Exceptional Ignorance... of Distributism.

It was but only a short time ago that I stumbled upon a Catholic blog that happened to be discussing the most recent papal encyclical. Most all the gang was there. Libertarians! Neocons! Distributists! Oh, my! Each and every one of them making their claims and placing their stakes in the war-torn wastelands of public discourse typically surrounding the discussion of Catholic Social Teaching. Very little productivity, but plenty of huff-puffery.

For most of the readers here, nothing I have described is all that peculiar. In fact, it is relatively run-of-the-mill. What made this particular battle significant, though, was a question asked by very popular Catholic who presides over a rather popular organization that published a not-so popular book written by an undeservingly popular Catholic attempting to put a halt to the ever-increasing popularity of distributism. Then again, it wasn't so much the question as it was the fact that it was asked by this particular fellow, and with what he insists to be the most sincere of motives.

The question, in sum, was how distributists believe their view of the State and the political economy differs from that advocated by adherents to National Socialism.

Let's ignore for a moment that this question has been answered by a myriad of distributist thinkers much brighter than me. Let's also brush aside the fact that a handful of these answers are readily accessible to anyone willing to take a moment utilizing a search engine. Instead, let us focus our attention on the fact that this man, who has dedicated so much time, effort, and money into convincing Catholics (and non-Catholics) to move "beyond distributism" lacks what could in all fairness be consider a functional literacy of distributism.

To deem this as merely unfortunate would be an understatement. What it does for us, though, is reveal the heart and soul of what may be the biggest problem distributists have yet to overcome: general ignorance. Think for a moment. If this particular theologian/economist is ignorant of what differentiates distributists from fascists and socialists, then where does that leave the mass of people unfamiliar with the ins-and-outs of all things CST? Not fearing redundancy, to deem this as merely unfortunate would be an understatement.

So what may be done? Plenty. In fact, plenty is already being done. Distributism has made great strides in recent years. It has found itself being discussed on blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, talk radio, podcasts, as well as in books, magazines and newspapers. Distributist apologists have also found a place at the table of public debate along with the socialists and neoconservatives who have for so long dominated the CST scene. Furthermore, for all the chatter pertaining to the so-called "non-relevance" of distributism, enemies of the school of thought have dedicated decent sums of time and money combating it. They may be of the type that spends gobs of energy beating dead horses, but I'm not of the type that would believe such things.

Having said this leads me to conclude that it's not so much the lack of material that has led to this general ignorance (though an ever-increasing amount of material wouldn't hurt) as it is the fact that most distributists are distributists in the abstract. In other words, we talk the talk, but very few walk the walk.

None of this is meant to be demeaning, as I am the guiltiest of the guilty on this count. Instead, this is meant to be a simple reminder of a simple maxim: actions speak louder than words.

Take the Amish for example. I would bet that most of us have read very little about the Amish. Few delve into studies concerning their history, theology, philosophy, and traditions. But most of us are well aware of their being thoroughly agrarian and, giving Arthur Penty a run for his money, extraordinarily skeptical of machinery. Most of us have seen their clothing, their buggies, their working on farms or on houses, and many of us may even have some of their woodwork in our homes. The point here, though, is that while we may be largely ignorant of the Amish life, our seeing them put their beliefs into practice (and in such an open and consistent manner) gives us a decent idea as to who they are, where they are, what they believe, and why they do what they do. Better yet, for those who have bought food from their stands or furniture from their shops, we see the standard of excellence they strive to achieve.

In final analysis, it would do us well to have more than Madragon to talk about. How wonderful would it be to talk of the achievements and lifestyle of distributists and Catholic Worker communities nationwide? More importantly, what impact would seeing such achievements and communities have on the public? At bare minimum, it may provide an image that would give them some degree of functional literacy regarding distributism. Then maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't have so many well-studied men asking such elementary questions concerning who we are and what we believe. That, in and of itself, may be worth the effort.

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Distributism, the State...

... and a long awaited for announcement!

