The Moral Personality of Economics

Lord Acton teaches us that in the discussion of economics, we must not overlook its moral consequences. He writes:

The emphasis on duties, virtues, and spiritual calling in a statement on political economy testifies that economics ultimately concerns human actions. Economic activity is not an impersonal process, but the coordinated efforts of free persons with moral obligations and a transcendent vocation to God. A study of economics that fails to comprehend morality neglects an essential aspect of the person, the true subject of all economic action. Thus, moral anthropology is not extrinsic to economics, but a necessary, integral part of the science. Acton's humane contribution to political economy attests that economics is not ethically neutral or spiritually autonomous; like the person, it has a "moral foundation" and a "metaphysical basis."

The moral measure that governs economics is clearer if we consider economic activity from the perspective of the individual. Morality addresses the human person in his freedom and responsibility, his capacity to choose good or evil. From Plato through Christendom, moral philosophy has taught that the human good requires the subordination of the appetites to reason and moral disposition. This truth holds for the whole of practical life, including the economic sphere. A person who works, saves, invests, buys, sells, and trades his goods with others merely to sate his bodily appetites would be judged immoral and base (not to mention strange). Furthermore, if he were to attempt an abstract explanation and defense of his surely dissolute life on this basis, we would find him incredible (and even stranger).

Acton argues that the same judgment -- based on the same moral truth about the human person -- ought to inform our evaluation of general economics. If the ultimate justification, the moral premise of the various human relationships that constitute economic life, were mere bodily satisfaction, we would condemn such a system as narrow and low. The basis of our judgment would be the degraded view of the person that it implies. The abstractness of economic analysis does not allow it to suspend concerns about the good of individuals. By grounding economics in the "fulfillment of duties," Acton would establish this science on the moral character of each person -his individual responsibility and his obligation to others. Economics informed by a conception of duty has a solid yet elevated purview; narrow economics, which presents itself as merely a mechanism for the free gratification of appetites, risks censure, even rejection, by morally serious persons.

Ultimately, the vital processes of political economy are not determined by mechanical policies of government. Instead they are governed by the concept of personal excellence, specifically the virtues of "labor, patience, justice, peace, and self-denial." Acton's emphasis on virtue, like his moral anthropology in general, expands the conventional scope of economic discussion. Although labor -- the disposition of persons to work -- is an essential component of ordinary economic analysis, its place among the virtues named by Acton suggests a greater significance. These virtues, which Acton calls the "mainsprings of economic production," do not obviously concern the material object to be produced; patience, justice, peace, and self-denial primarily address the subject of economic activity, the human person. As virtues, they are dispositions of the soul, signs of moral excellence, and good in themselves. The exercise of virtue testifies to the person's transcendent dignity, to his spiritual governance of his material, bodily nature. Acton's anthropological economics also addresses another human duality -- each person's individual and social existence. The economic virtues are both interior dispositions, which address the person in his spiritual quietude and self-mastery, and exterior habits, which provide the principles for all social life. Individuals' moral dispositions, rather than programs for the process of production, are the engine driving the production of goods.

A virtue-based conception of economics is, we recognize, useful; for this reason, it may be incorporated easily into conventional economics. Those who are industrious, patient, just, and temperate contribute mightily to the creation of wealth and to a stable, orderly, and fair arrangement of exchange. Yet, in his own day Acton was a critic of what he called "Benthamite systems" -- utilitarian economics that focused on mechanical means to the neglect of moral ends. Moral obtuseness remains a limitation of many contemporary economic theories about the operations of the free market. In contrast, the centrality of virtue in Acton's economics precisely illustrates the priority of moral individuals, not abstract systems, in the study of this important human activity. The human good and the moral responsibility of each person are naturally preeminent in every process in which people participate.

