EU president’s praise for Catholic teaching welcomed as bishops urge citizens to vote in elections to stop "nationalist threat"

[josie_L]

I did not say it predates feudalism, I said it predates the 15th century.

If you had bothered to read either article I posted/sourced you would have had a fuller explanation/analysis.

 

[josie_L]

He explains what form that capitalism takes.

it should be recognized that the error of
early capitalism can be repeated wherever people are treated on the same level as the whole complex of the material means of production, as an instrument and not in accordance with the true dignity of their work.

Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”) , Pope John Paul II, 1981 #30.

 

[grotto]

I think Pope Pius XII and Holy Father Saint John Paul II would be experts in the area of how Communism prepares to rear its ugly existence. He was not a Pope but Saint Maximilan Kolbe knew all about the same ugliness delivered by the Nazis.

 

[Canvas]

How can anyone believe that?

It’s a conflation of barter and trade with the system of capitalism, a system that John Paul II himself states in that encyclical had an “early” phase in modernity (he refers to “early capitalism”), after the exit from medieval feudalism.

I’m seriously being driven nuts here by folks liberal use of terminology.

Capitalism as it is understood now evolved from mercantilism, which came from feudalism. People here are confusing “commerce” with “capitalism” and show a profound misunderstanding of what capitalism is entirely. It is not just buying and selling. It is far more complicated. A market economy is as old as civilization but it is not the same as what we understand as capitalism.

 

[Vouthon]

Yes and he says that this “reversal” should precisely and rightly be called “capitalism”.

Not liberal capitalism, not unrestrained capitalism, but capitalism - just as other encyclicals use the term “socialism” (without qualifiers) to mean Marxist collectivism.

 

[Vouthon]

I did not say it predates feudalism, I said it predates the 15th century.

So your argument is that capitalism emerged from medieval Catholic thought?

You also agree that Pope John Paul II condemned “early capitalism” as a reversal of God’s order, yet believe that this early capitalism was Catholic in origin?

Ok…that makes a whole lot of sense. So the Catholic Church fostered and spawned a system that directly conflicted with God’s natural law.

 

[Vouthon]

Capitalism as it is understood now evolved from mercantilism, which came from feudalism. People here are confusing “commerce” with “capitalism” and show a profound misunderstanding of what capitalism is entirely. It is not just buying and selling. It is far more complicated. A market economy is as old as civilization but it is not the same as what we understand as capitalism .

Excellent summation of the facts

As you rightly note, commerce is not in any sense equivalent to capitalism and does not produce it because to quote one economic historian: “the dominant principle of trade everywhere (before capitalism) was not surplus value derived from production but “profit on alienation”, "buying cheap and selling dear”.

Trading entails the seeking of profit but it does not by itself affect how goods are produced.

Thus, many polities like medieval Florence and the early-modern Dutch Republic, which was mercantilist, did not become capitalist but were burgeoning international trading powers.

In the 18th century, enlightenment liberal philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith challenged the central planks of mercantilist economic theory and laid the groundwork for the age of full-scale industrial capitalism, in tandem with the first industrial revolution.

 

[Vouthon]

A useful description of the capitalist system’s essential features:

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www.schooleconomicscience.org

What are the characteristic features of a capitalist economy? Is it essence really about a particular work ethic? Here is a list of some of the basic modus operandi of this particular type of economy as it is conceived.

1) The “means of production,” a combination of land and capital, is privately owned.

2) Production of commodities is for sale in the market (rather than for direct consumption).

3) Producers compete with each other for sales in a self-regulating market where the price is determined by a balance between supply and demand.

4) Producers accumulate capital to increase productivity.

Because of the competitive nature of the arrangement there is pressure on capitalists to produce more efficiently than their competitors so they can sell their goods more cheaply. The main mechanism for this is to increase labour productivity by employing more capital.

5) Producers aim to maximise profits.

There is no central planning or allocation. It is left to individual producers to supply what they can and their motivation is to acquire by producing and then exchanging what has been produced for a price that is greater than the cost of production.

6) As well as a market in produced commodities there are markets in the basic factors of production – land, labour and credit.

