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The
Intellectual Origins of Modern Catholic Social Teaching on Economics: An
Extension Of A Theme Of Jesús Huerta De Soto by William
R. Luckey, Ph.D. Associate
Professor and Chairman Department
of Political Science and Economics Christendom
College Austrian
Scholars Conference Auburn
University March
23-25, 2000 In
a recent article entitled “The Ethics of Capitalism,” Jesús Huerta de Soto
points out how Israel
Kirzner’s concept of entrepreneurialism is very similar to the idea that the
creative acts of the human
person are decisive for the material benefit of society, as seen in Pope John
Paul II’s book The Acting
Person, and in his encyclical Centesimus
Annus. Interestingly, de Soto notes that prior to his death,
Friedrich von Hayek had a lengthy personal conversation with Pope John Paul II.
De Soto concludes:
“Undoubtedly, Centesimus Annus shows how the pope’s understanding of
economic relations
has been modernized, thus rendering obsolete a great deal of the church’s
earlier social teaching
on economics.”1
De
Soto also notes that this acceptance of the creative role of the This
new slant on Catholic social teaching, the existence of which is denied by
defenders of the old
view, is a welcome relief to the Austrian economist who is also a Catholic. The
fact that Catholic economic
teaching, put forth as unchanging and required of belief, did not square with
what Austrian economists
know to be true, has created an agonizing crisis of conscience for such
economists, even leading
to accusations by non-economist and economist Catholic colleagues casting doubt
on the loyalty
of such economists to the Church. Because of the older social teaching,
capitalism is seen by many
as an evil to be tolerated, regulated and feared. The power potential of
“unbridled capitalism” requires
government supervision for the sake of the common good,3
because it is based on the nation
of “radical
individualism,” defined as the desire of one to do whatever he or she wants to
make a profit.4 All
too often, Christians, who are taught by their faith to be skeptical of “the
world”, also tend to
be alienated from any notion of material or technical progress which they
equate, illogically, with that “world”
condemned by Christ, or the French Revolution. Since the industrial revolution
began, Christians
have clung like sloths to thinkers who caricature modern economic systems as
dehumanizing slave
systems, accelerating the impoverishment of the poor, so that the factory owner
can live more splendidly.
Those predisposed to this ideology thrill when Thomas Carlyle writes that the
Captains of Industry
are doomed not to chivalry but to “doggery,” or when he equates these same
Captains of Industry
with Buccaneers and Chactau Indians, “whose supreme aim in fighting is that
they get the scalps,
the money, that they may amass scalps and money.” For, “what is it that they
have a hundred thousand-pound
bills laid up in their strong room, a hundred scalps hung up in the wigwam.”5 They
feel akin to John Ruskin as he portrays success in business competition due to
business acumen as a large man
pulling himself up to a table where children are being fed and reaching over
their heads, takes their food
just because he can.6 While
this is not the place to give a detailed explanation of why these views are
incorrect, it is important
to note that such critics tend to ignore empirical evidence, were ignorant of
cause and effect relationships
in economics and/or were, as some early economists of the time were, hooked on Malthusian
doctrine. It was because of Malthus’ famous but misdirected theory of
population growth outstripping
food production (which influences the writings of so many population control
advocates today)
that Carlyle termed economics “the dismal science.” Suffice
it to say that the work of economic historians such as T. S. Ashton, W. H. Hutt,
and W. W. Rostow
shows definitively that conditions on the farms were no better than in the
factories, and that the rising
wealth caused by the Industrial Revolution led to a rise in the birth rate, a
reduction in the death rate
and the bettering of overall conditions. Truly, increased productivity led to
universal wealth which led
to better health.7 Catholicism
and Socialism In
his book Socialism, originally published in 1922,8 Ludwig
von Mises discusses the prevailing attitude of the major religions of Europe
toward the free market, and pays special attention toCatholicism. The main
question seems to be whether or not “either Christianity or ‘private
property’ should
reach a point in its evolution which renders the compatibility of the two
impossible--supposing that
it had ever existed.”9 He
finds a dichotomy between the way the Scriptures and the early Church approached
political and economic systems and the later writers and practitioners of the
Faith. Jesus himself, while not hesitating to criticize the current state of
affairs, especially the hypocrisy of the ruling elites, abstains from suggesting
any alternative political or economic system.10 This
held true through the early centuries of Christianity, and even the
“communism” of Chapter IV of the Acts of the Apostles, Mises points
out, is a communism only of consumer goods, not of production or ownership
of the means
of production. This was true of the exhortation of St. John Chrysostom (d. 407)
to restore a type of Christian communism.11 Mises
points out that even monastic communism is still that same type of consumer
communism, 12 after
all, the religious orders owned the land and the monastery in the same way as
the nobles of the Middle Ages owned their land, and employed peasants on that
land. 13 What
then accounts, according to Mises, for the sudden (in the late 1800's) interest
of the Church
in preserving private property. His explanation centers around the situation the
Church found itself
in in the dynamic world of the sixteenth century: “The roots of Christian
Socialism are found neither
in the primitive nor in the medieval Church. It was the Christianity that
emerged revitalized from the
tremendous struggles of faith in the sixteenth century which first adopted it,
though only gradually and
in the face of strong opposition.” 14 The
struggle for orthodoxy with Protestantism, as well as the struggle with the
reborn classical forms in art, literature and philosophy, of which some
churchmen were in the forefront, caused the Church to “fall back and
regroup,” so to speak. From the Catholic counter-reformation onward, according
to Mises, the Church has been fighting not merely to re-assert the time-honored
doctrinal and spiritual teachings of Christianity, but to recoup its position of
world dominance lost
since the waning of the middle-ages:15 Now
the Church condemns socialism only in its atheistic forms, but suggests its own version:
That the Church, generally speaking, takes up a negative attitude to socialist ideas
does not disprove the truth of these arguments. It opposes any Socialism which
is to
be effected on any other basis than its own. It is against Socialism as
conceived by atheists,
for this would strike at its very roots; but it has no hesitation in approaching socialist
ideals provided this menace is resumed.16 How
did Catholic social teaching end up accepting the negative stereotype of
capitalism? One plausible
thesis is presented in the same issue of the Journal of Markets and Morality
as Huerta de Soto’s
article. There, A. M. C. Waterman writes that the cause of this view is the view
that the state or society
is an organic unity: It
has often been remarked that the metaphor of the body politic could be and was
used by
seventeenth-century authors with no Christian-theological underpinnings. Sir William
Petty, for example, began his Political History of Ireland by noting
Francis Bacon’s
“judicious parallel . . . between the Body Natural and the Body
Politick” and much
use of the latter in his own work. Sir Robert Filmer and Jean Bodin each made the
body politic resemble the family, and thus extended patriarchy from the latter
to the former--exactly
as did Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum. At least the first of these might be
thought of as modern examples of the Aristotelian organicism that Minogue attributed
to Centesimus Annus. In my opinion, however, the type of organicism characteristic
of papal social teaching, though undoubtedly affected by Aristotle through the
influence of scholasticism, is primarily Christian and specifically Pauline. He
gives an example of Christian organicism influenced by Aristotle from Jonathan
Swift’s sermon
on mutual subjection. Swift writes of the “comparison which St. Paul maketh
between the Church
of Christ and the natural Body of Man: for the same Resemblance will hold, not
only to Families and
Kingdoms, but to the whole Corporation of Mankind.” Waterman later continues:
“For Christians mutual
subjection is an act of love. There is negligible difference at this point
between Swift in 1730 and
either Thomas Starkey’s Dialogue two centuries earlier, or Pius XI’s Quadragesimo
Anno two centuries
later.”17 Ultimately,
Waterman says, a close reading of Centesimus Annus reveals the imposition
of propositions
favorable to the operation of the market “upon an underlying body of papal
social teaching that
is alien to, and fundamentally incompatible with, such an order.” This is
because, in Waterman’s mind,
the Church sees society as an organism, but enlightenment social theory--”in
which political economy
is an explanans and market order is an explanandum, views society
as a habitat.”18 Hence,
the ultimate yet unintended outcome of this organicism is “the subsequent
isolation of papal social
teaching from political economy and the economic way of thinking.”19 In
an earlier article in the Review of Social Economy,20 Waterman
gives a different and more well
developed theory. According to Waterman, the main problem that caused the isolation
of Catholic
social teaching from the science of economics was the French Revolution: Why
did the Roman Church wait until 1891 before uttering any official teaching about the
industrial economy?21 Why,
when it did, was it so hostile to the market order? Why,
in view of its lack of confidence in the market, was it so opposed to socialism?
