The Throwaway Culture in the Economy of Exclusion: Pope Francis and Economists on Waste

• Author: Helen Alford,Charles M. A. Clark
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12295
• Date: 01 September 2019

The Throwaway Culture in the Economy of

Exclusion: Pope Francis and

Economists on Waste

By Charles M. a. Clark* and helen alford oP†

abstraCt. An essential part of Pope Francis’s critique of the “economy

of exclusion” is the concept of the “throwaway culture,” which is an

attitude and a reality that goes beyond mere exclusion. Francis is

building on critiques of consumerism (what John Paul II called

“economism”) that noted both the environmental impacts of

unnecessary waste and the social and human impact of reducing

humans to mere consumers—the idea that happiness is shopping.

Francis adds to this a concern for the people on the margins of society

who are treated as disposable and for the consequences of climate

change, both of which are connected to the throwaway attitude. This

article looks at Francis’s views within the tradition of Catholic social

thought and at how economists, especially Adam Smith, who provided

the foundation for modern economics, looked at waste and

consumerism.

Introduction

For Pope Francis (2013: §53) the main problem of the “economy of

exclusion” is that “such an economy kills.” This is a particularly harsh

statement. You can see why defenders of capitalism get so worked

up over Francis’s pontificate (Whaples 2017).1

Like Francis’s famous

tweet “Inequality is the root of social evil,” it initially seems simplistic

and reductionist, but in light of Francis’s writings and the Catholic

social thought tradition that Francis is building on, these statements

instead highlight the interconnectedness of society, the economy, and

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 4 (September, 2019).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12295

© 2019 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Senior Fellow, Vincentian Center for Church and Society. Research Fellow, Center for

Global Business Stewardship. Professor of Economics, Tobin College of Business, St.

John’s University (NY). Email: clarkc@stjohns.edu

†Professor of Business Ethics. Vice Rector, Pontifical University of St Thomas, Rome.

Email: alford@pust.it

974 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

the environment. A little exclusion brings about exploitation—for

example, by denying workers the right to collectively bargain so the

employer can pay them a lower wage and increase profits. The throw-

away culture is exclusion at its extreme, denying people the right to

participate in the economy, effectively discarding them from social

participation. We recognize this in past centuries when populations

were displaced from their lands so that the civilized West could use

the natural resources for its own benefit. It is always easy to see this

in the past because it avoids our complicity in present efforts to reallo-

cate wealth from poor areas (where people typically are marginalized

and have no agency) to affluent countries.

Exclusion is the defining feature of private property in capitalism.

It is the exclusive control of “capital” as private property that defines

capitalism. Private ownership of capital is justified on the assumption

that the owners will use it to promote their own self-interest, which,

led by the “invisible hand” of competition, will produce greater out-

put. Until recently, an increase in production was seen as the same

thing as social well-being. The Catholic tradition also supports private

property; however, it places stewardship and responsibility as defin-

ing features of private property. Without those added elements, prop-

erty turns into theft. With stewardship and responsibility, property can

become a helpful tool in helping people meet their responsibilities

and thus will promote the well-being of the community.2

The current

form of capitalism functions as an “economy of exclusion.” Within

that framework, which causes inequality, exclusion becomes a tool of

exploitation and a barrier to participation that causes poverty. While

humans have a right to property, it is always subservient to the human

right to participation and the responsibility to promote the common

good. Rights and responsibilities are elements of natural law and of

what it means to be human. In Catholic social thought, property is not

a right on the same level as human rights. As a result of exclusion and

inequality, people are being denied access to food or shelter and thus

dying of hunger and exposure.

The problem is not insufficiency of food or not enough wealth

to afford adequate housing. In fact, individual poverty comes into

existence with the creation of great wealth, as Adam Smith ([1776]

975The Throwaway Culture in the Economy of Exclusion

1904: Vol. II, Bk. V, Ch. 1, Pt. 2) noted: “Wherever there is great prop-

erty there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at

least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the

indigence of the many.” The problem is that systems that create great

wealth often do so by appropriating what is common to all or by

shifting costs onto the poor. In the era of climate change, the shifting

of the pollution costs from Western development onto the developing

world has become a barrier to their development, leading to the “eco-

logical debt” that Francis (2015: §51) mentions in Laudato Si. Creating

wealth in non-sustainable ways threatens the long-term future of hu-

manity and life on earth.

Consumerism has been a driver of the economy of exclusion. Part

of this exclusionary effect is connected to Thorstein Veblen’s (1899)

concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the attachment of invidious

distinctions to consumption to perpetuate the social order. However,

another part of the effect is due to the waste inherent in a con-

sumer society, the dramatic rise in garbage due to packaging, ship-

ping, and discarding of consumer goods that are designed for rapid

obsolescence.

As Susan Strasser (1999) notes in her history of trash, before the

consumer society, households and cities tended to be more like a

closed ecological system in that the waste created by one unit became

useful input for another. This has changed such that now households,

cities, and nations are open systems that eliminate their waste, which

is often not usable. As Strasser (1999: 17) notes:

Americans know only a well-developed consumer culture, based on a

continual influx of new products. Many of these are designed to be used

briefly and then discarded; many are made of plastics and other materi-

als not easily reused, repaired or returned to nature. Discarding things is

taken to be a kind of freedom; …. American culture offers the world’s

most advanced example of the “throwaway society.” An emerging global

culture strives to establish flows of materials and energy that will not only

satisfy consumer demand but create new desires among the many people

who make the products of developed economies but do not enjoy them.

Economic development has created persistent assaults on the global eco-

system from air and water pollution and global warming, as well as solid

waste.