Liberalism, Capitalism and Pluralism: The Catholic Wars Continue

Introduction On February 6, The American Conservative published a piece by Patrick J. Deneen titled A Catholic Showdown Worth Watching. In it, Deneen outlines the positions of two hostile political camps within American Catholicism: the liberal camp and what he ca lls a more radical/illiberal camp. The liberal camp is characterized by its support for free-market capitalism, liberal democracy, a vigorous interventionist foreign policy, and the basic compatibility of the American republic with Catholicism. The radical illiberal camp is virtually the opposite in every respect; it is skeptical of and in my experience quite hostile towards free-market capitalism, contemptuous of liberal democracy, anti-interventionist and views the entire American project as a failed enterprise incompatible with Catholicism. In my view there ought to be recognition of a third camp: Catholic libertarianism. Of course this immediately lends itself to semantic confusion. After all, some of what Deneens liberals hold would align with what libertarians hold, and both might lay claim to the descriptor of classical liberalism. The important point of dispute between this peculiar lot of liberals and libertarians proper, at least given the specific points raised by Deneen, would be the matter of foreign policy. Catholic libertarians such as Tom Woods and Judge Andrew Napolitano are resolutely opposed not only to American interventionism, but also to the growing domestic security apparatus that poses a threat to individual liberties. Deneens liberals, or at least the contemporary names such as Wiegel, Neuhaus, and Novak, may better be described as neo-conservatives. Insofar as the Catholic neo-conservatives share economic views with the libertarians, I will include them as classical liberals in the analysis to follow. It may also be argued that Catholic libertarians aligned with the Austrian school of economics and political theory are also quite critical of liberal democracy. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an Austrian intellectual, has led the way in the libertarian critique of democracy and there is no reason to assume that a classical liberal is necessarily a democratic liberal. The Catholic neo-conservatives have had a measurable impact on the GOP of course, and the Catholic libertarians raised their profiles through the wildly popular Ron Paul presidential campaigns. The radical illiberal Catholics have carved out a niche on the Internet as well. All of that said, Deneen is quite right to highlight the fact that this battle takes place on the margins, or one might even say the fringes of American political life. Many Catholics arent familiar with these names or these ideological conflicts. Worse yet, these Catholic groups, in my experience, often misunderstand one another. According to Deneen, this is how the radical illiberal camp thinks of liberalism: According to this view, liberalism is not a shell philosophy that allows a thousand flowers to bloom. Rather, liberalism is constituted by a substantive set of philosophical commitments that are deeply contrary to the basic beliefs of Catholicism, among which are the belief that we are by nature relational, social and political creatures; that social units like the family, community and Church are natural, not merely the result of individuals contracting temporary arrangements; that liberty is not a condition in which we experience the 1

absence of constraint, but the exercise of self-limitation; and that both the social realm and the economic realm must be governed by a thick set of moral norms, above all, self-limitation and virtue. This would also be to say that liberalism holds that men are not social animals, that social arrangements are in fact optional, that it positively endorses the notion that liberty is the mere absence of restraint, and that moral norms ought to be thin or perhaps non-existent. The problem with this is that almost none of it applies to classical liberalism, which is the only kind of liberalism of any importance on the American right.1 It might apply to some extent to Ayn Rands Objectivism, with its cult of selfishness and atheism, but it does not apply to the classical liberalism of Locke or even later versions such as Spencers. Classical liberalism does reject the idea that the state ought to be the guarantor of moral order and stability; it does reject the old Aristotelian idea that the state precedes man. It articulates a doctrine of individual natural rights not simply because, like Objectivism, it holds that selfishness is a virtue, but rather because the dignity of each man is bound up with the limitations placed upon governments. A government that can do anything to anyone is not bound to respect human dignity; a government limited by a clear articulation of human rights is so bound so long as the people continue to articulate them.

The Natural Man One of the most belabored critiques of classical liberalism is of its proposal of a state of nature, a time before governments in which men are said to exist as solitary individuals with absolute liberty and power to do as they please. I have long suspected that the charge of individualism, at least when leveled at Locke and used in its typical pejorative sense to mean something like Randian selfishness or Benthamite utilitarian calculus, is due to a serious misunderstanding and misreading of the Second Treatise. Lockes state of nature is not populated by isolated men and women. It is populated, ultimately, by households: husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, all in established relationships. All of this exists prior to political society.2 When a political society is eventually formed, it is not simply a horde of hitherto strangers coming together in a utilitarian ritual of self-preservation; it is an association of households (likely male heads of households) working out the details of a form of government that will preserve life, liberty and estate, the last of which we can reasonably assume includes wives, children and servants in addition material goods. It presupposes a certain level of social organization and is part of a logical and natural progression. In Lockes view, God has placed all men under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and inclination to form

I should hope that it is clear that modern left-wing liberalism, that combination of social and sexual libertinism with paternalistic and/or socialist economics, is outside of this discussion. 2 Second Treatise, Ch. 7, #77
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societies at all levels, from that between man and wife all the way up through political society.3 And yet not much further along in the ST, Locke does characterize conjugal unions as voluntary compacts between men and women. But is it really possible to reject a characterization of these relationships as voluntary without simultaneously denying another truth held by the Church, namely that men have free will? To put it differently, if with Deneens radicals we hold that family, church, and the like are natural, does this then mean that we can no longer say that they are voluntary? To answer in the affirmative would be absurd. By nature we are inclined to do certain things; by nature we are also free to not do them. We are, as a matter of semantic and ontological fact, at liberty/free to marry or not marry, adhere to a religion or no religion (the Church does not accept forced conversions), parent children or not parent children. This is a purely descriptive argument that hasnt the least to do with what arrangements men ought to prefer. The classical liberal does not state that liberty is the absence of restraint in the hopes that there ought to be no restraints whatsoever. By nature, we are at liberty to varying degrees and extents, unless we subscribe to materialist and reductionist views of human behavior and consciousness that eliminate free will. This is not an option for orthodox Catholics. What we do with that liberty is an entirely separate matter, but that moral question, or any moral question for that matter, would be pointless if we were not naturally free. This ties into the second complaint of liberalisms critics, who claim that liberty is found through self-restraint as opposed to the absence of restraint. This harkens back to the distinction between negative and positive liberty, freedom from vs. freedom to. The most articulate statement of positive liberty may be found in the Gospels, wherein Jesus remarks that those who sin are slaves to sin.4 The classical liberal formulation is a bit different, but it amounts to the same thing. An American student of Herbert Spencers, William Garham Sumner, put it this way: Vice is its own curse. If we let nature alone, she cures vice by the most frightful penalties.5 Classical liberals recognize that significant restraints abound in nature itself, and that government intervention often has the effect of removing those restraints. The perils of the welfare state are well known in this regard; we have seen that our own government regards single motherhood as a morally justifiable and even preferable choice that it is willing to subsidize with taxpayer money. In other Western countries every manner of vice is indulged, subsidized or declared a human right. Even laws that punish vice come with a hefty price tag in the form of more police, prisons (arguably a kind of welfare system), and bureaucracy and with little to show in the way of positive benefits. It is only in a purely laissez-faire society, structured by the rule of law and limited government, that natural laws have their full force and effect and individuals have the greatest incentive to practice self-restraint and virtue. In a social welfare state, these take on the appearance of dried up strictures and rusted fetters that are no longer of any use. Who needs to worry about natural penalties and consequences when the government has
Ibid. Jn. 8:34 5 The Forgotten Man, #14
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declared that everyone has a right to be a degenerate, and that everyone else has an obligation to work a certain number of hours each year to support that degeneracy? The freer we are, the more we find that we actually do need one another to survive. It is freedom itself, and all of the dangers it poses to the isolated individual, that makes the natural arrangements so useful and benefici al. This brings me to yet another point: the charge of utilitarianism, i.e. doing something for the benefit it brings as opposed to its intrinsic value or as a fulfillment of an imposed obligation. In my view it is a grave mistake, philosophically and politically, to drive a wedge between utility and other forms of goodness. If we were to say that marriage, children, family, and community ought to be entered into regardless of whether or not they were useful, we may end up holding that Gods natural la ws are arbitrary and possibly pointless. Reason demonstrates what the benefits of these institutions are, why they ought to be preferred and what the consequences are for avoiding them are (at least in a natural or laissez-faire society); we are not simple automatons blindly marching into social formations like ants. The fact that we find utility in these arrangements is a positive argument for their overall goodness, and not some sort of rival justification. Finally, on the point that society and particularly economic affairs must be governed by moral norms, classical liberals could not agree more. The idea of a society with no rules is simply madness; it could not even exist. Classical liberals are among the strongest advocates of the rule of law and particularly laws protecting property rights, without which economic progress is almost impossible. Many modern day libertarians are also proponents of the non-aggression principle (NAP), which holds that it is always morally wrong to initiate force. This is a moral axiom that often conflicts with purely utilitarian analyses.6 I have scarcely seen a group more dedicated to absolute morality than those libertarians who consider the NAP to be absolute.

