Ethics and the National Economy
184
Ethics and the National Economy
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781605700052 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | IHS Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2003 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 184 |
| Sales rank: | 992,220 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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Ethics and the National Economy
By Heinrich Pesch
IHS Press
Copyright © 2004 IHS PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-932528-35-0
CHAPTER 1
Economic Life and Life in Society
2. Economic life operates in the material realm of culture, and it is related in a reciprocal manner to civilization. Economic activity is a component part of human life and of the socio-political life of the community. It is important that we point out, first of all, how important Christian morality is for cultural progress, for the proper structuring of that condition of civil, political, and social perfection which we normally refer to as civilization, and for the full development and ordering of social life overall.
If it was indeed folly for Schleiermacher and Ziegler, among others, to view the working out of man's temporal welfare as the "highest good" and as lasting cultural progress for the human race, it is nevertheless true that the progress of culture and civilization is, in fact, a great good in the Christian view – one that is willed by God, so that spreading and sharing culture by people among themselves remains a legitimate task of the human race as it moves through the course of history. Ultimately we are dealing with nothing less than the eventual manifestation of God's own image as that is reflected in human nature and in the sharing of God's dominion over the world of nature. When that dominion is secured and affirmed in accord with the mandates of the moral law, this implies that the higher goals of man and mankind are also being facilitated and nurtured.
3. One idea that has become ever more manifest as a result of the impact of Christian morality on the course of history, even though this is sometimes lost sight of, is the notion of true human nature – the concept of humanity.
It is by the proper care and cultivation and the inner ordering of his own nature, of his intellectual faculties and of his will, by controlling his baser instincts and passions and subordinating them to reason and conscience, and by directing these toward their proper object and moderating them, that man becomes a human being in the full sense of the term. It is in this way that he elevates himself above the level of the animal – a level to which he sinks whenever he loses sight of his moral obligations and therefore also of the very dignity of his nature – and he thus becomes capable of social relations with other human beings.
Christian morality at one and the same time safeguards the human individual insofar as his own peculiar worth in the world in which he finds himself is concerned, whether he happens to be a worker or an entrepreneur, a subordinate or a supervisor, a free man or a slave. The notion of personality and of rights as a subject is directly connected to man's proper, individual goals and in particular to the higher goals of human existence. By virtue of his ultimate goal – his eternal destiny which is a principle that transcends all historical evolution – the human being, unlike what appertains to the external world in which he lives, remains autonomous. Thus he cannot become a mere means in the service of some earthly power.
Without losing his individuality, man operates and strives to achieve his goals in the context of society. There he finds himself working alongside other human beings who lay claim to the same rights by virtue of identical goals and purposes. Just as he does, they too have a right to the means needed to fulfill their objectives in life, a right to function, to develop, and to work out their earthly as well as their eternal destinies. It is the moral order which points out the way in which individuals and nations must act in their relationships to one another, if this is to be a genuinely human kind of conduct. It is also the moral order which sets limits to all arbitrariness in the choice of specific means and goals. It is universal human solidarity which unites everything that calls itself human, which therefore places the worker alongside the employer, and which protects the Black in colonial areas from suppression and exploitation. There is a law; and there is a kind of justice which transcends even the borders of the individual state; and the great law of Christian charity is binding there also. Even the lonely wanderer in the wilderness, inasmuch as he is a human being, retains his rights, his claims to assistance which no one may violate without incurring moral guilt. All persons, including the ones from Judea as well as from Samaria, and all of those who have demonstrated such hostility to us Germans: the Russians, the Englishmen, the Frenchmen, and the Americans, all of these remain children of the great family of God. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we ask that they too may have their daily bread, and also for forgiveness of their trespasses; and what is more, we cannot expect to gain forgiveness of our own sins unless we are prepared to forgive their sins against us.
