Posted on 07/24/2014 3:25:34 AM PDT by matthewrobertolson
When Adam Smith put to paper the principles of market systems that Marx would later dismiss as capitalism, people were still dedicated to their religious faiths. Smith -- who was not in Washington at the time (ba-dum-tssshhh) -- knew this, and, even prior to releasing this monumental work, he laid the foundation of what his market system would be based on: “moral sentiments”. Smith was not a relativist, but he believed that morals were commonly held -- after all, Christendom was still holding on, albeit just barely and for dear life.
True, enlightened capitalism, while inferior to distributism, is at least superior to what we have now. Dave Brat, a Catholic and a now-famous Tea Party politician in Virginia, has even written about this. What we have now is a disgrace: capitalism cannot work under America’s current value system.
G. K. Chesterton wrote, “It cannot be too often repeated that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism. No doubt it might have been Communism, if Communism had ever had a chance, outside that semi-Mongolian wilderness where it actually flourishes. But, so far as we are concerned, what has broken up households and encouraged divorces, and treated the old domestic virtues with more and more open contempt, is the epoch and power of Capitalism” (Three Foes of the Family).
He’s right. It’s been impure. It's been bad since at least 1929, when Wall Street made clear that it would rather have us suffer the Great Depression than have itself suffer easily-regained stock losses. That's a problem.
Others, including Rick Santorum, are beginning to advocate a more person-centered system, but within the capitalist vein. And this is great. Ven. Fulton J. Sheen wrote, “The third Declaration of Independence remains to be written; namely, the economics in which spiritual men will stand on their own because they can call something their own” (Freedom Under God). Widespread property ownership is good, and we have true capitalism to thank for its relative prevalence today.
But there is little appreciation for this now. Children and their parents only accept what we now call “capitalism” grudgingly, because we are fed it from the trough at a young age. Again, this “capitalism” is not pure, but is merely cronyism with the façade of a free market to keep the children believing they are in control. This desire for control is also prevalent in the theological underpinnings of today’s Christian movements, especially within Pentecostalism -- surely, that’s no coincidence. This is all doomed to fail, obviously, and its political epitome, China the over-builder, is near collapse. Humans must stop micro-managing, attempting to evolve themselves into demi-gods.
Some “conservatives”, unfortunately, argue for this situation’s worsening with cries for libertarianism. What is the root of this? Relativism: just an easy way of saying that you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, and however you want. Aleister Crowley’s “do what thou wilt” and Thomas Jefferson’s gleeful “if it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg” are held up as the new mantras. These, of course, are not Christian principles, for Jefferson was a deist and Crowley was an avowed occultist. The truth is that, even if we in our modern, tolerant, happy-clappy mindset don’t find a particular thing to be immoral or downright evil, there is still an objective Judge of all actions: God, Who is all Goodness, Truth and Justice. His views, being immutable by nature, never change. So, what then must He think of modern society’s tendency to drift to thoughtless novelties and the perpetuated anything-goes attitude?
Just look at the results. This godlessness has not worked. It's no surprise, really, that an economy falters when even the family is neglected. The Greek root for "economy" -- oikos -- means "home". So, for example, when artificial contraception was encouraged in the 1960s, what was the result in the 1970s (and onward)? The crooked got rich and an influx of new slaves, while real wages for ordinary folks spiraled downward. Surprise, surprise.
We need God’s grace to structure ourselves. “Christ alone can free man from what enslaves him to evil and selfishness: from the frantic search for material possessions, from the thirst for power and control over others and over things, from the illusion of easy success, from the frenzy of consumerism and hedonism which ultimately destroy the human being,” Pope St. John Paul II said.
People are, thankfully, starting to pay attention. We have had our fill of the antics and the petty partisans. And many have finally woken up to the fact that these have contributed to the culture of death. This is all materialism, we know! Enough of it!
As the economist E. F. Schumacher said, “An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth -- in short, materialism -- does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.”
I will be releasing several posts on the principles that govern society and economics. This series of posts will likely also, by necessity, plumb the depths of today’s anything-goes Protestant roller coaster, but will stick mostly in the Catholic realm. Christianity, like capitalism, has been trampled by deviant fellows with iron hearts. It is my hope to provide the groundwork necessary to shock modernity into a new Vendean insurgency to reconstitute Christendom and cast the ancient serpent once again into his pit of despair.
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Nonsense like this puts in question everything else he has to say. Hoover and FDR act gave us the Great Depression; not Wall Street. Most Wall Street analysts knew the market would recover. Washington had a regulatory solution in search of a problem and found it in the crash.
A bit hard to follow due to its poor construct and contradictions.
Moral vice is not a capitalist trait, it is a human trait.
What a major piece of Catholic propagandist jit
If you don’t believe in capitalism, you don’t believe in freedom.
If you don’t believe in freedom, you believe in slavery.
If you believe in slavery, you lose all moral claim to being one of the good guys.
End of story.
I'd be curious to know the moral or philosophical basis for this statement. I'm wondering if this attitude is part of the problem we're dealing with.
Free markets have produced wealth beyond the wildest dreams of people like Marx and Engels.
The only societies in which individual freedom is protected are societies with free markets.
As many people have observed, the only way you can have a socialist economy is with a police state enforcement to prevent people from making their own decisions. Farmers had to be literally forced at gun point into the collective farms of the Soviet Union. Armed guards would always be seen standing in front of stores in socialist countries where people waited in line for food and basic necessities.
In every socialist country human suffering and human misery is the result.
I find it disgusting that people who benefit from the wealth, ease and personal freedom of America criticize those who make this country work and praise corrupt politicians and brutal totalitarians.
If you don’t believe in freedom, you believe in slavery.
If you believe in slavery, you lose all moral claim to being one of the good guys.
End of story.
I was trying to think of an appropriate response to this piece and then I read your comment and the only thing I could think is: that's absolutely correct.
You are absolutely correct. You said it all in a few short words.
I don't care if someone is a Communist, a Catholic, a Muslim, a professional global warming hoax artist, an overpaid government bureaucrat or an inmate of an insane asylum, if they preach anti-capitalism, they preach slavery.
End of story.
Indeed. From the folks who conflated capitalism with the sale of salvation.
He seems to be a meddlesome sort of fellow
I am dumber for having attempted to read this article…..
It does seem that most worship the almighty dollar. With enough dollars, you can achieve heaven on earth.
Pure rubbish.
FRiend, your mind is corrupted by something, and I'd be curious to learn just what that is?
The thing about the Huge Difference between different types of property is that it is a sliding scale that can be adjusted downward by the government agents who apply it so that eventually, as in Communism, your own life isn’t even on the right side of the Huge Difference between property dividing like.
Bottom line: when someone talks about a Huge Difference between good and bad property, they are supporting the government’s unfettered claims on all property.
Good Grief!
This is all communist prattle.
I've said for a long time that an economic system built around people living in their "own" homes -- usually with large mortgages -- and then traveling somewhere else miles away to work for someone else is an economic system built on sand. So many principles of sound economics are put at risk in this type of scenario.
In a system built on sound economic principles, the only real property ownership involves property that is used as a means of production. The modern idea of "property ownership" that we've come to accept as normal is really a construct of the post-WW2 era.
Distributism seems to be a wildly optimistic assumption that everybody will be equally competent at managing their share of “the means of production.”
Somehow I doubt it. As my dad used to put it, if everybody started with the same amount of wealth today, in a few years it would be concentrated again in about the same fashion it is now.
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