Subsidiarity: Judging the Appropriate Level
The Distributist Review's own Paleocrat has posted a fascinating rumination on what subsidiarity really is. He convincingly argues that I, like many others, have been using the term rather imprecisely.
Oftentimes subsidiarity is described as the principle that the lowest possible level of society ought to be performing a given function. I myself have often defined it as such. It's understandable that many people think of it that way, given modernity's unquenchable penchant for harmful centralization. Indeed, Pope Pius XI's own formulation, in Quadragesimo Anno, was clearly concerned primarily with larger corporations eating up the functions of smaller, not the reverse. That saintly pope noted specifically that "it is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of right order, for a larger and higher association to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower societies," making no mention of usurpation the other way around. So it's only sensible that distributists likewise have traditionally concerned themselves more with over-centralization, rather than over-decentralization, though naturally both are problematic.
Furthermore, I think Paleocrat's "libertarian-leaning distributists" violate even this "smaller is always better" definition of subsidiarity, because they allow no real corporations between the state and the individual, meaning that the state is the only possible choice for any function the individual cannot himself perform. While they themselves will argue that private individuals can still get together and do things, rather than the state, the fact remains that any time one did not want domination by private individuals seeking private profit, one would be forced to resort to the state and to nothing else. What type of real subsidiarity is possible with such individualistic atomism?
Nevertheless, Paleocrat's argument is quite persuasive and, ultimately, correct; subsidiarity should be understood as saying not that the lowest possible level should be doing things, but that the right level should be doing them.
However, this does beg the question: how do we determine what the appropriate level of society is? I think the answer to this does depend, in part, on how high or low an order we're operating on. Many factors will play into our determination of what order of society is appropriate for what functions, and our conclusions will vary considerably depending on local circumstances. Still, here's a few of the considerations that I think are most important.
The nature of the task and the order in question. Obviously, what the task is, and what order we're looking at, will be pivotal in determining whether the task is appropriate to that order or some other. The best example of this is educating children. The nature of the task itself, and the nature of the family itself, make it quite clear that the family is the appropriate order for this task. (Of course, it's not always as simple as that; certain types of education are probably better done by other orders. But the general principle, I think, stands.)
The level of the order. While what Paleocrat calls "libertarian-leaning distributists" will probably balk at his conclusion, statist-leaning distributists will probably balk at what I'm about to say. However, the level of the order does have a good bit to say about whether it's the appropriate order for a given task.
Let's consider the education of children as another example, here in the United States. To assign this task to the federal government would be nothing short of ridiculous, and it would be ridiculous precisely because the federal government is too high an order for it. Education needs to be responsive to local needs; schools need to respond to local disciplinary problems; and so on. The federal government is just too high up, too large and broad-based, to effectively do the job.
On the other hand, the individual family is arguably too low-level to do all of it. The base of human knowledge is simply too broad even for two well-educated parents to teach their children completely on their own. My knowledge of calculus, dimly recalled from high school classes many years ago, just can't cut it; I'm going to need help teaching my children that.
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.
As commentator Marchmain on Paleocrat's article remarked, Pope John XXIII in Mater et Magistra probably said it best:
It should be stated at the outset that in the economic order first place must be given to the personal initiative of private citizens working either as individuals or in association with each other in various ways for the furtherance of common interests.
The state when necessary; but only when really necessary. Non-state corporations are to be preferred whenever possible.
And that doesn't even begin to address what level of the state would be the appropriate actor, even once we've determined that the state must be the one to do it.
Obviously, many other factors will play into this analysis. Frequently there will be great room for overlap. Furthermore, the appropriate level for a task will vary considerably according to local conditions; for example, the state may be an appropriate provider of health care in one community but not in another. However, Paleocrat has given distributists a lot of food for thought with his recent posting, for which I, for one, am grateful. I'll be pondering this one for some time.
Praise be to Christ the King!
