Report of the conference at the Vatican: Pursuing the Common Good: How Solidarity and Subsidiarity Can Work Together.
The above conference, which aims to update the social doctrine of the Catholic Church in light of current social developments, will take place May 2 to 6, 2008, and I will be presenting a case study on electronic giving and sharing there tomorrow.
I have almost never done any live reporting/blogging from conferences, because I feel it difficult to be fully present at such conferences, and to think about reporting at the same time. What I’m attempting to do here is different, it is a report of the different readings I have been doing to prepare for it, and I’m assuming that the papers will broadly reflect what the speaker-authors will be saying during their oral presentations.
First, some general info. The event was organized by the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences, with amongst the key scholar-organizers Margaret Archer and Pierpaolo Donati. In all likelihood, I owe my presence here, as a total outsider, to Margaret, who had been listening at a presentation I had given in Tromse, Norway, about 2 years ago, for the Association of Critical Realism. Margaret Archer, I learned there, was one of the foremost contemporary sociologist, and I have a lot of sympathy for Critical Realism and its pretty common sense approach to reality which is a good antidote to any postmodernism that goes over the top.
Some personal details to give context to how I will approach this have been posted at our Ning community blog. (registration needed for access)
The aims of the conference:
The conference is about updating the social doctrine in light of more recent developments in human society. In particular, it looks at the interrelationship of two of the four principles of this doctrine, Solidarity and Subsidiarity.
The Social Doctrine has indeed four guiding principles:
1) The dignity of the human person (every human being has equal worth through dignity)
2) The common good (we are here to make the world a better place for all)
3) Subsidiarity: civil society and its organizations are the primary and prioritary actors of our society, to which both market and the state should be subsumed
4) Solidarity: we have a social duty to take care of the less unfortunate, and those that have temporary difficulties
According to the introductory material, which I’m paraphrasing as of now, the 2008 Plenary Meeting aims to:
1) Examine the current uses of these concepts in order to clarify their correct meaning
2) Are these exemplars in reality the correct use of such principles, showing us in particular how subsidiarity and solidarity can work together?
3) Can we imagine a new configuration of society, which can transcend both the Hobbesian and the Hegelian heritage.
Note that I can readily imagine what is meant by Hobbesian, nl. that only a strong state can guarantee civil peace but at the price of having the full power to itself; and I’m supposing that Hegelian is related to the change theories that eventually led to the development of a material Marxism and concepts of class struggle, which the Church sees as antithetic to the Christian worldview?
4) One of the priorities will be to examine the interdependence of the four principles, since the social doctrine should be seen as a systematic account, in which gaps would be inacceptable.
5) Today, the relationship between solidarity and subsidiarity is “badly out of alignment”, for two reasons:
a. There is no symmetry in their relations, one can be high and the other can be low. This was the case in early modernity which combined high solidarity of workers with the low subsidiarity of market dominance
b. Subsidiarity can also thwart solidarity. Example: university autonomy under neoliberal conditions
c. Their conjunction is therefore problematic
d. There is a diminished supply of community-based solidarity, which is not being restored by elective virtual communities
e. The invasion of market forces and bureaucratic regulations in everyday life is increasing
6) These cycles could be broken by reciprocity, whose workings amplify both together.
Such reciprocity is however always in danger of being subsumed to either market or power relations, and is not ‘by itself’, a guarantee of justice. It mus therefore be associated with ‘free giving’, and the internet has shown us the strong social basis for this. Understood in this way, reciprocity can lead to an upward spiral which reinforces solidarity, for the full human person. It augments mutual support, friendship, and the creation of social identity.
7) Subsidiarity requires legal protection (through sector-appropriate justice) and allocation.
8 : The Plenary Meeting will cover:
a. New forms of solidary and subsidiary economy
b. Educational initiatives in developing countries
c. State family relationships
d. Access to information goods (internet), and
e. Microcredit and the third sector