The
short answer to all three questions is “The French Revolution.”22 Essentially,
the Church was caught in a dilemma. On one hand, it equated the theory of a free market
with the Enlightenment, which it blamed for the French Revolution which resulted
in the confiscation
of Church property and the martyrdom of many of its clergy. The Risorgimento,
which had taken
away the Papal States, was merely another version of the same thing. So the
Church was forced to
condemn anything that it felt came out of the Enlightenment without
distinguishing those things which were
compatible with Catholicism and Thomism and those which were not. But, it had to
condemn socialism,
the essence of which was the denial of private property in order to defend the
Church’s right to
its own property.23 While
both these theories of Waterman are essentially correct, and give great insight
into modern
Catholic social teaching and the cause of the crisis of conscience mentioned
above, the theory is
not complete. To date, no one has really tackled the economic theory used
intraditional Catholic economic
thought. This paper proposes to give some brief insights into this neglected
area. Sources
of Papal Economic Thought The
popes themselves usually do not footnote the economists from whom they get their theories.
Usually, the only non-scriptural references in papal social documents are St,
Thomas Aquinas and
St. Augustine. But underlying their thought is an economic theory that does not
match economic reality
certainly as the Austrians economists, nor even as most neo-classicals
understand it. In an attempt
to discover from where the popes got their economic theory, this author perused
a number of well
regarded, approved works on papal economic teaching, some of the authors of
which were actually
influential in the writing of the encyclicals. From the most recent to the
earliest, the list is as follows: ! Franz
H. Mueller,24 ! Rodger
Charles, S. J. with Drostan Maclaren,25 ! Johnnes
Messner,26 ! Oswald
von Nell-Breuning, S.J.,27 ! E.
Cahill, S.J.,28 ! Heinrich
Pesch, S.J.,29 ! Bishop
Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler,30 It
is well known that Bishop von Ketteler was really the first Catholic of any
influence to raise the
social question. In addition, it is commonly known that he had a great influence
on the way Pope Leo
XIII viewed the economic world.31 One
of the main themes of Catholic social teaching by the popes
and other writers has been the problem of a just and living wage. Leo XIII
describes the condition
of the workers of his time, 1891, is terms that really seem to apply fifty years
earlier: Hence,
by degrees it has come to pass that the working men have been surrendered, isolated
and helpless, to the hard heartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition
. . . . to this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are
concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very
rich men
have been able to lay on the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better
than slavery itself.32 Following
up on this notion, that the workers are merely victims of capitalist greed, Pope
Pius XI
proposed that “the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and
his family . . . . Every effort
must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to
meet the ordinary family
needs adequately.”33 While
the Papal social encyclicals are written in a general way so that it is hard to
divine exactly to
which particular circumstances the Popes are referring, the common impression is
that capitalism has reduced
the working class, even as late as 1931, to destitution. While we might excuse
Pope Pius XI for
his concern about this issue since he wrote Quadragesimo Anno during the
depression, where it was
common to blame capitalism and “the business cycle” for the economic woes of
the world, it is hard
to excuse Leo XIII. Using life expectancy figures, which ought to have been
available to Leo, it is clear
that at the dawn of the nineteenth century life expectancy in England was about
37 years, but after 1871-5,
about 20 years prior to Rerum Novarum, there is acceleration in
life expectancy with no setbacks,
so that by 1900 English life expectancy is about 50.34 Real
per capita income begins to soar immediately
after 1800 in all of Europe.35 The
only explanation for this is an acceptance of an economic theory that is its own
predictor. A
clue to this theory is found in Bishop Emmanuel von Ketteler’s work The
Labor Problem and Christianity
(1864). Chapter III of that work is entitled “the Condition of Labor.”
