The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, and Exemplary Anarchism
Benjamin J. Pauli
Kettering University, USA
The Catholic Worker movement’s fusion of anarchism and Catholicism is one of the most unusual hybrids in the history of the anarchist tradition and is sometimes dismissed as paradoxical or contradictory. In arguing that the pairing of these influences is not as counter-intuitive as it appears at first glance, this chapter seeks to explain the elective affinity of anarchism and Catholicism through the concept of exemplarity. The vision for the Catholic Worker devised by its founders Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day was, I argue, informed by interpretations of central Christian figures like Christ, the saints, and the “holy fool” that placed special emphasis on their exemplary qualities. Maurin and Day saw in the Catholic tradition of exemplarity a means of exercising leadership and authority through the power of examples and voluntary emulation rather than coercion, and within the context of the Catholic Worker movement the exemplary influence of Day in particular helped to reconcile the movement’s need for coherence and direction with the autonomy and dignity of its members. In highlighting the Catholic Worker’s “exemplary anarchism,” this chapter not only reveals one of the ways in which the Worker’s Catholicism actually enhanced its anarchism, but also points to the broader relevance of the concept of exemplarity to anarchist theory.
“I’m like everyone else: I admire people who have become outstanding.”
—Dorothy Day
If one wanted to illustrate the proposition, recounted by Noam Chomsky in his introduction to Daniel Guerin’s Anarchism, that
How to cite this book chapter:
Pauli, B. J. 2017. The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, and Exemplary Anarchism. In: Christoyannopoulos, A. and Adams, M. S. (eds.) Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1. Pp. 18–50. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bak.b. License: CC-BY
