Vous êtes sur la page 1sur 10

My Journey into Solidarism

-by Rupert J. Ederer Professor Emeritus, State University of New York at Buffalo At its fifth annual conference, the Society of Catholic Social Scientists presented me with the Pius XI award. The President of the Society, Stephen Krason, had informed me previously that the honor was in appreciation for my many years of work translating into English the Lehrbuch der Nationalokonomie by the great Jesuit economist, Heinrich Pesch (1854-1926). It was in his honor that I accepted. Except for my great respect for Pius XI who was pope when I was born, I would have renamed the award in my case the Sisyphus Award. Poor Sisyphus was the character in classical mythology who was assigned the task of rolling a huge boulder up a hill; and as he reached the top it always slipped away and rolled back down. Translating from German a five-volume work of some 3800 pages, complete with bibliographies, fine print and copious footnotes, was a boulder of a job. It was done over a period of 20 years. What is more, since there are at present no prospects for publication of the completed English translation, the probability of the boulder reaching the top of the hill is still very much in doubt. My fascination with Pesch and solidarism began more than a half century ago. Shortly after I graduated from college and just prior to being drafted into the Army in 1944,1 came across a six-page item in the Catholic Mind, a digest of significant articles and documents published monthly by The America Press.' The title was, "Pesch and Christian Solidarism" by Joseph B. Schuyler, S. J. who later served as a missionary in Nigeria. The article lifted my spirits at a time when world opinion of my native land, Germany, was arguably at an all time low. Its author proposed that the work of this Jesuit scholar who was virtually unknowncertainly among economistswas to Pius XI what Bishop Emmanuel Ketteler had been to Leo XIII. In Schuyler's words, Pesch's "system for social reorganization . . . was to form the basis of Pius' great Encyclical, that Magna Charta of modern social reform." He was referring to Quadragesimo Anno which was issued in 1931, five years after Pesch died. The Schuyler article also put me on a track for graduate studies where, after my discharge from the army, I could learn about Pesch and his Christian solidarism. There was at the time a scant handful of scholars in the United States who knew anything about the Cologne-born Jesuit. They included
Ederer 79

Goetz Briefs at Georgetown, Franz Mueller at St. Thomas College in Minnesota, Father Bernard Dempsey, S. J. at St. Louis University and Alphonse Clemens at Catholic University. I decided in favor of St. Louis University, because Frederick Kenkel, head of the Catholic Central Bureau with its unique library, was also situated close by. That school made possible for me my first serious study of Quadragesimo Anno and some acquantance with Pesch and solidarism. I paid a visit to Frederick Kenkel soon after I began my studies. When the sage old social philosopher heard of my plans to study economics at the University, he remarked somewhat mordantly that I would be getting "a slightly disinfected version" of the standard neoclassical economics. As it turned out, the disinfection came from a course called Theories of the Corporate Economy, for which the textbook was a Dempsey translation of Nell-Breuning's commentary on Quadragesimo Anno.2 That was followed at the graduate level by a course entitled, somewhat cryptically, Economic Analysis and Social Policy. Though he was a brilliant and outstanding scholar, Father Dempsey needed someone to make Pesch's original work accessible in English. He approached Franz Mueller who argued against a translation of the whole Lehrbuch, suggesting instead an abbreviated translation of significant selected excerpts. Dempsey rejected that option in no uncertain terms. Also, Mueller, a recently arrived immigrant (refugee) from Germany did not regard his command of English at that time as equal to the task. When I arrived at the St. Louis school, I was, to say the least, an unknown quantity. In any case, I came into
economics for the first time fresh from seminary studies in philosophy and

