Elements of Christian and Marxist Dialogue-Debate in John Raymaker’s and Pierre Whalon’s "Attentive, Intelligent, Rational, and Responsible ..." (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2023)
Hugh Williams
John, Pierre, et al,
so I begin over the next short while as a test/trial run for a much larger paper, this serious reading and commentary of your important text AIRR (2023) ...
I'm sure you and perhaps a few others will join in (or not) to add or clarify or correct or just discuss as needed.
Hugh
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Elements of Christian and Marxist Dialogue-Debate in John Raymaker’s and Pierre Whalon’s Attentive, Intelligent, Rational, and Responsible (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2023)
Forward
Cyril Orji’s forward to the text prepares us for some of what is to come in regard to what I am casting as this difficult yet urgent dialogue-debate …
Pxv Orji begins with a quote from Lonergan (L) saying that socialism is no solution, for the nationalization of capitalist errors only again puts more wealth into the hands of few. The problem of inequality is not likely to be effectively solved but only aggravated. This is because, according to Orji, in the Marxist theory underlying socialism is a questionable approach to economics. Thus, early on in the text we have introduced the so-called Christian ‘third way’ as a democratic alternative to both socialism and unabridged capitalism as found in neo-liberalism. Raymaker and Whalon’s text packages this ‘third way’ as a new effort to apply Christian values and ethics to the pressing societal problems we are presented with today.
Pxviii Orji enthusiastically refers to the text as an implementation of L’s macroeconomics though in reality, in my own view, it can only be taken as a theory for its implementation. And in just that, as a call for the reform of both the capitalist and socialist economies, from at least the Christian side of this difficult but urgent dialogue-debate, ... this is an important and significant advance.
Orji makes a much more specific claim - that Raymaker and Whalon (R&W) have demonstrated how L’s theory of economy overcomes post-Marxist and post-Keynesian deficiencies, perhaps advancing a new social contract addressing both global relations and the contemporary economic crises. Orji believes R&W have especially offered L’s theory of economy in a manner that is highly relevant for the emerging global nations.
Introduction
Pxxvii In the introduction the authors themselves at least implicitly express the urgency of this Christian-Marxist dialogue-debate by saying the text presents a short summary of L’s theory of economy and economics with the first purpose being to invite and attract further investigation and to renew hope. This hope is especially important for we are in a period of history where life on earth is facing its greatest threat ever and so there is a real need for wisdom that can inform resolute action. This inescapably means sound thinking about the concrete challenges we face. Thus, for me as a serious reader the text does take on an irresistible attraction when read in this light of the Christian-Marxist dialogue, which again for me, as a Canadian, was very much reinvigorated by the work of two Canadians who have helped at least a few of us to begin focusing on these global issues within the Canadian context, George Grant and Gregory Baum (for those interested see attached).
Hugh Williams
Listers all ...
Continuing this commentary of John and Pierre's AIRR text ...
which to some degree, I'm sure, grew out of, or was impacted by, this List and some of its many exchanges ...
and also as I do this, I'm more convinced of the value in the Christian-Marxist dialogue perspective/reading ...
I realize some would see an insurmountable chasm between these two 'traditions' but consider this
... that the 'dialogue-dialectic's' value can be understood intellectually this way ...
the Christian who may be so disposed intellectually to some significant degree is a composite of 'Aristotle and Thomas'
whereas the Marxist so disposed may be viewed as a composite of Epicurus and Aristotle (as was Marx himself).
So despite the seeming extremes of Epicurus and Thomas, it arguably is in the orbit of the great pagan thinker Aristotle
where some possible fusion of horizons may be possible ... at least to the extent
that the materialist - idealist divide that be present in any Marxist - Christian engagement is at least moderated in Aristotle's
less dualistic treatment of matter and form ...
(I know many evangelical christians who are specifically and deeply distrustful of Thomas' engagement with Aristotle ...
we can at least agree that Aristotle vehemently opposed any 'two world position' whether it be held by friends or enemies ...)
... I believe because of Lonergan's influence you can feel this sympathetic engagement in AIRR (read below) ... though I have no illusions about any final synthesis ...
but there is a great learning still to be had ...
