The Preferential Option for the Poor

 

Catholic social doctrine is, to my mind, close to being self-evidently true: solidarity, subsidiarity, human dignity, the dignity of labour. If only we could all agree on getting it done.

Except for one issue: the preferential option for the poor. Of course this is right; but how to go about it as a practical matter? How reduce inequalities of wealth in society?

We cannot simply take from the rich and give to the poor. This, as Catholic social doctrine makes clear, is unjust. Each man has a right to the products of his labour. This is what social justice actually means: to each according to his merits. That means he has a right to his property.

On the other hand, the dignity of man, and human solidarity, means we must together ensure that no one is left without means sufficient for life. We are each our brother’s keeper. In the classic case, if a man is starving, he has a right to take a loaf of bread. It is not theft, in a moral sense. We must organize society so that no one is sleeping in a tent in a Canadian winter.

But how?

Unions? Collective bargaining? Does not work. If one shop is organized to achieve higher wages, this means they must price their products higher. Customers go elsewhere, the firm goes out of business, and everyone starves. 

Organize across an entire industry, and the work simply moves abroad. 

The union movement has therefore collapsed in any industry which cannot establish a monopoly. It is limited to the building trades and government workers. 

People in the building trades and the civil service make more than the average income. 

So unions make the rich richer, by forcing the poor to pay more for certain goods and services.

A minimum wage? This has all the same problems. Jobs are eliminated in favour of self-serve and automation. As has been said, the real minimum wage is zero.

Welfare? A Universal Basic Income? Daniel Patrick Moynihan demonstrated its effects. By replacing the father in the family, it encourages family breakdown. Children do not well in a single-parent family, and the next generation is doomed to poverty and helplessness. It violates the dignity of work.

The first thing that might be done is to discourage single-parent families. End no-fault divorce.

The one thing that seems most obvious is that education should be free at all levels; as it is in some European countries. The only criterion for advancement should be merit. This is social justice; it gives everyone an equal shake. This is the same principle on which we have public libraries. It benefits not only the poor, but society as a whole: it means we get the best at each position, improving overall efficiency. If anything done by government ever were an investment, this is one.

The next thing would be monasteries—or some equivalent. A place where the poor and oppressed and those abandoned or abused by their families could be taken in, but with dignity and purpose. A place abused children could safely run away to. Sadly, the monasteries were broken up all over Europe in about the Enlightenment, not because the system did not work, but because it worked too well: the monasteries grew rich, and the civil power wanted the assets. 

For some generations, the alternative for poor kids who were abused was to run off with the circus, or to become gas jockeys somewhere. That escape was killed by child labour laws and minimum wage. Leaving what? Only drug dealing or prostitution.

There was an attempt in the Seventies and Eighties to revive something like the monastery system: the “cults.” The Hare Krishnas, the Moonies, Scientology, the Falun Gong in China. And the authorities went after them hammer and tongs wherever they appeared. Remember Waco. 

Even the Indian residential schools were too well calculated to help the Indian poor, and so have been declared anathema. Residential schools should probably instead be expanded: any child born into a single-parent family should attend a residential school. Ideally not run by government, but by some religious organization.

The reality is that much of society is constructed to keep the poor down.