theology. As a sympathetic and generous mentor, Father Dempsey recognized my need for full-time commitment to graduate studies. Subsequently he arranged to have two young university students to come over from Germany, take up residence at the University, and commence work on the translation. The problem was that their command of English was not yet up to the level required for this enormous project. Soon afterwards, Bernard Dempsey was sent to India where he was to help establish an economics curriculum at a college in New Delhi, India. That mission resulted in a serious health problem from which the learned Jesuit never fully recovered. Upon his return, he was assigned to Marquette University in Milwaukee where he died prematurely in 1960 at the age of 57. Meanwhile, in 1950 when I neared completion of my own graduate studies, I resolved to have a serious look at Pesch's work. However, anything more than a cursory study of the 3800-page work would have required taking up permanent residence near one of the few libraries where the five volume Lehrbuch could be found. (This was before the invention of the Xerox!) Having recently married a dear woman with relatives situated strategically in cities like Vienna and Zurich, and with cousins of my own located in Munich, I decided to exploit this fortuitous circumstance. Germany and
80 Catholic Social Science Review

Austria, then still rebuilding from the rubble of World War II, were in a sorry condition. The Swiss, unscathed due to their neutrality, came to the rescue. A complete set of the Lehrbuch in mint condition and in its final edition was located in Zurich.3 It turned out that having my own set of the Pesch's Lehrbuch was my salvation during the early years of my teaching career. I was destined to move through a succession of small colleges where I would have been effectively cut off from Pesch's work. The more disenchanted I became with standard economics, whether of the still prevalent neoclassical variety or of the then highly fashionable Keynesian revision of it, the more I realized that Pesch was providing me with the antidote that enabled me to keep my equilibium. Father Bernard Dempsey prefaced his book, The Functional Economy, with a chapter entitled, "The Biography of an Unsatisfactory Science."4 As the years went by, while I tried to make sense of what we were supposed to be teaching our hapless students from their overpriced textbooks, I felt that was, if anything, a courteous understatement! And simply offering a remedial one semester course in, e.g., papal social teachings, was often as not simply compounding the confusion in students' minds. The Kenkel observation about "slightly disinfected" neoclassical economics kept resounding. I spoiled one summer by wading through the huge Schumpeter History of Economic Analysis? hoping to salvage something from the wreckage of what passed for economic science. Alas, poor Joseph; he too slipped off the deep end into the by then standard positivistic approach where nothing that presumes to make "value judgements" ranks as serious scientific economics. The renowned Austrian-born Harvard professor paid dubious tribute to Pesch, referring to him as "That great man" who "was not particularly proficient in analytic economics" so that he "will not be mentioned again . . . . " We all know what that means. Could it be the kind of thinking that the great Pius XII had in mind when he referred to "the theory of laws of the market" as "a purely positivistic by-product of neoKantian criticism" in a talk before delegates of the Catholic International Congresses for Social Study in 1950?6 Finally one day, while preparing a lecture for my favorite course in the history of economic thought, I glanced over at the books lined up next to my desk. There, side by side with the five volumes of Pesch which I was by then using continually for remedial work and damage control, was Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and four volumes of Karl Marx's Kapital.1 It struck me like the proverbial ton of bricks that Smith's highly influential but dubious venture was made available in five languages even while he lived, and that it now exists in virtually all languages. Marx's heavy, turgid, Germanic gunk, perhaps no less influential than Smith's work, but far less readable, had by then also been translated into all world languages. Yet, here was Pesch, whose work has been described as a Summa Economica, inaccessible to most scholars because German is not a world language in the accepted sense. There seemed to me to be something wrong with that picture. Why should one of the
Ederer 81

