Transforming Welfare: The Revival of American Charity

Restoring Charity: Ethical Principles for a New Welfare Policy

by Robert A. Sirico

The current national discussion concerning welfare reform sees little, if any, analysis of underlying, fundamental issues. The entire ethical dimension to social-assistance programs and state-sponsored charity is often glossed over in the political rhetoric. Yet welfare is most properly a moral issue. Indeed, the only way to formulate a truly effective and meaningful welfare plan is to start with considerations of the fundamental moral and philosophical issues.

Understanding the Terms of the Debate

The parameters of recent welfare discussion tend to focus on issues of expediency and efficiency: What is the cheapest and most cost-effective way to meet the needs of the poor? Many argue that the current system of federal social assistance programs is not working. At the heart of such a charge is the implication that the current system is not cost effective. Questions then arise as to finding more expedient means for the government to respond to poverty. Block grants? Stop payments to unwed mothers? The suggestions for tinkering continue.

Concerns with expediency are no doubt important, yet rather than begin the discussion on welfare reform with these questions there must be a more thorough examination of core issues. We must ask deeper and more probing questions. What are the fundamental issues that confront us in the debate over welfare? Our first questions should address the basics. In a sense, what is needed is a better articulated philosophy of welfare itself.

The current expression of the welfare state is based upon the premise that it is morally good and that it fulfills an obligation to help those in need. The alleviation of poverty, want, ignorance and suffering are described as works of mercy. Three words closely associated with this concern for the less fortunate are welfare, compassion and charity.

These words appear in newspaper stories, editorials, articles, books, magazines, television and public presentations. When words are made common through frequent usage, people also run the risk of their careless usage. The word welfare is bounced around so often that we often forget what the word actually means. The following are my own attempts at definitions:

Welfare: The well-being of a person. Given that the totality of a person is not material, likewise, this notion is not limited to merely material well-being but must encompass the whole of a person’s reality: the spiritual, moral, cultural, and political dimensions of human existence. The true welfare of a person involves mental and physical health, community participation, education and training, and the securing of productive and meaningful work that grants a certain degree of self-sufficiency.

Compassion: Literally “to suffer with”; standing with others in their passion or suffering. Compassion is the proper response to seeing another in need. Compassion is the appropriate response of love to the dignity and value of all persons in need. Furthermore, authentic compassion provides the motivation for charity.

Charity: Derived from the Latin caritas, it signifies a form of love and care. Charity in relation to welfare implies those free acts of love that seek to provide for those who find themselves in need.

Are the above definitions the accepted ones in the current debate over welfare reform? When a congressman speaks of compassion, does he really mean a sense of suffering with people experiencing poverty in any of its forms? Does our national understanding of welfare go beyond meager material assistance? These are more than mere linguistical and semantic concerns. If our true concern is the well-being of human beings, then how we understand welfare or charity greatly effects our response to the fundamental issues at stake.

These definitions lead us to raise the following core questions: What is the morally proper way to care for the vulnerable among us, what are the normative ends we are trying to achieve with welfare policy, and what are the proper means and how are they affected by competing questions of private property and the size of government?

The Outline of a Humane Welfare

As the above questions show, it is not enough to offer a critique of the current welfare system and call for its dismantling without offering a replacement model. We must try to outline how we can accomplish the goal of truly meeting the needs of the poor. What model of public concern would incorporate fully our three-fold understanding of welfare, charity, and compassion? A new paradigm based on fundamentally sound principles is needed for the establishment of a truly humane welfare response.

If we are to embrace the free-enterprise method of social improvement (which is itself the precondition for all philanthropic endeavors), we first need to understand its four main components, which make a rise in the general standard of living more likely and personal desperation and social deprivation less likely. Each is not only consonant with morality but also with the common good of society.

The first component is private property. The first word of the phrase, private, is not meant as the inverse of public. Rather, private is to be contrasted with an institutional setting where the owner is politically defined as a collective entity such as the community or the state.

The second mark of a free economy is the right of exchange. This means, quite simply, that property owners have a right to dispose of what they own at any time in exchange for something they consider to be of higher value. It is the great unappreciated fact of voluntary economic exchange that it allows people to trade a less desirable state of affairs for a more desirable state of affairs. The fact that an exchange is agreed to voluntarily implies that everyone involved is in some respect made better off, and it is this aspect of the free economy that enables it to wisely conserve resources.