In practice it is found that when a system operates in which there is production for the market these fundamental factors become drawn into the market system.

This type of economy can be distinguished from others such as feudal, mercantilist and socialist…

According to Karl Polanyi the dominance of the profit motive, which he suggests is a key feature of capitalism, has only arisen in the modern age. Previous economies certainly had markets and engaged in trade but economic arrangements were embedded in social arrangements and traditional motives such as status, prestige and communal solidarity mattered more than profit.

Polanyi’s view was that when the basic elements of the economy, coldly termed “land” and “labour” which, he points out, in reality mean human lives and the whole of the natural world, became treated as commodities that could be bought and sold in the market place then a great transition took place to produce a market society in which social relations were now embedded in the market system rather than the other way round which had been the condition for the remainder of previously recorded history.

 

[Vouthon]

@Ridgerunner capitalism is not synonymous with trade and barter in currency.

Capitalism is about competitive production for the market, in the context of a comprehensive economic-social system in which "land” and “labour” (aka human lives and the environment as a whole), are regarded as commodities that can be bought and sold.

And that foundational understanding of human labour, it’s commodification, is described by the church as a “reversal” of God’s divine plan in the Book of Genesis: the idea, fundamental to capitalism, that work is merely an exchange of money for labour, which the church opposes.

As Pope St. John Paul II explains:

In all cases of this sort, there is a reversal of the order laid down from the beginning by the words of the Book of Genesis: man is treated as an instrument of production, whereas he–alone, independent of the work he does–ought to be treated as the effective subject of work and its true maker and creator.

Precisely this reversal of order should rightly be called “capitalism”…

Everybody knows that capitalism has a definite historical meaning as a system, an economic and social system, opposed to “socialism” or “communism.”…

It should be recognized that the error of early capitalism can be repeated wherever people are treated on the same level as the whole complex of the material means of production, as an instrument and not in accordance with the true dignity of their work

Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”) , Pope John Paul II, 1981 #30.

In sum, with this encyclical JPII endorses labour over capital, asserts that work is not a commodity to be sold, castigates the maximization of profit, calls for worker solidarity through trade unions, a just family wage, health insurance and describes capitalism as a reversal of God’s divine plan in Genesis.

Medieval merchants got a profit through commerce, certainly, but by buying cheap in one locale and selling expensively in another, however, they did not organize production, nor did they depart from the feudal structure in which they operated with it’s self-sufficient peasants largely living off the commons, while their manorial lords provided military security and civil justice in return for a portion of the produce of the community they governed.

If you think that’s what capitalism is then I’d suggest you study it a bit more.

 

[josie_L]

I am saying that the pope is referencing a period after the renaissance vis a vis capitalism because that is the period in which most people believe early capitalism took place.

He is describing that form of capitalism within that time frame.

The origins of capitalism is rooted however in Catholicism:

In his third chapter, “The Weberian Revolution of the High Middle Ages,” Collins finds that capitalism originated in the High Middle Ages, and that it was the Roman Catholic Church that produced it. Medieval monasticism was the cutting edge of capitalistic activity. As Collins says, “I intend to argue. . .that the Middle Ages experienced the key institutional revolution, that the basis of capitalism was laid then rather than later, and that at its heart was the organization of the Catholic Church itself.”

Collins denies that our western capitalist system began only in the modern period, with the harnessing by the Calvinists of the other-worldly asceticism of medieval monasticism to secular purposes. To the extent that he opposes Weber, Collins stresses the institutional, structural requirements for capitalism; and he rejects the role that Weber gives to the individualistic money-oriented motivation that derived from Calvinist predestinationist theology. This stress on the institutional and corporate aspect as opposed to the atomistic individualistic aspect of capitalism is the center of Collins’s disagreement with Weber.

