Capitalism and the Pope

Timothy Gordon recently posted an excellent essay on The Imaginative Conservative concerning the Holy Father's statements about capitalism and Rush Limbaugh's assertion that our Pope is some kind of a Marxist.  The essay is worth reading in its entirety, but some passages are especially interesting.

In a word, Pope Francis is not a Marxist: on that score, Akin is flat right and Limbaugh flat wrong.  The Pope concerns himself about Catholic social teaching and nothing more.

Gordon begins by stating the important, if somewhat obvious fact that the head of the Roman Catholic Church does not adhere to a militantly atheist ideology that is responsible for the death of millions.  Having done this, Gordon goes on to charitably consider both the pope's statements and Limbaugh's concerns.

Gordon argues that a republic informed by natural law will reject statism and individualism in favor of community, value liberty but shun license, and practice capitalism but not consumerism.  So what is capitalism?

“Capitalism” involves two concepts, and no more: 1) private ownership of property, or entitlement to benefit; 2) a rule against governmental impairment—proactive or retroactive—of private contracts (e.g. purchase or employment contracts). That’s all.  Capitalism doesn’t involve anything more conceptually complex than that, evil oil tycoons and cartoonish swan dives into of troves of riches notwithstanding. And as Akin affirms, the Pope explicitly defends the former aspect of capitalism, holding in Evangelii Gaudium that “private ownership of goods is justified.” Yet, like most conservatives or liberals, he deigns against commenting on the (only slightly) more technical second element, private contracts. But whether he would affirm or deny it, the Catholic Church has long acknowledged the necessity of reasonably unmolested private contracting.

In short, humans should contract with one another fairly. If they don’t, they violate the Natural Law—but the sacrosanct freedom of contract obtains. Thus, Limbaugh’s concern about the Pope’s fusty attitude toward capitalism is fair, or at least understandable, given the concept’s abiding mis-reputation.

The Church condemns the evils associated with capitalism rather than the substance of the thing itself.

Less-than-imaginative conservatives (together with the entire political left) have long presumed wrongly that political and cultural individualism is a bonum in se, that liberty equals license, and that consumerism is synonymous with capitalism.

If you are curious about why people get confused about the difference between capitalism and the incidental evils associated with it, read the rest of Gordon's excellent essay, which is too long to summarize in full.