Bless Be The Market

Is there a difference between a Mexican and an American? In today's society it appears there is, even when I enter through the doors of the Catholic Church near my home am I met with the biases. Should the Catholic Church not be opposed to such a concept or does the Church agree with national borders? I ask such questions to begin investigating the views of the Catholic Church on social teaching. We find contradictions to values the Church holds upon many issues; contradictions such as the state involvement in the market and man's freedom. I intend to point out the flaw in Catholic social teaching in one of the areas of contradictions, labor. I hope to improve Catholic social teaching by applying free market principles to Catholic beliefs.

A Review on Economics and Catholic Teaching

Economics is the study of individuals making choices to better themselves. No individual acts to make himself worse off even though at times he may. It is this self interest which allows us to comprehend why the moral values of the Church are important but not without understanding how it is man bettering himself. To produce anything in today's modern world, one man's labor is not enough. It is through the factors of production that we are able to create what we need or want. The factors are land, labor, and capital which can be applied in numerous ways to create different ends.

We are concentrating on the labor factor in particular against the Catholic social teaching. The Catholic Church does not view labor as what it is, a factor of production. Labor is a commodity, but the Church has a strange conception that if labor is a commodity then it undermines the essence of man. Labor is needed for the creation of any good. Without labor there would be no production. By government halting an individual's choice from working, he is interfering with the production of a type of good; this is done through immigration laws. Alchian comments:

"What is different about labor are the market procedures: the absence of buying and selling of people, and the personal involvement among persons during work. Private property rights to one's own labor is restricted if he is prohibited from selling his services to other persons at mutually satisfactory terms, or if he cannot migrate to another area to sell his labor services." (Alchian, p. 386)

Supposedly, everyone has his price. To understand this is not a devaluation of man we must comprehend the issue of price. Price is not determined by anyone who just randomly extracts an arbitrary number; it is the reflex or reaction of the actions of the individuals within the market system. Carl Menger, the father of the Austrian school of economics, describes it best by referring to price as ripples on the water:

If locks between two still bodies of water at different levels are opened, the surface will become ruffled with waves that will gradually subside until the water is still once more. The waves are only symptoms of the operation of the forces we call gravity and friction. The prices of goods, which are symptoms of an economic equilibrium in the distribution of possessions between the economies of individuals, resemble these waves. The force that drives them to the surface is the ultimate and general cause of all economic activity, the endeavor of men to satisfy their needs as completely as possible, to better their economic positions. But since prices are the only phenomena of the process that are directly perceptible, since their magnitudes can be measured exactly, and since daily living brings them unceasingly before our eyes, it was easy to commit the error of regarding the magnitude of price as the essential feature of an exchange, and as a result of this mistake, to commit the further error of regarding the quantities of goods in an exchange as equivalents. (Menger, 191)

The price system allows for the allocation of resources. High demand of a commodity causes the price to rise. This leads the actors in the market to move their goods to areas within the market whereas they can receive high prices with the incentive of profit for the owner of the goods needed. Wages are a price on labor.

What is so important about "everyone having a price" or their own wage? The wage allows the labor to enter different markets. Labor is a factor of production, a resource to which there is a price that tells the laborers where they are most needed. The laborers are free to decide to accept the wage or not depending on the wage and other aspects such as good working environment, possibility for promotion, etc. Any restriction on labor like a law on immigration is a decline in freedom that the laborer that would have which leads us to the question what is freedom?

There is no better source than the Bible for a Catholic view on freedom. In Galatians chapter 5 verse 1 we learn that "Christ set us free;" Galatians 5:13-15 tells us we were called not for slavery but for freedom. A freedom to not do as we want but to do for others through our love for them. The United States Catholic Cathechism for Adults states:

Human freedom is more than a capacity to choose between this and that. It is the God-given power to become who he created us to be and so to share eternal union with him. This happens when we consistently choose ways that on harmony with God's plan. Christian morality and God's law are not arbitrary, but are specifically given to us for our happiness. God gave us intelligence and the capacity to act freely.(310)

Freedom allows man to make a choice though not any choice; it is in choosing God that man is free. Man is to love his neighbor and by doing so loves God. (Galatians 5:14) The action of the laborer by accepting the wage given allows for a creation of a good not for him but for another. The laborer has foregone his own need to give to his neighbor. If man was denied the right to choose to accept a certain wage it would be in grievance against Catholic view on freedom.

Freedom to choose a low wage does not lower the dignity of a human. The Catholic Church sees itself as a guardian upon the dignity of man. In the Evangelium vitae, an encyclical letter by Pope John Paull II, we find the Church's inclination on human dignity:

Every individual, precisely by reason of the mystery of the Word of God who was made flesh (cf. Jn 1:14), is entrusted to the maternal care of the Church. Therefore every threat to human dignity and life must necessarily be felt in the Church's very heart; it cannot but affect her at the core of her faith in the Redemptive Incarnation of the Son of God, and engage her in her mission of proclaiming the Gospel of life in all the world and to every creature (cf. Mk 16:15)

Whatever is opposed to life itself, such