Peter Maurin – Systematic Agitator

By Lincoln Rice

Presented at the Peter Maurin Conference (Chicago, Illinois) on September 7, 2024

Peter Maurin presented his ideas in short poetic phrases that have become known as Easy Essays. Readers of the New York Catholic Worker often see individual essays published from time to time. Perhaps his best-known essay is “Better and Better Off.” This essay makes a humorous turn of phrase with its play on the title. The essay begins, “The world would be better off, if people tried to become better. And people would become better, if they stopped trying to become better off.”[i] And the essay continues on this track.

 Unfortunately, I believe the isolation of certain humorous and catchy essays by Maurin has further cemented the view of Peter being idiosyncratic and his writings are often dismissed. Luke Stocking, in his Master’s Thesis on Peter Maurin was the first to emphasize the importance of what he called Maurin’s “arrangements.” Peter rarely printed or recited a single Easy Essay in isolation from others. He preferred to combine several Easy Essays into a larger arrangement, in which individual essays would reinforce and build on one another to flesh out a larger idea or argument. As Stocking notes, “Referencing the Easy Essays by their arrangements gives an additional tool of analysis.”[ii]

In my presentation this morning, I would like to accomplish the following. First, analyze Maurin’s arrangements during the first year of the paper. I will give special attention to the arrangements from the first two months of the paper, which I believe are Maurin’s Magna Carta. These arrangements are foundational for his vision of the Catholic Worker. Second, I will note two additional topics of interest in Peter’s writing. If you would like to follow along with this analysis, this can be easily done with the book, The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin: Easy Essays from the Catholic Worker (2020), which lists the essays of Peter in chronological order.[iii]

The First Year of Easy Essays

The First Ten Essays

In this section, I will examine each of the ten essays listed in the first two issues of the paper. Then I will more broadly discuss his arrangements during the remainder of the first year. The first two issues of the paper are foundational in laying out Peter’s thought. Though Luke Stocking wrote the essays in the first issue “are randomly gathered,”[iv] I believe this is one the few times he is mistaken. I propose that in the first issue of the paper, Peter states the problem and in the second issue he proposes a solution. Peter firmly believed that before you could offer a solution for a better future, you needed to know how we arrived at the present.[v]

The first essay in the first issue of the paper was “Institutions – Corporations.” Here, Maurin contrasts the problematic nature of corporations, which “are organized to promote the wealth of the classes” with institutions, which “are founded to foster the welfare of the masses.”[vi] Peter is preparing us for his Catholic Worker program, which will counteract the crippling influence of corporations.

The second essay, “Ethics and Economics,” cites several sources to argue that the social problem is also an economic problem and an ethical problem. Maurin is clearly voicing his disagreement with Adam Smith’s notion of the invisible hand, which argues that a capitalist economy will self-correct itself despite individuals being only concerned about their own wellbeing. Peter concludes this essay by stating that the ethics of Canon Law, or Church Law, as “embodied in the encyclicals of Pius XI and Leo XIII” can address the lack of ethics in economics. The social encyclicals of both these popes asserted the necessity of morality in forming an economic system.[vii]

Peter’s third essay is a popular one, “Blowing the Dynamite.” In the previous essay, he offered what would come to be known as Catholic Social Teaching as a moral resource. In this essay, he complains that this message is not being proclaimed. He takes special aim at “Catholic scholars,” who “have wrapped it up in nice phraseology, placed it in an hermetic container and sat on the lid.” For the moral message of the Church to take center stage, we need “To blow the dynamite of the message.”[viii] This is exactly what Peter is trying to do.

