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<\/a>Subsidiarity is a word that gets thrown around a good deal in Catholic circles. Typically, it\u2019s associated with distributism, and most always with Catholic Social Teaching on the whole. Its emphasis on what some would call \u201cfederalism\u201d (to me this colors the concept with Americanism so stark that it becomes unrecognizable) is, however, often perverted such that it no longer makes sense within its great theoretical context (e.g. its association with solidarity). In the United States, many \u201cfollowers of Catholic Social Teaching,\u201d many \u201cdistributists\u201d are effectively libertarians.<\/p>\n
I am not a distributist (though the idea has my sympathies; it seems to lack, however, the theoretical heft of Marx\u2019s analysis of capitalism. Its solutions are decent ones, but it underestimates the intractable nature of capitalist economic structures). But, as an admirer of Dorothy Day, as a member of the American Solidarity Party (may my friends on the Catholic Left have mercy on me), and, well, merely as a Catholic, clarifying this definition holds a special significance. And so, with my meager, graduate-student, blogger\u2019s powers, I shall try.<\/p>\n
First, we\u2019ll need a general definition of subsidiarity. The Catechism<\/a><\/em> has this to say:<\/p>\n The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity<\/em>, according to which \u201ca community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This division of powers, so to speak, seems, to the American ear, to mean federalism as it is spoken about in the U.S. Here, for example, is the Acton Institute<\/a> on subsidiarity:<\/p>\n Monsignor Higgins, by contrast, fails to even mention the relationship between federal, state, and local governments. Any extended discussion of the principle of subsidiarity which neglects to consider the respective roles of the state and federal governments in the American system is radically flawed. As our founding fathers made clear in The Federalist Papers<\/em>, the U.S. Constitution was designed to leave many issues of great importance in the hands of the states. The federal government was to do only those things which the individual states could not effectively do for themselves. The subsidiarity principle was at work in the foundation of our nation. But from the New Deal era onwards, there has been a steady growth in federal power at the expense of the states. This has sparked a renewed interest in the Tenth Amendment, which reserves all powers not delegated to the federal government to the states.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This amounts to an equation of (a specific understanding of) American-style federalism with subsidiarity. This is prima facie <\/em>misguided for a couple reasons. For one, the term \u201csubsidiarity\u201d entered our \u201csocial teaching\u201d (it did not quite have the name yet) through Friedrich Emmanuel Freiherr von Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz<\/a>. In context, he was carving out a space for Catholic liberty in the midst of persecution during the German Kulturkampf <\/em>(not to mention his dalliance with certain forms of socialism). This moment in history was not about \u201clevels of governance,\u201d but represented a time of fierce Protestant aggression against German Catholics<\/a>:<\/p>\n Kulturkampf<\/strong>, (German: \u201cculture struggle\u201d), the bitter struggle (c. 1871\u201387) on the part of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck<\/a> to subject the Roman<\/a> Catholic church to state controls. The term came into use in 1873, when the scientist and Prussian liberal statesman Rudolf Virchow<\/a> declared that the battle with the Roman Catholics was assuming \u201cthe character of a great struggle in the interest of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n Bismarck, a staunch Protestant, never fully trusted the loyalty of the Roman Catholics within his newly created German Empire and became concerned by the Vatican Council\u2019s proclamation of 1870 concerning papal infallibility<\/a>. The Roman Catholics, who were represented politically by the Centre Party<\/a>, distrusted the predominance of Protestant Prussia within the empire and often opposed Bismarck\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n The conflict began in July 1871, when Bismarck, supported by the liberals, abolished the Roman Catholic bureau in the Prussian Ministry of Culture<\/a> (i.e., ministry of education and ecclesiastical<\/a> affairs) and in November forbade priests from voicing political opinions from the pulpit. In March 1872 all religious schools became subject to state inspection; in June all religious teachers were excluded from state schools, and the Jesuit order was dissolved in Germany; and in December diplomatic relations with the Vatican were severed. In 1873 the May Laws, promulgated<\/a> by the Prussian minister of culture, Adalbert Falk<\/a>, placed strict state controls over religious training and even over ecclesiastical appointments within the church. The climax of the struggle came in 1875, when civil marriage was made obligatory throughout Germany<\/a>. Dioceses that failed to comply with state regulations were cut off from state aid, and noncompliant clergy were exiled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The principle, however, became something of a buzzword at a more fully-ecclesial level via Pius XI\u2019s Quadragesimo Anno<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands. Therefore, those in power should be sure that the more perfectly a graduated order is kept among the various associations, in observance of the principle of \u201csubsidiary function,\u201d the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be the happier and more prosperous the condition of the State.<\/p>\n First and foremost, the State and every good citizen ought to look to and strive toward this end: that the conflict between the hostile classes be abolished and harmonious cooperation of the Industries and Professions be encouraged and promoted<\/p>\n The social policy of the State, therefore, must devote itself to the re-establishment of the Industries and Professions. In actual fact, human society now, for the reason that it is founded on classes with divergent aims and hence opposed to one another and therefore inclined to enmity and strife, continues to be in a violent condition and is unstable and uncertain.<\/p>\n Labor, as Our Predecessor explained well in his Encyclical, is not a mere commodity. On the contrary, the worker\u2019s human dignity in it must be recognized. It therefore cannot be bought and sold like a commodity. Nevertheless, as the situation now stands, hiring and offering for hire in the so-called labor market separate men into two divisions, as into battle lines, and the contest between these divisions turns the labor market itself almost into a battlefield where, face to face, the opposing lines struggle bitterly. Everyone understands that this grave evil which is plunging all human society to destruction must be remedied as soon as possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n First, the state is given \u201csupreme authority.\u201d It may \u201clet\u201d lower authorities handle issues when those authorities are capable of dealing with them, but only then. The graduation of power is intended to the common good and is not in itself the ultimate good. Insofar as Catholics accept the particularity of God\u2019s grace and the necessity of community in human life, lower orders are encouraged to handle all that they can, but, again, what they can handle will vary from period to period (and here the overarching concern is clearly increasing respect for the dignity of workers, which will be important to keep in mind).<\/p>\n This brings us to my second point about whence Pius\u2019 usage of the term emerges: medieval feudalism. This is not to say that Pius was a medieval, nor that somehow he actually meant that we should have manors and knights. Rather, it is important to keep in mind the Church\u2019s long-standing mistrust of American republicanism<\/a>, not to mention the fact that feudalism effectively existed throughout most of Europe (whether peasants were \u201cproperly\u201d serfs or not) until the 19th<\/sup> century, and in some places, into the 20th<\/sup>. Michael Haneke makes this clear in his haunting (and enchanting) film, The White Ribbon<\/em> (about a north German village and its local baron in 1913-1914). This is why, in the 19th<\/sup> century, Marx could still write about peasant landholders (in essence, U.S. Southern sharecropping was effectively a belated and non-overtly-aristocratic form of feudal land tenure).<\/p>\n Subsidiarity thus has its basis not in American-style federalism, but in the overlapping and often devolved medieval modes of landholding and politics. Villagers farmed a common green; local lords dealt with local problems with (as time went on) more frequent visits from central governmental officials (the emergence of \u201ctrue\u201d last names in the 14th<\/sup> century has to do with the need to keep more detailed tax records, as bureaucracies became more sophisticated and feudalism, at least in its most \u201cpristine\u201d form, began to wane).<\/p>\n What\u2019s key here, however, is that, even as feudalism left quite a mark, and many responsibilities remained local, governments did become increasingly centralized. Why? To be reductive (but, to my mind also essentially correct): capitalism, or, to put it more accurately, the development of an enriched merchant class within deeply disparate, often colonial, states and empires. The causes of the change were complex, but Chris Harman<\/a>, in an insightful piece on the topic, outlines the following primary changes:<\/p>\n Before the argument can begin it is necessary to spell out what the \u2019transition\u2019 was about. There has been a tendency in the recent discussions among Marxists to see it in terms of the change from the organisation of society (or at least of the economy) of the 14th century to that of the late 18th century. But the scale of the \u2019transition\u2019 is best grasped by comparing feudalism in its \u2019classic\u2019 form, that of the 10th century, with capitalism in its classic form, that of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.