The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy (Studies in Ethics and Economics)

Book Description

Filling a lapse in the debate on the role of religious thought in economic theory, The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, informed by the history of Catholic economic thought, shows that the long-seen contradiction between Catholic faith and support for the market economy does not exist.

Customer Reviews:

Beware!.......2007-10-15

As a Roman Catholic, I must point out that this book is NOT representative of the Catholic social teaching. Traditionalists (with whom the author sympathizes) are a minority group within Roman Catholicism (some groups don't even enjoy the favor of the Holy See) just like the Austrian school is a fringe school of thought in economics. Traditionalists do not like the Church's emphasis on social justice whereas Austrian economists would get rid of the central banks and social spending (in fact, they seriously contemplate privatizing oceans and sidewalks). If someone sympathizes with anarcho-capitalism and does not care about those who are hurt by the unfettered market, maybe they are not Catholic in the first place. Once again: this book does NOT express the Catholic view.

The Unhistorical Historian.......2006-03-26

Woods accepts uncritically the rather paradoxical view that there is an arena of human action (economics)exmempt from the moral order. This implies that it is also exempt from Church teachings. Thus, for Woods, it is the Church and not the market that is problematic. The market, for Woods, moves according to its own logic, just as the stars do; it is a pure science on the order of physcis or astronomy. However, the view that men are moved in the same way as are the stars is more akin to astrology than astronomy.

The traditional view that prevailed from Aristotle to Smith was that all human relationships, including economic ones, were regulated by justice. Justice, for Aristotle and St. Thomas, was not merely a "Part of virtue, but virtue entire." Hence there can be no human relationships outside its realm. To posit an order of relationships beyond justice is to subscribe, consciously or not, to the doctrine of the double truth. Just as in the 13th century, those who subscribe to this doctrine reject the authority of the Church, or indeed any authority at all.

Woods is truly unprepared for his task, with only a rudimentary knowledge of economics, mainly gleaned from the pretensions of "praxeology," a philosophy so flawed that only an economist could take it seriously. (Economists are generally the most poorly trained and least well-read of all the academics.) But Woods is an historian, and should have used his training in this area to examine the question. Had he done so, he would have discovered that the system he longs for existed in the 19th and early 20th century. The economy was, during that period, very nearly laissez-faire, with the government not even 1/10th as involved as it is today. The system was also highly unstable and inequitable, subject to ever increasing cycles of economic euphoria and depression, culminating in the Great Depression that very nearly brought the system down. Only massive government redistribution, starting after World War II, could given the system any stability. Now this intervention itself has become problematic, resulting in debts that cannot be sustained.

We have been where Woods would have us go; we did not like it. The truth of the matter is that economic Austria and social chaos share a border, and you cannot draw near to the one without coming close to the other. If justice is one thing and economics another, then there can be no just systems, and society is condemened to being a war of all against all. A little history would have saved the historian from great errors. And a little humility would not have hurt, either; if one is going to be a dissenter, it would be a good idea to have a better idea of the teaching one is dissenting from. Woods has neither history, nor humility, nor economics, nor justice. Without justice, there can be no stable social order.

Very effective.......2006-01-29

Let me note from the outset that I've gotten to know Professor Woods by means of emails we've exchanged after I've read some of his articles; I have reviewed a couple of his other books for Amazon as well.

I read The Church and the Market late last year and loved it. Woods has a gift for explaining complicated things in ways that can easily be understood. Woods anticipates more arguments against the free market than I could have come up with in 20 years and demolishes them all, without invective or a sneer.

This is an extremely learned book, and written in clear and engaging prose. Woods takes a consistently pro-freedom position in his discussion of wages, antitrust, the welfare state, banking, foreign aid, etc.

At the same time, he addresses some of the Catholic hostility to the market, and poses some interesting questions. His argument goes something like this: certain papal statements call for a "living wage" (for example) because they believe such recommendations will make workers better off. But what if such a policy (whether enforced by law or by ecclesiastical urging is irrelevant) will make workers worse off? (Woods gives many reasons that this would be the case, including the fact that fewer workers would be employed.)

