Great Article On Dorothy Day In St. Louis Today

[Aloysius]

[quote name='Sternhauser' date='12 November 2009 - 01:54 AM' timestamp='1258005264' post='2001158']
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 exchange of commodities, has an objective material value.

~Sternhauser
[/quote]
anything that employers have a demand for human labor has a living wage as its just wage. for humans are not commodities and human labor is not a commodity. that has always been my impression of her positions, and is echoed in the current mission statement of the organization she founded:
[quote]We advocate. . . [a] decentralized society in contrast to the present bigness of government, industry, education, health care and agriculture. We encourage efforts such as family farms, rural and urban land trusts, worker ownership and management of small factories, homesteading projects, food, housing and other cooperatives—any effort in which money can once more become merely a medium of exchange, and human beings are no longer commodities. 362[/quote]

[quote]
No, no. Fair is fair: Is God being unjust when the earth fails to yield crops, despite your hard labor?[/quote]
I didn't ask you to defend your position, I asked for Dorothy Day's defense of that position.

God is not being unjust, that's just the nature of the fallen world when such failures occur. Human society ought to alleviate the imperfections of the fallen world.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='12 November 2009 - 01:04 AM' timestamp='1258005845' post='2001168']the current mission statement of the organization she founded:
[/quote]
I'm not completely sure, but I don't think it's accurate to say that she founded an "organization." I think the Catholic Worker was more of an idea, which led to the founding of independent communities. They weren't an "organization" as such (and I don't think she wanted it to be an organization).

[Aloysius]

'organization' or 'movement', that statement is grounded in Day's beliefs. she didn't view human labor as a commodity.

[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."[/quote]

[quote]care to offer some quotes? I've read Dorothy Day, and this statement sounds like a description of your own thoughts, not hers.
[/quote]

Aloysius, if people do not commit fraud or initiate force, labor will be more than abundantly rewarded. Not until. Fraud and force must be eradicated before you will ever see all people making a subsistence wage on an arbitrary 40 hours a week.

I cannot yet firmly put my finger on the linchpin fallacy in your argument. Your argument is, at least, missing some propositions, I am sure. But what they are I am not able to abstract. I will.

~Sternhauser

[Aloysius]

but are we debating my argument, or debating what Dorothy Day believed? I am not here in this thread trying to prove my argument, just trying to show that it's resonant with what Dorothy Day believed.

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='12 November 2009 - 02:30 AM' timestamp='1258007421' post='2001181']
but are we debating my argument, or debating what Dorothy Day believed? I am not here in this thread trying to prove my argument, just trying to show that it's resonant with what Dorothy Day believed.
[/quote]

No, Aloysius. If I prove your argument to be fallacious, "Dorothy Day's argument" will follow, because you believe that she, like you, believed that "the just price of human labor is [at least] subsistence." We'll eventually need to hammer out every one of those terms and their implications. Tonight is not that night. I must get to bed.

~Sternhauser

Edited November 12, 2009 by Sternhauser

[Aloysius]

but THIS thread is about Dorothy Day. you seemed to assert that Dorothy Day agreed with your principles, while I assert that she did not. If you want to argue against my principles, and against Day's and Maurin's and Chesterton's and Belloc's (who were all quite allied in questions of economics and such), we can keep that to the debate table. I'm only in this thread trying to clarify that, contrary to your assertions, this is what Dorothy Day believed.

so in this specific thread, all I'm interested in from you is either 'yes, Dorothy Day upheld the natural right of living wages as I've described them', 'no she did not uphold them as this is why', or 'I'm not familiar enough with Dorothy Day's writings to make an accurate assessment of what her economic positions were'. everything else can be left to other threads.

it's okay if you're against Dorothy Day, I'm just trying to show that you are indeed against Dorothy Day. I actually once was not very favorable towards Dorothy Day for the exact same reasons that I am now defending her.

[Lounge Daddy]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='12 November 2009 - 02:43 AM' timestamp='1258008230' post='2001188']
but THIS thread is about Dorothy Day. you seemed to assert that Dorothy Day agreed with your principles, while I assert that she did not. ...
it's okay if you're against Dorothy Day, I'm just trying to show that you are indeed against Dorothy Day. ...
[/quote]

Ya, you're using some very abstract arguments to try and show that you agree with Dorothy Day, and so to disagree with your views are the same as disagreeing with her views.

But I don't see how Dorothy Day would advocate not using violence to defend oneself, on the grounds that she is that much opposed to coercion and violence, and yet she would champion coercive means to gain a "living wage."

Just because someone tosses about the word “living wage (a loaded term today), or "distibutionist," doesn't mean they think just like Chesterton. Or you.

