SPECIAL REPORT • ECONOMICS OF SOLIDARITY

A Christian Fraternal Invitation To Equity

BY REV. PROF. CALLUM D. SCOTT | UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA AND PERMANENT DEACON OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF PRETORIA

IN AUGUST 2020, the Mail & Guardian newspaper reported that the South African government had spent R10 billion (approximately USD 680 million) on personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare and essential workers, to protect them from the contagious Covid-19 virus (Smit & Harper 2020). While one would be hard pressed to criticize a State spending money on the purchase of equipment for the sake of protecting its citizens, it is what transpired in the procurement of the PPE, as well as other COVID-19 related expenditure, that has significant relevance to discussions surrounding economies, and particularly how economic activity is undertaken. It soon began to emerge that roughly half of the money spent on PPE (approximately USD 340 million) had been granted to questionable tenders, some including tenders granted to government employees, making a conflict of interest clearly evident (Koko 2021).

The embattled South African state-owned power utility, Eskom, has also been in the news in recent days. The enterprise squandered an astonishing R680 million (approximately USD 46 million) on its Wilge Residential Complex at Kusile Power Station near Balmoral in Mpumalanga. The accommodations lie vacant, unfinished, despite the massive expenditure of funds (Lindeque 2021).

These examples — but two among many — serve as cases wherein a few people have been enriched at the expense of the many who have paid income tax and value added tax contributing to state coffers. Sadly, they reveal a particularly un-Christian manner of engaging in economic activity, that is, a personal economics of greed and self-enrichment (since corruption is the action resultant from the behaviour of individuals), which has seemingly become societally acceptable.

In the last edition of Worldwide, I considered the idea of a gentler, more fraternal politics. In the light of the deeply self-referential economics that we have come to encounter throughout many parts of the globe — not only in Western countries, the hub of both liberal and neo-liberal economics — we are impelled to consider a dimension of human life that flows from one’s political disposition, i.e. economics. In particular, this article will consider what an authentically Christian economics could look like. Certainly, the Gospel lets us know very bluntly what Christian economics cannot be like. Consider the Parable of the Good Samaritan:

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead… [A] Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity” (Lk 10: 30, 33).

Pope Francis uses this parable as the lens through which he evaluates fraternity and social friendship in his encyclical, Fratelli Tutti (FT). In the Christians’ economic dealings, abuse of others cannot occur; we cannot behave like the brigands in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, who beat, who steal (FT §75). These robbers represent the worst of humanity.

The Christian economic tradition from the Early Church and the Fathers

Acts of the Apostles describes the lives of the first Christians after Jesus’ ascension, as they began birthing the dynamics of the Early Church. The manner in which they undertook their economic activity stands as the ideal Christian model:

“The whole group of believers was united, heart and soul; no one claimed for his own use anything that he had, as everything they owned was held in common… None of their members was ever in want, as all those who owned land or houses would sell them, and bring the money from them, to present it to the apostles; it was then distributed to any members who might be in need” (Acts 4: 32, 34–35).

Although not of one voice — given their number and the variety of their time period (roughly the first six centuries after Christ) — the Church Fathers elaborated upon and developed the Church’s social teaching from very early on in its existence (Stander 2014). Perhaps there was no other way but to do this, since the faith spread rapidly and Christians were to be found in so many parts of society, as the 2nd century African Church Father, Tertullian (1885) noted:

“We [Christians] are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you — cities, islands, fortresses, towns,
market-places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum — we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods” (Apology 37).

Pope Francis points out that a number of the Church Fathers argued — in line with Acts 4: 32, 34, 35 — for the common ownership of material goods (FT §119). St Basil (perhaps his position was coloured by his monastic life) rather radically argued that being born with no possessions, no person is entitled to own any possessions, in fact, viewing private ownership as akin to robbery (Stander 2014: 26). In a similar vein of thought, although not to the extreme of denying private property rights, St John Chrysostom argued: “Not to share our wealth with the poor is to rob them and take away their livelihood. The riches we possess are not our own, but theirs as well” (FT §119).

St Ambrose echoes this idea, for all that we have belongs to God (On Naboth 16); and by St Gregory the Great who, in his Pastoral Rule (§21), said that in giving the needy what is needed, we simply return to them what properly does not belong to us. For the Church Fathers, the theme of need comes across as important. St Basil, for example, argued that if all people utilized only what they needed then there would be enough for all people (Stander 2014: 29). Moderation is key. If we truly have care for our brothers and sisters, we will need only what we require to suffice, as excessiveness results in others wanting, given that there is always only a limited supply of goods.

This leads me to contemplate why some of the Fathers were so against the private ownership of goods, holding literally to the example described in Acts. Perhaps the radicality of their critique was not so much against the holding of goods, but the manner in which the goods were utilized to the exclusion of others.