three seminal thinkers in the history of economic science, who actually provided the materials for constructing an economic system, remain unknown throughout much of the world? There are various possible answers to that question. Pesch was a German, and German stock does not rate highly in the world during the present century. However, Marx too was a product of the German universities. Pesch, on the other hand, was openly Roman Catholic; and in addition, he was a Jesuit. All the world knows about Jesuitry! What is more, he made no apologies for this faith or for his theological and philosophical orientation. His worldview came through frequently and with unabashed candor in his work at various stages throughout the five-volume Lehrbuch. In fact, at one point he even allowed himself the luxury of drawing up an economic program for the Catholic Center Party which was an open contender for political power, along with the Communists and Nazis, during the chaotic Weimar period. One cannot help but wonder how different the course of history might have been if Germany had followed the social philosophy outlined by Pesch, instead of that of the infamous beer hall orator!8 Predictably, Pesch had to defend himself against "theologizing" his economics, and he did so admirably in the Foreword of the final edition of the second volume.9 There he took the opportunity to point out that all economic systems presuppose an underlying theology and philosophy which, together, he referred to as a Weltanschauung. For the old liberal economics which ensouled the capitalistic market economy, there was the naturalistic philosophy and deistic theology of the Enlightenment. For Marx, and for the socialists, it was was materialism and the Hegelian dialectic. Those who pretend to offer a "value-free science" are, in Pesch's terms, "under the influence of a positivistic, naturalistic Weltanschauung. " Whatever else may be said about Smith and Marx, and for that matter Keynes, they were scarcely "value-free." I resolved at that point in my career to do what I could to eliminate one major barrier to Pesch's great work being more widely known. The language problem I could resolve, if indeed that was the main problem. A brief work by the San Francisco Jesuit Richard Mulcahy, which had appeared in the meantime also helped to convince me more than ever that the great Englishspeaking parts of the world should have access to the entire Lehrbuch der Nationalokonomie.10 The book with just 188 pages of text was scarcely even a synopsis of Pesch's 3800-page summa economica. I, as a non-ranking economist, could at least strive to be a competent translator. Weighing my age and mortality, I proceeded economically. The most critical and distinctive elements in the Lehrbuch would be translated first, without regard to which of the five volumes they were in. After the introductory portions which set forth far more clearly than most standard textbooks what economics was all about, I translated the two parts which present the quintessence of Pesch's thought. These are the chapter setting forth the social
82 Catholic Social Science Review

philosophy, solidarism, in Volume I, and the description of the social (or solidaristic) system of human work in Volume II. From there I skipped forward to Volume V and the unique and important chapter on the remuneration for human workPesch's exposition of the just wage principle. Chapters on the just price and on interest and usury were also in that last volume. From those very high priority portions of Pesch, I was able to turn attention to his astute analyses of the rival economic philosophies: individualism and socialism in Volume I.11 The exposition of economic systems based on alternate economic philosophies were in Volume II. Included were chapters on mercantilism, physiocracy, Smith's individualistic system of industry, and socialism as it developed when it left the drawing board in 1917. Eventually, the German Jesuit's astute critique of Malthus and his population theories also needed to be presented. Far from passe, the dour Anglican minister's analysis and prognostications still color the renewed neoMalthusianism of our own time, and it infects the thinking of asute scholars like Wilhelm Roepke.12 Pesch cut through the fallacies, and provided the reassuring motto: if you take care of the quality of your population, you need not be concerned about its quantity.13 Unique to Pesch's solidiarist economics is his treatment of the relationship of ethics and religion to economics. These portions are found in Volumes I and II, and they should be of special interest to members of the SCSS in the various social sciences. Throughout, the Jesuit economist sustains the autonomy of economics as a science with its own formal object. Indeed, true to his Aristotelian-Thomistic approach to true science, Pesch presented the economic process in its logical sequence proceeding from production, to exchange, to income distribution. That contrasts with the contrived, artificial divison into macroeconomics and microeconomics that became standard after Keynes revolutionized the old way of looking at economic reality. The chapter on methodology should be studied, especially by economists, but also by other social scientists. Economists have for some time now accepted the proposition that to be truly "scientific," economic reality must be expressed in mathematical terms. Thus economics progressed inevitably from physiocracy to physics. On occasion, younger colleagues have confided to me, off the record of course, that the mathematical method in which they are totally immersed leads to dubious results and a false sense of security. That is inevitable in a science dealing with human acts, not physical laws and properties. (Alfred Marshall, himself a mathematician, was far more modest about the pretensions of the mathematical approach than most contemporary economists.)14 Then they continue mystifying their students with the elaborate mathematical models of how the economy is supposed to work. I cannot help but think of the alchemists and their self-important pretension to be serious chemists. Pesch was on to this charade back in 1905 when he published the first edition of Volume I of the Lehrbuch.i5
Ederer 83

