More on Poverty and Economics
This made
me recognize that Rerum Novarum,
whose critique of the free market and capitalism was reiterated by Paul VI in Quatressigmo Annum and John Paul II’s Centissium Annum (both titles refer to
the original and were issued on the anniversary of Leo’s encyclical) was in
actuality a call to the laity, amplified by the Second Vatican Council, to
start thinking about this area again and try to bring economic activity under
the leadership of the Gospel again. Each time a pope spoke about economics, he
essentially would end by saying, “I’m only a member of the clergy: you lay
people have to figure this out.”
It was the
new convert Chesterton who took up the gauntlet thrown down by Leo XIII, and
together with Hilaire Belloc sketched out a new economic construct they
christened distributism. Distributism is
a half-constructed tantalizing philosophy, considered unworkable by the learned
economist and the seasoned businessman, sniffed at by the socialist as too trusting
of evil property, snickered at by the libertarian as the product of papal
interference. Yet those who have tried it and made it work on the small scale
through cooperatives and independent business speak of it with affection, and
try to add to the drawing, to render and shade its outlines a bit more. Often
distributism is only a matter for thinkers and activists: it was another
mother, a businesswoman, who suggested to me that the proper place to work on
developing the philosophy that may or may not be someday still called
distributism is the home. Teach your children to consider economic activity
first in the light of their own soul, then the soul of their relatives and
families, and scale outward accordingly as you go. This is the challenge I have
gladly taken up.
Furthermore,
Brad Gregory’s work helped me see a surprising connection: according to him,
Catholic economic theory was marooned in the sixteenth century with the advent
of the Reformation, when society was still mostly agrarian. When Chesterton and
Belloc and their fellow thinkers began to tackle economics, they began
instinctively to tackle it by discussing farms and small business and craftsmen
and advocating that large landowners “distribute” productive land back to the
small farmer and small business owner in order to combat the monopoly-creating
tendencies in capitalism. Given that the Industrial Revolution had passed, and
the Information Age was just around the corner, critics of distributism jeered
proponents as being … marooned in the agrarian economy of the sixteenth
century. This helped me see that, Ent-like and disregarding of centuries, the
Catholic Church was merely picking up where She had left off. Distributism was not an idealist yearning
for an earlier age: it was a continuity.
The main
quibble with distributism (which I agree needs a new name), is the question,
“Who would implement it? What government or market oligarchy would have the
power to push it through?” The answer to
the question, “Who will implement this?” is, I now realize, “You and I.”
For
certainly, if enough people wanted to limit their incomes to only what they
could live upon, that would indeed change the market. If enough people care for
the destitute out of service of Christ, markets and even government programs
would align to their wishes. For as we are told, the market is only that:
wishes. If we were to all wish together, who knows what might happen? We may create a system of checks and balances
that allows for growth and goodness and checks tyranny and selfishness. But it
all depends on our conversion of heart.
Have we
indeed delegated away too much? Having created the market economy, have we
delegated away the very sense of our own free will in this regard? How much more peril now faces us with the
tyranny of technology, which similarly jeers at our free will, intimating that
it is a behemoth too great to be tamed by the hand of any man?
We need to
regain an awareness of the power of God to change the world with all the faith
of a David. We must live as though the Gospel were true, as if Christ mattered.
We must be able to do business this way, considering Him as the master off on a
journey who will require an account of all our doings when He returns. One
thing I am convinced of is that culture recovery cannot happen without an
embrace of poverty. It is the grounded virtue, the one that must be run into
the ground to stabilize the entire circuit of virtue. Why?
It is
usually overlooked how vital weakness is to Christianity, particularly when it
comes to economics. Human nature tends to value strength. Catholicism, as in
all things, affirms this natural impulse but also challenges it. Christ did not
come as the Superman but as a servant. He came not as all powerful but as a
dependent fetus, dependent upon a human being for His nourishment and care. The
casting down of princes from thrones prophesied in our Lady’s Magnificat has
been accomplished on the archetypal as well as the spiritual level by the
incarnation. We will, none of us, ever be the same again.
Poverty
should be the mark of the follower of Christ and reverence for the poor because
He chose poverty. How this will work in the age of the laity will need more
minds and decisions than mine, yet it is crucial.
So, what
must we do? Well, we must act as
though we have morals, though the rules of the game dictate otherwise, because
souls are at stake: our souls. The gladiator games were not halted because some
gladiators were baptized Christians who slew their foes just as competently, or
with greater dispatch than any others. It stopped by gladiators becoming
Christian and refusing to play by the rules, and getting killed for their
obstinacy, and spectators realizing that it wasn’t so fun to watch this any
longer. It was too human.
It must be
possible to live the Gospel. That is what makes me think that there must be a
way to remake our economic system so that the Gospel may enter in to it. It
must be possible to live the Gospel, as sinful and fallen as we are. If even a
remnant can live out the calling of Lady Poverty, would that be enough to right
the balance? We cannot expect that all will follow Christ, nor that all who do
will embrace Lady Poverty. But even if a tenth of a tenth do it, that may be
enough.
I believe
only two percent of the population needs to be doing something before it
becomes common in society. A good distillation of culture is small groups may
be all we need. When a tiny sliver are doing it well with intensity, a larger
among of people may be doing it badly but at least attempting, and beyond that
lie many who may never do it but who will accept the principle of the thing,
and others who do it without knowing why it needs to be done, but doing it for
other motives. And so, a society is changed.
So, if
enough of us sought after Lady Poverty, that might be enough.
Although
this recommendation might seem revolutionary and extreme, it is a true
revolution – a turning of the wheel – in the sense of returning to the past,
returning to the medieval realization that the accumulation of wealth could be
catastrophic for the soul, both your soul and the soul of others. This is one
part of cultural recovery which is an idea so old that it looks new, but that
with reflection, anyone can see is at least as new as St. Francis. In reality,
it is as old as the Gospels. It is the part of the Gospels that our age has
never gotten quite right or rightly understood. I can begin to try to get it
right.
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