Great Article On Dorothy Day In St. Louis Today

[Aloysius]

No, Dorothy Day is not compatible with "free market anarchism" with or without Christ. She simply didn't believe in laissez faire free markets. she spoke of things like "just wages" and "just prices" (a term you object to when I use, a term which she herself used); her economics were not "free market". at all.

Notice how you avoid the issue when I bring up where Dorothy disagrees with you, instead attacking Dorothy's argument itself. My point was to say that Dorothy Day agrees with my belief that such things are natural rights. To disagree with that is to disagree with Dorothy... and all we're really arguing about on this thread is what Dorothy believed, isn't it?

just because Dorothy identified herself as an anarchist doesn't mean she agreed with your ideas.

you continue to misrepresent what my position is; I have no belief in shooting through anyone to achieve living wages. I simply believe in enforcing justice; for depriving workers of their just wages is one of the four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance. therefore, no one should be allowed to deprive workers of their wages; and anyone being deprived of a living wage should have recourse to unions, guilds, courts, and/or any other avenue of justice for making sure their wages are just.

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='11 November 2009 - 11:36 PM' timestamp='1257996994' post='2001064']
No, Dorothy Day is not compatible with "free market anarchism" with or without Christ. She simply didn't believe in laissez faire free markets. she spoke of things like "just wages" and "just prices" (a term you object to when I use, a term which she herself used); her economics were not "free market". at all.[/quote]

I believe in just wages and just prices. The market decides upon both. Is it unjust of me to charge $50 for a rare CD, when someone else is selling it for $20, two miles away?


[quote]Notice how you avoid the issue when I bring up where Dorothy disagrees with you, instead attacking Dorothy's argument itself. My point was to say that Dorothy Day agrees with my belief that such things are natural rights. To disagree with that is to disagree with Dorothy... and all we're really arguing about on this thread is what Dorothy believed, isn't it?[/quote]

No, we're arguing about what you think she means by "natural rights."

[quote]
just because Dorothy identified herself as an anarchist doesn't mean she agreed with your ideas.[/quote]

Correct.

[quote]you continue to misrepresent what my position is; I have no belief in shooting through anyone to achieve living wages. I simply believe in enforcing justice; for depriving workers of their just wages is one of the four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance. therefore, no one should be allowed to deprive workers of their wages; and anyone being deprived of a living wage should have recourse to unions, guilds, courts, and/or any other avenue of justice for making sure their wages are just.[/quote]

"[color="black"][font="Arial"]Injustice to the wage earner" is one of the sins that cries to heaven. Injustice to the wage earner is not paying him what was agreed upon in a market free from coercion and fraud. There is no such thing as an objectively just wage, because wages are set by a subjective market.

~Sternhauser
[/font][/color]

[Aloysius]

Dorothy wouldn't say that the market decides the just price... unless we were talking about the same market I was talking about in the other thread, Heinrich Pesch's understanding of the market in terms of a just equilibrium where the just price is connected to the just (living) wage. You have yet to show anything in Dorothy Day's economic thoughts that comes remotely close to your concept of free market anarchism. It is simply incompatible, and that is patently obvious from any in depth reading of her economic thoughts. She sided decidedly against what you would call the "free market".

Here's a good little snippet from Dorothy Day: http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/daytext.cfm?TextID=481

so now it's what I say she means by natural rights?? you said there is no natural right, Dorothy is directly quoted as saying they are "natural rights"... so then you say she must have meant something different??

"You have no natural right to a living wage. You have the privilege a living wage." -Stern

"A man has a natural right to food, clothing, and shelter" -Dorothy Day

~"~she didn't mean 'natural right', she must have meant privilege~"~Stern

Tell me, what makes you think Dorothy Day is at all compatible with your system? Just because she's a pacifist anarchist? Do you really think she agrees with Austrian economic principals?

her politics may be similar to yours but her economics were far from yours.

