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--Implications of American Catholic Social Thought for Sustainable Economic Development
Abstract
In their pursuit of social justice, American workers and their leader possess a unique kind of intellectual resources, that is, the Catholic social doctrine as understood by Americans themselves. In principle, Catholic social teaching always takes a middle way between capitalism and socialism. This peculiar approach has never created an expectation for a model of society that is in reality independent from either a capitalist society or a socialist one, but it does create tension between those who embrace an established order in either capitalist or socialist environment and those who strive to reform the social structure. In discussing the ideas of social reforms proposed by Dorothy Day and John C. Cort, this essay tries to indicate how Americans practiced and developed Catholic social teaching in the context of their own culture and society, and how their treatment of communism influenced their understanding of social reform issues. In our efforts to form a working and sustainable way to develop our cities and our society, lessons may be drawn from the aforementioned American experiences.
A "charity" which “deprives the workingman of the salary to which he has a strict title in justice, is not charity at all, but only its empty name and hollow semblance. The wage-earner is not to receive as alms what is his due in justice. And let no one attempt with trifling charitable donations to exempt himself from the great duties imposed by justice.”
---Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris 49
In proposing that we as scholars of history or of other academic disciplines in China look into the implications of American Catholic social thought, what I would like to do is to identify a platform on which peoples in different countries will be able to have a constructive dialogue about how to establish a just society, a dialogue that can reach beyond political leaders and elite intellectuals and that can echo the voices of working people, that is, beyond ideological obscurantism and focusing on the genuine welfare of each and every persons in our society.
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Back in 1937, when the members of the ACTU (Association of Catholic Trade Unionists) were supporting the strike staged by the saleswomen at the Woolworth stores in New York, they carried a placard criticizing Barbara Hutton, the owner of the Woolworth, by quoting the aforementioned words of Pius XI: “Babs gave $11 million to charity, but the workers is not to receive as alms what is his due in justice.” John C. Cort, one of the founders of the ACTU, repeatedly mentioned that in his writings.
This incident indicates vividly that in their pursuit of social justice, American workers and their leaders possessed a unique kind of intellectual resources, which is the Catholic social teaching as understood by Americans themselves. In this era after the Cold War era, the intellectual framework we need for the future societal development needs to be modified and renewed. American Catholic social thought can be a good source for us to look for inspiration, owing to the following two factors. For one, in understanding and interpreting the papal social encyclicals, American Catholics were often paying attention to the influence or the threats from communism or the communist activities, in an obvious reactive way. Pius XI was often quoted as saying, “The great scandal of the nineteenth century was that the Church lost the working class.” American Catholic journals were once full of social essays that supported the labor movement in order to combat communism. At the same time, however, they were addressing the same issues the communist movement was trying to deal with. The second factor is that paradoxically, certain members of American Catholic community, such as John A. Ryan, Dorothy Day, Michael Harrington, Father Paul Hanly Furfey and John C. Cort, had a rather open mind towards various socialist ideas and practices, although they never accept the communism in its Soviet form.
Michael Harrington (1928-1989) took a gloomy view of Marxism in practice: In terms of turning people into opposition, he said, “the Communists rhetoric is even more potent than bourgeois democratic since it uses the language of the most revolutionary ideal ever proclaimed—the classless society—to facilitate class oppression.” Once it does not work out, people tend to be despaired of any hope and confidence in the system. Harrington, a born Catholic and once an active member of the Catholic Worker, later left the Church to embrace his brand of socialism. What was consistent with him was his heartfelt compassion for the poor. Thomas Merton (1915-1968), the well-known American Trappist monk and writer, was more optimistic in evaluating the theory of Marxism. He once said that one ought to “save” or “redeem” those “implicitly Christian roots” from Marxism, that is, peace, harmony, justice and love.
In principle, Catholic social teaching always takes a middle way between capitalism and socialism. Of course, much depends upon definitions. This peculiar approach has never created an expectation for a model of society that is in reality independent from either a capitalist society or a socialist one, but it does create tension between those who embrace an established order in either capitalist or socialist environment and those who strive to reform the social structure.
Thomas Aquinas already provided a link by which we might use to connect the current development of China’s market economy with a greatly improved social structure that not only aims at distributing wealth more evenly, but also takes into consideration human rights and human dignity. For Aquinas, private property is rational but is to be used for the needs of all. For example, the rich ought to distribute part of his own to the poor, and the poor in desperation with no other relief means available might seize some of his neighbor’s goods without committing theft or robbery. I will only briefly discuss one concept in Catholic social teaching that demonstrate in comparison the weakness of current Chinese social thinking, that is the concept of just wage or living wage as John A. Ryan calls it, before I go into the case of John C. Cort. Both Leo XIII and Pius XI mentioned the issue of just wage in their social encyclicals. In Rerum Novarum, Leo believes that “remuneration must enough to support the wage earner in reasonable and frugal comfort.” Pius XI, in Quadragesimo Anno, points out, “In the first place, the wage paid to the workingman should be sufficient for the support of himself and of his family.” And “it is to the common good that workers and executives enabled, by setting aside that portion of their wages remaining after necessary expenses are met, to attain to a modest fortune.”
In the early 20th century, Monsignor John A. Ryan (1869-1945), professor at the Catholic University of America, gave a systematic elaboration of papal teaching on just wage:
The material requisites of decent living may, therefore, be summed up as a reasonable amount of food, clothing and shelter for himself and his wife as long as they live; and for four or five children until these have reached the age of sixteen.
The laborer’s remuneration ought to be sufficiently large to enable him to provide against accidents, sickness and old age.
Finally, the laborer and his family have certain mental and spiritual needs, the satisfaction of which is essential to right living.