In his fourth essay, “The Money-Lenders’ Dole,” Peter observes that the poor are receiving negligible government aid while the banks receive “more than a billion dollars.” Echoing “the Prophets of Israel and the Fathers of the Church,” Peter reminds his readers that lending money at interest was forbidden. The traditional prohibition against interest in the Old Testament and in the teachings of the Catholic Church was meant to prevent the exploitation of the poor. Peter adds to this tradition. In a capitalist economy, constant and unnecessary growth depends on the borrowing of money from financial institutions and when those institutions become too big to fail, Maurin observes that they become the “first citizens on Uncle Sam’s payroll.”[ix]

The final three essays of this first issue expand on the previous essay about the harm caused by lending money at interest. In his fifth essay, “Mortgaged,” he explains the harm caused to homeowners, farmers, and local governments because they have mortgaged their property. In his sixth essay, “Out of the Temple,” Peter laments that even though “Christ drove the money lenders out of the Temple,” they are now given prestige because churches are financed by bank loans. In his last essay for the May issue, “Wealth-Producing Maniacs,” he observes how the the Roaring Twenties was only possible because of unnecessary growth and how after “a world-wide orgy of wealth and life-destruction, millions of people find themselves victims of a world-wide depression brought about by a world gone mad on mass-production and mass-distribution.”[x]

In one sense, the first collection of Peter Maurin’s Easy Essays is pessimistic. It began with a glimmer of hope about the ethics of the Catholic tradition early on but then finished with a world-wide depression. Maurin saved the good news for the second issue of the paper. I believe Peter originally intended to have the three essays in the second issue of the paper conclude his arrangement of essays from the May 1933 issue, but limited space for his essays prevented this.

In any case, the three essays featured in the second issue comprise Maurin’s three-point program that he would come to call the Green Revolution, owing to its Irish roots. The first essay, “Round-Table Discussions,” describes a staple event in many Catholic Worker communities where people learn about and discuss the problems of the day and “how a path can be made from things as they are to things as they should be.” The second essay describes his concept for “Houses of Hospitality,” which “give to the rich the opportunity to serve the poor.” Remembering Peter’s first essay contrasting corporations and institutions, he posits that these houses can “bring back institutions to the technique of institutions.” In his last essay, “Agronomic Universities,” he proposes the farming commune as another institution where the “unemployed” will have access to “free rent,” “free fuel,” “free food,” skill acquisition, mind improvement, and “spiritual guidance.”[xi]

Rest of the Year

The third issue of the paper (June-July 1933) contains an arrangement of Easy Essays that further explore the economic problem of capitalism. Peter begins with essays observing that the selfishness of businessmen “create[s] problems” and that the mastering of subjects by college professors is not helping anyone “to master situations.” Maurin continues his arrangement with a harsh critique of liberals, who are “not fanatics about anything,” even though it will take fanatics to correct our current problems.[xii]

Maurin is critical of religious, philosophical, and economic liberalism. Religious liberalism privatizes the role of religion and does not believe it should hold any authority in the public forum. Philosophical liberalism stresses the authority of the individual over outside sources, be they religious or governmental. Economic liberalism promotes laissez-faire capitalism with limited oversight.[xiii]

Maurin concludes the arrangement by pointing out that both capital and labor view the labor of workers as a “commodity” and not as a “gift.” In this sense, the labor movement, though it is trying to obtain a living wage for workers in the short term, is not working to change a system based on liberalism and greed.[xiv] In his response to a letter in the February 1934 issue of the paper, Maurin promotes a theory of labor that incorporates “self-expression.”[xv] In later essays, Maurin will repudiate industrialism and the assembly line because they lack the opportunity for self-expression and creativity.[xvi]

In September 1933, Maurin published one arrangement of essays that more properly seems like two. The first two essays in the issue confront the false belief that people can serve two masters: God and money. Even though some people may delude themselves into believing this can be done, it will always lead to the bank account becoming “the standard of values.”[xvii]

The remaining four essays explore Peter’s theory of the state. He begins by emphasizing the need for each person to organize oneself. Appealing to Thomas Jefferson, Maurin promotes the idea that government is not meant to solve economic problems. To further this argument, his next essay observes that “a politician is an artist in the art of keeping up with public opinion.” Such a person is not fit to lead and should not be expected to lead.[xviii] Peter concludes his arrangement by lamenting the separation of religion not only from the state, but also from education, politics, and business. As Maurin eloquently concludes:

When religion has nothing to do with education, education is only information. When religion has nothing to do with politics, politics is only factionalism. When religion has nothing to do with business, business is only commercialism. And when religion has nothing to do with education, politics, or business, people have little to do with religion.[xix]

For Peter, the reason that religion can improve the ends of education, politics, and business is because religion has a functional vision for society. Liberalism, with its embrace of laissez -faire capitalism, does not have ethics. Even worse, it promotes selfishness.

In early October 1933, the National Conference of Catholic Charities (the forerunner to Catholic Charities) was meeting in New York and would be attended by several bishops. In anticipation, Maurin published an arrangement of essays in the October issue called, “To the Bishops of the U.S.: A Plea for Houses of Hospitality.”

This arrangement consisted of seven essays. The first, “Duty of Hospitality,” berates the lack of hospitality in Christian countries and elevates people in need to the status of “Ambassadors of God” who “should be given food, clothing, and shelter by those who are able to give it.” The second essay, “Municipal Lodge,” laments that guest rooms in the homes of the rich are not reserved for these ambassadors, who are instead treated inhospitably at the city’s municipal lodge. The next three essays relate the history of houses of hospitality, which Maurin notes an early North African church council prescribes bishops to have connected to their churches. The final two essays urge the reintroduction of houses of hospitality by the local parish.[xx]

At this point, it should be remembered that Dorothy Day did not start the first Catholic Worker house of hospitality until December 1933. Two months earlier in October, Maurin was still hoping that these houses would be instituted by the bishops. The final essay in the October arrangement notes that this proposed hospitality would be a form of Catholic Action. Catholic Action did not simply refer to actions performed by Catholics but included the notion that these actions were performed by the laity at the direction of bishops and priests. That is why the earlier essay, “Houses of Hospitality,” which was reprinted in the October arrangement, includes the line, “We need Houses of Hospitality to bring the Bishops to the people and the people to the Bishops.”[xxi]

There are two additional Easy Essay arrangements in the October issue. The second is an essay by Maurin called, “The Spirit of the Mass – The Spirit of the Masses.” It begins by quoting a thirteenth-century text about the Mass and concludes with Maurin’s commentary on the Mass as an “unbloody repetition of the Sacrifice of the Cross.” Peter continues by stating that Christ’s entire life was one of sacrifice and that the Christian life should also be one of sacrifice. He concludes: “We cannot imitate the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary by trying to get all we can. We can only imitate the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary by trying to give all we can.”[xxii] We see Peter aligning himself with liturgical movements of the time that argued that the Mass had repercussions for how Christians should participate in the world. We also see Maurin’s first allusion in writing to voluntary poverty. He had been living a life of voluntary poverty for several years, but he had not yet voiced it as an explicit part of his program. We’ll come back to this.

The third arrangement in October 1933 was “An Open Letter to Father Lord, M.Ag. (Master Agitator).” Daniel Lord was a Jesuit and Maurin admired Lord’s agitation among students at St. Louis University. Maurin also saw himself as an agitator, so to call Father Lord a master agitator was a great compliment. The main thrust of Peter’s letter was his desire for Lord to found a School of Catholic Agitation.[xxiii] With lower than hoped for attendance at Peter’s clarifications of thought in New York City, perhaps Peter believed Lord could be a catalyst for promoting dynamic Catholic thought on a larger scale.

