Today I was at a religious retreat and noticed that right next to chesterton/belloc were copies of “austrian economics” by ron paul, “end the fed”, and “the revolution”, and (this is a big one) “the law” by bastiat. I was beside myself since the popes seemed to denounce laissez-faire on no uncertain terms and for a religious event to hold libertarian books as if it were uncontroversial was totally surprising.
This is part of a general pattern I noticed -catholics generally seem inconsistent on the workings and benefits of capitalism but catholics also seem to be greatly drawn to libertarianism too. Just thought it would be interesting.
Historically speaking (though not always true), the Catholic church has been the state’s biggest enemy and largest threat. The early Jesuits and scholastics attacked the “divine right” doctrine, and some even supported tyrannicide. Mariana, for example, came to the conclusion that if a king debases his currency, or taxes without consent, he should be killed. There are many Catholics today who still hold onto classical liberalism and defend freedom, but sadly the church has lost its way.
Marxian propaganda and agitation has turned the masses against religion–defined as a belief in some sort of God. They (the marxists) managed to blame all of the worlds greatest disorders on religion, instead of power-hungry tyrants who obfuscated religion for their own self-serving needs. Blaming religion for war is like blaming guns for murder. Today we see that atrocities are frequently committed by atheists.
I don’t think it’s lost but I do think that it stopped emphasizing study in the continental-liberal tradition. The inspiration for the social encyclicals was mainly from the German Historical School, which is surprising since the German Empire had a kulturkampf against catholicism. In the meantime, the maligned Austrian School emerged from catholic austria-hungary and pitted it’s more lucid principles against the cloudier ones of the G.H.S. I just hypothesize that the thought of the Historical School had too much of an obscuring nature on the catholic view of political economy while the Austrian one can really benefit catholics by “demystifiying” economics -which today is thought of in terms of aggregates of statistics, fully manipulable by a statesman, engineer, etc.
Plus, Chesterton/Belloc wrote in Britain which was (probably by now) under the sway of dickensian theories of political economy. The two influences of Germany and Britain on catholicism would result in the present state.
Funny you should mention that. I just had a long and nasty debate with some fellow Catholics concerning economics. Some of the Traditionalist Catholics (of which I thought myself as, but I’ve been informed I am in reality a ‘neo-trad’ for my economic views) have a major problem with certain Austrian tenants and are mistrustful of the large number of Catholics (myself included) who have embraced libertarianism. Most of them simply mischaracterize Austrian economics as ‘celebrating greed’ and then end the debate with appeals to authority.
But backing up for a moment, I wonder about this - what is behind the large number of Catholic libertarians? There are of course many atheists who are libertarians as well, but as far as actual religious people Catholics seem to be overrepresented within libertarian ranks. Other than Ron Paul (Baptist) and William Anderson (Presbyterian) I cannot think of too many protestant libertarians.
Sure, but those are the private opinions of theologians - they alone have no doctrinal weight within The Church. The closest thing to call for removing a head of state was Regnans in Excelsis, Pius V’s papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth I for persecution of Catholic worship.
Unfortunately that was because the Vatican and the state was the largest political power-blocks in any catholic region and hardly because the Vatican was anti-politics. During feudal times the church basically ran it all with Pope on top of every feudal hierarchy in Europe. Later governments grow stronger and struggled for independence from the church.
The church also collected taxes but was not as reliant on it as governments since it was in the business of selling “a special place in heaven” under more or less coercion to some pretty rich people.
A state-church is in no way better then this system. The first thing Gustav Vasa did in Sweden after converting to protestantism was to cease church assets to pay of the loans he had taken to establish himself as King. Then preceded to create our first real central government, such a rapid concentration of power to the state has rarely been seen since…
So a church powerful enough to oppose the state might result in less power. But don’t confuse the Vatican’s motives as libertarian.
Well communists and nazis have done some pretty bad shit and they are technically supposed to be faithless. Though there non-existing belief in the dominating religion in there culture can often be put in question.