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While Ryan accepted a form of mitigated socialism that aimed at socialization, to a degree, of natural resources and public utilities, he rejected totally “the Communism of Soviet Russia.” John C. Cort can be said to be one of his good students. The whole life of Cort (1913-2006) or the lives of American Catholics who have sincere compassion for the poor and the disadvantaged have demonstrated that the Catholic social teaching have been exerting good influence upon the modern society. He was one of the founders of the ACTU (Association of Catholic Trade Unionists), an organization well known and bitterly criticized, among academics at least, for its anti-communist orientation.
Can John C. Cort or at least his activities be characterized as mainly oriented towards an anti-communist crusade? My answer would be a definite no.
In order to answer this question, however, one might see where Dorothy Day and the publication of The Catholic Worker stood as far as the issues of unions and communism were concerned. In May, 1933, it was on the first page of the very first number of the publication that all paragraphs discussed the labor and social problems. During the second half of 1930s when the ACTU was founded and started to be active, it is evident that the labor movement was one of the prominent concerns of Day and of her publication. Did she give a stalwart support to the efforts to clear the communist influence and communists from the trade unions?
Judging from the essays published in The Catholic Worker, signed and unsigned, it is reasonable to say that one of her strong motives in founding the movement and the newspaper was to defend the Christian faith and the social justice as conceived by the Church. Day did not, however, design a tactics to fight the communist influence in the unions and followed up with political activities, nor did she harbor personal repugnance towards people who happened to be communists, but she clearly disagreed with them in principle. What John C. Cort and his colleagues at the ACTU did was different. They pursued social justice with a transparent political agenda, that is, to rid the trade unions of communists. Social justice, however, was his essential purpose, and anti-communism was just one of the means he believed necessary to achieve the end in the context of American society during the decades before and after the Second World War. It is thus understandable that Cort was upset in his later years when academics criticized the ACTU for its anti-communist activities.
Day was deeply worried that without good efforts made by the Church to help the poor, including the African-American Catholics, they would be wooed away by the communists. The reports in her publication reveal this concern vividly. Her protests against racial injustice were often accompanied with an description of the efforts the communists made to help the black people and ended with a warning against the communist influence: “Is it necessary to add that, even aside from the Christian duties of justice and love which should preclude race prejudice, the only way in which the Church can save the Negros from Cummunism is to follow the same program outlined above?” In justifying the need of such a paper as The Catholic Worker, Day called attention to the effect the communist propaganda upon the Catholic workers, pulling them away from the Church. The core contents of this propaganda were that the priests were indifferent to the welfare of the people. It was obvious to her and to many American Catholics that the intention of the then Soviets was to start a class war in the United States. She and people around her felt obliged to stop this potential class warfare in the country by introducing the Catholic social thought among the masses.
Day always acknowledged, “there were [sic] social justice in the demand made by the Communists---they were the poor, the unemployed, the homeless. They were among the ones Christ was thinking of when he said, ‘Feed my Sheep.’ And the Church had food for them, that I knew. And I knew, too, that among these men there were fallen-away Catholics who did not know the teachings of their Church on social justice---that there was a need that this message be brought to them. So I offered my prayers that morning that some way be shown me to do the work that I wanted to do for labor.”
Her rejection of communism is often explained by her antipathy towards atheism, but this is not the whole story. She is also opposed to the communist social programs that are based on the denial of private property to people. For example, when she wrote about the farmers’ picketing the roads, she said, “Communist are in favor of collectives and the American farmer is fighting for his home, to keep his home.” For her, the social conditions in the United States during 1930s were bad enough but communism was utterly unacceptable because on this issue, she was in agreement with what was printed on The Catholic Worker: “The Communist alternative means state slavery, because under its rule nothing belongs to the individual. He does not even belong to himself. The state owns him.”
Under her editorship, The Catholic Worker never shied away from pointed criticism of communism or communist activities. The reports about the strikes were full of remarks that communists worked hard to win over workers in great distress. It was perhaps evident during 1930s in the Great Depression and among the relative popularity of communism in the United States. One might compare two essays written by Day under the same title: “Workers of the World Unite! Under Christ, Light of the World.” In the first one, she placed a subtitle, calling workers to battle against communism. In the second essay of the same title, however, Day no longer did so and did not mention the issue of anti-communism at all.
As we have said, Day never harbored any personal repugnance towards communists, and she was consistent in this respect all her life, believing that the communists had their right as citizens. She protested against the violation of the right of free speech in the treatment of Earl Browder in Indiana and Florida, when he was there running for the United States president. She also disliked the so-called “red-baiting”, often used as the “Red Herring” technique to keep workers out of unions.
It must be admitted that Day and other Americans, perhaps members of American communists during those times, did not really understand the principles of communism in practice in such countries as the then Soviet Unions. They tended to comprehend communism as a set of abstract ideas, sometimes not accurately. For example, The Catholic Worker printed the article about Russians entertaining American seamen, which ended with the following words: “We feel friendly indeed toward Soviet Russia. If this is a fair sample of communist life, then we are emphatically for it.” Immediately after the ending of the above article, Day inserted a quotation from Pius XI (Forty Years After): “Just as the unity of human society cannot be built upon class warfare, so the proper ordering of economic affairs cannot be left to free competition alone.” In another report, Father McGowan was quoted as saying that there was a bit truth in the Communist thesis: “This bit of truth, he says, is that ‘Wage and salary workers must be partners on their industry. Partnership means actual sharing in the administration of industry itself, actual sharing in profits, actual sharing in ownership.”
However, it is undisputable that Day was opposed to the class warfare as advocated by the communists and she was also averse to the tactics employed by them, believing that dishonesty was integral part of communist strategy because they tried to hide their hatred of the Church from the Catholics. In this respect, she and Cort were in total agreement.
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Day was romantic and was suspicious about modern industries. She and Cort did have different opinions about the modern society.
