Social Justice Isn't What You Think It Is

by Michael Novak

  By contrast, the pope approved of “a society of free work, of enterprise, and of participation.”26 He added: “Such a society is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state so as to guarantee that the basic needs of the whole of society are satisfied.”27 The words “appropriately controlled” exclude a pure version of laissez-faire, but are in line with the concept of the tripartite society envisaged in section 42. “Society” is distinguished from “state”; the moral and cultural institutions of civil society are distinguished from the political organs of the government. Both the society and the state check, balance, and regulate the economy. That the pope did not intend a socialist method of “control” is obvious from the preceding sentence, wherein the pope was crystal clear: “What is being proposed as an alternative is not the socialist system.”28

  In the same spirit, the pope repeated three times that “it is unacceptable to say that the defeat of so-called ‘real socialism’ leaves capitalism as the only model of economic organization.”29 But here as elsewhere his cure for unbridled capitalism was capitalism of a more balanced, well-ordered kind. For he immediately proposed as a remedy:

  It is necessary to break down the barriers and monopolies which leave so many countries on the margins of development and to provide all individuals and nations with the basic conditions which will enable them to share in development. This goal calls for programmed and responsible efforts on the part of the entire international community. Stronger nations must offer weaker ones opportunities for taking their place in international life, and the latter must learn how to use these opportunities by making the necessary efforts and sacrifices and by ensuring political and economic stability, the certainty of better prospects for the future, the improvement of workers’ skills and the training of competent business leaders who are conscious of their responsibilities.30

  Similarly, in section 42, after having introduced capitalism rightly understood, the pope attacked “a radical capitalistic ideology”:

  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.31

  By “radical capitalistic ideology,” the pope seemed to mean total reliance on market mechanisms and economic reasoning alone. In the United States, we usually call such a view “libertarianism”; it is the view of a small (but influential) minority. American libertarians do not “refuse to consider” the poverty of multitudes; they offer their own sustained analyses and practical remedies, and with some success. The economy of Chile has become one of the leading economies of Latin America, in part through the sustained advice of libertarians from “the Chicago school,” who were once much maligned.

  Ironically, nonetheless, the pope preferred to call the capitalism of which he approves the “business economy,” “market economy,” or simply “free economy.” This is probably because of European emotional resistance to the word “capitalism.” My own reasoning in preferring to speak of “democratic capitalism,” rather than the “market economy,” is to avoid sounding libertarian—that is, narrowly focused on the economic system alone. For in reality, in advanced societies the institutions of both the juridical order and the cultural order do impinge greatly on, modify, and “control” the economic system. Indeed, any religious leftist or traditionalist who still believes that the United States is an example of unrestrained capitalism has not inspected the whole thirty-foot-long shelf of volumes containing the Federal Register of legally binding commercial regulations. One might more plausibly argue that the economies of capitalist nations today are too heavily (and unwisely) regulated than too lightly.

  In the real world of fact, the business economy is restrained by law, custom, moral codes, and public opinion, as anyone can see who counts the socially imposed costs they are obliged to meet—and the number of employees they must hire (lawyers, affirmative-action officers, public-affairs officers, inspectors, community-relations specialists, pension-plan supervisors, health-plan specialists, child-care custodians, and so on). The term “democratic capitalism” is an attempt to capture these political and cultural restraints that limit any humane economic system. It is defined in a way broad enough to include political parties from the conservative to the social democratic, and systems as diverse as those of Sweden and the United States.

  In a similar vein, John Paul II noted three clear moral limits to the writ of the free market: (1) Many human needs are not met by the market but lie beyond it. (2) Some goods “cannot and must not be bought or sold.”32 (3) Whole groups of people are without the resources to enter the market and need nonmarket assistance. The market principle is a good one, but it is neither universal in its competence nor perfectly unconditioned. It is not an idol.

  In addition, the pope thought in terms of international solidarity. The whole world was his parish. The pope’s frequent travels to the Third World were meant to dramatize the primary human (and Christian) responsibility to attend to the needs of the poor everywhere. Economic interdependence and the communications revolution have brought the Catholic people (and indeed all people) closer together than ever before. This fact brought to John Paul II’s attention many moral and social imperatives surrounding and suffusing economic activities. For example: Care must be taken not to injure the environment.33 States and societies need to establish a framework favorable to creativity, full employment, a decent family wage, and social insurance for various contingencies. The common good of all should be served, not violated by a few. Individuals should be treated as ends, not as means, and their dignity should be respected.

