The following article appeared in the March 1^st, 2007 edition of  Christian Week newspaper as part of a series entitled “Does the free market foster the decline of virtue?”

I believe that free markets foster the decline of virtue, but more specifically I believe that the kind of free market fundamentalism and capitalist triumphalism characteristic of the post-Cold War era has been particularly destructive of virtue. It is not just that the free markets of this era create and exaggerate inequality. That would be lacking enough in virtue. It’s that a whole new way of thinking about life, that used to know its place, has become so comprehensive and ubiquitous as to threaten other more virtuous ways of being human in the world. Markets are one thing, and still debatable as to their scope and nature, but the marketization of reality is another, and a much more undesirable thing.

My warning to Conservative M.P.s during the Free Trade debate of 1988 that they would get more than they bargained for is echoed by Paul Vallely in The New Politics. Catholic Social Teaching for the 21^st century, when he says “It is only now that we are coming to realize the extent to which the subversive dynamism of market forces has inexorably dissolved the framework of personal relationships in families and communities…” As the values of the market become less an unfortunate reality and more a quasi-religion, morality is undermined and all is short term contracts, individual self-fulfillment, and technological efficiency.

There is no virtue in global ecological collapse. We live in a finite universe. What this means is that we cannot remain committed to an economic ethos which requires infinite growth to work. Infinite production and consumption for its own sake, in a command economy, would also be undesirable. But this would be a contingent, political decision, amenable by political action. Infinite production and consumption in a finite world, as a necessary component of an economic system, is a commitment to a logical fallacy in theory and a disaster in practice. We must be open to ways of organizing our economic life that are truly sustainable, that don’t require traditional growth, and that produce a frugal but abundant life for all, in which meaning is sought more in being than having.

In my view the way the market has been elevated from one false god among many in the human political pantheon that it used to be, to the false god of the post-Cold War era and the era of globalization and free trade, as if the market existed outside of our collective obedience to it, is an open and shut case of idolatry. It is our graven image. The very nature of idolatry is to be found in humans granting god-like status or powers to something, and then forgetting that those god-like powers are not independent or objective, but derive from the power humans themselves grant. When we deny our own participation in reality, in this case, when we treat the marketplace as if it is not a human creation we are engaging in idolatrous behaviour. When we act as if the market cannot be changed, modified, regulated, or even eliminated where necessary in some sectors, we are forgetting that it is we ourselves who have created this particular golden calf.

From a Christian standpoint, it’s simple. Is the market Lord or is Jesus. If Jesus is Lord then Christians have to argue for a way of regarding the market that puts it in its place, for the sake of the full human life and human community that God intends. Is humanity made for the economy, or the economy for humanity? Which is another way of saying that the economy is a moral issue. The economy is every bit as much a moral issue as those issues which are sometimes set apart as moral issues or “matters of conscience.” In my view, a global economic order, read the WTO, that doesn’t even recognize let alone enforce core labour standards that prohibit child and slave labour, while protecting the interests of powerful investors, is a matter of conscience, and should be a matter of national conscience when Canada speaks at such meetings. But the dictatorship of the market needn’t be only a concern of Christians who see a challenge to the lordship of Christ or to other religions who see a challenge to the sovereignty of God or God’s justice. It is also a challenge to all who cherish democracy, and who think that the powers of democratically elected governments to act in the public interest, for the common good, or to preserve the environment, should not be impeded by a corporate bill of rights that supersedes all other considerations.

Finally, I believe that the market as we now know and experience it is an instrument of radical inequality. I can’t imagine Jesus giving us a lecture on the virtue of the market and tax cuts for the affluent when confronted with the growing gap between the rich and the poor. When the market produces a situation that pays millions to CEOs who make more in a day than some working families make in a year, it’s not virtue but the unbridgeable chasm between the rich man and Lazarus that springs to mind.

In his 1984 book The Naked Public Square Richard John Neuhaus, now editor of First Things, and reportedly one of the more influential Christians on the American political right, lamented the value free nature of the public square. I share this lament, but I will never understand why it is okay with him and others in his camp to celebrate a value free marketplace. There is no value free marketplace. It is, by its very nature, laden with values that can, and have, corrupted our worldview and fostered the decline of virtue.