Intentions and results

A remarkable conference was held in Washington a few weeks ago, at which prominent Catholic intellectuals, including one of Pope Francis' closest advisers, keynote speaker Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, took turns bashing capitalism. Although the name of the conference was "Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case against Libertarianism," the real target was the idea of a market economy.

The conclusion that emerged from the conclave was that good Catholics should embrace socialism over capitalism because it more effectively helps the poor.

This all serves to remind us that intellectuals, Catholic and otherwise, are no less capable of idiocy stemming from economic illiteracy than the rest of us. Socialism still gets a better press than capitalism in such quarters a quarter-century after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Of course, socialism will always appeal because of its noble intentions; more precisely, its "share the wealth" egalitarianism in which the rich are supposedly brought down and the poor supposedly lifted up. It also benefits from existing largely at the theoretical level, promising a fuzzy classless utopia sometime in the future if the good and generous among us are willing to work hard enough for it in the here and now.

Capitalism, on the other hand, and as Adam Smith's famous observation on the butcher, the brewer, and the baker suggests, has no "intentional" content whatsoever, because the prosperity it produces comes only from millions of individuals acting on the basis of self-interest (known in leftist circles as "greed," except when it applies to them). The wealth created is thus purely a byproduct of economic exchanges based on the profit motive and respect for that invidious concept known as private property.

There is, then, nothing romantic or idealistic about capitalism; if it helps the poor (or anyone), it does so without intending to. There is also no appeal to a theoretical future utopia; capitalism is the real world around us, with all of its imperfections; taken as is, with no "goal" implying movement toward anything much better, let alone something perfect. It may produce the goods, but it doesn't make anyone feel good about it. It certainly can't make anyone feel morally superior to others in the way that professing a belief in socialism does.

But then that is also where the discrepancy between intentions and results comes into play, because the undeniable truth is that capitalism has been proven to work better over time for just about everyone, including the object of leftist compassion, the poor.

Along these lines, we could, of course, compare the post-war economic performance of East Germany to that of West Germany, or perhaps that of contemporary North Korea to South Korea. Stepping back from the trees to the forest, we could more broadly compare the economic fortunes of the Soviet bloc (the USSR and Eastern Europe) to those of the West (the United States and the EU countries) during the Cold War; a discrepancy which had a great deal to do with the former losing the thing.

But more enlightening still has been the most important story in the world economy in the past half century--the concurrent rise of China and India.

China was an impoverished mess by the time Mao Zedong finished with it, but his successor, Deng Xiaoping, abruptly shifted course toward capitalism beginning in the early 1980s and China today is poised to overtake the United States as the world's largest economy. Who back in 1976, when Mao belatedly and thankfully died, would have thought that the largest middle class in the world less than 40 years later would be in China?

That huge Chinese middle class, 400 million strong and growing with each passing week, represents the greatest number of people lifted out of poverty in the shortest possible time in human history. And it was the shift from the socialism that Catholic intellectuals like Maradiaga favor to the capitalism that they disparage that did the lifting.

In a related sense, who among the baby boomer generation doesn't remember having their mother tell them to clean their dinner plates because "there are children starving in India?" The worst part was that it was true, largely because of the ignorant socialist economic policies followed by the likes of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. The sad joke was that ethnic Indians were rich everywhere but in India.

Then, roughly a decade after Deng changed course with spectacular results in neighboring China, India, under the leadership of finance minister Manmohan Singh, turned away from collectivism and protectionism toward free markets and free trade. Now, two decades later, India has the second-largest middle class in the world, after only China's.

The key to it all wasn't socialism or communism or any of the other variants of the collectivist impulse favored at the lefty Catholic conclave in Washington but none other than soulless capitalism, with its grubby profit motive and conspicuous consumerism.

The left claims that the most morally commendable economic system is the one that best helps the poor. So by what conceivable form of logic do they hate capitalism?

Perhaps because actually helping the poor matters less to them in the end than moral preening?

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 06/23/2014

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