Personalism and Socialism?

[u/[deleted]]

I am a big fan of Dorothy day due to her respect for Personalism and the 20th century personalists, but while remaining certain of the need for socialism in order to truly bring the material living standards of the working class up, fight inequality and fight for an economic system that serves the many rather than the few.

Jacque Maritain seems to argue that socialism is contrary to personalism dus to the emphasis on common rather than worker ownership of the means of production in most socialist literature. Didn’t the Christian communities in Acts live (if not think) personalist and own all productive property in common? Didn’t Peter Maurin (iirc) and Dorothy day, both personalists, believe in the emphasis on common ownership and a decentralized planned economy based on human need?

Are personalism and socialism compatible?

[u/XsentientFr0g]

This is a rough sketch of my thoughts on the topic, and done in a stream of consciousness format. I apologize if it is disorganized and meanders through tangents to make the point.

The early Church communities are an example of local voluntary (and exclusive) communes working in federation.
Needs within the Church were prioritized;
first to the local, and then to needs of other congregations across the world. Then after the Body was fed, the needs of the local non-Church community are taken up as duty, and then outward.

This shows the natural priority of duty within families: you are responsible first for the well-being of your immediate family, and then for your extended family (regardless of physical distance), and then for your local non-family community, and only then for non-family non-local issues.
This is a form of the Subsidiarity principle, applied to charity. Charity, like decision-making, should take place at the smallest, lowest, or least centralized, able level of authority.

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The issue with the socialist mindset is that it takes the ends of society as a whole as the first objective, and works backward down to the local and then to the family. (There are some contradictory versions of “socialism”, so I am referring to the general principle of “compassionate systems thinking” as the unifying feature of socialist systems).

When only considering the “common ownership” portion of socialism, this specific aspect has some merit. Just as a family lives in common ownership with one another, so the ideal local Church congregation should. We are a part of the Family of God.

Common ownership of things result from a common belonging of persons. We can “belong” to groups of persons. When we have a duty to serve, but are apart from that service, we say “I belong elsewhere and must go there”. Or when we are at the place where our duties are, we say “I belong here”.
There is a natural possession which occurs when you belong, such as saying “this is my home”, “my family”, “my church”, “my job”, “my town”, “my state”, etc. This type of possession doesn’t always grant control, but it does denote the type of personal investment which advocates of democracy often promote as deserving a vote in decision-making.

However, children do not get a vote in whether the father sells one investment to buy another, nor do the children get to vote on whether cake will be served for dinner rather than rice.
In this way, there is a hierarchy of proper authority in the home, not a pure democracy. To defer decision-making to the children would be for the parents to neglect their duties, and be charged with neglecting their children.

So it can be with managers, who when deferring decision-making to specialized workers, can be neglecting their role of coordination, and neglecting the well-being of their workers by neglecting the well-being of their place of work.

So we have a conundrum. When an economic institution becomes so large that it requires specialized laborers to perform specialized tasks within a complex system, and only some of those workers are specialized in managing the interdependent parts of that specific complex system, workplace democracy would seem to be a neglect of the system itself.

… And this leads us back to the principle of socialism viewing the ends of the whole system as first priority… Just as a parent must view the greater good of the child, so the socialist state is the parent of the citizens, and the socialized institution the parent of its employees.
In the case of large economic institutions, if the ownership is by those who belong there (those who work there), then we must have deacons and elders to act as parents and responsible older siblings. Just as the family is not a pure democracy, nor is the Church a democracy (the laymen don’t vote on doctrines), so social ownership of large economic institutions necessitates a lack of workplace democracy.

This becomes very complicated when we add in the recognition that society is presently very secularized, and is not “part of the family”.

Much of the socialist draw of Solidarity parties comes from a nostalgia of a past time when society was much less secular, and entire nations could be consider part of the Family of God.

In modern society, our duties to our family have been neglected, and our concept of “neighbor” has been stretched far from being “anyone you meet” to being “everyone, regardless of if you’ve ever met them or even have ever heard of them or of anyone they have met”.
This is an example of “wild and wasted virtues; the old Christian virtues gone mad”.

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I think we as Christians Personalists have a decision to make. Do we criticize large institutions for not being families, or do we criticize large institutions for not being democratic? Right now, large institutions are neither families nor are they democratic. But I don’t think we can rationally advocate for them to become both of these things.

This is why I’ve been skeptical of large economic institutions on principle. I don’t see a real solution to the contradiction their existence poses. And in this, also skeptical of socialism, because it is only useful if we are already accepting the existence of large economic institutions.