Rerum Novarum (On capital and labour)

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued a revolutionary encyclical letter that became foundational to Catholic Social Teaching. Rerum Novarum (On capital and labour) gave Pope Leo the opportunity to speak “… on the condition of the working classes” (§2), who the Pope saw as enduring both “misery and wretchedness” in their daily lives as a consequence of economic exploitation (§2). Although this encyclical was written in favour of the rights of the worker, it also criticises unrestrained capitalism as well as socialism (§4).

Pope Leo considered the rights and obligations of the employed and the employee. The progressiveness of this should be recalled. He was writing in the 19th century! While the workers have the responsibility of working hard and faithfully, the employers should not enslave employees, for they are persons of dignity, not to be exploited for personal gain or to be burdened unjustly with too much labour, and they must earn a just wage (§20).

The position that employees should earn justly leads us directly back into the issue of ownership of property, because a just wage implies usage of the wage for the sake of living. Pope Leo endorses that all are entitled to possess private property (§6). It is in the usage of property that Pope Leo hearkens back to the earlier teachings of the first Fathers of the Church — and of St Thomas Aquinas (No date) in the Summa Theologica: “… [W]hen what necessity demands has been supplied… it becomes a duty to give to the indigent out of what remains over” [cf. IIa-IIa, q. ixvi, a. 2. §22].

The obligation to care for those who do not have from the excess that one does have, points to the basic moral principle of the ‘common good’, that is, the shared conditions within a society that enable all people to live in accordance with their potential fulfilment (Rerum Novarum §34; Catechism of the Catholic Church 1995: §1906).

The moral measure of economic activity

What would the measure of the moral standing of a particular economic activity be, then? Catholic moral teaching must always uphold the foundational premise that all human life is sacred (Catechism of the Catholic Church §2258). The gauge that indicates the morality of any economic action, then, is whether or not an action enhances the fundamental sacredness of human life through the actualization of the common good (United States Catholic Bishops 1986: viii). Oftentimes, when the economy is distorted — as in the examples given of corruption at the heart of government projects — human beings are consciously maligned (FT §§18, 20), as a few financial oligarchs greedily increase their bank accounts, or fund their lavish, ostentatious lifestyles.

Economic activity, whether that of the employed or the employer, must be understood as being a moral action which has the potential to work for the sacredness or the denigration of human life (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 1996). Every economic action bears consequences. It is surprisingly sad, therefore, to realise that the world’s economy is terribly skewed in favour of the super-rich. Oxfam reports that the world’s 2153 billionaires are richer than 4.6 billion people combined (Coffey et al. 2020). Sadder still for our own African context is that “[t]he richest 22 men in the world own more wealth than all the women in Africa” (Coffey et al. 2020).

Pope Francis’ invitation

To an “economics of solidarity” Pope Francis’ diagnosis for the reason behind the ever-widening gap between rich and poor rests in what he considers to be the conscious distance between the self and the common good:

“[T]he gap between concern for one’s personal wellbeing and the prosperity of the larger human family seems to be stretching to the point of complete division between individuals and the human community…” (FT §1906).

We — all who engage in capitalist-like economic actions — seem to forget the Christian law, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself (Mt 22: 39). Rather, love of ourselves and our nuclear families, perhaps extended family at a push, has displaced the love of others. to share the excess that we do not need rather than piling it up in our bank accounts, this is the challenge. We need to be reminded of the command to love our neighbours. We need to be reminded of the virtue of solidarity.

To be ‘in solidarity’ with another person or group of people means loving, acting, serving for the sake of the good of that person or those people. It is, no doubt, a challenge! In a world where we are constantly told by financial planners that we should store up as much as is possible, solidarity will not be easily accepted. Yet, it is a deeply human way of being. It links up beautifully with Ubuntu, Botho, and Ujamaa.

“… [Solidarity] means thinking and acting in terms of community. It means that the lives of all are prior to the appropriation of goods by a few. It also means combatting the structural causes of poverty, inequality, the lack of work, land and housing, the denial of social and labour rights. It means confronting the destructive effects of the empire of money…” (FT §1906).

The invitation to consciously embrace and live out an “economics of solidarity”, implies that economic activity is placed second, whereas the good of others is given primacy because of all people’s innate dignity (FT §168). In this sense, “[t]he economy should work for people,” people should not work for the economy (United States Catholic Bishops 1986). Perhaps, however, the challenge that rests before the invitation to an “economics of solidarity” can be taken up, is the surrendering of our own “consumerist individualism” (FT §222), which is thoroughly incompatible with Jesus’ command to love others as we love ourselves.

Pope Francis bids the Christian faithful to embrace a truly Christian way of economics:

“In the name of the poor, the destitute, the marginalized and those most in need, whom God has commanded us to help as a duty required of all persons, especially the wealthy and those of means…” (FT §285).