{"id":566,"date":"2016-05-30T08:57:26","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T13:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/?p=566"},"modified":"2016-05-30T08:57:26","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T13:57:26","slug":"a-saint-for-a-new-socioeconomic-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thedorothyoption\/a-saint-for-a-new-socioeconomic-order\/","title":{"rendered":"A Saint for a New Socioeconomic Order"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Image: Corporacion Mondragon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Saints, G.K. Chesterton once pointed out, are an antidote to whatever the age neglects. Such figures restore the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever it has overlooked.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s world of Trumpism, our little band here at the Dorothy Option is arguing that a large dose of Dorothy Day is long overdo for American society. But just as Chesterton juxtaposed brilliantly St. Francis and St. Thomas, the more to underline their complementarity, so we might propose a figure (also with a cause for canonization underway) to set beside Dorothy. Beside her radical charity, we need a model of radical solidarity\u2013an apostle of cooperation, to use a key term of the new economy movement.<\/p>\n

Fr. Jose Maria Arizmendiaretta (often shortened to Arizmendi) was a Basque, as were his illustrious predecessors St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Francis Xavier. In February 1941, the young priest arrived in his new post of Mondragon where the local priest had been shot by Franco\u2019s forces. Battered by the war, Mondragon suffered from severe unemployment.\u00a0 But the new padre had no training in business or economic matters.<\/p>\n

But he was a close student of Catholic social thought (especially Rerum Novarum and Quadragresimo Anno), as well the writings of figures like Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier (whose work profoundly impacted Peter Maurin and by extension the Catholic Worker movement generally).<\/p>\n

Don Jos\u00e9 Maria, as he came to be called, became the chaplain of the local branch of the Catholic Action movement. \u00a0He believed that the social solidarity which had been typical of Basque communities historically could be rejuvenated. In his plan for social reconstruction, the first step was technical education and then the creation of a cooperative business. By 1943, his efforts led to a new polytechnic school, a democratically-administered institution open to all young people in the region.<\/p>\n

Importantly, the training at the school was not only technical: it was also informed by the personalism of its founder and his vision of the connection between Catholic social thought and the cooperative model, with all its benefits for both workers and consumers, indeed, for the larger society itself.<\/p>\n

In 1955, five graduates of the school were ready to create their first industrial cooperative, the beginning of what would become the Mondragon Corporation, today an international federation of worker cooperatives , the fourth largest enterprise operating in Spain, and an employer of almost 70,000 worldwide with annual sales of $16 billion.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, Mondragon continues to operate on ten basic cooperative principles: Open Admission, Democratic Organization, the Sovereignty of Labor, Instrumental and Subordinate Nature of Capital, Participatory Management, Payment Solidarity, Inter-cooperation, Social Transformation, Universality and Education.\u00a0 The average wage differential between employees in the lowest and highest paid positions continues to be 1:5. Until the 2008 recession, no employee had ever been laid off at Mondragon.<\/p>\n

The Catholic roots of Mondragon\u2019s remarkable success are sometimes skimped or ignored, especially as the principles of Catholic social teaching are not peculiarly Catholic\u2014except perhaps in the way CST combines them.<\/p>\n

As a way of better understanding this Catholic vision and its relevance for our current situation, we might turn to the collection of Don Jos\u00e9 Maria\u2019s remarkable Reflections<\/em> (English translation free to download here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

We are looking here at a key document of CST, a collection of thoughts on both the human person and on work viewed through the cooperative model. \u00a0This little book is a spiritual bridge to rehumanizing the social order and overcoming the antisocial nature of our neoliberal regime.<\/p>\n

Here are some sample entries:<\/p>\n