Hugh
AIRR commentary ...
P23 L’s GEM began as a cognitional theory where he invited his readers of Insight to affirm their own existence through judgment based upon reflection. In doing this he sought to found his metaphysics upon his epistemology. This say the authors was in opposition to certain trends in the scholastics and in the tradition of Aristotle and Thomas. This has meant in effect that in L that the metaphysics supporting GEM depends upon one’s epistemology which is psychologically grounded in that it depends upon the subjective appropriation of one’s own cognitional processes which, as I understand it, end up being simply posited to be isomorphic with the known object.
[So, I’ve argued long and hard on this List that this remains for me and many others an incomplete account of human knowledge. And yet I do not believe this incompleteness in L’s metaphysics and epistemology detracts from his profound methodological discovery of the crucial specializations for functional collaboration with others, specializations that can be taken as fundamental for any effective interdisciplinary and/or transdisciplinary inquiry. Nor does it detract from how this methodology is intimately related to what are considered to be the deeply personal attainments and commitments (conversions) associated with any effective application of this methodology. So yes, I can agree with the authors' stress on the need for the personal appropriation of L’s thought, but would want to add that there is need for a completed re-appropriation of the best aspects of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition so as to overcome or avoid what I have argued are the subjectivist tendencies in L. One might anticipate the Marxist side also claiming to be doing this at least in the sense that there is this fundamental and deep respect for Aristotle’s realism in Marx’s own materialist thought, and so perhaps this also anticipates or hints at what might be the value for the Lonergan and Christian side in any serious engagement with Marxism.]
P25 The author’s put their case and their own warning to their readers in the very early stages of the text in very concise common-sense terms – ‘we must wise up before it is too late’.
In L’s methodology we are to become aware of being aware and it definitely helps to be aware of some object but at the same time we are to be aware of who we truly are or might be. This means asking at some point in life ‘what have I done, and failed to do in my life?’ This say the authors involves a determinate procedure that may help us find ‘radical ways’ to overcome what ails us. And at this point the authors acknowledge, albeit in a footnote, that the uncertainties we now face are largely the result of a certain course of development which they summarize as industrialization and colonization and which Marx has termed capitalism. The authors early on in their text use this term as well, at least in footnote #72, commenting by way of a quote on how financial capitalism has distorted the creation of value into the mere extraction of value created elsewhere while real value added by government and public goods and services is ignored. We need a more integrative view of value in contrast to how value is created and extracted under capitalism, as well as a view on how this must change. This is because value depends upon vision (and hope) and if we cannot dream of a better future and try to implement it, there is no reason to value anything.
hopefully to be continued now and again ...
Hugh
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John Raymaker
Hugh Williams
Listers et al,
this next section does begin to touch on areas of controversy between Christian and Marxist ...
I'd imagine a title for this next part of the commentary on this good text AIRR as ...
Economy and the Magic Penny
P26 Because of globalization and technology we as a species are now faced with extraordinary challenges and opportunities. We have a world of instant communication and yet are not sufficiently aware of how our actions can and do impact others. There are gross inequalities between rich and poor. There is a revival of competing nationalist claims. There are disputes because of religious fanaticism. There is the divide between religion, atheism, and secularism. All of these challenges have made it very difficult to effectively implement measures to address climate change. A globalized planet dominated by self-interested ideologies needs self-giving persons focused on the common good.
However, in saying all this there are some indications of what I take to be the author’s own Western biases that come through when they speak of this common good being obstructed by arbitrary, selfish actions as when China seeks to tighten its grip on technology companies as the world comes to rely on Chinese manufacturing to power the critically needed transition towards clean energy. All I can say is that such observations need to be balanced by and placed within a larger context of geo-political politics for which the long tradition of Marxism can provide important insights. Thus, again this may speak for the value in a serious Christian-Marxist dialogue.
P27 The authors now begin to lay out their systematic approach to Lonergan. They start by explaining that L's remedy begins with his efforts to develop what is his unique version of a critical realism in his Insight and with his two-phased methodology in his Method in Theology. This is the basis upon which cooperation is to be fostered in all fields of human life, inquiry, and problem-solving. It is especially MiT’s two-phased method that is meant to develop the conversions and needed communal turn-arounds in economy and ecology.