Acton's intention to dignify economics in accordance with human dignity leads him to speak of the "metaphysical" foundation for economic activity. As in all things, it is Providence. Matthew 6:33 contains Christ's instruction to persons in their efforts to supply their worldly needs: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice and all these [necessary] things shall be added to you." This implies, in one aspect, a comprehensive teaching for social life. For each person to aspire to the justice of God is for each to hold virtue -- in the forms of fairness and moderation, charity and mercy -- as the guiding principle for the treatment of others. Again, conventional economics would surely welcome the practical consequence of this Christian teaching -- a system of steady production and equitable exchange. Yet Acton calls on economics to comprehend the greater import of this passage, and, indeed the whole of the sixth chapter of Matthew: the priority of an individual's spiritual and moral calling over his bodily needs and the effort to satisfy them. A person's sustenance will follow from his faith in God and the fulfillment of his moral obligations, Christianity teaches. But the recognition that behind acts of faith and morality is each person's spiritual longing for the good -- for God -- is the greater, metaphysical truth that Acton addresses to economics.

God's governance of the earth and His plan of redemption calls for each person's participation in an active, moral way. Salvation history may be viewed, e.g. by Augustine, as a sweeping and complex process that embraces all humanity. Yet the Gospels, in particular the sixth chapter of Matthew, testify that the faith and hope, the moral life of each person, is a crucial event in the system of salvation. Acton argues that this supreme insight of theological anthropology reveals practical life as a personal, ethical response to God's calling. Economics, then, is not "mere" economics -- simply a system to meet bodily needs or to satisfy bodily desires. It is a great part of each person's active life with others, and thus a reflection of his moral character and, ultimately, his spiritual calling.

In declaring a moral and metaphysical basis for economics, Acton argues that economics ought to be true -- that is, it must fully comprehend its subject. Acton's statement affirms that the comprehensive account of the human person is contained in Christian revelation -- each person is a free but fallen being called to seek God's redemption. Every study of human activity in this life, therefore, including economics, is most truly described as "a verification of the promise" made by Christ in Matthew 6:33. God's pledge of provision and salvation must be accomplished by each person in conjunction with God. That accomplishment is through our conscious moral decisions in all spheres of life, Acton suggests. Economic work, like the rest of practical life, is an opportunity and a responsibility for all of us personally and freely to "seek the kingdom of God and His justice." The moral concern that each person brings to his work in the economic sphere is evidence of his dignity and spiritual calling. A study of economics that grasps not only the complex process of free exchange but also each person's fundamental moral concern may be considered a comprehensively true science of economics.

The social teaching of the Catholic Church over the last century has confirmed and developed Acton's humane economics. Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, began the critique of modem economic systems -- both capitalism and socialism -- from the perspective of the dignity and moral standing of the human person. In two contemporary encyclicals, Pope John Paul II has drawn out the economic teaching of Rerum Novarum in its theological and anthropological depth. Laborem Exercens and Centesimus Annus are two particularly important contributions to the growing movement to delineate the moral and metaphysical foundations of economic activity.

In Laborem Exercens, John Paul speaks to the moral importance of economics through an analysis of the phenomenon of human work. Both Scripture and the diverse social sciences testify that "work is a fundamental dimension of man's existence on earth."¹ Labor characterizes persons not only in their material being -- that is, the work that is necessary for subsistence. As John Paul argues, work is also a calling of the highest order. It is a person's practical response to God's command to subdue the earth and have dominion over it, using all the intellectual and moral faculties of a being created in the image of God. Work, then, is discussed in the broadest and most fundamental context in Laborem Exercens by focusing on the subject of work, the human person.

Like Acton, John Paul argues that moral reality is the most important and fundamental aspect of any survey of work or economics. Work itself is measured in terms of its utility and efficiency in the larger economic process. However, the value of the worker is that he is "a conscious and free subject" who is capable of "acting in a planned and rational way" and has "a tendency to self-realization."² In his criticism of mechanistic or process-centered economics for the moral indifference they imply, Acton affirms that the individual human being, in his essential freedom and obligation, is the fundamental reality of economic activity. Similarly, Laborem Exercens calls attention to "the error of economism," which places "the spiritual and the personal" beneath the "material reality" of economic events or of work itself.³ John Paul recalls to economic study the importance of the human person in declaring that "work is 'for man' and not man 'for work.'"⁴