For John C. Cort, capitalism and modern industry can work provided that a harmonious business-labor relation is able to be established. In other words, a great deal of good depends upon class collaboration rather than on class warfare. In this respect, his strength to a great extent came form his reading of the social encyclical of the Popes. His anti-communist orientation does not differ from that expressed by Day in The Catholic Worker. The two of them do differ somehow in their methodologies in supporting American workers. Through working for the ACTU and being an activist, Cort was engaged fully in helping workers negotiate with employers, with emphasis on realistic results in terms of better wages and benifits. Before the Second World War broke out, there was no visible disagreement in principle nor in tactics in union activities between Day and Cort.
In other words, Day and Cort then shared a common vision in their pursuit of social justice, but they later started to differ in the ways to realize it.
1. Charity as a Christian virtue. The most distinctive attribute of the ACTU, if drawn from the writings of John C. Cort, is definitely not the anti-communist orientation. As in Dorothy Day, it is a heartfelt compassion for the working people, out of Christian faith and charity. Far from being an abstract and reasoned concern, this compassion is sincere and personal. In the case of Cort himself, he declined a highly-paid job and gave up, with struggles, his courting a banker’s daughter when he went down to New York to join the Catholic Worker. Because of his middle-class upbringing, it was a great and difficult challenge for him to live in the slums there. It was a life of dirty bathroom, full of bedbugs, and without daily showers. He eventually contracted T.B., an illness tormenting him for many years, though he had a long and happy married life with ten children. He dies at the age of 93. In describing his first night at the Catholic Worker’s House of Hospitality in New York, he wrote:
On this typical July night in New York, hot as any jungle, little or no air moving in our building, separated from the street by a small courtyard and another tenement. The room was heavy with the smell of sweat, and after a little while I began to itch all over. I suspected bedbugs.
In discussing the beginning of the ACTU, Cort never forgot mentioning the Woolworth saleswomen and the story of a man in the utility workers’ union who had been fired for union activities and eventually hung himself, leaving an ill wife and seven small children.
Apart from his activist life working with the trade unions, since the middle of 1960s, he also devoted many years to fighting racial discrimination and lived with his family in Roxbury, a black neighborhood in metropolitan Boston. He fought, among other things, for integrated public education on South Boston.
2. Fear of Communism. Anti-communism, for Cort, implies therefore two things. It is both proactive and reactive. He plainly considered the anti-communist trend as necessary and an integral part of the labor movement, since he believed that any Catholic had to fight atheism and a good citizen had to oppose himself to the possibility that the Soviets should gain political influence in this country. He was convinced, however, that such a powerful political leaning would be helpful in improvement of workers’ welfare. For example, when talking about the victory of Walter Reuther at the convention of the United Auto Workers, he wrote for the Commonweal the following words:
To begin with, it was the most decisive and substantial triumph scored by anti-Communist forces in the CIO since the founding of the organization. It marks a new low for red strength in the American labor movement and should pave the way for newer and lower lows. It will affect in a profound way the future of the whole CIO.
Dorothy Day never turned her refusal of communism into serious political action. But some of her disciples, such as John C. Cort, did it with gusto. Scholars in American labor history have given harsh criticism of the purge of the left-wing unions from the CIO in 1940s and 1950s. Their opinions have been directed to the fact that the labor movement as a whole was severely weakened and its result was the weaker protection of workers from the business and corrupt union officials. In the mind of Cort, a good riddance of communists would help people like Reuther to develop a kind of economic democracy that demanded a collective bargaining of both prices and wages, and the inclusion of labor as an equal partner in management and government of major industries:
His prestige tremendously enhanced, Reuther, with Socialist Mazey behind him, is now in a spot where he can push the CIO further toward that kind of economic democracy without at the same time allowing anybody to confuse the issue with cries of ‘Communism.’ (They will confuse it with cries of ‘Socialism,’ but that can’t be helped). In a word, the future looks interesting, and pleasanter.
Since communism was such a disabling taboo during those decades in America, a good riddance of its burden was better for everybody. Cort appeared to believe that. He nevertheless did his best to carry on the fight for social justice. In 1959, Cort noticed already the declined strength of the organized labor, and the corresponding arrogance on the part of business. He also resented that the Church as employers used certain tactics to prevent workers from being organized into unions.
As Cort himself emphatically pointed out, one could never pretend to say that wealth and prosperity in the U.S. made social reform and labor movement superfluous. He never believed that Americans ought to feel complacent about the social conditions in the country and stop working for social progress. In 1960, he wrote an essay to refute the ideas put forth by Father Edward Duff, S.J. that America was already a classless happy society and the social reforms had been accomplished. Father Duff in an essay in Social Order quoted Geeorge Meaney, the president of the AFL-CIO, as a proof that Americans did not have class consciousness. What Meaney said in December 1955 was as follows:
I believe in the free enterprise system completely. I believe in the return on capital investment. I believe in management’s right to manage.
Cort contended that the pursuit of social justice was never the thing that can be allowed to lapse after certain accomplishments. He cried out, “We are still under orders to do what we can to see that the Kingdom of God comes on earth as it is in heaven.” His conclusion is fascinating and beautiful:
Maybe I am wrong, but it seems to me that when we find ourselves in an attitude which is mainly one of defending status quo, then we are slipping into a position which is not consistent with the best of our traditions. As long as there is one man alive in the world who is victim of injustice, the Christian can never be content.
In other words, for Cort, the anti-communist orientation embedded in the social action was an approach to the end rather than the purpose per se. And in his idealistic mind, his vision conceives a world where economic equality and political democracy prevail. This vision, for him, is not an utopian dream, but a goal that can be realized, even if not perfectly, through human efforts enlightened by grace.
