Neither Liberalist nor Socialist

As we have said in the first part of this book, the Liberalist age founded its conception of society entirely on the individual; and, in establishing this, severed one by one the bonds of association which preceding centuries had forged. Thus it constructed if the expression may be allowed an atomistic society, each atom being self-contained and maintaining its independence of others as far as the nature of things allowed. In accordance with such ideas, economics disregarded the family, as if it were something of purely private concern.

As a reaction against this system, collectivism developed, envisaging as the best form of society one in which the individual would be entirely subordinated to the whole. Under this system, the family is not only ignored, it is opposed as having a bourgeois savour: what the legislator has before his mind is the anonymous mass of men, women and children — all utilities of the State.

We know today that both these extremes are disastrous and that humanity is awaiting a third solution which will be the mean between them; and the family very forcibly suggests itself as the component of which the substance of the new society would be formed, a component which neither isolates the individual nor leaves him to be lost in the featureless whole.

The men of today wish that the State should respect the liberty of individuals in the economic field as far as such liberty is consonant with the general good. But they also desire that the State should seriously concern itself with ensuring the essential minimum to every honest man.

Richard LOMBARDI, s.j., in Towards a New World, pp. 249-250