Sozialalmanach - Caritas Luxembourg

– The relative priority of economic expansion as a legitimate societal goal will depend
in part on the starting-point. A poverty-stricken society urgently needs growth, since
a certain freedom from want is indispensable for people to enjoy health and security,
to have the opportunity to cultivate friendships and to participate in the wider life of
their society. But what ultimately counts is this health, friendship, participation, rather
than their arguably typical economic preconditions. Once a widely shared sufficiency is
attained, however, a rational and mature society will emphasise aims other than growth.
We do this without question in wartime, for instance, when individuals or companies
who ‚profiteer‘ are widely despised. Perhaps we need to retain the verb ‘profiteer’.
– As the historian Peter Calvocoressi has pointed out, in any democracy, there is an implicit
conflict between economic growth and social justice. ‘When a choice has to be made,
two opposing propositions will be advanced. The first will aver that if priority is given
to justice growth will be inhibited, the second that if priority is given to growth justice
will be delayed. This conflict between social and economic ends can be resolved only by
political action.’ 15 Ironically, the neo-liberal insistence on market freedom deliberately
obscures our human and political freedom with respect to the market.
I want to end by offering some very general guidelines for authentic response to the
crisis, from a viewpoint formed by the Gospel and by recent Church teaching.
1. Sustainability: as I have noted, responses to the crisis tend to prescribe a return to
economic growth: the Church, as well as the environmental movement, reacts to this
tendency apprehensively. Some distinctions are crucial here. There is no ecological limit
to economic growth, provided that this growth is in non-material goods. The materials
of my laptop computer may cost €20: the rest of its market value lies in design, publicity,
etc. But growth in the manufacture and distribution of manufactured goods, and in
the extraction of minerals, has serious environmental costs. We need a sense of ‘the
richness of sufficiency’ that embraces compassionate human concern and respect for
environment sustainability – and also implies the refusal to over-consume. That in turn
implies a reaction of the ideology of growth.
2. Respect for the market as an instrument: the market remains an essential clearing-house
for goods and services. Countries that have recently developed successfully have done so
mainly through markets, rather than through governmental aid. But many developing
countries are blocked from exporting by the protectionism of richer countries. If sub-
Saharan Africa could export freely to the West, European and US agriculture would
be at grave risk, but Africa would have a way out of poverty. Our ‘free markets’ are far
from free, and if we accept economic globalisation it should be reciprocal.
15 Calvocoressi (1978), p. 169.
283