... and a long awaited for opportunity!

Anarchism is a fools errand. It is all too unfortunate, then, that there happen to be so many fools running errands. One may understand (albeit with a smirk) how the unbeliever or Protestant could believe in a stateless society. But I find it rather strange when running across distributists who would envision a stateless society, or even the "night watchman" notion reminiscent to the likes of Utopians who apparently can't distinguish between liberty and license. How a distributist, advocating a political economy that best reflects the entirety of Catholic Social Teaching, can advocate such notion of the central government is truly remarkable. So remarkable, in fact, that I believe it to be an impossibility, or at least a most horrific inconsistency.

As I stated earlier, the anti-State mentality may very well fit into the non-Christian or even Protestant scheme of things. In fact, it would be quite natural for them to maintain such a position concerning the State. I say as much because it would be in no way inconsistent with their concepts of autonomy, be it radical individualism or ecclesiological relativism. 

Take the Protestant. He maintains both the notion of radical individualism (we see this most clearly in regards to hermeneutics) and ecclesiological autonomy. Left to himself and contractual religious bodies that have no hermeneutical authority or ecclesiastical jurisdiction over him without his consent, he is an island of sorts. The religious assembly he chooses to attend holds very little sway over his faith and practice, unless he willingly gives is assent. Otherwise, to the religious assembly next door we go! One sect's heresy is another sect's orthodoxy, and the origin of ecclesial (as well as civil) authority comes from the individual's personal consent. 

In much the same way, Distributists who ignore the Church's teaching concerning the origin of civil authority and proper role and functions of the State are playing pick-and-choose with the Magisterium. These folks have assumed the kind of autonomy that causes them to believe that they have the right to overlook or under-emphasize portions of Catholic Social Teaching that either bumps heads with Chesterbelloc and Co. or goes beyond select portions of encyclicals that cover details already dealt with, explicitly or implicitly, in Rerum Novarum. I mean, it is a given that distributists have a special love for the Magna Carta of Catholic Social Teaching. But what about Diuturnum, Graves de Communi Re, Immortale Dei, or even Sapientiae Christianae? Well, unfortunately, these are tough sells. 

Why not stick with Diuturnum, as this was the encyclical first mentioned in the above list. Not so ironically it deals with the origin of civil power. Pope Leo XIII lays out here a number of functions the state is responsible for, or at least has a hand in. Among these are public safety (1); to reign, to rule, and to decree justice (9); to govern the wills of individuals so as to make one will out of many and to impel them rightly and orderly to the common good (11); and to study the welfare of the people (26). To say that this description of the state, as taken from bits and pieces of Diuturnum, is a far cry from the kind of stateless society advocated by certain distributists would be as daring as declaring that Thomas Woods doesn't believe the Church has jurisdiction or competence in the realm of economics.

One could very well delve into other encyclicals which lay out still more functions and responsibilities of the state, but the list is rather extensive. This is especially true once we get to Blessed Pope John XXIII. A cursory glance of Mater et Magistra or Pacem in Terris would leave the reader curious as to whether the Church has more in common with culturally conservative, populist democrats than their culturally conservative republican counterparts. 

When push comes to shove, distributist are not bound in time to the writings of the early distributists or confined to the text of Rerum Novarum. It is their duty, as faithful Catholics wishing to embrace and live out the entirety of Catholic Social Teaching, to toss aside such anti-Catholic concepts as a stateless society or "night watchman" state, refusing to run errands for the fools any longer.