  The tasks to be met by the good society are many. No system is as likely to achieve all these goods as a market system is; but in order to be counted as fully good, the market system must in fact achieve them. The pope explicitly commended the successes registered in these respects by mixed economies after World War II. But he also stressed how much still needs to be done. Finding good systems is a step forward, but after that comes the hard part.

  Toward a More Civil Debate

  Centesimus Annus is so balanced a document that, even while neoconservatives such as myself took it up with enthusiasm, many on the left also quickly embraced it. Quietly, some even pointed out that the left these days is in favor of markets, enterprise, economic growth, and personal initiative. The Latin American left and a few others reacted grudgingly, perhaps because of the intense emotional commitment of many to “liberation theology.”

  Even some on the North American Catholic left first responded to Centesimus Annus with shocked silence, followed less by an exposition of its themes than by an attack on neoconservatives for “hijacking” the encyclical. For example, a leading American Catholic progressive columnist, Father Richard P. McBrien, warned: “Neoconservatives who seem to exalt democratic capitalism as if it were the moral as well as the economic norm for the rest of the world cannot, on the basis of this encyclical, enlist the pope in their cause. Pope John Paul II is more cautious and more critical.”34 As evidence, McBrien cites section 42: “Is this [capitalism] the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World?” McBrien replies: “If I understand the neoconservatives’ position correctly, their answer would be, ‘obviously yes.’ For John Paul II, the answer is ‘obviously complex.’” This passage reveals that McBrien confuses neoconservatives with libertarians. In fact, it is neoconservatives who introduced the idea of political, moral, and cultural counterbalances to capitalism into Catholic social thought. That is why without hesitation or cavil they endorsed the pr
ecise words the pope used, as an echo of their own. Even the sentence: “The answer is complex.”

  The editors of the lay Catholic journal Commonweal also shared McBrien’s confusions. As a counterpoise to the encyclical’s “praise for the freedom and efficiency of market economies,” they quoted another line from the encyclical: “Even the decision to invest in one place rather than another is always a moral and cultural choice.” Then, they added in their own voice: “So much for the magic altruism of the Invisible Hand.”35 That is precisely the reason why some of us have long emphasized, with John Paul II, the legitimate roles of the political system and the moral-cultural system in supplementing and correcting the market economy: to go where the market alone cannot.

  In the not-so-centrist Center Focus, the newsletter of the radical Center of Concern, Father Jim Hug, S.J., fastened on a sentence from section 56: “Western countries, in turn, run the risk of seeing this collapse [of Eastern European socialism] as a one-sided victory of their own economic system, and thereby failing to make corrections in that system.”36 He also liked section 34: “There are many human needs which find no place in the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied, and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish.” (Such a sentiment, said Samuel Johnson, is the test of any good society.) Astutely, Father Hug concedes that “some of the language and emphasis of Centesimus Annus suggests that U.S. neoconservatives helped to shape its content.” He urges the left to outdo the neocons next time: “We in the progressive segment of the Church justice community need to become ‘wise as serpents’ to the ways of influencing Vatican teaching.”37

  Most assuredly, Centesimus Annus is no libertarian document—and that, to many of us, is its beauty. Quite as the Commonweal article asserted, “What the encyclical grants to market mechanisms it does not take away from its witness to injustice or defense of the poor.” It denounced conditions of “inhuman exploitation.”38 Quite truly, as Father Hug writes: “Centesimus Annus does not, then, anoint any existing system.” The pope saw a great many faults in the economic, political, and moral-cultural systems of even the most highly developed societies. His conclusion was as pointed as the obelisk in the center of Saint Peter’s Square. He made a nuanced, complex, but entirely forthright judgment about “which model ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World, which are searching for the path to economic and civil progress.” His considered judgment? The “business economy,” “market economy,” or simply “free economy.”39 But these too must be regulated by law and moral virtues. What could be plainer?

  I want to stress that Centesimus Annus gives encouragement to social democrats and others of the moderate left, as well as to persons who share my own proclivities and those whose preferences are further to my right. It is not a party document. Part of its brilliance lies in its discernment of several constellations in the vast night sky of social goods. John Paul II saw, as it were, the stars that those on the reasonable left are following, but also the stars that attract those on the reasonable right. Some reasonable persons, if they are also partisans, tend to glance past the stars that others follow, to focus with passion on their own. John Paul II had the largeness of mind to keep all the stars in view, and with remarkable equanimity and balance. Indeed, I had the happy experience in London in April 1992 of hearing a leftist church worker describe Centesimus Annus as virtually a Labour Party manifesto, in the conference room of an institute sometimes described as a Thatcherite think-tank, among conservatives delighted with the fair play that Centesimus Annus had shown toward enterprise and with the nobility it saw in civil society. The Tories liked its praise of creative subjectivity and its criticism of the welfare state (see section 48), while the Labourites were pleased to note the limits it set to market principles and its various appeals to state assistance.