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7 comments:
It seems that the concept of "subsidiarity" needs to always be understood alongside and in conjunction with the idea of "solidarity." The idea that the family is its own society which is naturally more fundamental and prior to the organized societies called States, and thus that certain operations are better left to the family before the State has a hand at helping (which is the root of the word subsidiarity) is only part of the ideal. The solidarity between families within society, and the organizing of other intermediate levels of assistance, such as guilds, is all just a way of applying in schema the various types of "justice" demanded of virtuous persons: distributive, social, commutative, legal, etc.
In my reading about the ways in which these types of justice relate, and the inter-dependancy of the dual concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity, I've become convinced that there is an important locus for theological discussion here, especially amongst those who think that these "social justice" ideas are a modern invention. If we understand human society and human beings to be reflections of the Trinity (in civil society, just as in the society we call the family), this sheds valuable light on the matter. The notion of circumcession of perichoresis which explains how the Trinitarian Persons relate to one another distinctly, but not separate in nature - this can bear implications for what we see in our models of how we are called to relate with one another as individuals and as "units" of organized or natural societies.
Joey G. Excellent comment! Too often, subsidiarity is used in an ideological way, merely to oppose some government program to which one has other objections. However, two questions must be asked: "Does a non-governmental alternative actually exist?" and "Is either alternative consistent with solidarity?"
Market based systems for goods that ought to be common rarely work if the goods in question are controlled by monopolies, and if the goods in question are necessarily scarce. In such circumstances, the market will ration goods by competitive bidding, playing off those with more money against those with less. This is legitimate if you are talking about Ipods or BMWs, but not if you are talking about more basic human goods.
There is a sense, however, in which "social" justice is a modern concept, but not in the sense that charge is usually made. It is a "modern" concept because justice itself is always social; justice is about what is due to others; it is about social relations. Hence the term "social justice" is somewhat of a redundancy. Only an individualistic and atomistic age such as our own would even need to add such an adjective; every other age would have understood that justice was the foundation of the social order. As St. Augustine put it, "Without justice, what are governments but gangs of thieves?"
Donald, great post, as usual. It is certainly true that the "our enemy the state" mentality is not a distributist position. However, a distributist could say, "our enemy, the modern nation-state" with some justification.
People do need to take responsibility at some level for their own defense, at least to the extent of locking their homes and cars, staying out of areas known to be unsafe, etc. Communities help by having viable neighborhood watch programs and the like. To expect the state to do everything is unreasonable, and leads to unreasonable behaviors, in the belief that the state will clean up after us.
+AMDG
Joey G., I concur with John; your comment is excellent. I wrote in Distributism that there are five primary principles governing a distributist society:
1.) The primacy of production over consumption, and consequently the primacy of productive property over other forms.
2.) Distributive justice, particularly with regard to productive property.
3.) The principle of subsidiarity, about which we've all been thinking so much lately.
4.) The preferential option for the poor.
5.) Solidarity; that is, the organic nature of the state and its end, the common good.
I interpret the principle of solidarity as meaning that the state is an organic whole, that its end is known as the common good, and that all of its subsidiarity parts are to be directed by the government of the state toward that common good. As such, subsidiarity, like the other main principles of distributism, must be understood in reference to that, as you observe.
I don't think I'd agree that the family is "prior" to the state, though, understood simply. The state is the perfect community, and thus is prior to the family in the order of being. However, the family clearly arose prior in time to the state, and it's also prior to the state in other ways. Given, however, that modern thinkers are constantly referring to things arising "before" or "prior to" the state, I think it's important to be precise about these things.
The root of the word "subsidiarity" is most likely the Latin subsidere, "to sit beneath." It comes from nominalizing "subsidiary," meaning "those things which sit beneath." I'm not sure how you're deriving it from "helping," since I know of no language from which English is even partly descended having a word meaning "helping" that bears any resemblence to it. What are you driving at with this derivation?
