Many years ago, nearly forty to be more precise, I was reading thinkers from both the Christian religious tradition and that of the more secular enlightenment tradition who were considering visions of a more egalitarian and less repressive society. Sometimes in dialogue with one another and sometimes not.
Efforts were being made, in both theory and practice, to subordinate economic development and the pursuit of higher standards of living to the social concerns for solidarity and a basic level of equality among people. This involved various visions for abolishing poverty and misery among a sizable portion of the population. This effort to balance the qualitative and quantitative in political-economy has been an ongoing debate and struggle that is now largely being dominated by the social sciences, and that of economics in particular.
Here in New Brunswick, to give this struggle a local concreteness, I can mention three examples of where that struggle more or less quietly manifests itself at present. (It of course is not at all limited to these struggles but these are struggles I know something about.) There are now – the labour management conflict at the Covered Bridge Potato Chip Company near Hartland; the wood producer’s associations and marketing boards ongoing struggle with the J. D. Irving Company and the provincial government for a fair share of the wood market at fair prices; and the struggle in the community based social and health services sector, by mostly women, for fair treatment as workers.
One can approach these issues, which I’m convinced are interconnected, from the perspective of political-economy, now dominated by the social sciences. And this is necessary now because of the complexities of our society and economy. But also, one can approach these struggles from a religious perspective … religious in the sense of the concern for justice – i.e. giving the other person their rightful due. This of course is expressed in the two most basic injunctions – ‘love of God’ and ‘love of neighbour’, or some close version of this summation of the whole divine law. This latter religious perspective is simpler and older. It admittedly can degenerate into a simplistic viewpoint, but it also can provide helpful guidance for how one sees things and for how one acts both individually and collective.
My mother in her later years and during one of our yearly family gatherings called the attention of all her very busy adult children to the Ten Commandments. I found after her death and while going through her things that she had kept a little prayer card in her prayer book. This little worn out card outlined in very simple language the divine law. I at that moment or soon after recalled how the great theologians and philosophers have taught that this divine law was intended to be a guide for our human laws for the sake of the common good.
In this divine law, expressed in the Ten Commandments, the first three commandments were guidelines for the ‘love of God’ aspect of the justice of religion while the other seven were guidelines for the ‘love of neighbour’ aspect. And in this part there are two commandments I’d like to call attention to as having profound relevance for our present struggles, and in particular the local New Brunswick one’s mentioned above.
“You shall not steal.” This seventh commandment is a good overarching rule for any political-economy. It needs prudent interpretation but it is nonetheless highly relevant. This commandment requires respect for the universal destination of goods and for the private ownership of them. It also and equally calls for the respect of persons, their property, and the integrity of creation. It addresses the unjust withholding of fair wages.
From the religious perspective, it is intended to serve as the basis for teachings on the correct way of acting in economic, social, and political life. It includes the rights and duties of business owners and managers, and of human labour. Business managers are responsible for the economic and ecological effects of their operations. They must consider the good of persons and not only the increase of profits. Workers are to carry out their work in a conscientious way with competence and dedication, seeking to resolve controversies with dialogue.
The other closely related commandment is “You shall not kill.” This fifth commandment is relevant to the seventh commandment in the sense that it governs serious conflicts that can profoundly affect other’s lives and that can descend into violence. It is the rule having to do with relations with one’s neighbour where coercion and force are used. There is a tradition of interpretation that carefully and cautiously qualifies its use.
The disturbance of the peace and good order by such force is justified when suffering has been inflicted by an aggressor in a lasting, grave, and certain manner, and when other peaceful means have been demonstrated to be ineffective, and when there are well founded prospects of success, and when the means used in the conflict are not likely to produce evils graver than the evils to be eliminated.
There is a special interrelationship and interdependence between these two general rules (as there is a more general interdependence between all Ten Commandments) for the sake of justice in this sense – that workers are viewed as having the right to organize and to have moral recourse to a non-violent strike when it appears to be the necessary way to obtain a proportionate benefit and its takes into account the common good.
And yet, as always in such reflections another question emerges … and that needs some resolution, and that is what is meant by the common good?
We’ll leave this for another day… and in the meantime, our lack of definition of this important concept of the common good does not render us unable to act towards this good because we can say with certainty and conviction, with both Plato and St. Paul (and my mother), that it is not something any of us are completely ignorant of …
Hugh Williams
Debec, NB