Finally, sections dealing with specific principles which Pius XI included in Quadragesimo Anno needed to be made available in English. I refer to the principle of subsidiarity found in Pesch's treatment of The State in Volume I, and again in Volume IV.16 There we find also segments on the occupational organizations, translated variously as "vocational orders" and "functional groups."17 The role of the social virtues, justice and charity, appear in Volume III,18 where Pesch added the concept contributive justice, to the ancient Aristotelian-Thomistic schema which included communtative justice, distributive justice and legal justice. Justice and charity as applied to the common good became the "loftier and nobler principles" which Pius XI proposed for regulating economic life. (Q. A. 88). If Pesch had a fault in his vast scholarly enterprise, it was his thoroughnessa trait which the world had grown to associate with German scholarship toward the end of the last century, and sometimes to shun. In developing a summa economica, he included material which goes well beyond what one would put in an economics textbook for student use. However, we should recall that a Lehrbuch literally is a "teaching guide," where a teacher of economics can find material which is adaptable for students and scholars at various levels. Thus there are sections on economic geography and business organization, along with significant historical material. Indeed, a portion of the first volume is devoted to what some may regard as matter for sociology and political science. Included are chapters on the family, the state, and private property which Pesch terms the "Pillars of the Social Order." For him, the state was not the enemy, as is widely suggested today in conservative circles. Instead, it is the highest natural society, standing at the end of the chain in the order of subsidiarity as the final guardian of the common good. As for the family, no one who observes the dissolution of family life in our own time could fail to notice how devastating that is also to the economic order. Pesch, incidentally, was steadfast in his belief that capitalism, barring drastic reform, would bring about the destruction of the family. A look at what is happening in American society today appears to support his prophetic insights. What the socialists proposed to do in their finely-spun theories, the capitalists accomplish by making the pursuit of profits at all costs their ultimate guiding principle. The entire large five-volume Lehrbuch is now available in English on computer disks. In raw form it is in the hands of two S.C.S.S. members, so that whatever happens to me, the countless hours of work involved in the translation will not be lost. At present, I am completing what I hope will be my final proof-reading of the entire work. To the criticism that much material in Pesch is dated and of historical interest at best, my response is: let interested scholars decide for themselves what is relevant or useful for their own purposes. The works of Adam Smith and Karl Marx have not been purged of the significant portions addressing the historical ambience in which they appeared. Moreover scholars, as well as those entrusted with shaping
84 Catholic Social Science Review

economic policies, should reflect on the wise saying of the Spanish-born philosopher George Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it." In summary, there has been no other economist who reconciled his scientific effort in so serious a manner with the tenets of his Catholic Faith, based on its system of theology and underlying philosophical principles. One may wonder why his Church, ever since Pius XI who was pope when Pesch completed his work on this earth, never publicly credited the man by name for his contribution to the development of its social principles. Nor have the successors, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II, done so, even though all of them progressively, by repeated usage, have made the word and concept, solidarity, a household word in Catholic social thought and beyond. An educated guess as to the reason would be that, since the Catholic Church does not propose specific economic systems, e.g., the often heralded "third way," it may not allow itself a public endorsement of a man who presented a blueprint precisely for a "third way" between socialism and capitalism. That is what Pesch did. He was trained as an economist, and he was therefore qualified and entitled to do so. Nevertheless, starting precisely with Pius XI, the Catholic Church proceeded to promote salient features of Peschian thought. As indicated previously, what I regard as the three cardinal principles in Quadragesimo Anno were present in Pesch's work: the principle of subsidiarity, the principle of occupational groups, and the virtues of social justice and social charity as ultimate regulating principles of the social order. These three are mutually supportive of each other like three legs of a tripod. If individuals cultivate the two virtuesand Pope John Paul II has told us that social charity is the same as the virtue of solidarity- much less activity will be required on the part of
the state to maintain sanity and stability in the social order. Likewise, the