The Real Disagreement? Though philosophical disagreements abound between classical liberals and illiberal radicals, do they really have practical political consequences? No one approves of crony capitalism, for instance. No one approves of massive government subsidies and bailouts for big banks and corporations. We may disagree on why these things come to be, but I hardly think it controversial to suggest that we all disapprove of them. I further think the illiberal radicals and the classical liberals would both find a great deal of common ground on the inefficacy of the modern welfare state, on the desirability of scaling back Americas military involvement in foreign countries, and certainly on the all-important question of defending the 1st amendment rights of American citizens contra Obamas mandates and the decrees of a morally destitute judiciary. So what are we really fighting over? The bitterest disputes appear to occur over the issue of capitalism itself. For the radicals and Pope Francis, the glass is half-empty; capitalism has
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See Murray Rothbards Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, Ch. 15.

left half the world in dire poverty, created great wealth disparities between nations, and created a bland mass culture in which the finer things have been trampled underfoot. For classical liberals, the glass is half-full; billions of people have been pulled out of abject poverty and either reached or are on the road to the middle class, average incomes are rising all over the world if not at equal rates, living standards have never been higher, and many of the worlds poor have access to consumer goods and living amenities that their ancestors could not have dreamed of. This is a clash of perspectives, and it is difficult to know what, if anything, can possibly be done about it. Many of the illiberal radicals are also Distributists, or identify with some other variety of an economic third way between capitalism and socialism. The problem is that from a classical liberal point of view, there are no third ways. There are a multitude of variations on government control of an economy, from Keynesian-lite to North Korean Juche, but they all violate the principle of voluntarism, the idea that economic arrangements ought to be purely voluntary. Just as one cannot be a little bit pregnant, one is either under the gun or one is not. This really is one of those either/or situations. The real question on the minds of classical liberals, then, is how can illiberal radicals justify the use of force to bring about ideal social arrangements? On both moral and pure utilitarian grounds, the use of force i s quite often a spectacular failure. Many classical liberals are willing to accept that there are a small number of very important things that governments should be entrusted with and may compel everyone to contribute to, such as national defense (while others, more properly regarded as anarchists, are opposed to even that). Beyond these tasks, government involvement in the economy for the purposes of social engineering is inefficient, counterproductive or even catastrophic. That said, there are no moral grounds upon which classical liberals would object to what I call voluntary collectivism. If groups of people who are fed up with traditional free enterprise want to arrange their economic affairs in different ways, the classical liberal says have at it. Organize communes, co-ops, sit-ins, or whatever else you like. It is when these groups of people want to compel everyone else to participate with the violence of the state that the classical liberal rejects them. If illiberal radicals dont propose to restructure society with force, then classical liberals have no quarrel with them. Deneens article points out that many such Catholics want to form enclaves to wait out the collapse of liberal democracy. Surely no one can object to that.

Pluralism, Not Liberalism I think the big mistake that the illiberal Catholics make, and perhaps Catholic liberals make it as well, is the assumption that America is essentially liberal. Early on in Deneens piece, it is assumed that this thing we now call a liberal democracy was the seamless development of whatever it was Americas founders started. And yet I doubt quite seriously that daily life in the American colonies, and then the American states, was some sort of liberal paradise by either classical or modern standards. Local governments had blue laws and sumptuary laws while some state governments had established religions. The republicanism of men such as 5

John Adams and others of the founding generation has been described as puritanical; it was commonly held that a free republic could not exist without virtuous men. 7 Across the lines of dispute between Federalists and anti-Federalists, Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians, this appears to be a constant and unifying theme. With Pope Leo XIII, they would have recognized the distinction between liberty and license and held them in the same regard, the former being the product of self-discipline, the latter leading straight to the collapse of republics and empires alike. Real freedom in the sense that classical liberal individualists would understand it was not necessarily to be found in established America, but on the frontier. There was plenty of room for plenty of ideas about how to live, at least in theory. The 10th amendment, which Jefferson called the foundation of the Constitution, establishes pluralism as the keeper of the peace in America and not liberalism. The 1st amendment, which is a more obviously liberal amendment, only bound the federal government, while the 10th acknowledges the right of state governments to do as they please insofar as they do not conflict with the Constitution itself. The 10th amendment doesnt limit itself to state governments either, but states that all powers not reserved to the federal government belong to the states and the people, enshrining the idea of popular sovereignty as well. Pluralism + popular sovereignty = a broad polity which, indeed, forms a shell under which a thousand flowers can bloom. The most important right in this polity arguably becomes freedom of association, which in its fullest sense is the freedom to band together with like-minded people to create institutions and even governments that reflect and defend shared values. Hence we have Maryland for the Catholics, Massachusetts for the Puritans, Pennsylvania for the Quakers, and so on. Where I might part ways with classical liberals then is to agree that so long as a person can exit a polity, I dont care how many irrational rules and regulations it wants to p ile on its hapless capitalists. They will be welcome to migrate to our evil laissez-faire hellholes to earn a profit. The same would apply for just about everything else, including established religion, which is not contrary to the 1st amendment at the state level. Of course we would have to do something about the judicial doctrine of incorporation first , by which the federal government applies Bill of Rights to the individual states. This process, in many ways, transformed America from a pluralistic republic into a liberal democracy. But does it really matter, in the end, if there was some dormant liberal seed that was destined by fate or providence to mutate into the obscene juggernaut of godless federal tyranny we observe today (as the illiberal radicals would have it), or if it really was an inorganic and artificial imposition of an alien ideology upon the American republic (as the classical liberals would have it)? If there is one thing that two hostile camps ought to be able to agree upon, especially when they profess the same faith, it ought to be the desirability of a polity in which different methods of arranging entirely prudential affairs such as buying and selling, working and owning can be experimented with.

