Suscipe Domine Traditional Catholic Forum

The Parish Hall => General News and Discussion => Topic started by: LouisIX on April 05, 2016, 12:50:54 PM

Title: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on April 05, 2016, 12:50:54 PM
This article is a few years old but it perfectly sums up the political situation in the West.

"...in any dispute between a liberal and a liberal, the liberal will win every time."

https://ethikapolitika.org/2013/06/24/radical-traditionalists-the-fall-of-triumph-magazine/
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Kaesekopf on April 05, 2016, 01:06:55 PM
What is political traditionalism?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lynne on April 05, 2016, 01:09:23 PM
Darn!!! This sounds like a really good book, Mark D. Popowski's The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine.

The hardcover is $80 and the Kindle version is $76!!!!!

Nice ripoff.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Kaesekopf on April 05, 2016, 01:11:13 PM
Make your library get it?  Lolol

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lynne on April 05, 2016, 01:14:34 PM
Quote from: Kaesekopf on April 05, 2016, 01:11:13 PM
Make your library get it?  Lolol

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

I like to own books but yes, that's an option.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: mikemac on April 05, 2016, 01:54:24 PM
Quote from: Lynne on April 05, 2016, 01:09:23 PM
Darn!!! This sounds like a really good book, Mark D. Popowski's The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine.

The hardcover is $80 and the Kindle version is $76!!!!!

Nice ripoff.

Google Books has it online but there may be some pages omitted.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=c5-TewmRvzsC&pg=PP2&lpg=PP2&dq=The+Rise+and+Fall+of+Triumph:+The+History+of+a+Radical+Roman+Catholic+Magazine&source=bl&ots=l0qf1H5TOc&sig=cAdsfMEXrGLVAaeg-Bq25Et6zqo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA58ronvjLAhXikoMKHWhKC3QQ6AEIJjAD#v=onepage&q=The%20Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20Triumph%3A%20The%20History%20of%20a%20Radical%20Roman%20Catholic%20Magazine&f=false

This pdf is not exactly the same but some of the chapters are titled the same.
ROMAN CATHOLIC CRUSADING IN TEN YEARS OF TRIUMPH, 1966-1976:
A HISTORY OF A LAY-DIRECTED, RADICAL CATHOLIC JOURNAL
By MARK DAVID POPOWSKI
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/etd/Popowski_okstate_0664D_10014.pdf

Or you can get a hard copy of The Best of Triumph for $20
http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Triumph-Christendom-Press/dp/0931888727 
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on April 05, 2016, 02:13:08 PM
Quote from: Kaesekopf on April 05, 2016, 01:06:55 PM
What is political traditionalism?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Broadly speaking, it's simply an espousal of traditional political principles rather than the espousal of relatively modern, liberal political principles. As the article suggests, the Western left and right are two different flavors of liberalism.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on April 05, 2016, 02:14:53 PM
There is also a $20 "Best of Triumph" available on Amazon. I purchased it recently but have not received it. If I like that, I will spring for the Popowski's book.

But the most important aspect of this article is its treatment of Triumph's general political relation to "conservatism" and the GOP. Many here do not understand how a Catholic could remain political but reject the Republican Party. This is the blueprint.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Kaesekopf on April 05, 2016, 02:28:12 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on April 05, 2016, 02:13:08 PM
Quote from: Kaesekopf on April 05, 2016, 01:06:55 PM
What is political traditionalism?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Broadly speaking, it's simply an espousal of traditional political principles rather than the espousal of relatively modern, liberal political principles. As the article suggests, the Western left and right are two different flavors of liberalism.

But what are traditional political principles?  Or, do you have a link for me to figure this out?  :lol: 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lynne on April 05, 2016, 02:49:36 PM
Quote from: mikemac on April 05, 2016, 01:54:24 PM
Quote from: Lynne on April 05, 2016, 01:09:23 PM
Darn!!! This sounds like a really good book, Mark D. Popowski's The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine.

The hardcover is $80 and the Kindle version is $76!!!!!

Nice ripoff.

Google Books has it online but there may be some pages omitted.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=c5-TewmRvzsC&pg=PP2&lpg=PP2&dq=The+Rise+and+Fall+of+Triumph:+The+History+of+a+Radical+Roman+Catholic+Magazine&source=bl&ots=l0qf1H5TOc&sig=cAdsfMEXrGLVAaeg-Bq25Et6zqo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA58ronvjLAhXikoMKHWhKC3QQ6AEIJjAD#v=onepage&q=The%20Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20Triumph%3A%20The%20History%20of%20a%20Radical%20Roman%20Catholic%20Magazine&f=false

This pdf is not exactly the same but some of the chapters are titled the same.
ROMAN CATHOLIC CRUSADING IN TEN YEARS OF TRIUMPH, 1966-1976:
A HISTORY OF A LAY-DIRECTED, RADICAL CATHOLIC JOURNAL
By MARK DAVID POPOWSKI
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/etd/Popowski_okstate_0664D_10014.pdf

Or you can get a hard copy of The Best of Triumph for $20
http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Triumph-Christendom-Press/dp/0931888727

Thank you sir!

I knew that Amazon frequently did that, over-price a book which is actually sold at another website for much cheaper. I just didn't take the time to look for it.

:toth:
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Aquila on April 05, 2016, 04:59:44 PM
Thank you for the article LouisIX. I'd heard of Wilhelmsen before, and was vaguely aware of Triumph. I'll have to do more digging. I consider myself a political traditionalist, mostly because I've come to the conclusion that "the people" are utterly incapable of effectively implementing democracy due to stupidity, greed, and ignorance (witness pretty much any political movement, whether it's the alt-right, the Sanders fans, or the Trump-bots. Morons, all of them). However it's been hard for me to find it articulated in a consistent ideological vision. Are there any books you might recommend, or is there some kind of manifesto of political traditionalism? Popowski's book sounds good, but I'd like to find something that's a bit more ideological.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Larry on April 06, 2016, 01:22:32 PM
Quote from: Lynne on April 05, 2016, 01:09:23 PM
Darn!!! This sounds like a really good book, Mark D. Popowski's The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine.

The hardcover is $80 and the Kindle version is $76!!!!!

Nice ripoff.

A friend of mine let me borrow his copy. It's an excellent book, but it's not worth 80 bucks.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on April 06, 2016, 01:49:47 PM
Quote from: Aquila on April 05, 2016, 04:59:44 PM
Thank you for the article LouisIX. I'd heard of Wilhelmsen before, and was vaguely aware of Triumph. I'll have to do more digging. I consider myself a political traditionalist, mostly because I've come to the conclusion that "the people" are utterly incapable of effectively implementing democracy due to stupidity, greed, and ignorance (witness pretty much any political movement, whether it's the alt-right, the Sanders fans, or the Trump-bots. Morons, all of them). However it's been hard for me to find it articulated in a consistent ideological vision. Are there any books you might recommend, or is there some kind of manifesto of political traditionalism? Popowski's book sounds good, but I'd like to find something that's a bit more ideological.

I would start with Plato and Aristotle. The Republic features a great critique of democracy and egalitarian forms of government, and Aristotle's thought on the common good, and virtue-based politics are sort of the basis for everything else that you might read.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on April 06, 2016, 02:05:46 PM
Quote from: Kaesekopf on April 05, 2016, 02:28:12 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on April 05, 2016, 02:13:08 PM
Quote from: Kaesekopf on April 05, 2016, 01:06:55 PM
What is political traditionalism?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Broadly speaking, it's simply an espousal of traditional political principles rather than the espousal of relatively modern, liberal political principles. As the article suggests, the Western left and right are two different flavors of liberalism.

But what are traditional political principles?  Or, do you have a link for me to figure this out?  :lol: 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

I'm not sure that it can be summed up in one work or one site. Boiled down to its most common principles however, I would say that it is:

1) Virtue and truth based rather than autonomy or "freedom" based.

2) Accordingly, it recognizes that legislation must reflect the moral needs of the people; laws provide a medicinal and educational purpose. Laws do not exist simply to litigate power struggles between citizens or corporations.

3) The political and communal aspect of man is constitutive of his nature as a rational animal. Man is inherently political and social. As such, the society must be treated not just as a collection of individuals, but also as a living entity itself, a whole composed of smaller parts. The smallest and most fundamental cell of society is the family. The State is analogous to the family, and works in a similar manner as it is simply the family writ large.

4) Egalitarianism is rejected for hierarchical forms of governance. The desire and need for hierarchy is constitutive of the human experience. It also provides the basis for real subsidiarity, as all members within the society have their own place. Responsibilities are easily adjudicated, which is often not the case in democratic or representative forms of government.

5) Politics are teleological. The aim is the flourishing of the citizens. At the very least, this involves ordering the society toward the virtue of its citizens, toward their natural end. Ideally, it also aims to aid citizens toward the achieving of their supernatural end of beatitude. This is primarily the responsibility of the Church, but the State acts as Her handmaiden. Insofar as temporal affairs affect our spiritual life, the State is charged with aiding the Church in the attainment of that end.

6) A traditional society does not solve all moral issues via economics and the financial market. It recognizes that issues of social justice are not simply private. Since these injustices regard temporal goods and public suffering, the State has a very formal place in addressing and rectifying them.

7) There is a distinction but no functional divorce between the Church and the State. As many modern political commentators have written, it is impossible for the Church and the State to remain completely separated. The current state of the West is an example of how such a separation invariably leads to the subjection of the Church to the State. The traditional response is to restore the State's submission to the Church.

8 ) This leads to the rejection of the compartmentalization of faith. The State confesses a religion as true, rather than espousing a religious and philosophical plurality. A State or culture which does not share common values and beliefs cannot stand together.


I would say that this is a good start.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on April 06, 2016, 04:06:55 PM
For those interested in Popowski's book, but who are not willing to pay for it and are not quite motivated to get it through the library, I recommend reading the dissertation on which the book is based.

http://dc.library.okstate.edu/utils/getfile/collection/Dissert/id/73536/filename/74227.pdf

As noted above, the book is not very ideological.  Popowski is sympathetic to the Triumph endeavor, but his work is academic.

I have the other books mentioned above and a folder full of links.  If anyone is interested in learning more about Triumph, just ask.  I'll see what I can dig up or remember from my reading on the subject.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on April 06, 2016, 04:18:11 PM
Thanks, Jacob!
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lynne on April 06, 2016, 04:22:09 PM
Quote from: Larry on April 06, 2016, 01:22:32 PM
Quote from: Lynne on April 05, 2016, 01:09:23 PM
Darn!!! This sounds like a really good book, Mark D. Popowski's The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine.

The hardcover is $80 and the Kindle version is $76!!!!!

Nice ripoff.

A friend of mine let me borrow his copy. It's an excellent book, but it's not worth 80 bucks.

Nothing's worth $80 except many yards of fabric! :-)

Sent from my KFTT using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lynne on April 06, 2016, 04:24:35 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on April 06, 2016, 04:18:11 PM
Thanks, Jacob!

Yes, more info would be great!

Sent from my KFTT using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on April 06, 2016, 04:45:05 PM
Well, unless you have specific questions, there's not much to say.

The story of the magazine is the story of Bozell and his associates (Wilhelmson and the others).  Bozell was a conservative (ghostwrote Goldwater's book Conscience of a Conservative) who broke with his National Review fellows and went off to found Triumph.

The Wikipedia article looks to be correct and unbiased.  Start there.  That ought to answer most questions on Bozell's political transformation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_%28magazine%29

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Prayerful on April 06, 2016, 06:25:27 PM
Conservatism and the Right often seems to be mainly about enriching wealthy commercial or industrial interests with social issues largely as distractions only weakly pursued. Abortion and homosexuality fall into that pretend conservtive distraction category. Some political leaders have tried to run a supportive attitude to industry in harness with social conservatism. Tony Abbot probably was an example, but can mean a fatally divided attention. It can mean political defeat, like for Abbot, or that the legislative effort is just empheral and vanishes with the next change of government. Big money conservatism is stonger in the West now thanks to the complete cultural victory of the Frankfurt school. This conservatism annexes social liberalism, and regards genuine social conservatives in their ranks as somewhere between annoyances or amusing oddities.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: mikemac on April 06, 2016, 10:23:00 PM
Quote from: Jacob on April 06, 2016, 04:45:05 PM
Well, unless you have specific questions, there's not much to say.

The story of the magazine is the story of Bozell and his associates (Wilhelmson and the others).  Bozell was a conservative (ghostwrote Goldwater's book Conscience of a Conservative) who broke with his National Review fellows and went off to found Triumph.

The Wikipedia article looks to be correct and unbiased.  Start there.  That ought to answer most questions on Bozell's political transformation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_%28magazine%29

I see Triumph had quite the list of contributors, including Solange Hertz, Dietrich von Hildebrand and Marcel Lefebvre.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Non Nobis on April 06, 2016, 11:31:10 PM
My family (parents) used to get Triumph magazine when I was growing up.  I remember liking it... unfortunately I don't remember more.  Also unfortunately, we didn't keep them.

A lot of help I am!

Hmm, maybe I can help one person:  (as I write this) there is 1 copy of the book for $44.91 on abebooks:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&tn=The+Rise+and+fall+of+triumph+the+history
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on April 07, 2016, 08:05:14 AM
It is interesting that someone hasn't scanned in all the issues of the magazine by now.  It certainly is influential enough in certain circles.  The interest is out there.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lynne on April 07, 2016, 09:51:39 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 07, 2016, 08:05:14 AM
It is interesting that someone hasn't scanned in all the issues of the magazine by now.  It certainly is influential enough in certain circles.  The interest is out there.

copyright issues?
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Kaesekopf on April 07, 2016, 12:43:26 PM
Who would sue on behalf of a dead publication?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lynne on April 07, 2016, 12:50:55 PM
Quote from: Kaesekopf on April 07, 2016, 12:43:26 PM
Who would sue on behalf of a dead publication?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Bozell's relatives? The publisher? It's still in copyright. I believe something is still in copyright 78 (or even 100) years after the death of the author/owner.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Kaesekopf on April 07, 2016, 12:57:40 PM
Meh.   

It's not like theyre selling back issues, or making the content available in other formats (the two aforementioned books notwithstanding).

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lynne on April 07, 2016, 01:01:16 PM
Quote from: Kaesekopf on April 07, 2016, 12:57:40 PM
Meh.   

It's not like theyre selling back issues, or making the content available in other formats (the two aforementioned books notwithstanding).

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Yes but I'm sure someone would complain if someone tried to make some money of the publication. It's a shame because I'm sure a decent number of people would be interested in it but thank Disney!

They're the ones who pushed to get copyrights extended. Have to protect Mickey Mouse (and its $$$), you know...  ::)
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Kaesekopf on April 07, 2016, 01:05:49 PM
Oh, sure, make money, that's a different thing.  I assumed they'd be scanned to archive.org. 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on April 07, 2016, 01:56:26 PM
Quote from: Prayerful on April 06, 2016, 06:25:27 PM
Conservatism and the Right often seems to be mainly about enriching wealthy commercial or industrial interests with social issues largely as distractions only weakly pursued. Abortion and homosexuality fall into that pretend conservtive distraction category. Some political leaders have tried to run a supportive attitude to industry in harness with social conservatism. Tony Abbot probably was an example, but can mean a fatally divided attention. It can mean political defeat, like for Abbot, or that the legislative effort is just empheral and vanishes with the next change of government. Big money conservatism is stonger in the West now thanks to the complete cultural victory of the Frankfurt school. This conservatism annexes social liberalism, and regards genuine social conservatives in their ranks as somewhere between annoyances or amusing oddities.

Likewise, it regards traditionalists as socialists or Marxists since they do not employ "The government is inherently evil" as their major premise for every argument.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Michael Wilson on April 07, 2016, 04:21:29 PM
A good reading list on Traditional Catholic Social teaching should include the Papal Encyclicals (not a complete list)
Quas Primas; Pius XI On the Kingship of Christ.
Immortale Dei; Leo XIII On the Christian Constitution of States.
Humanum Genus; Leo XIII On Freemasonry.
Vehementer Nos; Pius X "The Separation of Church and State.
Quanta Cura; Syllabus; Pius IX; Condemnation the errors of Liberalism.
Pius XII "Ci Riesce" address to the association of Italian Catholic Jurists

The Works of Fr. Denis Fahey CSSR are helpful, as they contain many of the same Papal teachings as they apply to the subject of government and the duties of Catholics especially: "The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism"; "The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganization of Society".
Rev. E. Cahill S.J. "The Framework of a Christian State'' (online here: http://strobertbellarmine.net/books/Cahill%20--%20Christian%20State.pdf).
Those can give a Catholic a good sense of the Catholic social doctrine
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on April 07, 2016, 04:46:17 PM
Members of SD who come from FE may remember Roger Buck, a member there who took part in an on-again off-again thread on Bozell, etc.

I see now today at Roger's website that he has posted a long essay that is worth a read on the subject of conservatism and political traditionalism.  Go check it out.

http://corjesusacratissimum.org/2015/09/mustard-seeds-a-conservative-becomes-a-catholic-by-l-brent-bozell-review/
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Kaesekopf on April 07, 2016, 10:32:24 PM
Thanks guys!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Non Nobis on April 08, 2016, 12:13:49 AM
Quote from: mikemac on April 05, 2016, 01:54:24 PM

Or you can get a hard copy of The Best of Triumph for $20
http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Triumph-Christendom-Press/dp/0931888727

Of course you can also get "12 New from $12.96".  It is on abebooks for about the same price.

I ordered one.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Prayerful on April 08, 2016, 06:14:41 AM
Quote from: Jacob on April 07, 2016, 08:05:14 AM
It is interesting that someone hasn't scanned in all the issues of the magazine by now.  It certainly is influential enough in certain circles.  The interest is out there.

That would be great, as the magazine would reflect the stance of many here.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on August 22, 2016, 11:42:50 AM
Topic resurrection: GO!

I am in contact with a lady at Notre Dame who works for the Catholic Research Resources Alliance.  It is an alliance of institutions working to facilitate the preservation of Catholic research materials in the US (if your local diocese has recently digitized its newspaper archive, it's probably under their auspices).  I asked the lady if they accept suggestions for digitization of periodicals held by their members and then passed along Triumph.  We'll see what happens.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 22, 2016, 12:38:43 PM
I probably cross the line into fascism when it comes to social issues, so I find myself in agreement with many of your items.  This is incorrect:

QuoteIt recognizes that issues of social justice are not simply private. Since these injustices regard temporal goods and public suffering, the State has a very formal place in addressing and rectifying them.

"Social Justice" was a term invented by Pesch.  It is not "political traditionalism", whatever that is.  Also the State has very little to do with "addressing and rectifying" "injustices" with regard to temporal goods.  The devil is in the details.  Relief of the poor is reserved to the Church.  So says Rerum Novarum.  More on social justice, if we take the literal meaning of the term it means people who don't work starve.  The more correct term is "social mercy", however leftists like yourself don't like the idea that people are free to give alms or not.  edit: delete
QuoteLikewise, it regards traditionalists as socialists or Marxists since they do not employ "The government is inherently evil" as their major premise for every argument.
A poor caricature.  Traditionalists that take no account for the fallen nature of man IN GOVERNMENT are not socialists.  They are utopians who reject Original Sin.  Especially in government where the State has a monopoly on coercive power strong restraints must be in place to limit State power.  England, France, and Russia have taught us this. 

On economics, the Calculation Problem must be addressed, and in a hundred years the left has no answer.

My ideal of government would be a constitutional aristocracy with government broken down to individual States, with a very small central government, similar to the government God set up, before the Israelites rebelled and demanded a king.  A constitutional limited monarchy would probably be ok, e.g. Liechtenstein, Andorra, and Monacco, however the counter example of Switzerland before the Sonderbund war, when it was very decentralized is relevant.  Interestingly it was the Catholic Cantons that fought to keep subsidiarity.  They lost.  Switzerland is still a decent place however and retains much in the way of subsidiarity.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 22, 2016, 01:01:32 PM
Interesting excerpt from Wikipedia:

QuoteThe Sonderbund consisted of the cantons of Lucerne, Fribourg, Valais, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden and Zug, all predominantly Catholic and governed by Conservative administrations. The cantons of Ticino and Solothurn, also predominantly Catholic but governed by liberal administrations, did not join the alliance. ..... The liberal Free Democratic Party of Switzerland (German: Freisinnig-Demokratische Partei, French: Parti radical-démocratique) which was mainly made up of urban bourgeoisie and burghers and was strong in the largely Protestant cantons obtained the majority in the Federal Diet (the Tagsatzung) in the early 1840s. It proposed a new Constitution for the Swiss Confederation which would draw the several cantons into a closer relationship. In 1843, the conservative city patricians and mountain or Ur-Swiss from the largely Catholic cantons were opposed to the new constitution. These cantons combined to form the Sonderbund in 1843. In addition to the centralization of the Swiss government, the new Constitution also included protections for trade and other progressive reform measures.[1]

The Sonderbund alliance was concluded after the Federal Diet, with the approval of a majority of cantons, had taken measures against the Catholic Church such as the closure of monasteries and convents in Aargau in 1841,[2] and the seizure of their properties. When Lucerne, in retaliation, recalled the Jesuits to head its education the same year, groups of armed radicals (Freischärler) invaded the canton. This caused a revolt, mostly because rural cantons were strongholds of ultramontanism.

Doesn't fit into any neat category (edit: in the left/right Euro spectrum.  According to the American spectrum the leftists defeated the right).  My interpretation (and that's all it is) is that pre-war Switzerland was a loosely confederated system of individual cantons with a weak central government (my ideal), i.e. it was a system based on the Catholic principal of subsidiarity.  The Catholic governments were "conservative", which could mean they had strong social conservative policies, or that they were more of an aristocracy (patricians).  Likely both.  The "Liberals" wanted a strong(er) central government (contra what Louis claims), with more democracy and obviously less Church power.

The pre-war set up would be my ideal for a government, though only 9 of the cantons were Catholic.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 22, 2016, 05:30:05 PM
Quote from: james03 on August 22, 2016, 12:38:43 PM
I probably cross the line into fascism when it comes to social issues, so I find myself in agreement with many of your items.  This is incorrect:

QuoteIt recognizes that issues of social justice are not simply private. Since these injustices regard temporal goods and public suffering, the State has a very formal place in addressing and rectifying them.

"Social Justice" was a term invented by Pesch.  It is not "political traditionalism", whatever that is.  Also the State has very little to do with "addressing and rectifying" "injustices" with regard to temporal goods.  The devil is in the details.  Relief of the poor is reserved to the Church.  So says Rerum Novarum.  More on social justice, if we take the literal meaning of the term it means people who don't work starve.  The more correct term is "social mercy", however leftists like yourself don't like the idea that people are free to give alms or not.  edit: delete
QuoteLikewise, it regards traditionalists as socialists or Marxists since they do not employ "The government is inherently evil" as their major premise for every argument.
A poor caricature.  Traditionalists that take no account for the fallen nature of man IN GOVERNMENT are not socialists.  They are utopians who reject Original Sin.  Especially in government where the State has a monopoly on coercive power strong restraints must be in place to limit State power.  England, France, and Russia have taught us this. 

On economics, the Calculation Problem must be addressed, and in a hundred years the left has no answer.

My ideal of government would be a constitutional aristocracy with government broken down to individual States, with a very small central government, similar to the government God set up, before the Israelites rebelled and demanded a king.  A constitutional limited monarchy would probably be ok, e.g. Liechtenstein, Andorra, and Monacco, however the counter example of Switzerland before the Sonderbund war, when it was very decentralized is relevant.  Interestingly it was the Catholic Cantons that fought to keep subsidiarity.  They lost.  Switzerland is still a decent place however and retains much in the way of subsidiarity.

Why don't you try citing things instead of just calling me a leftist. Don't be so lazy.

"Social justice" in this sense means just that: justice which is social in nature rather than private. You're going to have a hard time selling anyone who is familiar with the Church's social teaching (do you permit the term "social teaching"?) that She never spoke on the State's responsibility to effect economic justice for its citizens. The countless calls for a just wage are themselves a very real commission by the Church for the State to help combat poverty.

The State exists to safeguard the temporal goods of its citizens. If that's not its job, I do not know why it would even exist. The idea that only the Church would deal with safeguarding temporal goods is strange, as is the idea that all charity is somehow privatized to one's religion.

The State has a responsibility to respect the natural law. The natural law demands that we not deprive our neighbor of his due.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Miriam_M on August 22, 2016, 08:08:12 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on August 22, 2016, 05:30:05 PM
The natural law demands that we not deprive our neighbor of his due.
"His due" might be interpreted variously.

Is it recompense for existing and residing within that State?
Is it compensation for inability to earn, in the same time period, what a more able-bodied or able-minded person could earn?  (i.e., Disability Payments)
Is it compensation for breaching the immigration laws of our country, and if so, what is "due" those who do honor those same laws?
Is it compensation based on political power or perceived political power of particular special interest groups?
Is it defensive compensation based on anticipation of political backlash or other consequences if the State does not anticipate the "due" of certain groups vs. other groups or all groups?
Is it another form of Unemployment Compensation?
Is it the closing of emotional and/or practical gaps due to greater earned economic status of the skilled vs. the less skilled?  (Is it an attempt to eradicate theoretical or actual inequalities?)
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 22, 2016, 09:06:44 PM
QuoteYou're going to have a hard time selling anyone who is familiar with the Church's social teaching (do you permit the term "social teaching"?) that She never spoke on the State's responsibility to effect economic justice for its citizens. The countless calls for a just wage are themselves a very real commission by the Church for the State to help combat poverty.
The Church's solution for a Just wage is COLLECTIVE BARGAINING.  Here's your quote:
QuoteIf through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however - such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc. - in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection.

As far as relief of the poor being reserved to the Church, here's your quote:
QuoteNay, in order to spare them the shame of begging, the Church has provided aid for the needy. The common Mother of rich and poor has aroused everywhere the heroism of charity, and has established congregations of religious and many other useful institutions for help and mercy, so that hardly any kind of suffering could exist which was not afforded relief. At the present day many there are who, like the heathen of old, seek to blame and condemn the Church for such eminent charity. They would substitute in its stead a system of relief organized by the State.
Pope Leo refers to you and your ilk "heathen of the old".
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 22, 2016, 09:13:36 PM
QuoteThe State exists to safeguard the temporal goods of its citizens. If that's not its job, I do not know why it would even exist.
Seriously, what the heck does that statement have anything to do with what I said?  Yes, the State should protect private property.  However they are forbidden by the Church to dictate its use.  By the way, Pope Leo described the right to private property as sacred.

QuoteThe idea that only the Church would deal with safeguarding temporal goods is strange,
I agree, that would be a strange belief.  The Church teaches that the State should protect private property.

Quoteas is the idea that all charity is somehow privatized to one's religion.
The Church teaches that the Church and individuals provide charity.  However she points out that this does not fall under the laws of Justice and can not be dictated by the State.  Above I quoted Pope Leo saying people that called for State relief are equivalent to "heathens of old".

QuoteThe State has a responsibility to respect the natural law. The natural law demands that we not deprive our neighbor of his due.
That is justice, and I completely agree.  I've never said otherwise.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 22, 2016, 09:53:56 PM
Here's a list of quotes for you:

Quote"It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry. So, too, it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and a disturbance of right order, to transfer to the larger and higher collectivity functions which can be performed and provided for by lesser and subordinate bodies.(Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 79)"

Quote"it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over. "Of that which remaineth, give alms."(14) It is a duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity - a duty not enforced by human law."  -- Rerum Novarum 22

Quote"The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This being established, we proceed to show where the remedy sought for must be found." --RN

Quote" 47. In order to place definite limits on the controversies that have arisen over ownership and its inherent duties there must be first laid down as foundation a principle established by Leo XIII: The right of property is distinct from its use.[30] That justice called commutative commands sacred respect for the division of possessions and forbids invasion of others' rights through the exceeding of the limits of one's own property; but the duty of owners to use their property only in a right way does not come under this type of justice, but under other virtues, obligations of which "cannot be enforced by legal action."[31] Therefore, they are in error who assert that ownership and its right use are limited by the same boundaries; and it is much farther still from the truth to hold that a right to property is destroyed or lost by reason of abuse or non-use."  -- QA
Quote"Let them, however, never allow this to escape their memory: that whilst it is proper and desirable to assert and secure the rights of the many, yet this is not to be done by a violation of duty; and that these are very important duties; not to touch what belongs to another; to allow every one to be free in the management of his own affairs; not to hinder any one to dispose of his services when he please and where he please."LONGINQUA

By the way, the left called Pope Leo a sell out to capitalists.

If you want to learn about economics, just read my book.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 22, 2016, 10:09:11 PM
For those interested in economics, the Sonderbund war is an interesting example.  I always like seeing demonstrations in the real world that match theory, in this case, subsidiarity.  What is demonstrated is WHY you need subsidiarity.

So Switzerland was set up pretty similar to the way God set up the Israel government.  A loose confederation of cantons.  Evidently the Liberal party took over the central government and wanted to impose Enlightenment policies (unfortunately the Wiki article doesn't go into detail).  However, they COULD NOT.  Why?  Because they lacked the power.  So what they did was change the constitution to give them that power.  They had been thwarted by subsidiarity.  And thus we see the advantage, it is a natural check on government power.

There is also a lesson learned for those young lads that will survive the reset and author the next constitution.  You need an unamendable bill of rights and limitations.  I would suggest the following:

1.  Taxes limited to sales tax and import tariffs.
2.  Property tax outlawed.
3.  Government debt outlawed.
4.  Gold and silver are the only money.
5.  100% reserve requirement for the banks.
6.  No central banks or bankers's guild.
7.  Power retained by local governments.
8.  No redistribution payments or State pension schemes.  I like the Chile model of a required private pension with a required 5% deduction. 
9.  Catholic confessional State (obviously).
10.  Only Catholics in government, bank ownership, media ownership, and entertainment company ownership.
11.  Right to own, keep, and bear arms shall not be infringed.
12.  Civil courts can only award actual damages.  Fines such as punitive "damages" and triple "damages" are outlawed.

Probably others.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 23, 2016, 10:00:27 AM
Quote from: james03 on August 22, 2016, 09:06:44 PM
QuoteYou're going to have a hard time selling anyone who is familiar with the Church's social teaching (do you permit the term "social teaching"?) that She never spoke on the State's responsibility to effect economic justice for its citizens. The countless calls for a just wage are themselves a very real commission by the Church for the State to help combat poverty.
The Church's solution for a Just wage is COLLECTIVE BARGAINING.  Here's your quote:
QuoteIf through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however - such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc. - in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection.

As far as relief of the poor being reserved to the Church, here's your quote:
QuoteNay, in order to spare them the shame of begging, the Church has provided aid for the needy. The common Mother of rich and poor has aroused everywhere the heroism of charity, and has established congregations of religious and many other useful institutions for help and mercy, so that hardly any kind of suffering could exist which was not afforded relief. At the present day many there are who, like the heathen of old, seek to blame and condemn the Church for such eminent charity. They would substitute in its stead a system of relief organized by the State.
Pope Leo refers to you and your ilk "heathen of the old".

Except that Pope Leo does not talk exclusively about collective bargaining. Throughout this same encyclical and many others, the idea of the just wage is laid down as a social justice, a matter of the law, not just what one brings up in the confessional. Pope Pius IX spoke about a proper distribution of private property, and it is to this that I was referring above.

You keep talking about how the Church deputes the State to maintain private property. That is true. But it also deputes the State to maintain an economic system which is just, that is, one wherein wealth is so distributed that it is easy for men to actually procure private property, as well as basic temporal goods.

This is what you keep missing. The "many" who are like "heathens of old" are the ones who state that the State should supersede the Church in dealing with problems that can only be fixed with charity and justice. James, for one moment consider the text and what I am saying before you starting throwing around insults and essentially label me a heretic. I am not in any way advocating for replacing the Church with the State, which is exactly what Leo is condemning. I already mentioned this earlier in this thread. If the State's authority and confession does not flow from the Church then the State will necessarily dominate the Church. Everything that I have advocated for in this thread is that the State acts as the handmaiden to the Church in its secular execution, especially in relation to temporal goods. The exact thing that Leo condemns is a relation of separation of the Church and the State which would see the State has overtaking the Church. When you claim that the State is essentially relegated to maintaining private property but that issues like justice and charity are relegated entirely to the Church, I think that you fall into the same error of separating the Church and State, such that the task of one does not flow into the temporal governance of the other. It is even a task of the State to prepare, via its laws and culture, the citizen for his supernatural end and the grace whereby one reaches it. Of course the Church can only provide this, but the State works with the Church to prepare the way, as it were.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on August 23, 2016, 10:03:38 AM
Quote from: james03 on August 22, 2016, 09:53:56 PM
If you want to learn about economics, just read my book.

Where can I find your book?
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Baldrick on August 23, 2016, 10:24:27 AM
Quote from: james03 on August 22, 2016, 12:38:43 PM
I probably cross the line into fascism when it comes to social issues, so I find myself in agreement with many of your items.  This is incorrect:

QuoteIt recognizes that issues of social justice are not simply private. Since these injustices regard temporal goods and public suffering, the State has a very formal place in addressing and rectifying them.

"Social Justice" was a term invented by Pesch.  It is not "political traditionalism", whatever that is.  Also the State has very little to do with "addressing and rectifying" "injustices" with regard to temporal goods.  The devil is in the details.  Relief of the poor is reserved to the Church.  So says Rerum Novarum.  More on social justice, if we take the literal meaning of the term it means people who don't work starve.  The more correct term is "social mercy", however leftists like yourself don't like the idea that people are free to give alms or not.  edit: delete
QuoteLikewise, it regards traditionalists as socialists or Marxists since they do not employ "The government is inherently evil" as their major premise for every argument.
A poor caricature.  Traditionalists that take no account for the fallen nature of man IN GOVERNMENT are not socialists.  They are utopians who reject Original Sin.  Especially in government where the State has a monopoly on coercive power strong restraints must be in place to limit State power.  England, France, and Russia have taught us this. 

On economics, the Calculation Problem must be addressed, and in a hundred years the left has no answer.

My ideal of government would be a constitutional aristocracy with government broken down to individual States, with a very small central government, similar to the government God set up, before the Israelites rebelled and demanded a king.  A constitutional limited monarchy would probably be ok, e.g. Liechtenstein, Andorra, and Monacco, however the counter example of Switzerland before the Sonderbund war, when it was very decentralized is relevant.  Interestingly it was the Catholic Cantons that fought to keep subsidiarity.  They lost.  Switzerland is still a decent place however and retains much in the way of subsidiarity.

Very well put. 

The calculation problem is is always side-stepped by utopian/statists of all flavors; and, despite being unable to demonstrate what is meant by a "just wage," the term is simply repeated ad infinitum as if it actually means something beyond a vague yearning (if not a kind of virtue signaling) "for a better world'; and only entrepreneurs and other economic actors (unless a laborer or a member of union hierarchy) suffer from Original Sin.

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Flora on August 23, 2016, 11:19:29 AM
Quote from: Miriam_M on August 22, 2016, 08:08:12 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on August 22, 2016, 05:30:05 PM
The natural law demands that we not deprive our neighbor of his due.
"His due" might be interpreted variously.

Is it recompense for existing and residing within that State?
Is it compensation for inability to earn, in the same time period, what a more able-bodied or able-minded person could earn?  (i.e., Disability Payments)
Is it compensation for breaching the immigration laws of our country, and if so, what is "due" those who do honor those same laws?
Is it compensation based on political power or perceived political power of particular special interest groups?
Is it defensive compensation based on anticipation of political backlash or other consequences if the State does not anticipate the "due" of certain groups vs. other groups or all groups?
Is it another form of Unemployment Compensation?
Is it the closing of emotional and/or practical gaps due to greater earned economic status of the skilled vs. the less skilled?  (Is it an attempt to eradicate theoretical or actual inequalities?)

These are essential questions that need to be answered if one wants to move past hypothetical utopia into real-world application.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Flora on August 23, 2016, 11:29:46 AM
Quote from: Baldrick on August 23, 2016, 10:24:27 AM
Quote from: james03 on August 22, 2016, 12:38:43 PM
I probably cross the line into fascism when it comes to social issues, so I find myself in agreement with many of your items.  This is incorrect:

QuoteIt recognizes that issues of social justice are not simply private. Since these injustices regard temporal goods and public suffering, the State has a very formal place in addressing and rectifying them.

"Social Justice" was a term invented by Pesch.  It is not "political traditionalism", whatever that is.  Also the State has very little to do with "addressing and rectifying" "injustices" with regard to temporal goods.  The devil is in the details.  Relief of the poor is reserved to the Church.  So says Rerum Novarum.  More on social justice, if we take the literal meaning of the term it means people who don't work starve.  The more correct term is "social mercy", however leftists like yourself don't like the idea that people are free to give alms or not.  edit: delete
QuoteLikewise, it regards traditionalists as socialists or Marxists since they do not employ "The government is inherently evil" as their major premise for every argument.
A poor caricature.  Traditionalists that take no account for the fallen nature of man IN GOVERNMENT are not socialists.  They are utopians who reject Original Sin.  Especially in government where the State has a monopoly on coercive power strong restraints must be in place to limit State power.  England, France, and Russia have taught us this. 

On economics, the Calculation Problem must be addressed, and in a hundred years the left has no answer.

My ideal of government would be a constitutional aristocracy with government broken down to individual States, with a very small central government, similar to the government God set up, before the Israelites rebelled and demanded a king.  A constitutional limited monarchy would probably be ok, e.g. Liechtenstein, Andorra, and Monacco, however the counter example of Switzerland before the Sonderbund war, when it was very decentralized is relevant.  Interestingly it was the Catholic Cantons that fought to keep subsidiarity.  They lost.  Switzerland is still a decent place however and retains much in the way of subsidiarity.

Very well put. 

The calculation problem is is always side-stepped by utopian/statists of all flavors; and, despite being unable to demonstrate what is meant by a "just wage," the term is simply repeated ad infinitum as if it actually means something beyond a vague yearning (if not a kind of virtue signaling) "for a better world'; and only entrepreneurs and other economic actors (unless a laborer or a member of union hierarchy) suffer from Original Sin.

This is another question that needs to be answered.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Flora on August 23, 2016, 11:30:05 AM
Quote from: Jacob on August 23, 2016, 10:03:38 AM
Quote from: james03 on August 22, 2016, 09:53:56 PM
If you want to learn about economics, just read my book.

Where can I find your book?

I would also like to know.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Miriam_M on August 23, 2016, 01:10:01 PM
Quote from: Flora on August 23, 2016, 11:19:29 AM
Quote from: Miriam_M on August 22, 2016, 08:08:12 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on August 22, 2016, 05:30:05 PM
The natural law demands that we not deprive our neighbor of his due.
"His due" might be interpreted variously.

Is it recompense for existing and residing within that State?
Is it compensation for inability to earn, in the same time period, what a more able-bodied or able-minded person could earn?  (i.e., Disability Payments)
Is it compensation for breaching the immigration laws of our country, and if so, what is "due" those who do honor those same laws?
Is it compensation based on political power or perceived political power of particular special interest groups?
Is it defensive compensation based on anticipation of political backlash or other consequences if the State does not anticipate the "due" of certain groups vs. other groups or all groups?
Is it another form of Unemployment Compensation?
Is it the closing of emotional and/or practical gaps due to greater earned economic status of the skilled vs. the less skilled?  (Is it an attempt to eradicate theoretical or actual inequalities?)

These are essential questions that need to be answered if one wants to move past hypothetical utopia into real-world application.

Thank you, Flora.  However, I asked those questions not for their "utopian" application but for the moral considerations.   Classic moral theology in the Church has been discarded in the post-V2 era by mainstream new-Church in favor of emotionalism (emotional justifications for an invented "social justice" which ignores the parameters suggested in specificity by certain popes and in accordance with the permanent deposit of faith).  Probably for that reason I prefer the term "social theology" to "social justice," because the latter has been severely corrupted by the Conciliar Sect and tends to lack moorings, yet with an often-inaccurate assumption of "justice" for a few despite injustice for many more, and -- more importantly -- despite a deeper injustice which does not emanate from the Church's social theology but is subjective, novel, politically-driven, and otherwise modernistic.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Baldrick on August 23, 2016, 01:24:30 PM
Quote from: Miriam_M on August 23, 2016, 01:10:01 PM
Quote from: Flora on August 23, 2016, 11:19:29 AM
Quote from: Miriam_M on August 22, 2016, 08:08:12 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on August 22, 2016, 05:30:05 PM
The natural law demands that we not deprive our neighbor of his due.
"His due" might be interpreted variously.

Is it recompense for existing and residing within that State?
Is it compensation for inability to earn, in the same time period, what a more able-bodied or able-minded person could earn?  (i.e., Disability Payments)
Is it compensation for breaching the immigration laws of our country, and if so, what is "due" those who do honor those same laws?
Is it compensation based on political power or perceived political power of particular special interest groups?
Is it defensive compensation based on anticipation of political backlash or other consequences if the State does not anticipate the "due" of certain groups vs. other groups or all groups?
Is it another form of Unemployment Compensation?
Is it the closing of emotional and/or practical gaps due to greater earned economic status of the skilled vs. the less skilled?  (Is it an attempt to eradicate theoretical or actual inequalities?)

These are essential questions that need to be answered if one wants to move past hypothetical utopia into real-world application.

Thank you, Flora.  However, I asked those questions not for their "utopian" application but for the moral considerations.   Classic moral theology in the Church has been discarded in the post-V2 era by mainstream new-Church in favor of emotionalism (emotional justifications for an invented "social justice" which ignores the parameters suggested in specificity by certain popes and in accordance with the permanent deposit of faith).  Probably for that reason I prefer the term "social theology" to "social justice," because the latter has been severely corrupted by the Conciliar Sect and tends to lack moorings, yet with an often-inaccurate assumption of "justice" for a few despite injustice for many more, and -- more importantly -- despite a deeper injustice which does not emanate from the Church's social theology but is subjective, novel, politically-driven, and otherwise modernistic.

Very, very interesting Miriam_M.   :)   

Where might I learn more about this? 
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Miriam_M on August 23, 2016, 01:59:09 PM
Quote from: Baldrick on August 23, 2016, 01:24:30 PM
Quote from: Miriam_M on August 23, 2016, 01:10:01 PM
Quote from: Flora on August 23, 2016, 11:19:29 AM
Quote from: Miriam_M on August 22, 2016, 08:08:12 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on August 22, 2016, 05:30:05 PM
The natural law demands that we not deprive our neighbor of his due.
"His due" might be interpreted variously.

Is it recompense for existing and residing within that State?
Is it compensation for inability to earn, in the same time period, what a more able-bodied or able-minded person could earn?  (i.e., Disability Payments)
Is it compensation for breaching the immigration laws of our country, and if so, what is "due" those who do honor those same laws?
Is it compensation based on political power or perceived political power of particular special interest groups?
Is it defensive compensation based on anticipation of political backlash or other consequences if the State does not anticipate the "due" of certain groups vs. other groups or all groups?
Is it another form of Unemployment Compensation?
Is it the closing of emotional and/or practical gaps due to greater earned economic status of the skilled vs. the less skilled?  (Is it an attempt to eradicate theoretical or actual inequalities?)

These are essential questions that need to be answered if one wants to move past hypothetical utopia into real-world application.

Thank you, Flora.  However, I asked those questions not for their "utopian" application but for the moral considerations.   Classic moral theology in the Church has been discarded in the post-V2 era by mainstream new-Church in favor of emotionalism (emotional justifications for an invented "social justice" which ignores the parameters suggested in specificity by certain popes and in accordance with the permanent deposit of faith).  Probably for that reason I prefer the term "social theology" to "social justice," because the latter has been severely corrupted by the Conciliar Sect and tends to lack moorings, yet with an often-inaccurate assumption of "justice" for a few despite injustice for many more, and -- more importantly -- despite a deeper injustice which does not emanate from the Church's social theology but is subjective, novel, politically-driven, and otherwise modernistic.

Very, very interesting Miriam_M.   :)   

Where might I learn more about this?
I'll have to dig up what I wrote about this on a couple of forums.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Quaremerepulisti on August 23, 2016, 02:52:05 PM
Quote from: Baldrick on August 23, 2016, 10:24:27 AM
The calculation problem is is always side-stepped by utopian/statists of all flavors; and, despite being unable to demonstrate what is meant by a "just wage," the term is simply repeated ad infinitum as if it actually means something beyond a vague yearning (if not a kind of virtue signaling) "for a better world'; and only entrepreneurs and other economic actors (unless a laborer or a member of union hierarchy) suffer from Original Sin.

The Church knows exactly what is meant by a just wage.

Quote from: LeoXIII, Rerum Novarum
43. We now approach a subject of great importance, and one in respect of which, if extremes are to be avoided, right notions are absolutely necessary. Wages, as we are told, are regulated by free consent, and therefore the employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part and seemingly is not called upon to do anything beyond. The only way, it is said, in which injustice might occur would be if the master refused to pay the whole of the wages, or if the workman should not complete the work undertaken; in such cases the public authority should intervene, to see that each obtains his due, but not under any other circumstances.

44. To this kind of argument a fair-minded man will not easily or entirely assent; it is not complete, for there are important considerations which it leaves out of account altogether. To labor is to exert oneself for the sake of procuring what is necessary for the various purposes of life, and chief of all for self preservation. "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread."(33) Hence, a man's labor necessarily bears two notes or characters. First of all, it is personal, inasmuch as the force which acts is bound up with the personality and is the exclusive property of him who acts, and, further, was given to him for his advantage. Secondly, man's labor is necessary; for without the result of labor a man cannot live, and self-preservation is a law of nature, which it is wrong to disobey. Now, were we to consider labor merely in so far as it is personal, doubtless it would be within the workman's right to accept any rate of wages whatsoever; for in the same way as he is free to work or not, so is he free to accept a small wage or even none at all. But our conclusion must be very different if, together with the personal element in a man's work, we consider the fact that work is also necessary for him to live: these two aspects of his work are separable in thought, but not in reality. The preservation of life is the bounden duty of one and all, and to be wanting therein is a crime. It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live, and the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work.

45. Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however - such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc. - in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection.

46. If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Akavit on August 23, 2016, 04:16:55 PM
So put it into real numbers.

Elsewhere I've stated that it is possible for a family of 4 to eke it out (no room for emergencies) on a single, full-time job paying $9 an hour with a take-home pay of $17,000 annually.  Other people claim that childcare expenses alone require as much as $18,000 a year per child.  Furthermore, does an employer have to ask how many children a man has and alter the wage based upon that information?  Is it okay to pay single people one wage and a father of 8 another?  Are all employers required to pay wages sufficient to support a family of 10 for every job position?

In the US, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to ask a potential employee about their children or familial status.

The big problem is that no two people can agree upon what constitutes a minimum standard of living.  In my opinion, this is about $30 a week of food per person plus a roof and basic medical (occasional checkups and the occasional antibiotic subscription plus conventional first aid).  Other people consider that baseline impossibly cheap.

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Miriam_M on August 23, 2016, 04:23:55 PM
Quote from: Akavit on August 23, 2016, 04:16:55 PM
The big problem is that no two people can agree upon what constitutes a minimum standard of living.  In my opinion, this is about $30 a week of food per person plus a roof and basic medical (occasional checkups and the occasional antibiotic subscription plus conventional first aid).  Other people consider that baseline impossibly cheap.
Well, there's more than one problem, but taking just this one, may people do consider 30/week for food impossibly cheap, depending on the COL in their immediate region,yes.  Thirty dollars does not travel far in my neck of the woods, no.  If you grew your own fruits/vegetables and your body & medical requirements for that body tolerated your being a vegan, then $30 would be possible; otherwise, not.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Akavit on August 23, 2016, 04:28:12 PM
Quote from: Miriam_M on August 23, 2016, 04:23:55 PM
Quote from: Akavit on August 23, 2016, 04:16:55 PM
The big problem is that no two people can agree upon what constitutes a minimum standard of living.  In my opinion, this is about $30 a week of food per person plus a roof and basic medical (occasional checkups and the occasional antibiotic subscription plus conventional first aid).  Other people consider that baseline impossibly cheap.
Well, there's more than one problem, but taking just this one, may people do consider 30/week for food impossibly cheap, depending on the COL in their immediate region,yes.  Thirty dollars does not travel far in my neck of the woods, no.  If you grew your own fruits/vegetables and your body & medical requirements for that body tolerated your being a vegan, then $30 would be possible; otherwise, not.

It's easily possible.  It just requires more use of whole grains, beans eggs and potatoes than most people want to eat.  The Irish thrived on a diet consisting of mostly potatoes and Mexicans have done the same off beans and tortillas for generations.  Such diets are actually healthier than the average American diet.

The main difference between myself and other people is that I tend to set baselines at a functional level rather than a "tasty" level.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Quaremerepulisti on August 23, 2016, 05:04:09 PM
Quote from: Akavit on August 23, 2016, 04:16:55 PM
So put it into real numbers.

That's a job for economists.

QuoteElsewhere I've stated that it is possible for a family of 4 to eke it out (no room for emergencies) on a single, full-time job paying $9 an hour with a take-home pay of $17,000 annually.

Perhaps in small towns.  In a major metropolitan area, no way.  But even so, this is only the case due to government help in the form of EITC, Medicaid, food stamps, child tax credits, public education, etc.


QuoteThe big problem is that no two people can agree upon what constitutes a minimum standard of living.  In my opinion, this is about $30 a week of food per person plus a roof and basic medical (occasional checkups and the occasional antibiotic subscription plus conventional first aid).  Other people consider that baseline impossibly cheap.

So what are they supposed to wear and how are they supposed to get to work?
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Flora on August 23, 2016, 05:06:57 PM
Quote from: Akavit on August 23, 2016, 04:16:55 PM
So put it into real numbers.

Elsewhere I've stated that it is possible for a family of 4 to eke it out (no room for emergencies) on a single, full-time job paying $9 an hour with a take-home pay of $17,000 annually.  Other people claim that childcare expenses alone require as much as $18,000 a year per child.  Furthermore, does an employer have to ask how many children a man has and alter the wage based upon that information?  Is it okay to pay single people one wage and a father of 8 another?  Are all employers required to pay wages sufficient to support a family of 10 for every job position?

In the US, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to ask a potential employee about their children or familial status.

The big problem is that no two people can agree upon what constitutes a minimum standard of living.  In my opinion, this is about $30 a week of food per person plus a roof and basic medical (occasional checkups and the occasional antibiotic subscription plus conventional first aid).  Other people consider that baseline impossibly cheap.

Exactly this. What are the details and exact numbers of what constitutes a "just wage"? If we were to go by what LeoXIII says, in my opinion, the current state of wages in the US is perfectly fine to live a frugal lifestyle. It is already "just" when you consider that government assistance takes care of many costs (eg., medical) for low earners.

This meal cost the poster $0.78, and he could have gotten the ingredients for cheaper too:
https://www.reddit.com/r/food/comments/4yxt9d/just_moved_out_of_home_and_followed_reddits_rice/

This is what I consider a frugal and healthy meal, which is more than affordable. However, others disagree.

Let's be honest, many people consider a "just wage" one where they can live a middle-class lifestyle. That as long as you are employed "somewhere" (doesn't matter what your job is -- could be pulling weeds or bagging groceries), you should be paid enough to life a middle-class lifestyle. Nothing wrong with that. But I think at that point you are talking about something other than "justice".

In any case, the questions posed by Akavit (and Miriam) need to be answered.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Flora on August 23, 2016, 05:13:20 PM
Quote
QuoteElsewhere I've stated that it is possible for a family of 4 to eke it out (no room for emergencies) on a single, full-time job paying $9 an hour with a take-home pay of $17,000 annually.

Perhaps in small towns.  In a major metropolitan area, no way.  But even so, this is only the case due to government help in the form of EITC, Medicaid, food stamps, child tax credits, public education, etc.

So it looks like the system is already "just"? Unless you are suggesting that they should take away all of the assistance and supplement people's income with hard cash instead?
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Flora on August 23, 2016, 05:27:16 PM
Quote from: Miriam_M on August 23, 2016, 01:10:01 PM
Quote from: Flora on August 23, 2016, 11:19:29 AM
Quote from: Miriam_M on August 22, 2016, 08:08:12 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on August 22, 2016, 05:30:05 PM
The natural law demands that we not deprive our neighbor of his due.
"His due" might be interpreted variously.

Is it recompense for existing and residing within that State?
Is it compensation for inability to earn, in the same time period, what a more able-bodied or able-minded person could earn?  (i.e., Disability Payments)
Is it compensation for breaching the immigration laws of our country, and if so, what is "due" those who do honor those same laws?
Is it compensation based on political power or perceived political power of particular special interest groups?
Is it defensive compensation based on anticipation of political backlash or other consequences if the State does not anticipate the "due" of certain groups vs. other groups or all groups?
Is it another form of Unemployment Compensation?
Is it the closing of emotional and/or practical gaps due to greater earned economic status of the skilled vs. the less skilled?  (Is it an attempt to eradicate theoretical or actual inequalities?)

These are essential questions that need to be answered if one wants to move past hypothetical utopia into real-world application.

Thank you, Flora.  However, I asked those questions not for their "utopian" application but for the moral considerations.   Classic moral theology in the Church has been discarded in the post-V2 era by mainstream new-Church in favor of emotionalism (emotional justifications for an invented "social justice" which ignores the parameters suggested in specificity by certain popes and in accordance with the permanent deposit of faith).  Probably for that reason I prefer the term "social theology" to "social justice," because the latter has been severely corrupted by the Conciliar Sect and tends to lack moorings, yet with an often-inaccurate assumption of "justice" for a few despite injustice for many more, and -- more importantly -- despite a deeper injustice which does not emanate from the Church's social theology but is subjective, novel, politically-driven, and otherwise modernistic.

I agree completely. I am not against a "just wage" or giving my "neighbor" his "due". But we have to first understand what those terms mean. For example, just to address one of your questions, who is my "neighbor" who is "due" such things? Are illegals who are flooding this country my "neighbor"? Are they and their children "due" what a legal citizen is "due"? According to the Conciliar Sect, they WOULD BE. Yet, that is completely unjust.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Flora on August 23, 2016, 05:50:12 PM
Quote from: Flora on August 23, 2016, 05:13:20 PM
Quote
QuoteElsewhere I've stated that it is possible for a family of 4 to eke it out (no room for emergencies) on a single, full-time job paying $9 an hour with a take-home pay of $17,000 annually.

Perhaps in small towns.  In a major metropolitan area, no way.  But even so, this is only the case due to government help in the form of EITC, Medicaid, food stamps, child tax credits, public education, etc.

So it looks like the system is already "just"? Unless you are suggesting that they should take away all of the assistance and supplement people's income with hard cash instead?

To expand on this, I have noticed that people often say: "you can only live on those wages in a small town". My question then is: "does that make it unjust?" Is it a matter of justice to be able to live anywhere one wants and according to X, Y, Z standards? If I move to SF, should my husband be paid six figures so that we can afford "just" housing (ie., middle class housing -- it would be quite "unjust" to subject families with small children to areas with homeless, gangs, other riff raff, right?) with enough space for our six kids? Even though his job is mowing lawns?

If society could somehow pull that off, I don't see why anyone would be against that. Doing simple labor jobs and being able to raise a family comfortably anywhere one wants. Sounds like the dream. Not even being sarcastic. Beats being a "Catholic" school teacher (in reference to the other thread).
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Baldrick on August 23, 2016, 07:19:02 PM
Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on August 23, 2016, 02:52:05 PM
Quote from: Baldrick on August 23, 2016, 10:24:27 AM
The calculation problem is is always side-stepped by utopian/statists of all flavors; and, despite being unable to demonstrate what is meant by a "just wage," the term is simply repeated ad infinitum as if it actually means something beyond a vague yearning (if not a kind of virtue signaling) "for a better world'; and only entrepreneurs and other economic actors (unless a laborer or a member of union hierarchy) suffer from Original Sin.

The Church knows exactly what is meant by a just wage.

Quote from: LeoXIII, Rerum Novarum
43. We now approach a subject of great importance, and one in respect of which, if extremes are to be avoided, right notions are absolutely necessary. Wages, as we are told, are regulated by free consent, and therefore the employer, when he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part and seemingly is not called upon to do anything beyond. The only way, it is said, in which injustice might occur would be if the master refused to pay the whole of the wages, or if the workman should not complete the work undertaken; in such cases the public authority should intervene, to see that each obtains his due, but not under any other circumstances.

44. To this kind of argument a fair-minded man will not easily or entirely assent; it is not complete, for there are important considerations which it leaves out of account altogether. To labor is to exert oneself for the sake of procuring what is necessary for the various purposes of life, and chief of all for self preservation. "In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread."(33) Hence, a man's labor necessarily bears two notes or characters. First of all, it is personal, inasmuch as the force which acts is bound up with the personality and is the exclusive property of him who acts, and, further, was given to him for his advantage. Secondly, man's labor is necessary; for without the result of labor a man cannot live, and self-preservation is a law of nature, which it is wrong to disobey. Now, were we to consider labor merely in so far as it is personal, doubtless it would be within the workman's right to accept any rate of wages whatsoever; for in the same way as he is free to work or not, so is he free to accept a small wage or even none at all. But our conclusion must be very different if, together with the personal element in a man's work, we consider the fact that work is also necessary for him to live: these two aspects of his work are separable in thought, but not in reality. The preservation of life is the bounden duty of one and all, and to be wanting therein is a crime. It necessarily follows that each one has a natural right to procure what is required in order to live, and the poor can procure that in no other way than by what they can earn through their work.

45. Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice. In these and similar questions, however - such as, for example, the hours of labor in different trades, the sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and workshops, etc. - in order to supersede undue interference on the part of the State, especially as circumstances, times, and localities differ so widely, it is advisable that recourse be had to societies or boards such as We shall mention presently, or to some other mode of safeguarding the interests of the wage-earners; the State being appealed to, should circumstances require, for its sanction and protection.

46. If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.

I assume that you are talking about this part:

Quotethat wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.

Is that what the Church means by a "just wage"?  I just want to agree on this before we go on to talk about it. 

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Akavit on August 23, 2016, 09:25:45 PM
Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on August 23, 2016, 05:04:09 PM
Quote from: Akavit on August 23, 2016, 04:16:55 PM

QuoteElsewhere I've stated that it is possible for a family of 4 to eke it out (no room for emergencies) on a single, full-time job paying $9 an hour with a take-home pay of $17,000 annually.

Perhaps in small towns.  In a major metropolitan area, no way.  But even so, this is only the case due to government help in the form of EITC, Medicaid, food stamps, child tax credits, public education, etc.

But we do have all those things plus medicare, social security, workman's comp and unemployment insurance.  I didn't factor EITC into my calculations but that would just increase the amount of take-home pay.  I did factor in other tax credits.   Though I do wonder why the government taxes low income people then creates complex tax credit systems to give it back.

Of course all of the above does cost money and it does come out of the checks of low-paid workers.  A worker claiming zero exemptions at a wage of $10/hr. will cost the employer an average of $12/hr yet go home with under $9/hr.  Eliminate those benefits, give the worker cash and that $17,000 a year goes over $24,000 per year.

Now your comparison of metropolitan vs rural settings is one of the things I was referring to when I said people couldn't agree on an acceptable baseline.  I've quoted numbers based upon life in small town Illinois.  Illinois is a great example because Chicago and the surrounding suburbs dominate the politics but the southern rural villages have to live with the consequences.  State politicians supporting a $15/hr. minimum wage know that the city will be able to absorb the increase since wages and costs are already higher to begin with.  The rest of the state would be hit with a sudden, destabilizing wage inflation followed immediately by a major price inflation.



Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on August 23, 2016, 05:04:09 PM
Quote from: Akavit on August 23, 2016, 04:16:55 PM

QuoteThe big problem is that no two people can agree upon what constitutes a minimum standard of living.  In my opinion, this is about $30 a week of food per person plus a roof and basic medical (occasional checkups and the occasional antibiotic subscription plus conventional first aid).  Other people consider that baseline impossibly cheap.

