Two Views of Social Justice: A Catholic/Georgist Dialogue

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2012.00847.x
• Author: KENNETH R. LORD
• Date: 01 October 2012
• Published date: 01 October 2012

Two Views of Social Justice: A

Catholic/Georgist Dialogue

By KENNETH R. LORD*

ABSTRACT. Sixteen scholars have come together in this issue to

examine eight social-justice themes from the perspectives of Catholic

Social Thought and the philosophy of Henry George. The themes they

address are natural law, human nature, the nature of work, the

nineteenth-century papal encyclical Rerum novarum, causes of war,

immigration, development, and wealth, and neighborhood revitaliza-

tion. While they sometimes wrangle with each other, their common

aspiration is the same as their nineteenth-century predecessors: to find

solutions to the human suffering caused by injustice.

A Meeting of the Minds

When a Catholic archbishop from New York and a subordinate

(although at the time it appears he considered him insubordinate)

priest who was championing Henry George’s platform for social and

economic reform sparred publicly in the 1880s over their different

views of the path to social justice, it is doubtful either would have

envisioned a scholarly exchange of views on that topic under the joint

auspices of a Jesuit university and two Georgist organizations some

120 years later. On July 22 to 27, 2007, 16 experts assembled at the

University of Scranton to engage in a dialogue on the contributions of

Catholic Social Thought (CST) and of Henry George to eight central

tenets of social justice and economic reform that are as relevant in the

twenty-first century as they were in the nineteenth. Their essays,

subjected to lively response and rebuttal during that conference and

rigorous review and updating thereafter, are the focus of this issue.

The themes addressed are the following.

*Kenneth R. Lord is Associate Dean, Kania School of Management, and Professor,

Management & Marketing Department, The University of Scranton. E-mail: kenneth.

lord@scranton.edu

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 4 (October, 2012).

© 2012 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

Natural Law

“Natural law” is a formative element in the contributions that both CST

and Georgist economic theory bring to the troublesome political,

economic, and social issues of this century. In its earliest known

formulation (Aristotle’s Nichmachean Ethics), natural-law theory pre-

dates both the nineteenth-century writings of Henry George and the

sixteenth-century classical canon that has been a mainstay of CST on

the topic (Summa theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas).

Professor Anthony J. Lisska walks us through the views of “tradi-

tional Thomists,” “analytic Thomists,” and “post-modernists” (the old

English major in me remains confused about how anything other than

prophesy about the future can be “post-modern,” but I will leave that

and such modern—or should I say “post-modern”—marvels as “fat-

free sour cream” for another day and audience) in the analysis and

contemporary application of St. Thomas’ exposition of natural-law

concepts. He observes that “moral theory rests upon the social nature

of human persons together with the obligation of each human agent

to act in such a way that one’s natural, human ends are fulfilled,” that

“[a]ny law, which, all things being equal, hinders the development of

a natural disposition in a human person, is inherently unjust,” and that

“the common good—the commonweal—of a society must be part of

the enactment of every positive law based upon the natural law.”

However, while “an unjust law is no law at all,...[Aquinas] argued

that conditions must be severe and exhibit rampant injustice before an

unjust law ought to be overthrown and overturned.”

From the Georgist perspective, Professor Francis K. Peddle reminds

us that in George’s view “[t]he distinction between human law and

natural law is the first necessity in the study of political economy.”

Expressing the view that “the enactment of human laws in contraven-

tion of the natural law may obstruct and temporally displace the latter

but can never permanently abolish it,” he goes on to suggest that to

“do anything economically to restrain unjustifiably human well-being

or flourishing” is to act “against the strictures of normative economics.”

Most tax laws, he writes, “are contrary to the normal inclinations of

human nature” (indeed, they are “market destroying and generative of

spurious competition”) and “morally unjustifiable taxing statutes such

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