F.R. Hoare, from “The Fundamental Laws of Economics Are Moral Laws”:
When Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, he pointed out the problems of capitalism and its disastrous effect on society. Marx correctly stated that capitalism was destroying family, property, and religious faith. Capitalism makes the individual the primary economic unit, rather than the family. Work outside the home, first the father and children and then the mother, pulls apart the family unit just as family work on the farm and in the workshop hold it together. Capitalism is the enemy of private property because unfettered competition takes property out of the hands of the many and concentrates it in the hands of the few. Capitalism is the enemy of religion because it requires an atmosphere that excludes moral considerations from economics in order to pave the way for the unfettered reign of “market forces.” The disaster that follows is left to the charity of others with no consideration to the injustices that caused the disaster.
We need nothing less than an economics that is itself a system of morals in its basic principles. At one time it was an accepted thing that economics was a more or less mathematical science, into which morals could only enter as a disturbing element. Even the philanthropists asked no more than that moral considerations should occasionally be allowed to temper the practical conclusions drawn by scientific analysis. Unhappily, practical experience showed that economic processes, and the men who worked them, having once been set in motion without regard to morals, did not easily admit the introduction of morals at a later stage.
Even those who by their religious profession acknowledged that morals should come first were generally willing to agree that the case of economics was "somehow different." They did this even when they had a sound system of moral philosophy to draw on. As for those who had no sound philosophy behind them, but only amiable intentions, their attempt to regulate economics by morals was foredoomed to failure. For they proposed to substitute for non-moral economics, not a system of economic justice, but selections from the Sermon on the Mount.
Now, in so far as it really brought back to the world a desire for economic justice and for bettering the lot of the dispossessed, Marxist Communism did a good and much-needed work. But in so far as it conceived of economic justice wholly in terms of a single class, even though the largest--indeed, in so far as it thought in terms of classes of any kind, to the exclusion of the individual and families--it could never give the world a universally satisfying justice or one founded on the true needs of human nature. And in so far as it made economic betterment an end in itself and taught that all the values of human life could be realized by an economic change, it made economic betterment worthless and human life a mockery.
When we speak of economic reconstruction on a moral basis it is not meant that the whole of economics can be comprised in a moral code. The view of economics as a non-moral, quasi-mathematical science contains this much truth: that a great part of it must always consist of technical description and analysis, since it has to determine what economic aims are technically practicable and what are the most efficient methods of attaining them.
But the subject matter of economics is, after all, a field of human activity, namely man's efforts to supply his material needs. Its material aims, therefore, must ultimately be judged by their conformity to the moral ends of human life, and its methods by the moral standards of human conduct. Men remain morally responsible for their deliberate acts in all circumstances, including their economic relations.
In the Middle Ages economists had no doubt that economics was, at bottom, the science of how men ought to behave to one another in the course of getting a living. Hence, they dealt primarily with men and their behavior, and only secondarily with goods and money and their accumulation. They emphasized the sinfulness of avarice and of taking advantage of another's urgent necessities; they held that the craftsman was under a moral obligation to do good work; they required that wages, prices, and rates of interest should be just and not merely competitive; and so forth. They rightly considered that to disregard these principles was bad economics.
In the second half of the 18th century economists began to teach openly that each man should pursue solely his economic self-interest. They tried to bring this into a system of morals by declaring that the economic uniformities resulting from this simplification of motives constituted a natural harmony; but the practical effect of their doctrine was to put economics into a separate compartment of life, outside morals, ruled by jungle law under slogans like "business is business."
In the next phase of Liberalism, the economic uniformities in question came to be regarded as inexorable laws of nature against which rebellion was as futile as against the law of gravitation. This determinism was used to prevent philanthropists from trying to mitigate the system. Marx gave a fresh turn to it by representing the existing economic system, and all economic change, as brought about entirely by a predetermined historical process. Our approach, far from admitting that moral considerations constitute a deviation from the strict path of economic truth, implies that maladjustments even on the strictly economic plane may be traceable to moral error.
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The ChesterBelloc Mandate: The Seven Principles of the New Radicalism (distributist.blogspot.com)
Frederick Russell Hoare (1888—1951) was an author, editor, and translator who specialized in classical antiquity and in the history of the Catholic Church. His best-known books include Eight Decisive Books of Antiquity, The Western Fathers, and The Papacy and the Modern State.
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