: support for the market economy:
: ‘If by "capitalism" is meant an
: economic system which recognizes the
: fundamental and positive role of business,
: the market, private property and the
: resulting responsibility for the means of
: production, as well as free human creativity
: in the economic sector, then the answer is
: certainly in the affirmative, even though it
: would perhaps be more appropriate to speak
: of a "business economy",
: "market economy" or simply
: "free economy".’ [ Centesimus
: Annus #42, 1991].
Centesimus Annus # 42, un-cherry-picked:
42. Returning now to the initial question: can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of Communism, capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress?
The answer is obviously complex. If by "capitalism" is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a "business economy", "market economy" or simply "free economy". But if by "capitalism" is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.
The Marxist solution has failed, but the realities of marginalization and exploitation remain in the world, especially the Third World, as does the reality of human alienation, especially in the more advanced countries. Against these phenomena the Church strongly raises her voice. Vast multitudes are still living in conditions of great material and moral poverty. The collapse of the Communist system in so many countries certainly removes an obstacle to facing these problems in an appropriate and realistic way, but it is not enough to bring about their solution. Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which refuses even to consider these problems, in the a priori belief that any attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their solution to the free development of market forces.
Spot the difference
For a view on capitalism at the service of human freedom, see D L Schindler's "Ordering Love, Liberal Societies and the Memory of God."
Excerpts:
The liberal free market with its inner logic of commodification fosters an incapacity to pay attention — to God, to other persons, and indeed to the things of nature: fosters an incapacity truly to rest in anything for its own sake. The logic of the market reinforces an incapacity for interior stillness, or again dissipates the patient relations necessary for giving depth of meaning to the concrete time and space and place in which alone our humanity really exists: to what is here and now. But if we are not able to give meaning to this time and this place, we will lack the capacity for meaningful memory of who we are, and hence for a meaningful future.
To repeat what I’ve said elsewhere, the most basic problem of liberal society may be rightly described as a massive Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The liberal market economy is a significant, though scarcely the exclusive, agent of this disorder, which, again, is both a sign and an expression of liberalism’s relentless logic of instrumentalism. (It is this logic, for example, that informs at its root our distinctly liberal-technological form of “compassion,” which inclines us toward manufacturing babies to the design desired by parents, or for the purpose of killing them to harvest their genetic parts for easing the pain and suffering of others.)
But there remains a final and overarching question: What alternative can be proposed?
. . . .
What is crucial is that we recuperate the habits of patient consciousness and freedom proper to our being as creatures, as from and for God and others. Two examples will help illustrate what this implies.
First, we can try to recuperate a sense of our reality as children: of God, of our parents and the generations of parents before them, of the entire creaturely world that has preceded us and remains the anterior condition of our own being. To be a child is to be from-others, for-others. We teach children to say “please” and “thank you.” But, properly understood, this is not a matter merely of manners but of teaching them the truth of their being, which lies in the child’s reality as a gift calling forth gratitude. Recuperation of childlikeness in this sense is the first step in realizing that the relations that give us our deepest meaning are not those first contracted by us but given to us, in the very constitution of our being.
Second, we can try to live freedom in its truest sense as ordered from its inmost depths to saying forever, to vocation. God’s act of creation bears the structure of a covenant: he promises unfailing fidelity to his creation, inviting unfailing fidelity to God in return on the part of creatures. This implies saying forever, which normally takes the form of a vow, either in consecrated virginity or in marriage.
Saying forever enables an entry of the whole of our being into each of our actions and productions, a patient drawing of eternity into each moment and each place of our existence, affording each moment and place a literally infinite depth and fullness of meaning.
Realization of the alternative vision of economic life implied by my argument, in sum, does not require that we move from the city or from urban professions to, say, farming (though survival of local, family-owned farms is an urgent matter for the health of civilization). The point, rather, is that each of us is already involved in economic activity in some way: in the professions, as homemakers, as laborers and business executives; all of us in various ways as owners, producers, purchasers, and consumers of things. We all can begin living more profoundly our reality as from-and for God and others, pondering how, from inside our economic activity in all of these ever-present concrete ways, we can deepen this freedom as ordered to saying forever, in a way that draws eternity into every moment and place of our life and gives grateful and generous form to each of our activities. It is in this way alone, which is only apparently “small,” that we can truly transform economic freedom, private ownership of property, earning a profit, and realizing wealth as these are conceived and practiced in the dominant liberal market economy.
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