Chesterton, socialism and capitalism

In 1998 Nguyen Ngoc Sang, a Vietnamese intellectual and journalist living in Los Angeles, gave an interesting interview. As a young man with a privileged background he was a rebel and was disgusted at the grinding poverty of the majority of his people in Vietnam, then a French colony. He despised the Vietnamese (Catholic) Church and the colonial capitalism advocated by the Vietnamese upper classes. He intended to become a guerilla in the Communist Viet Minh!

In desperation his father brought in a priest to set him straight. The priest shocked him by stating: "You should read Chesterton... Chesterton said: 'Capitalism and Communism are just alike. They are built on the truth that everything is simple and easy if you just eliminate liberty'."

Nguyen Sang was provoked and prodded into studying what Chester-ton's ideas were. He ended up discussing Chesterton regularly with a group of friends, becoming a convert to GKC's ideals.1

The horrors of Communism and unbridled socialism should now be well known but those of capitalism go largely unrecognised. In most Western media, capitalism is paraded as the economic model most feasible for man's development. Chesterton thought otherwise and argued his position with remarkable vigour and wit.

Chesterton (1874-1936), who dismissed himself as "just a journalist", was a formidable thinker and became a Catholic convert. He was blessed with enormous mental energy matched by his appetite for food, reading, writing and debating. His liberal upbringing enabled him to question anything and everything.

He grew up in the late 19th century. It was a time of great social and political upheaval resulting from the consequences of the industrial revolution, which dehumanised labour. Large sections of society were impoverished not only economically but, worse still, mentally and spiritually.

The evils unleashed by the industrial revolution gave rise to what Marx and Engels labeled "the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production, and employers of wage labour." Accord-ing to Marx and Engels: "They put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations... have pitilessly torn asunder the motley, feudal ties that bound man to his 'natural superiors', and left no other bond between man and man than naked self interest, than callous "cash payment".2

Catholic Church and Conversion

In his book Catholic Church and Conversion (first published in 1926), Gilbert K. Chesterton describes how he was enamoured by Socialism believing at the time that it was the solution to society's ills, writing: "...we were quite convinced that social justice must be done somehow and could be only done socialistically. I therefore became a Socialist in the old days of the Fabian Society, and so I think did everybody else worth talking about - except the Catholics. And the Catholics were an insignificant handful, the dregs of a dead religion, essentially a superstition. About this time appeared the Encyclical on Labour by Leo XIII; and nobody in our really well informed world took much notice of it. Certainly the Pope spoke as strongly as any Socialist could speak when he said that Capitalism 'laid on the toiling millions a yoke little better than slavery' ... we could not expect the poor old gentleman to know what every young man knew by this time - that Socialism was inevitable."

He continues: "... most of us began to realise that Socialism was not inevitable; that it was not really popular, that it was not the only way, or even the right way, of restoring the rights of the poor. We have come to the conclusion that the obvious cure for private property being given to the few is to see that it is given to the many, not to see it taken away from everybody or given in trust to the dear good politicians. Then having discovered that fact as a fact, we look back at Leo XIII and discover in his old and dated document, of which we took no notice at the time, that he was saying then exactly what we are saying now. 'As many as possible of the working classes should become owners.'

"That is what I mean by the justification of arbitrary warning. If the Pope had said then exactly what we said and wanted him to say, we should not have really reverenced him then and we should have entirely repudiated him afterwards. He would only have marched with the millions who accepted Fabianism, and with them he would have marched away.

"But when he saw a distinction we did not see then, and do see now, that distinction is decisive. It marks a disagreement more convincing than a thousand agreements. It is not that he was right when we were right, but that he was right when we were wrong. "

Distributism

In his powerful way GKC states: "One word that tells us what we do not know outweighs a thousand words that tell us what we do know."

"As many as possible of the working classes should become owners" sums up the ideology of Chesterton which is also the cornerstone of Catholic social teaching. It is also termed "Distributism". The philosophy of distributism implies that private property or rather private ownership is a sacred concept that everybody without distinction has a right to as it is the only means by which a person can become more human.