This means deploying MiT’s eight interdependent functional specializations (research, interpretation, history, dialectic, foundation, doctrine, systematics, and communication) that are meant to underlie the necessary communal changes in economic and environmental policy.
The authors begin by giving Insight a deeper historical context so as to clarify the importance L saw in confronting the mistaken presuppositions of the dominant views in both philosophy and economics especially. This means focusing on what the authors claim to be L’s three major intellectual breakthroughs – 1) on heuristic structures being reduced to two – classical and statistical, 2) on the relationship between belief and faith, and 3) on the difference between convergent and divergent problems.
Insight’s study of heuristic structures resulted in two major structures the classical and the statistical. L notes how the physical sciences seem to be able to reach a single, precise, and generally acceptable technical language on the basis of which to carry on their work, whereas philosophy cannot be reasonable in this way or on the same terms. This is because the philosophers have to become familiar with different traditions of thought and with their diverse positions. And in addition, they have to find some grounds for deciding between these traditions and their positions. It is the reasonableness of that decision which provides the basis for further collaboration with a particular tradition of thought. Clearly this has a high relevance for my own use of the tradition of Christian-Marxist dialogue in the reading of this text.
P28 The authors then introduce a particularly Christian dimension to their GEM-FS sandwich approach to their L systematics, saying quite clearly that it has to include what they call a spiritual dimension that will draw upon the key distinction between belief and faith where they insist, with L, that both false beliefs and the false believer are to be overcome. This means confronting the way one happens to have accepted false beliefs, how one has been co-opted by the social surd and its biases. The fundamental problem here from the Christian side is that false beliefs are seen to prevent our proper orientation to the mystery of love. And more than this, for the plot very much thickens at this point with the claim that, it is a loving faith that can unite people of different beliefs.
And yet one does have to confront how it is that one has come to accept erroneous beliefs along with the carelessness and bias that leads one to accept the false as true.
[Here I must emphasize the importance of the reader paying close attention to the text’s footnotes. For in the footnotes are essential insights for this amazing text’s emerging and developing systematic interpretation of L’s seminal methodological GEM-FS and for grasping its relevance to our present situation as a species.]
At footnote #76 it is pointed out how L at a certain point in his Insight says that the absolute does not reside in sensible presentations but in the field of our abstractions and our invariant expressions. It is also said that it is likely that our statistics require both kinds of heuristic structure both statistical and classical depending upon the situation and that it is the applied sciences and scientists who know which is appropriate for which situation or context.
P29 Again, the authors reiterate, after L, that some manner or way of adversion to the spiritual, the mystical, and apophatic to be integral to the religious conversion required to fully understand GEM-FS methodology.
The authors then give us another summation of their text’s overall effort … it is to have L’s two economic texts serve directly in helping integrate GEM-FS transformations into a more systematic reading of L. It is a radical move that I’m suggesting is on par with what Marx in his day tried to do with Hegel, and this is another reason for my offering of the Christian-Marxist dialogue as an interpretive key for a livelier reading of AIRR. It is nothing less than an effort to help us in our own time move from what is well known in L studies as personal authenticity to the much more radical notion of communal authenticity, clearly the challenge of our times. In a real sense from the Christian side this is a work of faith reinterpreting ethics in the area of economy and economics much more broadly conceived.
Beliefs have played a role in civilizational development and in the progress of knowledge. Indeed knowledge is often handed on by beliefs which have transmitted science from one generation to the next.
L’s is seen by the authors to have advanced our understanding of divergent and convergent problems that have puzzled so many other thinkers. Divergent problems are problems that cannot be solved by logical reasoning while convergent problems can be solved by such reasoning. It is divergent problems that are said to keep life going as problems that have to be lived through, and are to be solved, so to speak, only in death. These problems are not recognized in the physical sciences and mathematics.
P30 In dealing only with convergent problems one does not enter into the fullness of life and its mysteries. L, says the authors, goes a long way in resolving this dilemma. L confronts the need for new economic and environmental policies and yet there is, according to the authors, some sense in which convergent problems are useful human inventions that do not actually exist in reality. There is this sense in which they are the product of abstract thought and can be handled by abstract thought. Divergent problems are very different in this regard not necessarily producing the same answer among those who should think about them. Education is an example. The transmission of learning from one generation to the next is a divergent problem.
