Ted Schmidt sent us his latest editorial from new catholic times—sensus fidelium. He argues that Catholic social teaching might have something useful to say regarding the global economic crisis and what we need to do to get out of it and to prevent it happening again.

"There is no such thing as a free market!"

British industrialist, Arnold Weinstock

As a bi-weekly journal-paper we cannot write a comprehensive editorial on the financial crisis enveloping western capitalism. We can however include a number of articles for the clarification of thought in this whole area. Now we would like to make a few cardinal points.

One wag wrote in a Canadian context: listeriosis (the disease which has so far claimed 20 Canadians in the tainted meat scandal) is Latin for deregulation. Pretty good. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's embrace of laissez-faire capitalism allowed meat companies to virtually inspect themselves — with the attendant results. This was very similar to the raw meat free market brawl Ontarians suffered under Mike Harris.

We remember the car dealer-minister Al Paladini totally deregulating the transport industry and as predicted, original sin ran rampant and the transport companies radically cut corners (as humans in search of profit will do). Wheels suddenly were flying off huge rigs and killing human beings. After several deaths, a sudden blitz ensued with the not-unexpected results — 90% of the trucks had serious deficiencies. The deaths were preventable as were the water deaths in Walkerton. These are but two small examples of a totally free market with no protection for people and no government oversight.

We believe this present crisis well may be the swan song of market mania vigorously promoted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. For three decades it was mortally sinful — a secular heresy — to contradict the prevailing wisdom that the market knows best; that the untrammeled search for profit and individual self-interest somehow makes for a healthy society.

The extraordinary economic meltdown has sIgnalled the necessity of more stringent control of a country's economic life.

Catholic social teaching…

This has always been Catholic social teaching, ignored by the messiahs of turbo-capitalism. Any state intervention was absolutely verboten. Pope John Paul ll in his encyclical Centesimus Annus (1991) rejected this thinking in the name of the common good. One must always keep an eye on the market's effects on human beings and the environment.

In that encyclical the pontiff stressed the centrality of the dignity of the human person, the one made in God's image for whom the economy exists.

58. Love for others, and in the first place love for the poor, in whom the Church sees Christ himself, is made concrete in the promotion of justice. Justice will never be fully attained unless people see in the poor person, who is asking for help in order to survive, not an annoyance or a burden, but an opportunity for showing kindness and a chance for greater enrichment.

Only such an awareness can give the courage needed to face the risk and the change involved in every authentic attempt to come to the aid of another. It is not merely a matter of "giving from one's surplus", but of helping entire peoples which are presently excluded or marginalized to enter into the sphere of economic and human development.

A major shift in thinking is required…

Time Magazine's portrait of John Meynard Keynes

For this to happen, it is not enough to draw on the surplus goods which in fact our world abundantly produces; it requires above all a change of life-styles, of models of production and consumption, and of the established structures of power which today govern societies. Nor is it a matter of eliminating instruments of social organization which have proved useful, but rather of orienting them according to an adequate notion of the common good in relation to the whole human family.

Today we are facing the so-called "globalization" of the economy, a phenomenon which is not to be dismissed, since it can create unusual opportunities for greater prosperity. There is a growing feeling, however, that this increasing internationalization of the economy ought to be accompanied by effective international agencies which will oversee and direct the economy to the common good, something that an individual State, even if it were the most powerful on earth, would not be in a position to do. In order to achieve this result, it is necessary that there be increased coordination among the more powerful countries, and that in international agencies the interests of the whole human family be equally represented. It is also necessary that in evaluating the consequences of their decisions, these agencies always give sufficient consideration to peoples and countries which have little weight in the international market, but which are burdened by the most acute and desperate needs, and are thus more dependent on support for their development. Much remains to be done in this area.

Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor!

It was breathtaking to watch the sudden abrogation of these heretofore sacrosanct principles. We watched as the crestfallen American president George W. Bush intoned his predictable mantra that he was a free marketer but in this case the government must intervene.

Once again we see how quickly government can act when it is crisis time — when their friends in the financial sector cried help — those who have made obscene amounts of money, paid themselves exorbitant salaries and put in golden parachutes as they walked out the door. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.

Let it be a lesson — one which the discredited Lord Keynes championed. The government is not a bystander; the government is us, and just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt acted swiftly in the Depression, government can and should act on behalf of its citizens, particularly its most vulnerable.

We ask where was this government activity when it came to child care, to unemployment, to fix the crumbling infrastructure and students needing money for higher education? Where was it when the poor were asked to get by on an embarrassing minimum wage? Where was the shame and activity when one-quarter of our fellow citizens' children fell below the poverty line? We seem to have so much money now for war ($18 billion and counting) and so little for that which makes for a stable society.

Government action as John Maynard Keynes insisted may be back — and just in time.

Catholic social teaching, as well, suggests that a brand new global financial architecture may be in order — one which reins in greed, protects the people and honours the earth.

IMAGE CREDITS: Click on the images to see the original source.

[Index of Commentaries from New Catholic Times]