Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

a) The market economy and free competition are not the same thing.
The old liberalism demanded freedom of contract and freedom of competition, but in doing so
overlooked the fact that freedom of competition can be eliminated with the help of freedom of
contract by the formation of monopolies. Only in the case where there is mutual and full production
competition will self-interest serve the common good. Therefore, the escalation of the
market through monopolies, partial monopolies, oligopolies, cartels, syndicates, combines,
and the like must be prohibited. Inevitable monopolies, however, must be placed under public
control.
b) Production competition does not arise of itself;
Rather, it must be organized by the state. According to the neoliberal understanding, the state
is not merely a night watchman; rather, it must give the economy a constitution that affords
free competition development possibilities : through the recognition of private property and of
free price setting, through the opening up of markets, and through the control or prohibition of
monopolies. This constitutive and regulative intervention of the state in the economy must
conform to market conditions, i.e., it may not eliminate price mechanisms and the selfregulation
of the market, which these effect. Subsidies, foreign exchange control, price
freezes, investment prohibitions, and the like are therefore rejected as measures not conforming
to market conditions. According to the neoliberal conception, free production competition,
which is to be secured by a constitutive and regulative economic policy, is the regulative principle
of the economy, the ‘third way’ between capitalism and collectivism. Nor does Christianity,
„even in its so well-organized Catholic form,“ know any better solution with respect to
the economic order; for the „renowned but much unappreciated“ encyclical, Quadragesimo
anno, comes at bottom to the „same result.“ 20 There is „no true opposition“ between neoliberalism
and Christian social teaching. 21
c) The „Non-Productive”
There are „a great number of things that are inaccessible to the market mechanism, but nevertheless
of the greatest importance for human concerns.“ One cannot „refer non-productive
people to the market“ since they are not capable, „for whatever reasons, of fending for themselves
in a way corresponding to market conditions, whether because they are sick, because
they are weak, or because they are old.“ 22 The Paleoliberalism of the ‘political right’ assumed
„that the stomach of the market economy would react with cramps and nausea to every political
fact, whereas the left considered this stomach of the market economy absolutely robust
and believed that it could cope with every sort of mistreatment and digest every foreign body“
(Franz Böhm).
d) A critical Evaluation of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism dismisses as offensive the objection that it subordinates human concerns to the
market mechanism. The market has „merely an ancillary function“; it is „not an end in itself,“
but should lead „to the most favorable provision possible for people.“ 23 Nor can one hold neoliberalism
responsible for the fact that many adherents of the old liberalism usually call themselves
‘neoliberals’ today.
Compared with Paleoliberalism, the neoliberal theory no doubt represents a certain approximation
to the principles of Christian social teaching. Nevertheless, the interpretation and the
evaluation of the market mechanism allow deep oppositions to be recognized now as before.
20
W. Röpke, „Gedanken eines Neoliberalen zur Enzyklika ‘Quadragesimo anno,’“ in Dokumente 7 (1947):427f.
21
A. Müller-Armack, Soziale Irenik (Cologne, 1948), 7.
22
A. Rüstow, in Junge Wirtschaft 2 (1960):5.
23 Ibid., 5.
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