The Madness of Bigness

by Roy F. Moore

To the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true. A man who thinks himself a chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people.

Hanwell, which Chesterton is referring to here in the chapter of Orthodoxy called “The Maniac,” is, as you probably know, an insane asylum. His description of the ordinariness of madness would make Hanwell a good name our present economic system.

It has become oh so ordinary for big companies to buy out smaller ones or merge into bigger ones. During the last two weeks of January 2005 a Distributist can see how this trend of homogenized madness in the business world effects us all. It is the same in the halls of government of course, but these events I will relate hit home hard in the Boston area, where I live.

During this period of time, the conglomerate Proctor & Gamble bought out the local-based razor and battery giant Gillette with the latter’s permission. As is par for the course, this merger will result in factories closing, with thousands of workers losing their jobs, throwing their futures into agonizing doubt. Gillette claimed that they would be treading water if Proctor & Gamble didn’t take them over.

However, the Massachusetts Secretary of State is launching a probe to inquire whether Gillette’s financial strength was as weak as it claimed. According to Boston Herald, the CEO of Gillette would take home a financial package worth a now estimated $185 million. Reporter Brett Arends noted two days earlier that an employee making $50,000 annually there would have to slave away for more than 3,000 years to make the amount the CEO will receive.

In the other major economic event, the Boston Globe, owned by the infamous New York Times Corporation, is attempting to buy a forty-nine percent share in the free daily paper the Boston Metro. The Times is offering the Swedish-based Metro International, owner of the free daily, $16.5 million in exchange for the share. The Herald has filed an anti-trust suit against the Globe in light of the attempted purchase, citing concerns over monopolizing news coverage and advertising revenue in Boston, thus reducing competition.

But there is further controversy yet. Two officials of Metro International had to resign their positions over racist remarks they made during gatherings held for their corporation. Black leaders in Boston have demanded the Times and the Globe to scrap their attempt to buy into the free daily because of the racist slurs by the two executives. Furthermore, the parent company of the Metro has a partial owner, Modern Times, who owns twenty-eight percent of the company. Modern Times controls a Swedish network that, among other programs, telecasts European porno films.

We have seen such shenanigans before and worse in companies like Enron, WorldCom, Bechtel, Halliburton, and Wal-Mart. The maddening idea that “bigger is better, all the time,” devouring small competitors like they were snacks at a buffet table, is rampant among too many in the circles of big business. Like their counterparts in big government, those in the boardrooms of huge conglomerates feel the need to always grow and spread. They are not satisfied with living within limits.

Can this trend toward larger companies and conglomerates be stopped and reversed, along with the similar trend toward a World State run by a self-proclaimed elite? Yes, it can. It will take long, hard efforts against those who believe in the fantasy of “bigger is better.” More and more people realize these trends are wrong and they are galvanizing to fight against them, but they lack one important thing. They have no comprehensive vision of what they would replace it with. Without a vision the people perish.

We have a vision to offer. It is Distributism. It is grounded in common sense, sane limits and the Good News.

As Chesterton wrote in The Outline of Sanity:

The world has woken up very late; but that is not our fault. That is the fault of all the fools who told us for twenty years that there could never be any Trusts; and are now telling us, equally wisely, that there can never be anything else.

In a Distributist society, companies like Gillette, Proctor & Gamble, the New York Times and Metro International would not be so huge. Both balanced legislation and consumer action would keep such companies from expanding to their current size. Likewise, the powers of government would be kept in check by similar methods, so as not to fill the vacuum with the tyranny of a heartless bureaucracy.
We can defeat the twin giants of big government and big business. Giants are made to be defeated by the likes of us.

©Gilbert! Magazine (The Distributist)
Reprinted with Permission

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Man, State, Economics

by Fr. Kenneth Novak

Economics begins with the "management of the household" and deals primarily with the family. Only secondarily is it concerned with "Political Economy," that is, the relation of the family to external goods, with the wealth of the nation and how that wealth is produced, distributed, exchanged, and consumed. The modern economist holds Political Economy to be a physical or natural science with rigid laws, comparable to physics or geometry, which can be methodically studied and empirically tested. The point for these moderns is that the "natural" law which governs economic science is not normative (i.e., consisting of moral laws that govern what man ought to do in this or that situation) but it is rather analytic (i.e., based simply upon conclusions drawn from observation and analysis). But, believing that Economics works the same as gravity works is nuts. The law of gravity is a property of physical nature that cannot be denied without serious consequences. "Laws" of economics which demonstrate that the big firm "must" always swallow the small firm may seem irrefutably true in a society in which laissez faire (literally, "let people do [as they please]") is the law of the land, but the idea that I must conform to a "law" of this kind simply because this observed "swallowing phenomena" is likely to repeat itself—barring any moral, customary, or legal restraint—is nuts, too.

