Capitalism with soul?
Dionne, E.J. Jr.
CAPITALISM WITH SOUL? E.J. DIONNE, JR. NOVAK ON THE CATHOLIC ETHIC Pope John Paul TI's...
...But most progressives 1000 copies: $200 accepted the central themes of Centesimus minus summarized 500 copies: $150 well in this magazine by J. Bryan Hehir...
...This critical posture means that the Christian's vocation is to live in dynamic tension with Once time was simple as compass pointswhatever system or society he or she happens to participate in- I saw north as the way everyone traveled to be, in John Paul's famous phrase, "a sign of contradiction...
...I 521/93 L J While many of Novak's arguments will be familiar to read10: 21 Mav 1993 Commonwea ers of his earlier work, he does offer an interesting innovation, justice is bound to be a highly contested concept, it is also a proposing to redefine "social justice" as a personal virtue...
...THE SOCIAL DIMIEMSlq„S litical spectrum...
...the enormous dislocations that capitalism-espec- The difficulties arise over the interaction among these three ially in its new global form-can create...
...Novak, as we have seen, is not trying to deify capitalism...
...Capitalism can be high- systems...
...Within many large the other concerning the relationship between religious faith corporations, executive salaries-and pensions and "golden and political commitments...
...Novak sometimes falls short of this difficult ideal, notably in his chapter "Against the Adversary Culture," but he mostly stays true to the spirit he ascribes to Centesimus annus...
...With large cuts in the Department of Defense's research forty years before, we board words, and development budgets, which had substantial spinoff ben- reworking pasts to make them fit efits to the private economy, other government agencies may this night and who we've become, have to step into the research area...
...the one and only Catholic way...
...The market principle is a good one," he writes at another, but then adds: "It is not an idol...
...Christian's proper attitude toward any political or economic sys- And reinvented pasts become just as true, tem...
...And (Please include a 9 x 12 self-addressed some on the Catholic Left were more enthusiastic about the pope's envelope with 520 stamp) earlier formulations on social questions (especially Laborem Bulk Orders: exercens and Sollicitudo rei socialis...
...Citing Ha- On the other hand, Novak's desire to define "social justice" yek, he argues that "social justice has become the chief battle as a virtue applying to individuals is appealing as a supplement cry of those who would expand the role of government, par- to older definitions...
...fetch a fortune on the open market...
...But that was not one, a rarity in papal documents...
...how I'll always hate oatmeal This raises the broader question of how orae defines the and being made late...
...Novak is not a pure libthat conservatives speak about so much...
...Father Hehir wrote 100 copies: $ 50 that the pope's assessment "takes the market reality seriously plus handling and UPS charges and acknowledges values in it that John Paul's predecessors may have assumed but did not assert...
...One contributor to a National Review symposium on the encyclical saw I parts of it as "endorsing socialism in its currently fashionable I Name form of corporatism...
...parachutes"-are usually determined by internal political fac- Ever since he published The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism tors...
...As a result, he says, intellectuals "overlooked the self-reforming capacities Dixie Partridge of capitalism when the latter is embedded in powerful demo- Unnatural Laws cratic and moral-religious traditions...
...As a result, those who have disagreed with Novak in recent years will find many things to like here...
...Novak draws his title from Max Weber's command economies, capitalism without social safety nets and book about the Protestant ethic and begins with an argument safeguards) while leaving open a broad area for debate and ex- that Weber defined the spirit of capitalism too narrowly and atperimentation . The pope's approach is principled, but not ide- tributed to Calvinism certain attitudes that were in fact more ological...
...The highest compliment to the pope's 1991 social encyclical lay not in the fact The Catholic Ethic that so many were eager to say they agreed with and the Spirit of Capitalism, the pope, but that partisans of so many different viewpoints in Michael Nor'ak...
...how the bulb turned off Even on the level of economic performance, substantial seems not to let that last light escape, government intervention has often been needed to keep the but draws it quickly back--free market from running off the rails...
...Such consensus is often reached with fuzzy language, artful compromises, and a high level of generality...
...LIBRARYJOURNAL •:• "An unusually good and vigorous set of essays representing many points of view, all strongly argued...
...The pope was highly specific about understands the efficiencies bred by market economics, but also the principles Catholics should embrace in judging economic the important role markets play in rewarding creativity and insystems...
...What we can see now, he says, is that "the threefold criteria...
...An enthusiast for capitalism, Novak nonetheless goes out of his way to make clear that his 1 claims are limited...
...PETER L. BERGER 367 pages •:* $24.95 cloth •:• ISBN 0-89633-164-4 Available at bookstores or through National Book Network, 1-800-462-6420 ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER Commonweal 21 May 1993: 11 both by the state and by private institutions...
...tions, and injustices in "this world...
...comes...
...pend...
...italism can encourage creativity and enterprise...