The third requirement of free economies is contract enforcement. People must have security in their property and in the results of their exchanges. When contracts are not enforced, the overall value of wealth declines. That is, a banker cannot lend money if secured terms of enforcing everyone’s respective obligations do not exist. Nor will a laborer work for a business unless he or she can be ensured of payment for services rendered. Contract enforcement is a prerequisite for social peace.

The fourth element of the economic system appropriate to a free society is creative liberty, or what Pope John Paul II has called the right of economic initiative. Every person, created in the image of God, has within his or her heart and mind a capacity for thinking things anew, for renewing the space around him, and improving society. This desire that exists within each of us and that virtue requires that we cultivate, is a reflection of a primary attribute of God as creator. In economics, this creative capacity is called entrepreneurship. In a free economic system, entrepeneurship is only rewarded by profit when creativity is working on behalf of others. As George Gilder comments in The Spirit of Enterprise, entrepreneurship has an altruistic dimension directed toward the service of others who use produced goods and services out of their own free choice.

These four institutions—private property, free exchange, contract enforcement, and creative enterprise—are the foundation of prosperity generated by a market system. The market should be allowed to work for many of those experiencing poverty.

The essential problem with the current malfunctioning of the welfare system stems from a misunderstanding of the function of the state in the first place. For the state to be effective, it must abide by the principle of subsidiarity. As section 48 of the papal encyclical Centesimus Annus declares, this principle holds that "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good."

Subsidiarity is based on a view of the state as a natural entity that results from the inherent social nature of the person. Human beings cannot live and expect to flourish outside of a community. The first and most fundamental community is the family, which forms the basis for all society. Groupings of families, in turn, form the local community. The development and growth of such communities, including the mixture of interrelated social structures such as the church and other private organizations, lead to the need for more overarching organization that offers a judicial system and protection from agression.

This idea is mirrored in Reformed Protestant social ethics by what is called "sphere sovereignty," usually associated with the thought of Abraham Kuyper. According to sphere sovereignty, God has ordained each social institution with its own sphere or domain, its own authority, and its own ruling norm; therefore, each should be protected from interference by the others. In short, sphere sovereignty calls for “elbow-room” between the various institutions that together form society.

What must be kept in mind is that each social structure by its nature has duties and responsibilities. For example, children are the primary responsibility of parents. Therefore, the family unit has the primary duties of education, character formation, and moral instruction. Churches, private groups, neighbors, and extended family all help indirectly in raising children. Yet parents who have the ultimate responsibility for their children must also have corresponding freedom in performing their duties. The state, or any other social structure, does not have the right to interfere unless the parents have clearly shown themselves incapable of raising their children. It is the duty of the state to provide a framework of liberty, primarily through just law, that supports the family in its task.

From this view we see that it is not the place for Washington, D.C., to dictate how parents should raise their children. Such attempts, from an impersonal and removed position, are risky, uninformed, and frequently ruinous. In most situations, parents know what is best for their children.

Subsidiarity applies to welfare in a similar fashion. The specific needs of a poor person in a small town in Idaho are first to be addressed by that individual. Every parent knows the importance of instilling independence in a child, as do wise family members with relations. When, for reasons beyond a person’s control, evident needs become apparent, such needs are best addressed by those closest to that person. The responsibility for such a person in need falls first to his or her family. If the scope of the need is overwhelming, then responsibility continues to fall to the next available and immediate social structure able to help. When Congress and Washington bureaucracies attempt to directly address the needs of individual poor people, the results are inadequate and destructive to the social fabric.

Pope John Paul II, in a clear-headed analysis of the problem, puts it well:

By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the welfare state leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbors to those in need. It should be added that certain kinds of demands often call for a response which is not simple material but which is capable of perceiving the deeper human need (Centesimus Annus, § 48)

The Advantage of Private Charitable Initiatives

The welfare state has been a fixture of American life for decades, but now we must begin to imagine our society and economy without it. It proves very difficult for us to do. It is a mental exercise akin to what many Soviet intellectuals faced in the late 1980s. Socialism had produced a gasping economy, an angry and near revolutionary citizenry, and isolation from much of the developed world. The Soviet intelligentsia began to recognize that the socialist state had failed. Yet there seemed to be a million reasons why it could not be dismantled.

One example is the choice of residence. Under the central plan, people could not change their residence without the permission of the Soviet state. It took months and years for this permission to be granted. Requests were frequently denied on the grounds of insufficient housing, economic need, or fear of demographic dislocation. The bureaucracy that approved a permanent move from one place to another had to be courted and bribed.