John, you're absolutely correct that the modern nation-state is an enemy of distributism. It's no coincidence that the decline of Catholic influence in society that Belloc correctly identified as permitting capitalism's rise coincided with the rise of the nation-state.
I also agree about "social" justice; what other kind is there? Justice can only exist in a society; as such, man can only practice it in society, and can only attain his perfection in a society. Aristotle's dictum holds true: "He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god." Atomism has shown that he will always be a beast.
Praise be to Christ the King!
WWW.CLASSICALLIBERALARTS.COM will solve your education problem. At what point in history were the parents the primary teachers of anything beyond the moral and practical (i.e., the most important things)?
I agree about Joey. On solidarity, the research which led to Marriage Encounter found it in families which communicate well, which seems to say something about whether one should kill, keep away from or communicate better with the anti-social. Aren't national militia all too often secretive and arrogant? I have long understood that Americans retained a constitutional right to arm themselves as a defence against the military of "their enemy, the State", the problem being that power corrupts, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely. We are all both good and bad, and what is an instrument of mutual empowerment or defence on our good days can all too easily become one of offence on our bad days. (C.f. what's happened in Burma). In any case, the safe weapon Chesterton envisaged was a sword of wood.
On "social justice", I suspect the conceiving, physical communication of and directing influence of the meaning of a Word provides a more intelligible and obviously Biblical schema of trinitarian communication than the technical word 'perichoresis', but c.f. the in-dwelling of the same meaning in a message, a print-out of it and the reader's informed actions.
Agreed "justice" is demanded of virtuous persons, but so are channels for communicating it, while "subsidiarity" helps to make clear the scope of "social" is not just between individuals but between groups of people of comparable capabilities but with wider and narrower interests, and indeed between people and the sub-human ecology on which we all depend.
I have had several questions regarding this issue for some time now.
Now I'm a bit unsure of what John means by "modern" nation-state as being our enemy because the way I see history is that concept of nation-state as developed by Dante in his defense of autonomy of the city-government of Florence. The idea of the nation-state is that a people ought to be ruled within the essentially the same language group rather than foreign oligarchs dictating law and neither know or understand, or care about the fate of the people. The State was finally put into practice at Louis XI under the influence of the Brethren of the Common Life and the first modern nation-state France came into existence following the Treaty of Arras (1482).
Now the point of this that Louis XI essentially put into practice the idea of Nicholas of Cusa’s idea of the commonwealth into practice now I don’t understand what exactly what is the problem with “modern nation-station” as it came to form a bulwark against Venice the center of oligarchism in the form of the League of Cambrai.
Are you suggesting we go back to the times when essentially the world was dominated by warlord baronages whose armies constantly looted and sacked the villages and farms?
And this brings us to the question of subsidiarity in regards to the nation-states and what action is proper attention of the central government.
Now people may accuse me of being a natalist but I believe a proper and indeed scientific measurement of the growth of the wealth of nation is its physical capacity to provide for a potentially increasing population.
To me, an economic model cannot deliver on this task is a failed model from the onset. However, in our country we in fact facing a future problem of “Peak Fossil Water” and unlike Peak Oil this is a real physical peak not a “profit peak.”
I cannot see how anything less than a massive federal program to start building NAWAPA infrastructure and desalination plants would be able to accomplish the movement of the necessary amount of water needed to keep the American West populated at current and indeed increasing levels.
So my question is how does one practice subsidiarity when the task involves the moving literally billions of tons of water that will be desperately needed.
In short, how do we organize the small to build the physically big?
Now I believe the Federal spending on cross-State and International Infastructure is necessary but aside from funding how do we use the principles of subsidiarity while building something NAWAPA or even a large city?
In some sense, I’m asking for a detailed Distributist model on city building because for now I’m using the American system model as guild-line as well older Renaissance economic principles because I’m am simply not aware of any other way to do it other than the Imperial method of building around the ports used for looting nations.
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