Collins’s researches in the beginnings of capitalism, like Lynn White, Jr.’s researches in the origins of the industrial revolution, illustrate the general trend in medieval studies. This trend is to push back to medieval times the new developments and discoveries that were supposed to have come about abruptly in the modern era. The model of the abrupt transition from medieval darkness to modern luminosity has been replaced, as a result of historical studies, by a model of a continuation into modern times of an innovative mentality reaching back into the eleventh century. So the rationality of capitalism is simply one more example of an overall rationality which entered into the whole body of life in the Middle Ages under the aegis of the Catholic Church.

https://www.crisismagazine.com/1988/the-catholic-origins-of-capitalism-max-weber-clarified

 

[josie_L]

That’s NOT AT ALL WHAT I said.

He is refering to a period after the Renaissance as that is when modern capitalism is supposedly to have taken place or that was the consensus at the time he wrote this.

And I’ve already stated that by early capitalism he is refering to capitalism when it was practiced under liberalism and/or was highly individualistic and unfettered.

This coincides with what I have read in various other encyclicals vis a vis capitalism.

Capitalism that is tethered to justice and charity is not anathema to church teaching, i.e., the Church describes in what capacity and form capitalism is acceptable.

Socialism on the other hand is categorically condemned, i.e., in theory and in practice.

 

[Vouthon]

And I’ve already stated that by early capitalism he is refering to capitalism when it was practiced under liberalism and/or was highly individualistic and unfettered.

So how then can you say that the “origins of capitalism are rooted however in Catholicism” if your admitting that this “early capitalism” (early meaning at the start or beginning of capitalism) is condemned as a reversal of God’s order and highly individualistic/unfettered (even though he doesn’t use these latter terms that you keep adding in)?

There is a serious logical flaw here in that you are saying the church fostered a system which in it’s “early” phase was a reversal of God’s natural order. You want to have your cake and eat it: early capitalism is against God’s will yet is rooted in Catholicism, is what your saying, which is completely inconsistent and paradoxical.

And your still avoiding the fact that he doesn’t use the terms unfettered or liberal here but rather says that it should precisely be called “capitalism” pure and simple, just like Marxist collectivism is referred to as “socialism” in other encyclicals without any qualifiers.

Yet you accept the latter as a condemnation of “socialism” in toto, but not when “capitalism” is similarly condemned by itself without any qualifying terms attached, even though you keep adding these terms to that passage where JPII doesn’t use them.

People are not blind Josie and can see the glaring contradiction here. It’ll be apparent to anyone reading this thread that JPII says “capitalism” without qualifiers in this instance (even using the word “precisely” for added emphasis and clarity, in case there were any doubt) and yet your not owning up to this, which is just silly at this rate and a case of needless obfuscation.

If you keep repeating “unfettered” when the actual text in this case simply says “capitalism”, indeed “precisely” capitalism, then we will need to end this discussion because there is no point in continuing if you refuse to recognise the plain wording of the text which is there for everyone to see. We can all read you know!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Capitalism is about competitive production for the market, in the context of a comprehensive economic-social system in which "land” and “labour” (aka human lives and the environment as a whole), are regarded as commodities that can be bought and sold.

I think you’re stretching to find a definition that excludes those economies you want to exclude. Do you really think neither land nor labor were regarded as “commodities” in ancient Rome when human beings were bought and sold for their labor and people like Ausonius bought an estate in Gaul to plant vineyards?

Even in the 19th Century, serfs were still bought and sold for their labor. That’s “commoditization with a vengeance”.

I think it’s more realistic to simply acknowledge that various Church leaders, including Popes, have upheld the dignity of labor, which they should. They have not said labor cannot be exchanged for money by the laborer, or should not be. The Church speaks of attitudes toward labor and fairness. The Church does not teach that exchanging money for labor is intrinsically evil. Your quote from JPII speaks of the errors of “early capitalism”. I think everybody acknowledges that.

And when was production for the market not competitive other than in periods of monopoly? Are we to think there was no competition among merchants on the Wool Wharf in Chaucer’s day?

