Economic Competition, Death & Life

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, in an address to the Italian Senate—published in L’Osservatore Romano (requires subscription)—discussing business and economic competition from a Catholic perspective, in light of Pope Benedict’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate, noted, in these remarkable six paragraphs:

“Contrary to what people think, Efficiency is not the fundamentum divisionis for distinguishing between what is business and what is not, for the simple reason that “efficiency” is a category that belongs to the order of means and not of ends. Indeed, efficiency is indispensable in order to achieve as well as possible the purpose one has freely chosen to give one’s action. The entrepreneur who gives priority to efficiency that is an end in itself risks being caught by one of the most frequent causes of the destruction of wealth today, as the current economic and financial crisis sadly confirms.

“To expand briefly on this theme, to say “market” means saying “competition”, in the sense that the market cannot exist where there is no competition (even if the opposite is not true). And there is no one who can fail to see that the fruitfulness of competition lies in the fact that it implies tension, the dialectic that presupposes the presence of another and the relationship with another. Without tension there is no movement, but the movement—this is the point—to which tension gives rise can also be fatal; in other words it can generate death.

“If the purpose of economic action is not synonymous with striving for a common goal—as the Latin etymology “cum-petere” would clearly indicate—but rather with Hobbes’ theory, “mors tua, vita mea” [your death is my life], then the social bond is reduced to commercial relations and economic activity tends to become inhuman, hence ultimately inefficient.

“Therefore, even in competition, “the Church’s social doctrine holds that authentically human social relationships of friendship, solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or ‘after’ it. The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed is an ethical manner”.

“ Well, the advantage—by no means small—that Caritas in Veritate offers us is to give special consideration to the concept of market, typical of the tradition of the thought of civil economics, according to which it is possible to live the experience of human sociality within a normal economic life and not outside or beside it. This concept might be defined as an alternative, both regarding the concept that sees the market as a place for the exploitation and abuse of the weak by the strong, and the concept, which, in line with anarchic-liberalistic thought, sees it as a place that can provide solutions to all the problems of society.

“This way of doing business is differentiated from that of the traditional Smithian economy, which sees the market as the only institution truly necessary for democracy and freedom. The Church’s social doctrine, on the other hand, reminds us that a sound society is certainly the product of the market and of freedom, but there are needs that stem from the principle of brotherhood that can neither be avoided nor be referred solely to the private sphere or to philanthropy. Rather, the Church’s social doctrine proposes a humanism with various dimensions in which the market is not combated or “controlled” but is seen as an important institution in the public sphere—a sphere which far exceeds State control—which, if it is conceived of and lived as a place that is also open to the principles of reciprocity and of giving, can construct a healthy civil coexistence.” (Bertone, 2009, The many dimensions of humanism, L”Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, Wednesday August 5, 2009, p. 4)