In L there is a sense in which this dilemma as in economics may require mathematical development that shows how to transpose a real-life problem of economy that may appear divergent into a problem of convergent knowledge. This is where L’s appropriation of the Hegelian dialectic is important for assumed progress or development results from a concrete unfolding of linked but opposed principles of change. This means there may be convergence in a determinate manner that we do not yet understand. For example, one may claim the modern economy is unsustainable but the authors in following L seek to articulate two socio-cultural conversions as a way of transforming what appears as a divergent problem into a viable form of convergent problem for economics and ecology.
P31 This type of reformulation of the problem from divergent to convergent is not possible for mainstream economics because of an inability to recognize the social-surd (or the problem of evil). However, the authors argue that such recognition is essential if economics is not to fail in its mission. They believe L’s twofold heuristic structure (classical and statistical) aides his GEM-FS methodology in accommodating the full scope of human intelligence’s anticipations. In L this means a transformation of the notion of divergence from its classical treatment towards a higher viewpoint that sees convergence in the data.
This means that the classical viewpoint and its laws are no longer interpreted as concrete but as elements of an abstract system of thought constituted by defined relations and terms connected with data indirectly through descriptive concepts yielding limited verifications for certain controlled circumstances or contexts in which data converges with sufficient reliability.
In fn # 83 the author’s quote from L’s problem of evil and its resolution in Insight where the dialectic of intellect is healed by way of God’s love and the dialectic of will. It is worth recycling:
“The will can contribute to the solution of the problem of social surd inasmuch as it adopts a dialectical attitude that parallels the dialectical method of intellect. The dialectical method of intellect consists in grasping that the social surd” cannot be treated “as intelligible. The corresponding dialectical attitude of will is to return good for evil. For it is only inasmuch as men are willing to meet evil with good, to love their enemies, to pray for those that persecute and calumniate them, that the social surd is a potential good. It follows that love of God above all and in all so embraces the order of the universe as to love all with a self-sacrificing love.” (Insight, pp.721-722)
So here, again, in the footnotes we have this Christian reach or stretch for some sense of ‘resolution’ towards what might be called the ultimacy (or hyper-good) of love as L formulates it in the final pages of his Insight. Simply and bluntly put, this Christian formulation in extremis is not likely to be accepted by the Marxists or Marxism with its Epicurean materialist philosophical roots, and perhaps, at best, it will be for some time a source of great puzzlement … perhaps best left as a divergent problem and mystery.[1]
The authors now having tried to clarify the three fundamental advances in L’s GEM-FS methodology move to consider L’s critical realism more closely.
[1] My only response to such a problem of divergence is in the famous children’s song on the paradox of love which as best as I can remember goes something like this – ‘love is like a magic penny/ hold it close and you won’t have any/ give it away and you’ll have plenty/ love is like a magic penny’ …
Pierre Whalon
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/1184943087.975834.1752902114481%40mail.yahoo.com.
Hugh Williams
Listers et al,
Continuing, during this very hot summer in Canada, to read and comment on John and Pierre's AIRR (2023) ...
and to do so with an eye on those elements of a christian-marxist dialogue/debate which in my view are clearly evident.
Hugh
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P35 The authors confirm their confidence in Lonergan's (L) offer of a global vision that can help us address the complexities of both today and tomorrow.
P37 Marx is cited as one of the great thinkers who deeply influenced L preparing him to interpret Thomas Aquinas in a way that might help Catholic theology better meet the challenges of the modern world and its people's situation.
P38 Again, GEM-FS is cited as giving us some needed criteria to help us realistically face changes that can at times seem almost apocalyptic, and the economic and environmental conversion-turnarounds are seen by the authors as helping us develop the viable policies across the globe ‘to save what can be saved’.
P39 One of the major points of tension with Marxism is how L is said to have believed that Marxism undervalued the role of entrepreneurship and investment finance especially in complex economies. And yet Raymaker and Whalon acknowledge how government’s role in ensuring ordered and stable monetary flows is too often counteracted by huge private international financial entities that can move money around in both volatile and disruptive ways. At this point in the text their appeal is for economic education where ‘we’ are expected to learn to make economic choices that benefit what is called the common good.
P44 This appeal for education can at first seem facile given the nature of the complex challenges alluded to. But for L and his adherents, like Raymaker and Whalon, education means something quite specific. It is not a conceptualism seeking some continuity and interrelationship in and among concepts but instead is seeking a continuity in the common cognitional operations possessed by people of different times and places. What is being sought and focused upon in the education called for here, is a fundamental methodological concern for all human attempts to know. This is not just another resource for solving particular problems or addressing particular content such as that of theology. It is a method most concerned with one’s consciously subjective intentional operations as an open dynamic structure, arguably, for any and all inquiry.
Pp45-46 It is an invitation that involves a type of self-appropriation of one’s own conscious activities as knower, which if one fails to grasp this fundamental aspect in L’s central concern for education, his methodological reflections will be largely inscrutable. The authors then attempt to at least formally outline how this type of education is based upon MiT’s treatment of the four mediating phases of the eight functional specializations of research, interpretation, history, and dialectic, and subsequently upon the four mediated phases of foundations, doctrines, systematics, and communications. It is a very difficult section to follow without the benefit of an illustrative example, but it seems it must be done to prepare for how this methodology applies to past efforts to understand the ways the economy and economics have been misunderstood. It is this extensive attention to different understandings of economy and economics in history that comes in their next section – Part II: A Brief Annotated History of Economics. In a sense it can be taken as their illustrative example.
Hugh
Hugh Williams
John, Pierre, et al,
So far these are very generous reactions ....
but I am anticipating some very necessary and very difficult dialectics as we proceed with what we are
describing to be a significant advance in the Christian-Marxist dialogue-debate ...
and if I may speculate prior to providing the textual evidence of the full commentary - what we have in Lonergan's work
and the Raymaker-Whalon (AIRR) interpretation is this tremendous effort to achieve
some higher synthesis of what is called by Lonergan the liberal thesis
and the Marxist antithesis. (AIRR p.105; Insight p.266)
At the moment, I'm of the view that philosophically, at least, this becomes a vitally important question of the ongoing struggle to move from personal authenticity towards
what we might call communal authenticity which in modern terms becomes at root an issue of the proper exercise of our freedom.
So in some sense this creative and dialectical tension between these vast traditions of liberalism and Marxism becomes a question of freedom -
how it is understood and how it is used ... ???
so it seems to me
Hugh
(ps. the assumption here, it seems, is that christianity for the most part has become the 'captive' of liberalism ...
thus the linkage with the christian-marxist dialogue and for the purposes of this commentary
these two groups of prominent exponents in 'Lonergan and his interpreters' and 'Marx and his interpreters' ....)
------------------------------------
Part II
A Brief Annotated History of Economics
P68 For Raymaker and Whalon the major difficulty in this educational history has been in the separation of economics from ethics which they say has been a catastrophic development. Here the text, now and again, will move much closer to some consideration of Marx’s own work in which, the authors view Marx as clearly seeing how capitalism mistakenly encourages greed, but yet, in their view, he has failed to see what they call the mistaken nature of his materialism.
P78 Economic analysis generally has tended to begin with a consideration of the dynamics of a stable economy and then moves to consider the destabilizing effect of entrepreneurial activity. L in contrast begins with entrepreneurial activity especially as it occurs on the massive scale in economic cycles, revolutions, and surges. His analysis is based upon the rigorous analytical distinction between basic and surplus activities, expenditures, incomes etc.. These are all notions relevant for the understanding and control of an economy without major surges. Here the authors comment that there is no distraction of some labor theory of value and that the perspective is concretely heuristic and opposed to abstract model building.
P79 According to Phil McShane’s interpretation the key problem of the modern economy is the cutting off of the basic expansion because of basic businesses’ discouraging experience of shrinking prices. Basic expenditures, basic income, basic receipts should keep growing in pace with growing basic production. But this crucial keeping pace is impossible to fulfill given the present mindset of businesses and economists. Changing this is what is meant by “the massive cultural shift.”
This present mind set mistakenly calls for the continual growth of the surplus stage incomes when in fact the economy is not generating these incomes. There is this fundamental failure in understanding that pure surplus income may increase geometrically in the initial stage of long-term expansion but must give way to the basic expansion and thus systematically decline and finally revert to zero as expansion is completed.
P80 Figuring out the details of this massive cultural shift regarding wages is not going to be easy, and implementing it in this century is seen to be a psychic climate change according to Phil McShane.
Lonergan insists that circuit acceleration is the underlying requirement for the concomitance of income with expenditure and that in very technical terms these two items are to be identical with the adjustments of the rate of saving to the requirements of the productive process. Thus theoretically, it is said to follow that one can project a division of expenditure into a division of income and that this is the way to arrive at the concept of pure surplus income. Pure surplus income is a notion crucial to L’s theory and is somehow to be related to how ethics should modify greed and exploitation.
But it is not easy to change human nature for the better nor were the authors’ in the beginning conscious of the need for the six conversions – four individual: intellectual, moral, religious, psychic, and two on the part of economists and socio-communal entities (institutions) both economical and ecological. But there is a logic to this development involving extremely demanding GEM-FS processes in conjunction with a prophetic vision based upon a ‘realistic hope’.
P81 Basic income is income that is consumed or becomes part of one’s standard of living however large. Surplus income is income saved and invested. Here L is quoted as saying ‘it is the proportions of total income consumed and invested and not their proprietary sources that are significant for the macro-economy.’ These functional distinctions can be tracked statistically. In a surplus expansion if the pure surplus income is captured by the higher income levels alone, the anti-egalitarian shift in the distribution of income is being achieved and savings will be sufficient. (CWL 15, p.151) [Theoretically this 'anti-egalitarian shift' because of the credit and financial needs of the surplus expansion can be theoretically accommodated because of the theoretical commitment to a subsequent basic expansion. Nevertheless, this I expect would be an area of vulnerability in L's theory that Marxists would be very much concerned about given the historical record of growing inequality that the authors themselves seem to acknowledge.]
P82 The authors do then pause to consider why what they consider to be L’s exceptionally perceptive analysis has not acquired the general approbation of economists. And in trying to address this question they quote Philip McShane who provides what I would characterize as a striking indication of the daunting pedagogical challenge the GEM-FS project faces:
“The first difficulty is psychological. The basic and static phases are a somber world for men brought up on the strong drink of expansion. They have to be cured of their appetite for making more and more money so that they may have more money to invest. They have to be fitted out with a mentality that will aim at and be content with a stable going concern and a stable standard of living. It is not so easy to effect this change, for as the Wise Man said, the number of fools is infinite.”
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Pierre, I totally agree that Hugh has done us and the "Lonergan movement" a good turn. His posting today--a bit expanded--would make a very good, succinct book review-starting perhaps with Method, the Journal of Lonergan Studies. John
On Saturday, July 26, 2025 at 12:13:21 PM GMT+2, PIERRE WHALON <bppw...@aol.com> wrote:
Hi John,
Well, I must say I am impressed. And grateful to Hugh.
Your thoughts?
Pierre
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Hugh Williams
Listers all,
This is a slight digression but I hope it may prove helpful in at least clarifying this language usage of and communications around these terms such as capitalism. liberalism, marxism, and even of christianity in the context of this subject-line ....
Hugh
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If we do characterize what I’ve been calling this dialogue-dialectic between Christianity and Marxism as often being boiled down to an ideological conflict between Liberalism and Marxism then we perhaps can better recognize and appreciate any attempted advance as a higher synthesis based upon Lonergan as is being attempted much more systematically by Raymaker and Whalon in their recent AIRR text.
Then it seems to me that Christianity cannot be seen simply as, or be reduced simply to, an ideological captive of Liberalism but as having a much fuller viewpoint that genuinely seeks this (higher) middle or third way sometimes referred to by Lonergan.
As Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato Si very much enlivened this debate from the official Christian side, there was an earlier 1981 encyclical by JPII that reopened the dialogue-debate also in powerful ways that is not mentioned by Raymaker and Whalon. And besides the actual encyclical there is an extraordinary and highly relevant commentary offered by the Canadian theologian-sociologist Gregory Baum that, as a guide to this complex area of concern, is quite luminous and thus very helpful for sorting out these 'identity' terms – Liberal, Marxist, even Christian, which all can be used very loosely.[1]
This JPII encyclical’s criticism of Marxism, Baum shows convincingly, is directed towards the official Marxism of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe which at the time was viewed as rigidly economistic. Whereas the Christian perspective offered is, according to Baum, very much inspired by more creative Marxist analyses and critiques of real-world capitalism. When the encyclical treats of Liberalism, its target is economic liberalism which it finds to be equally economistic with a very restricted notion of individual freedom and a notion of a so-called free market that in fact never really existed. This is because there always have been significant political forces at play. In our contemporary Western society, and so it simply is very simplistic and misleading to define our economy as governed by a free market. The old liberal picture may be used for misleading ideological purposes but government has been deeply involved in our economies.
Liberals and neo-liberals have promoted and defended ideologically a type of reform capitalism. But the encyclical asserts that new developments have occurred in the organization of capital and in the development of technology that have grave consequences for workers creating new conditions of exploitation. Multi-national corporations have gained enormous power so that national governments are now effectively prevented from guiding their national economies and protecting their people from exploitation.
Baum’s commentary acknowledges that the encyclical’s analysis in this area is brief and limited. And in addition, he cites how the traditional Catholic distinction between the use and ownership of capital needs much further work and development to remain credible (certainly for Marxists). And he is quite forthright in how official and institutional Christian political interests in situations of serious social conflict too often have defended or sided with capitalist interests over socialist interests.
Nevertheless, the encyclical is quite insightful in noting the similar exploitation of workers that can occur under Capitalist and Communist regimes. And yet Baum notes that, in the Christian view, a society does have the right to nationalize ownership of privately owned industries and financial organizations whenever corporations’ power is such that it is impossible for the common good to be protected and served. Clearly, according to Baum, with this encyclical the social good of even reform capitalism is now seriously in question.
This brief diversion into another relatively recent Christian ‘instruction’ from the Christian-Marxist dialogue perhaps can help prepare us again for considering the actual nature and relevance of Lonergan’s and AIRR’s authors’ GEM-FS advance to some higher synthesis for what increasingly is being caste as this Liberal-Marxist dialectic, … especially in its relevance for our own times and now planetary circumstances.
Already we can see how from both from the Christian side and the Marxist side there is this reach for some kind, or measure, of transcendence over ideological capture or what Baum has called deadening reification.
[1] See Gregory Baum’s The Priority of Labor: A Commentary on Laborem Exercens, Encyclical Letter of Pope John II (New York: Paulist Press, 1982).
Hugh Williams
John, Pierre, et al,
Another brief digression … I’ve come to a place in these reflections where there is a real need to slow down, turtle-paced, for the sake of the discussion’s integrity.
We have reached an undisputed further characterization of what I’ve been calling the tradition of christian-marxist dialogue. That characterization is supported, in my view, by both the AIRR text and Lonergan’s Insight. It is this dialectic of “Liberal thesis and Marxist anti-thesis” referred to in AIRR at p.105 and in Insight at p. 266.
I especially believe this section in Insight to be deeply formative for the entire AIRR text which is an effort to contribute to this ‘higher synthesis” that is being almost desperately sought-after in Lonergan, and now in Raymaker and Whalon …
I believe this characterization can also be expressed as that which occurs between capitalist and socialist positions.
Now, I’m of the view that this characterization with its textual basis in both Lonergan and ‘Raymaker and Whalon’ leads to two much deeper philosophical questions – ‘what is capital?’ and ‘what is labor?’
And there is the intimately associated question – is there some normative primacy in this relationship between ‘capital and labor’? (My last post with its reference to JPII’s encyclical Laborem Exercens argues that labor in fact has a normative priority over capital in both the Christian and Socialist traditions.)
Nevertheless, if AIRR is to be read as an effort to articulate (and advance) the higher synthesis that is sought then, it seems to me, that very much turtle-paced, one has to carefully consider the actual thesis and anti-thesis of the Liberal’s concern for ‘capital’ and the Socialist’s concern for ‘labor’.