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Distributism in the Populist Moment

Life is full of pleasant things, regularly coming at times when they are least expected. Today just so happened to be one of those days. As I went out to check the mail, I noticed that my edition of The Week magazine had arrived. And there, on the cover, was a splendid picture of people rioting around the idol (i.e. the statue of the bull) in front of the New York Stock Exchange. The people with their fists in the air, shouting at the symbol of swinishness, pulling it down from its pedestal in a way reminiscent of the famous topple of Saddam’s statue, and the words “Populist Uprising” gracing the bottom of the page. The image beautifully captured the sentiment, and the words accurately reflected the image. It was spectacular in the truest sense of the word

Unfortunately, as with many articles of this nature, my joy was quickly and significantly diminished. The story was on page 18 in the Talking Points section and it only consumed the larger part of the upper-half of the page. That aside, the article was concerning to the $500,000 salary cap Obama has issued for all bank CEOs to receive per-annum. While I should have paid more attention to the cover of the magazine (which has the words “the new, $500,000 limit on CEO salaries” as the tag line), I figured that the story would deal with… well, the overall uprising of populism.

It was the earlier portion of January, 2008, when I began speaking more about populism, and in particular what I saw as the rise of populism in America. The populism I predicted was relatively moderate. I insisted that it would be a hodgepodge of ideas derived from what is typically referred to as the “right” and the “left.” People would be generally conservative on abortion, homosexual marriage, and a host of other “culture war” issues. On the other hand, people would still support public schooling. Very few would want to rid the system of Medicaid. Unemployment and welfare benefits would remain. They’d stand by the notion of Social Security. If trends continue to go in the direction they appear to be going, people maybe even endorse some form of universal health care. Furthermore, I believed that we would see an outcry against Wall Street, CEO salaries, and mega-monsters like Wal-Mart.

I still stand by my predictions, and I believe most of the indicators are pointing in that direction. Sadly, I don’t see this rising tide lasting too long before it breaches.

People are angry, this much is sure. But they either don’t really know why they are angry or they are taking it out on the wrong things. A casual conversation with Johnny Q. Public will get you an earful of emotionally charged tirades concerning the salaries of CEOs, how Scooter’s Hardware is going out of business because they can’t compete with Wal-Mart, and how the average Joe just can’t make the kind of living he used to with a hard day’s work. In all likelihood, you’ll even hear them talk about the hucksters and swindlers in Washington and Wall Street.

None of this is necessarily problematic. What is problematic is how this tirade is followed up with the same old song and dance that got us here in the first place. The very same person will go to the grave defending state capitalism, quoting “the ole Gipper” by saying “Government is the problem.” This person may be on their way in (or even out!) of Wal-Mart, while Scooter’s is just one mile up the road. He’ll stand by the wage-slave concept, decrying a Living, Family, Just Wage or vocational organizations as socialism. And he’ll probably tell you (depending on how the next few years go) that all we need to do is get more “conservative” Republicans like Sarah Palin in office to begin “taking care of business.”

If you haven’t been formally introduced to this person, or the mass of individuals he happens to represent, you haven’t been in the US very long. Or maybe you just haven’t been paying attention. At any rate, intellectual schizophrenia is the way of the day, and apathy runs thick through Main Street.

This isn’t to deny the ray of light peaking through the clouds. Not at all! It is simply admitting that, as of yet, it is little more than a sunbeam piercing through the clouds of convention tomfoolery. It’s a mere acknowledgment that the masses aren’t as angry with the socio-political apparatus as they are with who may be in control at the time. It’s a blame game, with all their bets being on top-down measures to make all the difference.

Yet even here it is not entirely doom and gloom. This underlying sentiment is real, it is emotional, and it is angry. What is required is good old distributist education. While a large portion of the populace may be experiencing frustration with the status quo, they need to realize that the answer is not found in merely tweaking the status quo, or even crossing their fingers in hope that those on Capitol Hill who just so happened to micromanage the status quo will make all the difference.

Distributists, then, are living in a time of great opportunity. People are dissatisfied, and they are willing to listen to “new” ideas. Better yet, most do not realizing that those “new” ideas are far from being “new.” Capitalists have had their chance. Socialists have had their chance. Now it is time for distributists to have their day in the sunbeam.

How long this uprising lasts is unknown. But it would be foolish not to take advantage of a brilliant opportunity to direct this populist moment towards a more humane political economy.

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Distributism is Dying...

... or so I've been told.