Do you really think the shipbuilding industry in Venice was NOT organized production? It was every bit as organized as General Motors, with intricate production lines and individual purveyors of all kinds of materials. And neither was it feudal. For that matter, the pyramid builders of ancient Egypt were organized production of a quality and quantity that would put many modern production lines to shame. Picture it. People with a certain skill set chose rock to cut and split. Others did it with copper tools and fire. Some organized gangs to take the blocks to landings on the Nile. Others sailed the barges to the building sites; a considerable skill. Others waited for the barges and unloaded them. Others finished the blocks. Others hauled and placed them. Meanwhile other gangs obtained daily quantities of fish, bread and beer for the workers. Others made the bread in organized ovens, and cooked the meat or fish. Others brewed the beer. Others brought the grain on barges to the work site for the millers and bakers. And yes, they have found coins in the old worksites (the few the workers didn’t carry away to spend elsewhere).

If that’s not “organized production”, there’s no such thing.

Even in the Temple of Solomon in biblical times. Worshipers brought money. The Temple authorities required that they change their money (at a discount) to special Temple coin in order to purchase the animals to be sacrificed. That’s why Jesus turned their tables over. It wasn’t “just exchange”. The Temple authorities were “skimming” by that device. It was “capitalism”, but it was “unfair capitalism” exercised by people who had a monopoly on the transactions; as bad as the old “industrial barons” of the 19th Century. But it was most definitely a cash deal for reverent Jews.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Jesus’ parables recount cash for labor transactions without condemning them as such.

 

[Vouthon]

The Church does not teach that exchanging money for labor is intrinsically evil.

Really?

I should like to call attention to Pope Pius XI’s encyclical, paragraph 83, which begins:

“Labor, as Our Predecessor explained well in his Encyclical, is not a mere commodity. On the contrary, the worker’s human dignity in it must be recognized. It therefore cannot be bought and sold like a commodity. Nevertheless, as the situation now stands, hiring and offering for hire in the so-called labor market separate men into two divisions, as into battle lines, and the contest between these divisions turns the labor market itself almost into a battlefield where, face to face, the opposing lines struggle bitterly. Everyone understands that this grave evil which is plunging all human society to destruction must be remedied as soon as possible.”

• Pope Pius IX, Quadragesimo Anno (May 15, 1931)

It does teach that the commodification of labour is a moral evil and perverts the order designed by God. The distinction between people and products (“capital”) is fundamental to human civility and social justice. The first principle of the ILO Declaration of Philadelphia, adopted in 1944, is “labour is not a commodity” that can be bought and sold like other capital products.

Please read:

Centesimus Annus (1 May 1991) by Pope St. John Paul II #2

Towards the end of the last century the Church found herself facing an historical process which had already been taking place for some time, but which was by then reaching a critical point…In the sphere of politics, the result of these changes was a new conception of society and of the State, and consequently of authority itself. A traditional society was passing away and another was beginning to be formed — one which brought the hope of new freedoms but also the threat of new forms of injustice and servitude.

In the sphere of economics, in which scientific discoveries and their practical application come together, new structures for the production of consumer goods had progressively taken shape. A new form of property had appeared — capital; and a new form of labour — labour for wages, characterized by high rates of production which lacked due regard for sex, age or family situation, and were determined solely by efficiency, with a view to increasing profits.

(continued…)

 

[Vouthon]

In this way labour became a commodity to be freely bought and sold on the market, its price determined by the law of supply and demand, without taking into account the bare minimum required for the support of the individual and his family. Moreover, the worker was not even sure of being able to sell “his own commodity”, continually threatened as he was by unemployment, which, in the absence of any kind of social security, meant the spectre of death by starvation.

The result of this transformation was a society “divided into two classes, separated by a deep chasm”.6 This situation was linked to the marked change taking place in the political order already mentioned. Thus the prevailing political theory of the time sought to promote total economic freedom by appropriate laws, or, conversely, by a deliberate lack of any intervention.

Note that Pope St. JPII here clearly states that “a new form of property had appeared — capital; and a new form of labour — labour for wages” which had NOT existed prior to this period in human history (hence its ‘newness’), contrary to your assertions that capitalism is as ancient as the hills, and moreover “characterized by high rates of production which lacked due regard for sex, age or family situation, and were determined solely by efficiency, with a view to increasing profits”.