So what are they supposed to wear and how are they supposed to get to work?

I consider walking the basic form of transportation.  Certainly it doesn't make sense to take a long commute for a low-income job when there are always non-skilled positions available in every community.  Clothes are a negligible expense by the time garage sales and thrift stores are factored in.  Even new clothes aren't that expensive.  Shoes are the biggest cost and I've spent roughly $35 a year on new, quality brands.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Quaremerepulisti on August 24, 2016, 08:36:51 AM
Quote from: Baldrick on August 23, 2016, 07:19:02 PM
I assume that you are talking about this part:

Quotethat wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.

Is that what the Church means by a "just wage"?  I just want to agree on this before we go on to talk about it.

Yes.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Quaremerepulisti on August 24, 2016, 08:52:55 AM
Baldrick, Akavit, and Flora:

You raise some good issues, and the Church does not claim competence to decide them.  The exact "nuts-and-bolts" about how to implement what the Church teaches about a just wage is in the realm of economics and free opinion.

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Miriam_M on August 24, 2016, 09:12:52 AM
Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on August 24, 2016, 08:52:55 AM
Baldrick, Akavit, and Flora:

You raise some good issues, and the Church does not claim competence to decide them.  The exact "nuts-and-bolts" about how to implement what the Church teaches about a just wage is in the realm of economics and free opinion.

Unfortunately, the modernists and Conciliarists in the Church do, haphazardly and irresponsibly, claim competence to decide them, without the authority of the Church's traditional teaching to support that supposed "competence."  Bishops, Cardinals, and priests have made such statements regularly in the late 20th century and in this century.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 24, 2016, 10:03:50 AM
QuoteThe Church knows exactly what is meant by a just wage.
It knows the characteristics of a just wage, that is all (and you probably agree with that), not a number.

As Pope Leo points out, there are far too many variables.  The Church promotes collective bargaining to arrive at a just wage.

QuoteThat's a job for economists.

They can't arrive at an answer because there is no answer.  In my book I give the example of an independent wheat farmer and the miller.  The wheat farmer, William Farmer, produces 2 sacks of hand ground flour a day.  The miller, Chaim Goldstein produces 150 sacks of flour a day using his automated farm and mill. Chaim realizes if he hires William he can increase production to 200 sacks a day.

I then challenge the reader:  You are in a distributist economy and head of the farming soviet.  Your job is to come up with the right wage, in sacks of flour, that Chaim has to pay William.  I then show that the "right" answer could be 3 sacks of flour (50% raise) to 199 sacks (Chaim doesn't have to go into the fields anymore), or anything in between.  Without a market you can't determine the right answer (the calculation problem).  Come to think of it, William might be happy with 1 sack of flour a day in exchange for Chaim doing the paperwork and the fact that William can do the job in an air conditioned combine.

An economist also can not determine the right answer.  What we have is the question on the proper way to allocate production between owners of capital and labor.  The market does this, kind of like an optimization engine (it is never "right", it tends towards the optimum).

Pope Leo seems to recognize this and recommend collective bargaining, which gives negotiating power to labor.  Note I know with the horrors of unions in the past many recoil from this, but economically Pope Leo is correct, and this is a good way to prevent undue influence from the State and let the market work it out.

As far as unions, we need reforms, but right now in a right-to-work state my go-to contractor is union.  We freely choose to use them.  So I'm speaking from first person experience, collective bargaining can work well, in fact it is great, if we learn from the past and fix the problems, e.g. work rules rackets.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 24, 2016, 10:30:55 AM
QuoteExcept that Pope Leo does not talk exclusively about collective bargaining. Throughout this same encyclical and many others, the idea of the just wage is laid down as a social justice, a matter of the law, not just what one brings up in the confessional. Pope Pius IX spoke about a proper distribution of private property, and it is to this that I was referring above.
Do you even realize you are not addressing my argument (because you are losing the debate), or is this just your muddled way of thinking?  Here's a question Louis for you to ponder: where have I denied the concept of the Just Wage?  Now go back and read what you wrote.

QuoteYou keep talking about how the Church deputes the State to maintain private property. That is true. But it also deputes the State to maintain an economic system which is just, that is, one wherein wealth is so distributed that it is easy for men to actually procure private property, as well as basic temporal goods.
More ambiguous waste of electrons.  This is the red flag that I'm dealing with a Utopian.  What the Church deputes is for the State to PROTECT private property, not "maintain it".  In a just economic system, wealth might not be distributed very much at all.  We can imagine a colonial economy where the colonialists have all the wealth because they out-produce the savages 10,000 to 1.  In a just economy the producers will have 10,000 times the wealth.  But owning property in the US is simple to do even with unskilled labor (outside of the ghettos, which are waste lands created by leftist utopians).
QuoteThis is what you keep missing. The "many" who are like "heathens of old" are the ones who state that the State should supersede the Church in dealing with problems that can only be fixed with charity and justice. James, for one moment consider the text and what I am saying before you starting throwing around insults and essentially label me a heretic.
I have not labeled you a heretic.  I hold that you are an uneducated utopian.  You also lack experience in running a business, so you don't even bring personal experience to the table.  If you want to learn about economics, here's a good starting point.  https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9760 (https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9760)  These are regs I'm familiar with.  Note that you are under legal obligation to follow all of this if you make one change to your process.  If you don't, you go to jail.  This is less the 0.1% of the regs of one agency at the Federal level.  This is the reality of fascism/distributism/corporatism/crony capitalism that you refuse to see.  Paraphrasing the great Yuri:
QuoteI can take him to OSHA.  I can show him the regulations.  He still won't believe me.  Only when the government boot crushes his face will he understand, but it will be too late.  That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.
I'm coming to understand that inexperienced utopians such as yourself truly do assume that the producers will always produce.  You can have your authority without responsibility.  B.S. like this OSHA reg has very real consequences, such as factories shutting down and moving overseas.  Also large corporations spend the bucks to come up with systems so that we can pencil whip the forms and stay in compliance.  OSHA (the government you idolize) is a huge barrier to entry of the little guy.  Also, NO company is 100% in compliance, so the government can shake down anyone at anytime for money, or jail political opponents.  This is the reality of the fallen nature of the men in government you will not see.

QuoteWhen you claim that the State is essentially relegated to maintaining private property but that issues like justice and charity are relegated entirely to the Church, I think that you fall into the same error of separating the Church and State, such that the task of one does not flow into the temporal governance of the other. 
I don't "claim" anything.  I have quoted the Church saying that relief of the poor is NOT a matter of justice and that it is NOT regulated by law.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 24, 2016, 11:00:19 AM
Quote from: james03 on August 24, 2016, 10:30:55 AM
QuoteExcept that Pope Leo does not talk exclusively about collective bargaining. Throughout this same encyclical and many others, the idea of the just wage is laid down as a social justice, a matter of the law, not just what one brings up in the confessional. Pope Pius IX spoke about a proper distribution of private property, and it is to this that I was referring above.
Do you even realize you are not addressing my argument (because you are losing the debate), or is this just your muddled way of thinking?  Here's a question Louis for you to ponder: where have I denied the concept of the Just Wage?  Now go back and read what you wrote.

QuoteYou keep talking about how the Church deputes the State to maintain private property. That is true. But it also deputes the State to maintain an economic system which is just, that is, one wherein wealth is so distributed that it is easy for men to actually procure private property, as well as basic temporal goods.
More ambiguous waste of electrons.  This is the red flag that I'm dealing with a Utopian.  What the Church deputes is for the State to PROTECT private property, not "maintain it".  In a just economic system, wealth might not be distributed very much at all.  We can imagine a colonial economy where the colonialists have all the wealth because they out-produce the savages 10,000 to 1.  In a just economy the producers will have 10,000 times the wealth.  But owning property in the US is simple to do even with unskilled labor (outside of the ghettos, which are waste lands created by leftist utopians).
QuoteThis is what you keep missing. The "many" who are like "heathens of old" are the ones who state that the State should supersede the Church in dealing with problems that can only be fixed with charity and justice. James, for one moment consider the text and what I am saying before you starting throwing around insults and essentially label me a heretic.
I have not labeled you a heretic.  I hold that you are an uneducated utopian.  You also lack experience in running a business, so you don't even bring personal experience to the table.  If you want to learn about economics, here's a good starting point.  https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9760 (https://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9760)  These are regs I'm familiar with.  Note that you are under legal obligation to follow all of this if you make one change to your process.  If you don't, you go to jail.  This is less the 0.1% of the regs of one agency at the Federal level.  This is the reality of fascism/distributism/corporatism/crony capitalism that you refuse to see.  Paraphrasing the great Yuri:
QuoteI can take him to OSHA.  I can show him the regulations.  He still won't believe me.  Only when the government boot crushes his face will he understand, but it will be too late.  That is the tragedy of the situation of demoralization.
I'm coming to understand that inexperienced utopians such as yourself truly do assume that the producers will always produce.  You can have your authority without responsibility.  B.S. like this OSHA reg has very real consequences, such as factories shutting down and moving overseas.  Also large corporations spend the bucks to come up with systems so that we can pencil whip the forms and stay in compliance.  OSHA (the government you idolize) is a huge barrier to entry of the little guy.  Also, NO company is 100% in compliance, so the government can shake down anyone at anytime for money, or jail political opponents.  This is the reality of the fallen nature of the men in government you will not see.

QuoteWhen you claim that the State is essentially relegated to maintaining private property but that issues like justice and charity are relegated entirely to the Church, I think that you fall into the same error of separating the Church and State, such that the task of one does not flow into the temporal governance of the other. 
I don't "claim" anything.  I have quoted the Church saying that relief of the poor is NOT a matter of justice and that it is NOT regulated by law.

Spoken like a true GOPer. If you don't own a business then you're uneducated. Nevermind actual education. That's not real education. How much money have you made? That's the real world.

James, you are incapable of having an actual conversation. For an adult that is supposedly so learned, you certainly can't seem to make a response without boiling everything down to calling me a leftist utopian, uneducated, and saying that my posts are a "waste of electrons."

You're exceedingly condescending. The fact that you stated that you think I am "losing the debate" just goes to show why engaging with you is imprudent. I'm not trying to beat you in a debate, James. I'm trying to discuss a topic with you as a fellow Catholic. Economics and politics are not always de fide topics, but one would never know it when talking with you.

Clearly you're more interested in winning some sort of debate with me. It's too bad that you aren't capable or willing to have a higher level conversation without reducing everything to winning and losing.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 24, 2016, 11:21:05 AM
QuoteSpoken like a true GOPer. If you don't own a business then you're uneducated. Nevermind actual education. That's not real education. How much money have you made? That's the real world.
No Louis, I am commenting on your lack of education AND your lack of experience.

QuoteI'm not trying to beat you in a debate, James. I'm trying to discuss a topic with you as a fellow Catholic.
No Louis, you are not trying to discuss a topic with me.  If you were, you would acknowledge points I have made.  From past experience I know you will never acknowledge even one.  You lack humility so you can't be taught.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 24, 2016, 11:22:49 AM
QuoteWhere can I find your book?

The second edition is done, I'm (not) working on layout, which I hate.  It will be on Amazon.  I'll post when it is up.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Baldrick on August 24, 2016, 11:51:24 AM
Quote from: Quaremerepulisti on August 24, 2016, 08:36:51 AM
Quote from: Baldrick on August 23, 2016, 07:19:02 PM
I assume that you are talking about this part:

Quotethat wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.

Is that what the Church means by a "just wage"?  I just want to agree on this before we go on to talk about it.

Yes.

There is simply no way that an economist or a group of economists can implement such a thing in a non-arbitrary manner.  James has already done an excellent job describing briefly why this is, so I won't repeat the argument.

It seems to me that people on the "just wage" side of the issue seem to think that there is all this money out there that isn't being paid to wage earners.  What they don't understand is that most businesses are barely scraping by, barely making payroll day-in and day-out.  Many of the people at the "top" of the company are not doing nearly as well as you might think.  An arbitrarily determined decree that wages should be such-and-such will simply mean closing the doors of many businesses and even higher unemployment than we already have.

It's the lack of specificity (thinking that the general definition of a "just wage" proffered above is even remotely useful in the context of the real world) AND the lack of experience regarding how things actually work that is quite frustrating to see and argue against because such people imagine that they have solution that even in principle they cannot possibly have.

And the damage done by such thinking ^ - particularly in the 20th century - is incalculable. 

Finally, the economy is in dire straits worldwide; and before we start talking about a "just wage" - and who is going to pay for it, much less the insane Corbyn idea of a guaranteed income, please give this very balanced overview of the state of the economy a listen.  It's a middle of the road guy, Jim Puplava, no right-winger by any stretch of the imagination: http://www.financialsensenewshour.com/broadcast/fsn2016-0820-2.mp3

Also, LouisIX is certainly not uneducated; I don't think James meant that generally.  I relish his thoughts on theology/thomism, for example.  But here, I'm afraid, he's a bit lost. 

 
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 24, 2016, 01:02:46 PM
Quote from: james03 on August 24, 2016, 11:21:05 AM
QuoteSpoken like a true GOPer. If you don't own a business then you're uneducated. Nevermind actual education. That's not real education. How much money have you made? That's the real world.
No Louis, I am commenting on your lack of education AND your lack of experience.

Haha. You don't even know anything about me.

Quote from: james03 on August 24, 2016, 11:21:05 AM
QuoteI'm not trying to beat you in a debate, James. I'm trying to discuss a topic with you as a fellow Catholic.
No Louis, you are not trying to discuss a topic with me.  If you were, you would acknowledge points I have made.  From past experience I know you will never acknowledge even one.  You lack humility so you can't be taught.

Hahaha. The irony. Well, thank you for trying to educate me, James. That was so humble of you, especially given my lowly status as forum imbecile.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 24, 2016, 01:25:29 PM
Quote from: Baldrick on August 24, 2016, 11:51:24 AM
Also, LouisIX is certainly not uneducated; I don't think James meant that generally.  I relish his thoughts on theology/thomism, for example.  But here, I'm afraid, he's a bit lost. 

What I'm trying to do is to question some of the premises of the average GOP position. I very much respect those who disagree with these objections. However, what I don't understand is how questioning trickle-down-economics, for example, automatically makes one a leftist or a socialist. I abhor socialism and love private property. I consider myself a political traditionalist.

I think that those who sell themselves on practical politics are losing sight of the Church's political principles in a blind effort to conserve. But all of this is complicated, right? That's why good Catholics have differing opinions. But it seems increasingly true that SD is not a place to discuss politics, at least not if you don't work with your hands, own a business, are voting for Trump, etc. If you disagree with the two or three vocal posters here you will just be insulted and relegated to the leftist bin.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 24, 2016, 03:28:46 PM
QuoteHaha. You don't even know anything about me.

I know that your education is not in economics.

QuoteHahaha. The irony. Well, thank you for trying to educate me, James. That was so humble of you, especially given my lowly status as forum imbecile.
There is no irony Louis.  You are sophomoric at best when it comes to economics.  Why wouldn't I try to educate you?  Well, it's because you lack humility and won't ask me for help.

Compare our discussions on philosophy vs. our "debates" on economics.  In philosophy it is evident you are at least self taught, and I believe you have received formal training.  You have more knowledge than me on that topic and I respect that.  Our discussions on philosophy are without rhetoric.  Note this is not because I always agree with you either, as I am from the Bellarmine school.  But we still have good discussions even on things like Free Will.

On economics you throw up ambiguous feel goods, non-sequiturs (e.g. just wage) and have now resorted to virtue signaling (I only respect people with money.).  You will not acknowledge one point of mine (which are well accepted economic principles.  I believe Hayek won the Nobel Prize on the calculation problem) so we can't build a discussion.  The problem is your pride.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 24, 2016, 03:54:42 PM
Let's take a closer look at the just wage.  What we have here is the need to efficiently allocate the increase that comes from production between capital and labor.  You can subdivide labor into professional and line workers.  Note that in the US, the Capitalists by and large are pension funds, even in private companies.

In my situation no one is advocating that I should have access to collective bargaining, or that I need some government puke to tell my employer what to pay me.  I am in a balanced situation.  The pension fund capitalist owns very large capital (oil production/refining).  However it is worthless without people like me.  Therefore they need me to use their capital to provide value and an increase (called a profit).  I bring education (limited to a relative few), and experience (even more limited).  So I have a lot of power during negotiations.  On the flip side I need THEM, because my education and experience are completely worthless if I don't have the capital available to employ.  So they have power over me.  I have other options, and they have other options.  In North Dakota their options are very limited, so I can get paid a lot more.  I can do the same job somewhere else and get paid half. 

Now look at the situation where you have one main employer in a small town.  Labor has one option for a decent wage.  In this case the owner of capital has all of the power.  It is this case where Pope Leo advocated using collective bargaining to level the playing field and avoid undue interference from the State.  It is the same negotiations I have to go through, but labor strengthens their position and can negotiate a better rate.  Note keep in mind the miller/farmer, there is no right answer (though there are plenty of wrong answers as I will discuss).
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 24, 2016, 04:09:04 PM
One of the problems in economics that most people miss is the allocative function of prices.  We tend to think of prices as a source for revenue.  I charge more, so I make more.  But the most important aspect of prices is that it is used in the capitalist system to allocate resources.  That is why central banks and banking guilds always wreck an economy, they end up causing prices to be distorted and you get misallocation.  The banking guild cut rates too low in 2005, and you ended up with the market overallocating resources to condominiums in Las Vegas.  The Fed cut interest rates too low in 2009 and you had the market allocated too many resources to oil production.  While we like the resultant lower gasoline prices, we are not going to like it when our pensions get cut due to the huge losses.

So when you dictate a wage, and it is too high, you are signaling to the market that the economy is labor constrained.  Now normally when you get the feel that wages are low the reason is because the economy is capital constrained.  What you are doing is sending out a pricing signal to increase labor and decrease capital.  Note that this is the worst possible thing you can do in a capital constrained market.

Now in the US the major causes of capital constraint are due to absurd regulations and high taxes on profits.  Signaling that you are labor constrained  makes it worse, but the converse is not necessarily true.  Removing any restraints on wages will cause wages to drop, but this does not fix the problem of capital constraint.  So if we took away all minimum wage laws, wages would drop to the point where we could compete with a freer economy like communist China or communist Vietnam.  On the plus side, such a move would stop the false signaling to increase labor and your would see illegal immigration disappear, unless done for social reasons (escaping head hunters.)
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 24, 2016, 05:40:23 PM
Quote from: james03 on August 24, 2016, 03:28:46 PM
QuoteHaha. You don't even know anything about me.

I know that your education is not in economics.

QuoteHahaha. The irony. Well, thank you for trying to educate me, James. That was so humble of you, especially given my lowly status as forum imbecile.
There is no irony Louis.  You are sophomoric at best when it comes to economics.  Why wouldn't I try to educate you?  Well, it's because you lack humility and won't ask me for help.

:laugh:

Quote from: james03 on August 24, 2016, 03:28:46 PMCompare our discussions on philosophy vs. our "debates" on economics.  In philosophy it is evident you are at least self taught, and I believe you have received formal training.  You have more knowledge than me on that topic and I respect that.  Our discussions on philosophy are without rhetoric.  Note this is not because I always agree with you either, as I am from the Bellarmine school.  But we still have good discussions even on things like Free Will.

On economics you throw up ambiguous feel goods, non-sequiturs (e.g. just wage) and have now resorted to virtue signaling (I only respect people with money.).  You will not acknowledge one point of mine (which are well accepted economic principles.  I believe Hayek won the Nobel Prize on the calculation problem) so we can't build a discussion.  The problem is your pride.

You're right that my formal area of study is not economics and that is part of the reason that I have espoused no formal set of guidelines as to economic theory. What I have discussed is the moral-political theology of the Church, which is my area of formal study. We're discussing concepts here that apply to justice, not merely the prudential and practical applications of those principles. That might be "vague" to you, but it's how people discuss issues without simply resorting to calling their interlocutor a "leftist" when they disagree with their practical conclusions.

Do you have significant formal education in economics or are you self-taught? What about philosophy? Theology? Political Science?