Edited November 12, 2009 by Lounge Daddy

[Aloysius]

again, I pointed out that Dorothy Day advocated the actions of UNIONS to achieve living wages. she saw a living wage as a right, and she advocated achieving that right through the work of unions.

disagreeing with my views is not the same as disagreeing with her views; but disagreeing with a natural right to a living wage is disagreeing with her views, and disagreeing with distributism is disagreeing with her views. in terms of state statutes, I've not seen her opinion expressed; suffice it to say that I've shown that those who knew her said she was uninterested in state politics and equally uninterested in developing anarchist theories (as shown by her reaction when her friend showed her the magazine entitled "Anarchy") so I think it likely that we won't find a view expressed in that regard. regardless, her position of advocating a living wage as a natural right of man and working through unions to achieve that right is absolutely resonate with what I believe.

she didn't think like Chesterton, eh? then why'd she recommend him as a starting point for people interested in the Catholic Worker movement??
"The principles of Distributism have been more or less implicit in much that we have written in the Catholic Worker for a long time. [b]We have advised our readers to begin with four books, Chesterton's What's Wrong With the World, The Outline of Sanity and Belloc's The Servile State and Restoration of Property. The aim of Distributism is family ownership of land, workshops, stores, transport, trades, professions, and so on." -Dorothy Day

just because Dorothy Day used the word "anarchist" doesn't mean she thought like you, either, my friend.

[Lilllabettt]

I am not a fan of Dorothy Day. Too much political/religious syncretism for my tastes.

But she was an interesting person, for sure.

[JimR-OCDS]

Isn't "free market anarchism," a different way of saying unbridled capitalism?

Because that's what you end up with.

Jim

[Lil Red]

[quote name='Lounge Daddy' date='11 November 2009 - 05:34 PM' timestamp='1257982440' post='2000936']
Here are the first four paragraphs.

[indent][b]Dorothy Day: Giving Proof that the Gospel Can Be Lived[/b]

Dorothy Day was an anarchist and a pacifist who was arrested multiple times throughout her life (the last time when she was in her 70s). The FBI had a 500 page file on her, and Herbert Hoover hoped to see her arrested for sedition. She’s also been called “the most significant, interesting and influential person in the history of American Catholicism” (by historian David O’Brien in “Commonweal” magazine), and the Vatican has approved considering her cause for canonization.

That’s my kind of saint. I love Dorothy Day. In the great communion of saints, there are a handful of people that I look to as my heroes and role models, my “household saints”. Dorothy Day is one of them, and today is her birthday. She was a “sign of contradiction”, “holiness not easily domesticated”, to quote Robert Ellsberg. She managed to defy stereotypes, and confound both supporters and opponents over the course of her life.

Her radical politics came before her conversion to Catholicism, but her political commitments only grew deeper when she came to faith. In the gospel she found a rejection of power, oppression and violence and a call not only to serve the poor, but to be one of them. Her advocacy for justice was now accompanied by a devotion to works of mercy and to life in community. Along with the eccentric French peasant and itinerant teacher Peter Maurin, Dorothy founded the Catholic Worker movement. I am reminded of Frederick Buechner’s line that “God makes saints out of geniuses and sinners because He has nothing else to work with.” I think Dorothy would have enjoyed that, and agreed, seeing what came from the partnership she had with Peter Maurin. There are now over 185 Catholic Worker houses of hospitality, including three in St. Louis, and it all started with soup and coffee in Dorothy’s kitchen.

Dorothy Day never abandoned her anarchism or pacifism. Her politics were a scandal to Christians who felt the church should serve as chaplain to the state and maintain the status quo. Her religion was incomprehensible to the anarchists, Socialists and Communists with whom she’d spent her youth. But Dorothy continued to reach out to both sides, seeing herself as a faithful daughter of the church, and yet a radical called to disturb the comfortable - even when the comfortable were in the pews, or the prelate’s office. And so she often found herself, as she once wrote in her column “On Pilgrimage”, talking “economics to the rich and Jesus to the anarchists.” It wasn’t an easy path.

... [url="http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/civil-religion/catholic/2009/11/dorothy-day-giving-proof-that-the-gospel-can-be-lived/"]rest of the article HERE[/url][/indent]
[/quote]
+J.M.J.+
i never know how to feel about her

[Aloysius]

I used to be very wary of her, but recently going over The Long Loneliness again I'm kind of thinking I really like her. Granted, I don't agree with everything about her, but there is a lot to be admired.

haha, and then she goes and quotes Chairman Mao and it's like.. hmm... but it wasn't really something objectionable from Mao I guess. lol, she's quite a character, I'll give her that. overall I like her, quite an interesting woman, very much a believer in distributism and opponent of the oppressiveness of both big business and big government... very much an enigma in the history of Catholic social thought.

I think the absolute best definition I can think to make of her is this: "Bizarro World Mother Theresa". There, I said it. lol.

[Nihil Obstat]

Just remember that some people talked about making Stalin a saint too.

Of course, they were Russian. Probably too much vodka that night. Or too much communism.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='12 November 2009 - 03:26 PM' timestamp='1258057574' post='2001405']
I think the absolute best definition I can think to make of her is this: "Bizarro World Mother Theresa". There, I said it. lol.
[/quote]
I think the major difference between Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day was just that Dorothy Day was political. She was a laywoman, very much involved in the practical/temporal world around her. Whereas Mother Teresa was a nun, and politics were not part of her work. But I think both women had the same remarkable love for the poor. And they both made courageous personal decisions to live their lives *with*/*among* the poor.