[mommas_boy]

Back when I was younger and more impressionable, I heard some criticism about Dorothy Day, saying that she'll never be made a Saint because of her almost "militant pacifism" (I think that was how the critic put it) ... that she called for pacifism even in face of an aggressor, when a state should be concerned with protecting the lives of its citizens. Is there any truth to this criticism?

[Aloysius]

I don't think that'll be an impediment to her canonization...the Church speaks of the right to self defense, but not of an obligation to self defense, and it is certainly permissible to lay down one's own life in the face of an aggressor.

though it becomes slightly more problematic when we're dealing with the defense of others, but even so I think that Day's thoughts are not incompatible with Catholic teaching; they are one direction one may choose to go out of Catholic teaching, ie, complete non-violence. The Church obviously wouldn't endorse any concept that all people must be that non-violent, because she speaks of the legitimate right of violence in self defense, but again I don't think that's going to impede her canonization.

[mommas_boy]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='11 November 2009 - 11:49 PM' timestamp='1258001384' post='2001113']
I don't think that'll be an impediment to her canonization...the Church speaks of the right to self defense, but not of an obligation to self defense, and it is certainly permissible to lay down one's own life in the face of an aggressor.

though it becomes slightly more problematic when we're dealing with the defense of others, but even so I think that Day's thoughts are not incompatible with Catholic teaching; they are one direction one may choose to go out of Catholic teaching, ie, complete non-violence. The Church obviously wouldn't endorse any concept that all people must be that non-violent, because she speaks of the legitimate right of violence in self defense, but again I don't think that's going to impede her canonization.
[/quote]

Ok. But it is true that she espoused those beliefs?

[Sternhauser]

You have a natural right to increase the number of humans in the human race, Aloysius. Can the meaning and implications of those words be taken in several different ways?

~Sternhauser

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Sternhauser' date='12 November 2009 - 12:53 AM' timestamp='1258001587' post='2001115']
You have a natural right to increase the number of humans in the human race, Aloysius. Can the meaning and implications of those words be taken in several different ways?

~Sternhauser
[/quote]
I assure you that Miss Day knew what she meant by using the term "natural right", and she often quoted Fr. Vincent McNabb and agreed with him, whom I have quoted as the source of my belief in the rights of ownership. Miss Day was definitely sided with Fr. McNabb in terms of these things as rights, and would've agreed with what McNabb said here: http://distributist.blogspot.com/2007/02/fr-mcnabb-speaks-on-rights-and-property.html

anyway, I don't have the right to increase the number of humans in the human race. upon marrying I will have that duty, and therefore the right to the means necessary to accomplish that duty, but I do not currently have that "right"

but I posted the link to where she said that little snippet about the natural rights; please read it and come back and try to tell me, after seeing the context, that this is not what she meant. it is indeed what she meant: that all who work have the right to earn a living wage because all families have a right to food and shelter and clothing.

I want to straight up ask again: do you seriously contend that Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, agreed with laissez faire free market anarchism? if so, on what do you base that assertion? I know of no one who's seriously read Dorothy Day who's come to that conclusion.

mommas_boy, yes I do believe it is true that she held to a pretty extreme pacifism that didn't really recognize the use of violence in self defense; nor do I think it would have even allowed for the use of violence in the defense of others. I could be wrong, but that's always been my impression of her; I don't agree, but don't think it's something that impedes her canonization.

[Lounge Daddy]

[quote name='Sternhauser' date='11 November 2009 - 11:44 PM' timestamp='1257997490' post='2001066']
... Injustice to the wage earner is not paying him what was agreed upon in a market free from coercion and fraud. There is no such thing as an objectively just wage, because wages are set by a subjective market.
[/quote]

+1

[Lounge Daddy]

[quote name='mommas_boy' date='12 November 2009 - 12:51 AM' timestamp='1258001516' post='2001114']
Ok. But it is true that she espoused those beliefs?
[/quote]

(Aloysius is a little busy trying to say that Dorothy Day agrees with him.)