It wasn't but four years ago that I stumbled upon Distributist Perspectives Vol. 1. It was a Christmas gift from my parents. Along with it came two other books. The first was "I'll Take My Stand" by the Twelve Southerners. The second was "Who Owns America?" edited by Agar and Tate. Unbeknownst to me, the writers and content of both "I'll Take My Stand" and "Who Owns America" were in some way or another linked to those persons and ideas contained in Distributist Perspectives Vol. 1. Chalk it up as a strike of providence. 

Upon reading these books, it didn't take me long to see the similarities. All three were traditionalist, skeptical of all things big, and agrarian to the core. Furthermore, the writers all appeared to see a connection between the political economy and culture. They talked of art, literature, and architecture. In brief, there was a consensus amongst the contributors that the debates surrounding the political economy were not merely academic. Rather, these debates hit to the very center of who we are as individuals, as a city, and as a nation.

Some may insist that the ideas advanced within these books fall within the losing column of history. I would beg to differ, though only with the luxury of hindsight. While one should readily admit that there was relatively little progress made during the lifetimes of these particular men, it would be foolish to confine the win and lose columns of history to the lifespan of a group of writers. 

At any rate, there are those who point to the burgeoning of Big Business, Wall Street, and the service economy as proof that the American people have no interest in the ideas typically associated with distributism. Some may even note the fact that a large portion of Americans claim to love Capitalism, while very few have ever heard the word distributism, and even less of its substance. These facts, at least for the anti-distributist, serve as evidence that distributism is on its deathbed waiting to be put out of its misery. Or, if they are generous enough to grant that there will always be a remnant of those willing to identify themselves as distributists, they will ridicule the school of thought as a fringe movement made up of discontents and those overly infatuated with all things nostalgic. 

But are these so-called evidences proof, as the antagonist would insist, that distributism is dying? As I said earlier, I would answer this in the negative. For these so-called evidences can be seen and interpreted in many other ways. 

Take for instance Big Business. It certainly appears to be thriving. On the other hand, even giants like Wal-Mart are having to rally the troops in hope of figuring out ways to bypass what has recently become a storm of opposition.  One need only watch the documentary "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" to see just how strong, and coordinated, the opposition has become. 

But this, in and of itself, does not answer the question as to why so many people continue to frequent these behemoths. Truth be told, the answers are as simple as they are complex. We know that there many shoppers that have been pigeonholed into believing that they cannot afford to shop anywhere else. There are others who could shop elsewhere, and who decry the loss of small business, but who would prefer watching the local hardware dealer go out of business than to pay what could only be described as a reasonable price for goods  and services of better quality. Sadly, there are also those who simply don't care what happens to their neighbor, so long as they save a few pennies here and there. Of course, they shun from their conscience all guilt for having fed companies that rely for their existence on what amounts to nothing less than slave labor in foreign countries. For these particular shoppers, it is a matter of "out of sight, out of mind." To make matters worse is that the vast majority of these people don't realize that their low prices are also tied to government subsibies. These come from local, state, and federal dollars, and they come in frequency and figures that would be the envy of any local business owner. So while the answer to this question may seem easy to the antagonist, the truth of the matter is that the issue is much more complicated than it may first appear.

Wall Street is an entirely different story. The average Johnny Q and Sally Sue have little care for what goes on there. As The Nation pointed out so accurately in 2002, people don't typically go to work in order to purchase stocks. Where the common folk of yesteryear may have been somewhat indifferent to Wall Street, this can no longer be said. Instead, indifference has turned into outrage. Faulty prices, rabid speculation, credit swaps, and the stock market's subtle, but now apparent, interconnectivity with even those who know little about the numbers and letters flashing across the bottom of the television screen, has resulted in a collective man-hunt, with Wall Street as its target. Add to the flames the "revelation" concerning the government's obvious preference for the well-being of Wall Street insiders over against the common good, and you have a sure recipe for populist outcry. 