The reason that you're pissy about this is because you can't get over the fact that your own opinions are not "accepted economic principles" to every Catholic. You're dogmatizing your own interpretation of Leo on private property.

Also, when you tell people that they should learn from you, you ruin any credibility that you would otherwise have to preach to someone else about their humility. You're not an instructor here nor are you a superior to anyone so get over yourself.

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 25, 2016, 07:11:45 AM
In economics Louis you aren't even in my same league.  You are sophomoric at best.  Yes, I've taken Masters levels Micro and Macro.  I believe getting A's.  B at worst.  I also have taken Masters level courses in accounting (financial and cost), tax, and finance.  High GPA throughout.  I'm also self taught, reading von Mises, Ricardo, Say, Bastiat, Hayek, Rompke, Pesch, and Marx.  I've never finished Pesch as he was too stupid to endure.  On Marx I believe I have only read his Manifesto and excerpts from Das Kapital.  Milton Friedman also.  Adam Smith.  I don't believe I have ever read any Keynes.  Plenty of critiques of his work though.  I've also written a book on economics that was downloaded about 2,000 times.  The second edition will be on Amazon soon.

Quoteand that is part of the reason that I have espoused no formal set of guidelines as to economic theory.
And that is an offense against Prudence.  If you are not educated in economics then you can't comment on government policy that is economic policy.  This statement is very dangerous for someone at best sophomoric on economics:  "It recognizes that issues of social justice are not simply private. Since these injustices regard temporal goods and public suffering, the State has a very formal place in addressing and rectifying them. "

By the way, you were not aware that the term "social justice" is a recent invention?  I would have guessed that you had studied Justice.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on August 25, 2016, 09:14:15 AM
Quote from: james03 on August 25, 2016, 07:11:45 AM
Quoteand that is part of the reason that I have espoused no formal set of guidelines as to economic theory.
And that is an offense against Prudence.  If you are not educated in economics then you can't comment on government policy that is economic policy.  This statement is very dangerous for someone at best sophomoric on economics:  "It recognizes that issues of social justice are not simply private. Since these injustices regard temporal goods and public suffering, the State has a very formal place in addressing and rectifying them. "

Before there were separate disciplines of political science and economics, there was political economy.  Gotta know one to really know the other.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 25, 2016, 12:36:54 PM
EDIT: Accidentally modified this post from the original.

Quote from: james03 on August 25, 2016, 07:11:45 AM
By the way, you were not aware that the term "social justice" is a recent invention?  I would have guessed that you had studied Justice.

I would have thought that, you know, with all of your high training on these issues that you might be familiar with the term's Catholic history and papal origin. I would have guessed that someone offering to educate us would not make such simple mistakes.

Quote from: Quadragesimo AnnoTo each, therefore, must be given his own share of goods, and the distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice.

In fact, "social justice" (socialis iustitiae) appears no less than nine times in that encyclical.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 27, 2016, 07:38:12 PM
QuoteYou've shown nothing which speaks to my concerns regarding basic issues of economic justice.
I have posted what the Church teaches and have been arguing for the overseeing of the relief of the poor by the Catholic Church.  And I have not seen you mention any concerns about economic justice, if you truly mean economic justice.

QuoteYou assume my positions (on this thread and others), presume my education,
I don't assume your positions.  I respond to what you write.  Your education, as revealed by yourself elsewhere, is Liberal Arts, not economics.  If my memory is faulty on this, you had plenty of chances to correct me.  You've conceded that you were not educated in economics.

Quoterefuse to engage with the points that I am making by appealing to your own authority,
No Louis, I quoted the Church.
Quoteand then you slap a "leftist" tag onto it and call it a day.
No Louis, you are a leftist.  To be clear (and I've already written this) we are talking about the American spectrum.  On the economic spectrum, you are left.  You have admitted supporting a leftist party, you supported Bernie's economic policies, you support "It Takes a Village", and you supported Francis's leftist economic manifesto.  You are part way down the path of "From each according his ability, to each according to his need."  You aren't all the way there and I don't call you hard left or commie.  Not even socialist.  Interestingly that statement is the opposite of economic justice.  A statement of economic justice: "To each according to what he produces".  But Catholics aren't taught what Justice means anymore.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Baldrick on August 28, 2016, 12:30:52 PM
I just would like to chime in to say that, really, everyone who has a critical knowledge in anything is "self taught."  Teaching isn't like shoving information and skills and whatnot into a brain.  Even in the most intimate learning situation (say, in tutorials) the student is ultimately teaching him or herself.  To suggest otherwise is not only to misconceive how education "happens" but it puts those with "formal" training on a false pedestal.  In this day in age especially (where you can contact and correspond with world-class experts etc.), I think the distinction between a credentialed academic and an independent scholar is mostly smoke and mirrors.   
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on August 28, 2016, 06:01:51 PM
QuoteI just would like to chime in to say that, really, everyone who has a critical knowledge in anything is "self taught.
True, but you have to have the knowledge and it should be fairly broad.  I've studied communism, socialism, fascism, keysianism, monetarism, and Austrian school.  Let me give you two examples on this forum where someone was making economic commentary and obviously did NOT have critical knowledge.

1.  Someone posted an article (or excerpts) of E. Michael Jones.  I read it and stated Jones was a Marxist.  People initially thought I was using rhetoric ("You sound like one of them there commie pinkos).  No, I was serious.  Jones evidently knew nothing about the core belief of Marxism, the labor theory of value.  And yet he wants to comment on economics.

2.  In this very thread I stated the Louis is a leftist.  He responded that I was trying to insult him and I was being "pissy".  No, I'm stating a fact.  Louis obviously lost track of a basic leftist tenet: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." (lost track, because I assume everyone is familiar with that statement).  This is in fact HARD left.  So Louis holds that the State should take from the producer and give to the taker.  Why should the government take from the producer?  Because they have the money.  That is, they have the ability to produce.  Why should the government give to the taker?  Because he has the need.  This is classic leftist thought.

Now I make a distinction that Louis is NOT hard left.  The reason is that he would say that there are limits that the government would follow as he idolizes government.  He can not give a way to figure out the limits (the calculation problem), and he must insist on not seeing the hippo in his bathtub called Original Sin.  Beyond that is the problem of misallocation, which he is completely ignorant about.  Anyhow, for these reasons he is not hard left.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: John Lamb on August 29, 2016, 01:35:37 PM
Quote from: james03 on August 24, 2016, 10:03:50 AM
What we have is the question on the proper way to allocate production between owners of capital and labor.  The market does this, kind of like an optimization engine (it is never "right", it tends towards the optimum)

Yes, but isn't the problem that what's optimal for the market may not be optimal for men? If the end of the market is the optimization of profit margins, human happiness is just an accident that may or may not result from the optimization of profit margins. It may be optimal for the market to reduce a good portion of the populace to slave labourers. Isn't that what free market liberals are doing on the international scene, e.g. when they outsource their manufacturing to Chinese sweatshops? The market may also be blind to the destruction of other goods not directly related to profiteering, such as the preservation of the local environment, of local customs and traditions, and public morals (e.g. the pornography industry is wonderful if you idolize markets, but not if you care about public morals).
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: John Lamb on August 29, 2016, 02:22:38 PM
Also, Dr. Jones is aware that Marx's version of the labour theory of value is false, or what he calls "exaggerated". He says the following:

Quote from: E. Michael Jones
Karl Marx came up with what you would call an exaggeration of the value of labor. Primarily because I think he was an atheist and an atheist cannot understand the purpose of creation. Creation was made by God and human wealth comes about by a collaboration between man and God, through creation. So what he had was a labor theory of value which said that all value comes from labor. Well, that's not true. You could say there is no value without labor, I think that is true. I think that Locke would agree with that, I think Smith would agree with that. But, you can't say that all value comes from labor because you're leaving creation out of the picture. So for example, let's take a vineyard. There's a vineyard in a place like France that grows great wine with little effort. Okay, that's the value. There's relatively little human labor that goes into it. On the other hand, you could have a vineyard in let's say... Iceland, in which case there's a huge amount of human labor that goes into it and you get crappy wine or virtually nothing. This is the refutation of the labor theory of the value and I think this runs aground on Marx's atheism.

The Marxist theory of labor value is false for the reason that Dr. Jones provides: equal labor does not necessarily produce equal goods. However, the idea that value is totally subjective I find even more unsatisfactory. Goodness is not primarily in the human will, but in the substances towards which the human will is directed. For example, God is good regardless of whether or not men love Him. A stream of water in some hidden cove, that men have never seen, is good, even though there is nobody around to "value" it. The idea that value is subjective seems to come from Descartes, and his idea that the world is made up of nothing but "extended substance", and all "secondary properties" are in the mind. The idea that value is subjective leads to absurdities just as much as the extreme labor theory of value. It means that those atrocious modern art pieces that decadent billionaires spell millions on, really are worth millions. It means that a man could justly demand a starving man to pay him a fortune for a glass of water, on the grounds that a glass of water is worth a fortune "to someone who is thirsty enough"; when, on the contrary, everyone knows that such an action would be grossly unjust.

Here's a reductio ad absurdum I found against the labor theory of value, from another forum:
Quote
Values are subjective. If you dig a hole and fill it up again hour after hour, you have produced nothing of value despite the labour involved.  So values are not based on labour.
I can produce just such an argument to prove that values are not subjective: if you take a dump you have not produced anything of value, yet it's not implausible that some pervert would value your excrement to be worth more than enough food to feed a small nation for a year. So values are not subjective.

I think E. Michael Jones must be right, that value must come partly from the inherent worth of things in creation, and partly from labor, in the sense in which the bible says that: "the labourer is worthy of his hire", i.e. he deserves a reward for having turned something of relatively little value to relatively great value, on top of the inherent value of the product itself.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: John Lamb on August 30, 2016, 09:31:54 AM
I thought of a better way of refuting the following:
QuoteValues are subjective. If you dig a hole and fill it up again hour after hour, you have produced nothing of value despite the labour involved.  So values are not based on labour.

If values are subjective, then digging a hole and filling it up again hour after hour may be deemed to be worth millions. Maybe it's a work of postmodern performance art, or whatever. Producing food, clothing, or technology would not have any more value, objectively, than filling a hole up again and again. This would destroy the basis of economics, because we would no longer be able to tell how healthy an economy is, because the value of the whole economy being subjective, a starving country would not objectively be any better off than a fat one. Therefore, the must be some objective standard of value in commodities and in an economy generally.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Prayerful on August 30, 2016, 11:50:47 AM
This may or may not be relevant here, but the ease with which the 'neo-con' Republicans switched to supporting HRC is perhaps indicative of how little conservatism is in neo-conservatism. A conservative politician is typically traditionalist to a notable degree, supportive of religion and family, and as concepts independent of state control. Distinguishing conservatism and traditionalism is reasonable, but putting them in manichaeist opposition is simply an error. HRC likes war, neo-cons like war, and they are mostly indifferent to social issues unless it somehow clashes with their authoritarian, militarised, internationalism.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 30, 2016, 03:35:26 PM
Quote from: Prayerful on August 30, 2016, 11:50:47 AM
This may or may not be relevant here, but the ease with which the 'neo-con' Republicans switched to supporting HRC is perhaps indicative of how little conservatism is in neo-conservatism. A conservative politician is typically traditionalist to a notable degree, supportive of religion and family, and as concepts independent of state control. Distinguishing conservatism and traditionalism is reasonable, but putting them in manichaeist opposition is simply an error. HRC likes war, neo-cons like war, and they are mostly indifferent to social issues unless it somehow clashes with their authoritarian, militarised, internationalism.

Political traditionalists have been saying this for decades. The "right-wing" of American politics is simply a different variety of liberalism. Those most educated on the "right" will fully admit to being classical liberals who espouse classical liberalism.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Baldrick on August 30, 2016, 04:43:14 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on August 30, 2016, 03:35:26 PM
Quote from: Prayerful on August 30, 2016, 11:50:47 AM
This may or may not be relevant here, but the ease with which the 'neo-con' Republicans switched to supporting HRC is perhaps indicative of how little conservatism is in neo-conservatism. A conservative politician is typically traditionalist to a notable degree, supportive of religion and family, and as concepts independent of state control. Distinguishing conservatism and traditionalism is reasonable, but putting them in manichaeist opposition is simply an error. HRC likes war, neo-cons like war, and they are mostly indifferent to social issues unless it somehow clashes with their authoritarian, militarised, internationalism.

Political traditionalists have been saying this for decades. The "right-wing" of American politics is simply a different variety of liberalism. Those most educated on the "right" will fully admit to being classical liberals who espouse classical liberalism.

You're conflating two different historical meanings wrt liberalism, Louis.  The word "liberal" originally meant to be relatively free from the shackles of the overgrown State; in the early 20th century, though, Statists of various flavors managed to re-engineer the word so that it meant the exact opposite: that the state would "free" a person from the vicissitudes of economic life. 


Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 30, 2016, 05:55:37 PM
Quote from: Baldrick on August 30, 2016, 04:43:14 PM
Quote from: LouisIX on August 30, 2016, 03:35:26 PM
Quote from: Prayerful on August 30, 2016, 11:50:47 AM
This may or may not be relevant here, but the ease with which the 'neo-con' Republicans switched to supporting HRC is perhaps indicative of how little conservatism is in neo-conservatism. A conservative politician is typically traditionalist to a notable degree, supportive of religion and family, and as concepts independent of state control. Distinguishing conservatism and traditionalism is reasonable, but putting them in manichaeist opposition is simply an error. HRC likes war, neo-cons like war, and they are mostly indifferent to social issues unless it somehow clashes with their authoritarian, militarised, internationalism.

Political traditionalists have been saying this for decades. The "right-wing" of American politics is simply a different variety of liberalism. Those most educated on the "right" will fully admit to being classical liberals who espouse classical liberalism.

You're conflating two different historical meanings wrt liberalism, Louis.  The word "liberal" originally meant to be relatively free from the shackles of the overgrown State; in the early 20th century, though, Statists of various flavors managed to re-engineer the word so that it meant the exact opposite: that the state would "free" a person from the vicissitudes of economic life.

No, I'm not conflating them. I know very well the difference between the two, which is part of the reason that I have stated on this forum that modern liberals are perhaps more fertile ground for conversion than the stauncher libertarians on the American "right." The former has much more in common with political traditionalism (by way of principles) than classical liberalism.

This idea that the State is the boogey man which arbitrarily imposes itself upon individuals is the thought of Enlightenment figures like Rousseau or Hobbes. It is the complete opposite view of the ancients and the Church for whom human nature is itself political, with the State arising out of the family. Rather than privatizing political society or attempting to do away with it all together, it embraces the proper place of the State within the mission of the Church.

One of the points that I've been trying to make on this thread is that political traditionalism and American conservatism are enemies. They share nearly no common principles and are really historically rooted in negating the other. The response of some has been to tell me that I don't really understand the historical-political landscape. While it is quite true that I have much room for continued education in the area, people are assuming that my disagreement on this issue is based in ignorance. In fact, I'm simply trying to stress a juxtaposition between truly conservative politics and what I believe to be an Enlightenment impostor.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on August 30, 2016, 06:16:43 PM
This is leading back to the old argument Brent Bozell had with Meyer in National Review in the sixties when Meyer and his fellows were arguing in favor of Fusionism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusionism) in order to bring together the Old Right with various strains of the New Right (mostly economic conservatism).

Bozell argued back then as LouisIX is now that ultimately the two liberalisms lead back to each other: on the left it strengthens the state while destroying communal institutions such as family and church that protect the individual from the state and on the right it atomizes society as it works to build individual rights at the expense of communal institutions such as family and church.

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on August 30, 2016, 06:22:17 PM
Quote from: Jacob on August 30, 2016, 06:16:43 PM
This is leading back to the old argument Brent Bozell had with Meyer in National Review in the sixties when Meyer and his fellows were arguing in favor of Fusionism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusionism) in order to bring together the Old Right with various strains of the New Right (mostly economic conservatism).

Bozell argued back then as LouisIX is now that ultimately the two liberalisms lead back to each other: on the left it strengthens the state while destroying communal institutions such as family and church that protect the individual from the state and on the right it atomizes society as it works to build individual rights at the expense of communal institutions such as family and church.

Bingo. That is it precisely.

As I've mentioned on this forum previously, I adhere to the general view of the editors and writers of the old Triumph magazine. This was a traditional response to the American right. Whereas others on this forum appeal to various political institutions as far-reaching as The National Review or even Fox News, I am proposing Triumph as an alternative, one which is loyal to the political traditions of Christendom proper, not just the supposed "right wing" of Americanism.

This often results in being labelled a leftist because it is presumed (often subconsciously, I think) that anything which is not "the right" is leftist. In a political landscape that attacks traditional politics from all angles, left and right, not aligning oneself with either side draws the ire of both. I am a leftist, socialist, utopian on this site. Among other groups I am labelled a fascist. This is due to the fact that political traditionalism does not fit into the categories of modern political discourse, since all modern political parties are in some way a rebellion and overthrowing of political traditionalism. One of the important principles of traditionalism is the heuristic harmony of family, state, and Church into a single human unity under Christ. Modernity has done nothing but to choose one of these pieces to the exclusion of the others.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: John Lamb on August 31, 2016, 08:02:02 AM
Don't worry Louis, those that champion individual liberty above all things are liberals in the proper sense of the word. Those that we call liberals today are actually socialists, and those that we call conservatives are actually liberals.

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: John Lamb on August 31, 2016, 08:13:22 AM
Quote from: LouisIX on August 30, 2016, 05:55:37 PM
No, I'm not conflating them. I know very well the difference between the two, which is part of the reason that I have stated on this forum that modern liberals are perhaps more fertile ground for conversion than the stauncher libertarians on the American "right." The former has much more in common with political traditionalism (by way of principles) than classical liberalism.

This is true. A lot of the young Marxists and Feminists who campaign against racism, sexism, exploitation of the poor, etc., have good intentions, even though their shepherds are misleading them. Marxism can be seen as a corruption of Christian doctrine in that it acknowledges evil in mankind, proposes a kind of redemption, and looks forward to a more just society. I think a lot of people become Marxists because they see the economic situation as unjust, and Marxists are the first they hear complaining about injustice. Marxism is like Christianity except the State takes the place of God the Father, and deliverance of men from material evils completely replaces spiritual liberation. The Liberalism or Liberterianism which says, "I'll do what I want, mind your own business; I don't answer to nobody other than myself", a kind of "every man for himself" attitude, is absolutely divorced from Christianity, or at least Catholicism, in every respect. Perhaps you can say that Socialism is atheistic Catholicism, and Liberalism is atheistic Protestantism.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: mikemac on August 31, 2016, 12:00:45 PM
I'm just catching up on this thread.  After 7 pages have we finally got back to the topic, Political Traditionalism?  Personally I wouldn't mind learning more about what Wilhelmsen, Bozell, Popowski and others have to say.  Plus some of the contributing writers of Triumph like Solange Hertz, Dietrich von Hildebrand and Marcel Lefebvre.  I mean it's got to beat listening to an arm chair economist flog his upcoming Amazon release.  :)

Recently there has been interest in this forum on book discussions.  Maybe we could do the same with Mark D. Popowski's 'The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine, 1966-1976'.  If the book is too expensive for most then maybe the discussion could be on Popowski's 'Roman Catholic Crusading In Ten Years Of Triumph, 1966-1976: A History Of A Lay-Directed, Radical Catholic Journal', which is a free pdf below.  You never know, if this gets spread around maybe US Catholics will be better prepared for the next election in four years.

Quote from: mikemac on April 05, 2016, 01:54:24 PM
Google Books has it online but there may be some pages omitted.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=c5-TewmRvzsC&pg=PP2&lpg=PP2&dq=The+Rise+and+Fall+of+Triumph:+The+History+of+a+Radical+Roman+Catholic+Magazine&source=bl&ots=l0qf1H5TOc&sig=cAdsfMEXrGLVAaeg-Bq25Et6zqo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA58ronvjLAhXikoMKHWhKC3QQ6AEIJjAD#v=onepage&q=The%20Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20Triumph%3A%20The%20History%20of%20a%20Radical%20Roman%20Catholic%20Magazine&f=false

This pdf is not exactly the same but some of the chapters are titled the same.
ROMAN CATHOLIC CRUSADING IN TEN YEARS OF TRIUMPH, 1966-1976:
A HISTORY OF A LAY-DIRECTED, RADICAL CATHOLIC JOURNAL
By MARK DAVID POPOWSKI
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/etd/Popowski_okstate_0664D_10014.pdf

Or you can get a hard copy of The Best of Triumph for $20
http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Triumph-Christendom-Press/dp/0931888727
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on August 31, 2016, 01:29:30 PM
I would be interested in discussing the PDF, yes.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: mikemac on September 01, 2016, 07:39:07 AM
Quote from: Jacob on August 31, 2016, 01:29:30 PM
I would be interested in discussing the PDF, yes.

Good.  Is anyone else interested?
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on September 01, 2016, 08:28:15 AM
I am, though how much real time I could devote to the discussion will vary.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: mikemac on September 01, 2016, 12:08:51 PM
Good.  Who wants to start?
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on September 01, 2016, 04:03:21 PM
Wilhelmsen definitely called it all the way back in 1970:

QuoteThere is a judgment passed on the nations by the Lord of time. . .  And when America faces its God on that awesome day and when He asks America 'What did you do for these the least of My little ones?'  America will answer 'Lord, we killed them while they were indeed the least of Thy little ones so that they could not be a nuisance to us.'  And then the Lord God, our Incarnate King, Christ, will answer: 'Go you, America, into outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  I and all my angels vomit you out because you have done this to Me and to My Mother, your Queen.'  America, you have become a nuisance to God.
Obviously these guys saw things going downhill fast.  Read through pages one through the top of seven.  Thoughts?
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Michael Wilson on September 01, 2016, 07:08:59 PM
Quote

    The main error, the capital crime of this century is the pretension of withdrawing public society from the government and the law of God... The principle laid at the basis of the whole modern social structure is atheism of the law and of the institutions. Let it be disguised under the names of abstention, neutrality, incompetence or even equal protection, let us even go to the length of denying it by some legislative dispositions for details or by accidental and secondary acts: the principle of the emancipation of the human society from the religious order remains at the bottom of things; it is the essence of what is called the new era. (Cardinal Pie, Pastoral Works, vol. VII, pp. 3, 100)

    The time has not come for Jesus Christ to reign? Well, then the time has not come for governments to last. (Cardinal Pie, meeting with Emperor Napoleon III)
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: mikemac on September 01, 2016, 07:11:21 PM
Yeah Jacob, Wilhelmsen said that in 1970 (before Roe v. Wade) at one of the first pro-life demonstrations.  When the five men who had infiltrated the clinic were arrested and led to a police wagon the Los Hijos de Tormenta (the Sons of Thunder) roared "Viva Cristo Rey".

"Indeed, they believed that secular-liberal America was on the verge of collapse.  On its rubble, they hoped to construct a sacral society—an order in which all things were rendered unto Jesus Christ; all things, that is, were conformed to His truth, as expressed through His Church, the Roman Catholic faith.  They sought, then, the enthronement of Christ—to reinstitute His Kingship over all things."

"We will make America Catholic as the conquistadores made half the world Catholic."
—Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

The other day I was looking at the Wikipedia page for L. Brent Bozell.  William F. Buckley Jr. was Bozell's brother-in-law.  Buckley summarized Bozell's new position as follows: "[Bozell's] thesis now is that the republic of the Founding Fathers was doomed because of their failure to adequately enthrall the city of man to the City of God."

They were definitely ahead of their time.

P.S. Walty I didn't realize you were so militant.  I like it.  :)
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on September 03, 2016, 01:09:49 PM
Quote from: james03 on August 25, 2016, 07:11:45 AM
By the way, you were not aware that the term "social justice" is a recent invention?  I would have guessed that you had studied Justice.

I would have thought that, you know, with all of your high training on these issues that you might be familiar with the term's Catholic history and papal origin. I would have guessed that someone offering to educate us would not make such simple mistakes.

Quote from: Quadragesimo AnnoTo each, therefore, must be given his own share of goods, and the distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice.

In fact, "social justice" (socialis iustitiae) appears no less than nine times in Pius XI's encyclical.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: mikemac on September 03, 2016, 02:19:52 PM
What do you say about the first part of chapter 1 of the pdf LouisIX?

P.S.  I just realized that your avatar is an image of a hero of the Vendee counter-revolution, Jacques Cathelineau, known among his followers as the Saint of Anjou.  A peasant who became the generalissimo of the Catholic and Royal Army.  Cool.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lambda Phage on September 03, 2016, 10:10:22 PM
My maxim is "The problem with traditionalism is that it's not actually traditional." That extends to Louis' "political traditionalism," which is not actually traditional but largely based on the writings of certain men in the last hundred years or less who had a deficient understanding of western political and economic history. They essentially created something and called it tradition. For more on such a phenomenon there is a scholarly book called the Invention of Tradition which discusses this at the nationalist level. For example, much of the BS that the Irish think is a part of traditional Irish culture is really just a bunch of BS made up sometime during the 1800's.

Boggles my mind how a traditionalist can essentially echo the USCCB's "The Challenge of Peace" despite the fact that it presents a wildly different understanding of the morality of warfare compared to the writings of Ambrose, Augustine, Aquinas, Vitoria, and Suarez. And how they can abhor capitalism when there is no better example of pre-modern capitalism than in the medieval Italian city states. But that's only part of it.

I posted this some time ago and was hoping I'd get a response from Louis but never did. The below illustrates the incongruity of simultaneously attacking capitalism and pleading for more equality, or economic justice or whatever socialist plea you want to make. And yes it is socialist, at the very least utopian.

Quote from: Lambda Phage

Exhibit A
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/f8ANcOkTj88IJ_6Fs3AaSc2wtveF1He3EqSFyh7dLqpW9a4JMGA0CU4m7x986C_WePPViwt_BcIzG53A_SBag-mSkKiEZkpyfJyyHiUW8riZcEZghb9MZ3aN7xbQfIEkHo9r0Bfk38B16J5OWu4-bz6-65rWLHllQIkvGzMEHwHI7sku784M-bD6C-_5eMowJy3qS4EWI-kWGRO1Ey7hto8zo6zU1uSR2bzoyC8qNO_4BDAChmmW6uW50KQKebwLNIp_Frisj5He2Lx204o-Q0Br-5aZyaEhfZfbvYumDYPZakRdE5mvVQfnB_YomD5DgQBY0F1wFd51Fo5OCSBv01UWBqf9rvtE9jdWZbF4k_f7AnpB1wkSd3u7B0pIcLi-jj2mHRX6McT2T1TfnOi0CeEh8qxJfEnjPEjhMKl7K9cTdd2_juBUHZUo-KxRipqd7y6CcvcRKTS3UiiLVsKaku32HA9eoh7oRj42TIh885tD4NAxEtpv-LGFxQ4DxapF8rITetrYm_H6owQJoj7RIUuHPa3WYPiSdynPmte9kmbzy-WTmM4IMaBPNe0eI4qEikzOLhqUMqnzyp2P6eWR4zqt4uIK5qc=w532-h375-no)
This is a graph of average real wages across human history. By average I mean what the common man earned. Inflation and purchasing power have been accounted for (hence the term real). I made three modifications to this graph. I labelled the point at which Rerum Novarum was written, and I drew two lines. The red line marks the real wage below which, by Leo XIII's reckoning, the wage is probably unjust. The blue line marks the real wage below which, by the reckoning of liberals, socialists, and some traddies, the wage is still apparently unjust. Notice how, according to the red line, from approximately 1000 BC to 1891 AD wages were unjust. And according to the blue line, from 1000BC to 2000 AD, wages were unjust.

Exhibit B
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/dtMqMJ0vuMscAXmx7pjDbnJ1GFXCU_XDmftvgk_t7cuXirGlRQNVfyXivqLKte4AR3r9ID_xvEpMiKhZoANHM7F1VagZdRiwtBedrOGvopTAb0kvHSK81UOxoR-Q412atzmIKlGqeqZ6GBnUNnZDF7jKWPScnlgoPa2f9IAuH5R3iLfVemqbZdwpft3gZdV1sRwXKLGEpYqABYbKeTKUMV4u1ju0f0DZQXi7AdolxMSDLTleeQnkuIqzLrhdZdjasziVVc93K3kO-FhPm22bWP5_pzanGcvWHdon1Rfi02Uwj4hE6-ZTtq29S_SxaokRhVUIpo7dqUsOMypAypJoImQXh2KRVNpXeGjP98JUqTHY_ckwR7XWJsRFKI7udACzi96yNpNReqDJlWfIs1myJ-apML1zz7FBR-3Xpv0C1KiodoD9yqNfXmZyiRb_ZZnGjchZhXPSMGzfDJzoLmG0skoFFR7JbhK7741KdjDLlYgPiUvu2UDTToQ7Qc24W_rAq6lHlqymzKRrMQ9p33vKTwAz7V3OaGWkCRKR14rVUzPEubBk3AuOGwxQfNPe4qTtLujWvOdpojJYVYW2ODlGTc8IhBKFudQ=w575-h322-no)
A comparison of wealth distribution between pre-industrial and post-industrial Europe. The table shows the share of assets held by the Top 1%, 5%, and the Gini coefficients. Again, for those of you who do not know what a Gini coefficient is, 0.0 is perfectly equal, 1.0 is perfectly unequal (all the wealth is owned by 1 person). Inequality was at its highest in the pre-industrial world. The only socio-economic order more equal than modern capitalist society is the hunter gatherer model in which nobody really owned anything.

Exhibit C
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wPtkV7YaiAJbZga_bo61e1y4rV1DlzAo4-kiNj1xhobQ8J_dLYQvV8Pi5N8kqs4cMeLNKH6FY-_wlOCrZ5A6UluHjgpwV6bxxyWApjOvTn4bE5Vhv9GfH17Ih66FAfJsW1tnTP0rTfHNQZ82vfhb3N8bXbVvfRv-Kr6hlQmaDntzVuhJh0hogNt-W7J9h-xX0mEdFTWOYU35qedEueSbbsVK3aCTv-LquVdZtQ29PRtLfHfvy5zfpBJp5rsGUrL_EfrGXqbE7KQZGpeCht3Jh7drMaMUyUrr28gxQwe8Jl04j8rVq5D2BSlG88NcSVsexra51IcNBhuBKwcM7JppaI613vPltT4ZjK0wOzYr1SIrgnbxJNGXhD0JP0Ijw2bFahYzCyxnzfqomNbQCJ-DNHFo5n4XRAoTVMadahhW5wTCNc5tbS_P9UE6y9NEuShhXeICN026RP84_JXfI47n2kjLDRdJDWs2S-k5IJJmZJBsSWMI70UH_zX1-l50A_aX_mjfuRPGQ8ZLrmj6GIZ4mHwY3o5705UptlVIzfvZDAo78B1XkwSQlIbvB3watrsZQau3_YSdD3MfLGc4XUDUDXiAzxLNuAQ=w518-h290-no)
Annual pretax earnings of an unskilled laborer relative to the average income. We see two things here relevant to the discussion. One: women made far less relative to men before the industrial revolution. This really is common knowledge by the way in economic history. Two: the unskilled laborer made even less, relative to the common man, before the industrial revolution compared to after.

Exhibit D
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ho3gFIPGwEkHn9A24_rthib1OQe9CRLMJ0sfCIajDPyjikjssoLsq-wBBowIWbzaNdD5tqq5qFldS82Z9RFu1iA4ZbksYtDa-kNZ0gt0j-ME470oGIiB0iN_OvE7SmWZJAnXF3hipaX5L0e2U7cVH4KSdWw6CGqj8MpCntc7boKzkOwepLT4J8jATVuNsjZ_Tm9Rf_lEkR0qXyOU4JPi3HLYKqgPuGO0r9mkb3sy7M4VyIRsMY3o6nA9d02PZY_yH_dDZtX9p25TGbjSlbJheHWEmpv7Z6jHvkI5JUTV-UPhtwDgMU3OU2Mt7_FQdRw_6QnApJXYg0Sz5kFAzQmSxSu_oJ7q7lIFuanAaoaavyZRbIwbytk6eQru9Vwj9rtbDlkZDYcJCyDya1UyqK05k4wVf2U1lmIEPnc6DsTdkuWMeIeU5zY2drusPgsSjPnDmm-M900x6IVA3BsgGuSijnQyWVAVghNj7BN5PZkTDOUZtEx96XwvEi9TcN3b29ullEn-XWPt5glFpwwAhWTJph3Dnu85FagMLDIcHw3He6SBSRzHS89weDS36gq9Dn7I6QxfYqIrG7S6oc50eeZXbsd9BrJZit4=w584-h329-no)
Comparison of equality in standards of living between preindustrial and modern society. Speaks for itself. Beyond just money, modern society is far more equal than preindustrial society. Whatever you think is wrong with modern capitalist economics was ten fold worse in agrarian and mercantile society.

Lastly, to illustrate the historical precedence (read: tradition) of low tax, free market economic policy:

QuoteMarkets for goods, labor, capital, and even land were generally free. Indeed if we were to score medieval England using the criteria typically applied by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to evaluate the strength of economic incentives, it would rank much higher than all modern high-income economies - including modern England...

Pre-industrial societies were generally low-tax societies. England, in particular was an extremely lightly taxed nation. Before the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 which established the modern constitutional democracy of Britain, the government expenditures of all types were extremely modest. In the years 1600-88 these averaged just 2.2 percent of national income...

Even allowing for the additional taxing power of the Church, all taxes collected in preindustrial England before the Glorious Revolution were typically less than 6 percent of income.

Graphs, tables, and the excerpt above were taken from Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms.


If you want to talk about quality of life, life expectancy, exposure to disease, nutrition, etc, capitalism similarly has delivered far more than any other system. Some idiot on this forum posted a few months ago that he is distraught over the fact that he can no longer drink from the wild waters because of pollution from industrial society. That idiot is completely unaware of the fact that his ancestors similarly would not have been able to drink from the wild waters. The vast majority of natural fresh water on this planet that is not fit for consumption is not fit for consumption because of the fact that fish, birds, and other animals shit die and rot in said water. Before industrial society, human beings would also shit in said water. When you spend your life in the comforts of a temperature regulated building typing on a computer, you forget that. There's a reason the medievals made great advances in the art of distillery and brewing - because at the point in time when people dumped their buckets of human shit in the local river, if you drank water you died. The fact that we can consume as much clean water as we do is thanks to water treatment brought to you by none other than industrial capitalism.

BTW Louis, Pius XI was pope less than a hundred years ago. In the grand scheme of church history, that's pretty recent.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 04, 2016, 12:43:10 PM
Quote from: John LambYes, but isn't the problem that what's optimal for the market may not be optimal for men? If the end of the market is the optimization of profit margins, human happiness is just an accident that may or may not result from the optimization of profit margins. It may be optimal for the market to reduce a good portion of the populace to slave labourers. Isn't that what free market liberals are doing on the international scene, e.g. when they outsource their manufacturing to Chinese sweatshops? The market may also be blind to the destruction of other goods not directly related to profiteering, such as the preservation of the local environment, of local customs and traditions, and public morals (e.g. the pornography industry is wonderful if you idolize markets, but not if you care about public morals).
Thank you John for adding to the discussion.  Yes, you are right.  I've used the porn example in the past: IF society demands porn, then you will get the highest quality porn, with the cheapest price, available to the most people with a free market.  The market is an economic system, and that is all.  It is the best economic system and is basically a statement of Prudence.

My argument is that it is up to THE CHURCH to influence what society demands, and yes the local government should support the efforts of the Church (assuming you have a Catholic confessional State).  Furthermore it is Traditional Catholic belief that the Church and Catholic laity should provide for relief of the poor, not the government.  I've provided my sources for that.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 04, 2016, 12:48:14 PM
QuoteIn fact, "social justice" (socialis iustitiae) appears no less than nine times in that encyclical.
And it was written in 1931, if my memory is correct.  I can dial it back a little earlier, to around 1890 or 1900.  That was when Pesch hatched the concept.  To claim that this is the Traditional Church teaching is ridiculous.  It comes from Pesch.

Now note, there IS a Catholic concept that would comport to the literal meaning of Social Justice:  If a poor man were to sue a rich man, and lost not due to the merits of the case, but because the court favored the rich man, that would be an offense against Social Justice, or more specifically Distributive Justice.  I agree that concept is ancient, but that's not what Pesch is talking about.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 04, 2016, 12:58:06 PM
QuoteThe Marxist theory of labor value is false for the reason that Dr. Jones provides: equal labor does not necessarily produce equal goods. However, the idea that value is totally subjective I find even more unsatisfactory.
That is true, but it appears like you are trying to set up a false dichotomy (or maybe you just thought it needed to be mentioned.  If so, I agree.)

The opposite of the Labor Theory of Value is not that value is subject.  The answer lies in first recognizing that labor is not the source of value, but is a COST.  However there are other costs, such as CAPITAL, KNOW HOW, and ORGANIZATION.  The economic problem is allocating the production (which is called "profit") to the various costs.  As far as the source of value it is a mix of Objective facts (on goodness) and subjective opinion.  The subjective opinion can be quite bizarre at times.  Why did people value a cabbage patch doll at $100?  Why did people value tulips at $10,000?  I don't pretend to answer it.  But agreed it is not completely subjective, maybe not even by half.  I value food because of the goodness in the nutrition.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 04, 2016, 01:05:07 PM
QuoteAlso, Dr. Jones is aware that Marx's version of the labour theory of value is false, or what he calls "exaggerated". He says the following:

Then he is bouncing around with his thoughts.  Heinrich even emailed him to comment on his statement that "all value comes from labor" and that this was Marxist.  Maybe I'll search for the post.

Note also that Jones refuses to say that CAPITAL also provides "value" (in reality it is just a cost), instead using the ambiguous term "creation".  What the heck is that supposed to mean?  It is interesting that Jones can't even acknowledge that capital is part of production.

I give him credit for acknowledging the difference between vineyards, but note he provides no theory of value to explain anything.  The COST of labor for a vineyard in France is much cheaper than the COST of labor for a vineyard in Iceland, using his example.  Actually it is more correct to say that the CAPITAL required in Iceland is much higher.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 04, 2016, 01:18:52 PM
Quoteargued back then as LouisIX is now that ultimately the two liberalisms lead back to each other: on the leftBozell it strengthens the state while destroying communal institutions such as family and church that protect the individual from the state and on the right it atomizes society as it works to build individual rights at the expense of communal institutions such as family and church.
This is a helpful statement in that it is a problem statement, which is a necessary step.  But it offers no solution.

This is precisely what Pope Leo was addressing.  The answer is subsidiarity, which is a natural check on central State power.  If you want to discover why the US was so successful economically, look to the 10th amendment, which was subsidiarity codified into the highest law of the land.  Push the power down to the local community and minimize the central authority, all the while the Church is involved at every level providing moral guidance (the missing piece in the American system).  In such a system you do have healthy individualism, but you also have strong local communities.  The central State becomes a court system, similar to what God set up in Israel.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on September 04, 2016, 06:21:55 PM
Quote from: james03 on September 04, 2016, 12:48:14 PM
QuoteIn fact, "social justice" (socialis iustitiae) appears no less than nine times in that encyclical.
And it was written in 1931, if my memory is correct.  I can dial it back a little earlier, to around 1890 or 1900.  That was when Pesch hatched the concept.  To claim that this is the Traditional Church teaching is ridiculous.  It comes from Pesch.

Now note, there IS a Catholic concept that would comport to the literal meaning of Social Justice:  If a poor man were to sue a rich man, and lost not due to the merits of the case, but because the court favored the rich man, that would be an offense against Social Justice, or more specifically Distributive Justice.  I agree that concept is ancient, but that's not what Pesch is talking about.

But, of course, even though you claim to have known that this was indeed a term with Magisterial precedent, you pretend as if it isn't the case and assume that, on a Catholic forum, my usage is entirely at odds with the papal usage. That seems disingenuous to me.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on September 04, 2016, 06:23:54 PM
If you actually read Rerum Novarum, you will see a whole slew of citations regarding the the "State" or "public authority" and its necessity in aiding the poor to bring about a more just economic order. This idea that Rerum Novarum is like a GOP document which condemns public involvement with the poor has no basis in the actual text.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 04, 2016, 06:38:07 PM
QuoteBut, of course, even though you claim to have known that this was indeed a term with Magisterial precedent, you pretend as if it isn't the case and assume that, on a Catholic forum, my usage is entirely at odds with the papal usage. That seems disingenuous to me.
I have acknowledged many times that "Social Justice" and "Solidarity" (you forgot about that one) was injected into Catholic thought since the time of Pesch, which puts it around 1890-1900.  In QA, the influence on Pius XI can be seen, though he is cautious about it.  In the 1937 encyclical he embraces it, though he spends only a paragraph espousing fascism, which again comes from Pesch.

My point has always been that "Social Justice" is not a Traditional Catholic concept (per the meaning currently given to it) and is a novelty from Pesch.  Paul VI dives whole hog into it with PP, and its been down hill ever since.  JPII was a bit more cautious because he was anti-communist.  Instead he favored more the "virtue" of Solidarity, again from Pesch.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 04, 2016, 06:43:20 PM
QuoteIf you actually read Rerum Novarum, you will see a whole slew of citations regarding the the "State" or "public authority" and its necessity in aiding the poor to bring about a more just economic order. This idea that Rerum Novarum is like a GOP document which condemns public involvement with the poor has no basis in the actual text.
Interested readers can reference back to Page 3 of this thread to see my citations.  Yes, Pope Leo does refer to the "State", as in equating those who want "State" relief of the poor to "heathens of old", and putting forth collective bargaining as a solution to economic injustice as a way to prevent undue influence of the State.

I would never equate RN to a GOP document as the GOP supports monopolies (though there are a lot of good GOP guys, maybe half).  However RN was considered as a sell out to capitalists, and Pius XI felt it necessary in QA to defend Pope Leo from the charge.  If you are curious, find it yourself in QA.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on September 04, 2016, 07:01:56 PM
Quote from: james03 on September 04, 2016, 06:43:20 PM
QuoteIf you actually read Rerum Novarum, you will see a whole slew of citations regarding the the "State" or "public authority" and its necessity in aiding the poor to bring about a more just economic order. This idea that Rerum Novarum is like a GOP document which condemns public involvement with the poor has no basis in the actual text.
Interested readers can reference back to Page 3 of this thread to see my citations.  Yes, Pope Leo does refer to the "State", as in equating those who want "State" relief of the poor to "heathens of old", and putting forth collective bargaining as a solution to economic injustice as a way to prevent undue influence of the State.

I would never equate RN to a GOP document as the GOP supports monopolies (though there are a lot of good GOP guys, maybe half).  However RN was considered as a sell out to capitalists, and Pius XI felt it necessary in QA to defend Pope Leo from the charge.  If you are curious, find it yourself in QA.

All of the following are from Rerum Novarum.

"The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State. And it is for this reason that wage-earners, since they mostly belong in the mass of the needy, should be specially cared for and protected by the government."

"Whenever the general interest or any particular class suffers, or is threatened with harm, which can in no other way be met or prevented, the public authority must step in to deal with it."

"Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the working classes should be carefully watched over by the administration, so that they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the community may themselves share in the benefits which they create-that being housed, clothed, and bodily fit, they may find their life less hard and more endurable. It follows that whatever shall appear to prove conducive to the well-being of those who work should obtain favorable consideration. There is no fear that solicitude of this kind will be harmful to any interest; on the contrary, it will be to the advantage of all, for it cannot but be good for the commonwealth to shield from misery those on whom it so largely depends for the things that it needs."
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 04, 2016, 08:49:14 PM
This is the lead up to his call for collective bargaining.  He starts with a strong statement for property rights and goes on to call on limits to government.  Then he mentions the need for government to look over the rights of the working class.  Then he arrives at his solution to current problems (which he lists), which is collective bargaining.  Here he mentions that the right to collective bargaining is rightly protected by the state.  It is a well balanced approach.  No where does he call for redistribution of wealth or a minimum wage.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 04, 2016, 09:09:38 PM
Here's the context you left out:
Quote36. Whenever the general interest or any particular class suffers, or is threatened with harm, which can in no other way be met or prevented, the public authority must step in to deal with it. Now, it is to the interest of the community, as well as of the individual, that peace and good order should be maintained; that all things should be carried on in accordance with God's laws and those of nature; that the discipline of family life should be observed and that religion should be obeyed; that a high standard of morality should prevail, both in public and private life; that justice should be held sacred and that no one should injure another with impunity; that the members of the commonwealth should grow up to man's estate strong and robust, and capable, if need be, of guarding and defending their country. If by a strike of workers or concerted interruption of work there should be imminent danger of disturbance to the public peace; or if circumstances were such as that among the working class the ties of family life were relaxed; if religion were found to suffer through the workers not having time and opportunity afforded them to practice its duties; if in workshops and factories there were danger to morals through the mixing of the sexes or from other harmful occasions of evil; or if employers laid burdens upon their workmen which were unjust, or degraded them with conditions repugnant to their dignity as human beings; finally, if health were endangered by excessive labor, or by work unsuited to sex or age - in such cases, there can be no question but that, within certain limits, it would be right to invoke the aid and authority of the law. The limits must be determined by the nature of the occasion which calls for the law's interference - the principle being that the law must not undertake more, nor proceed further, than is required for the remedy of the evil or the removal of the mischief.

Basically dangerous work conditions, illegal strikes, threats against property, immoral behaviour, the mixing of sexes at the work place, child labor, not following religion, things like that.

Immediately after this we get your quote on the State looking out especially for the poor.  No where does Pope Leo recommend income redistribution.  In fact, he eventually talks about equitable wages, and that is where he proposes collective bargaining.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lambda Phage on September 05, 2016, 05:18:52 AM
Quote from: james03 on September 04, 2016, 06:38:07 PM
In QA, the influence on Pius XI can be seen, though he is cautious about it.  In the 1937 encyclical he embraces it, though he spends only a paragraph espousing fascism, which again comes from Pesch.


Which of course, we now know is completely possible, given the pontificate of Francis and the extent to which the Holy Spirit has permitted undue and nefarious influence to enter into the texts of papal documents.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Quaremerepulisti on September 05, 2016, 09:22:26 AM
Quote from: james03 on September 04, 2016, 08:49:14 PM
This is the lead up to his call for collective bargaining.  He starts with a strong statement for property rights and goes on to call on limits to government.  Then he mentions the need for government to look over the rights of the working class.  Then he arrives at his solution to current problems (which he lists), which is collective bargaining.  Here he mentions that the right to collective bargaining is rightly protected by the state.  It is a well balanced approach.  No where does he call for redistribution of wealth or a minimum wage.

True, but he also does say this:

Quote14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth.

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on September 05, 2016, 10:50:02 AM
Also, social teaching must be taken as a whole. While Rerum Novarum does not discuss a "minimum wage," several other pre-conciliar encyclicals do indeed discuss a just wage, and not merely in relation to something which one must discuss in the confessional.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: ludimagister on September 05, 2016, 03:34:48 PM
Although I largely agree with Louis XI's take on political and economic matters, I wish someone would address Lambda Phage's post at #106. I'm not competent to do so, but it seems a point that needs answering by critics of capitalism.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Graham on September 05, 2016, 05:55:48 PM
Pre-industrial countries having certain characteristics that resemble capitalism is taken as proof that capitalism is traditional. But Lambda was unable to be consistent about that over the course of a single post, since he couldn't help but describe older societies as (woefully) "agrarian and mercantile." Traditional societies were not characterized by generally free markets in land, labour, and capital. Land - ever heard of the manorial system? Labour - heard of guilds, or again, of the restrictions placed on labour mobility by the same manorial system? Capital - heard of barter, necessitated by the widespread scarcity of money, or perhaps of restrictions on lending at interest? Someone with more interest in economic history could greatly enlarge the list, but I think that's enough.

I won't argue that capitalism and traditional social organization don't have several points of intersection. He's right about low taxes, for instance. But the central pillar of capitalism, that the market should be self-regulating and free from interference, and even more so the corollary that everything or damn near it should be included in the market, could not be less traditional.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lambda Phage on September 05, 2016, 09:56:20 PM
Quote from: Graham on September 05, 2016, 05:55:48 PM
Pre-industrial countries having certain characteristics that resemble capitalism is taken as proof that capitalism is traditional. But Lambda was unable to be consistent about that over the course of a single post, since he couldn't help but describe older societies as (woefully) "agrarian and mercantile." Traditional societies were not characterized by generally free markets in land, labour, and capital. Land - ever heard of the manorial system? Labour - heard of guilds, or again, of the restrictions placed on labour mobility by the same manorial system? Capital - heard of barter, necessitated by the widespread scarcity of money, or perhaps of restrictions on lending at interest? Someone with more interest in economic history could greatly enlarge the list, but I think that's enough.

I won't argue that capitalism and traditional social organization don't have several points of intersection. He's right about low taxes, for instance. But the central pillar of capitalism, that the market should be self-regulating and free from interference, and even more so the corollary that everything or damn near it should be included in the market, could not be less traditional.

You essentially missed the point of the post. The point was two fold. The second and only minor point was not that capitalism is traditional, but merely, as you say, that it does have points of intersection with traditional society, whatever "traditional society" actually means. In other words, the point is that it was not as abrupt and revolutionary as typically claimed, but that there did exist a historic precedent to it, one whose earliest form really only existed in the Catholic world. Again, there is not an economic historian out there, as liberal as he or she may be, who thinks Marx got really anything right about history. For some moronic reason, 19th-20th century Catholic writers (and Popes) granted that Marx got his history right but his solutions wrong, when in fact he got it all wrong. The growth of capitalism was slow and gradual, evolutionary, so gradual that it only came to fruition in the West where it had a thousand years to unfold, and there are a billion different ideas out there as to why this only happened here.

The larger point was that the traditionalist narrative of industrial capitalism, with its foundation in the writings of Leo XIII, is absolutely false. It completely inverted the reality of the situation. Capitalism did not result in the "utter poverty of the masses" as the good Pope implied, but in fact has raised the real wage of the unskilled laborer to more than 10 times his pre-industrial earnings. To date it is the only economic system ever put in place that actually alleviated the utter poverty of the masses. He of course had no way of knowing this, and like Pope Francis simply regurgitated the imprudent words of the men who advised him on these issues. Turns out they were wrong. He inadvertently condemned a hundred thousand years of human social history. Using the standards listed by him, his own era was more economically just than any previous era, yet he considered the socio-economic condition of his own era to be unjust. He was the first Pope in 1800 years to write about this. Yet every complaint about wages and distribution levied at capitalism was only worse in times past.

You can try to falsify the words of Dr. Clark on land, labor, and capital, but you're out of context. He said generally free. You can similarly find dozens of examples of modern land, labor, and capital to show that our markets are also not completely free. For example, for some reason people think guilds are analogous to unions but they're really not. They're more analogous to groups like the AMA which hold a monopoly on who can practice medicine and fight primarily for the benefit of employers rather than employees (see Steven A. Epstein's Wage Labor and Guilds in Medieval Europe). I however think that is a good thing. Our markets are not truly free now either, but compared to the world in the past outside of western civilization it is completely fair to characterize both our markets and pre-industrial English markets as generally free.

For the record, the deification of the ideological tenets you point out at the end have been non-essential to capitalism as it has actually played out and still plays out in the real world. When economic historians speak of capitalism they are speaking of the form of economy and economic policy that has generally been in place in western civilization since the mid 18th century, though there are a growing number of scholars who would push that date into the 17th century or earlier because of the fact that it was gradual and lacking any sort of demarcation (see for example Roman Studer's The Great Divergence Reconsidered). True, unregulated markets are essential to capitalist policy but typically the policy has been enacted as a means to stimulate commerce and generate wealth rather than as a means to achieve some sort of ideological end. Remember when I speak of unregulated markets I mean it in a relative sense, since as a whole the market has never really been completely unregulated but compared to the alternatives can fairly be called "unregulated." Unregulated markets typically take the form of a lack of the characteristics of a command economy. It's not so much a thing as a lack of a thing. To wit, unregulated markets have been around for a lot longer than the ideologies which deify them, and have existed prior to capitalism itself. Ideologues will pen their words but they're not essential to the policy.

Adam Smith wasn't really a modern or industrial capitalist for that matter. He lived before modern economic growth really took off and could not fathom a world in which sustainable economic growth took place. His words mean nothing to me nor to any of the actors currently putting policy in place.  Consider this: There has never been an economic system in which there was no regulation. There has never been an economic system in which the government does not intervene in the market in some situation or circumstance. Most people will admit this. Most people will also admit that the West has been living in a captalist system for the past couple hundred years. Therefore there is clearly a discrepancy between the real policy and the words of ideologues. The real reason every western nation on earth adopted capitalist policy within the last few hundred years has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with the simple fact that it creates wealth, for the individuals, for the community, for the State, and for the entire nation. In other words, it works.

I think it is beyond idiotic that traditionalist Catholics are trying to solve problems that are not actually problems instead of trying to put the faith back to where it belongs. Nobody has any reason to be so concerned with "just wages" or "income inequality" when they are objectively better than ever. This world has always been fallen and will never be perfect. Those who advocate unprecedented alternatives to capitalism in order to enact a "just wage" or reduce "inequality" even more are working for something that has never existed. They are trying to make heaven on earth and in doing so are doing exactly the same thing as secular liberal humanists, which is precisely why every Trad who takes up the mantra of economic/social justice is an utter sell out. Not only are they fighting a make believe battle but in the battles before us with real lasting consequences they are doing more harm than good by giving others unjust cause to hesitate.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Graham on September 05, 2016, 10:47:11 PM
Quote from: Lambda Phage on September 05, 2016, 09:56:20 PM
You essentially missed the point of the post.

[...]

The larger point was that the traditionalist narrative of industrial capitalism, with its foundation in the writings of Leo XIII, is absolutely false. It completely inverted the reality of the situation. Capitalism did not result in the "utter poverty of the masses" as the good Pope implied, but in fact has raised the real wage of the unskilled laborer to more than 10 times his pre-industrial earnings. To date it is the only economic system ever put in place that actually alleviated the utter poverty of the masses.

I didn't miss that point, I just wasn't concerned with it. My point is that capitalism is thoroughly anti-traditional.

QuoteYou can try to falsify the words of Dr. Clark on land, labor, and capital, but you're out of context. He said generally free. For every one restriction you list of the middle ages you can probably find another in the modern economy as well.

They were not generally free, though. They were very regulated, as even my short rundown showed beyond any doubt. If you have an argument here, it isn't that the traditional markets were free, it's just that even modern capitalist economies are subject to many regulations. That's a point I can appreciate - since it shows that the market economy is not at all a naturally occurring system as many of its proponents like to argue, but actually requires an intricate and artificial backdrop of laws and cultural norms in order to exist in even an attenuated form - but it does nothing to buttress the very mistaken idea that the middle ages (or any other pre-modern society, for that matter) had "generally free markets in land, labour, and capital."

That's really all I'm concerned with. You can take up the just wage stuff with Louis.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Graham on September 05, 2016, 10:55:34 PM
For the record, I do think the argument you're posing is challenging for Louis or anybody with a similar perspective on social justice, and needs addressing.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lambda Phage on September 05, 2016, 11:21:31 PM
Quote from: Graham on September 05, 2016, 10:47:11 PM

My point is that capitalism is thoroughly anti-traditional.

There are many scholarly texts refuting just that. Beginning with Henri Pirenne's Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe. He thought anyone who did not see the workings of capitalism in medieval cities was a fool. Robert Lopez' The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages addresses the rise of commercialism during the middle ages. Steven A Epstein's An Economic and Social History of Later Medieval Europe, 1000?1500 pays homage to Pirenne's earlier title. A History of Business in Medieval Europe by Edwin Hunt is another which gets bonus points for debunking Max Weber's made up theory on the Protestant Work Ethic. These last three titles were published by Cambridge. Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms published by Princeton which I have cited at length is definitely the most comprehensive of the more recent titles.

For less scholarly but probably more palatable to Catholic laity would be Rodney Stark's Victory of Reason and How the West Won. I have not read the former but have read the latter. I also read his recently released Bearing False Witness where one of the myths he debunks is the myth that Protestantism or secularism invented capitalism. Thomas Madden's book Venice: A New History, also credits the medieval italian city states as being the first place on earth where capitalism really took hold. Madden's an orthodox Catholic who a lot even here probably like and respect.

No the system as we know it today has not always been in place as is, of course not. But there are precedents and a truly organic development - that is all I mean. The economic policies of the late middle ages similarly were not always in place, nor were the ones of the early middle ages.

QuoteThey were not generally free, though. They were very regulated, as even my short rundown showed beyond any doubt. If you have an argument here, it isn't that the traditional markets were free, it's just that even modern capitalist economies are subject to many regulations. That's a point I can appreciate - since it shows that the market economy is not at all a naturally occurring system as many of its proponents like to argue, but actually requires an intricate and artificial backdrop of laws and cultural norms in order to exist in even an attenuated form - but it does nothing to buttress the very mistaken idea that the middle ages (or any other pre-modern society, for that matter) had "generally free markets in land, labour, and capital."

Well, I guess it's a matter of perspective then. The original post that mentioned the freedom of medieval markets was a direct quote from A Farewell to Alms. Stark has said the same thing. To be sure, it's not like I can say it's my argument, I'm just repeating what these guys say. But knowing what I know about how the rest of the pre-modern world functioned outside of Christendom, I see no difficulty in believing them and have no problem re-iterating it. Ancient Rome was a command economy compared to the economy of Christendom, and medieval China was similar to Rome in that regard. The sphere of Islam was in a league of its own. Basically, my response is: If you think that's regulation you ain't seen nothing yet.  :D
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lambda Phage on September 05, 2016, 11:38:43 PM
Though I would add that I still think the modern market economy is natural, though it is becoming more and more unnatural. I'd say it is natural because that's basically the way it all unfolded. Nobody had to seize control and consciously nix the whole pre-existing plan and start from scratch as we saw in most communist States.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lambda Phage on September 06, 2016, 12:31:43 AM
If I may also add, I think the reason food price controls, for example, used to be in place, was not so much because of tradition as it was because heads of state thought it actually worked. Once they found out it only makes the problem worse by leading to food shortages, they abandoned the policy. If a head of state feels compelled to secure economic prosperity for his people, which traditionally he did, then he'll adopt the policies which accomplish that, which is precisely what happened.

Despite what I said about Adam Smith, for what it's worth in Richard A. Lebrun's comparative study "Joseph de Maistre and Edmund Burke: A Comparison," Lebrun notes that de Maistre approved of Smith's economic thoughts. Lebrun is probably the world's leading scholar on Joseph de Maistre. And if you don't know who de Maistre was, he was basically the first european continental conservative, one of the first men to pick up a pen and write against the Enlightenment. And this kind of gets to the heart of this thread: I don't know how you can get more traditional than de Maistre and his explicit "altar and throne" Catholicism. Yet for so many reasons I would bet that de Maistre would be lumped in with American neo-conservatives, if not for his economics, than surely for his view on warfare. If somebody on this forum is going to think me a neo-con for citing Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, than at least I'll be in de Maistre's company. His political philosophy blows holes in the theory that there is a deep seated antagonism between conservatism and traditional forms of political philosophy (as does Bossuet btw). A particular difficulty arises when one realizes that this conservative lived and died before the "political traditionalists" frequently cited in this thread, namely the editors at Triumph and every Pope from Leo XIII onward, and all of the 19th and the 20th century Catholic writers.

Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lambda Phage on September 06, 2016, 06:39:24 AM
Graham, I found the relevant passages in Clark in which he discusses the freedom of medieval markets, land, labor and capital.. He has almost a whole chapter written on it. I'll post again tonight with some excerpts. I stayed up way too late last night and life suddenly caught up with me this morning  :)
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Lambda Phage on September 06, 2016, 08:32:18 PM
Clark begins by scoring the incentives of economic life in England in 1300 against economic life in England in 2000. He characterizes England in 1300 by low tax rates, modest social transfers, stable currency, and low public debt. To England in 2000 he ascribes none of these. He picked these criteria because that's what the IMF says is needed for economic growth, though Clark argues that it's actually not true, or at the very least that those things are not sufficient for economic growth. This is actually the whole point of the chapter. He is arguing that institutions are not sufficient to explain modern economic growth because of the fact that the medieval pre-industrial world actually had better institutions in free market capitalist terms than does the modern world, yet the medieval world did not see any sort of prolonged, sustainable economic growth.

