Radical Orthodoxy

On 11 July at St Benet's Hall in Oxford the Chesterton Institute based at Seton Hall, NJ, is running a conference on Distributist responses to the economic crisis. One of the speakers is Phillip Blond, who is associated with John Milbank's (shown here) 'Radical Orthodoxy' movement. What is all this about, and how does it related to the British reception of the forthcoming social encyclical, 'Caritas in Veritate'?

Here is Milbank's perceptive analysis of the economic crisis from his fascinating book The Future of Love. He talks of the danger that as a reult of the crisis 'State bureaucratic oligarchy would now start to fuse with the "private" oligarchy and monopoly of capital. Hilaire Belloc's "servile state" would start to emerge.'

'With the current apparent collapse in 2008 of the finance and debt-fuelled domination of neoliberalism in a crisis of the "non-realizability" of abstract assets through linkage to more material ones, this specter now looms. State control of banking could easily dictate greater state direction of production and a greater use of technology - yet still in the interests of the market and still involving an extraction of surplus-value from the dispossessed who do not equitably share in the profit of industry, but are bought off with "wages" and "salaries" (p. 96).'

Milbank stands within the tradition of non-statist Christian "socialism", alongside other types of thinkers who 'characteristically stress subsidiarity (the distribution of money and power to appropriate levels, not necessarily the lowest) and the break-up of central sovereignty through the operation of intermediary associations.'

'These theories can appear as relatively more "left" or "right", yet all in reality question the left/right distinction in its secular form. In relation to the latter, Christians must pursue a politics of seeming paradox from apparently "opposite" vantage points. Thus some within Radical Orthodoxy will follow Phillip Blond in his espousal of a new British form of "Red Toyism". Others, currently the majority, will follow my own brand of "Blue Socialism" - socialism with a Burkean tinge, now common to many on the left, including some within the centre-left (anti New Labour) British Labour Party "Compass Group"' (p. xvii).

But he rightly adds that 'these differences may not be what matters' in the debates concerning

'the role of nuclear and extended families, of co-operatives, of trade guilds, of mutual banks, housing associations and credit unions, and of the law in setting firewalls between business practices, defining the acceptable limits of usury and interest, and the principles that must govern the fair setting of wages and prices. Above all perhaps they concern how we can turn all people into owners and joint-owners, abolishing the chasm between the mass who can only earn or receive welfare and so are dependent and the minority who own in excess' (ibid.).

More philosophically, Milbank argues that we need a new sort of market, and a new sort of politics, in which economics and politics are no longer defined in isolation from each other (exclusive regard for the power of money, or the power of law). Does this sound fantastic, he asks? 'No, the fantastic is what we have: an economy that destroys life, babies, childhood, adventure, locality, beauty, the exotic, the erotic, people, and the planet itself' (p. 263).

And speaking of the New Distributists, a particularly fine new introduction to this important strand of Catholic social thought has been recently published by IHS Press. Titled Beyond Capitalism and Socialism: A New Statement of an Old Ideal, and edited by Tobias J. Lanz, it contains powerful statements by twelve of the most impressive Distributist thinkers alive today.

What Ails Modern Society

by Peter Maurin (Catholic Worker)

What ails modern society
is the separation
of the spiritual
from the material.

When religion
has nothing to do with education,
education is only information;
plenty of facts,
but no understanding.

When religion
has nothing to do with politics,
politics is only factionalism:
“Let’s turn the rascals out
so our good friends
can get in.”

When religion
has nothing to do with business,
business is only commercialism:
“Let’s get what we can
while the getting is good.”

And when religion
has nothing to do with
either education, politics or business,
you have the religion of business
taking the place of
the business of religion.

Reith Lectures

The social encyclical is due to be signed at the end of June. In the meantime, you could do a lot worse than sharpen your mind by reading or listening to the 2009 Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4. This year's lecturer in the prestigious series is Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel, and his lectures, entitled A New Citizenship, are about "the prospect for a new politics of the common good". (The Radio 4 website has podcasts and transcripts available.) Outlining the subject matter for his lectures, Professor Sandel said: "The Reith lectures have a storied tradition of engaging the life of the mind and the public square. At a time of political change and economic turmoil, we need new thinking about the common good: What, in an age of globalisation, are the moral limits of markets? What should be the place of moral and spiritual values in public life? How is biotechnology transforming our relation to nature and the environment?"

The lectures are being broadcast both on Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. The first ever Reith lecturer was the philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1948, who spoke on "Authority and the Individual". Professor Sandel is the author of Liberalism And The Limits Of Justice (Cambridge University Press, 1982, 2nd edition, 1997), Democracy's Discontent (Harvard University Press, 1996), Public Philosophy: Essays On Morality In Politics (Harvard University Press, 2005), and The Case Against Perfection: Ethics In The Age Of Genetic Engineering (Harvard University Press, 2007).