People are outraged. This much is certain. But what is more telling than their outrage is their not wishing to better familiarize themselves with the beast. Rather, many prefer to see it go the way of the dinosaur, or at least to be treated like a plague that needs isolation and strict supervision. Regardless of how the hucksters on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue wish to spin this, the American people have quickly grown a healthy distaste (and distrust) for Capitalism's casino and the gamblers who frequent its halls.

As for capitalism, while the word is commonplace amongst the citizenry, very few know what it really entails. Most tend to boil it down to a free market where people can compete with others and earn money along the way. This is typically dovetailed with the notion that less government intervention is good. 

While all this sounds well and good, it fails to take into account the fact that, as Chesterton put it, one of capitalism's greatest inadequacies is that it creates too few capitalists.  To add insult to injury, the average citizens knows as little about little of the current status of wealth in the United States as they do about the meaning of capitalism. I'm willing to bet the farm that were the citizenry to be fully aware of the figures concerning the distribution of wealth and land in this so-called capitalist society, they would, unlike Chesterton, be astounded. 

Let's take the 2006 Federal Reserve, Department of Treasury survey as a practical example. We begin with $100. Then we add 100 people. Now,  a perfectly equal distribution of wealth (which is not the goal of distributism) would be $1 per person. As it stands right now, the 50 individuals at the bottom of the stack have $0.05. Collectively, they make up $2.50, leaving $97.50 to be divided between the remaining 50. The next 40 have $0.70 of wealth, or $28 collectively. The next nine have $4 of wealth, or $36 collectively. Now this leaves one person remaining. This single individual would, per $100 mentioned earlier, have in his or her sole possession $33.50. 

To say that this is horrifying would be to trivialize the meaning of horror.

One may rest assured that when these figures come to light, as they are with the passing of every day, people will begin to see the forest for the trees. They'll begin to connect the dots, finding a line between Big Business, Wall Street, and what parades around as capitalism. It is here, at this moment and at this time that distributists can smile and wink at the antagonist, knowing full well that the confidence of the naysayer was built on what was little more than a phantasm waiting for the right moment to disappear.

Distributism isn't dead. It isn't even dying. No, distributism is coming to light. It is, as John Medaille would say, "the wave of the future."

The road is destined to be hard, as money and power never fail to put up a good fight. But those rumbling underfoot, fueled by ideas penned by those of old, may be too much for even the giants of today to withstand. In the end, being perceived as finding a home in history's losing column may have turned out to be a boon rather than a bust. 

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Can Mises be Baptized?

There is no doubt that the Catholic Church supports the idea of a just social order, and has expounded on that order in the great Social Encyclicals. However, and despite more than 100 years of constant Papal teaching on this subject, the average Catholic—indeed, the average Bishop—is confused about it meaning or even unaware of its existence. Most preaching concerns personal sin without ever considering the social implications or connecting sin to a violation of a just social order. And yet, this is strange, since what makes a sin sinful is that it violates what the right order between a person and his neighbor and his God. Without a violation of this order, a thing cannot be sinful. This is expressed negatively in the Ten Commandments (“Thou shalt not kill, steal, covet, etc.”) and positively in the Sermon on the Mount (“do good to those who harm you...” etc.) However, rather than stress the social damage that sin causes, preaching most commonly connects it only with our ultimate destiny to heaven or hell. And while this is legitimate in itself, it strips Catholic teaching of its more immediate values.

Church teaching does not, by itself, dictate a particular social or economic system; it only lays down the criteria by which any social or economic system is to be judged. It is up to the laity to devise systems in their own social and historical context that meet with the criteria. Most often, this task is refused. It is not that Catholics are not heavily involved in the political and social life of the nation. But often that involvement is disconnected with their religious beliefs and with Church teaching. Many such examples can be found on the left, but the greatest example can be found on the right, specifically the attempt to baptize the essentially pagan economics of Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian School.

