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Global Markets … ‘reign’ or ‘be reined?’ For better or worse, economic globalization has become a fact of life in the 21st century. The phenomenon will continue to be an ongoing ethical conundrum. From a moral standpoint, “the rubber meets the road” when fact intersects with value. Political commentator William Pfaff has noted that since the 1990s foreign policy has been marked by two principal working presuppositions --- “deregulation and trade liberalization.” The United States, in particular, unleashed both economic and political power to effect deregulation on a global scale. In Pfaff’s judgment, globalization in some respects has taken on the airs of “colonialism.” Pfaff ascribes that shift to a brand of “economic utopianism” that justifies the global economy “freed from government regulation, self-governed by the supposedly impartial and uniquely different mechanisms of the market.” Left to its own devices, the dynamics of such an ideology would “generate the greatest overall wealth, measured as productivity and gross national product, and therefore, in principle, to produce the greatest material well-being for the greatest number of people.” [See “American Destiny,” Commonweal, (May 17, 2002).] Justice in the World (1971) conceived the right to development “as a dynamic interpenetration of all those fundamental human rights upon which the aspirations of individuals and nations are based.” (JIW n. 15) Justice in the World, a document issued by the 1971 Synod of Bishops, warns that “(i)f the developing nations and regions do not attain liberation through development, there is a real danger that the conditions of life created especially by colonial domination may evolve into a new form of colonialism in which the developing nations will be the victim of the interplay of international economic forces.” (JIW n. 16) Earlier in On the Development of the Peoples (Populorum Progressio, 1967), Pope Paul VI had recommended that multilateral agreements should “give way to friendly relationships of true solidarity that are based on juridical and political equality.” Freed from ties of dependence characteristic of colonial times, the developing nations could be clear that financial or technical assistance would not be “used for a cover for some new form of colonialism that would threaten civil liberty, exert economic pressure on them, or create a new power group with controlling influence.” (PP n. 52) The Church in America (Ecclesia in America, 1999) commemorated the Special Assembly for America of the Synod of Bishops. Convened in 1997, the Special Assembly had broached the topic of international dimension of the economy and its impact in the North, South, and Central America. In that Apostolic Exhortation, Pope John Paul II analyzed the phenomenon of globalization in the light of Church social doctrine. As a phenomenon, globalization produces both positive and negative results. The efficiency and productivity of globalization can forge deeper unity among peoples as well as provide better service to the world at large. Two points on the relationship between morality and markets are worth noting. First, there are human needs and moral demands that elude the law of the market. Thus, the Holy Father expresses a strong moral caveat about the negative effects of market systems which operate “to suit the powerful.” The Church in America cites several examples of deleterious effects: “the absolutizing of the economy, unemployment, the destruction and deteriorization of public resources, the growing distance between rich and the poor, unfair competition which puts the poor nations in a situation of ever increasing inferiority.” The undeniable positive economic outcomes of globalization do not cancel out or counterbalance unjust negative effects. Earlier, in the encyclical Centesimus Annus (1991), Pope John Paul II crafted a positive conception of the role of free markets within the moral parameters which ought to guide their functioning. Government has a moral function “to provide for the defense and preservation of common goods such as the natural and human environments, which cannot be safeguarded simply by market forces.” (CA n.40) Church social teaching clearly states that markets are morally limited by “collective and qualitative needs which cannot be satisfied by market mechanisms.” The vision of a just economy must be conscious of “the risk of an ‘idolatry’ of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities.” (CA n. 40) A second point illumines the moral horizon of the socio-economic order. In this regard, Pope John Paul II explicitly denounces “social sins that cry to heaven.” Unjust social structures are “signs of a deep crisis caused by a loss of a sense of God and of moral principles which should guide the life of every person.” It is tragic that with the erosion of moral markers “an unbridled greed for wealth and power takes over, obscuring any Gospel-based vision of social reality.” In this regard, The Church in America calls for “the globalization of solidarity.” Among the major principles of social justice, the preferential option for the poor and the requirements of the international common good become interpretive keys for evaluating the justice and fairness of the world economy. Pope John Paul II endorses the Church’s task “to pay greater attention to the formation of consciences, which prepare the leaders of society fro public life at all levels, promote civic education, respect for law and for human rights, and inspire greater efforts in the ethical training of political leaders.” (EIA n. 56)
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