Category: Economics

To close out a series of thoughts which emerged in two earlier posts (here and here), let me start by clarifying something a few readers may have missed, namely that corporatism, as a viable model of socio-economic organization, should only be pursued by Catholics to the extent that it conforms to the dictates of the Church’s social magisterium. There is no one, hard set corporatist model to follow. Both Joseph Schumpeter and Pope Pius XI focus on principles, not machinery. What the two men share in common, however, is a rejection of fascist forms of corporatism. John Pollard, in his book The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism: 1914-1958 pg. 247, has this to say on the matter:

Dale Cramer and Charles Leathers’s analysis of economist and social theorist Joseph Schumpeter’s views on corporatism (discussed here) rely heavily on Schumpeter 1945 Montreal speech to a group of Quebec businessmen, “How to Preserve Private Enterprise: The Importance of Professional Organizations.” The speech, delivered originally in French, was translated into English by Michael G. Prime and David R. Henderson and published as “Schumpter on Preserving Private Enterprise,” 7 History of Political Economy 293 (1975). In their brief introduction to the translation, Prime and Henderson express some bafflement concerning Schumpeter’s concrete political views in the 1940s, though they note that “[t]here is little doubt that he regarded utilitarian liberalism as an inadequate basis for a durable social order.” Being that he was a critic of both fascism and bolshevism, the translators estimate that “Schumpeter’s sympathies lay with an aristocratic social order” and that “he thought that social reconstruction along the lines suggested by [Pope Pius XI’s] Quadragesimo Anno (QA), as an alternative to impractical laissez-faire or a totalitarian state, was a possibility worth exploring.”

Joseph Schumpeter’s name is not commonly associated with Catholic social teaching, nor is much said about the economist’s views of corporatism, that is, the organization of society around interest groups and their duly appointed representatives. In a 1981 article for the History of Political Economy, “Schumpeter’s Corporatist Views: Links Among His Social Theory, Quadragesimo Anno, and Moral Reform,” Dale Cramer and Charles Leathers tease out Schumpeter’s apparently positive appraisal of corporatism as an alternative to the metamorphoses of capitalism into socialism. In doing so, Cramer and Leathers provide evidence of Schumpeter’s affinities with Pope Pius XI’s landmark encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno (QA), and the Catholic corporatist tradition as a whole. Though Schumpeter never dedicated concentrated attention to the topic, two speeches delivered in the 1940s, including a 1945 address given in (still Catholic) Montreal, reveal Schumpeter’s belief in a corporatist possibility, albeit one predicated upon an ill-defined “moral reform.” As Cramer and Leathers point out, it’s not entirely clear that Schumpter was directly attached to Catholic thought or that his idea of moral reform mapped perfectly well onto the principles enumerated in QA. Even so, Schumpter’s thinking on corporatism reveals an awareness of the ethic component of economic reform, one lost in the minds of many Catholics who, for various reasons, seem to believe that capitalism is both inevitable and desirable.

I apologize for being “whimsical” again, but it was brought to my attention last evening by a couple of thoughtful Catholic gentlemen that Distributists are an angry lot, or at least they come off that way. This impression, it seems to me, is not entirely off base if one looks, perhaps selectively, at certain “representative voices” of the contemporary Distributist movement, though certainly Distributists hold no monopoly on anger these days.