occupational groups, if they are once reconstituted, will make it easier for individuals who choose to operate with an eye always on the common good, to do so. At the same time, such individuals within the framework of particular industries will help to keep the occupational organizations themselves from becoming merely selfish pressure groups which put their own narrower interests ahead of the overall common good. And ultimately, the state, which has as its object safeguarding and promoting that overall common good, is there to intervene in the event that individuals, singly or in organized groups, lose sight of it. In other words, where all of these three cardinal principles of social order are in place, each corroborates the other. The great trilogy of social teachings addressed to the economic order by Pope John Paul II provides the ultimate clear corroboration of Peschian thought. The first of the three encyclicals, Laborem Exercens, presents a theology of work, and an emphasis on the centrality of the just wage in economic life which are concordant throughout with Pesch's presentation of human work as the principal source of the wealth of nations. The second
Ederer 85

encyclical of the trilogy, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, could justifiabily bear the English title: On Solidarity! Perhaps its most distinctive feature is the careful development of that concept. It is here that the Pope declares solidarity, that was central to Pesch's solidaristic economic system, to be a "Christian virtue." (SRS 40). And in the Centesimus Annus, he equated solidarity with the expression "social charity" used by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno but never defined by him. That is a very important addition to the Church's social teachings, since social charity was coupled with social justice as the twin virtues that were proposed by that Pope as ("M)ore lofty and nobler principles" for regulating the social order (Q.A. 88). Indeed, Pius XI specified that social charity (solidarity) was to be "the soul of this order." As the Thomistic Summa does not offer and did not propose to offer the last word that ever needed to be said in its discipline, Pesch's summa economica certainly does not contain all that ever needs to be said about economics. However, what is there is bedrock which can be built on with confidence. Pesch requires no "disinfecting." Precautionary admonitions with regard to methodology can rectify present errors and avert going down wrong paths in the future. In conclusion, therefore, I would like to propose to Catholic social scientists, that they should pay some attention to this neglected and nearly forgotten social scientist. In his thoroughness he went beyond the strict boundaries which our tightly compartmented approach to the social sciences now observes. Heinrich Pesch outlined a system of economics with principles that are fully in harmony with Catholic Christian principles of theology and its Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical foundation. Indeed, he appealed to those principles in a manner that was at once refreshing and disarming. For example, no other economist began his economics textbook with a chapter entitled: Man as Lord of the World According to God's Ordinance.19 Nor was that an unintended lapse from serious scientific discourse. Later in the first volume Pesch wrote: For too long has the name of God been either totally excluded from scientific discussion with a certain reticence or with tongue-in-cheek. Actually, this most holy name should be professed before the whole world, so that at least where God's dominion is acknowledged and where divine moral law is regarded with reverence, the true common good of nations can find a secure safeguard and a powerful affirmation . . . . 2 0 Heinrich Pesch did not stop at reintroducing God into the scientific discourse of economics. As a Jesuit, he could scarcely refrain from appealing also to the name of Jesus Christ. Therefore, at the end of his Ethik und Volkswirtschaft he stated: . . . I wish to conclude my presentation about ethics and the economy not merely as a theologian but also as an economist, wih a grateful, unshakeable,
86 Catholic Social Science Review