Also well worth noting and reading is a series of articles by Mick Brown in the Telegraph Magazine, called 'High Street: High Noon', looking at the recession and the world that is emerging from the ashes. The first article looks at the High Street in Chester and goes on to examine the impact of alternative economics in Totnes - fascinating!

Catholic social teaching is no secret

The body of Catholic social teaching built up in modern times has become quite a formidable edifice. Naturally successive papal encyclicals on the subject have to reprise their predecessors as well as develop the teaching further. Each repays careful study in its own right, but conveniently the Church has summarized the accumulated tradition so far for us in her Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. The soon-to-be-released social encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI will build on this foundation.

In my first posting, I tried to reduce the whole body of principles to four: personality, solidarity, subsidiarity and sustainability. The starting point of the whole teaching is the revelation of the meaning of the human person, created in the image of the Trinitarian God - relational not merely individual. On this depends all our dignity, our rights, and the responsibility to act accordingly. A Dominican friend has pointed out that this theme was developed beautifully in an important but little-known document of the International Theological Commission of the Holy See called Communion and Stewardship (2004). The document discusses the theology of the divine image, including its relevance to gender, community, ecology, evolution, science and technology. Here are some extracts concerning ecology:

Created in the image of God to share in the communion of Trinitarian love, human beings occupy a unique place in the universe according to the divine plan: they enjoy the privilege of sharing in the divine governance of visible creation. This privilege is granted to them by the Creator who allows the creature made in his image to participate in his work, in his project of love and salvation, indeed in his own lordship over the universe. Since man's place as ruler is in fact a participation in the divine governance of creation, we speak of it here as a form of stewardship. [57] ...Human beings exercise this stewardship by gaining scientific understanding of the universe, by caring responsibly for the natural world (including animals and the environment), and by guarding their own biological integrity. [61] ...A misunderstanding of this teaching may have led some to act in reckless disregard of the natural environment, but it is no part of the Christian teaching about creation and the imago Dei to encourage unrestrained development and possible depletion of the earth’s resources. [73]

What Is Happening to Capitalism?

Geoff Mulgan has an interesting article in the April 2009 issue of Prospect magazine, entitled 'After Capitalism'. It begins: 'The US banking system faces losses of over $3,000bn. Japan is in a depression. China is headed for zero growth. Some still hope that urgent surgery can restore the status quo. But more feel that we are at one of those rare points of inflection when nothing is the same again.'

Meanwhile the Spring issue of RSA Journal is concerned, in the words of its editorial by Matthew Taylor, with the question of 'whether the economic collapse is an accident or a revelation,' and wants to take the debate to a new level.

Market globalisation, turbo-consumerism, the fetishising of economic growth, indifference to inequality, scepticism towards the state and even the very idea that human beings are best understood as rational, self-interested, individuals: all these aspects of what some in the UK might loosely call the neo-liberal inheritance are now subject to a concerted attack.

The first article that follows this RSA editorial, by Oliver Kamm, argues that we are facing not a 'crisis of capitalism' but 'a severe malfunctioning of one part of the capitalist economy, its financial sector' - to be corrected not by increased protectionism and state control but by openness and regulation (and in the short term by injecting money, purging bad debts and writing down assets). Pete Lunn writes of the rise to prominence of the 'behavioural economists' who argue that human beings function economically in a much less 'rational' manner than neo-liberalism assumes. We behave as a herd (even experts and CEOs), we often make worse decisions the more information we are given, and we act on the basis of trust and a sense of fairness, rather than as 'independent, rational economic agents out to maximise their own self-interest'. An article by Jonah Lehrer then examines the psychology of spending, and the way credit cards lead us into temptation, bypassing the normal inhibitions that constrain desire, and he applies this principle to the subprime mortgages that triggered the present crisis. Finally, Barbara Taylor asks the question whether men are to blame for the crisis more than women, pointing out that in Iceland the male bosses have now been replaced by females. This leads into a fascinating discussion of the differences between men and women and the history of feminism.

Back at Prospect magazine, Geoff Mulgan wants to look at how things might change for 'capitalism'. But what does this ubiquitous word actually mean?

The French historian Fernand Braudel offered perhaps the best description of capitalism when he wrote of it as a series of layers built on top of the everyday market economy of onions and wood, plumbing and cooking. These layers, local, regional, national and global, are characterised by ever greater abstraction, until at the top sits disembodied finance, seeking returns anywhere, uncommitted to any particular place or industry, and commodifying anything and everything. Capitalism became an “ism” when the vigorous banking and trade of Genoa and Venice, London and Bruges, combined with inventive manufacturing to create a world where the holders of abstracted capital became dominant, displacing the many other contenders for pole position, from warriors and scholars to bureaucrats and makers of things.

