The Dirty Papist

I wasn't a regular reader of Reason magazine, but this article by Stephanie Slade struck me.  There's a lot to it that's interesting but I don't want to get into, like how the capitalist ideal of enlightened self interest won't guarantee that a successful and stable free market populated by good Christians will resemble a successful and stable one populated by a bunch of greedy bastards, but I want to quote this longish bit from near the beginning and make one point about it:

Since the first papal encyclical on modern economic questions, Rerum Novarum, was promulgated in 1891, Catholic pontiffs have had harsh words for "unbridled capitalism" and "philosophical liberalism." In Quadragesimo Anno (1931), Pope Pius XI wrote that "the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces. For from this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching." In Octogesima Adveniens (1971), Pope Paul VI argued that "structures" should be set up "in which the rhythm of progress would be regulated with a view to greater justice." 

The upshot—that a capitalist system cannot be trusted automatically to produce what the Church views as morally acceptable outcomes—may seem to require Christians to support a robust central government. If society is to be oriented to the common good, surely some person or body needs to have enough power to do the orienting. What, besides the state, can regulate the market? 

But when Pope John Paul II gave an audience to the board of the European Automobile Manufacturers Association in 2001, he offered a different, orthogonal answer: "As presidents of the major automobile companies of Europe," he told them, "you have important responsibilities, not only in guiding the growth of your own industry, but also in ensuring the right development of an increasingly globalized economy. The process of globalization, while opening up new possibilities for progress, poses urgent questions regarding the very nature and purpose of economic activity.

John Paul is suggesting an important insight into the germ of totalitarianism.  At the EAMA audience, he exhorted the automotive executives themselves to think, act, behave in ways that are more human, and not by meddling in what they do.  The Pope there was acting in the place of this purported centralized moralizing bureaucracy, but without resorting to force of positive law.

This is something that would have to happen in a centralized government that hoped to ward off tyranny, anyway.  By this I mean that even if czars and branch managers try to impose some kind of moral standard backed by fine, bar, and bullet, if they can't inspire the economic free agents to do good, then all they can do is try to force them to follow policies that are often poor stand-ins for the good; if they cannot appeal to the higher natures of entrepreneurs and capitalists, then they will have to exert greater and greater efforts to achieve compliance.

And eventually that always comes to an end.  But a righteous man is an end in himself.