...The pope's principles rule out This is the underlying theme of The Catholic Ethic and the certain approaches (including dictatorships, highly centralized Spirit of Capitalism...
...That strikes me as a pretty fair 1 reading...
...Few are suggesting that the market can or should the inequitable distributions of power that un- be eliminated...
...Milton Friedman saw "much for left-liberI Address als" in the document...
...vention...
...Free Press...
...helping us carry what we can't shed: But many Christians who find themselves with doubts about that my black-eyed rebellious daughter is like me: Novak's enthusiasm for capitalism are acting not out of a you've become your grandfather: blindness to its benefits, but from a view that Christians have how we learn to close around our pain a particular obligation to be critical of the failures, imperfec- like night leaves of prayer plants...
...In fact, a libertarian like Hayek doesn't like the the system better...
...And many of the things Novak says Wily Doerolls rllrsr HOT HILL about the importance of civil society and the institutions of church Leon R. Kass and family reflect a consensus that is taking hold across the po'AID-IR.Dy1M...
...Novak is entirely right when he writes: "The Daniel Callahar: best thing government can do, in a positive way, is to catalyze the efforts of civil society, so that the citizenry at large will bring its many diverse talents and resources to the assistance Additional copies of the needy...
...At a certain level, most who call themselves progressives, liberals, or social democrats broadly accept some version of Ir he difficulty with Novak's view of capitalism is this system...
...been saved by its democratic critics...
...The as our headlight beams hit the sea rock...
...This raises questions of "social justice," and so, tripartite system" involving a market economy, a democratic too...
...After years in the polemical trenches, the Novak who emerges here is seeking a friendlier and more civil debate...
...But he would severely circumscribe the state's economic role...
...Novak sees the hostility to capitalism among intellectuals as related to what he calls "the aristocratic biases of modern intellectual life...
...self-reforming" capacities of democratic capitalism are in large dissolve out over the black edge part due to the first word, democratic...
...In his political pilgrimage to the Right, Novak has emerged as a humane Jack Kemp-style conservative...
...In the global economy like a jump-start needed which is producing substantial job shifts from high-wage to low- so the future will work...
...That may make us less appreciative of the market system than Novak thinks we ought to be, but we wonder who were we reallti•l true north lost to the stone-eyed stars my suspicion is-to put it in the market's terms-that the benefits of this stance far outweigh the costs...
...The emphasis here, and in all sub- r sequent quotations, is Novak's...
...tivism," he writes, "it means organizing...
...Yet for all of Novak's welcomed caution, he has a particular case to make: That the pope's encyclical marked a major 4 shift in Catholic social thought because it offered not only a negative definition of capitalism (which was common enough t in the history of Catholic social thought) but also a positive E.J...
...At the same time, Hehir r added, the pope saw moral limits on the market, notably that I "many human needs are not met by the workings of the marCOMMONWEAL ket," that "there are whole groups of people without the resources I I 15 Dutch Street, New York, N.Y...
...Similar things were said about the AmerCity, State, Zip ican bishops' economic pastoral, which was far less well-received by neoconservatives who liked the pope's view so much...
...the church insisted that the pope had agreed with them...
...But many of Now with all our storied pasts capitalism's critics, even some of the self-righteous ones, were we know the future as mute, responsible for the very process of self-correction that Novak signing us into that place celebrates...
...Who can say forms in the capitalist countries were the product of New where the light stops being light, Dealish and social democratic movements...
...One hopes especially that Novak's conservative allies will read him, because they would do well to emulate his communitarian spirit and his repeated emphasis on the need to lift up WHAT IS AT SfANs, Alexander Morgan Capron & Vicki Michel the poor...
...The notion that Christians have a personal notion of social justice because he rejects on principle the idea obligation to expand what political scientist Robert Putnam has that one should worry about social, as against individual, out- referred to as the pool of "social capital" makes good sense...
...24.95, 334 pp...
...open to the advantages of markets and the But Novak's argument with Weber is secondary to his broadpositive uses of government...
...True, a handful of particularly dogmatic critics of capitalism may have been unhapSingle copies: $1 py with the very parts of the document Novak likes most...
...NOVAK ON THE CATHOLIC ETHIC Pope John Paul TI's Ceruesimus anntts has to rank as one of the most successful papal documents in history...
...Most of the social re- of the sea...
...it means trying to make Well, yes...
...Thus, although social ertarian...
...No democratic capitalist regime should pretend to be the Kingdom of God," he writes at one point...
...To the extent that Christianity nurtures that critical where time changes to a circle-sea, spirit and encourages impatience with injustice, it is doing just and trawling a little too far south what it is supposed to do...
...sees the concept as existing in a "conceptual fog...
...er goal of offering a history of Catholic attitudes toward capiMichael Novak would, I think, agree with this account...