Ketteler writes: The
satisfaction of the material needs of the working class, the provision of all
the necessities
of life for the worker and his family rests, with so few exceptions that it only proves
the rule, on the worker’s wage. And the wage rate in our time is determined by subsistence
in the strictest sense of that word, i. e., the minimum food, clothing, and shelter
that a person needs to sustain a bare physical existence. The truth of this proposition
has been so well established as a consequence of the well known controversies
between Lassalle and his opponents that only an overt intention to deceive
would lead one to deny it36 What
Ketteler is referring to here is the theory of the “iron law of wages”
formulated by the German socialist
and associate of Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lassalle. The “iron law of wages”
asserts that the wage
rate is based on the combination of the cost of subsistence and the number of
workers. In other words,
employers would only pay workers what workers would need to keep up their
strength to work,
but no more. This desire of the employers would be conditioned by the number of
workers available
in the society. If the population declined, the employers would be forced by the
scarcity of workers
to payer higher than subsistence. This would increase the population, forcing
wages down below
subsistence causing the population to decline, thus raising the wages again. The
subsistence level was
an equilibrium level around which wages hovered. Oddly enough, this iron law of
wages was derived
from a theorist whose ideas are anathema to Catholics today because of his
population control ideas
that are used extensively by proponents of abortion and artificial birth
control, two things clearly condemned
by the Church, Thomas Malthus.37 According
to Malthus, food supplies would increase arithmetically,
but population would increase geometrically. Hence the population would outrun
the food
supply, thus reducing the population. When the population lessened, it would be
better fed, inclining
toward another increase and declining per capita food supplies, etc. All the
iron law of wages is
is an application of the Malthusian food theory to wages. In
addition, the iron law of wages is based on the “law of diminishing returns”
something accepted
by the classical economists and by many neo-classicals, but which is based on a
static view of both
production and farming.38 Neither
the Malthusian food theory nor the law of diminishing returns take
into account the fact that the economy is a dynamic process, and thus a
continuing developing technology
increases productivity. Nor do these theories realize (or intentionally ignore)
the fact that workers
are paid, not by the cost of subsistence, but by their discounted marginal value
product (DMVP),
on which the capitalist will earn the going rate of interest on the savings he
spent on all the factors
of production (the total DMVP). The price of a good or service, then, is the
DMVP of the factors
of production plus the interest earned on the investment of the DMVP paid to the
factors.39 With
the increase of capital accumulation, the DMVP of the factors increases, because
each factor produces
more. The resulting increasing wealth of society (Say’s law) allows increased
purchases and increased
savings, thus ultimately increasing the worker’s DMVP. This is why it can be
said that the theory
of wages accepted by Ketteler and the popes is its own predictor. Without
consulting the factual
reality, the iron law of wages “predicts” that capitalism automatically
results in the pauperization of
the workers, from which they cannot extricate themselves. This is why the state
must tax the capitalist.
Someone must aid the workers, or give them what they should have in
“justice” which is being
confiscated by the capitalist. This is not charity, which the Church also
properly enjoins on the faithful.
But, if this wage theory is accepted, the redistribution of wealth by the
coercive powers of the state
is completely justified, and in no way can be called theft. The
Ultimate Economic Theory Behind Catholic Economics Not
only did Ketteler accept Lasalle’s idea of the iron law of wages, but Hogan
writes that Ketteler
is influenced by both Adam Müller (1779-1829) and Franz von Baader (1765-1841).
