In Christ,

+FrG

that’s all.

Forgive me, I’m a bot slow these days as we prepare for our move from Ohio to Wisconsin, but how does Adam’s quote figure in to the conversation here? 🙂

In Christ,

+FrG

(Who has said his prayers but not had his coffee yet.)

Thank you for your kind words (# 9/10)–I wrote a response last week but I most have deleted it rather than post it. Ah well. 🙂

Your comments and those offered by Chrys (#14) move the conversation somewhat in the direction I was hoping it would take–a conversation about what (if anything) Novak’s thought might mean for the Orthodox Church both in the States and overseas.

Thinking about this a bit, especially in light of what Chrys has said, I wonder if in fact we have not depended too much on extrinsic factors to maintain the Church? The easy example is the emphasis on ethnicity. But I think we can add to this what David Bentley Hart identifies as that most strange (and in my view unwholesome) Orthodox cottage industry: the anti-Western Christian mentality common among many of us. The idea, as we all know, works to build the Orthodox Church by tearing down Catholicism and Protestantism. To my mind it is much like Southwest airlines saying “Fly Southwest, US Air crashes a lot!”

We can too easily use fear and guilty to try and pressure people to participate in the life of the Church. Doing this however doesn’t take advantage of the creativity and dynamism that is released when we focus on offering people intrinsic incentives for participation.

In my own pastoral work I have discovered taking the time to help people sort out their own motivations and to help them find the areas of convergence between their own lives, the Gospel and the Tradition of the Church turns out a much better “product” in terms of the person’s commitment in all areas of Church life. Yes, it takes a lot more work on my part (and theirs) but it is I think the only way to go if you are concerned with the long term health of both the person and the Church.

Again in my experience at least, I have found that my approach to catechizing and confessing is successful not only with inquirers but also “cradle” Orthodox. No one wants to be forced to participate in the life of the Church. While mindful of my own failures, one of the great sorrows in my ministry is that the work I do with people to help them discover their own, internal motivations for participation, are often undone by, let me simply say it, lazy priests and lay leaders who are more interested in their own immediate comfort than the Gospel.

Especially in this country, the Church has become more a reflection of the bureaucratic inefficiency of socialism and have left by the wayside the liberating power of the Gospel.

I best stop here before I say something I regret.

Again, thanks to one and all for your comments.

In Christ,

+FrG

The genius of his insight was well expressed in his classic line: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” While we can not rely on anther’s virtue for our sustenance (in fact, we can not often rely on our own), we can rely on their contingency (which reliably drives us as well). In a reasonably well-ordered society, the other must offer something we want to receive something he wants – and the offer must be “worth it,” it must be of sufficient value to us for us to make the exchange. In this way, the other must strive to provide us with something we value. In doing so so, we are both enriched.

This strikes me as fundamentally sacramental: we must invest our efforts to make an offering of value for the blessing of the other and in so doing receive a blessing in return. That this is the structure daily life should not be a surprise if we believe that Christ, who gave us the Eucharist as the preeminent expression of His ministry and our life in His body, is the same one through Whom the heavens and the earth were formed.

There are (at least) two important qualifications.

First, because people in this process are seeking that which appears to offer the greatest value, a change in the “rules” can change our appraisal of value. Incentives and deterrents – whether political, social or commercial – will shape our considerations and affect our decisions.

While extrinsic incentives and deterrents may have an influence, they do not alter the fundamental need or value that drives the exchange. If those outside forces are coercive enough, they may eventually drive those exchanges underground, but they do not go away. Whether this is acceptable or not depends on how marginal or essential those exchanges are to our daily lives. In the end, there are limits to the effectiveness of various outside factors to modify our assessments of value.

Prescriptive systems – like Socialism or today’s NeoCons – eventually fail because they seek to impose extrinsic criteria on human exchange; in these examples, the criteria are politically-defined outcomes. (In fact, I would argue that they are not only extrinsic criteria but alien – reflecting not true human virtue- which has meaningful rewards – but a defective concept rooted in an anthropological fantasy.) While humanity is remarkably elastic in its ability to adapt, the underlying character remains the same. If we do not allow people to reasonably pursue their own self-interest, they will cease to exert themselves beyond the (ever-diminishing) minimum required. Again, this eventually leads to bankruptcy.

The second qualification may well be the source of the first: that human exchange is meant to be sacramental does not mean that sin can not and has not corrupted these interactions any less than it has every other sphere of human activity. Sin misuses and disorders the good gifts of God. Deception, force, manipulation – or outright plunder – are distortions and deviations that have all too often characterized our economic relationships.

This, however, condemns us, not the good thing itself. That we misuse each other does not diminish the truth of human interaction described by “capitalism.” Yet here, as elsewhere, the light drives out the darkness. Accountability can expose these deviations and, with adequate exposure to its light – and often a good bit of grief (all sin eventually produces grief) – there will be some corrective action. If not, reality inevitably imposes corrective action; a perverted system eventually collapses from its own lack of integrity and bankruptcy. (Of course, this can take quite a while if there is adequate force propping it up – e.g., the Soviet Union.) It may come later or sooner, but it will most certainly happen. Eventually everything will be brought to the light.

In evaluating economic systems, then, it is helpful to know both that (1)capitalism/free markets describes the nature of fundamental human interaction AND that (2) sin will distort and pervert it. The effective system makes room for the first while recognizing and establishing accountability solutions for the second.

I believe that true capitalism must based on an “others oriented attitude”,

What a wonderfully closed system of thought; how wonderfully ideological. It prohibits anyone from attempting to look at capitalism as anything else but what you say it is. You are free to simply say, huffingly, “Well, that’s not true capitalism”. Anyone who says different is just being a heathen–guilty of moral equivalency (the unforgiveable sin).