Maurin would write another open letter to Lord in December, in which he decried the rise of fascist and Bolshevik dictatorships. Maurin believed much of this was due to modernism and liberalism, which separated the spiritual from the temporal. Instead of looking to politicians and big business for answers to political and economic problems, lay people should be looking to the bishops for leadership. Maurin calls on Lord to work on this issue.[xxiv]

In the November issue of the Catholic Worker, Peter contrasted Marxism with Catholic Action. Maurin critiqued traditional Marxism for its materialism and the belief that Communism would naturally replace capitalism. In contrast, Peter promoted the common good as formulated by popes and bishops. He also promoted his Green Revolution as a program for a new society, the basis of which he now explicitly states are charity and voluntary poverty.[xxv]

In a public announcement that Peter wrote for the December 1933 issue, he for the first time uses the terms cult, culture, and cultivation, which he equates respectively with liturgy, literature, and agriculture.[xxvi] He liked this line of thought and continued it the next month in the essay “Building Churches.” In that essay, he shared how Henry Adams could not receive a proper education in the US or Europe “because education implies unity of thought and there is no unity of thought in America [or Europe].” But in looking at Our Lady of Chartres Cathedral, Adams discovered there was unity of thought in the thirteenth century. Maurin agreed with Adams and believed that the very act of building such a cathedral was a combination of cult, culture, and cultivation. That is to say that the building of that church grew out of the people’s liturgy, philosophy, and labor. Whether unity of thought really existed in the Middle Ages is another question. But Maurin believed that that society’s grounding in liturgy created unity in thought.[xxvii]

In the first issue of the paper, Maurin took aim at Catholic scholars for concealing the moral message of the Church. In February 1934, Peter concluded an essay arrangement with one of his most quoted phrases, “The scholars must become workers so the workers may be scholars.” Maurin believed that the scholars can have something meaningful to say if they participate in the world. This collaboration with the worker can provide an opportunity for both scholars and workers to create a path forward.[xxviii]

In April 1934, Peter began the practice of naming his arrangements in the newspaper with something more specific than “Easy Essays.”[xxix] This final arrangement to conclude the first year of Easy Essays is called, “The Case for Utopia.” After the first essay on how “people would be better, if they stopped trying to become better off,” his second essay proclaims that “Christianity has nothing to do with modern capitalism or modern communism.” In this essay, he goes on to state that “property with responsibility” and “voluntary poverty” are Christian ideals that are rejected by modern capitalism and modern communism respectively. To emphasize the importance of voluntary poverty, Maurin’s third essay, “Christ’s Message” features three Gospel quotes, with the last one emphasizing voluntary poverty. The fourth essay, “What Saint Francis Desired,” further explores the theme of voluntary poverty by highlighting Francis’s desire that people “should give up superfluous possessions” and “offer their services as a gift.”[xxx]

The fifth essay quotes popes in recent times who extolled the importance of the Third Order of St. Francis, which is composed of lay people. This is perhaps an attempt by Maurin to attract the Third Order to his Catholic Worker program. Before finding Dorothy, Peter had proposed his program to the directors of the Third Order without success.[xxxi]

ADDITIONAL TOPICS

Peter’s thought evolved and grew during the remainder of his writing career, but I believe the core of his thought can be found during the first year. Nevertheless, I would like to briefly touch on two topics that Peter did not explicitly write on during his first year: personalism and racism. I could have chosen to look at Peter’s vision of history, his understanding of freedom, his changing view of Catholic Action, his critique of clerics, or his interest in evangelization among others, but time is limited.[xxxii]

Personalism

It might seem surprising that Peter did not mention personalism during the first year of the Catholic Worker. The reason for this will become obvious in a few moments. The French Catholic philosopher Emmanuel Mounier is credited with first articulating and promoting personalism first in his journal Esprit and later in books such as The Personalist Manifesto (1936). Esprit was first published in October 1932, seven months before the publication of the Catholic Worker, but we do not know exactly when Peter first had an opportunity to read the journal. Since Peter first uses the term “gentle personalism” in July-August 1934, it is probable that he first came across Mounier’s use of the term in Esprit shortly before.[xxxiii] Mounier described personalism as “any doctrine, any civilization, which affirms the primacy of the human person over the material needs and over the collective mechanisms which sustain his development.”[xxxiv] Peter would have agreed with this. Peter’s vision for society already included much that was present in Mounier’s personalism, so it was easy for Peter to incorporate it. Peter’s strand of personalism emphasized personal responsibility and sacrifice, gentle personalism, and a communitarian vision.[xxxv]

Racism

One year after the founding of the movement in May 1934, Maurin, along with a Protestant friend, Herman Hergenhan, moved into a Harlem storefront that had been offered for use to the Catholic Worker. The main purpose of the storefront was evangelization and was in no way a center for confronting or organizing against racism.