As Angus Sibley points out in his book “Catholic Economics,” ever since Carl Menger began the Austrian school of economics, and their corrosive neo-liberal ideas infected business schools throughout the western world, there has been a “fetish” of labor productivity that has harmed workers rights. Ludwig von Mises, the pre-eminent libertarian economist, wrote in this regard that: “labor is dealt with like any material factor of production and sold and bought on the market.” In this way of thinking, “[w]ork is thought to have no human value apart from the market value of what it produces.” As Sibley notes, if we adopt this view, “we grossly misunderstand and devalue our very selves" according to Catholic Social Teaching.

This is a particular problem in contemporary North America. Pope John Paul II stated as such in Mexico City on January 22, 1999 in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America . Addressing people in all of America, he warned: “More and more in many countries of America, a system known as ‘neoliberalism’ prevails. Based on a purely economic conception of man, this system considers profit and the law of the market as its only parameters, to the detriment of the respect due to individuals and peoples”.

Your expressed values in the economic realm, in terms of commodifying labor, appear to owe more to the Austrian school than that of Catholic Social Doctrine, if I can judge them by your above remarks. That’s a crying shame.

 

[josie_L]

Vouthon, when John Paul wrote his encyclical it was believed that “early capitalism” started after the renaissance or in modern times, i.e., he is referencing that time period when he speaks of early capitalism as were many others.

But history and its interpretation is not static and more and more historians are concluding that capitalism has it’s origins prior to this period, i.e., during the high middle ages, but this is not the period in which John Paul was referencing nor the capitalism that he was condemning.

Moreover, he speaks like many of his predecessors of individualistic capitalism or capitalism under liberalism and its excesses (that was very much influenced by calvinist thought/work ethic). It is this form of capitalism that is condemned.

Capitalism in and of itself is malleable and if tempered by justice and charity is amenable to Church teaching.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Vouthon, the Popes are speaking of extremes. They do not oppose trading labor for money. Here’s JPII from “Laborem Excersens” below. It’s just wages and recognition of the dignity of labor the Popes endorse. They do not condemn working for wages any more than Jesus did in speaking of wages for work. Here’s Pope JPII.

"Man is made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God himself1. 2, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth3. From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth

capital cannot be separated from labour; in no way can labour be opposed to capital or capital to labour, and still less can the actual people behind these concepts be opposed to each other, as will be explained later. A labour system can be right, in the sense of being in conformity with the very essence of the issue, and in the sense of being intrinsically true and also morally legitimate, if in its very basis it overcomes the opposition between labour and capital

Opposition between labour and capital does not spring from the structure of the production process or from the structure of the economic process.

The key problem of social ethics in this case is that of just remuneration for work done. In the context of the present there is no more important way for securing a just relationship between the worker and the employer than that constituted by remuneration for work. Whether the work is done in a system of private ownership of the means of production or in a system where ownership has undergone a certain “socialization”, the relationship between the employer (first and foremost the direct employer) and the worker is resolved on the basis of the wage, that is through just remuneration for work done. "

 

[Vouthon]

Vouthon, the Popes are speaking of extremes. They do not oppose trading labor for money. Here’s JPII from “Laborem Excersens” below. It’s just wages and recognition of the dignity of labor the Popes endorse.

Do you believe that labour can be treated as a mere commodity to be bought and sold on the market?

It’s a simple question. The Austrian school of economics says, “yes” - “labor is dealt with like any material factor of production and sold and bought on the market (Ludwig von Meses).

Catholic Social Doctrine definitively states, “absolutely not” - “Labor is not a mere commodity. It therefore cannot be bought and sold like a commodity” (Pope Pius XI)

Which is it for you?

These are two conflicting principles and approaches to economics.

 

[josie_L]

He is saying that labour should not MERELY or rather SOLELY be a commodity, so it does not signify that money in exchange for labour is evil, it is evil only if labour is REDUCED to a commodity without taking into consideration the man who is labouring.

Capitalism does not mean man is necessarily treated as a commodity but that under certain forms it can and does.

He is speaking of extremes and highlighting how under the present system of capitalism (under liberalism) it does reduce labour merely to a commodity