3. A Realist for the Sake of Workers’ Welfare. Cort was never hesitant in scorning the red-baiting tactics when he realized that it was harmful to promoting the welfare of workers. He was vigorous in defending the Political Action Committee in the CIO, often branded by the conservatives as having connection with the communists. When he felt it necessary, he could be blunt in criticizing the Church and its red-baiting tactics. In 1945, while writing about the Catholic unions in Canada, he blamed the clerical domination and ignorance as the cause that the Canadian union leaders fought against International Ladies’ Garment Workers, regarding it as a communist organization. Together with Dorothy Day, Cort and the ACTU also actively supported the strike staged by the cemetery workers in the Archdiocese of New York, and had a bad time with the Archbishop, Cardinal Francis Spellman. The Cardinal denounced the strike “anti-American,” and considered it inspired by the communists, and stopped giving the annual donation of $3000 to the ACTU.
In the case of the Taft-Hartley Act, Cort joined the battle against the so-called “right-to-work” laws, and tried hard to push for amendments that would have given federal law precedent over state law. He actually agreed that union officials should no longer be required to file non-communist affidavits. He added, however, that the communist were more eager to sign these affidavits than anyone else. That was a dubious statement. He also had harsh words towards priests who embraced the “right-to-work” laws. As early as in 1942, he had realized that the closed shop was only part of the larger movement for “recognition of the workers’ rightful share in a world that was once regarded as the exclusive property of the ‘bosses’.”
Apart from working to improve the conditions of workers through unionization, Cort and the ACTU made great efforts in calling for the reforms that were to reduce racketeering and corruption in the labor movement. An ideal unionism, for them, was not only free from communists and racketeering, but also was free workers and businessmen from the class warfare attitude. It had to be based upon a harmonious relation between labor and capital. In his own words, it is harmful for both labor and capital to follow the extreme premise that “either one or the other must triumph and reduce its antagonist to a state of servile subjection.” For Cort, a good relationship of labor and capital was in a sense both a socialist and a Catholic one. “Such as, for example, joint production committees, profit-sharing, stock-sharing, and the industry council.” But before the realization of his ideals, he never overlook the practical and daily-life issues for ordinary workers, such as a decent workers’ compensation law to help them to cope with medical bills and disabilities.
In discussing Walter Reuther’s victory in the UAW, Cort wrote, “a strong dose of anti-communism in a labor leader is neither a handicap, as some believe, nor, as others believe, a substitute for positive quality. Reuther won because he had a constructive program, consistent principles and consummate ability to put them across.” One of Cort’s strongest antipathies towards the communist control of American unions resulted from his conviction that the communists always placed their own political agenda above the welfare of workers. He cited numerous examples in his writings on labor movement. He considered it outrageous that the strategies employed by the communists changed so dramatically with the German-Soviet Pact of 1941 and with the Nazi invasion into the U.S.S.R. Be that as it may, in the case of UE (United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America), the anti-communist purges in the second half of 1940s were mainly political, for the UE leadership, called by Cort as Stalinists, was able to deliver decent wages and other benefits.
On one occasion at least, Cort tried to apply to the calculation of wages the concept of living, saving and Christian family wage put forward by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno. In commenting on the Steel dispute in 1949, Cort pointed out that average steelworker made $66 for a 40-hour week and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said $63.50 to $65 a week should be enough to keep a working class family of four in reasonable comfort. However, Cort reminded his readers that the BLS figure did allow for saving and it neglected the fact that a Christian family was not to be limited to two children. In other words, $100 was more appropriate and for a good living wage the steel workers had a long way to go. He ended his essay by quoting the statement of the U.S. bishops in The Church and Social Order: “The first claim of labor, which takes priority over any claim of the owners to profits, respects the right to a living wage.”
Day and Cort were again united in battling the “right-to-work” laws in 1950s, but Day and some fellow Catholic Workers now called Cort a pro-capitalist because they perhaps took as his vote of confidence in capitalism his belief in a Christian industrialism and in union activities within the frame work of the existing social order.
What Cort truly believed was a version of democratic socialism.
4. Conversion to Socialism, an Inevitable Ending. Apart from his Catholic faith and his determination to carry out the social teaching in the papal encyclicals, Cort possessed a typical American middle class mindset in the sense that he upheld the principle of democracy throughout all the years he worked in trade unions, and he would continued to do so up to the end of his life when he had become a socialist Democrat, a member of the Democratic Party who happened to believe in Christian socialism. His union activities, radical as they might appear to conservative businessmen, were always conducted in the framework of law and order. He paid high respect to the nation’s democratic institutions in general, and strove to establish a democratic structure in particular within union organizations. Charles E. Curran once called attention towards Father Furfey, one of the major spiritual advisor of the Catholic Worker, and towards his final choice in his life-long pursuit of social justice as a Catholic radical: “Communism and capitalism are rejected as inadequate alternatives, and a third way is proposed with special reference to the model of Sweden. The means of production still are retained by private owners, but workers and the state become involved in policies so that profit is not the primary motive. He thereby calls for a more egalitarian society to be structured in accord with Swedish system.”
By no coincidence, John C. Cort took the same path towards the Christian socialism. He was a believer in the papal teaching that the reform of institutions had to go hand in hand with the reform of individual persons and vice versa. His rejection of liberation theology was firm and clear, not unlike that of Michael Novak, but his conclusion was different from what was proposed by the latter. Cort never questioned the legitimacy of private property and the possibility of a harmonious labor-capital relationship. In refuting the theologians of liberation, he wrote:
For Common sense and everyday experience have taught us that employers and employees do have important things in conflict. But they also have important things in common. And they can and frequently do work out a just relationship.
Michael Harrington put it more succinctly when he reminded us that “any fool can nationalize.” Of course, you could replace the individual employer or corporation with a workers’ or peasants’ cooperative, so that the workers, or peasants, on the basis of one-person-one-vote, instead of the capitalists’ one-share-vote, elect the board of directors. This is a much better idea than ownership by the state because it is real economic democracy, and the best short definition of socialism is the extension of democratic process from the political to the economic sphere.”
