Note: This is a slightly revised version of a post which appeared on the old Opus Publicum web-log on January 20, 2014. As I have had numerous requests to re-post old pieces, I am trying to do better about fetching them from the archives. Your patience is appreciated.
Keith Michael Estrada, writing over at Patheos, has more than a few words to say in defense of socialism from a Catholic perspective. Although Estrda is right to criticize those who would use the Church’s social magisterium to baptize capitalism, his attempted presentation of what Catholicism “actually teaches” regarding socialism leaves something to be desired. The most elemental error Estrada makes is failing to offer concrete examples of “socialisms” which have not been condemned by the Catholic Church. Instead, Estrada repeatedly suggests that not “all socialism” contradicts the magisterium. But what kind of “socialism” is that? Clearly the principles of private property and subsidiarity do not support a state-centered system where heavy expropriation, command-planned redistribution, and centralization are the norm. And while there are other models of socialism available which are more localized and communal, Estrada fails to discuss them . . . at all. Call that the “meta” problem with Estrada’s article. There are a couple of others worth noting as well.
When I decided to return to the Roman Catholic Church in 2011 I considered myself to be a “weak libertarian.” That is, I supported economic policies such as deregulation, low taxes, and the dismantling of international trade and investment barriers, but had no time for the “hedonistic” wing of “the cause.” For instance, although I believed then—as I believe now—that certain social policies, such as the so-called “War on Drugs,” were ineffective and wasteful, I did not think it was prudent to legalize drugs across the board. Between 2011-12 my thinking on “things economic” began to change, mainly due to pressure from online acquaintances to take the Church’s social magisterium seriously. It was not possible to read the canon of social encyclicals and think that they could be squared with the tenets of economic liberalism. I found it disconcerting how Catholic neoliberals/libertarians felt they were entitled to read Catholic social teaching with a hermeneutic of selectivity while blasting other Catholics who play pick-and-choose with the Church’s teachings on matters such as marriage, contraception, and sexuality. Although it is true that the Church does not present a ready-made plan for how societies ought to organize their economies, it is clear that there are principles in place which no state has the right to derogate from. I did not believe I could be a consistent and orthodox Catholic while ignoring those principles and supporting policies which in fact contradicted them.
The Distributist Review (DR) is back after a two-year hiatus with a new piece by Daniel Schwindt, “While We Were Out.” In it, Schwindt offers a quick survey of where distributism “is at” and findins hope for distributism’s future in Pope Francis’s pontificate. That’s far from certain, however. As I have noted elsewhere, one of the central problems with Francis’s socio-economic instruction is that it rends to lack refinement and is often buried under needless rhetoric. Moreover, due to the Pope’s penchant for issuing wobbly statements on various points of doctrine, his critics—including Catholics—feel quite at ease ignoring what he has to say on Catholic social teaching. This is not to say that there aren’t important passages in documents such as Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si; it’s just that they aren’t always easy to tease out. Even so, Schwindt is optimistic about the prospects for distributism under this pontificate. I pray that he’s right.
Distributism needs a shot in the arm. More than that, it needs to be more firmly tethered to the Church’s social magisterium than it has been in recent years. This means looking not only to classic social encyclicals like Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, but the magisterial documents issued by Pius VI, Blessed Pius IX, and St. Pius X as well. Catholic social teaching must be read holistically, not selectively like the liberals enjoy doing. Distributism could also use some theoretical refinement. Hopefully the return of the DR proves to be a gateway toward that end.
“Normativity” is a tricky word, one I prefer to avoid in polite company. And yet it is taken for granted in both the legal and economic fields that their respective professionals are somehow “allowed” to make normative judgments, transcending the “is” to pontificate on the “ought.” When hybridized, law and economics or “economic analysis of law” takes the neo-classical conception of “efficiency” and applies it to all sorts of legal rules, procedures, and marginal phenomena to declare what should stay and what should go. Not all economists agree with using “efficiency” in this manner, and some reject the concept altogether. One such camp is the so-called “Austrian School” of economics which, traditionally, holds that economics is the science of “is” not “ought.” Ludwig von Mises makes this very clear in Human Action and other works; a slightly more recent Austrian, Irving Kirzner, does as well. Some Austrians have, from time to time, tried to develop normative criteria for their school, though none of it has ever really taken hold. This is perhaps why the Austrian School, as opposed to the neo-classical Chicago School, never had much influence over the law and economics movement. Without the ability to transcend the “is,” it couldn’t gain away over brilliant legal professors who—unlike the rest of us—always know the “ought.”
