We were going to title this particular blog, “And Now For
Something Completely Different.” That,
however, would have been too obvious a rip-off of Monty Python, and, frankly,
it’s not any different from anything we’ve been saying all along, anyway.
Last Thursday we received an e-mail from a “Brother
Hibernian” giving us a link to an article in the Irish Independent, “Pope Calls for World Financial Reform.” What first caught our eye was the passage,
“Speaking of financial markets [Pope Francis] said: ‘A new,
invisible and at times virtual, tyranny is established, one which unilaterally
and irremediably imposes its own laws and rules’.”
It seems to us we’ve seen something along those lines
somewhere before — such as in Quadragesimo
Anno:
“[F]ree competition, while
justified and certainly useful provided it is kept within certain limits,
clearly cannot direct economic life — a truth which the outcome of the
application in practice of the tenets of this evil individualistic spirit has
more than sufficiently demonstrated. Therefore, it is most necessary that
economic life be again subjected to and governed by a true and effective
directing principle. This function is one that the economic dictatorship which
has recently displaced free competition can still less perform, since it is a
headstrong power and a violent energy that, to benefit people, needs to be
strongly curbed and wisely ruled. But it cannot curb and rule itself. Loftier
and nobler principles — social justice and social charity — must, therefore, be
sought whereby this dictatorship may be governed firmly and fully. Hence, the
institutions themselves of peoples and, particularly those of all social life,
ought to be penetrated with this justice, and it is most necessary that it be
truly effective, that is, establish a juridical and social order which will, as
it were, give form and shape to all economic life. Social charity, moreover,
ought to be as the soul of this order, an order which public authority ought to
be ever ready effectively to protect and defend.” (Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, § 88.)
There’s more that we’ll get to in
a later posting, but we have to stop here and correct some misimpressions and
misunderstandings. First, we agree with
every word in the above passage. Second,
we are fully aware that a great many other people also agree with every word in
the passage.
The problem is that what those
others mean by many of the words in the passage, and what we, and Pope Pius XI,
meant by those same words, are frequently two very, very different things. Take,
for example, “free competition.”
Many people will, despite the
pope’s clear statement that free competition is “justified and certainly useful
provided it is kept within certain limits,” take this as either an endorsement
of unrestricted, laissez faire
competition (restrained, of course, by such virtues as greed, cf. Dr. Milton
Friedman), or as a condemnation of all forms of competition except that which
is kept strictly in bounds by positive State regulation, meaning total
control. In today’s lexicon of political
economy, “regulation” always means
“control.” The choice, then, appears to
be between capitalism and socialism.
Is that, however, what the pope
means by calling for financial reform?