Müller himself
was influenced by St. Simon and Lamennais, especially regarding the notion that
the main social problem
was not the wealth of the workers but the rights of workers.40 Müller
tried to defeat the ‘dangers’
of economic liberalism to the perceived interests of Christianity long before
Ketteler. Müller can
be classified as a “romantic economist” and a forerunner of the German
Historical School of economics
that took the anti-liberal and anti-Austrian side in the Methodenstreit. Müller found
fault with the ideas of the enlightenment, of rationalism, and of natural law
and, as a
bitter critic of Adam Smith’s liberal views . . . . extolled the corporate
state and other medieval
institutions and suggested their restoration, deploring the liberal
commercialism of
the modern age and contrasting it with what he claimed to be higher spiritual
values grounded
in authority, tradition, and religion, with the state exalted as a mediator between
man and God. 41 Müller
found free enterprise to be a threat to the viability of the absolute state and
a source of confusion in
society. He exalted money as a creation of the state and placed paper money on
an equal footing with
metallic money.42 All
this was accomplished by Müller and the rest of the historical school of romantic
economists without any economic analysis.43 Interestingly
as well, the historical school, while upholding
Catholic historical and philosophical ideals, “was primarily informed by
Humean nominalism [abhorrent
to Catholic teaching], while [ironically the Austrian side of the Methodenstreit]
is best understood
in the context in the context of nineteenth-century
Aristotelian/neo-scholasticism.”44 This explains
why the historical school did not accept the possibility of any “laws” of
economics. Baader
defended, not the old corporate order, but a system of guilds designed to meet
modern conditions.
The guilds not only should be protected by the state, but that the guilds would
have the say as
to how much protection they should have--a sure ticket to a type of
“dictatorship of the proletariate.”
Baader granted the state the right to use force in regulating the German
economy.45 Coming
directly from this tradition is Heinrich Pesch, a German Jesuit economist, who
was a great
indirect influence on Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, and
the founder of Solidarism,
essentially an organized summary of what has been discussed above. Pesch
(1854-1926), who is touted as a trained economist by those in support of his
theory, studied
at the University of Bonn and “was strongly influenced by the triumvirate of
Schmoller, Sering and
Wagner”46 of
the German historical school. While Pesch does concern himself with economics, and
accepts a version of Smith’s self-interest, both occur as a result of the
actions of God. For Pesch, society
is never a spontaneous order as Hayek would later postulate, but is based on
three principles, 1)
subsidiarity--that nothing should be done by a higher level of society that can
be done by a lower
level, and nothing should be done by the public authority that can be done by a
private authority;47 2)
solidarity--which sees man as a social animal and social institutions as aids to
man’s “evolution
and unfolding;” and 3)
unit--man is to consider the welfare of his fellows. 48 By
this time it should be apparent that the thrust of Catholic social teaching on
economics primarily
reflects a combination of the Aristotelian-Thomistic school and the German
historical (or Romantic)
school. To confirm this hypothesis a perusal of the other relevant works reveals
the truth of it.
Nell-Breuning,
also German, a disciple of Pesch and the main author of Pius XI’s Quadragesimo
Anno, has no footnotes in book, The
Organization of Social Economy, but there is no
question that he follows the same general trend. He openly rejects the economy
as a spontaneous order,
calling the idea that economic life has no predetermined end as “the
liberalist fiction.” 49 He
uses a
definition of capitalism from a German named Jostock, which holds that
competition always ends up to
the benefit of capital (implying that competition is to the detriment of labor. 50 He
also rejects much competition,
substituting instead a clearly spelled out corporatist state, where consumers,
workers and management
will be organized into large organizations. 51 These
organizations will co-operate with each other,
with no real need for “excessive” competition. 52 It
should be obvious that this is merely a continuation
of the German historical school’s version of economics. Cahill
uses Charles Antione’s Cours d’econimie sociale (1920) as his main
source for economic
knowledge. Antoine (1847-1921) had a peculiar background. He was trained as an engineer
and chemist, but taught theology. Antoine’s book approaches economics from the
theological perspective.
What this means is that in Cahill’s book there is no economic analysis and
very little understanding
of the subject. Cahill also makes use of Belloc’s The Servile State,
and holds with Belloc
that the results of liberal capitalism is either “the servile state” of
pre-Christian times or Socialism. Cahill
uses German historical economist and future Nazi theorist Werner Sombert to
blame the Jews as a
source of capitalism and holds that the Jews and Puritans were in an ecconomic
partnership. 53 He
is also
critical of the field of finance which he calls a dictatorship and “the most
comprehensive and far- reaching
evil of the capitalist system,” because “[i]t puts the financial magnates,
who are mostly Masonic
Jews and the inveterate enemies of Christianity” in a position of immense
power. 54 Lastly, Cahill
still holds that Capitalism leads to widespread pauperism, possibly because the
depression on- going
at the time he wrote “proved” this oft repeated error. 55 Joannes
Messner, another German, has produced a substantial work, and like Nell-Breuning, he
attempts at least to discuss at length the ideas of production and distribution
of wealth. Messner cites
German Othmar Spann with approval that the economy must have a determined end. 56 But
to Messner’s
credit, he sees the market as a process, similar to Austrian theory. 57 He
rejects the neo- classical
idea of homo economicus, 58 but
criticizes the classical liberals for turning their economic postulates
into moral ones, 59 revealing
that he really does not understand the idea of economic laws. He
does quote some Austrians on page 760, but ends up glorifying the corporatist
state, citing John Kenneth
Galbraith and J. M. Keynes with approval. 60 Lastly
he uses Joan Robinson as an authority to say
that while it is true that the accumulation of capital raises wages, this is
true in both capitalist and socialist
economies. There is no attempt to deal with the facts. Franz
H. Mueller’s book is a detailed yet telescopic history of the historical and
intellectual atmosphere
that engendered Catholic social teaching on economics. But, while Mueller quotes
plenty of
German economists of the historical school, he does so in the sense of
“proving” that the free market economists
were wrong. That is, laissez-faire is harmful because these Germans say it is.
There are even
some outrageous statements in the book that fly in the face of all we know. For
example, he tells us
that the idea of freedom came from England with the Puritans to America. The
Declaration of Independence
was then responsible for the French Revolution by re-importing the notion of
freedom back
to the continent 61 There
is no analysis or proof given. He also denies that the workers in Europe w
better off as a result of the industrial revolution, 62 and
he cites a number of thinkers such as Baader, Müller
and Marx as recognizing this truth. The only proof for his assertion about the
increasing pauperization
of the masses are certain literary works. 63 This
leads us to the last book under consideration, and one that is very instructive
due to its honesty.
Father Rodger Charles, S.J., criticizes Say saying without further elaboration
that Say’s theory
does not take into account the underemployment of resources, and therefore those
who use Say’s
writings to justify the free market are wrong. 64 Without
reading any further, one can see an implicit
approval of Keynes, whose whole theory is based overproduction and
underconsumption--a rejection
of Say’s Law. He sides with the welfare economics of Pigou because it takes
into account what
he calls the technical and human aspects of economic life. And eventually
praises Keynes as expected
because he feels that Keynes theory corrects some mistaken notions of the
classical economists. 65 Lastly,
in his praise of Keynes, he says that Keynes was not the first to correct this
aspect of the
classical economists. He refers approvingly to outright socialist John Grey
(1799-1883) who believed
that the competitive system exploits the workers by appropriating what should be
theirs. Hence,
Grey argued, the competitive system should be abolished through the
establishment of co- operative
communities, very similar to the ideas of Father Nell-Breuning and the Quadragesimo
Anno of
Pius XI. 66 Conclusion The
results of this admittedly telescopic investigation are abundantly clear. The
intellectual origins
of Catholic social teaching on economics are a very clear reflection of the
thought of the German historical
school only. This is true not only of content, but also of methodology. Both de
Soto and Waterman
are correct, but they did not go back far enough in their analysis to the root
causes of the gap
between free market economics and Catholic social teaching. The acceptance of
some market ideas
by Pope John Paul II does show the irrelevance of the previous economic
teaching, but there still remains
at least a partial adherence to the denial of economics as a science inherent in
the German historical
school’s approach, which treats the classical liberal approach as a mere
ideology motivated by
the economic greed of the capitalists, despite the facts. These
findings explain much about the political policies of the Catholic Church in the
United States.
Given the approach of the popes and the intellectual sources of Catholic
thinking on economics, it
is no wonder that the Church could have given rise to Msgr John Ryan of Catholic
University of America,
called by many Msgr. “New Deal.” It also explains the adherence of so many
Catholics to the
Democratic party and its policies, and to an adversarial labor union mentality.
It might also explain why
these same Catholics do not see why the party they historically loved so much
would be in the forefront
of abortion and birth control policies that the Church condemns. Here they fail
to see that the foundation
of the whole Catholic theory is still a disguised form of Malthusianism, so that
the wholesale acceptance
of the German approach to economics has become a Frankenstein. Lastly,
after considering the implications coming from this analysis, it is no longer a
mystery where
Catholic liberation theology came from. Even thought the popes have always
taught respect for authority
and have never condemned capitalism outright, much of their teaching and the
thinking of their intellectual
ancestors have implied that the movers and shakers in business are by definition
corrupt, as seen
in John Courtney Murray’s economic thought which relied on the thinking of
Adolph Berle, an institutionalist
under the influence of Veblin who was influenced by this very German historical
school. 1.
Jesús Huerta de Soto, “The Ethics of Capitalism,” The Journal of Markets
and Morality II, 2 (March
1998): 157. 2.
Ibid., 157-8. 3.
John Courtney Murray, S.J., “Leo XIII: Two Concepts of Government,” Theological
Studies 14
(December, 1953): 551-567. Also, the recently issued Catechism of the
Catholic Church
(New York: Doubleday-Image, 1994), 642, states: “Reasonable regulation of the marketplace
and economic initiatives, in keeping with a just hierarchy of values and a view to
the common good, is to be commended.” 4.
See, for example, the touted E. Cahill, S. J., The Framework of a Christian
State (Fort Collins: Colorado,
Roman Catholic Books, n.d., originally published in 1932), 138ff. The Catechism
of the
Catholic Church, 642, says of the
Church: “She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of
‘capitalism,’ individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the
marketplace over human labor.”
5.
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present (London: Chapman and Hall, 1894), 233. 6.
Ruskin, John, Morals and Religion. Part 7 of The True and the Beautiful in
Nature, Art, Morals
and Religion Selected From the Works of John Ruskin
( New York: John Wiley and
Son, 1875), 409. 7.
See also, Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Bridzell, Jr., How the West Grew
Rich :The Economic Transformation
of the Industrial World (n. p.: Basic
Books, 1986), 177-8, and Julian Simon,
ed., The State of Humanity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). 8.
The original title was Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus
(Jena: Gustav Fischer,
1922). All quotations from this work used here are from the English edition, Socialism:
An Economic and Sociological Analysis (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics,
1981). 9.
Mises, Socialism, 373. 10.
Ibid., 373-4, and 376. 11.
Ibid., 383-4. NOTES 12.
Ibid., 384 13.
See, M. Raymond, OCSO, Three Religious Rebels: The Founding Fathers of the
Cistercians (Boston:
St. Paul Books and Media, 1986), 173. 14.
Mises, Socialism, 384. 15.
Ibid., 384-6. 16.Ibid.,
386. 17.
A. M. C. Waterman, “Market Social Order and Christian Organicism in Centesimus
Annus,” The
Journal of Markets and Morality II, 2
(Fall, 1999): 222-223. 18.
Waterman, “Market Social Order”, 221. 19.
Ibid., 229. 20.
”The Intellectual Context of Rerum Novarum,” The Review of Social Economy
49, no. 4 (1991):
465-82. 21.