Strange then that so many Austrian economists, almost all of whom are epigones of Mises or Hayek, spend so much time wagging their fingers at fellow economists, lawyers, and politicians over economic policy. Despite being deprived of any right to speak of the “ought” on purely economic grounds, the Austrians continue to push for the usual menu of libertarian reforms: deregulation, limited-to-no taxation, ostensibly neutral rules affecting the economy, and so on and so forth. On what possible normative basis do they stand to make their claims? It is only after importing rickety liberal ideology, the sort which exalts individualism and personal freedom above the common good (or identifies the two with it), can they start to say something substantive about how society, particularly its economic structures, ought to be organized.
Stranger still that so many Catholics, like those associated with the Acton Institute, would be drawn to Austrianism. Setting aside the fact that the Austrian School has been marginalized by the economics profession as a whole, shouldn’t Catholics—of all people—have some worries about a school within a discipline which, by its own pure self-understanding, cannot transcend the “is” to arrive at the “ought”? Or do those Catholics who adhere to Austrianism believe that it is their duty to supply the “ought,” this time not form liberal ideology but rather from a warped understanding of both the natural-law tradition and the Church’s social magisterium? Or perhaps that’s just window dressing meant to distract from the vacuity of Austrian-style economics while drawing unsuspecting Catholics into the belief that markets will save the world. What a grisly state of affairs that would be.
Thomas Storck has a new piece up over at Ethika Politika, “The Catholic and the Modern Loss of Purpose.” In it, Storck takes aim at the vacuousness of modern economic thinking while calling on Catholics to “reorient our thinking to see ourselves, and indeed the entire trajectory of history with the Catholic understanding of nature and purpose[.]” Here is a sampling of Storck’s critique of economics.
All that economists have to see is this man selling and that man buying, this man producing and that man consuming. They are simply facts, facts from which we can discover how to buy most cheaply or sell most dearly or produce and consume the most. Wealth, however obtained, for whatever end and in whatever amount, is the purpose of economic activity. If I can make money producing a good or service, so long as it is legal, I need never ask if the community really needs the things that I make, or if they are not in fact harmful to it, or if I am otherwise destroying any of the higher goods that pertain to the community.
This understanding of economic life is possible only because men were first convinced that the purpose of economic activity is whatever an individual wants to make it, that it has no inherent purpose to which one must in humility submit. And that view is only possible because Western civilization had already decided that things have no inherent nature. There is no standard by which to judge any economic action because there is no purpose inherent in them, and they have no purpose because they have no nature.
Be sure to read the entire article. And while you’re at it, take a moment to check out Storck’s latest book, From Christendom to Americanism and Beyond, which is now available from Angelico Press. I am currently in the midst of reading it and will be reviewing its contents in due course.
The concept of the just wage continues to vex economic liberals, though there can be no doubt that it is an integral element of the Catholic Church’s social magisterium—just as integral as, say, subsidiarity and solidarity. However, even some Catholics who defend the Church’s teaching on the just wage sometimes confuse the concept as the upper limit of what a worker ought to be paid rather than seeing it as the base floor. Here is what Pope Leo XIII teaches in Rerum Novarum:
There is a dictate of nature more ancient and more imperious than any bargain between man and man, that the remuneration must be sufficient to support the wage-earner in reasonable and frugal comfort. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions, because an employer or contractor will give him no better, he is the victim of fraud and injustice.
Since J. Arthur Bloom, in writing a take-down of Samuel Gregg over at The Mitrailleuse, was kind enough to refer his readers to this blog for posts critical of the Acton Institute and its propagandists, I thought I would offer a sampling from the archives on that subject. Enjoy.
Perhaps like me, some of you enjoyed the glory days of The Distributist Review (and/or its predecessor web-log). Now that the site has gone dormant, allow me to direct you to another excellent resource for contemporary distributist writing: David W. Cooney’s Practical Distributism.
For those looking to dive right in, let me suggest two ongoing series. The first, “Achieving Distributism,” by Cooney himself and the second, “Economic Law and Catholic Social Doctrine,” by Thomas Storck. You can find the subsequent installments of each series on the site. Needless to say, both deserve attentive reading.
Earlier this year I posted a brief “series” of entries on the economic ordo known as corporatism, Pope Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno, and their place in the thought of Joseph Schumpeter, one of the 20th Century’s most famous economists. For those who did not read them, here are the links:
