Grayish Markets
Wealth, Poverty & Human Destiny
edited by Doug Bandow and David L. Schindler
Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2003
(538 pages; $29.95, hardback)
reviewed by John William Coleman
The appearance of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter Centesimus Annus in 1991 was greeted by many as a victory for the liberal democratic tradition. While it did not offer unconditional support to capitalist economic orders, its condemnation of socialism and reaffirmation of freedom as an essential precursor to the recognition of human dignity seemed a vindication for those who support classically liberal ideas. However, the pope’s message for Lent in 2003 reiterated his concern for the modern poor:
Faced with the tragic situation of persistent poverty, which afflicts so many people in our world, how can we fail to see that the quest for profit at any cost and the lack of effective, responsible concern for the common good have concentrated immense resources in the hands of a few while the rest of humanity suffer in poverty and neglect?
In Wealth, Poverty & Human Destiny, Doug Bandow and David Schindler attempt to address these questions in a world in which the failure of socialism has left capitalism unopposed—even as poverty, inequality, and wider moral and social decline persist. The editors have compiled one of the most thorough examinations of this topic in recent history.
The writers are divided loosely into two camps. Bandow’s writers (Peter J. Hill, Michael Novak, Samuel Gregg, Jennifer Roeback Morse, Daniel T. Griswold, and Richard John Neuhaus) generally argue for the practical efficacy of free markets in helping the poor and for the general compatibility of Christianity and liberal democracy. Schindler’s writers (Adrian Walker, D. Stephen Long, William T. Cavanaugh, David Crawford, V. Bradley Lewis, and Arthur Davis) are more pessimistic—most notably arguing that these orders are undermined by their implicit (and sometimes explicit) creation of a moral poverty and spiritual homelessness.
Synthesized in concluding responses by the editors themselves, these arguments offer an enlightening discussion of liberty, Christianity, modernity, and the poor. The book includes two appendices: Wendell Berry’s essay “The Total Economy” and a bibliographic essay by Max L. Stackhouse and Lawrence M. Stratton.
Different Poverties
Bandow’s writers win one battle conclusively: arguing global capitalism’s practical superiority as a tool for raising material standards. In thorough if unoriginal essays, they offer a wealth of historical evidence and economic theory showing the benefits of liberal democracy, free trade, and globalization, and they carefully outline those anti-capitalist forces, both cultural and political, that threaten their final success. Several of Schindler’s writers question the authenticity of this triumph, citing examples of corporate abuse, income inequality, and consumer “unfreedom,” but their efforts are often abstract and are invariably overwhelmed by the arguments of their liberal counterparts.
Indeed, Schindler himself seemingly concedes the wealth created by these systems (as do several other writers), noting the historical accuracy of Michael Novak’s assertion that, “for the poor, market systems provide far better chances of improving income, conditions, and status.” And the book itself seems a reflection of the gradual real-world triumph of capitalism in the last century.
However, on questions of moral poverty and spiritual homelessness, Schindler’s writers offer no such concession. Arguing that it is only the dominance of a liberal anthropology that allows poverty to be narrowly defined as a merely material condition, these writers reject the instrumentalism of the new global economy and hark back to questions of deeper moral poverty and spiritual homelessness.
John William Coleman is a senior economics major at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. Founder of For the Least of These: A Journal of Hunger and Homelessness Issues, he is the editor of two campus publications and a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines.
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