Getting government out of the moving-permit business and letting people live where they wanted to, seemed like an irresponsible measure to many in the Soviet Union, one that would lead to chaos and homelessness. Who could possibly favor such a thing but an anarchist? The very idea raised innumerable problems: Wouldn’t everyone want to cluster in the most desirable places, leaving large portions of the towns and cities abandoned? Wouldn’t whole factories be left empty as families packed up and moved to more attractive environs? How can the state plan if people move anywhere they want? Would granting this right throw the society into chaos?

Do we not hear echoes of our own welfare debate in the above description? The idea of allowing people to move freely seemed odd and dangerous after seventy years of central planning. It can be difficult to escape the central planning mentality. In our own country we know from experience that the freedom to move does not cause chaos. But that is because our experience of freedom has shown us the benefits of liberty.

The idea of overhauling the welfare state in the United States has been meet with similar objections. Just as the Soviet people had been accustomed to looking at the state as the producer and provider of all goods and services, many in our country see the government as the only entity capable of handling our social problems. What will happen to the people who cannot work? How will young children of single mothers be cared for? How will the unskilled receive training? Won’t Great Depression-style poverty return?

The former Soviet Union is beginning to find that, although the transition is difficult, spontaneous order set in motion by unleashing freedom is starting to show benefits. The structure of Russian society is coming alive again in the midst of the pain and adjustment. Would such spontaneous order work for us?

I believe that private charity has the following advantages over government sponsored welfare:

Private charity is in accord with subsidiarity and enables genuine compassion. An effective welfare system will allow those closest to the individuals in need to be the resources of first resort. Spheres of responsibility would emanate from the person to his family members, to neighbors, to religious institutions, to towns and cities, and then to the states. The federal government would only be involved when lower orders cannot do the job, in cases of clear urgency effecting the well-being of society as a whole, and then only for brief periods so as not to replace the social functions of the lower order. Members of churches would become directly involved in the lives of the poor people in their own communities. These committed local people and groups will work to encourage the weak to become stronger, the dependent as independent as possible. This process will, in turn, revivify local churches by encouraging them to retrieve their original sense of social mission and ministry.

Private charity can better discern the needs of the poor they are involved with. The response could be more humane and tailored to meet specific circumstances and needs.

Private charity would be in accord with human freedom. It is a free and therefore more meaningful moral response. We improve both the lives of those we give to as well as our own lives through this process.

Private charity is less likely to establish a culture of dependency. An impersonal check given without any expectations for responsible behavior leads to a damaged sense of self-worth. Assisting someone out of love can help develop a vision of worth and dignity within those helped. The beauty of local efforts to help the needy is that they humanize welfare. They allow for one person to help another to pursue his creative potentials. They make the individual receiving aid realize that he must work to live up to the expectations of those helping him out. This sense promotes community.

Private charity would be cost-effective. Decentralization would provide for less costly ways of helping the poor and removing red-tape and over-regulation. Ineffective programs would shut down rather than be refunded through federal aid. Money would be channeled to address the most urgent needs. Local solutions allow for a flexibility that is simply impossible at the federal level.

This all cannot happen if we do not try. This cannot happen if we do not place the impetus for charitable giving back where it belongs—in the hands of individual Americans, who through their own efforts or organizations can fulfill their moral obligations to those less fortunate.

There are those who doubt the ability of the private sector to meet the overwhelming needs that exist. Where would the money come from? Wouldn’t the rich just ignore the poor? The questions, in fact, are endless. We can never answer every objection to reform. Many people will maintain the assumption that needy people will not be cared for if the role of government is diminished in the provision of welfare. To overcome this mentality, we will need the faith it took to leap from communism to a free market in Soviet Russia. We need faith that the American people are up to the task.

Welfare socialism has failed to attain perfect security for all people. There will always be older people, children, poor men and women, the disabled, and the unemployed who need our help. The issue is not how to create a perfect world without poverty, but how we can create a system that is most adept at finding those who need our help, meeting their needs, and when possible, helping those people toward a life of independence.

Whatever imperfections such a transformation in the system would produce, it must be compared to the present system, which has been an abysmal failure. The only way out of this mess is to return much of the responsibility for dealing with these problems back to its proper place: the private sector.

One of the tragedies of the our thirty-year experiment in social engineering is our loss of the practical knowledge of how we can effectively help poor people improve their lot.

Authentic charity cannot be centrally planned any more than an economy can be. The spontaneous efforts of private individuals, houses of worship, and charities will work, however imperfectly. Whatever its flaws, a system based on greater private charity will allow caregivers to learn from their own mistakes.