is entitled to this dividend, which we call social, because it is the income from a social capital.”
The problem is with the monetary system and how the money supply is increased. Credit/usury is at the heart of the problem, and also tying distribution entirely to participation in production. Really, a year’s worth of time and sunlight and rain, and centuries worth of accumulated technological knowledge…belong to no one man, but to mankind as a whole. This should be reflected in a public/social credit rather than allowing the usurers to sell time itself in private credit and private-money-creation.
In order to make myself clearer than in the comment on M.Z.’s recent post, let me first say I understand wealth to be production in excess of what you need. I think that was taught in an economics class. Though some wealth can be accumulated based on your own excess production, I believe great wealth (what most of us refer to as wealth) requires the excess production of a great number of people. Also, accumulating wealth means that you are not distributing through charity or “handing out glasses of water” you are accumulating it (keeping it for yourself). Only in the case of a wealthy business owner who keeps all profits in the business but has little personal wealth outside of that business could one argue that the accumulation of his wealth creates jobs and helps the poor. Therefore I stand by the statement that accumulating wealth comes at the cost of the poor.
I have also come to believe that we cannot solve poverty by either meeting the needs of the poor through charity (forced through the government or otherwise) or by telling the poor to work harder because other poor people have gotten ahead. The evidence of the first is all around us, we have structured a welfare system that is not only demeaning and insufficient, but also ineffective. This does not mean that I do not feel the hungry should be fed or the sick treated at the expense of those who have excess. It means that is a response to a need, not a solution to poverty.
To solve poverty (rewording this post from the point of view of an engineer) we need to realize variability exists in everything. We are born with a range of capabilities and talents. We are also born into a wide range of opportunities. The most talented among us will be able to succeed regardless of the conditions we are born into. Whereas someone with severely limited capabilities born into the Rockefeller family could at best just survive on the families resources. We cannot control the range of capabilities people are born with. We can certainly control the opportunities people are given. When our parents fought for better public education through increased funding, for equal rights for all regardless of race or gender and for the right for workers to organize so they could be on somewhat more equal footing with the managers of business, our whole society benefitted with tremendous growth and the fastest growing middle class in history. We need to continue the fight to insure as many opportunities for as many people as possible, not just keep telling them to work harder and they too can succeed.
Kyle write, “So, what, CST doesn’t acknowledge that politics as practiced involves the competition for power?”
I would say that it doesn’t *properly* involve competition for power. People in the political system do compete for power for personal gain, all the time. But they are misusing the political system in doing so. Just as someone who seeks to profit personally while raising funds for a charitable operation is misusing charity.
To me this is at odds with DeBoer’s statement, “Forgive the Marxian cant, but politics is about the competition for power…” He’s making power the essence of politics, and not merely acknowledging that the pursuit of power is a common corruption of what politics is by nature.
The reason this is important, in my view, is that Marxists, having made “the competition for power” the very essence of politics, proceed to make the pursuit of power their express goal, contending that they are acting properly and correctly within that realm, and not acknowledging that in so acting they are contributing to making politics even more corrupt. If you have the nature of a thing wrong, then the way you act towards it will be wrong.
Therefore statements like DeBoer’s should not be tossed about without careful qualification. He may not have meant literally that politics is essentially the competition for power, but in saying that it’s “about” that, that’s the impression he gives.
You keep calling me Kurt. I’m Kyle.
And you can’t do politics, even with perfect moral legitimacy, without the competition for power. If you are trying to do good using politics, then you compete for power with others within the political arena. There’s no escape from the competition for power in the land of politics: it always – ALWAYS – means the competition of power, the attempt to control. You can’t do anything in the political sphere, even the common good, without the power to do so. And doing anything means that others are not doing something else. Freddie is right, and there’s no inconsistency in what he says here with CST.
Yes there is.
You keep calling me Kurt. I’m Kyle.
No one should have to suffer that kind of indignity :)
And just to agree with Angellius. That is, that a Marxist perspective of politics (which deBoer admits to) is intrinsically flawed and leads to greater evil. But given Marxism’s flawed anthropology it is easy to see how its view of politics becomes flawed. They go hand in hand one suspects.
Kyle writes, “You keep calling me Kurt. I’m Kyle.”
I apologize. I’m arguing in two or three different threads, with you and with Kurt, and I just can’t keep it straight sometimes, especially when your names are so similar, both starting with K and both being 4 letters long — could one of you change your name, please?
Kurt (not Kyle) writes, “No one should have to suffer that kind of indignity :)”.
Ha! : )