Sixty years ago, when the very first issue of Commonweal went to press, the presidential election returns were not yet complete but the identity of the winner was known. He was Calvin Coolidge. Cynics might be tempted to observe that some things never change.
This editorial, in reality, is going to press a week before election day, at a time when all the polls but that final one on November 6 are pointing toward the reelection of the man who substituted Calvin Coolidge's picture for Harry Truman's in his administration's Cabinet Room. If times indeed have changed, the changes have only added ominous resonance to the phrases with which Commonweal's editors greeted Mr. Coolidge in 1924. The new president, they wrote, would have to lead a"nation troubled and perplexed by most serious and highly perilous problems, complicated by the fact that this nation must in one way or another play a leading part among the other nations of the world at a time when peoples are facing a crisis graver than any recorded in the annals of humanity." In sum, the president faced "problems of unparalleled intricacy and magnitude—moral, economic, and international."
Moral, economic, and international—that sounds like a list of themes from the expiring presidential campaign. Unfortunately the three themes often were compartmentalized, with "moral," for example, referring to abortion, school prayer, and the knotty "religion and politics" issue. A year earlier, the Catholic bishops' historic pastoral letter on nuclear arms tried to warn against such compartmentalization, in that case between morality and international security questions. It is not clear how thoroughly the lesson stuck, even with members of the hierarchy. But now the bishops are about to try again, this time linking morality and economics. Not long after the media report the results of the election, they will be reporting the contents of the first draft of the bishops' pastoral letter on the American economy.
It is with that event in mind that we have chosen to devote this anniversary issue to the topic of Christian faith and economics. Only the lead article, however, directly discusses the bishops' effort, and we have tried to avoid covering topics that the bishops, draft was sure to address more thoroughly—the Scriptural basis of Christian attitudes toward economic life, for example, or the social teachings of the church over the last century. This issue emphasizes, instead, a number of adjunct or background considerations: the possibility that computerization may be rendering obsolete the economic remedies of both major political patties; the need for a nuanced debate on economic growth itself; the intersection of Christian values and the working concepts of mainstream economic theory; the emergence of new forms of poverty and of social-science theories to explain them (or explain them away); the challenge of living a Christian life resistant to the commodity culture of American capitalism; even the question of whether the bishops' credibility on "worldly" issues like economic justice does not depend on their determination to heal the old breach between home and workplace embodied in the different treatment the church metes out to men and women. Putting together this wide-ranging issue made us sharply aware of how much reception of the bishops' message may depend on the background assumptions about the present moment in American economic and political life that participants carry to the debate.
For example: One popular attitude holds that the overriding reality in approaching economic questions is the danger of statism. Such a stance links together a number of concerns. On the international level, the West is seen as hard pressed by Soviet Communism. On the national level, initiative and entrepreneurship are thought to be in terrible danger of strangulation by government taxation and regulation. On the cultural level, an educated "new class" supposedly promotes its own role in society by nurturing anti-business attitudes and by urging the expansion of the state apparatus in the name of social equality. The tendency of this position is to frame all issues against the background o f a sharp dichotomy between capitalism and socialism, the market and the state, with democracy, pluralism, economic well-being, and individual freedom all identified with the former. Modern "mixed economies" are recognized as more or less unavoidable, but given this outlook's premises, the regulatory, planning, and redistributive functions of government are always on the defensive. Similarly, the church's economic criticism, its insistence on societal responsibility, its historic uneasiness about the capitalist ethos are likely to be viewed as "part of the problem," revealing the economic and political immaturity of church leaders and their need for worldly tutoring.
Our own view of the context in which the bishops are discussing the American economy is quite different. While the East-West conflict is a reality, it is relevant to the economic debate mainly in this sense: the failure of the West to find a solution to long-term issues of unemployment, debt, and third-world poverty will create far greater breaches in the defense of democracy than any number of foregone armaments. But otherwise, Western economies have been sturdier and more dynamic since the onset of active government intervention than before. And despite the fact that socialism has inspired many of the last century's social improvements, and the socialist-influenced economies in Northern Europe consistentiy outperform our own, nonetheless socialist theory is itself too much in flux and crisis, too cognizant of the value of markets, and simply still too stigmatized in American political discourse, to justify the fondness of both left and right for transforming all debate about economics into a confrontation between capitalism and socialism.
The setting in which the bishops' draft arrives is not one in which capitalism and its leadership are on the defensive. On the contrary, they are aggressively reasserdve. The social and economic crises of the late sixties and early seventies have produced a reaction in which corporate interests have mobilized in an unprecedented fashion. To traditional forms of Washington lobbying have been added sophisticated public relations campaigns, the organization of grass-roots lobbying by stockholders and employees, strategic alliances with right-wing social insurgencies, shrewd and extensive funding of intellectuals, publications, and institutions favorable to the dissemination of pro-business ideology, and massive financing of political campaigns. Organized labor can scarcely claim junior partner status in this newest configuration of American power. The Republican party has become ideologicallyunited on economic questions. Meanwhile, the Democrats are fragmented in loyalty and responsiveness -between the lowerincome, working-class, and minority groups that have historically been their constituencies; the well-educated, politically active strata that adhere to liberalism for its protection of individual rights, including those of intellectual and moral dissent; and the business groups that, though they may prefer Republicans, provide Democratic incumbents with crucial support. The consequences of this contest between a wellmobilized and ideologically united business conservatism and a fragmented, under-financed, and under,organized liberal egalitarianism are by now evident. The share of taxes paid by corporations has declined Sharply. Owners of capital and inherited wealth have seen their tax rates slashed. The distribution of tax breaks and spending cuts has been massively skewed by the federal government in favor of upper-income groups. Poverty has grown apace; the war against inflation and the adjustment to overseas competition has been assigned to the lowermiddle of the income spectrum.
We do not deny that one can make a case for this development. That it is only a temporary readjustment. That it is essential to bringing up the absolute well-being of the poor even while inequality is increased. That its costs are exaggerated and its benefits underrated. Etc. The problem is not simply that we are unconvinced. It is that even if the current economics of inequality should misfire, the accompanying shift in political power may be so decisive that rectification will be impossible. Meanwhile, we believe, the public agenda is sorely limited. All kinds of alternative approaches to mixing markets and planning, enterprise and welfare, incentives and redistribution—operating successfully in nations as different as'Austria and Japan—are dogmatically ignored. Furthermore, it is a moment when even so enthusiastic a supporter of assertive American capitalism as the Economist can write, "In today's America, where the market has become an object of worship in its own right, an attitude of devil-take-the hindmost is increasingly and disturbingly common."
Historically, one function of the "third way" of Catholic social thought, for all the vagueness of its rejection of both pure capitalism and pure socialism, has been simply to provide some open space for new ideas, to fan the embers of dissatisfaction, and to keep the search for justice alive. That should be an unabashed goal of the bishops today.