Peter Maurin did not dedicate any Easy Essays to racism until May 1938, when he wrote against anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism. This was five years after the first issue of the paper was published. Maurin believed that if African Americans behaved in the loving way white people should behave, whites would be inspired to change their behavior based on the “power of example.” Compared to many of the Black writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Maurin’s writings against racism were tepid. In other words, on the few occasions when Peter wrote on racism, most of which focused on anti-Semitism, it was extrinsic to his broader framework. By stating that solutions for racism are extrinsic to his main program is not an insult. It simply clarifies that the pernicious nature of racism must be addressed on its own merits, especially since racism is often employed to justify social inequality.

CONCLUSION

I hope this brief dive into Peter’s first year of Easy Essays has illustrated that from the beginning Maurin had a systematic plan on how to respond to the current economic, social, and moral problems that plague our society, and that more insight into Peter’s essays can be garnered when his arrangements are read as whole.

Lincoln Rice grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin and is a lifelong Catholic. He earned his PhD in moral theology from Marquette University and has published articles in American Catholic Studies and the Journal of Religion, Identity, and Politics. He has taught theology courses at Marquette University and is a member of the Casa Maria Catholic Worker in Milwaukee Wisconsin, which provides temporary shelter for homeless families and promotes a variety of peace and justice issues.

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[i] Peter Maurin, Easy Essay 50. The essay numbers refer to the numbering system of Maurin’s essays that were adopted in Maurin, The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin, ed. Lincoln Rice (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020).

[ii] Luke Stocking, “When the Irish Were Irish: Peter Maurin and the Green Revolution” (M.A. thesis, St. Michael’s College 2007), 51.

[iii] Maurin, The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin, ed. Lincoln Rice (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020).

[iv] Stocking, “When the Irish Were Irish,” 51.

[v] For example, see essays 8, 45, 70, 151, 265, 307, and 533.

[vi] Maurin, Essay 1, “Institutions – Corporations.”

[vii] Maurin, Essay 2, “Ethics and Economics”; Adam Smith, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, chapter ii, paragraph 9; Pope Pius XI, Encyclical, Quadragesimo anno, 42–43; Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical, Rerum novarum, 28, 36, 62.

[viii] Maurin, Essay 3, “Blowing the Dynamite.” At the time he wrote, Catholic scholars would have entirely consisted of clergy with advanced degrees.

[ix] Maurin, Essay 4, “The Money-Lenders’ Dole.”

[x] Maurin, Essay 5, “Mortgaged”; Essay 6, “Out of the Temple”; Essay 7, “Wealth-Producing Maniacs.” Later the same year in December 1933, Maurin would focus another arrangement of essays on usury entitled, “To National Recovery Act Administration Officials – Is Inflation Inevitable?” Maurin, Easy Essay 37, “Usurers Not Gentlemen”; Easy Essay 7, “Wealth-Producing Maniacs”; Easy Essay 5, “Legalized Usury”; Easy Essay 38, “Fallacy of Saving”; Easy Essay 39, “Avoiding Inflation.” In this same issue of the paper, Maurin also shared the address he delivered at a previous round-table discussion. Most of his comments concerned the evil of usury. Maurin, Easy Essay 41, 42, 38, “Legalized Usury.”

[xi] Maurin, Essay 8, “Round-Table Discussions”; Essay 9, “Houses of Hospitality”; Essay 10, “Agronomic Universities.”