Leave aside your objection that Woods' economic analysis is wrong, and that, say, a $50 minimum wage would actually be a great thing. The question is this. Let's say Woods is right, which is certainly possible. Let's say this approach would indeed make workers worse off. Is a Catholic free to say so? If not, why not?

Note that Woods isn't saying the Church is not allowed to speak on economic matters. He is saying that some of the economic assumptions behind the bishops' statements on the economy are faulty, and that the resulting moral analysis is necessarily faulty as well.

It would be something else if Church leaders were to admit that the policies they recommend would surely make people worse off, but that justice requires that they be instituted anyway. That would be one thing. But these policies are being recommended on the express assumption that they will help people. But what if they won't? What then?

That is an interesting and good question, though many Catholics are embarrassing themselves by claiming Woods has no right to ask it. Playing right into the Protestant caricature of Catholicism, they insist that free discussion on such matters is not allowed (a fact that would have been very interesting to medieval scholars, who wrote about and debated just about every philosophical and theological issue you can name). They acknowledge none of the careful distinctions Woods makes, and some of the dafter ones go so far as to say he's dissenting from official teaching simply in pointing out reality. What a nightmare.

As for N. Ravitch, below, he's Professor Norman Ravitch, who 1) hates the Catholic Church (do a Google search on him) and 2) makes a habit of reviewing books he hasn't read. (Check out his review of George Weigel's book God's Choice, for example.) The point of Woods's book is to ADDRESS anti-market statements by Church figures; Ravitch, apparently going only on the brief description above, assumes Woods' book just ignores them. No one who even owned a copy, much less actually read it, could have mischaracterized it so completely.

Catholics for Freedom.......2005-03-12

Professor Thomas Woods is an interesting author: a traditionalist Catholic who is also a supporter of the free market economy. In this book, he presents a Catholic case for the free enterprise system, employing the economics of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard (neither of whom was religious, much less Catholic.)

It's well known that the Roman Catholic Church has never been a particularly strong supporter of capitalism. Many popes have stressed the benefits of private property and opposed extreme versions of socialism, but have not realized the positive benefits of Capitalism. In the past, teachers in the Catholic Church haven't understood the functioning of economic laws. The always-paradoxical John Paul II, while having a better understanding of the markets processes, supports large-scale government intervention in the economy. In addition, many Catholics believe that the church's advocacy of the mixed economy is dogma, thus putting Catholic supporters of free enterprise on the same level as those who advocate women priests and the like.

Prof. Woods thus has a lot of work to do. He first shows the autonomous nature of economic reasoning. Churchmen are entitled to instruct the faithful on their duties to their fellow man, but lay Catholics are free to make an independent appraisal of the effectiveness of any given plan. For example, if a churchman tells his flock to help the needy, that's all well and good; if he tells them that the only way to improve the lot of the poor is through minimum wage laws, labor unions, foreign aid and the like, he is making a judgment about how economic laws work. Woods argues that, from the Catholic perspective, there is no reason to believe that the pope is infallible in his economic prescriptions. Prof. Woods discusses a large number of subjects, including usury, wages, prices, banking and foreign aid.

My one concern is whether all of Catholic economic teaching fits neatly into Prof. Woods' approach. Many popes taught in a rather dogmatic way about the need for various interventions in the economy. One example is the support for laws mandating the closing of stores on Sunday (as well as giving workers the day off). If popes who advocated these things had been Misesian praxeologists, I doubt they would have come to different conclusions.

