FIRST FLOWERING

How Christianity Created Capitalism (Michael Novak, May/June 2000, Religion & Liberty)

Capitalism, it is usually assumed, flowered around the same time as the Enlightenment-the eighteenth century-and, like the Enlightenment, entailed a diminution of organized religion. In fact, the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was the main locus for the first flowerings of capitalism. Max Weber located the origin of capitalism in modern Protestant cities, but today's historians find capitalism much earlier than that in rural areas, where monasteries, especially those of the Cistercians, began to rationalize economic life.

It was the church more than any other agency, writes historian Randall Collins, that put in place what Weber called the preconditions of capitalism: the rule of law and a bureaucracy for resolving disputes rationally; a specialized and mobile labor force; the institutional permanence that allows for transgenerational investment and sustained intellectual and physical efforts, together with the accumulation of long-term capital; and a zest for discovery, enterprise, wealth creation, and new undertakings. [...]

The economic historian David Landes, who describes himself as an unbeliever, points out that the main factors in this great economic achievement of Western civilization are mainly religious:

--the joy in discovery that arises from each individual being an imago Dei called to be a creator;

--the religious value attached to hard and good manual work;

--the theological separation of the Creator from the creature, such that nature is subordinated to man, not surrounded with taboos;

--the Jewish and Christian sense of linear, not cyclical, time and, therefore, of progress; and

--respect for the market.

As the world enters the third millennium, we may hope that the church, after some generations of loss of nerve, rediscovers its old confidence in the economic order. Few things would help more in raising up all the world's poor out of poverty. The church could lead the way in setting forth a religious and moral vision worthy of a global world, in which all live under a universally recognizable rule of law, and every individual's gifts are nourished for the good of all.

I believe this is what the pope has in mind when he speaks of a "civilization of love." Capitalism must [be] infused by that humble gift of love called caritas, described by Dante as "the Love that moves the Sun and all the stars." This is the love that holds families, associations, and nations together. The current tendency of many to base the spirit of capitalism on sheer materialism is a certain road to economic decline. Honesty, trust, teamwork, and respect for the law are gifts of the spirit. They cannot be bought.

In his book, Fire of Invention, Mr. Novak likewise makes the point that the monasteries of the Middle Ages were the forerunners of the modern corporation. He quotes Paul Johnson to the effect that:

A great and increasing part of the arable land of Europe passed into the hands of highly disciplined men committed to a doctrine of hard work. They were literate. They knew how to keep accounts. Above all, perhaps, they worked to a daily timetable and an accurate annual calendar--something quite alien to the farmers and landowners they replaced. Thus their cultivation of the land was organized, systematic, persistent. And, as owners, they escaped the accidents of deaths, minorities, administration by hapless widows, enforced sales, or transfer of ownership by crime, treason and folly. They brought continuity of exploitation. They produced surpluses and invested them in the form of drainage, clearances, livestock and seed...they determined the whole future of Europe; they were the foundation of world primacy.

This "continuity of exploitation"--or "institutional permanence", as Mr. Novak more tenderly put it--is just one way in which the idea of linear time broke the West out of cyclical thinking. The monastery, unlike the patriarchal family, was relatively unchanging and could plan for the future with some reasonable degree of confidence. Odd as it will seem to those who despise it, the Church was, in this worthwhile sense, progressive. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 18, 2003 6:06 PM