Much of the Catholic intelligentsia has surrendered to this doctrine. The Austrian Catholic right boasts names like Michael Novak, George Weigel, Thomas Woods, Murry Rothbard, to name but a few. Further, these scholars are supported by well-funded institutes such as the Acton Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Institute, the Liberty Foundation, and a host of others. Money flows like water for these people, usually corporate money, water largely used in an attempt to baptize Mises. Still, there is one scholar who was absolute in his opposition to such a notion, who declared, over and over again, the fundamental opposition between the Austrian School and any genuine understanding of Christianity.

That scholar was Ludwig von Mises.

Mises recognized that Austrian order and Catholic order would always be at odds. “A living Christianity,” said Mises, “cannot exist side by side with, and within, Capitalism” (Quoted in Jorg Guido Hulmann, Mises, the Last Knight of Liberalism, p. 982). Later in his career, Mises would allow that Christianity could exist within capitalism, but only if the Christians kept their opinions to themselves, only if they were marginalized and kept apart from the political and economic orders. As Murry Rothbard admits, Mises considered himself a “man of 1789, an heir of the Enlightenment, (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard169.html),” that is, a man of the French Revolution. And the great advantage of the French Revolution was that it destroyed the older social order in general and the social authority of the Church in particular. As Mises himself put it, “for us and for humanity there is only one salvation: return to the rationalistic liberalism of the ideas of 1789.”

Mises's antipathy towards Christianity begins with his disdain for its founder.

[Jesus] rejects everything that exists without offering anything to replace it. He arrives at dissolving all existing social ties…. The motive force behind the purity and power of this complete negation is ecstatic inspiration and enthusiastic hope of a new world. Hence his passionate attack upon everything that exists. Everything may be destroyed because God in His omnipotence will rebuild the future order…. The clearest modern parallel to the attitude of complete negation of primitive Christianity is Bolshevism. (Socialism, p. 413)

Another thing about Jesus that rankles Mises is his attitude towards the Rich:

Jesus's words are full of resentment against the rich, and the Apostles are no meeker in this respect. The Rich Man is condemned because he is rich, the Beggar praised because he is poor…. In God's Kingdom the poor shall be rich, but the rich shall be made to suffer. Later revisers have tried to soften the words of Christ against the rich … but there is quite enough left to support those who incite the world to hatred of the rich, revenge, murder and arson…. This is a case in which the Redeemer's words bore evil seed. More harm has been done, and more blood shed, on account of them than by the persecution of heretics and the burning of witches. They have always rendered the Church defenceless against all movements which aim at destroying human society. The church as an organization has certainly always stood on the side of those who tried to ward off communistic attack. But it … was continually disarmed by the words: “Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the Kingdom of God.” (Socialism, p. 420)

Mises rejects Christian love as the basis of social order, and reduces it to self-interest and the fear of violence:

Social cooperation has nothing to do with personal love or with a general commandment to love one another… [People] cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiment but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society…and to substitute peaceful collaboration to enmity and conflict. (Human Action, p. 168-9)

Now, one may agree or disagree with Mises in all of this, but in either case it simply cannot be reconciled with Catholic Social Teaching. It is not even, as Murray Rothbard notes, conservative in any possible meaning of that term. It is, rather, the quintessence of Enlightenment Liberalism, the French Revolution continued in our day.

The surrender to the Enlightenment among Catholic intellectuals on the right is more or less complete. For example, Michael Novak, a nominal Catholic, notes that an attempt “to try to run an economy by the highest Christian principles is certain to destroy both the economy and the reputation of Christianity” (The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, p. 70). For Novak, there is no sacred canopy that covers society, but only an “empty altar” in which each man places the idols of his own choosing. Religion in this case is not really the repository of truth, but merely a consumer product giving the purchasers whatever satisfactions they desire; theology gets replaced by marketing. This narrowing of the sacred, Novak tells us, requires “not only a new theology but a new type of religion” (Novak, p. 69). Not that Christianity would be done away with; it would be allowed to modify itself to conform to the new ideology:

Yet if Jewish and Christian conceptions of human life are sound, and if they fit the new social order of pluralism, the widespread nostalgia for a traditional form of social order may be resisted…For the full exercise of their humanity, being both finite and sinful, free persons require pluralist institutions (Novak, p. 69-70).

