Caritas in Veritate: An Integral Development Manifesto
In his book To the Finland Station (1940), Edmund Wilson argues that “the Communist Manifesto is dense with the packed power of high explosives. It compresses with terrific vigour into forty or fifty pages a grand theory of history, an analysis of European society and a program for revolutionary action.” Apart from being longer than Marx and Engels’ famous tome – it is 72 pages in the Paulines Nairobi edition – Pope Benedict’s new encyclical potentially offers for integral human development what they did for revolution.
Benedict’s analysis is global in its scope. It is not enough to look at Europe or even the first world. Globalization encompasses us all and we all feel its effects, both good and ill. While he recognises that absolute economic equality is unrealistic in a global capitalist society, Benedict is critical of those features of capitalism that diminish human beings. Economic inequality is no excuse to treat people as commodities that can be bought and sold. As persons (from womb to the grave), everyone has an equal and infinite worth rooted in being created in the image of God.
Development cannot simply be reduced to technological growth and economic prosperity for the few. Human life is not a commodity. Some things that are currently being ‘traded’ as goods simply should not be ‘up for grabs’. The basic necessities of life – food security and access to clean water in particular – are non-negotiable human rights.
Integral development means for Pope Benedict appropriate economic policies that are ethical and people-centred rather than focused simply on profit. While no longer assuming that it is the husband alone who will work, he sees the need for policies that promote and support the family. Here he is scathing of those who seek to ‘solve’ economic problems by promoting rigid population control, since (as I read him) this plays into a mindset that sees persons as individual economic units.
This point is echoed in his critique of unethical business practices rooted in greed that have led to economic crisis. Business must be ethical and this ethic is not simply one of promoting shareholder interests above everything. When it fails to focus on the human, when it fails to promote human dignity and wellbeing, it becomes part of the problem.
Nor should development be at the expense of the environment. He is critical of those who pursue economic growth at the expense of the planet. Nobody owns the earth. We are stewards of creation. While the encyclical does not go into greater detail as to how we might attain a proper balance between human and other life forms, hopefully the subject of a future encyclical, Benedict warns against taking the earth for granted. With an eye on those who favour uncontrolled economic growth, he reminds us that the environment is God’s gift to everyone, not something to be exploited to benefit the few.
Unlike Marx and Engels, Benedict XVI does not in this encyclical offer an explicit programme of action, revolutionary or otherwise. Quite rightly I think, for this is the proper work of a range of professionals: economists, ecologists, policy-makers. But if this ‘manifesto’ is taken up, the policies that might flow from it could well produce a positive revolution in global capitalism.
