The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace [Paperback]

This is a textbook on the Social Teaching of the Roman Catholic Church for would-be business professionals. Part I does 3 things: provides (1) a history of moral discourse since the Enlightenment, (2) a history of economic thought from Aristotle and Aquinas to Ludwig Mises and Milton Friedman , and (3) a history of property. Part II provides a close reading of 3 major social encyclicals. Part III examines the tensions between Catholic social teaching and neoclassical economics. Part IV explores 5 case studies of the actual implementation of Catholic-like social teaching. The over-riding theme of the book is that the original unity of distributive and corrective justice that prevailed in both economics and moral discourse until the 16th and 17th centuries was shattered by the rise of an individualistic capitalism that relied on corrective justice (justice in exchange) only. The rise of individualistic business practice was paralleled by a movement in moral thinking from a discourse of virtue and the common good to a discourse of utilitarianism and emotivism ; individual preference became all that mattered, and only the market is capable of correlating individual preferences. An economics that lacks a distributive principle will attain neither equity nor equilibrium and will be inherently unstable and increasingly reliant on government power (Keynesianism) to correct the balances. Catholic social teaching emphasizes equity in the distribution of land, the means of production, and a just wage.

Part I: Historical Background 1: Justice and Economics 2: The Modern Moral Dialogue 3. Justice in Economic History 4. The Disappearance of Justice 5. Property, Culture, and Economics Part II: The Social Encyclicals 6. Rerum Novarum: A Scandalous Encyclical? 7. Laborem Exercens: Work as the Key to the Social Question 8. Centesimus Annus: The Uncertain Victory Part III: Toward an Evolved Capitalism 9. The Social Teachings and Economics: Ideas in Tension 10. Toward an ElҬ