Making capitalism moral.

• Author: Nocera, Joseph
• Position: Catholic bishops' pastoral letter

"Socialist theories have far less chance in American than in Europe," said the archbishop. "In the first place, the sentiment of personal dignity and responsibility and the spirit of enterprise are much developed in the American people. . . . Furthermore, there is room in the United States for all kinds of energy. Labor there insures honorable life; then, the greater number of Americans have conquered their situation by personal valor, at the price of efforts, perils, and heroic sacrifices. They are not disposed to share with others what they have gained by so much work."

The archbishop was John Ireland, head of the St. Paul archdiocese. It was the summer of 1894, and the America he spoke of so admiringly was a far tougher, far more cutthroat--and, in that sense, far less "Christian"--place than it is today. There was no such thing as welfare payments, no such thing as child labor laws, no such thing as subsidized medical care for the needy. The divide between rich and poor was enormous; the geometric growth of the middle class was still a long way off. The great capitalists of the day became known, not without reasons, as the "robber barons." The poor did what they could to get by, without expecting their government to help them.

Nevertheless, to an Irishman facing another year of famine, America was not a place where the poor were exploited but a place where he might be able to fill his belly. To an Italian whose family had spent generations tied to a parcel of land that became less and less productive with each passing year, America offered a potential way out. When Archbishop Ireland looked out at his flock of Catholic immigrants, what he saw was not so much the exploitative nature of capitalism, as the obvious chance for his people to find a better life. That is why Archbishop Ireland, and the other American bishops of his era, could accept an economic system that was, at bottom, not rooted in Christian virtues and ideals, notwithstanding all the blather to the contrary spewed forthy by capitalist cheerleaders from George Gilder and Michael Novak all the way back to Adam Smith himself. That is why, historically, as the Jesuit Historian John Courtney Murray has written, "the church in American has accepted this thing which is the American economy."

Ninety years later, the American bishops look out upon their flock--by now fully 25 percent of the population and represented at every level of society--and at the economic system in which they operate and see things in a far more demning light. They see a system in which "women and men are thrown out of work as a result of plant closings or national policies they are too weak to change." They see that "entire families today are frequently driven off the land because their small farms cannot compete with large agri-businesses." They see that "elderly people become homeless because they lack the resources to purchase the apartments they have lived in when the owner converts the buildings to condominimums." From such evidence they conclude that much is wrong with American capitalism. It is driven by the sin of greed; it promotes "inequality of income [while] there are poor, hungry and homeless people in our midst"; and it tolerates the existence of "sinful structures that institutionalize injustice."

These more recent quotes come, of course, from the first draft of the American bishops' pastoral letter on the economy, a product of four years of deliberation, which was first unveiled for public consumption within days of the 1984 presidential election. The final version, which was to be released this spring, has been postponed a year because the bishops have been so swamped with comments and criticism; a second draft of the letter is scheduled to appear in October. Nonetheless, the bishops can be expected to hew to their major theses. Despite vocal dissent from conservative Catholic laymen, the bishops reaffirmed the central goals of the project during a national conference in June. The New York Times reported "a resounding consensus of support" for the first draft's sweeping indictment of the failure of the American economy to provide for the poor.

Much, obviously, has changed in this country since the 1890s, though not all of that change has been what you might expect if all you had to go on was the word of American bishops, then and now. America today is a far more humane place than it was 90 years ago, and this is especially true in regard to American capitalism. Much of the inherent dog-eat-dog harsness of the system has been legislated away. With the election of Frankling Roosevelt (and subsequently John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and yes, richard Nixon), the unfettered American capitalism that existed at the turn of the century has been tamed in many ways. Roosevelt's 100 Days established the principle (and the fact) that government could intervene in the market, theretofore the most sacred of sacred cows. Government could break up monopolies, or assure the rights of labor unions, or itself put the unemployed to work. In the 1960s and early 1970s, there were additions to the agenda: worker safety and the environment, for instance. We also erected a "safety net" for those who fell victim to the heartless vagaries of the market. Unapologetically, we took money from the rich--in the form of the progressive income tax--and gave to the poor.

The liberal imagination in the post-war era has been fixed on capitalism's losers, as opposed to its Horatio Algers. The liberal instinct has always been to distrust the market, to impose limits on the lengths to which the capitalist could go in pursuit of profit. For the most part this liberalism has prevailed. Today, only the most nuttily dogmatic libertarian would argue that the entire government apparatus errected since Roosevelt's time should be dismantled. Even someone like Michael Novak, who has spent most of the 1980s arguing (unconvincingly, in my view) in favor of the inherent morality of the market, does not call for, say, the dissolution of the Food and Drug Administration. For the right0wing as well as the left--for Jack Kemp as well as Ted Kennedy--the idea that government can soften capitalism's punches has become the status quo.

From Spellman to two Johns

In its heyday, liberalism was always informed as much by morality as by pragmatic politics. Making sure the hungry had enough to eat, or that the poor had shelter--there weren't many votes in that, not after the Depression at any rate. It was simply the right thing to do. You would think, therefore, that the country's moral and religious leaders would have been among the first to line up behind such noble sentiments. Some of them were, to be sure. But, curiously, not America's bishops, who could be found either sitting on the sidelines or running...