There is no particular reason to assume that people are greedier in a market economy than in a socialist economy, write Philip Boothand Peter Nolan
There is a parody of the market economy often put forward by priests in Ireland and elsewhere, caricaturing it as the arena of ignoble and unrestrained greed. That parody was exhibited in the straw man Father Tony Flannery put up and knocked down in his recent column in The Irish Times (June 26th). The moral framework of the market economy, as understood both by secular scholars and in the teaching of the church, is very different.
In his famous essay The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, the pioneering German sociologist Max Weber wrote: "Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse."
Greed and business are far from synonymous - the accumulation of wealth without the regard for means or consequences is characteristic in societies lacking a moral framework. Often, the demonisation of religion and the criminalisation of business people in Russia and China have gone hand in hand.
Instead, a market economy relies on people autonomously making choices as to what is best for their own interests, whether it is in the provision of food, clothing or holidays, or in the pursuit of cultural and educational attainments.
This echoes the principle of subsidiarity emphasised in Catholic social teaching, the idea that decisions should be taken by those most closely involved, without the unnecessary involvement of overcentralised authority.
University courses in many developed countries are not financed by the government - they are part of the market economy. But it would be ridiculous to say that the students who take the courses and the professors who teach them are motivated by greed. Self-interest will be one of many motivations for a student's decision about which courses to take, but it is nonsense to cite greed as a major factor in place of the enjoyment or sense of mission they take from their work, the desire to support themselves and their families and the ambition to employ their talents to the fullest possible extent.
Father Flannery's view seems to restrict the set of truly Christian vocations to exclude our everyday work and family lives, preferring those of the religious or indeed the revolutionary.
Thus self-interest and autonomy keeps a market economy ticking over and ensures that scarce economic resources are put to useful ends. To equate self-interest operating in a market economy with low taxation with greed is akin to suggesting that two people in a fruitful, consensual marriage are necessarily lustful or that somebody who enjoys a good meal is always a glutton. It is possible to enjoy good food, good clothes and good sex without being gluttonous, greedy or lustful.
Of course, some people are greedy. But there is no particular reason to assume that people are greedier in a market economy than in a more socialistic economy - or that the poor are better cared for in the latter. The tax burden in Britain is nearly 40 per cent greater than that in Ireland, but people are not noticeably greedier in Ireland, nor are the poor less well cared for.
The USA has a similar tax burden to Ireland, yet private philanthropic help to the continent of Africa is as big as the foreign aid budgets of all the developed countries in the world put together.
Father Flannery advocates higher taxes as a modern-day interpretation of the social message of Jesus. Yet a government taking money from people, while threatening to put them in prison if they do not pay, is not the same as the charity, love and sharing that Jesus preached. When taxes are high, people start to defraud the system. When fraud becomes endemic, people can lose their moral compass altogether.
Citizens have to fight each other for resources that are allocated through the political system in socialistic societies. In France, for example, there are regular and sometimes violent demonstrations. The old demonstrate to protect their pensions, imposing burdens on the young; those in jobs fight for job-protection legislation oblivious to the consequences for those who do not have jobs because of over-regulation; and farmers fight for their subsidies and tariff protection without a care for consumers who must pay more for food or for Third World farmers who pay the cost of restricted opportunities for development, often with their very lives.
The Catholic Church is very clear about limiting the extent that clergy should be involved in political matters. The church's Catechism, republished under Pope John Paul II, states quite clearly that these matters are to be left to lay experts. Yet Father Flannery was explicitly attaching himself to a particular ideology. He was also quite clearly misinterpreting the "social" Gospel as a "socialist Gospel".
Clergy should teach their flock to avoid greed in their actions both in the market economy and in the public square; they should teach them to share and to be charitable and loving. Culture may need to be changed, but it will not be changed by the imposition of a more socialist economic system.
We shall leave the last words to Pope Leo XIII's Rerum novarum: "Socialists, therefore, by endeavouring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages."
The social Gospel is profoundly social, but it is not political. Insofar as it is political, it differs sharply in its implications from those drawn by Father Flannery.
Prof Philip Booth is editor of the recently-published book Catholic Social Teaching and the Market Economy. Peter Nolan is an Irish investment analyst and journalist based in London