Cort explained elsewhere that socialism after the Second World War in the West was no longer the socialism condemned by Leo XIII and Pius XI, for it had embraced political democracy and private ownership.
When Michael Novak was arguing against liberation theology, he conceded that democratic socialism, advocated by Harringtong, Father Arthur F. McGovern, S.J. and Cort, was in crucial respects identical with his favorite democratic capitalism, for it rejected the abolition of private property, absolute principles of nationalization and collectivization, the abolition of markets, and radical egalitarianism.
Novak also directly discussed the social and economic ideas of Cort., and pointed out that their differences were not “disagreements of principle.” He believed that Cort and his fellow socialists desired more caring and compassion, more democratic procedures within the firms, and more government control over the large corporations, while paying less attention to consumers in the market. He concluded in his own words, “To a very large extent, the issues may be best decided by empirical observation of what works.” Cort did not directly answer the criticism from Novak. His life-long activities in trade unions, in making war on poverty and racial discrimination, point to his belief that injustice in a society often resulted not from individual failures but from structural defects. Market may work well, but individuals will suffer if Christians do not take their responsibility to fight injustice. “As long as there is one man alive in the world who is victim of injustice, the Christian can never be content.” Such was his belief to the end of his life.
One of Cort’s fellow democratic socialist, O’Brien Steinfels quoted in 2001 John A. Ryan while discussing the relevance of his teaching in today’s world: “There must be an appeal to the minds and hearts of individuals and the fullest utilization of the latent power of organization and social institutions.”
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In principles, in their influence upon laws and policies, there are many things for us Chinese to learn from American Catholics, such as Dorothy Day, John C. Cort and Monsignor John A. Ryan. For example, the recently written and approved Labor Law of People’s Republic of China stipulates that the employer only has to pay the employee a wage not lower that the minimum one as regulated by each province. The issue here is whether the minimum wages in China is a living wage, given the fact that those who work for minimum wages are adults with families rather than high school students working part-time. What the new Labor Law ought to do is to rewrite the aforementioned article and ask the employer to pay a wage that can provide the worker and his family a reasonably decent life, that is, a living, saving and family wage.
After the ending of the Cold War, Monsignor George G. Higgins once said, by quoting a liberal American banker, that it was high time to rid ourselves of polemical way of thinking in discussing social and economic issues, leaving behind the fear of socialism and communism and starting to have a non-ideological, pragmatic reexamination of economic systems. He was talking about the U.S. economy. I believe that the same attitude ought to be adopted by us in China, and thereby we will be able to pay much needed attention to the lot of the working class.
Dr. Ryan once wrote two essays, respectively entitled: “May a Catholic Be a Socialist?” and “Does the Church Condemn Moderate Economic Socialism?” If I may, in conclusion, I would like to paraphrase these two titles into one question:
Can we Chinese be socialists with sincere love for workers and sincere interest in sustainable social development? In other words, can we be socialists with heartfelt compassion towards the labor while taking a responsible supporting attitude towards business and economic expansion?
I am hopeful that we can. And I believe that we must.
This English translation quoted from Gerald C. Treacy, S.J., ed., Five Great Encyclicals (New York: The Paulist Press, 1939), p. 195. The word charity in its theological context implies greatly more than alms-giving, and certainly in contradiction to the alms-giving out of impure intention.
It is high time for us to become wary of the pseudo-scientific remedies offered by economists and sociologists and to pay more careful attention to scholars in humanities and even those in theology. As Thomas Merton said, seemingly archaic thoughts given by a monk can be better answers to the issues of modern society. Sometimes they are. Thomas Merton, “The Root of War Is Fear,” in William H. Shannon, ed., Passion for Peace: The Social Essays (New York: Crossroad, 1995), p. 18.
Cort, “Catholics in Trade Unions,” Commonweal 30 (1939), pp. 34-36; “Nine Years of ACTU,” America 75 (1946), pp. 4-5; “Side by Side with the Unions,” Commonweal 59 (1953-54), pp. 552-554.
Michael Harrington, Socialism (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1970), p. 181.
Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1973), pp. 56-57.
Charles E. Curran, Catholic Social Teaching 1891-Present (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), pp. 175-176; John A. Ryan, “Were the Church Fathers Communists,” International Journal of Ethics, pp. 26-39, here pp. 29-30.
Rerum Novarum 34. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon, ed., Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1998), p. 31.
Quadragesimo Anno 70, 74. David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon, ed., Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, pp. 58-59. John Paul II makes it very clear that the wage constitutes a key element in the social system: “It should also be noted that the justice of a socioeconomic system and, in each case, its just functioning, deserve in the final analysis to be evaluated by the way in which man’s work is properly remunerated in the system.” Laborem Exercens 19. Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, p. 378.
John A. Ryan, A Living Wage (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920), p. 103.
John A. Ryan, A Better Economic Order (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935), pp. 131-147. On p. 144, Ryan writes: “A political system based upon dictatorship and scorning democracy will naturally permit only as much individual liberty as seems to be compatible with the ends of dictatorship.”
There have been several unfair and incompetent treatments of the ACTU.
The Catholic Worker, May 1933 (vol. 1, no. 1), p. 1. On this page are these titles: “Thirty Hour Week,” “Women in Industry,” Negro Labor on Levees Exploited by U.S. War Dept.,” “Less Child Labor Due to Present Low Wage Scale,” “Do Something! Join Catholic League for Social Justice, Now!” And three short easy essays by Peter Maurin on “Institutions-Corporations,” “Ethics and Economics,” and “Blowing the Dynamite.” In the last essay that is continued to age 8, Maurin wrote: “If the Catholic Church is not today the dominant social, dynamic force, it is because Catholic scholars have failed to blow the dynamite of the Church. Catholic scholars have taken the dynamite of the Church, have wrapped it in an [sic] hermetic container, and sat on the lid. It is about time to blow the lid off so the Catholic Church may again become the dominant social dynamic force.”
