Michael Novak and Yves R. Simon on the common good and capitalism

Review of Politics

Volumn 58, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 229-258

  Rourke, Thomas R ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0000476623     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500019355     Document Type: Article

References (75)

1. Michael Novak, Free Persons and the Common Good (New York: Madison Books, 1989), p. 1. This work is Novak's most developed expression of his thinking on the common good.
2. The following explication of Aristotle's role in the development of the common good tradition is taken from Novak, Free Persons, pp. 22-26.
3. Novak, Free Persons, Ibid., pp. 26-30.
4. Novak, Free Persons. Ibid., pp. 28-29.
5. Novak, Free Persons. Ibid., pp. 22-24.
6. Novak discusses the American contribution to the common good in Free Persons. ibid.,pp. 41-73.
7. Indeed, Novak believes that the capitalist society has contributed to the development of the "communitarian individual." See Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), pp. 143-150
8. Novak, Free Persons, pp. 81-82. Emphasis mine.
9. The following discussion of tribalism, the "veil of ignorance," and authority is drawn from ibid., pp. 78-95.
10. Novak discusses the formal and material concepts of the common good in ibid., pp. 176-188 Here Novak also explicitly compares his work with Simon's.
11. Ibid. p. 177. The expressions, "the material common good" (Novak) or "the common good materially considered" (Simon), do not refer simply to economic well-being. Everything specified by law and public policy would pertain to the material common good, and this clearly goes beyond economic matters. However, economic matters are, for both authors, a constitutive dimension of the material common good. Beyond an exploration of the different ways Novak and Simon explicate the theory of the common good (both materially and formally), this article intends to focus on the economic dimension.
12. Michael Novak, The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: The Free Press, 1993), pp. 149-151
13. Michael Novak, The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Ibid., pp. 180-181
14. Michael Novak, This Hemisphere of Liberty (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1990), pp. 28-34.
15. The following observations on the communitarian and orderly nature of the market system is based on Novak, Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, pp. 128-142
16. Novak, Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. Ibid., pp. 104-116.
17. Novak, Free Persons, p. 80. Emphasis mine.
18. Yves R. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), p. 65. Simon defines community as a society relative to a common good. A characteristic feature of such societies is "communion in immanent action," which Simon is explaining in the expression quoted here. Two other features of societies relative to a common good, collective causality and communion-causing communications, are mentioned by Simon but will not be discussed in this article. It is crucial to distinguish between a common good and the common good. There are any number of examples of common goods. Simon cites a team of workers, a football team and the army as examples of societies pursuing common goods. The common good, however, refers to a comprehensive set of goods in which the entire civil society participates. Simon is not referring in this example to the material common good of an entire society, the requirements of which are normally expressed by the function of authority. Simon explains why the civil society is a society relative to a common good in Philosophy of Democratic Government, pp. 63-68.
19. Yves R. Simon, The Tradition of Natural Law (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), p. 98.
20. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, p. 65.
21. This means that in the civil society the virtuous citizen genuinely desires and is willing to contribute to the common good. It does not mean that all citizens concretely will the same material state of affairs. The determination of the latter is the special function of authority.
22. Ibid., pp. 64-65.
23. See Yves R. Simon, The Definition of Moral Virtue (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), pp. 61-67.
24. Here, scientific knowledge is understood in the Aristotelian sense as knowledge characterized by the strict, objective necessity of its conclusions.
25. Yves R. Simon, Practical Knowledge (New York: Fordham University Press, 1991), p. 13.
26. Novak's exact words are as follows: "The formal meaning points to the full (and future) conclusion of human development, both communal and personal. The material meaning points to the existing level of human development" (Free Persons and the Common Good, p. 177). Simon, on the other hand, speaks of a distinction between the form and the matter of the common good in the context of two ways of willing and intending the common good, and not to suggest that the common good itself has two separable meanings or that the common good materially considered could somehow be present without the form.
27. This may well account for Novak's refusal to acknowledge the degree to which Latin American economies are already liberalized.
28. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-H, 19, 10 in Introduction to Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Modern Library, 1948).
29. Ibid.,
30. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, p. 42.
31. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government. Ibid., p. 41.
32. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government. Ibid., p. 55.
33. Yves R. Simon, A General Theory of Authority (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980), p. 29.
34. Yves R. Simon, A General Theory of Authority. Ibid., p. 158.
35. Of course, Novak would demand a framework of laws in which the competition for particular goods takes place.