More importantly they aren’t really faithless, they just replaced God with another imaginary abstraction: the greater good. There are several other similarities with religion as well…
There is a lot of truth in this, but I was referring to Catholic intellectuals and scholastics. Any centralized body, with such a bureaucratic hierarchy, will necessarily be at odds with libertarianism. But over time, starting with Aquinas, the Catholics developed economic doctrines which refuted the notions of “just price,” inflationism/interventionism, divine right, and eventually supported interest (though this part was particularly controversial). Libertarianism and natural law originated with the Catholic scholastics, though Rothbard calls Lao Tzu the first libertarian.
The question is if that supports any kind of academic freedom in the Church or simply states that all other venues of academic debate where banned. Forcing some degree of academic diversity upon it simply because every intellectual expression made was done through it.
Uhm, it is perfectly possible to support the state by rational and logically valid argumentation. Especially if you are supposed to be it’s leader…
Not that communism and nazism follow this particular tradition, but the fact that they are statist is now what makes them similar to religion.
Granted the existence of God can also be supported by rational and logical argumentation … at least Descartes tried. The difference between religion and non-religion (philosophy in this case) is how the problem is approached not the conclusion itself.
Communism (at least as a popular movement) relies heavily on emotional pleads and rhetoric rather then reason and logic, making it closer to religion then science.
Contrary to popular belief, the Church allowed for intellectual debates and controversy. Of course, when we say the “church,” we’re really talking about a succession of various popes, which were extremely heterogeneous in their beliefs. But there was lively debate amongst Catholic intellectuals, over all sorts of topics. They were a good check on the state, and often sparked revolutions. I’m not saying that there was any real degree of freedom during this period, just that many Catholic scholastics were indeed progressives, who laid down natural law and the foundations of classical liberalism.
Thomas Aquinas was no friend of Libertarianism. In fact, he was an enemy of many libertarian principles, including that of private property. In Summa Theologica, he wrote:
“then it is lawful for a man to succor his own need by means of another’s property, by taking it either openly or secretly: nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery … It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another’s property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need … In a case of a like need a man may also take secretly another’s property in order to succor his neighbor in need.”
This view of property rights has been echoed by many members of the Catholic clergy throughout history. One example will suffice. Cardinal Tommaso Cajetan (1469-1534), in his commentaries on Summa Theologica, wrote: “Now what a ruler can do in virtue of his office, so that justice may be served in the matter of riches, is to take from someone who is unwilling to dispense from what is superfluous for life or state [condition], and to distribute it to the poor. For according to the teaching of the saints, the riches that are superfluous do not belong to the rich man as his own, but rather to the one appointed by God as dispenser, so that he can have the merit of a good dispensation.”
I said beginning with Aquinas. So please, let go of the straw man. There was steady, though often frantic, progression towards libertarianism and classical liberalism, which culminated with the Spanish scholastics (Mariana for example, who Rothbard called, “the Learned Extremist”). They also made important economic breakthroughs (quantity theory, explanations of interest, origin of money, ect). We can sit here and trade quotations all day, but it is one giant waste of time. Like I said before, I suggest a “History of Economic Thought before Adam Smith,” by Rothbard.
No, it isn’t. The very act of argumentation presupposes the primacy of private property, which is antithetical to Statism. A Propertarian cannot be a Statist, unless they err in their reasoning or are intentionally deceitful.
I’ll put the book on my reading list. Put this one on yours. I still don’t see how anyone, even Rothbard, could argue that Aquinas contributed positively to Libertarian ideas. He was opposed to the ideas of private property and ownership. Read more from the sections of Summa Theologica that I linked.
It doesn’t. I could for instance be a solipsist and deny the world exists hence no property outside my own mind.
Now the solipsist standpoint isn’t logically valid but is a rational construction. Scepticism is however both rational and logically valid and it gives me the opportunity to postpone judgment about property outside my own mind since I don’t know if the world exist. Hence I can argue for a state just as much as I want without logical inconsistency.
And if I could make that up in 10 seconds I am sure there are many other rational arguments that could be made for the state, by denying universalism, absolute property or whatever to avoid logical errors. Also everyone make logical errors, sometimes it takes thousands of years before they are discovered and corrected. Making errors alone doesn’t make someone religious, it is the entire denunciation of a rational approach to problems.