Is Economics Universal?

I’ve been reading with interest some of the materials David Jones and Chris Blosser posted the other day about the debates between Tom Woods and Tom Storck over economics and Catholic Social Thought. From what I can gather, one of the major areas of dispute has to do with economics status as a science, and specifically with the question of whether economic principles have any universal validity.

For Woods, there are certain economic principles (such as, say, the law of supply and demand) which are valid at all times and in all places, though of course how such principles are applied may vary (for instance, the law of supply and demand would still apply in a society with price controls; it’s just that what would be predicted by the law – shortages, black markets, etc. – would be different than where prices are set by the market). Storck, by contrast, seems to think that economic laws are historically contingent, and cites the German historical school of economics, among others, in support of his view.

I have to admit that I am more in sympathy with Woods here (big shocker). In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis argued against moral relativism by asking the reader to “[t]hink of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double crossing all the people who had been kindest to him.” In a similar vein, it’s hard for me to picture a society in which increases in the supply of a good or service make it more expensive. Perhaps, though, this is just the result of my own ideological blinders. Sure, economic principles appear to work in modern capitalist economies, but would they still hold in radically different circumstances?

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Thomas Woods and His Critics, The Austrian vs. Distributist Debate Among Catholics

Christopher Blosser:

As a young convert I was very much intrigued by the ongoing discussion between Richard J. Neuhaus, George Weigel, Michael Novak and Fr. Robert Sirico — and their critics, ranging from David Schindler (editor of Communio) to Tracey Rowland and Alisdair MacIntyre. This has sometimes been described as a debate between ‘Catholic neocons’ and ‘Catholic paleocons’; ‘Whig-Thomists’ vs. ‘Augustinian Thomists’ (the latter by Tracey Roland in a famous two-part interview with Zenit).

The discussion was centered on such questions as:

What are the religious and philosophical foundations of the ‘The American Experiment’?

Is the liberal tradition (understood in the sense of democracy, human rights and the free market) a help or a hindrance to the life of the Church and evangelization?

Is capitalism and the free market compatible with Christian morality and the social teachings of the Catholic Church?

What is the proper role of religion in the public life of America today and how ought we to interpret the ‘separation of Church and State’?

What is the proper understanding of freedom, conscience and religious liberty in Catholic tradition?. . . in other words, the kinds of questions that we at American Catholic are largely preoccupied. To aid in my readings and research on this topic I started a website, “The Church and the Liberal Tradition” and a blog, “Religion and Liberty” which was largely active from 2003-2006.

One of my chief sparring partners online was David Jones, founder of the blog la nouvelle theologie. While my time of late has been preoccupied with readings in other subjects (and other pursuits), David has kept up with new developments in this ongoing discussion. Among them, the recent exchanges between Catholic-traditionalist-turned-libertarian Dr. Thomas Woods and his chief critics, Thomas Storck and Christopher Ferrara (of The Remnant)– about which David would like to offer the following remarks in a guest post:

Oh What a Tangled Web…

Few things are more annoying to me than the obstruction of both semantic quibbles and logical fallacies to a clear understanding of reality. Thus my experience as a Distributist has become one of near-perpetual annoyance, given the proliferation of both throughout the Distributist camp. Here I want to address a few of the latest examples of this obstruction, and provide some insights as to how and why it ought to be overcome.

First, there is John Medaille’s interview with the Young Turks, in which he declares that one cannot be in favor of both free markets and capitalism, simply because he has defined a free market as a situation in which there are vast numbers of competitors, and capitalism as a situation in which economic power has been concentrated in the hands of a few large firms. When challenged on this distinction by the interviewer, who asserted that capitalism could be defined as a free market economy while this economic concentration could be defined as corporatism, Medaille essentially had no choice but to agree. He then decided to add that “the capitalism we have” is what he claims to be talking about, regardless of how one wants to “define it in the abstract.”

By answering in this way, however, Medaille might leave you with the impression that people who claim to be in favor of capitalism aren’t interested in criticizing that which “we have”, when it is beyond obvious to anyone who actually reads the material of self-identified pro-capitalist organizations such as the Mises Institute that they view “what we have” as corporatism or statism or state-capitalism or some variation on that theme, and oppose it as well.

Read the rest here.

Middle Ground Between Storck and Sirico?

This essay I wrote today is a much more developed treatment of the libertarian-distributist alliance I proposed not long ago. It was inspired by a critique of the Acton Institute and it’s Fr. Sirico by distributist Thomas Storck, linked through the essay.

My hope is that it can be an opening move in a real dialogue between libertarians and distributists. Comments are welcome.