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='12 November 2009 - 01:07 AM' timestamp='1258002469' post='2001130']
[quote] I assure you that Miss Day knew what she meant by using the term "natural right", and she often quoted Fr. Vincent McNabb and agreed with him, whom I have quoted as the source of my belief in the rights of ownership.

anyway, I don't have the right to increase the number of humans in the human race. upon marrying I will have that duty, and therefore the right to the means necessary to accomplish that duty, but I do not currently have that "right"
[/quote]

Wait. You don't have the natural right to increase the number of humans in the human race, because you have to get married, but you have the natural right to food, clothing and shelter without having to work? [i]A natural right is something you, of your very nature, have the moral right to [/i]do[i], not a physical thing you are entitled to without conditionals[/i]. Like increasing the number of humans in the human race. You have to exchange marriage vows first. And like getting food, clothing and shelter: you have to work for them. You have the right to get married, and you have the right to work. You do not have the right to have sex with any woman, and you do not have the right to systematically make other people who are in the same boat give you food, clothing or shelter beyond what your labor is worth according to the subjective market price system.

[quote]all who work have the right to earn a living wage because all families have a right to food and shelter and clothing.[/quote]
Is God being unjust when the earth fails to yield crops, despite your hard labor?

[quote]I want to straight up ask again: do you seriously contend that Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, agreed with laissez faire free market anarchism? if so, on what do you base that assertion? I know of no one who's seriously read Dorothy Day who's come to that conclusion.[/quote]

Insofar as Dorothy Day knew that only society, just from the individual heart outward, would result in living wages for all, and that non-violent means were the only just way to achieve this, yes, she agreed with free market anarchism.

~Sternhauser

Edited November 12, 2009 by Sternhauser

[Aloysius]

I'm actually trying to show that I agree with Dorothy Day (since Stern challenged that I did not agree with her) and (as if this were even in question) Dorothy Day was not in favor of laissez faire "free market" capitalism. but I answered, it is my impression that she absolutely disagreed with violent self defense, a position of hers which I respectfully disagree with... legitimate respect though, it's a laudable position.

an objectively just wage is a living wage. at least, that's where Dorothy Day was coming from.

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='12 November 2009 - 01:48 AM' timestamp='1258004906' post='2001156']
I'm actually trying to show that I agree with Dorothy Day (since Stern challenged that I did not agree with her) and (as if this were even in question) Dorothy Day was not in favor of laissez faire "free market" capitalism. but I answered, it is my impression that she absolutely disagreed with violent self defense, a position of hers which I respectfully disagree with... legitimate respect though, it's a laudable position.

an objectively just wage is a living wage. at least, that's where Dorothy Day was coming from.
[/quote]

You can't give me an objectively just material price for any commodity under the sun, yet you think that labor, which reaps its rewards through the voluntary exchange of subjectively valued commodities, has an objective material value.

~Sternhauser

Edited November 12, 2009 by Sternhauser

[Aloysius]

"Insofar as Dorothy Day knew that only society, just from the individual heart outward, [b]would [/b]result in living wages for all, and that non-violent means were the only just way to achieve this, yes, she agreed with free market anarchism."
care to offer some quotes? I've read Dorothy Day, and this statement sounds like a description of your own thoughts, not hers.

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='12 November 2009 - 01:54 AM' timestamp='1258005268' post='2001159']
"Insofar as Dorothy Day knew that only society, just from the individual heart outward, [b]would [/b]result in living wages for all, and that non-violent means were the only just way to achieve this, yes, she agreed with free market anarchism."
care to offer some quotes? I've read Dorothy Day, and this statement sounds like a description of your own thoughts, not hers.
[/quote]

No, no. Fair is fair: Is God being unjust when the earth fails to yield crops, despite your hard labor?

~Sternhauser