John Paul argues that the moral content of economic effort -- the good that it represents -- addresses human nature in its individual and social dimensions. Work is good for persons in that, as each freely and responsibly invests himself in his labor and the material world around him, work "expresses [his] dignity and increases it."⁵ Like Acton, John Paul focuses on the value of industriousness as "a moral habit ... something whereby man becomes good as man."⁶ Work is also the foundation of family life, and is, therefore, a social good for persons. The material provision for one's family that comes in most cases by laboring certainly attests to the moral importance of one's work. More significantly, though, the subsistence that work provides makes possible "the whole process of education in the family."⁷ Education of children in the good exercise of their human freedom and talents is itself work, calling for the utmost personal investment by parents. In an affirmation of a central tenet of the Church's social teaching, John Paul argues that the family is the moral association that prepares persons to participate responsibly in greater human societies. The morality of work embraces the human good in the practice of familial, societal, and economic relationships.

Centesimus Annus reiterates John Paul's concern for humane economics as part of the Church's broader social teaching. The context of the encyclical is the sweeping political, technological, and economic changes in recent years -- the "New Things of Today." Yet the foundational truth that informs John Paul's evaluation of socialist political economies, growing capitalist economies, and advanced consumer societies is the freedom, dignity, and spiritual vocation of the human person. The real failure of socialism illustrates the profoundly limited and false anthropology on which it is based. Socialism represents one extreme of the process-driven economics that Acton and John Paul criticize. Socialism treats the individual person merely as "a molecule within the social organism"; as a consequence, the good of each person is "completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism."⁸

Although the anthropological narrowness of socialism deeply offends the dignity and responsibility of persons, capitalism and consumerism may also neglect their moral character; the practical foundation of these systems may appear to be merely "the satisfaction of appetite," in Acton's phrase. The basic human freedom to provide for oneself by one's efforts, which capitalism affirms, is central to the morality of work. Furthermore, John Paul declares in Centesimus Annus that the free market is "the most efficient instrument" for employing resources and meeting human needs on the scale of nations.⁹ However, the danger of all utilitarian views of economics, even if they affirm a practical aspect of freedom, is the promotion of bodily needs or desires to the exclusion of moral and spiritual goods. There are many true human needs that cannot be met through the free market, and many artificial, unhealthy desires that can be supplied by a morally indifferent market."10 The corrective to the practical materialism that tragically recurs in economics is a morally vigorous culture that educates both citizens and officials on the principled stewardship of political economy. Although John Paul admits that the Church has no specific economic models to offer, this culture, spearheaded by the Church, still contributes the true conception of the human person and of the common good."11 The sum of this fundamental teaching is that each person is a free and morally responsible individual, capable of conscious decisions in every sphere of his practical life, and called to live in spiritual communion with his neighbors and with God.

For both Acton and John Paul, the effort to inform economics testifies that the truth about the human person is comprehensive truth. In his obligations and his vocation to God, the person has a "moral foundation" and "metaphysical basis." What is true for persons as individuals holds for them in organized society. The moral and spiritual reality of the person provides a unity, order, and purpose for the different spheres of human activity that are otherwise autonomous. Correctly understood, economics does not contradict but reflects the truth about the human person, a truth contained in Christian revelation. The person is the true fulfillment of economic processes, while God is the fulfillment of the human person. We understand, then, Acton's purpose in concluding his statement on political economy with a promise from the Gospel. The kingdom of God and its justice are both the reality and the hope of each person in all his work on earth.

Sean Mattie graduated from Middlebury College in 1991 with a B.A. in Political Science. After Middlebury, he earned an M.A. in Political Science, with an emphasis on political philosophy, at Boston College in 1993. He entered the Institute of Philosophic Studies, the doctoral program at the University of Dallas, with a concentration in Politics. His studies in theology and political philosophy at the University of Dallas were advanced by his participation in the 1997 Institute on the Free Society, held in Krakow, Poland. He is currently writing a dissertation on American constitutional law and hopes eventually to teach college or to conduct research at a public policy institute.