… and then one can ask ‘how might Lonergan through AIRR’s treatment of this topic achieve a higher synthesis?’
As a reader and commentator, the hints so far, it seems to me, are that this synthesis will be thoroughly methodological (and pedagogical) which, if true, sheds great light on John’s recurrent referencing of the GEM-FS methodology over the many years of this ‘Lonergan google list-serve’ which is now both articulated and given updated content in AIRR (2023).
( … and again, and in addition, over the course of this inquiry, I’ve found the Canadian theologian-sociologist Gregory Baum (see “The Priority of Labor”, 1982) to be an extraordinarily helpful intermediary guide for this dialectic and this (hopefully) gradually emerging higher synthesis.)
Hugh
Doug Mounce
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Hugh Williams
One last digression on capital and labor from the Christian social teaching viewpoint -
In preparing for what is to come next in our commentary on the AIRR text where we will comment on the author’s treatment of the ‘labor theory of value’ in Marx particularly, we’d like to share certain elements of the Christian position that seem to align in significant ways with the Marxist position on labor and its value.
Again, we summarize Gregory Baum’s interpretation of the JPII encyclical Laborem Exercens, which literally means, as I understand it, ‘through labor’. Baum’s commentary is called “The Priority of Labor”.
Baum explains that human labor for Christianity is central to human self-making and self-understanding. Thus, the central conflict causing oppression, alienation, wars, and dehumanization in our industrial age which is still unfolding is based in this conflict between capital and labor. There is this conflict between the small but powerful group of entrepreneurs, owners, and holders of the means of production and the much larger and broader multitude of people who lack these means and thus share in the production process solely by means of their labor.
For the encyclical, says Baum, this conflict over work is the central problem of society in both the East and the West, and in the developing world. Human life constitutes itself everywhere on this economic basis. For the encyclical, and similar to Lonergan, this problem between capital and labor is not due to sin, at least not sin understood generally as a matter of personal selfishness. This conflict has to be understood in a larger historical and structural context having to do with capitalism’s development. All other conflicts and structures of oppression must be understood in the light of this economic infrastructure.
Thus, there is this need, according to Baum, to pause to consider more carefully the nature of capital – asking ‘what is capital?’ Objectively capital is the natural resources we use along with the means by which these resources are transformed to meet human needs. Thus, it refers to the means of production and the money needed to pay for labor and technology.
However, an often-overlooked or forgotten point, and it is fundamental for our argument here and going forward, is that this capital is the result of human labor. All this capital is the result of people’s work. Capital is labor transformed into the means of production.
The encyclical recognizes and asserts that there is a distorted economic understanding of this capital-labor relationship. There was this economic view that saw labor and capital as distinct and separate quantities in the productive process. Human labor’s behavior was seen to follow the laws of the market in a type of economism which the Christian church also viewed as a type of materialism. Both the capitalist class and their liberal economist-apologists promoted this practical materialism. They did so without denying spiritual reality outright, though in actual fact people became viewed as acting in accordance with economic laws.
Marx and Marxism protested this subjugation of labor to capital but for most Christians Marxism was also seen to retain the error of economism where the human being continued to be solely understood in economic terms. Culture and consciousness were regarded as reflections of economic conditions and the reality of the spiritual was denied.
Nevertheless, Baum calls attention to an important departure in the encyclical from the classical view that says we first get ideas and then act on them. The encyclical in contrast gives practice a certain primacy in the sense that the economic theories of the liberal economists were rooted in the distorted practices of the early capitalists who were hiring laborers at the lowest wage and treating them only as economic units in a productive process with the sole purpose of maximizing profit. From a traditional Christian perspective this was both immoral and irrational, and produced this distorting separation of capital from labor. These early entrepreneurs, it seemed, were intent on breaking with the feudal order where ownership of land carried with it the social duty to provide for the well-being of the peasants living on the land. This then in this historical context that the encyclical presents where the natural priority of labor over capital was first violated in practice and then justified ideologically in liberal economic theory by virtue of an erroneous or distorting separation.
Hugh