[xii] Maurin, Essay 11, “Creating Problems”; Essay 12, “No Way to Turn”; Essay 13, “Liberal Fanatics.”

[xiii] Maurin, Essay 14, “The Age of Treason.”

[xiv] Maurin, Essay 15, “Commercializers of Labor”; Essay 16, “Selling their Labor.”

[xv] Maurin, “Peter Maurin Answers,” New York Catholic Worker, February 1934, in The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin, 70.

[xvi] Maurin, Easy Essay 155, “Mechanized Labor”; Easy Essay 560, “CULTIVATION — Boredom Justified by Fear.”

[xvii] Maurin, Essay 17, “God and Mammon”; Essay 18, “When Civilization Decays.”

[xviii] Maurin, Essay 19, “Self-Organization”; Essay 20, “Politics is Politics.”

[xix] Maurin, Essay 21, “Church and State”; Essay 22, “A Modern Plague.”

[xx] Maurin, Essay 23, “The Duty of Hospitality”; Essay 24, “The Municipal Lodgings”; Essay 25, “Back to Hospitality”; Essay 9, “Houses of Hospitality”; Essay 26, “Hospices”; Essay 27, “Parish Houses of Hospitality”; Essay 28, “Houses of Catholic Action.”

[xxi] Maurin, Essay 9, “Houses of Hospitality”; Essay 28, “Houses of Catholic Action.”

[xxii] Maurin, Essay 29, “The Spirit of the Mass – The Spirit of the Masses.”

[xxiii] Maurin, Essay 30, “An Open Letter to Father Lord, M.Ag. (Master Agitator).”

[xxiv] Maurin, Easy Essay 40, “Another Open Letter to Father Lord M. Ag. (Master Agitator).”

[xxv] Maurin, Essay 31, “To Be a Marxian”; Essay32, “Karl Marx Soon Realized”; Essay 33, “The Communist Manifesto”; Essay 34 “For Catholic Action”; Essay 35, “The Bishops’ Program”; Essay 36, “Reconstructing the Social Order.”

[xxvi] Maurin, “To our Readers: Notice; Round Table Discussion,” New York Catholic Worker, 15 December 1933, found in Maurin, The Forgotten Radical Peter Maurin, 62.

[xxvii] Maurin, Easy Essay 46, “Building Churches.”

[xxviii] Maurin, Easy Essay 45, “Scholars and Bourgeois.”

[xxix] Previous Easy Essays arrangements with names were also public letters. This arrangement was named without having a specific audience.

[xxx] Maurin, Easy Essay 50, “The Way Out”; Easy Essay 51, “Christianity, Capitalism, and Communism”; Easy Essay 52, “Christ’s Message”; Easy Essay 53, “What Saint Francis Desired.”

[xxxi] Maurin, Easy Essay 53, “The Third Order”; Marc H. Ellis, Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), 37. The final four essays of the arrangement stress Maurin’s philosophy that labor is a gift and the importance of self-organization by workers. Maurin, Easy Essay 55 “Three Ways to Make a Living”; Easy Essay 15, “Capital and Labor”; Easy Essay 16, “Selling Their Labor”; Easy Essay 19, “Self-Organization.”

[xxxii] For a discussion on Maurin’s unusual critique of clerics, see Piehl, Breaking Bread, 64-65, 180 (endnotes 31-32).

[xxxiii] Maurin, Easy Essay 67, “The Common Good.” Maurin so appreciated Mounier’s concept of personalism that Maurin persuaded St. John’s Abbey to publish the English translation of Mounier’s The Personalist Manifesto. Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), 70.

[xxxiv] Mounier, quoted in Juan Manuel Burgos, An Introduction to Personalism (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 68.

[xxxv] Maurin, Easy Essay 24, “The Municipal Lodgings”; Easy Essay 67, “The Common Good”; Easy Essay 73, “Personal Sacrifice”; Easy Essay 166, “They and We.”