For this “new theology” and “new religion,” Novak finds it necessary to drain Christian dogmas of their original meaning and convert them into mere supports for corporate capitalism. The Trinity, for example, is only a “symbol,” since “no one has ever seen God” (Novak, p. 337). The point of this symbolic Trinity is to teach us about pluralism. The Incarnation is the sign of religious futility: it is no longer the salvific act of a loving God but the ultimate demonstration of the futility of good intentions.

The point of the Incarnation is to respect the world as it is, to acknowledge its limits… and to disbelieve any promises that the world is now or ever will be transformed into the City of God. If Jesus could not effect that, how shall we? ...The world is not going to become—ever—a kingdom of justice and love (Novak, p. 341).

I might point out to Mr. Novak that Jesus isn't dead yet, or rather, he isn't dead again, despite the neoconservative attempts to kill him off. He lives on in his Eucharist and in His Church, but the life of His Church waxes and wanes with the faith of His followers, and with their ability to transform the gospel from the printed page to the social order. But this is not likely to happen so long as the Austrian neoconservatives have such sway in Catholic intellectual circles. What is needed is a revolt of the masses in favor of the Mass, and for making the Eucharistic vision a part of social, economic, and political life. What is needed is what Benedict XVI calls Eucharistic consistency. For this we have a model. Not indeed a modern model, but an effective one nevertheless. She was not an intellectual; indeed she was a mere peasant girl. But she was given, in a single instance, a vision of the full meaning of the Incarnation and its social implications. She gave full answer to the neoconservatives, to both Mises and Marx. Her words were:

My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

For he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

Behold! From this day all generations will call me blessed; The almighty has done great things for me and holy is his name.

He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things while the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.

^

On their best days, neither Mises nor Marx wrote anything this good. All the money in corporate capitalism cannot buy a single drop of holy water with which to baptize Ludwig von Mises, and Mises would be the first to agree. The attempt to do so has made the Catholic politics of the right incoherent and therefore rendered it impotent; at best account, it is a mere appendage to corporate capitalism.

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The Cult of Entrepreneurship

A few days ago, I was asked to serve on a panel discussion at the University of Dallas concerning a film produced by The Acton Institute. The title of the film was The Call of the Entrepreneur, and its central question is, "Is the entrepreneur virtuous or vicious?" Like most of the products of The Acton Institute, it was media slick and intellectually shallow. Here are the comments I gave to the group:

One reason that this film is important to me is that the social justice class which I teach emphasizes the role of the entrepreneur in shaping the business world, and hence the moral and economic universe in which we live. The book we use, which I had the honor to write, is called The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace. It's point is that business, in my view, is not merely a job, but a vocation, a calling to change the world, that is, to apply our moral imagination to the problems of the world. The proper understanding of entrepreneurship is crucial, in my opinion, to the proper understanding of the connection between human development and economics. And since entrepreneurship is so crucial, it is crucial to get it right. When we have an incorrect or incomplete understanding, we end up distorting the meaning of entrepreneurship; we end up limiting it by converting it from a call to a cult, one limited to the few, rather than extended to the many, as it should be. All are called to invest their talents, and not to hide them. And indeed, all people want to do so, or nearly all. It is usually cultural and institutional bars to creativity that limit us, not something lacking in the human person, or limited to only a few. For the person is, or so we believe, the very image of God, the creator of all, the first worker, and the first to earn his day of rest.

The strengths of this movie, aside from its excellent production values, are two. The first is the engaging personal stories, especially of Jimmy Lai and the Compost King. Entrepreneurship is essentially a narrative, a story whose end cannot be known in advance, but it always an adventure, possibly a romance, and more than occasionally a tragedy. We cannot know, we can only do, and do our best. And so personal history is perhaps the best way to convey the point, rather than abstract demonstration. The second, and even more important point, is the strong connection the film makes between entrepreneurship and personal virtue. Indeed, virtue is the foundation of all human action, and every successful action requires at least some degree of personal virtue. Even robbing a bank requires virtues of courage, planning, perseverance, and so forth.