However, private ownership implies, above all, land and the tools to earn a living. Today we only consider private ownership as the plethora of gadgets that adorn a modern home, a car, a yacht and other expensive trinkets. But private ownership in the ideology of the 'distributists' is associated with empowerment with those goods that enable the person to be reasonably self-sufficient.

This includes education and skills to work usefully, tools and workshops, and above all, land. The integrity of traditional rural communities, that are being devastated by the brutal and insensitive onslaught of agri-business, is central to the ideals of distributism.

Ownership means responsibility and the readiness to face the uncertainties of life. The present Pope, John Paul II, had first-hand experience of work as a labourer. In his landmark encyclical Laborem Exercens, he insists again and again on the significance that workers should have joint ownership of the means of work.

He states: "Only when, on the basis of his work, each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part-owner of the great workbench at which he is working with everyone else is rigid capitalism defeated."3

This is apparently anathema to the current practice of most trade unions that look at work as a means to earn the maximum with the minimum of effort. This condemns the working class to remain uncommitted and often unfulfilled wage earners.

Nguyen Ngoc Sang highlights Chesterton's philosophy on ownership towards the end of his interview, stating: "The US is a wealthy country, so most people get enough money to buy consumer goods, but not enough to purchase land or machine tools. We Americans exist to earn and spend and live day to day; most of us exist at the whim of the corporation or the welfare department. Liberty does not come from whim." 4

Chesterton's views and the Catholic stand on social justice and economics are as relevant today as they were over 70 years ago.

"Globalisation and uncontrollable market forces present today a similar challenge to Catholic social teaching as industrialisation at the end of the 19th century. There had been social teaching before Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum, but industrialisation demonstrated to the Church that it had to be much more systematic, rigorous and expansive.

"Catholic teaching in the 20th century has grown and developed: Thomas Aquinas talked about the common good, but he never talked about the international common good; Catholic social teaching today talks about the international common good. Aquinas talked about legal justice; today, the Church talks of social justice.

"The Catholic social vision believes that no political system or economic system, whether national or international, is self-justified: all social systems must be tested by what they do to and for the dignity of the person(s)."5

As in Chesterton's time, the evils of unbridled capitalism are staring us in the face. The crass inequality between the Western world and the so-called Third World is spiralling out of control. Above all, the destruction of the world's crucial ecosystems as a result of our capitalist system treating the environment as an inexhaustible resource should make us realise that we are on the wrong track.

Only recently, a book, The Future of Life, by natural scientist, Edward O. Wilson draws our attention to this sad reality. Yet the US, the world superpower and embodiment of unbridled capitalism, rushes ahead with more enthusiasm down the well trodden path of believing that transnationals and giant corporations will lead us to El Dorado. Thankfully more and more people are questioning this destructive modus operandi.

The late economist E.F. Schumacher (who coined the phrase "Small is beautiful"), the late Barbara Ward (author of Progress for a Small Planet), the late genetic biologist Barbara Carson (author of The Silent Spring, the book that launched environmental awareness), the French farmer/activist Jose Bove, the writer Susan George, and so many others are drawing our attention to the fact that we need to change tack.

Only recently, Race Mathews, an Australian politician turned academic, has rediscovered the wisdom and ideals of Chesterton and wrote a book, Jobs of our Own, that proposes the building of a stakeholder society that provides an alternative to the market and the state.

It is amazing how these people from disparate social, national and ideological backgrounds return to the same wellspring of wisdom that sustains that poverty and degradation are not inevitable. Race Mathews ends his book with a quote of the veteran socialist George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton's friend and sparring partner: "Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?'. I dream of things that never were and say 'Why not?'."

References

1. The Chesterton Review, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, August 2001.
2. Marx & Engels quoted from Good Work, E.F. Schumacher.
3. Laborem Exercens, 14.
4. The Chesterton Review, Vol. XXVII, No. 3, August 2001.
5. "Wanted: a new global order" Bryan Hehir, The Tablet, December 1, 2001.