<\/p>\n Tenth century feudalism was an overwhelmingly rural society. Almost the whole of the population lived off the land, in more or less self contained manorial villages. Control of each manor lay with the feudal lord \u2013 either a warrior or an ecclesiastical body \u2013 exercising political and juridical as well as economic power in the locality. The mass of peasants were serfs, unable to leave the manor, where they tilled strips of land for themselves but also provided for the livelihood of the feudal lord, either by forced labour on his estate (\u2018demesne\u2019) or by payment of rent in kind. Money played very little role in rural life, with the feudal lords using serf labour to produce non-agricultural produce in demesne workshops.<\/p>\n Towns were few, far between and small, with many town dwellers themselves tilling plots for part of their livelihood. Trade was carried out by despised travelling peddlers who provided those few essential goods (for instance, salt) which the local serfs could not produce. Because land was the only source of substantial wealth, control of it was the motive force behind the behaviour of the ruling class \u2013 and the cause of repeated armed conflicts within it.<\/p>\n The feudal lord exploited the peasants, often forcing them into abject poverty. Yet he could not exploit in order to amass profits. The aim of production was consumption (including conspicuous consumption), not accumulation. As Marx put it, \u2018the limits to the exploitation of the feudal serf were determined by the walls of the stomach of the feudal lord\u2019.<\/p>\n Contrast capitalism at its height. Urban life dominates, so that even owners of agricultural land are based in towns. The great majority of the population work in industry or \u2018services\u2019. Money plays an absolutely central role. Everyone depends on selling something in order to get the means of livelihood \u2013 even if all most people have to sell is their labour power. Most importantly, there is no limit to the accumulation of wealth. Everything can be turned into money and members of the ruling class can own endless amounts of money. What drives the system forward is not the consumption of the ruling class, but what Marx called self-expansion of capital, the endless pursuit of accumulation for the sake of accumulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thus subsidiarity was, in many senses, an attempt by the Church to carve out room for traditional spheres of independence over and against the tentacles of the modern state (animated as it was by the need to increase trade, valorize capital, and generally spread the central tenets of European liberalism). In this sense, subsidiarity itself was a way of combating<\/em>, not of abetting, the liberalism that lies behind the libertarian understanding of American federalism.<\/p>\n As capitalism has changed thus so too have the demands of subsidiarity. Can my municipal or my state government actually claim the ability to regulate successfully contemporary finance capital such that the dignity of workers (emphasized by Pius) is protected? Can these levels of government guarantee protection for the poor and destitute, who, by definition are our primary concern<\/a> within Catholic Social Teaching?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This brings me to the last point of my piece: a libertarian conception of subsidiarity violates another pillar of Catholic thought: solidarity. Pope Saint John Paul II<\/a> has said the following (and considering his role in the Polish group \u201cSolidarity,\u201d<\/a> we most likely ought to take his view very seriously):<\/p>\n Therefore political leaders, and citizens of rich countries considered as individuals, especially if they are Christians, have the moral obligation, according to the degree of each one\u2019s responsibility, to take into consideration, in personal decisions and decisions of government, this relationship of universality, this interdependence which exists between their conduct and the poverty and underdevelopment of so many millions of people. Pope Paul\u2019s Encyclical translates more succinctly the moral obligation as the \u201cduty of solidarity\u201d; and this affirmation, even though many situations have changed in the world, has the same force and validity today as when it was written.<\/p>\n On the other hand, without departing from the lines of this moral vision, the originality of the Encyclical also consists in the basic insight that the very concept of development, if considered in the perspective of universal interdependence, changes notably. True development cannot consist in the simple accumulation of wealth and in the greater availability of goods and services, if this is gained at the expense of the development of the masses, and without due consideration for the social, cultural and spiritual dimensions of the human being.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For one, this puts into question the oft-repeated libertarian idea that \u201ccapitalism brings new wealth to developing countries\u201d (when it is clear that it most often brings it only to elites). But notice that, in looking to Pope Paul VI, he foregrounds the idea that solidarity requires our constant attention to the poor. If the poor cannot be adequately helped or protected by local governments (over and against our huge, globalized economy), how can we be expected to support libertarian subsidiarity? Again, local governance is itself a mediate good\u2014the end of governance in general is the common good as expressed especially in solidarity; thus fetishization of libertarian federalism makes little sense within the context of Catholic Social Teaching.<\/p>\n