  Nonetheless, it took nearly a whole year for a serious essay to be offered by the American Catholic left. Addressing “Christian Social Ethics After the Cold War,” David Hollenbach, S.J., a specialist in religious ethics and figure of the Catholic left, gingerly requested room in the conversation for a chastened socialist vision from Latin America and the liberal agenda of the American bishops. Here is how that plea poignantly concludes:

  Those who have been led to believe that Centesimus Annus endorses “really existing capitalism” should take a hard look at the text. I hope that this modest “note” will encourage both such careful reading and subsequent talking in the spirit of solidarity and commitment to the common good that permeates the encyclical.40

  Very nicely put. Hollenbach later quotes (but only in part) one of my favorite passages from Centesimus Annus, as follows:

  The fact is that many people, perhaps the majority today, do not have the means which would enable them to take their place in an effective and humanly dignified way within a productive system in which work is truly central. . . . Thus, if not actually exploited, they are to a great extent marginalized; economic development takes place over their heads.41

  But the two sentences that Hollenbach leaves out in his ellipsis are central to the pope’s argument, since they put the stress on human capital:

  They have no possibility of acquiring the basic knowledge which would enable them to express their creativity and develop their potential. They have no way of entering the network of knowledge and intercommunication which would enable them to see their qualities appreciated and utilized.42

  In other words, the communication of knowledge and the opening of markets and trade are among the best services that advanced societies can offer to the poor of the Third World.

  Further, John Paul II insisted that the poor of the Third World must be allowed to become more economically active. But this will require basic structural reform, including changes in the laws of those Third World nations (particularly in Latin America) that hold most enterprise by the common people to be illegal. Skipping this radical critique of precapitalist states, Hollenbach interprets the pope as merely restating the formulation used by the U.S. Catholic bishops, which seems to picture the people as passive: “Basic justice demands the establishment of minimum levels of participation in the life of the human community for all persons.”43 In the pope’s view, by contrast, governments must support the fundamental right of all persons to personal economic initiative. The pope stressed the creativity and activism of the poor, and criticized the barriers (often imposed by states) to the full exercise of their potential.

  In summarizing John Paul II’s proposed remedy for Third World ills, Hollenbach cites its promarket beginning: “The chief problem [for poor countries] is that of gaining fair access to the international market. . . .” But he leaves off its even more significant ending: “. . . based not on the unilateral principle of the exploitation of the natural resources of these countries but on the proper use of human resources.”44 Here again the pope focused on human knowledge and creativity. These need to be developed to their full potential. These need proper institutional support. These are the source of wealth. Repressing them is a very great evil. Most Third World states cruelly punish or neglect the human creativity of their citizens. More strikingly still, the two sentences the pope supplies that lead into this passage are quite stunning:

  Even in recent years it was thought that the poorest countries would develop by isolating themselves from the world market and by depending only on their own resources. Recent experience has shown that countries which did this have suffered stagnation and recession, while the countries which experienced development were those which succeeded in taking part in the general interrelated economic activities at the international level.45

  “In my judgment,” Hollenbach writes, “the principles [of Centesimus Annus] call for major changes both in the domestic arrangements presently in place in the United States as well as in the global marketplace.” On that point, Hollenbach and I read the encyclical the same way. On what those “major changes” should be,
however, Hollenbach and I are in different camps. The pope systematically recommends changes that open up and extend the benefits of market systems and encourage the domestic development of human resources. But Hollenbach has nowhere considered the concrete steps necessary to bring about “the proper use of human resources” in the Third World, particularly in the institutions that make personal economic creativity possible. One needs to ask him: How does one improve the skills of ordinary people, their knowledge, know-how, and capacities for enterprise (that is, human capital)? What institutional changes are necessary in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia—and south central Los Angeles?

  Recall Michael Ignatieff’s description of the moral flaw in the British Labour Party, as shown by the loss of four straight elections, including that of 1992: “Labour always tells people what it is going to do for them. It never encourages them to do it for themselves.”46 Far better is it to build up institutions of enterprise and creativity, the social supports for that personal exercise of creativity and self-determination of which human dignity consists.

  This was John Paul II’s point: A clear call for creative approaches to replace tired progressive remedies, while giving the latter due credit for what they did achieve. There was room in the pope’s house for many arguments among different tendencies and parties. But it was also important for those who disagreed to include each other in the discussion, and to conduct that discussion forthrightly, openly, and civilly.