The "scientific" approach to Economics is based upon basic truths and observed behavior. Well and good, so far. For instance, it is not "economical" to undertake a productive activity if it consumes more wealth than it produces, or, men stranded on an island will immediately look to build shelter. Catholics often conclude, however, from considering this "scientific" aspect of Political Economy, that Economics is a science like math and chemistry are. But thinking of Economics only in this way leads Catholics to forget that Economics is governed by laws of justice and morality. No Catholic who understands Economics in a Catholic way would say selling pornography is an "economically valuable" activity any more than it was a moral one, or that just because America can be efficiently stocked with slave-produced Chinese junk (49 hours a week at 30-40 cents an hour), it is therefore "economical" that Wal-Mart be allowed to run every family retail and craft shop out of business.

Modern economists come to their "economic" conclusions by saying that they are "compelled" by "economic law" to argue for this and that proposition. Hilaire Belloc says that if Economics as a science is truly independent of morality, it cannot propose certain courses of action but only explain how the economic process works.

The Science of Economics does not deal with true happiness nor even with well-being in material things. It deals with a strictly limited field of what is called "Economic Wealth," and if it goes outside its own boundaries it goes wrong. Making people as happy as possible is much more than Economics can pretend to. Economics cannot even tell you how to make people well-to-do in material things. -Economics for Helen

Belloc writes that "economic law" provides no excuse for violation of the moral law, because though the two are independent one is subordinate to the other. Economics must be kept in its place in order to prevent its trumping the moral law:

The only difficulty is to keep in our minds a clear distinction between what is called economic law, that is, the necessary results of producing wealth, and the moral law, that is the matter of right and wrong in the distribution and use of wealth. Some people are so shocked by the fact that economic law is different from moral law that they try to deny economic law. Others are so annoyed by this lack of logic that they fall into the other error of thinking that economic law can override moral law. (Ibid)

Laissez faire Economics is practically laissez faire morality.

Moral philosophy is a "science" no less scientific than the next. Modern Catholics tend to think, however, of "science" as based upon natural observation and physical fact, and some other discipline as telling us how to behave. On the contrary it is very "scientific" to understand, based on first principles, how normative laws governing human action regulate not only private activity but also the public pursuit of wealth.

Knowing to what degree the science of wealth creation is ultimately subordinate to moral science would help clear up the confusion perpetuated by writers—among them even traditional Catholics—who refer to Economics as an exclusively "positive science" which is a "value-neutral, scientific discipline" and not the normative one of Political Economy which regulates human conduct. Once we skate on Economics as "value-neutral," we are on thin ice. Whereas Fr. Denis Fahey explains, "As the Mystical Body of Christ was accepted by mankind…economic thought and action began to respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church" (The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, 5), we hear a woodpile of Catholic thinkers today deliberating that Church teaching of cardinal points of doctrine on man, society, and economic life are "an indefensible extension of the prerogatives of the Church's legitimate teaching office." On the contrary, it is from moral and social philosophy itself that economics as a social science must derive its essential concepts (Fr. Heinrich Pesch, Ethics and the National Economy)! From this foundation certain principles of moral rectitude in economic practice (beyond just theft and dishonesty) can be derived that are not the less true because the Magisterium has sought to authoritatively teach them for the common good.

On "Economics," the Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) says:

The best usage of the present time is to make political economy an ethical science, that is, to make it include a discussion of what ought to be in the economic world as well as what is. This has all along been the practice of Catholic writers.

Happily it also remains the practice of writers Christopher Ferrara and Dr. Peter Chojnowski. In this issue of The Angelus, they explain why we should reject modern schools of economics which fail to take root in a truly Catholic understanding of what justly guides and limits economic thought, namely, the moral and social philosophy that is the patrimony of the Church and her scholars. Actually, let me now pass the buck to them.

©Angelus Online

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