He goes on to talk of various versions of capitalism that have flourished at different times and in different cultures, and then about alternative utopias that have been proposed relatively recently:

The answers ranged from communism to managerialism, and from hopes of a golden age of leisure to dreams of a return to community and ecological harmony. Today these utopias can be found in the movements around the World Social Forum, on the edges of all of the major religions, in the radical sub-cultures that surround the net, and in moderated form in thousands of civic ventures across the world. They are bound to find new adherents. But their weakness and the weakness of much contemporary anti-capitalist literature (from David Korten, Wendell Berry, Alain Lipietz or Michael Albert) is that they offer little account of how their visions might be realised and how powerfully entrenched interests would be overcome.

Daniel Bell and others have spoken of the way capitalism tends to erode the traditional ethical and social norms on which its success depends. Others point out that as populations become older in the developed nations, a growing number of elderly will need more and more support from a dwindling group of youngsters. Even the success of capitalism works against it, forcing it to 'invest ever more in creating new needs fuelled by anxiety about status, or beauty and body mass'. But for a deeper insight, Mulgan turns to Venezuelan economist Carlota Perez:

Perez is a scholar of the long-term patterns of technological change. In Perez’s account economic cycles begin with the emergence of new technologies and infrastructures that promise great wealth; these then fuel frenzies of speculative investment, with dramatic rises in stock and other prices. During these phases finance is in the ascendant and laissez faire policies become the norm. The booms are then followed by dramatic crashes, whether in 1797, 1847, 1893, 1929 or 2008. After these crashes, and periods of turmoil, the potential of the new technologies and infrastructures is eventually realised, but only once new institutions come into being which are better aligned with the characteristics of the new economy.

Here is the relevance to our present situation:

Perez suggests that we may be on the verge of another great period of institutional innovation and experiment that will lead to new compromises between the claims of capital and the claims of society and of nature. In retrospect these periodic accommodations are as integral to capitalism as financial crises—indeed it’s only through crisis and institutional reform that capitalism adapts to a changing environment and rediscovers the moral compass that is so vital for markets to work well.

'If another great accommodation is on its way,' he adds, 'this one will be shaped by the triple pressures of ecology, globalisation and demographics.' However:

Forecasting in detail how these might play out is pointless and, as always, there are as many malign possibilities as benign ones, from revived militarism and autarchy to stigmatisation of minorities and accelerated ecological collapse. But the new technologies—from high speed networks to new energy systems, low carbon factories to open source software and genetic medicine—have a connecting theme: each potentially remakes capitalism more clearly as a servant rather than a master, whether in the world of money, work, everyday life or the state.

This sounds nice, but what could it mean? He talks about the pressure for increased regulation and accountability, the rise of social and ethical investment, and various forms of mutualism.

Even money itself may be rethought. The privileges that accompany the ability to create money will come in future with more responsibilities, but we may also see more enthusiasm for alternative currencies that are more embedded, like the local currencies in Germany or timebanks.

There are already 'strong movements to restrain the excesses of mass consumerism: slow food, the voluntary simplicity movement and the many measures to arrest rising obesity, are all symptoms of a swing towards seeing consumerism less as a harmless boon and more as a villain.' The evolution of low-carbon production methods, and the success of open-source software, cooperatives and employee-owned firms like John Lewis, point towards the new types of capitalism Mulgan has in mind, although here, he says, the decisive issue 'is whether capitalism can find a new accommodation with the family'. He concludes that there is

no inherent contradiction between capitalism and community. But we have learned that these connections are not automatic: they have to be cultivated and rewarded, and societies that invest large proportions of their surpluses on advertising to persuade people that individual consumption is the best route to happiness end up paying a high price.

I hope it is clear why I am summarizing all this material on a blog about Catholic social teaching. It is not that any of these authors are Catholic (as far as I know), but it does seem to me that the new ideas thrown up by the crisis and new approaches being suggested in mainstream journals do dovetail quite nicely with CST. The teaching of the Popes and other religious traditions has inevitably appeared of marginal interest to a civilization secure in its own liberal ideology. But that security has vanished, and a deeper wisdom is being sought.

See also Democratic Capitalism, Adrian Pabst on Karl Polanyi, the Progressive Conservatism project, Proutism, Allan Carlson's Third Ways, an online book on Subsidiarity, Distributist Perspectives, and John Zmirak on Wilhelm Roepke