The economic situation in the next decade will need to find practical solutions to infrastructure renewal, the climate crisis and just transformation of the world of work.
CST and Politics for workers
Rachel Lu asks in an article in America Magazine if Catholic Social Teaching (CST) can redeem a post-Trump, pro-labor Republican Party? The right-of-center think tank. American Compass, is directed by Oren Cass, a former advisor to Mitt Romney, the Republican senator from Utah. He and a growing number of conservatives have become increasingly concerned about the future of American blue-collar labor. For some time now, the Republican Senator Marco Rubio has been speaking and writing publicly about the “dignity of labor,” often citing Catholic labor encyclicals in his public speeches. Labor in the United States has changed radically in the past couple of decades, with concerns about wages and working conditions increasingly overshadowed by fears of being cut loose entirely by employers without warning. There is an opportunity for either party to position itself as being more responsive to the priorities of working families.
There are many conservatives for whom the renewed interest in labor seems to be sincere. Intellectuals like Mr. Cass clearly believe that they are charting a new course forward for conservatism, while a politician like Mr. Rubio has long shown an interest in cultural reform that transcends Reaganite limited-government principles. At gatherings of right-leaning Catholic intellectuals, “Rerum Novarum” and “Quadrigesimo Anno”are now being discussed with real enthusiasm and energy. Family policy has become a popular topic, as the rugged-individualist rhetoric of the Tea Party era fades into the background. Conversations about “the common good” are trendy once again. Social justice is no longer a taboo… Protecting workers against exploitation is still a worthy goal. It needs to be balanced, however, against the need to create better jobs for a wide range of people. Can the Republicans devise a policy approach that balances both goals? Already, this is an active concern for politicians like Mr. Rubio and for intellectuals like Mr. Cass. Some of their ideas are interesting, and there is potential here for a healthy form of political rivalry, as the right and left both scramble to generate effective labor policy. Prudent reform will be possible, however, only if conservative politicians can resist the populist right’s more vengeful impulses. That may prove difficult. Many pro-labor conservatives want to motivate corporations to invest more resources toward employees. They rail against “shareholder primacy,” arguing that American workers are suffering from decreased opportunity and stagnant wages, owing in part to a financial system that motivates corporations to prioritize the demands of their shareholders. This may not even be good for the companies themselves over the long run. Workers, argued Mr. Cass in a recent essay in Politico, are more interested in the company’s long-term viability. Shareholders mainly want to make some quick cash..1
Damian Howard, SJ, the Provincial of the Jesuits in Britain, asks in relation to Fratelli tutti, how does Pope Francis respond to a confused and troubled world which is struggling to articulate a vision for its future, with a gospel-centred narrative which is both practical and ambitious?
Politics today functions across the globe as if there were only two visions for the future of humankind: to persevere with the four decades-long project of neo-liberal economics, with its succession of ever-deeper economic and debt crises, its austerity regimes and the cold, technocratic globalisation that is so rapidly erasing cultural differences and empowering a new class of the super-rich; or to resist all that by promoting national populisms of various sorts which foment propaganda, talk of empowering ordinary people against the social, financial and educational elites and their ridiculous ‘woke’ concerns, but all the while colluding with corrupt financial interests. We are told it’s a choice between Fox News and a hundred new gender pronouns… A not-unusual Catholic move to make in such a situation is to try to locate on each side some reflection of a resplendent truth and then to see if, instead of insisting on the ‘either-or’ of binary opposition, there might in fact be greater wisdom in a ‘both-and’ approach. And this is precisely what this long encyclical, the third of Pope Francis’ pontificate, sets out to do, sketching out in the process a vision that is conscious of its own ambition and yet intensely practical... 2
Catholic Social Teaching and the Gospel narrative
Liberalism | Catholic Social Teaching | Populism |
neo-liberal economics | greater wisdom in a ‘both-and’ approach | foment propaganda |
Deep economic and debt crises | universal fraternity | empowering ordinary people against the social, financial and educational elites |
austerity regimes | slavery and Christianity incompatible | ridiculous ‘woke’ concerns |
cold, technocratic globalisation | a society in which everyone is included | colluding with corrupt financial interests |
a new class of the super-rich | cultural and other differences are sources of enrichment rather than resentment | righteous indignation fuses with malign opportunism to create modern day populism, |
principle of the freedom of individuals | Francis’ Catholic ‘both-and’ strategy enables us to see that the actual starting point for the journey into universal love is our learning first to love our own roots, our own culture, our own homeland, in short to become a happy member of a people. |
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the universal operation of free markets | Francis says that other cultures ‘are not “enemies” from which we need to protect ourselves, but differing reflections of the inexhaustible richness of human life.’ |
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painful inequality | The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods. This has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society. Yet it often happens that secondary rights displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant. (§120) |
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banal materialism | ‘the right of all individuals to find a place that meets their basic needs and those of their families, and where they can find personal fulfilment’ (§129). |
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lack of any shared vision of the good life to unite us | the duty to remember the horrors of human history: notably the Shoah, Hiroshima and slavery (§247f). Memory of such things, Francis points out, is an essential component of social and political love. |
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may play an important role in synthesis of conservative concern for workers and the decline of liberalism.
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