A Christian Economy: Something Else Entirely?

By Andrew Kidd | June 12, 2014

Capitalism and communism are but two points on a huge plane of potential economic systems that can exist in the world today. The problem with the notion that we are either one or the other narrows our viewpoints and restricts potential opportunities to bring the Gospel to life as the Holy Father asks.

In response to Pope Francis’s comments on economics of late, Cardinal Dolan’s defense of “virtuous capitalism” in the Wall Street Journal and Cardinal Rodriguez’s comments against libertarianism at the Catholic University of America are something else entirely. Cardinal Dolan’s article does not even fall in line with capitalism. Rodriguez’s musings cannot be construed as communist just because he attacks capitalism at its root of utility-maximizing agents.

Economics and its theories and models are meant to help us understand bits and pieces of the world around us, but they should not act as templates for how to order our lives. Pope Francis is calling the world to stop forcing itself into the mold of the political socio-economic system that is in place, or even to think we have to create something in which to abide. Rather, we are called to accept that everyone, rich and poor, is made in the image and likeliness of God in order to better understand how wealth (a gift of God’s graces and talents He bestows) can serve one’s family, one’s community, and oneself.

When a man starts a business, he should not say to himself, “I am a firm trying to maximize profits.” The end of that business is not the amassing of monetary wealth for the man and the marginal utility brought to the consumers of its goods. The man starts a business to serve a greater purpose. The goods and services of the business should lead others to more virtuous lives and the profits can be used to help those less fortunate. He has the free choice to help others and virtues (both cardinal and theological) draw him to do so. And yet, sometimes, some structures are in place that cannot be fixed by individuals alone. Solidarity calls societies to use their governments to find solutions to problems that individuals alone cannot solve. This is what Pope Francis means.

Heather Horn argues that Pope Francis’s economics falls somewhere else on the plane of economic systems, more in line with that of Karl Polanyi, a Hungarian economist and theorist who believed economic systems should serve human relationships, not the other way around. We should not be trying to attain the most through competition (pure capitalism) or be disincentivized from attaining anything because we own nothing (pure communism). Rather, we must see ourselves primarily in an interpersonal relationship with all people of society; this encourages us to see where the needs of society can be met by our individual talents, whether they be entrepreneurial efforts or service in public office or medical knowledge, etc.

Dolan and Rodriguez are speaking on the same terms with different words. We must recognize that Mammon should be servile to us, so that we can serve God and His people better.

Editor’s note: This article is part of a series on “virtuous capitalism” designed to explore the topic in 500 words or less. The entire series may be found here.

Dylan Pahman

“Solidarity calls societies to use their governments” — Are market and state our only options, or could solidarity lacking in the market be supplied by some other means? The implied (narrow) logic here seems to be: “If not the market, then the state.”
Dan Hugger

Polanyi’s argument isn’t so much that, “economic systems should serve human relationships”, but rather that economies are culturally embedded and conditioned. It has also been discredited by economic historians:

http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/karl-polanyis-battle-economic-history
Diego Fernando Ramos Flor

I don’t think the word “governments” refers exclusively to the nationwide level. But I agree Mr. Pahman, we should stress all the intermediate organizations that solidarity calls to take part on the worlds problems, from families, going through labor unions, cooperatives and national governments, to UN (by the way, and given the trend, I read somewhere that FIFA has more member-countries than UN; solidarity should get there too).
Eric Frith

Polanyi’s work hasn’t been discredited in any meaningful sense. Economic historians have contested his economic claims, and justifiably so. But his purpose in writing wasn’t to do economic history. It was to show the way that economic behavior was embedded in culturally-inflected moral and political behavior, and inseparable from them in terms of either action or analysis. In this latter sense he was very much ahead of his time, and remains very influential not only among historians ( of politics, economy, and culture alike), but also among economists (especially of the institutional and behavioral variety). In this sense he’s forced the young quasi-science of economics to go back and reexamine its classical roots, to see what was lost in the marginal revolution as well as what was gained.