36. Simon, quoted in Michael Novak, Free Persons, p. 32.
37. Maritain, quoted in Novak, Free Persons, pp. 32-33.
38. James Madison, quoted in Novak, Free Persons, p. 32.
39. Simon writes: "What bears repeating is that the whole problem of the relationship between work and wealth depends on recognizing and admitting something that many economists want to leave out of the picture altogether, namely, the possibility of a discrepancy between human desires and genuine human needs" (Work, Society, and Culture [New York: Fordham University Press], p. 125).
40. Yves R. Simon, Freedom of Choice (New York: Fordham University Press, 1969), p. 153.
41. Simon, Work, Society and Culture, p. 120.
42. Simon, Work, Society and Culture. Ibid., p. 121.
43. Thorstein Veblen, Work, Society and Culture. 121, quoted in ibid.
44. Simon, Work, Society, and Culture, p. 139.
45. Simon, Work, Society, and Culture. Ibid. p. 122.
46. Ibid.,
47. Richard Barnet and John Cavanaugh, Global Dreams: Imperial Corporatwns and the New World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), pp. 326-328
48. While accepting inequalities in the recompense of human labor, Simon believes that there should be an upper limit, because "no aspect of the common good demands that any person should enjoy an income many times greater than his avowable needs" (Philosophy of Democratic Government, p. 250
49. Simon considers Proudhon "an astonishingly perceptive observer of social life, with a special talent for identifying tendencies that remain constant in the play of social forces" (Yves R. Simon, "A Note on Simon's Federalism," trans, by Vukan Kuic, Publius 3 [1973]: 19-30).
50. Yves R. Simon, The Community of the Free (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), p. 162.
51. Simon, Work, Society, and Culture, p. 35.
52. Simon, Community of the Free, p. 163.
53. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, p. 240.
54. Simon, Work, Society, and Culture, p. 37.
55. Simon, Community of the Free, pp. 163-164.
56. Simon, Work, Society, and Culture, p. 130.
57. Ibid.,
58. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, p. 248.
59. Barnet and Cavanaugh, Global Dreams, p. 254. Again, the issue for Simon here would not be simply to create equality of incomes. He is concerned, however, about wages of this kind which are not sufficient to maintain "common participation in the basic necessities of life" (Community of the Free, p. 172).
60. Thomas D. Lairson and David Skidmore, International Political Economy: The Struggle for Power and Wealth (Fort Worth: Hartcourt Brace, 1993), p. 260.
61. Simon, Work, Society, and Culture, p. 122.
62. This doctrine was defined by Pius XI as follows: "Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative . . . and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil . . . to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do (Quadragesimo Anno, #79).
63. For Novak's fears concerning the welfare state and its appropriate limits, see The New Consensus on Family and Welfare (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1987). Novak mentions employee stock ownership in This Hemisphere of Liberty, p. 105.
64. Simon mentions his fears of an excess of state management and his support of worker cooperatives in Philosophy of Democratic Government, p. 252.
65. Simon, Work, Society, and Culture, p. 140.
66. The former would insure that the needs of a worker's family would be considered in the determination of the wage. The latter would include all voluntary forms of distribution where recipients do not pay for what they receive.
67. Novak would not disagree, but he is far more concerned about exploitation by the state.
68. Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government, pp. 252-253
69. Simon, The Tradition of Natural Law, p. 166. Of course, Novak does not argue directly that the poor should be left to chance. He argues, on the contrary, that the cycle of exchange be expanded to include the poor. But is this fundamentally different from leaving them to chance when there is no inherent necessity for the market to be inclusive? Novak's theory suggests that all should take responsibility for the poor through voluntary institutions. However, if such institutions lack the people and the funds to deal with the problems, then it would seem that the reliance on private initiative would ultimately be indistinguishable from leaving the poor to chance.
70. Novak, This Hemisphere of Liberty, pp. 101-102.
71. Novak, This Hemisphere of Liberty Ibid., p. 104. 70.
72. I am not sugesting the simplistic and false argument that economic liberalism is the unique cause of Latin American poverty. I am suggesting that recent liberalization, particularly in the 1980's, has had a negative impact on the standard of living of the poor and does not show signs of reversing the problem.
73. For a discussion of contemporary Mexico, see Tom Barry, ed., Mexico: A Country Guide (Albuquerque: Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center, 1992).
74. Novak makes an astounding claim with reference to this phenomenon. He blames the proliferation of informal workers on the difficulties of obtaining legal incorporation for their efforts. Although I concur with the proposal to make incorporation easy, the absence of this factor cannot be said to account for the tremendous proliferation of informal workers. Liberal socioeconomic policies which prompted job loss and dramatically lower wages at the same time that social sector spending was being greatly reduced, surely played an important role in generating the millions of informal laborers in the 1980s.
75. The following is not intended as a simple endorsement of the South Korean model. The achievements of South Korea were related to a repressive political model. The following draws on Gary Dorrien, The Neoconservative Mind (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 295-306.