The book ends with a strong critique of distributism, which seeks a larger distribution of private property in the hands of workers. Chesteron and Belloc, among others, advocated distributism. Many traditionally minded Catholics see distributism as a "third way" between capitalism and socialism. But as Prof. Woods points out, the only institution which has the power to redistribute property on a massive scale is the state.

an austrian primer.......2005-03-05

This book's title is deceptive in that it suggests the author is going to examine the place of capitalism within formal Catholic social thought. Sadly, Dr. Woods foregos the opportunity to examine the teachings of the social magisterium in favor of the standard bromides of the Austrian school. Admitting at the outset that he's no intention of bringing up the pronouncements of the popes throughout the ages, he instead nitpicks about the sorts of things which have traditionally annoyed Austrians. In most things, Woods follows the lead of others, contributing nothing himself in the way of original analysis. He acknowledges his intellectual debt to Murray Rothbard in the introduction and, later on, draws on Rothbard's arguments concerning the 16th century scholastics, some of whom wrote opinions in accord with Austrianism. Unfortunately, a few 16th century theologians does not the Church make and it's of course silly to even think that these men, grounded as they were in the thought of the Angelic Doctor, would in any way endorse the bastard children of the Enlightenment. It would be the equivalent of saying that the popes are Austrian because they view private property as a pillar of society.

According to Rothbard, the error of Thomists and all classical natural-law theorists is that they viewed the state as a "major locus of virtuous action". Elsewhere, Rothbard defines the state as a monopolistic criminal enterprise. Each of these views is well outside of the social magisterium; no where will you find a pope who rejects the validity of the state since it holds authority by the will of God. St. Paul addresses the state in Romans 13, not the all-powerful market, and he does not fall on the side of Murray Rothbard. The errors of the non-Catholic Rothbard on political issues are not enough to persuade Woods that he's suspect as an authority in economics. He clings instead all the more tightly to the luminaries of Austrianism in a book ostensibly dedicated to Catholic social teaching on economic concerns. Modern Catholic intellectuals and popes have always recognized the interdependence between the economic and political frameworks. What one holds regarding the proper constitution of a society has ramifications in the economic sphere. Rothbard's political views are inseparable from his economic theory since the state exists solely to destroy the fruits of the market (cf. Man, Economy & State).
The irony is that Dr. Woods continues to defend the compatibility of Austrianism and Catholicism, despite the repeated condemnations of economic liberalism by popes like Pius XI, to whom Woods appeals against the errors and confusion which have plagued the post-conciliar Church (cf. The Great Façade; the phrase "cafeteria Catholic" comes to mind). Here, Pius XI addresses Woods and his ilk in his encyclical letter Ubi Arcano Dei:
"Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labor, on the rights of the laboring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV. There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism."

Liberalism takes many forms. In our own day, most faithful Catholics assume it is primarily concerned with corruptions of human sexuality. In fact, the popes remind the faithful that liberalism appears under varied guises.

Dr. Woods evinces a poor philosophical foundation and he is easily taken in by all sorts of Austrian assumptions. For example, Ludwig von Mises, critical inspiration to Rothbard and other Austrians, claims in his work Human Action that praxeology "is the science of every kind of human action," rejecting any claim that his new science, heretofore unknown to the doctors of the Church, is not limited to those actions which lead to an improvement in man's material well-being. This claim of course is fundamentally at odds with St. Thomas and Catholicism at both a natural and theological level. From a Thomistic perspective, one wonders how anyone can have a perfect science of all human action that does not weigh good or bad actions. This is true whether it's philosophical ethics or evangelical precepts. The error of the past, says Mises, is that philosophers like Aristotle sought to explain human action by notions of good or bad, just or unjust, or even worse, the miraculous "interference" of a Deity. Instead, human actions are not ordered by objective valuations, but rather by the dictates of the market. Virtue and vice are subjective notions which have no place in economics. If a man is to "succeed" says Mises, he must adjust his actions to economic law. In his intro to Human Action, he uses the example of a man who wants frequent sexual intercourse: if he's going to get it, he's going to have to know economics. Austrian economics, not Chicago-style. Elsewhere, he quips that "simple faith and economic rationalism cannot dwell together. It is unthinkable that priests should govern entrepreneurs." Meaning, the Church has no business at all talking about the market. The social magisterium is just so many opinions which may or may not be the correct way to establish a just and felicitous social order. Rothbardians would go further and say that the Church can be ignored without moral peril whenever She posits the notion of a common good that the state is obligated to safeguard.

Woods argues that economics is not a species of ethics but is instead a pure science studied in the same way that physics is by physicists. As St. Thomas says in his commentary on Aristotle's Ethics, "external goods that are used purposively by men have a moral consideration." It's precisely this ethical cast that Mises and other Austrians have sought to remove from the discipline of economics. The Church has claimed the right to decide the moral lights which should guide Christians in formulating a just economic order. The author does not meditate upon the question of whether there is a moral calculus in the laws which the state passes to regulate the exchange of goods or in relations between labor and capital. How can he? His mentor Rothbard had already taught that the state was criminal by nature, so it follows that its decrees are only the threats of violence made by a monopolistic crime syndicate. Rothbard took Mises to his logical conclusion, deciding that the market would necessarily find the most humane and efficient way to secure corporate goods with the state tagging along as an unwanted parasite. The author uses the same line of thought in his discussion on safety regulations. The market will always do a better job of implementing safety in the workplace than any public regulation because it is rational. If an objective moral evil exists in the social order, it cannot be addressed by the state. The market is infallible and will eventually solve any problem, whether it takes days or decades. Positive laws to remedy or palliate a condition are by definition always worse than doing nothing. It's kind of like a doctor telling his patient to fore go any treatment since death will eventually cure his illness.

Woods wants us to accept that economics is a value-free science, a set of observations about the way things work in a world marred by scarcity. At the same time, he can't help dipping into moral considerations (e.g, p. 47), predicating moral or immoral of certain economic choices. In addition, he favorably quotes the Jesuit Mariana, who calls any ruler "wicked" who sets a price by edict. Mises and Rothbard of course also resorted to various moral arguments when discoursing on economics; their gift for moralistic psychologizing has been picked up by anarchists like Hans Hoppe at UNLV. The question is then: whose morals guide the discussion? Are they Catholic? Do they reflect the mind of the Church in her magisterium and liturgy (cf. The Feast of Christ the King)? The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, used by Byzantine Catholics, is very un-Rothbardian: the priest prays for the good of the civil authorities and the armed forces. It's hard to be a Greek Catholic and a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist. Biblical passages like 1 Peter 2:13 become problematic at best, candidates for expunging at worst. To be deep in Austrianism is to cease to be Catholic.

At the very least, we can dispense with the pretension that economics is just a pure science about the way things are. This claim can also be found in fields like sociology and psychology. It's foolish to predicate pure value-neutrality of the political science, but the Economic Man is a powerful myth, so it happens that the whole science of economics gets a pass when it does this very thing. The Austrian School is a marginal school at best (no pun intended), with Noble Laureates and scholars coming from other schools like Chicago. The variety of theories would suggest that economics is a science in an equivocal sense only.

Woods has repeatedly shown that he's out of his depth in tackling the question of the Church and the market. For those who accept his thesis, think more carefully about it after reading Rothbard and Mises. Both authors have good insights and much of what they write is reasonable when they discuss the minutiae, but this book is nothing more than an Austrian primer. Woods limits much of his effort to sniping at individuals like Belloc. Heinrich Pesch gets two whole pages even though he's hugely influential in 20th century Catholic social thought. One senses that Woods is really only interested in regurgitating standard Austrian fare. We don't need this book for that purpose since many others have already been written.

A concise but potent antidote to Austrian ideology is the recently released Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Unlike this book, it actually delves into the heart of the Church's teaching on economic, political and cultural issues. Citations are copious and far ranging and, alas, authoritative.

The Market Economy and Christian Ethics (New Studies in Christian Ethics)

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The Market Economy and Christian Ethics (New Studies in Christian Ethics)
Peter H. Sedgwick
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics (New Studies in Christian Ethics)

ASIN: 052147048X

Book Description

Peter Sedgwick explores the relation of a theology of justice to that of human identity in the context of the market economy, and engages with critics of capitalism and the market. He examines three aspects of the market economy: first, how does it shape personal identity, through consumption and the experience of paid employment in relation to the work ethic? Second, what impact does the global economy have on local cultures? Finally, as manufacturing changes out of all recognition through the impact of technology and global competition, what is the effect in terms of poverty? Drawing on the response of the Catholic Church, both in the United States and in papal encyclicals, to the market economy from 1985–1991, Sedgwick argues that its involvement deserves to be better known. Moreover, he recommends that the Churches remain part of the debate in reforming and humanizing the market economy.

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Peter Sedgwick explores the relation of a theology of justice to that of human identity in the context of the market economy, and engages with critics of capitalism and the market. He examines three aspects of the market economy: firstly, how does it shape personal identity, through consumption and the experience of paid employment in relation to the work ethic? Secondly, what impact does the global economy have on local cultures? Finally, as manufacturing changes out of all recognition through the impact of technology and global competition, what is the effect in terms of poverty? Drawing on the response of the Catholic Church, both in the United States and in Papal encyclicals, to the market economy from 1985-1991, Sedgwick argues that its involvement deserves to be better known. Moreover, he recommends that the churches remain part of the debate in reforming and humanising the market economy.

Capitalism and Christianity: The Possibility of Christian Personalism

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Conservative, Breaks New Ground
Sensible Ethics, sensible economics

Capitalism and Christianity: The Possibility of Christian Personalism
Richard C. Bayer
Manufacturer: Georgetown University Press
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Customer Reviews:

Conservative, Breaks New Ground.......2004-06-04

You will love this book for its insights and constructive approach in the neo-conservative tradition. It requires a understanding of both economics and ethics (Catholic Social Teaching).
You won't agree with this book if you're in the socialist or New Deal tradition.

Sensible Ethics, sensible economics.......1999-11-29

An unusually sophisticated joining of ethics and economics -especially interesting if you are informed about Catholic Social Teaching.

Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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Great theory, but not always an easy read
Value edition for the budget minded
A Very Standard Economic Postulate
Don't buy the Dover edition of this book.
great idea, little proof

Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Max M. Weber
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
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ASIN: 0631230815

Book Description

Max Weber's best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day a powerful and fascinating read. Weber's highly accessible style is just one of many reasons for his continuing popularity. The book contends that the Protestant ethic made possible and encouraged the development of capitalism in the West. Widely considered as the most informed work ever written on the social effects of advanced capitalism, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism holds its own as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century. The book is one of those rare works of scholarship which no informed citizen can afford to ignore.

Customer Reviews:

Great theory, but not always an easy read.......2007-07-30

Max Weber's thesis that the Protestant work-ethic helped give rise to the spirit of modern capitalism is well known, but how true is it? Weber goes into an impressive review of historical details on how Luther's concept of the calling became the Calvinist concept of labor to glorify God, and finally the Puritan concept that is applied to business as well as anything else. In short, the Protestant hard-work ethic, intended to be a sign of election and to glorify god, inadvertently (at least in part) gave birth to the spirit of capitalism, of sustained, planned, methodical profit-making. Though capitalism is no longer dependent upon religion for maintaining its ethos (we are all caught in the rat race), it is fascinating how Weber makes a compelling case that a once anti-materialist Protestant Christianity came to affirm the capitalist spirit by way of a hard-working ethic. Many of Weber's themes are persuasive, if also controversial. Weber has by no means isolated the final or full cause of the take-off of capitalism in modern times, but he has made a good case for one contributing factor. Would that his style of writing had been a bit more direct - Weber's insights are at least worth careful reading.

Value edition for the budget minded.......2007-06-06

The "reviews" about Weber's thesis could fill libraries. Ooops! They actually have!

So let's ignore that.

The focus here is on value, and this Dover value edition is perfectly fine for the thrifty college student on a limited budget who needs to read this work for an assignment but doesn't want to be at the mercy of the University Library.

This is a seminal work that reaches far into other fields of inquiry, so it is likely you will need it no matter what your field.