Anyways, he goes on to assign both medieval and modern england security of property and social mobility. To both he also ascribes free goods markets, free labor markets, and free capital markets. He ascribes free land markets to England in 1300 but not England in 2000. The only economic desiderata he says characterizes England in 2000 but not England in 1300 is intellectual property rights.

Since you seem to agree that taxes in the medieval world were significantly lower than in the modern world I'll leave out what he has to say on it. Moving on.

Regarding stable currency:

QuoteSince token monies cost little to create, the optimal inflation rate from a social perspective is always zero or less. That is when money has its maximum value as a medium of exchange and a store of value. However, by printing more money and creating inflation, governments can extract an inflation tax from the economy. Thus from a revenue perspective the government would favor a relatively high level of inflation, to the cost of society as a whole...

Weak modern governments rely heavily on the inflation tax, and many poor countries have been subjected to high inflation rates in recent decades. Inflation rates have also been high in even the richest economies during some periods over the past fifty years. However, in preindustrial England, and indeed in many preindustrial economies, inflation rates were low by modern standards. Figure 8.7 shows the English inflation rate from 1200 to 2000 over successive forty-year intervals. Before 1914 inflation rates rarely exceeded 2 percent per year, even in the period known as the Price Revolution, when the influx of silver from the New World helped drive up prices. In a country such as England, which had a highly regarded currency in the preindustrial era, the crown did not avail itself of the inflation tax, despite the close restrictions Parliament placed on its other tax revenues. Only in the twentieth century did significant inflation appear in England. By the late twentieth century annual inflation averaged 4-8 percent per year...

Even though there were periods of substantial inflation in some other preindustrial societies, other societies achieved long-run price stability. Thus in Roman Egypt wheat prices roughly doubled between the beginning of the first century AD and the middle of the third. But that reflects an inflation rate of less than 0.3 percent per year.

Regarding public debt:

QuoteAnother macroeconomic success forced on preindustrial economies by their low tax bases was the general avoidance of extensive public debt. Before the Glorious Revolution English public debt, for example, was minuscule since the government could service with current revenues a debt of, at maximum, less than 10 percent of GDP.

An immediate consequence of the greater taxing power of the government after 1689, however, was an increase in public debt. Figure 8.8 shows the ratio of public debt to GNP for England from 1688 to 2000. The fiscal stresses of the "Second Hundred Years War" with the French saw debt rise by the 1820s to record levels of nearly 2.5 times GNP. Peace and economic growth had reduced the debt relative to GNP by 1914. But the stresses of the wars of the early twentieth century again inflated the debt to 2.5 times GNP by 1950. Since then the debt has declined. But at more than 40 percent of GNP it still substantially exceeds that of England before the Glorious Revolution.

Assuming the public has a limited perception of the level and significance of public debt, it will crowd out private investment, reducing the capital stock, and thus reduce the overall output of societies. An unaware publice will not respond when governments finance current expenses with debt, as it would if it were aware and rational, by increasing its savings by the amount of the debt in anticipation of a future greater tax burden. Thus public debt will drive up interest rates and drive out private investments. Jeffrey Williamson, for example, argues that the huge accumulated debt of Britain during the period of the French wars was a major economic policy disaster that substantially slowed growth during the Industrial Revolution.

Regarding security of property:

QuoteAn indicator of the security of property in medieval England, and of the general stability of institutions, is the modest fluctuation in property values over time. Figure 8.9 shows the average real price of farmland per acre in England by decade from 1200 to 1349 relative to the price of farm output. There is remarkably little variation in the real price by decade. Medieval farmland was an asset with little price risk. This implies few periods of disruption and uncertainty within the economy, for such disruption typically leaves its mark on the prices of such assets as land and housing.

In comparison the figure also shows the decadal average of the real price of arable land in the district of Zele, near Ghent, in Flanders from 1550 to 1699, which shows dramatically greater variation. The reason for this is easy to infer from the narrative history of Flanders. In 1681-92 Flanders was the setting for the battle over Dutch independence. Ghent was recaptured from the rebels in 1584 after fierce fighting. Flanders from then was mostly Spanish, but the Dutch continued to raid the countryside until 1607. The fighting is reflected in the huge depreciation in land values in Zele: by the 1580's they had sunk to less than 20 percent of their level in the 1550's. There was also warfare in Flanders in 1672-97 during the wars of the Dutch and the Habsburgs against Louis XIV. Land values then also declined sharply relative to the peaceful years of the 1660's.

Thus the sometimes turbulent nature of high politics in England in the medieval period - there were armed conflicts between the king and the barons during 1215-19, 1233, 1258-65, and much of 1312-26 - had no impact on the average person. At the local level property rights were stable and secure.

The next two are probably the ones you'll be most interested in. First, on social mobility:

QuoteProperty and person might be secure, the objection will be voiced, but in a society in which there was a strict division between the noble class at the top and a mass of undifferentiated sevile peasantry at the bottom, this security was that of a stultified social order, not that of an economy pregnant with the possibilities of progress. This is yet another caricature of the preindustrial world. Case after case, study after study, shows that even medieval England was a highly fluid society in which people lived at every possible economic level, from landless wage laborers to wealthy, and in which movement between conditions was frequent.

Taxation records and manorial court rolls reveal from the earliest years enormous income and wealth disparities. Records of the 1297 Subsidy (a tax of movables), for example, suggest huge variations in wealth, even above the minimum value of possessions (about a quarter of the annual wage of a laborer) that made households liable to the tax.

Even at the lowest level, the laborers and peasants, there was an active land market from at least the early thirteenth century, which transferred even land notionally held by nonfree tenants to unrelated individuals. Thus peasants or even laboreres who were energetic and frugal could accumulate land and move up the rural social hierarchy. This fact shows up, even from the earliest years, in the great inequalities of land holdings. A survey of the royal manor of Havering in 1251, for example, reveals that, while four tenants held more than 200 acres of land each, forty-one held less than an acre and forty-six held between 1 and 3 acres.

Another factor responsible for the great social mobility and fluidity in Malthusian societies like medieval England was the accidents of demography. Figure 8.10 illustrates the distribution of the numbers of surviving sons for male testators in England, both outside London and in London itself, from the wills discussed in chapter 6. The distributions shown here would have been characteristic for the whole Malthusian era. Outside London one-third of males leaving wills had no surviving son, while 11 percent had four or more. Few fathers had just one son to whom all their property and position devolved. Instead collateral inheritance was frequent, as were cases in which, to retain their social position, the sons of larger families would have to accumulate property on their own. This meant that accidents of birth and inheritance were constantly moving people up and down the social ladder.

The data also illustrate the well-known fact that in the preindustrial era cities such as London were deadly places in which the population could not reproduce itself and had to be constantly replenished by rural migrants. Nearly 60 percent of London testators left no son. Thus the craft, merchant, legal, and administrative classes of London were constantly restocked by socially mobile recruits from the countryside.

Medieval England may have been a static society economically. But the overall stasis should not blind us to the churning dynamism of the social fabric, with individuals headed up and down the social scale, sometimes to an extraordinary extent. A substantial fraction of the landed aristorcracy of England, even in the medieval period, actually had its foundation not in long aristocratic lineage or in military success, but in successful merchants and lawyers who from the twelfth century onward were using their profits to buy land and enter the aristocracy. High Church positions were even more open to the lower orders. In the medieval period only 27 percent of English bishops, the clerical aristocracy, came from the nobility. The rest were the sons of lesser gentry, farmers, or merchants and tradesmen.

The social fluidity of medieval England was probably more the norm, rather than the exception, for the Malthusian era. Thus in Ming and Qing China, all the way from 1371 to 1904, commoners typically accounted for 40 percent or more of those recruited by way of examination into the highest levels of the imperial bureaucracy. And in China those with money, at least from the 1450's onward, could alternatively buy official ranks and titles. In ancien regime France the ranks of the nobility were similarly stocked from financially successful merchants and government officers from earlier generations.

And lastly, regarding markets:

QuoteMarkets in medieval England were relatively complete and competitive. Labor, for example, was not immobile and fixed to the land or traditional occupations. Medieval Europe in general had a surprising degree of geographic mobility. Given the low reproductive success of the urban population there had to be a constant flow of labor from the country to the city. Thus the records of a 1292 tax levied by Philip the Fair on the commoner households of Paris show that 6 percent were foreigners: 2.1% English, 1.4% Italian, 0.8% German, 0.7% Flemish, 0.6% Jewish, and 0.4% Scottish. A poll tax levied on aliens in England in 1440 revealed about 1,400-1,500 non-naturalized alien males in London at a time when the total adult male population of the city would be only about 15,000: nearly 10% of the population.

Goods markets were similarly open. The grain trade in medieval London was so well developed that private granary space was available for hire by the week. From 1211 onward local yields had no effect on the prices at which manors sold wheat. The national price was the only thing that mattered in predicting local prices.

The earliest surviving records of transactions in property from the twelfth century already show an active land and house market. Manorial court records, which survive in quantity from the 1260's, also reveal a very active land market among the peasantry, trading small pieces of farmland back and forth between families. The land market was certainly much less restricted than in modern England, where the decisions of planning authorities can change the value of an acre of land by millions of dollars.

I left out all of his citations and footnotes. My hands hurt enough from typing out what I did.

Nobody better ever say that Lambda Phage does not cite sources and provide data to support his arguments. The opposition, on the other hand, cites only the rehashed musings of old biases and falsified historical narratives.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 11, 2016, 10:04:21 AM
QuoteTrue, but he also does say this:

Quote
14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth.

"Extreme distress", "UTTERLY deprived", "extreme necessity".

So we adopt economic statism, tax the crap out of people, destroy work through regulations, make it basically impossible to have true Catholic hospitals, and Catholic relief societies because the government is sucking up all the tax money.  So the poor no longer are helped by the local community, and we say, "See, Pope Leo is all for getting the State to help these people".

That's your point?  Seriously?

So in a society where you have Catholic charitable hospitals and Catholic relief, how are people "utterly deprived"? 
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 11, 2016, 10:06:57 AM
QuoteAlso, social teaching must be taken as a whole. While Rerum Novarum does not discuss a "minimum wage," several other pre-conciliar encyclicals do indeed discuss a just wage,
Non sequitur.  No one is denying the concept of a just wage.  I am advocating the Catholic solution of using collective bargaining to determine it to avoid undue interference from the state.  You advocate setting up soviets to run the economy.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james03 on September 11, 2016, 10:21:49 AM
QuoteI think it is beyond idiotic that traditionalist Catholics are trying to solve problems that are not actually problems instead of trying to put the faith back to where it belongs. Nobody has any reason to be so concerned with "just wages" or "income inequality" when they are objectively better than ever

Lamda, you will appreciate this.  There is a story going around on the internet that goes over how Snowden escaped.  It points out that he hid out in the worst slums of Hong Kong.  The author of the article was trying to show how horrible it was for these people to live there, and yet they let him into their hovel, so what great people, salt of the earth.  It was the human interest piece of the article.  I have no problem with it, it sells.

The funny part is in the article it is revealed that these poor people living in squalor have: 1. an air conditioner, a refrigerator, running clean water, and a toilet.  The author informs us about the "rattling window unit" because he probably has bad memories of staying at a relative's vacation camp and how horrible it was to try to sleep with the rattling old air conditioner.  And he is appalled that the refrigerator is "small".  We also find out that Snowden sent the dude to the corner to pick up chicken at McDonalds.

I can only laugh.  Only a westerner would consider this a slum.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Akavit on September 11, 2016, 12:18:43 PM
Quote from: james03 on September 11, 2016, 10:21:49 AM
QuoteI think it is beyond idiotic that traditionalist Catholics are trying to solve problems that are not actually problems instead of trying to put the faith back to where it belongs. Nobody has any reason to be so concerned with "just wages" or "income inequality" when they are objectively better than ever

Lamda, you will appreciate this.  There is a story going around on the internet that goes over how Snowden escaped.  It points out that he hid out in the worst slums of Hong Kong.  The author of the article was trying to show how horrible it was for these people to live there, and yet they let him into their hovel, so what great people, salt of the earth.  It was the human interest piece of the article.  I have no problem with it, it sells.

The funny part is in the article it is revealed that these poor people living in squalor have: 1. an air conditioner, a refrigerator, running clean water, and a toilet.  The author informs us about the "rattling window unit" because he probably has bad memories of staying at a relative's vacation camp and how horrible it was to try to sleep with the rattling old air conditioner.  And he is appalled that the refrigerator is "small".  We also find out that Snowden sent the dude to the corner to pick up chicken at McDonalds.

I can only laugh.  Only a westerner would consider this a slum.

I must be living in squalor as I don't use air conditioning and my phone is outdated.  I've also been known to drink water from the tap on hot days instead of clean, bottled water.

Life is unbearable.  Hopefully Hillary will get better so she can expand the ObamaPhone program so all of us can enjoy living again.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: mikemac on September 11, 2016, 05:05:42 PM
Quote from: james03 on September 11, 2016, 10:06:57 AM
QuoteAlso, social teaching must be taken as a whole. While Rerum Novarum does not discuss a "minimum wage," several other pre-conciliar encyclicals do indeed discuss a just wage,
Non sequitur.  No one is denying the concept of a just wage.  I am advocating the Catholic solution of using collective bargaining to determine it to avoid undue interference from the state.  You advocate setting up soviets to run the economy.

Collective bargaining can be a problem itself too.  For example the Canadian Auto Workers' at General Motors in Oshawa demanded 3% wage increase per year for a long time while the going was good.  They said they'd walk if they didn't get it.  What the CAW wasn't telling the union workers was that since NAFTA the Auto Pact was abolished.  The Auto Pact protected their jobs from leaving Canada.  Since 2008 and the Auto bailout the wages for new workers at GM in Oshawa have decreased considerably.  My brother who was not effected was making about $30 an hour before he retired.  Now a new GM worker in Oshawa will not make over $15 an hour.  It doesn't end there either.  Between all the collective bargaining high earning baby boomers that are either retired or about to retire (not just GM) and the immigration policy it's basically destroyed the economy here in Canada.  The collective bargaining high earning baby boomers are selling their over priced homes in the larger communities like the Greater Toronto Area (which includes Oshawa) to the immigrants and moving to other communities where they can scoop up houses that they consider cheap compared to what they get for the houses they sell to the immigrants.  What this has done has increased the price of real estate in the other communities considerably.  To the point of a real estate agent telling me that locals will have to move up north to find real estate that they can afford.  Collective bargaining can be very detrimental some times.  In this case collective bargaining high earning baby boomers have basically screwed younger generations.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: LouisIX on September 12, 2016, 04:10:25 PM
Quote from: james03 on September 11, 2016, 10:04:21 AM
QuoteTrue, but he also does say this:

Quote
14. The contention, then, that the civil government should at its option intrude into and exercise intimate control over the family and the household is a great and pernicious error. True, if a family finds itself in exceeding distress, utterly deprived of the counsel of friends, and without any prospect of extricating itself, it is right that extreme necessity be met by public aid, since each family is a part of the commonwealth.

"Extreme distress", "UTTERLY deprived", "extreme necessity".

So we adopt economic statism, tax the crap out of people, destroy work through regulations, make it basically impossible to have true Catholic hospitals, and Catholic relief societies because the government is sucking up all the tax money.  So the poor no longer are helped by the local community, and we say, "See, Pope Leo is all for getting the State to help these people".

That's your point?  Seriously?

So in a society where you have Catholic charitable hospitals and Catholic relief, how are people "utterly deprived"?

If you visited a few poor cities in this country you would see extreme necessity.

My point, however, is that discussion of governmental solutions is based in prudence. So far in this thread you've equated economic help and the State as socialism, full stop. Obviously this is not a principle seen in the actual papal texts. On the contrary, the Church speaks explicitly about the possibility of State help and guidance. So, by all means, you may argue that this particular circumstance is decidedly not the one referenced in Rerum Novarum, and to act as such would be greatly imprudent. However, to just go around labeling people who do espouse it in this particular circumstance as "socialists" is to ignore the papal text and to dogmatize against that which is in them as an approved principle.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Prayerful on September 12, 2016, 06:22:32 PM
Quote from: Akavit on September 11, 2016, 12:18:43 PM
Quote from: james03 on September 11, 2016, 10:21:49 AM
QuoteI think it is beyond idiotic that traditionalist Catholics are trying to solve problems that are not actually problems instead of trying to put the faith back to where it belongs. Nobody has any reason to be so concerned with "just wages" or "income inequality" when they are objectively better than ever

Lamda, you will appreciate this.  There is a story going around on the internet that goes over how Snowden escaped.  It points out that he hid out in the worst slums of Hong Kong.  The author of the article was trying to show how horrible it was for these people to live there, and yet they let him into their hovel, so what great people, salt of the earth.  It was the human interest piece of the article.  I have no problem with it, it sells.

The funny part is in the article it is revealed that these poor people living in squalor have: 1. an air conditioner, a refrigerator, running clean water, and a toilet.  The author informs us about the "rattling window unit" because he probably has bad memories of staying at a relative's vacation camp and how horrible it was to try to sleep with the rattling old air conditioner.  And he is appalled that the refrigerator is "small".  We also find out that Snowden sent the dude to the corner to pick up chicken at McDonalds.

I can only laugh.  Only a westerner would consider this a slum.

I must be living in squalor as I don't use air conditioning and my phone is outdated.  I've also been known to drink water from the tap on hot days instead of clean, bottled water.

Life is unbearable.  Hopefully Hillary will get better so she can expand the ObamaPhone program so all of us can enjoy living again.

Given HRC's bellicose attitude to Russia, the phones might be a bit useless in the times after her accidently triggered nuclear apocalypse.

Mikemac does make a decent point about collective bargaining. There are so many examples of older workers basically selling out new starters to keep their insupportable wage packet.

Collective bargaining is useful is ensuring a sustainable going rate for work. Hopefully a President Trump will be able to end, well reduce or tame wage arbritage by ensuring that trade agreements work to support employment, rather than enrich the Goldman Sachs and George Soros' of this world. It was one of the bases on which baby boomer prosperity was built. It is noteworthy that US Unions will likelier use the dues of their members to support a Presidential candidate whose likely trade policies would mean the extinction of the unionised industrial worker. Trade Unions could do well to consider their members pay and conditions rather than supporting the latest leftwing social agitation.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Akavit on September 12, 2016, 06:54:19 PM
Pensions are probably the biggest culprit.  Current workers use their Union muscle to extract promises of future checks.  Company leaders make promises they can't keep since they'll be gone before it's a problem.  Future workers have to deal with the mess.  If people are earning a good salary, they ought to be in charge of their own retirement plans.

The only people that should get pensions are those who are forced into early retirement by a crippling injury.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: james.rogerson on December 08, 2018, 02:30:55 AM
Sorry to revive this thread, but I thought I'd let anyone who might be interested know that Mark D. Popowski's The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine, the book mentioned on page 1 (which is available for $110 on Amazon) is actually a version of Popowski's PhD thesis. Anyone who has access to ProQuest or academic libraries can get a PDF as I have done.
Title: Re: Political Traditionalism and Its Adversary, "Conservatism"
Post by: Jacob on December 08, 2018, 09:33:32 AM
Quote from: james.rogerson on December 08, 2018, 02:30:55 AM
Sorry to revive this thread, but I thought I'd let anyone who might be interested know that Mark D. Popowski's The Rise and Fall of Triumph: The History of a Radical Roman Catholic Magazine, the book mentioned on page 1 (which is available for $110 on Amazon) is actually a version of Popowski's PhD thesis. Anyone who has access to ProQuest or academic libraries can get a PDF as I have done.

Any thoughts on the dissertation's subject matter?  I started a new thread. (http://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=21232.0)