And therein lies the problem; for if virtue in some degree is required even to rob a bank, then personal virtue alone cannot determine the virtue of an act, or of an enterprise. Something else is required. Or rather, two other things are required: the ends, the purpose of the act, or in this case, the purpose of the firm, must tend towards the common good, and the means must themselves be good. A failure in either the means or the ends makes an act—or an enterprise—vicious, even when virtuously performed. Extolling entrepreneurship without directing it towards the common good gives us an incomplete understanding.

The point is this: Entrepreneurship by itself is neither good nor bad. Rather, it is the field of human action in the social and economic order. But the direction we choose to go on that field is another matter.

We can illustrate the range of human actions that are “entrepreneurial” by two activities that lie at opposite poles of that range: at one pole we have motherhood. The mother “produces” (if I may put it that way) a unique human product (if I may put it that way), that is, the human being, the active agent, end, and purpose of all human production. She injects a value into the world, and into the world of business, whose value can never be known, and for which a price can never be set. And although the family is the basic economic unit, her recompense is never in money. She takes on a long-term commitment whose course she cannot know, but which most women find difficult to repudiate, even in the most dire of circumstances. At the other end of the pole, we have the bank robber, who creates no wealth of his own, but merely appropriates the wealth of others. His actions are purely for profit, without adding anything to the stock of society. At one end of the scale, we have a pure self-giving; at the other, only a self-interested taking.

Therefore, we can never judge entrepreneurship to be good per se. Rather, we must judge it by the contribution it makes, or fails to make, to the common good. For many enterprises fail to make such a contribution. Certainly, we know that harmful products find a market, no less than good ones, products such as drugs, pornography, and sub-prime loans. I have little business experience with the first two, but a great deal of experience with the last. For the last five years, I have seen increasing corruption in the mortgage markets, aided by an army of entrepreneurs working from the highest levels of finance down to brokers working out of their spare bedrooms. The deals given to buyers got to be so dirty, that after each closing you just wanted to go home and take a shower. This was entrepreneurship that more resembled bank robbery, even though it was the bank pulling off the robbery.

We should also be aware of the institutional barriers to entrepreneurship. The film did a good job of pointing out the barriers in a communist tyranny. Indeed, raising such barriers is part and parcel of any tyranny, and tyranny can be judged, at least in part, precisely by the barriers it raises to such human development. We know that entrepreneurship tends to die in socialist collectives; however, when production is gathered into gargantuan corporate collectives, with immense private bureacracies, does entrepreneurship suffer a similar fate? In other words, in our society, is the corporation the place where entrepreneurship goes to die? My own experience of 17 years in large corporations would lead me to believe this.

Finally, there are cultural barriers to entrepreneurship, to the full development of the human person in the business world. Most of us, alas, are culturally conditioned to seeking a “good” job rather than following a real vocation. We tend to believe, unconsciously perhaps, that our well-being depends on being in the good graces of ruling bureaucracies. We are losing—or have already lost—the habit of entrepreneurship, or that creativity that is part and parcel, to a greater or lesser degree, of every human being. Indeed, entrepreneurship is viewed, to often, as something “special,” something reserved to a group set apart from the rest. At this point, it becomes not the call, but the cult of the entrepreneur. And the cult of the entrepreneur is very like the romantic “cult of the artiste.” This cult, we know, limits art to a few rarefied individuals; it results in both less art and worse art. Both art and entrepreneurship are part and parcel of what it means to be human. One applies to the aesthetic realm, and the other to the moral realm. But both apply to all men and women.

In short, then, entrepreneurship is basic to human development and creativity, and raising barriers to it, whether public or “private” barriers, is part of the essence of tyranny. But we need to see it as the field of moral action in the world, and judge it by its contribution to the common good, and human development.

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