See, for instance, Novus Ordo Seclorum by Forrest McDonald, pgs. 70-73

I think the most that classical liberals would demand from their illiberal critics is respect for their sovereignty, that is to say, their authority in those areas that the people have decided to designate as free-market polities. The question on my mind as a fellow-traveler of classical liberalism is this: can illiberal, radical anti-capitalists actually do it? Or is the fervent desire to remake the entire world by the force of arms, the Napoleonic or Leninist impulse, burning too hotly within them? Those who wish to retreat to the countryside and form enclaves dont worry me, and classical liberalism ought not to worry them. Those who believe that co-operative, worker-owned enterprises are the way of the future dont worry me either, provided that they remain committed to voluntarism. This means that only people who actually wish to work for and/or buy from such enterprises will do so. It is those who believe that government power can and ought to be seized and used to reshape society that concern me, whether they are illiberal radicals or neo-conservatives of the Rick Santorum variety. If they were to limit themselves to what a pluralistic republic would allow state & popular sovereignty then I would not be concerned. They can have ten states to establish whatever sort of dictatorships they like, as long as people are free to leave at any time. If they believe it is their divine mission to bring me by force of arms into the anti-capitalist fold, or that the War on Drugs is some kind of holy crusade that the federal government is morally obligated to pursue until the end of time (which is about how long it will take to eliminate the demand for narcotics), then enmity and hostility are the only options remaining.

Conclusion I have indulged in a bit of grand speculation here. Neither illiberal radicals nor classical liberals will likely be able to achieve all or even most of their goals. This ought to clue us to an important political reality, though; illiberal radicals and classical liberals do have a common enemy after all. It is radical social egalitarianism. This, more so than liberal individualism, is the ruling ideology of contemporary America. Both illiberal radicals and classical liberals embrace certain elements of egalitarianism, of course; the former tend towards economic egalitarianism while the latter demand legal egalitarianism, i.e. the equality of all individuals before the law. But the radical social egalitarianism of the Democratic Party, the judiciary, the universities and the mass media is hostile to both camps. Radical social egalitarianism cannot abide the hierarchy, distinctive gender roles, and natural law morality of the Catholic Church. It cannot abide the economic inequalities that classical liberals would defend as justifiable and in fact necessary in a truly free-market; a separate issue, let it be noted, from inequalities that result from crony capitalism. It cannot abide the preference for aristocratic and monarchical forms of government or even de facto social arrangements that many Catholic intellectuals on both sides might hold. Even Jeffersons natural aristocracy or meritocracy is ideologically proscribed as collectivism replaces individualism. It is clear that we have a common enemy, and even clearer still that our differences at the present time dont have implications beyond who looks good in an Internet debate. Classical liberals are not about to take America back to the 19th century 7

and illiberal radicals are not about to reinstate the Holy Roman Empire within the continental United States. Everyone can breathe and relax. Perhaps we on the classical liberal side cannot make Tea Party Catholics out of our radical illiberal friends, but we may at least persuade them that it is a rational response to an enemy hell-bent on driving everything we value underground or into oblivion. And perhaps those on the classical liberal side of things can recognize that liberalism is not beyond critique or correction, and that in its purest of forms, it can be quite hostile to Catholicism. After all, Locke, Jefferson, Spencer, Rothbard and other classical liberal philosophers have had complicated relationships with the Church, from rejection and hostility to indifference and approval, at least where natural law is concerned. It is also clear to me that at least some of the tenants of classical liberalism have worked their way into Catholic social thought, nowhere more explicitly than in Pope Leo XIIIs encyclical Rerum Novarum, a topic I explored elsewhere and will do so again.8 This convergence is not enough for classical liberals to demand that all Catholics ought to be classical liberals, but it is more than enough for Catholic classical liberals to demand recognition of their views as a legitimate tendency in Catholic social and political thought.

Author: Bonchamps Date: 2/8/14

Follow the discussion at the-americancatholic.com

How John Locke Influenced Catholic Social Teaching, published in Crisis Magazine 2010.