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Capitalists Should Be Nervous: A Response to Fr. Robert Barron on Laudato Si’

Capitalists Should Be Nervous: A Response to Fr. Robert Barron on Laudato Si’

Last updated on: January 5, 2016 at 8:44 pm by Keith Michael Estrada

Capitalists Should Be Nervous: A Response to Fr. Robert Barron on Laudato Si’ 2016-01-05T20:44:25-07:00 Keith Michael Estrada

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It is common for supporters of capitalism to also be advocates of religious (hereafter including moral) and family life. Indeed, supporters of capitalism often invoke arguments related to religious and family life in their defense of their beloved economic system. I have not come across a consistent treatment of capitalism, religion, and family, grounded in the Catholic social tradition, that concludes with a positive embrace of all three.

Barron agrees that capitalism can be used for unjust ends. What is not considered by Barron is whether injustice, greed, and indifference-including the “-isms” of materialism, irreligiousism, individualism, and relativism-generate and establish the structures of capitalism while, this economic system, at the same time prefers and reinforces in society these very vicious “-isms” which function as capitalism’s life support.

Sirico and Novak (mentioned above) could be read as answering the question in the negative without providing any demonstration to support such a conclusion. This is particularly suspicious when the heritage of their economic thought rightfully disagrees with them.

Two pro-capitalist thinkers come to mind, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich August (F. A.) von Hayek.

Mises and Hayek, in very plain words, show that Barron’s missed question above should be answered in the affirmative. What is more devastating is that capitalism being generated and established by injustice, greed, indifference-including the “-isms” of materialism, irreligiousism, individualism, and relativism-while at the same time preferring and reinforcing in society these very vicious “-isms”, is seen by Mises and Hayek to be a good thing. We can easily find support for this reading of Mises and Hayek by turning to their works, “The Anti-capitalistic Mentality” (1956) and “The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism” (1988), respectively authored.

Mises and Hayek do a fine job of tying success with relativism, concern for others with defeat. Community life and solidarity are for the materially and technologically retarded, while advanced societies (if we can use the term inappropriately here) give free reign (with implied support, at a minimum, for social darwinism) to the acceleration of the growth of capital.

It is quite fascinating to consider that the approval of success based on worldly measure, consumerism, and consumer relativism, along with the rejection of simplicity, asceticism, spiritual pursuits, and solidarity appears to contradict the Gospel of Jesus Christ detailed in the social praxis and doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Somehow, Sirico and Novak, and Barron along with them, believe that they are able to consistently support capitalism, family and religious life at the same time. It would seem that capitalism cannot support family or religious life if we are to understand family and religious (or moral) life in a way compatible with the Catholic faith and natural law.

Family life has been hurt by US capitalism, here and abroad. One need only look towards the many ills people find as caused-in whole or in part-by the current situation begotten by the prevailing economic order: abortion, contraception use, preference-tailored laboratory babies, sterilization, divorce and a reluctance to get married, emigrating (which often pulls families apart), children without parents for most of the day due to the need for multiple incomes, and so much more.

I started the last paragraph by pointing at US capitalism’s effect, here and abroad. It is important to see that capitalism in the US cannot be isolated from other parts of the world in form or in effect. The latter is obvious. The former needs a clarification. Our economic system is not closed. It is not a national market. Since before the colonists rose up against the King, this land had been subject to international economics. To this day, our capitalism depends on, molds, and either elevates or destroys other capitalisms in the world. As if the aforementioned violence against life and family in the US wasn’t enough, people in Latin America, for example, also suffer these injustices alongside incredible poverty, violence, and abuse.

Some may suggest that Francis not only has little issue with US capitalism, but is staunchly against the “cronyism” masquerading as capitalism in the continent he calls home. This capitalism in Latin America exists, in large part, because of then-european economic models and now, primarily, US models. This parallels a Michael Novak’s discussion in his sixteenth chapter of “The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism” (1982). Novak rejects the notion poor of the south are suffering at the hand of a powerful north. Instead, Novak says, latin american catholic bishops’ condemnation of capitalism and the life given to it by the United States and other centers of economic power, should, instead, be directed inwards.

‘We are the victims,’ the bishops say. They accept no responsibility for three centuries of hostility to trade, commerce, and industry… After having opposed modern economics for centuries, they claim to be aggrieved because others, once equally poor, have succeeded as they have not… Before pronouncing moral condemnation, do they understand the laws which affect international currencies? Do they wish to enjoy the wealth of other systems without having first learned how wealth may be produced and without changing their economic teachings? The Peruvian aristocracy and military were for three centuries under their tutelage. Did the Peruvian bishops for three centuries teach them that the vocation of the layman lay in producing wealth, economic self-reliance, industry, and commerce, and in being creative stewards thereof.

This, and even some teachings on economics by US bishops, is nothing but an “intellectual failure”, Novak writes. Unfortunate for Novak, we’re left intellectually incomplete by the missing treatment of the history of Latin America.

The English translation of Enrique Dussel’s “A History of the Church in Latin America” was published the year before Novak published the text we cited, and ten years before the release of 1991 edition. Perhaps if Novak would have considered the history of the continent in question prior to casually dismissing the cry of the poor and pitting the blame on their shepherds’ intellectual failures, his conclusions may have been a tad bit different.

While focusing on the history of the church in latin america, because the social realities of human life overlap, Dussel also manages to outline the transformation of economic life in the new world. It is remarkable how easy it is to discover that the economic and physical violence attached to capital, and its pursuit of self-growth at the expense of others has been a reality in latin america since the sixteenth century. It is evident that corruption, domination, death, and commodification have been a part of latin american capitalism before the US system appeared on stage. Wealth and power, which were often hard to distinguish, maintained their position, and were always more socially immobile than mobile, through the centuries. This along with the patronato system enforced a peace wherein the messengers of the gospel of God’s liberating love for the poor was extinguished by death or exile. It is hard to wonder why the latin american church has had such “hostility to trade, commerce, and industry”, as Novak writes, when trade, commerce, and industry has perpetually resulted in the death of latin american peoples.

Secularization and the revolutions did very little to help the poor of latin america. The system of exploitation, while no longer able to feed off of Spain, offered the blood of natives to an eager, new nation, the United States. From revolutions to military coups, the US system has respected the established tradition of accelerating the growth of capital for mostly private gain, utilizing military force through supported dictators in the region, with a cost of countless miserable lives.

I digress.

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