Nowhere does this unity of the human race find its expression more clearly than in the life of the Christian Church. There, those of high and low estate have the same origin, the same goal, the same common Father in heaven, the same Redeemer, and the same natural and supernatural status as a child of God. When the poorest of the poor come into the house of God, they recognize that they are at home there. In Ems, over a period of years, King George of Saxony used to kneel alongside the ordinary workers at the same Communion rail, and he received the same Savior from the hands of the same priest. While I was stationed in Berlin, I administered the last rites to a poor journeyman tailor. The server who assisted me was the offspring of a noble princely household. Is it so unusual for daughters of princes to offer their lives in the service of the sick and the poor? In fact the Franciscan nun who wipes perspiration from the brow of the dying worker has done more for him and has offered more to him than the socialist agitator who promises him Eldorado sometime in the future, but who in the meantime robs him of his Faith and, along with it, his peace of soul. As a matter of fact, the Christian Church is a Church of all people, not merely a Church for the rich and the powerful; it is not a church of class and caste. It long ago accomplished in a proper way, in accord with its own constitution, what the socialists strive to achieve: the abolition of class distinctions. It is in the Church, where the spirit of Christ reigns, that all are embraced with the same love; and there is even special love for the little people and the poor to whom the gospel is preached first of all. Nor is the Christian Church a national church, but a world church and a church of all nations which embraces the entire human race. For the genuine Christian, the foreigner is not some kind of enemy or barbarian. He is his friend and his brother.
Theodore Meyer said that what constitutes the all-encompassing natural bond of brotherhood is the community of nobility which comes from the hand of God, the community of those who share the same ultimate exalted supernatural destiny, the community of those participating in the same human pilgrimage toward this selfsame goal and sharing in all of the helps, dangers, struggles, hopes and joys which this involves. That is what constitutes in human consciousness the universal moral framework of human society. Wherever that ethical bond of all-embracing human charity loses its effectiveness, purely egotistical private interests will inevitably move into the foreground and become dominant. Hatred, envy, and brute force will then become the motive forces which determine the way society develops. That was clearly the condition of the pagan world following its fall from Divine grace, since God is the only possible social focal point for all nations and all ages. But has not the new paganism, a grievous sinful departure from God in our own days as reflected in the horrendous World War, brought about the same state of affairs? What would Jesus Christ say to that manifest urge which nations display to destroy other nations?
4. Individuals are not simply scattered atoms. The Kantian juxtaposition of the "I" and "the world" cannot lead us to a morally correct relationship of the individual to the community in which he lives. Man is both capable of and in need of fulfillment. Thus, for example, by the gift of language, and by his craving for social relations, it is clear that man is of his very nature a social being. He comes into this world as a member of his family, of his tribe, of his clan, and of his national community. He gains from being a member of the community without having his individuality suppressed by it. But he must also conform himself to society and even to subordinate himself to it as a higher and determinative community; and he must serve the purposes of the community and the welfare of those associated with him in the life of the community. Associated with this notion of obligatory service that is to be rendered as if it were mandated, is the Christian concept of occupation or function in society. The ethical personality of the human person grows by fulfillment of his functional responsibility, and without dedication to function or occupation, virtuous living becomes impossible. Thus, Christian ethics does not cultivate the human being only for a higher world in the life hereafter, but also and in a very specific sense for cooperation in the tasks before us here on earth. As F.W. Foerster noted, it changes the centrifugal individual into a centripetal individual; and in the innermost recesses of the individual it gives birth to a kind of life that transcends mere individuality so as to make possible the survival and advancement of life in community with other human beings.
5. The original cell-unit of human society is the family. It is in the family that religiosity must find its deepest and ineradicable root, as A.M. Weiss said, otherwise it will never thrive. It is there that the first and most secure foundations of the Faith, of obedience, of respect for authority, of a sense of sacrifice for the common good – the five foundations of the social structure – are established It is here too that the seeds of a legitimate conservative sense are nurtured which respects customs, traditions, and forms a protective screen for the traits, peculiarities, and customs of races, tribes and, nations. Here property ownership and the traditional work habits and modes for acquiring things find their safeguard and protection. Here too are formed ever new bonds among people which are in fact the strongest bonds of all – the bonds of blood relationship. Here people unite themselves, and persons whose paths otherwise go in different directions are linked together by friendship and common social interests. Only where the family is established in a secure and orderly manner can we expect that social peace will be ensured.
