The Dark History of Social Justice

Firkin after Industrial Workers of the World, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

For nearly two centuries, the purpose of social justice has been to prop up the ruling class. In the 1840s, when Europe was in turmoil and the monarchists saw the looming threat of the democratic revolutions of 1848, a conservative Catholic priest named Luigi Taparelli promoted “social justice” to keep kings and priests at the top of the social pyramid. His philosophy was an update of noblesse oblige: he believed the rich should enjoy all the privileges of wealth, but they should treat the poor with respect and make sure the working class had enough to survive at the bottom of the pyramid.

For over a century, “social justice” stayed a Catholic concept. Its best practitioners were people like Dorothy Day and the liberation theologists who worked with the poor to alleviate poverty. Its worst advocate may have been Father Charles Coughlin, editor of an American magazine during the Great Depression titled Social Justice. Coughlin was an anti-communist and anti-semite — his ideological heirs include Anders Breivik and Mel Gibson. Coughlin’s radio show was extremely popular. How much of that was due to his desire to help the poor and how much was due to his scapegoating of Jews may be impossible to untangle. The Vatican finally silenced him, just as it later silenced the liberation theologists whose ideology had nothing to do with hatred, but went too far in criticizing the rich for the…