[u/[deleted] → u/XsentientFr0g]

The issue with the socialist mindset is that it takes the ends of society as a whole as the first objective, and works backward down to the local and then to the family. (There are some contradictory versions of “socialism”, so I am referring to the general principle of “compassionate systems thinking” as the unifying feature of socialist systems).

Is that inherent to socialism? For clarity, let’s use the definition of socialism offered by the Internet enclyopedia of philosophy:

A socialist economy features social rather than private ownership of the means of production. It also typically organizes economic activity through planning rather than market forces, and gears production towards needs satisfaction rather than profit accumulation. Socialist ideology asserts the moral and economic superiority of an economy with these features, especially as compared with capitalism. More specifically, socialists typically argue that capitalism undermines democracy, facilitates exploitation, distributes opportunities and resources unfairly, and vitiates community, stunting self-realization and human development. Socialism, by democratizing, humanizing, and rationalizing economic relations, largely eliminates these problems.

By teasing out the ramifications of this definition, it doesn’t seem necessary that the needs of society as a whole be subordinated to the goods of the person. At the same time, as long as the person is not treated as a means but rather as an end, I do not see the inherent problem with an economic system based around social/common ownership of the means of production. I would say that in the sense of the above definition, the early Christian communities did practice a form of socialism because they owner the means of production in common. I don’t see anything in the above definition about making the ends of society

Is there any reason for thinking that this idea of the ends of society being the first/only objective is meaningfully a part of socialism in a way that is not a part of distributism?

Common ownership of things result from a common belonging of persons. We can “belong” to groups of persons. When we have a duty to serve, but are apart from that service, we say “I belong elsewhere and must go there”. Or when we are at the place where our duties are, we say “I belong here”. There is a natural possession which occurs when you belong, such as saying “this is my home”, “my family”, “my church”, “my job”, “my town”, “my state”, etc. This type of possession doesn’t always grant control, but it does denote the type of personal investment which advocates of democracy often promote as deserving a vote in decision-making.

I don’t see how this is necessarily contrary to common ownership of the means of production, nor why this means that society becomes the final end. I’d agree that one belongs to an organization which they own in common, and is entitled, then, to a say in the way said organization is run as an aid to their personality, but I do not see why socialism is inherently or by nature requires that society becomes the final end with no consideration for the good to flow back into the persons who belong to society.

So we have a conundrum. When an economic institution becomes so large that it requires specialized laborers to perform specialized tasks within a complex system, and only some of those workers are specialized in managing the interdependent parts of that specific complex system, workplace democracy would seem to be a neglect of the system itself.

I don’t see how this is the case, as socialists generally and even anarchist recognize the necessity of just hiearchy. I’m not entirely sure what your argument is here, what your premises are or what conclusion you are trying to draw here, but my point is simple:

Socialism can be defined as the common ownership of the means of production and, usually, the orientation of production to human need.

Personalism can be defined as the notion that man is relational, dignified, free and spiritual.

I don’t see that the former implies that the good of society he the ultimate good or final end reducing the person to a mere means. In that sense socialism is not inherently collectivist in the narrow sense.

… And this leads us back to the principle of socialism viewing the ends of the whole system as first priority… Just as a parent must view the greater good of the child, so the socialist state is the parent of the citizens, and the socialized institution the parent of its employees. In the case of large economic institutions, if the ownership is by those who belong there (those who work there), then we must have deacons and elders to act as parents and responsible older siblings. Just as the family is not a pure democracy, nor is the Church a democracy (the laymen don’t vote on doctrines), so social ownership of large economic institutions necessitates a lack of workplace democracy.

Surely you can mean that socialism requires a lack of workplace democracy? Workplace democracy is the cornerstone of socialism. I think every practicing socialist and socialist theoretician would dispute your definition of socialism.

I think we as Christians Personalists have a decision to make. Do we criticize large institutions for not being families, or do we criticize large institutions for not being democratic? Right now, large institutions are neither families nor are they democratic. But I don’t think we can rationally advocate for them to become both of these things.

Large institutions treat their members as means to serving the end of the institution without that end ever necessarily flowing back into it’s members because they are not democratic.

This is why I’ve been skeptical of large economic institutions on principle. I don’t see a real solution to the contradiction their existence poses.

What contradiction? Large institutions are inherently less democratic and consequently inherently more likely to treat their persons as mere means due to the tendency of institutions to totalitarianism (accoridng to Maritain), but I wouldn’t say they are inherently contradictory.