...In the meantime, some conservatives were quite unI copies of the EUTHANASIA report I 11 Payment enclosed 0 Bill me comfortable with many of the things the pope said...
...And most want a "moral cultural system" as inchecked capitalism can produce and downplays dependent as possible from state and market...
...broadly egalitarian without being a demand for broadly shared among many varieties of Christians and Jews...
...John Paul, he argues, not only true with Centesimus anntts...
...DIONNE, JR., author of Why Americans Hate Politics, writes about "Nothing personal, Pooh, but we figured You'd politics for the Washington Post...
...Among the virtues he lists at one point as being essential to a free society, one is "the art of speaking kindly, even of those one opposes, in order to protect possibilities of future practical cooperation...
...Arriving late with +11Y rather, 77: There is another way of looking at this...
...I Telephone: 212.732.0800 don't remember any "shocked silence...
...they bear almost no relationship to a company's market in 1982, Novak has been urging us to embrace what he calls "a performance...
...wage countries, energetic government will be required to ease the transitions of millions of workers and to underwrite job train- Near a spot you brought me ing...
...Far from being friends the Northwest Cocutlit e of aristocracy, many of the critics of pure capitalism are actually democrats who believe the market works best-and on be- What's time but a trick...
...It is not a party document...
...Novak sees this as a large advance over traditional He was also clear in stating where various systems-socialist, Catholic efforts to find "a third way" between capitalism and capitalist, welfare state-failed to live up to sensible Christian socialism...
...Among the contributors: Carl E. Braaten •:• Jean Bethke Elshtain •? J. Bryan Hehir Christa R. Klein •:• Richard John Neuhaus :• Mark A. Noll Michael Novak * Max Stackhouse •:• Glenn Tinder •:• George Weigel "Uniformly thoughtful and logically composed...
...One could multiply these to explain, say, why you sicken examples, but the point is clear enough: capitalism has often at the smell of geraniums...
...does the plight of a steel worker who has devoted himself polity, and a "moral cultural system" that would nourish the loyally to his firm for a quarter century and suddenly finds him- "virtues and values" on which free economies and societies deself unemployed because of shifts in the world market for steel...
...half of the largest number of citizens-when it is constrained Present distilled to past and improved by the workings of democratic government...
...The largest difference lies in what the relationship should ly disruptive of the ties of "family, work, and neighborhood" be between democracy and the market...
...E 12: 21 May 1993 Commonweal...
...If Novak wants to criticize Those child-years self-righteousness and reflexive anti-Americanism on the Left, before we know about time he'll get no argument from me...
...He argues, for example, that "the first response of the COMMONWEAL, American Catholic Left to Centesimus anmls was shocked si15 Dutch Street, lence, followed less by an exposition of its theme than by an New York, New York 10038 attack on 'neoconservatives' for 'hijacking' the encyclical...
...In doing so, they tackle some of the most controversial questions involving religion and public life today...
...the achievements of their country...
...The pope's encyclical, he writes, "gives encouragement to social democrats and the moderate Left, as well as to persons who share my own proclivities, and to those further to my right...
...to the future...
...Novak highly useful standard by which to measure social systems...
...Those who question a libertarian view would assert that At the end of this book, I was left with two large questions social justice is relevant precisely because market outcomes do about the thrust of Novak's argument, one related to politics, not automatically produce a just society...
...10038 to enter the market," and that "there are goods that 'cannot and I Please send me must not be bought and sold...
...Progressives obviously have no problems with that it tends to sweep from view questions about democracy...
...he's not CONSIDER, THE sure>t, Carlos F G.omez a hard-shelled rightwinger...
...absolute equality...
...he accepts the need for social safety nets organized BEING CHRISTIAN TODAY An American Conversation Edited by RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS and GEORGE WEIGEL How can Christians help to shape the future of the American experiment and its promise of "liberty and justice for all...
...And I'll also grant him that the we are different-inventing only the present, Left has been insufficiently mindful of the ways in which cap- and it sings...
...Commonweal 21 Mal• 1993: 9 talism-interspersed with a few too many citations from freemarket thinkers such as Hayek and von Mises-and a celebration of where the church has come out...
...But John Paul wisely chose not to build a political and combination of democracy, capitalism, and religious liberty is economic system from top to bottom and declare his creation the `middle way...
...The practice of social justice means acticularly in questions of redistribution...
...of this special report Still, Novak can't resist scoring points that are not entirely are available from fair...
...Twenty-seven distinguished commentators probe that question in an interdenominational conversation among evangelical Protestants, ecumenical Protestants, and Roman Catholics...
...But the equator travels on Novak would agree with this analysis in principle, but argue forever, never reaching south or north, that many on the Catholic Left take the "prophetic stance" in magnetic poles working on the seas, the wrong direction and are too eager to dismiss the moral and black rock and tides so unfamiliar in theirchange practical advantages of the market and (if they are Americans) we don't see...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 10