Arthur G. Falls, “The Communists Say: ‘Welcome, Negro Brother!” The Catholic Worker, April 1934, pp. 1, 8. Dr. Falls, Chairman of the Interracial Commission of the Chicago Urban League, complained that the Catholic institutions in the neighborhoods provided service only to “the white race,” while the communists appeared to hold no racial discrimination and they even danced with the black people. Cf. Unsigned, “Communists, Despite Noise, Are Not Only Defenders of Scottsboro Case,” The Catholic Worker, May 1933 (vol. 1, no. 1), pp. 1, 6. In 1331, on the freight train between Tennessee and Alabama, two white girls were allegedly attacked by a group of balck boys, one of the latter was to be sentenced to death later. In another report in The Catholic Worker, “Increased Radicalism Among Negros Noted by Urban League,” it was noted that more unemployed the black and the white workers were organized by “political bodies expressing both the Communist and Spcialist philosophy of government.” June-July, 1933, p. 7.
Unsigned, “Communists Seek Entry to Negro Churches,” The Catholic Worker, September 1933, p. 9.
Unsigned, “Specimens of Communist Propaganda,” The Catholic Worker, February 1934, p. 1: “The Communist hatred of the church is something entirely separated from the Communist hatred of the capitalist system and this is so obvious that it is hard to see how the Catholic worker is taken in. It is because he is taken in very often that there is the need of such a paper as The CATHOLIC WORKER.”
Francis L. Burke, “Communism and the NRA,” The Catholic Worker, February 1934, p. 2.
Joe Bennett, “First Issue of Catholic Worker Distributed May Day in Union Square”, June-July 1933, p. 5: “One old Italian, turned Communists because of unemployment and near starvation, rmarked after reading a copy of our paper, ‘Ya know, da Church, she wanta help uss after all. I t’ink I drop da red flag an’take up da Cross again.’” In the ending of the report: “As soon as the worker realizes that the Church Militant is interested in man’s welfare as well as his soul, he will stop to consider before embracing Communism and its atheistic ideas. The Scriptures, history, tradition and common sense will tell him that without God there is neither happiness, security or prosperity, either in men or in mations.”
Dorothy Day, “Progress,” The Catholic Worker, December 1933, p. 4.
Unsigned, “Strike Method of Farmers Hastening Relief Legislation,” The Catholic Worker, June-July, 1933, pp. 1, 2. On p. 2, she wrote about the farmer, “He is tired, he says, of hearing about food lines and soup kitchen in the city when he cannot sell his hogs or grain or fruit. He see plenty and starvation side by side, and he intends to raise a rumpus until some adjustment is made. But it cannot be denied that Communists are taking every advantage of the present situation.”
Michael P. Gunn, “The Labor Guild: Love, Justice Charity,” The Catholic Worker, June-July, 1933, p. 8.
Unsigned, “Demonstrations by Communist Party in Anti-War Fight: Communists Trick Students; Movement Not for Peace, but for Class War,” The Catholic Worker, May 1934, pp. 1, 6. On p. 1: We are printing the bulletin to show how Communists dominate the entire peace movement through the United States, and how by their activity and their visible results, the idealistic youth of the country are being led to Marxism.”
Unsigned, “Why Write about Strife and Violence?” The Catholic Worker, June 1934, pp. 1-2. On p. 1: “If we attempt with undue optimism to minimize the crisis, if we do not recognize their plight, we are forcing them to turn to sheets such as the Daily Worker which does take cognizance of their condition. At the scene of every strike the Daily Worker is sold, and the workers read it because it deals with their problems.” It then continue: “We recall to our comfortable readers, to whom these tales of strike and riot are something outside their ken, that the Red Cross has in many cases refused to give help to starving women and children when a strike was on. That it was the Communists who collected food and clothes for the families of miners waging their industrial battles [sic: battes]down in Kentucky, for the families of the textile strikers in North Carolina.”
Dorothy Day, “Workers of the World Unite! Under Christ, Light of the World,” The Catholic World, October 1936, pp. 1, 7
Dorothy Day, “Workers of the World Unite! Under Christ, Light of the World,” The Catholic World, May 1958, pp. 1, 11.
Unsigned, “Communist or Not, Browder Has Right to Be Heard,” The Catholic Worker November 1936, pp. 1, 8. On p. 8: “In a word, we emphatically do not agree with what Browder has to say, but we must, as Americans and as Catholics, insist loudly on his right to say it.”
Unsigned, “N. Y. Milk Strikes Ask for Greater Share of Profits,” The Catholic Worker, September 1933, pp. 1, 4. On p. 4: “The usual charges of Communism were hurled at the strikers to confuse the issue…. It is difficult to follow the logic by which a strike is judged by attaching a label to its leaders instead of on its justice.”
James McGovernm “Russia Entertains American Seamen, U.S.S.R. Is Viewed by a Catholic American Sailor,” The Catholic Worker, October 1933, p. 5.
Unsigned, “Communistic Ideal Hold Some Truth, Says Fr. McGowan: Urges Partnership of Workers and Owners in Industries for End of Calls Struggle,” The Catholic Worker, October, 1933, p. 7.
Unsigned, “Undercover Communists Organizing Farmers,” The Catholic Worker, October 1933, p. 2; Unsigned, “The Communist Press,” ibid., p. 4.
John C. Cort, Dreadful Conversions: The Making of a Catholic Socialist (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), pp. 9, 18-20.
He proposed to his future wife Helen Haye when he was declining into terminal T.B. She said yes, and he recovered. Dreadful Conversions, pp. 134-135.