Forgive me anyway Chris, I am clearly unworthy to bask in the light of your lumenescent knowledge and wisdom.

Regarding this statement:

we can’t look at capitalism and socialism as simply two different, albeit differently flawed, economic systems precisely because capitalism as such is not an economic system. Do I have this?

Yes, that’s precisely the issue! Like calling Gravitation what is normally “the natural phenomenon by which objects with mass attract one another”, we can call Capitalism that which represents “the laws of human interactions regarding economics, wealth, value creation, and value exchanges.” Unfortunately, many folks include in that label unethical, immoral, and criminal behavior that has absolutely nothing to do with ethical and voluntary exchanges of value for value of free individuals.

As a matter of fact I will go a step further. I believe that true capitalism must based on an “others oriented attitude”, realizing a need in the world and providing a product or a service to your neighbor in order to help them. Providing that help, allowing others to freely chose and giving them the benefit of your hard work and risk-taking is indeed how societies have benefited, especially the poor, the sick, and the elderly. This is more like Servant Leadership than many realize. This natural engine of value and wealth creation, built on a moral and legal foundation has brought more benefit to humanity than all the various social experiments and lesser economic systems invented by man.

Regarding your summation:

the objection of moral equivalence is found when we confuse, or intentionally obscures the difference between a descriptive and a prescriptive approach to how we understand and shape humanity’s economic life. Do I have that correct?

Yes, that’s correct! The process labeled as “capitalism” is descriptive of how human beings normally interact to live in the material world. Granted that human sinfulness, greed, unethical conduct, and rejection of God’s truth and moral laws lead many to abuse that process and abuse their neighbor, but that is not the fault of “capitalism”. It is the fault of man and his excessive and even exclusive focus on the materialistic dimension of life. These men are not ethically following free market economic rules (better term to describe capitalism) but abusing or ignoring them. They are actually disregarding the law and behaving unethically (immorally if you will) or criminally.

Marxism and Fascism are indeed immoral ideologies based on lies and distortions of life and reality. They are artificially imposed on mankind and their tenets alien to humanity from the start. There is nothing redeeming in their precepts and their complete rejection of God, morality, and devaluation of human life.

Thank you Fr. Gregory for the additional insights and clarifications.

Thank you for your comments.

I think I see your point (#5)–God’s grace is always available and if we live according to His will for us then we will have sufficient for our needs (if not our desires). I would make two qualifications to this.

First, and I admit I might be a bit persnickety here, I would limit the term “super-abundant” to God. Yes, I agree that as designed creation has sufficient for humanity–but I would still argue that sufficiency does not mean without limits.

Second, and I think more substantially, I do think that scarcity accurately describes the situation of a fallen creation. With Adam’s fall, creation falls as well–or at least it too is damaged–and so scarcity not only describes the resources of creation relative to human desire but creation itself as it has come to be under the reign of sin and death.

From this point of view, I understand why you would argue that scarcity reflects a materialistic worldview. But I would argue that scarcity is nevertheless an accurate description of the world as it is and is not necessarily materialism. Let me go go a little further here and say that the concept of scarcity has the potential to be a point of convergence and at least some schools of economic theory and practice.

Speaking personally (and I understand you didn’t say this) I don’t think limiting scarcity to simply a reflection of disordered human desires takes sufficient account of the effects of sin on the creation. While scarcity is often of human misconduct, I would be hesitant to ascribe all material want simply and exclusively to the concrete sinful acts of particular individuals.

Does this make sense or am I way off the track?

Chris,

Your point about the difference between capitalism and socialism is well taken I think. i would express the difference this way: Capitalism is a descriptive term, socialism, prescriptive. Or, as you say above (# 7)captialism:

simply explains the relationship of voluntary exchanges of value for value between free individuals. It’s a word that describes how free human beings voluntarily interact with one another to exchange value (usually in the form of money in return for goods or services) in order to be able to live (food, clothing, and housing) and how they invest the excess value they have earned to produce, create, and gain more value. Capitalism, is value and morally neutral.

Marxism and Fascism, on the other hand, are ideologies–or if you prefer socio-economic action plans that one party seeks to impose upon the other. It is in the sense that they are imposed they are immoral. Let me make that stronger, because they are not only are artificial and contrary to (and destructive of) they the social character of the human)are evil and unnatural.

I may be wrong here, God knows it would not be the first time, the concern of moral equivalence is not in saying that in both the free market and the Marxism there exists the possibility of abuse. No, the objection of moral equivalence is found when we confuse, or intentionally obscures the difference between a descriptive and a prescriptive approach to how we understand and shape humanity’s economic life. Do I have that correct?

Your comment (and others have made it here as well) that the term capitalism was introduced by those who were concerned not with a description of humanity’s economic life but rather as a rhetorical technique to advance their own ideological concerns about, and for, human economic life is a new thought for me but one that makes a certain intuitive sense to me. Assuming for the sake of argument that this history is correct (and I’m not disputing it, I just don’t have the education to evaluate the claim), then while not blind to the presence of sin in all human relationships, we can’t look at capitalism and socialism as simply two different, albeit differently flawed, economic systems precisely because capitalism as such is not an economic system. Do I have this?

Again, friends, thanks for the chat!

In Christ,

+FrG

One thing I am heartily tired of, however, is the ad hominum perjortive of making a argument of moral equivalency just because you refuse to understand nuance.

Give it a rest, expand your vocabulary and deal with the substance of what I am saying.