The binding is an el-cheap-o slab of glue, so it won't lie flat on your desk when you are transcribing a quote for a citation.....but since you've downloaded the text file you'll just cut and paste anyway.

Academic citations to this edition are perfectly acceptable in scholarly papers and under MLA, ASA, APA, ACS, APSA, "Turabian" and MHRA style guidelines (and perhaps others).

A Very Standard Economic Postulate.......2007-04-15

Assuming Max Weber's thesis to be true proves useful. By assuming it as a postulate, one gains a potential way of understanding the beliefs of the western-world's upper pareto boundary and the typical ressentiments / bad faith (bad-tempered, difficult mental traps everyone who tries to create something can't help but fall into from time to time, mea culpa!) of the lower.

Max Scheler (who advised Karol Wojtyla as a Ph.D. student) seems to have done something similar to what Max Weber describes the upper pareto boundary (somewhere over the rainbow as the song goes) as having done. Max Scheler "attempted to reconcile Nietzsche's ideas of master-slave morality and ressentiment with the Christian ideals of love and humility."

Anyway, just projecting a few of my other readings onto this one a bit. L8R.

Don't buy the Dover edition of this book........2006-10-26

The Dover edition of the book has been bound so tightly that it's difficult to turn the pages--and to read the words, which are nearly swallowed up by the binding. It feels like if you force it at all, the whole binding will come unglued.

It may be cheap, but it *feels* so extremely cheap that it's just not worth the money saved. Buy yourself another edition--or for that matter, just get the text free online. Anything's better than trying to read this edition.

great idea, little proof.......2006-09-26

As part of my enquiry into the forces that the Reformation unleased, I decided to at last read this classic.

Alas, it was disappointing in that Weber makes the assertion - that reformation-spawned ideologies were the foundation of the capitalist revolution - and then offers little historical explanation as proof of his thesis. Instead, what he does is to painstakingly describe the ideologies in question, to show that they are compatible conceptually with his definition of capitalism (the rise of an urban bourgeoisie that created wealth by investing in industry as a major new economic actor, eventaully leading to the eclipse of the old land-based aristocracy). As Hannah Ardnt said, so long as you are far enough from reality, you can make almost any ideas appear compatible. As such, I was unconvinced that a) the feeling of being among the elect made people work harder to prove it by material success and b) that a heightened sense of individuality that arose with separation from the papist ideologies augmented this pursuit of self-development via the massing of personal capital. While the protestant ideologies may conform vaguely to these notions, that does not in the slightest prove a direct causal connection. Indeed, one might argue that it was the repression by the Inquisition - against the bourgoise's challenge to traditional aristocrats - that may have delayed the development of capitalism in Catholic countries for a few centuries. (That capitalism did develop in many Catholic countries also undermines the book's prinicpal thesis.)

This essay is interesting as a pioneering attempt at sociological determinism from a rather existentialist perspective, but reading the whole thing was a bit much for me. Weber was a great and innovative thinker, however out of date his modes of reasoning have become - they are strictly qualitative. Not recommended except asof historical interest.

Market Whys and Human Wherefores: Thinking Again About Markets, Politics and People

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Market Whys and Human Wherefores: Thinking Again About Markets, Politics and People
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The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic: An Enquiry into the Weber Thesis

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The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic: An Enquiry into the Weber Thesis
Michael H. Lessnoff
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THE MARKET ECONOMY AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.(Review)(Brief Article): An article from: Theological Studies

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THE MARKET ECONOMY AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.(Review)(Brief Article): An article from: Theological Studies
Thomas Massaro
Manufacturer: Theological Studies, Inc.
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This digital document is an article from Theological Studies, published by Theological Studies, Inc. on March 1, 2001. The length of the article is 799 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: THE MARKET ECONOMY AND CHRISTIAN ETHICS.(Review)(Brief Article)
Author: Thomas Massaro
Publication: Theological Studies (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2001
Publisher: Theological Studies, Inc.
Volume: 62 Issue: 1 Page: 209

Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article

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