Originally, the focal point of economic life was also to be found in the domestic economy, which had to serve directly as the economic unit providing self-sufficiency by providing for the family's needs and wants. Then as exchange economies gradually spread and became the rule and achieved the necessary stability, the old unity between the producer and consumer economics disappeared more and more, at least as the general case. The man of our times seeks his pay mostly outside his household. Women and children are not, as a rule, involved in the man's economic activity; and at times even they go to work elsewhere. In families where there is some household industry carried on, as is the case in small middle-class industries and farm families, the one-time significant economic role of the family has been preserved to a greater degree. Otherwise it is only consumption which takes place in the household. Father and son sit at the table in the home to consume what the mother places before them. Certain articles of clothing and other textile goods may perhaps still be made in the home, and more often cleaning and the repair of these are still done at home. In fact, even the household that is limited to consumption now stands in danger of being emptied out. Many of the tasks which used to be a part of house keeping are now, also being done outside the home, like baking, laundry, the slaughtering of animals, etc. But does this mean that the family is destined to be abolished entirely and set aside by such cultural restructuring of the economic field of activity within the family? On the contrary: there are enough important tasks left to the family, which can now be done ever so much better as economic burdens are lifted. Schmoller said that those who would send every hungry person to a restaurant, every pregnant woman to a clinic, every child from birth to full adulthood to a succession of educational institutions, will simply succeed in changing society into an aggregation of self-seeking, egotistical vagabonds, whose neuroses and tensions will provide a surplus of candidates for mental hospitals. The more mobile people become in our time, the more important is the secure bond of love that is exclusive and which involves the kind of trust and respect which only the family can provide. The future of nations and the genuine emancipation of the woman is to be found not in the destruction of the family domicile and the domestic economy but in their proper restoration.
But is a restoration of family life possible where moral degradation prevails, where sexual intercourse becomes an end in itself, where love is merely passion rather than true, genuine love based on mutual respect and combined with a sense of responsibility and fidelity between the marriage partners, along with a devotion to the raising of children? It was not without a good deal of extravagant fantasy that Engels and Bebel tried to teach the poor workers that women in primitive times had sexual and economic freedom, and that with the disappearance of the rights of motherhood they became the property of man. To be sure, mothers of families in large metropolitan and industrial cities at present do not enjoy the kind of legitimate equal rights which are owed to a lifetime companion as required by Christian ethics. They serve instead as the instruments for satisfying lust and as slaves for men. Without motherly love, without love between spouses, married life is, as it is alleged to have been in primitive times, all too often merely a brief interlude of sexual and economic freedom, and even worse than that! Anyone who observes life in our cities and metropolitan areas knows well that it is precisely the destruction of Christian family life which constitutes the pervasive evil threatening our culture at its very foundations. No one comes to know and appreciate the value of the Christian family better than a chaplain in one of the large welfare institutions of our metropolitan areas.
The restoration of family life also calls for regulation of the relationship between servants and those who employ them. All efforts to resolve that problem will be in vain unless domestic service once again comes to be regarded as an honorable occupation with proper status. The queen of Austria offers us a fine example in this regard, and she, in fact, bears the name of a servant girl, St. Zita. It is a matter of the greatest importance that servants' position continues to be an integral part of the family unit. One cannot remunerate servants simply with money. One must also learn how to treat them properly, to ease the burden which goes along with holding a subservient position by respect and love, with the kind of familial concern and psychic recompense that is in keeping with moral responsibility. Roscher said that the ideal to be sought where domestic service is involved is a situation where such service fits into and becomes a part of the family structure and is regarded as such by masters and servants alike. This means ultimately that there must be kindness on the one hand and dedication on the other, as well as loyalty on both sides along with unselfish concern for the present and future interests of the other party tamquam sua, and concern in particular for the eternal welfare of each party.
Now let us turn our attention to another very important economic problem.
There is an undeniable interrelationship between economic progress and population increase. Where there is economic progress, as a general rule, population is also increasing; and conversely, the rising population factor indicates rising productivity, greater intensity in the division of labor, or in industrial and commercial activity. A growing population also indicates that there is greater consumption, that being a condition of increasing economic progress in a nation. Thus, by increasing population, increasing national wealth is made possible; and increasing national wealth provides the economic basis for an increasing population.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword The Directors, IHS Press,Introduction to the Second Edition Dr. Rupert Ederer,
Introduction to the First Edition Dr. Rupert Ederer,
Preface Heinrich Pesch, S.J.,
Ethics and the National Economy,
Introduction,
I. Economic Life and Life in Society,
II. The State and the National Economy: The Purpose and Unity of the National Economy,
III. Human Wants and the Economy,
IV. Workand the Worker,
V. Ownership and the Acquisition of Material Goods,
VI. Justice in Pricing and in Income Determination,
VII. Justice and the Harmony of Interests,
VII. Objection Raised Against Christian Ethics,
IX. Testimony by Economists in Support of Christian Ethics,
X. Ethics and Economics,
XI. Capitalism and Socialism,
XII. The Economics of the Future,