John C. Cort, Dreadful Conversions: The Making of a Catholic Socialist, p. 9.
John C. Cort, “Catholics in Trade Unions,” Commonweal 30 (1939), pp. 34-36.
Cort gives an lengthy description of this experience in his autobiography. Dreadful Conversions, pp. 244-273.
John C. Cort, “The Meaning of the UAW Victory,” Commonweal 47 (1947-48), p. 176.
Dorothy Day in citing Pius XI’s famous saying, “the greatest scandal of the 19th century was the loss of the workers to the Church,” writes also: “Speaking on the death of the Pope, Fr. Cardin said: ‘Never did the Pope want an anti-Marxist front. Never did he wish to align himself with any materialistic regime or have recourse to methods of violence to combat communism.” Day, “Pius XI Opposed Red Baiting: J.O.C. Priest Says Pius XI Sought Positive Action,” The Catholic Worker, March 1939, p. 1. See also Day, “Workers of the World Unite! Under Christ, Light of the World: Catholics Urged to Take Leadership of Unions from Communists and Work against Violence,” The Catholic Worker, October 1936, pp. 1, 7. In the issue of May 1958, on pp. 1 and 11, Day wrote an essay with the same title without mentioning anything explicitly against communism.
David Montgomery, Worker’s Control in America (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 169-170: “In fact, loyalty to the govermentt’s foreign ventures became a test of loyalty to the Democratic Party, and even of fidelity to the AFL and the CIO. The result was a draconic purge of alleged Communists sympathizers, especially from the CIO between 1946 and 1949, which plunged the movement into internecine warfare. In a more general sense, the combined impact of the unions’ loyaty to the Democrats’ cold war policies, widespread dismissal and police harassment of leftwing workers, and purge within the union movement served to suffocate political and ideological debate in working-class America.” Steve Rosswurm, “The Catholic Church and the Left-Led Unions: Labor Priests, Labor Schools, and the ACTU,” in idem, ed., The CIO’s Left-Led Unions (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992), pp. 119-137. On p. 137: “Anticommunism was more dangerous---to the Catholic Church, its working-class membership, and the American working class as a while. In this crusade, the Church betrayed the divine promis, made through Isaiah, to ‘create new heavens and a new earth,’ to ‘create Jerusalem to be a joy and ots people to be a delight’.” See Isaiah 65:17-22.
John C. Cort, “The Meaning of the UAW Victory,” Commonweal 47 (1947-48), p. 176. Cort himself did not like to drive out the communists of the unions through illegal means. See “Sometimes You Make Mistakes,” Commonweal 45 (1946-47), p. 495. Here is the story of a UE local at Bridgeport, Connecticut, that expelled 27 members of the Communist Party in violation of the UE constitution.
John C. Cort, “Turning Back the Clock,” Commonweal 71 (1959-60), pp. 99-101. In this essay, Cort pointed out, on p. 101, “Of half a million men employed in Southern mills, the Textile Workers, buck right-to-work laws, hostile judges and governors even more antipathetic that Governor Hodges, have been able to organize, at the most, only seventy thousand.”
John C. Cort, “Catholics and Sicial Justice”, Commonweal 71 (1959-60), pp. 150-151. On p. 151, he wrote in conclusion: “…if the objective is to prove that the Church practices what she preaches, if the objective is to serve as a shining example to the world of what social justice really means, then it would seem to be quite obvious that these methods are terrible and tragic failure.”
John C. Cort, “Review on Catholics and Radicals: The Association of Catholic Trade Unionists and the American Labor Movement from Depression to Cold War by Douglas Seaton,” Commonweal 110 (1983), pp. 438-446. On p. 438. Cort scorned the opinion put forward by Werner Sombart that since the American worker consumed almost three times as much bread and meat, it was impossible for socialism to develop in his country. In Sombart’s words, “On the reefs of roast beef and apple pie socialistic utopias of every sort are sent to their doom.” Even in the 21st century, Cort did not think that the gap between the rich and the poor was to be acquiesced. Dreadful Conversion, pp. 302-303. In America’s top companies, he cited on p. 302, the income of CEOs in 1998, was 475 times that of the employees.”
John C. Cort, “Case for Discontent,” Commonweal 71 (1959-60), pp. 392-394.
Cort did admitted in his autobiography published in 2006 that in its anti-communist activities there was “doubtless from time to time an exaggerated concentration of energy and concern..” Dreadfull Conversions, p. 168.
John C. Cort, “Hillman, CPA and PAC,” Commonweal 41 (1944-45), pp. 6-9.
John C. Cort, “The Cardinal Cried Red,” Commonweal 101 (1974-75), pp. 297-298. The strike provides a good example that indicates the difference between Dorothy Day and Cort in dealing with labor issue at that time. While Day wrote to the Cardinal to ask him to pay respect to the workers, saying: “It is not just the issue of wages and hours as I can see from the conversations which our workers have had with the men. It is a question of their dignity as men, their dignity as workers, and the right to have a union of their own, and a right to talk over their grievances.” Cited in D. L. Gregory, “Dorothy Day and the Transformation of Work: Lesson for Labor,” in W. J. Thorn et al., ed., Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Essays (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2001), pp. 274-297, here p. 280. Cort and others at the ACTU helped the workers to negotiate with the Archdiocese in the settlement of the dispute and get better wages. See Cort, “The Calvary Cement Strike, I, II, III,” Commonweal 49 (1048-49), pp. 471-472, 563-565, and 610.
John C. Cort, “The Durkin Experiment,” Commonweal 59 (1953-54), pp. 58-60.
