Catholicism and Economics

At the Nassau Community College, Center for Catholic Studies

The speakers were

Charles Clark, the Democratic Socialist, St John's University

Michael Novak, the Democratic Capitalist, American Enterprise Institute

Thomas Storck, for the Distributists, The Distributist Society

It was not capitalism's day to shine. It's wasn't a classic debate along the lines of "Resolved: The United States should abandon capitalism for socialism." or
"Resolved: The United States should abandon capitalism for distributism" it was more like put the texts of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations through Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse into a pinata and beat it around.

Really, there were so many lies and half-truths said about the "c" word, there would be scarcely any time to offer up criticism on socialism and distributism.

Michael Novak, I think, fell into several traps, citing government interventions into political matters as favorable evidence for capitalism. I thought citing the provision for patents and copyrights in the Constitution as a very odd way of defending capitalism -- an example of how the government grants a limited monopoly. Rather, it demonstrates that government often intervenes into markets.

Rather than convincing me to stop being a capitalist, I heard many familiar complaints which I could have answered like "capitalism necessarily increases income inequality", but I also heard a few that made me think about things: how different the country would be if it were not so easy to create limited liability corporations.

The lasting impact on me was a resolution to reread Rerum Novarum (1891) and its sequels through Centesimus Annus (1991) to get a better sense of how they connect to Catholic social justice.

Finally, if they do this again, it should include someone who can argue for more capitalism -- that the Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional because it was not an enumerated power, and that "commerce clause" cases all the way back to Gibbons v. Ogden were decided in contravention of the principles of capitalism. Don't stop with unwinding creeping socialism in FDR's new deal, let's unwind all the way back to George Washington.