Monday, August 3, 2015

The Koch Brothers and Justice | National Catholic Reporter

The Koch Brothers and Justice | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: The Koch view of liberty, which is distinctly Austrian by nature, includes elements of corporate collusion to identify and not hire trouble makers, which would force them to compete against their former employer.  The problem is, this is easier said than done.  While schemes such as Georgism,  Catholic Distributism and a Basic Guaranteed Income mitigate against such power, they are also libertarian in nature and mitigate against solidarity.



Solidarity, of course, is not just unions, which the Church likes until pro-choice unions want to organize Catholic school teachers or advocates demand a living wage for Church workers.  Indeed, Subsidiarity is not enough in these cases – indeed, they could make things worse for Church employees.  They need some decent brand of libertarianism, where teachers can take a challenging view on the legality – but not the promotion- of abortion and are free of interference (Church Power) when picking health care options that may include abortion. Liberty is essential to those of us who think the Magisterium is a bad joke and the natural order a sophistry – that morality is to humanize mankind, not to diefy it.  The locus of those moral decisions is not just a well-formed conscience – it’s a free discussion by all Catholics – not just the priests and theologians.  While MSW’s union card is helpful, it does not bestow monopoly status in a natural law argument.



Solidarity has to include socialism – employees making decisions as owners of the enterprise.  Profit sharing alone is inadequate – the authoritarianism of both economic benefit and control must be smashed and union solidarity alone won’t do that.  Secretary Clinton won’t do that.  There are alternatives, however, that will.  These alternatives should not only be used to bring us back to FDR era concessions by the plutocrats, but implemented for their own value.  Solidarity is necessary for revolution, but not sufficient.


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