John C. Cort, “The Closed Shop Blues,” Commonweal 37 (1942-1943), pp. 6-8; “The Battle over “Right-to-Work’,” Commonweal 62 (1955), pp. 75-77; “Catholic Views: Right-to-Work Laws,” Commonweal 64 (1956), pp. 438-440. In the last essay, on p. 439, Cort quoted Father Edward Keller, C.S.C. of Notre Dame University who in defending the “right-to-work” laws, maintained that since American labor movement was one of the most dominating economic, political and social institutions in the nation, it was “beyond the capability of employers to destroy it, even if they so desired or attempted.”
John C. Cort, “Reforms Are in Order,” Commonweal 59 (1953-54), pp. 161-163. Also see Cort, “Goodbye, Teamsterss,” Commonweal 67 (1957-58), pp. 285-287; “Expulsion of the Teamsters,” Commonweal 67 (1957-58), pp. 404-407.
John C. Cort, “Unionism: Hard and Soft,” Commonweal 59 (1953), pp. 328-330. He is here telling the story about Phil Murray of the Steelworkers. He made a deathbed wish to accompany Benjamin Fairless of U.S. Steel on a good-will tour of the company’s plants.
John C. Cort, “A Man Going Blind,” Commonweal 60 (1954), pp. 628-629. He writes about a young worker named Oneil Bouchard from Main whose eyes were hurt badly in an accident while working on the roof. The insurance company stopped paying his medical expenses and a weekly living stipend of $21 after 6 years. Cort also wrote an essay on health insurance in 1949, and supported the AFL and the CIO in their efforts to have Congress pass a national health insurance plan. He pointed out that in 1940 the Catholic bishops already backed the extension of social security to cover national health insurance, but the proposal for such a plan by the Truman Administration was attacked by the NCWC, the Catholic Hospital Association and the National Conference of Catholic Charities. Cort himself believed a compulsory plan was necessary, even if it meant to eliminate he voluntary plans, in order to have more people covered. “Health Insurance,” Commonweal 51 (1949-50), pp. 155-157.
John C. Cort, “Reuther and the Auto Workers,” Commonweal 44 (1946), pp. 6-9, here p. 9.
John C. Cort, “The Ladies’ Garment Workers,” Commonweal 40 (1944), pp. 465-469; Dreadful Conversions, pp. 144-173.
Dreadful Conversions, pp. 149-150.
Dreadful Conversions, pp. 146-147. See also Michael Harrington, “Catholics in the Labor Movement: A Case History,” Labor History 1 (1960), pp. 231-263. On p. 263, in conclusion, Harrington wrote: “The future of democratic trade unionism thus depends upon the development of an indigenous rank-and-file within the unions, standing first upon a platform of fulfilling the immediate economic demands of the workers, and then broadening this function and encompassing wider areas of social action and responsibility.” In the wake of the purges of the communist unions, Cort wrote: “We will have a chance to see how many employers are sincere enough in their protestations of Americanism to resist Communism offers of easy contract in exchange for exclusive bargaining rights.” “The CIO Expels Its Communist Unions,” Commonweal 51 (1949-50), pp. 211-212, here p. 212.
John C. Cort, “The Steel Dispute and the Encyclicals,” Commonweal 50 (1949), pp. 509-511.Cort also noticed and disapproved the outrageous high wages for the management as early as in 1955, such as the annual wage of $600,000 for Harlow H. Curtice, president of General Motors. See “Guaranteeing the Worker’s Pay,” Commonweal 62 (1955), pp. 180-181. Cort also believe that ideally “a union official should make no more money tah he needs to support himself and his family in reasonable comfort, according to his status in society.” Some said that a union official should never make more money than the highest paid member of his union. In the words of Cort, “That’s not a bad principle.” “Too Christian,” Commonweal 51 (1949-50), p. 462.
John C. Cort, “Is a Christian Industrialism Possible?” Commonweal 49 (1948-49), pp. 60-62; “Capitalism: Debates and Definitions,” Commonweal 61 (1954-55), pp. 221-222.
Charles E. Curran, American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth-Centruty Approaches (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), p. 171.
John C. Cort, “Around the Convention Circuit,” Commonweal 60 (1954), pp. 535-537. On p. 537, He writes: “And it seems to me that if there is to be primary emphasis by Catholic organizations in the social field it must be on the spiritual reform of individuals, for the very simple reason that institutions cannot be reformed except through individuals, and if the character of the individual is inconsistent with the reform proposed, or unable to stand the pressures involved in any attempt to change anything in this stubborn old world, then there is little hope of reform for social institution.”
John C. Cort, “Christians and the Class Struggle,” Commonweal 113 (1986), pp. 400-404.
John C. Cort, “Review on Catholics and Radicals: The Association of Catholic Trade Unionists and the American Labor Movement from Depression to Cold War by Douglas Seaton,” Commonweal 110 (1983), pp. 438-446, here pp. 445-446.
Michael Novak, Will it Liberate: Questions about Liberation Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1986, pp. 170-173.
Michael Novak, Will it Liberate: Questions about Liberation Theology, pp. 175-177.
John A. Ryan, A Living Wage (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920), p. 182; Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, “The Contemporary Importance of Monsignor John A. Ryan and Catholic Social Teaching,” in Robert G. Kennedy et al., ed., Religion and Public Life: The Legacy of Monsignor John A. Ryan (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2001), pp. 291-298, here p. 298.
For this year (2007), in the province of Zhejiang, the minimum monthly wage is RMB 620 to 850. It is RMB 840 in Shanghai and RMB 640 in Beijing. In Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, Beijing and Shanghai as well, a new apartment of 50 square meters is usually priced 500,000 RMB.
George G. Higgins, “Trade Unions, Catholic Teaching and the New World Order,” in Oliver F. Williams and John W. Houck, ed., Catholic Social Thought and the New World Order (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1993), pp. 351-363, here 361-362.
Catholic Fortnightly Review 16 (February 1, 1909), pp. 70-73; 16 ly 1, 1909), pp. 391-394.
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