Remember, the church complained about the condition of the working classes after
their condition
had been significantly improved. See p. above. 22.
Waterman, “The Intellectual Context of Rerum Novarum,” 465. 23.
Ibid., passim. 24.
The Church and the Social Question (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise
Institute for Public
Policy Research, 1984). 25.
The Social Teaching of Vatican II: Its Origin and Development (Oxford:
Plater Publications and
San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982). 26.
Social Ethics: Natural Law in the Western World, rev. ed., trans. by J.
J. Doherty (St Louis: Herder,
1965, originally published in 1949). 27.
Reorganization of Social Economy (New York: Bruce, 1936). 28.
The Framework of a Christian State (see endnote #4). 29.
Lehrbuch der Nationaökonomie 5 vols. (Frieburg im Breisgau:
Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1905-22). 30.
The Social Teachings of Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz
(1811-1877), ed. by
Rupert J. Ederer (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981). A
collection of
writings and speeches of Bishop von Ketteler. 31.
Rupert Ederer, “My Journey into Solidarism,” The Catholic Social Science
Review 3 (1998): 79,
and John Courtney Murray, S. J., “Leo XIII: Two concepts of Government,” 551.
32.
Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (On the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor)
in The Church Speaks
to the Modern World: The Social Teachings of Leo XIII, ed. By Etienne Gilson New
York: Image, 1954), 206. 33.
Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno (On Reconstructing the Social Order),
in The Church and the Reconstruction
of the Modern World: The Social Encyclicals of Pius XI,
ed. By Terence P.
McLaughlin, C.S.B. (New York: Image, 1957), 244. 34.
Samuel H. Preston, “Human Mortality Throughout History and Prehistory,” in
Julian Simon, ed.
The State of Humanity, 31. 35.
Joyce Burnette and Joel Molkyr, “The Standard of Living Through the Ages.”
in Simon, ed., The
State of Humanity, 139. 36.
In Ederer, ed., The Social Teachings of Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler,
321. 37.
An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). 38.
For a thorough discussion of the iron law of wages see, George Reisman, Capitalism:
A Treatise
on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois:
Jameson Books, 1996), 491 ff. 39.
Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy and the State (Auburn Alabama: The Ludwig
von Mises Institute,
1993), 390-1. 40.
William Edward Hogan, “The Development of Bishop Wilhelm Immanuel von
Ketteler’s Interpretation
of the Social Problem” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1946), 4.
41.
William Henry Spiegel, The Growth of Economic Thought, 3rd ed. (Durham,
North Carolina: Duke
University Press, 1992), 416-7. 42.
Ibid., 417. 43.
Joseph Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994),
419-422. 44.
Samuel Bostaph, The Methodenstreit in The Elgar Companion to Austrian
Economics, ed. By
Peter J. Boettke (Cheltenham, UK: Elgar, 1994), 460. 45.
Hogan, “the Development of Wilhelm Immanuel von Ketteler’s Interpretation of
the Social Problem”,
4-5. 46.
The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics , 852. 47.
Austin Fagothey, S. J., Right and Reason: Ethics in theory and Practice
(St. Louis: C. V. Mosby,
1967), esp. Chap 9. 48.
The New Palgrave, 852. 49.
Nell-Breuning, The Reorganization of Social Economy, 86. 50.
Ibid., 270. 51.
Ibid., see, chart after p. 258. 52.
Ibid., 271-278. 53.
Cahill, The Framework of a Christian State, 114. 54.
Ibid., 152. 55.
Ibid., 148-9. 56.
Messner, Social Ethics, 748. 57.
Ibid., 754-5. 58.
Ibid., 758. 59.
Ibid., 759-60. 60.
Ibid., 772, 789 and 785. 61.
Meuller, The Church and the Social Question, 50-51. 62.
Ibid., 54-55. 63.
Ibid., 145, note 106. 64.
Charles, The Social Teaching of Vatican II, 266-7. 65.
Ibid., 268. 66.
Ibid. On Grey see, The New Palgrave, c. v. “John Grey”, 562-3.
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