and joyous acknowledgement of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, who is not only the Savior of souls, but also of human society, of states, and of nations.)21 Amid the gloom of our time, Heinrich Pesch remained hopeful. However, for him, hope was conditioned by the restoration of Christianity in the social order. When the sun sets in the evening, it leaves behind its light in the vault of the heavens, and its warmth without which all life would cease to be. For altogether too many souls, the night of unbelief has set in. Nevertheless mankind still continues to always benefit from the rich heritage of Christianity. Yes, we do not, in fact, encounter a single, true, great idea among modern reform endeavors in the area of social policy and welfare which does not, in the final analysis, stem from justice and charity in their Christian sense. That, however, justifies the joyous and secure hope that soon night will once again yield to the daylight where the sunshine of Christianity will return to enlighten all souls, warm all hearts, and where He, whom the Christian faith has so beautifully declared to be the Sol iustitiate, Fons amoris, Vinculum charitatis, will get the recognition, the grateful respect, and the humble prayer which He deserves.22 These quotations will help to explain why I regard Heinrich Pesch as the premier Catholic economist, and as an exemplar for Catholic social scientists.

Notes
1. Joseph B. Schuyler, S.J., "Pesch and Christian Solidarism," The Catholic Mind, XLII (1944), 369-374. 2. Oswald von Nell-Breuning, S.J., Reorganization of Social Economy, trans. Bernard W. Dempsey, S.J., (Milwaukee: Bruce Pub. Co., 1936). 3. Heinrich Pesch, S.J. Lehrbuch der Nationaokonomie (Freiburg im Br.: Herder, 19031926), 5 volumes. The first editions of the five volumes appeared in 1905, 1909, 1913, 1922, 1922 respectively. The subsequent editions were published for only the first three volumes in 1924, 1925 and 1926 respectively. 4. Bernard W. Dempsey, S.J., The Functional Economy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, Inc., 1958), pp. 1-17. 5. Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1954), p. 765. 6. Pius XII, "Production for Human Needs," The Catholic Mind, XLVIII (1950) 509-510. 7. Karl Marx, Das Kapital was published originally in German in 3 volumes. Only the first appeared in Marx's lifetime in 1867. The others were edited and published by Friedrich Engels. A fourth volume in three books entitled Theories of Surplus Value appeared after Engels had died. It was translated from the original German in 1956. 8. Rupert J. Ederer, "Heinrich Pesch, S. J. 1864-1926: If Germany Had Listened!," Social Justice Review, March 1976. 9. Lehrbuch II, pp. vi - viii. 10. Richard E. Mulcahy, S. J., The Economics of Heinrich Pesch (New York: Henry Holt & Co. 1952.)

Ederer 87

11. A manuscript of some 300 pages containing translations of this material is publicationready. 12. Wilhelm Roepke, A Humane Economy (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1960). Roepke entertained some valid ideas about what he called the "limits of the market." Unfortunately, he was taken in by the overpopulation alarmism which came into vogue after World War II (cf. pp. 39-52). His economics, so far as it goes, would need to be "disinfected" from that kind of thinking to be acceptable to a Catholic social scientist. It goes directly contrary to what Pope John XXIII said about the overpopulation scare in Mater et Magistra ( paragraphs 185- 194). Roepke could have benefited from Colin Clark's calmer analysis of the earth's ability to feed its people. 13. Lehrbuch, vol. II, p. 578. 14. Cf. Alfred Marshall, Principles ofEconomics ( 8th ed.; New York: Macmillan Co., 1920) pp. x-xi. 15. Lehrbuch I, p. 561-563. 16. Lehrbuch I, p. 186; also: Vol. Ill, Vol. IV, p. 211. 17. Lehrbuch IV, pp. 261-280. 18. Lehrbuch II, pp. 272-276. 19. Lehrbuch I, pp. 1 -2 20. Lehrbuch I, pp. 521-522. 21. Heinrich Pesch, Ethics and the National Economy, trans. Rupert J. Ederer (Manila: Divine Word Publications, 1988), p. 154. 22. Lehrbuch III, pp. 837-838.

88 Catholic Social Science Review

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi