A sensible approach to the state?

Yesterday, we presented John Medaille’s presentation of distributism as an economic doctrine. I’m not sure if there is a total linkage between distributism and catholicism, but cleary, John Medaille’s version is, hence the many references to the social doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Further browsing through this Distributist Review, I found this distributist treatment of the ‘state’, which I find very sensible. It is an excerpt from a larger article which deals with the principle of subsidiarity. (There is also a more lengthy examination on the Church’s position on the state here.)

John Medaille:

“So while “always let the lowest possible level do it” is certainly not an accurate application of subsidiarity, the level of the order in question is a vital consideration. A distributist need not be libertarian-leaning to assert that most functions currently performed at a high level of society ought to be done by one considerably lower.

The state itself is a corporation of last resort. The state exists in order to direct subsidiary corporations toward the common good. As such, it has a vital role to perform. The common libertarian notion of “our enemy, the state” is fundamentally antithetical to distributism, and to Catholic social thought in general. The state is not only our friend, but it’s a good and necessary part of human society. As Aristotle rightly observed millennia ago, the man who can live rightly outside of the state must be either a beast or a god; he cannot be a man.

Catholic social teaching gives us the criteria for determining when the state needs to be involved:

[I]t is rightly contended that certain forms of property must be reserved to the State, since they carry with them an opportunity to domination too great to be left to private individuals without injury to the community at large.

Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno. Clearly, the state has a role to play, but it’s not one to be played lightly. The argument that Pius is supporting here is that the state is an appropriate agent when the “opportunity to domination is too great to be left to private individuals.”

The military is an obvious example. Entrusting the defense of the realm to private individuals was tried in the Middle Ages, and worked reasonably well; unfortunately, it also resulted in frequent internecine warfare and armies difficult to direct to a single purpose for any considerable length of time. Our current system of entrusting national defense to the state is sensible and wise; even though the job could be done effectively by a lower level of society, it is done better and more appropriately by the state exclusively.

On the other hand, one could argue (and I would, personally) that entrusting personal defense entirely to the state would be deleterious. I work with the local police on a daily basis, and respect them immensely; they do an excellent job with overly limited resources and deserve our support. But they can’t do everything. Permitting private citizens who have not otherwise forfeited their right to do so (for example, by conviction of a felony) to possess weapons for their own defense, and to use them for that purpose if necessary, is only sensible. Entrusting personal defense entirely to the state, forbidding lower corporations from defending themselves and owning the means necessary to do so, would be a violation of subsidiarity.

The reasoning behind not giving a task to the state if it’s not necessary is the same as that behind giving it to the state if it is. That is, the “opportunity to domination” just isn’t great enough to justify it. One must, of course, always consider this factor, even when the state is not in question; private corporations can dominate just as effectively as the state can. However, with the state the issue is much more relevant. The distributist need not be reminded about the benefits of private ownership; ownership and performance of a function by private—by which I mean simply non-governmental—organizations ought to be preferred, wherever possible, to that by state organizations.”

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