At our June ACI webinar, Emeritus Professor James Franklin spoke on “Catholic social justice and the Labor Party 1900-1940” at our next ACI webinar on Tuesday 13 June.
In Europe in the early twentieth century, Catholics like Marc Sangnier and Joseph Cardijn were concerned about justice for the workers and had a plan on what to do about it.
At the same time in Australia, Catholics were also concerned about justice for the workers and acted to bring it about. But the political context of the two continents was completely different, and so were the plans. Or perhaps the plans were not so different as might appear at first.
The Australian plan had much less explicit theory and much more pragmatism and politics, and much more success in implementation. The moderate wing of the Australian Labor Party developed a politically feasible plan that has made a major contribution to the system of “regulated capitalism” or “market socialism” that we live in today.
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