The Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace (Paperback)

by John C. Médaille (Author)
Key Phrases: useful unemployment, labor theorists, agency dilemma, World Bank, United States, Rerum Novarum (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"In this remarkable book John Médaille succeeds in showing how the more radical elements in Catholic social teaching can be turned into really practical projects for building an alternative to capitalism. He demonstrates that the key is to alter the culture of business and the corporation in order to ensure that political and economic purposes, distributive and corrective justice, become once again integrated, as classical philosophy and Christian theology alike demand. The Vocation of Business supplies us at last with some keys for turning the Christian critique of liberalism into a new form of effective practice." -- John Milbank, University of Nottingham

Product Description
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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 359 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826428096
• ISBN-13: 978-0826428097
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #105,786 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a tour de force, July 23, 2007

By	Adam K. Webb - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Much of today's most worthwhile and thought-provoking writing comes from outside the conformity-producing confines of academia. John C. Medaille has an impressive command of the history of economic thought. In this book, he has distilled centuries of key debates between the purveyors of "value-free" economics, on the one hand, and the more humane and multidimensional tradition inspired by Catholic thought, on the other. On this very solid foundation, Medaille goes on to identify space for an alternative economic vision in our own time. He ranges widely over economic experiments that have tried, with some success, to create the conditions for fulfilling work, social justice, and a decent way of life.

I greatly enjoyed reading this work, which displays a rare mix of erudition, ethical commitment, and experience. I highly recommend it both to intellectuals of a critical bent, and to those in the business world who want to reflect on the values that do--and that values that should--shape our economic life. It has the potential to contribute to some important debates in years to come.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Medaille brilliant on Business, October 25, 2007

By	David J. Taylor - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The Vocation of Business is extremely lucid, informative and well organised, but in writing an utterly compelling introductory text for young business students its author has avoided over-facing his audience by making his case solely through practical examples. For more theoretically oriented minds that may leave it disappointingly understated. Having paved the way with the remark that social science has the ideological character of "self-fulfilling prophecy", it could so easily have concluded with a more challenging chapter drawing attention to research addressing deep theoretical problems. Is contemporary economic theory (which Business tends to take for granted) about a circulation system? a control system? an information system? Had economists asked these questions they might have noticed and learned from the well-established theories of circulation, control and information systems.

Its author, then, is confident enough that Business has not only made our world but also spoiled it by bad economics (and why should he not be confident, for young people world-wide are deserting Economics for the Business Schools). His theme - the need for both efficiency and justice, for both corrective and distributive justice - nevertheless implies a need for complex logic, dealing with both theory and practice; with both what works and how it can go wrong (leading to the practical question of what can be done about it); with both efficiency and reliability. What logic, mathematics and theory really are and how they work out in practice is not evident from even Medaille's most telling and appropriate examples. His most significant reference here, to G K Chesterton, the literary genius and Distributist who recognised in people the two types of logic invented later by C E Shannon and now embedded in computers, is marred by an appalling editorial failure. Both the page references and the corresponding bibliographic entry point to Chesterton's Complete Works, which will amount to thirty five highly diverse volumes! (Volume V was probably intended). (See http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/authors/gkchesterton.asp).

Despite these first edition flaws, this is an extraordinarily significant book, and Amazon does it no favours by categorising it primarily with religion. Modern economics ignores inconvenient history and defines its terms to suit its arguments; this book defies the vested interests and starts with the history of economics and crucial concepts like justice, virtue and property, rooted in Greek and developed in Christian philosophy. It tells how Catholic social teaching took up again the virtue of justice, in response to the manifest lack of it under 19th century Capitalism and the prospect of Marxist reaction making matters worse: independent criticism which both these parties have tried to play down. It then focuses on the development of a capitalism which works, showing how Adam Smith's automatic balance (given equal people) turned into private or state monopoly (pretending that economically people are of unequal value). The moral - a need to return to greater equality between people - involves a choice between Keynes' monetary redistribution (with its known weaknesses) and Christian propertied Distributism achieved by just wages. How the latter has in places been achieved, in the teeth of Anglo-American style company law and enforced monetary globalisation, provides an utterly enthralling finale.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 4.5 Stars-Excellent but overlooks the results of Keynes's technical analysis in chapters 20 and 21 of the GT, March 16, 2008

By	Michael Emmett Brady "mandmbrady" (Bellflower, California ,United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Vocation of Business: Social Justice in the Marketplace (Hardcover)

The author has written an excellent book.He demonstrates that the removal of considerations of morality in economic decision making from the center stage, that it had occupied in theoretical views(as opposed to actual practice) of how an economy is supposed to operate so as to attain justice and peace, leads to a chaotic,dog eat dog form of Herbert Spencer's social-economic "survival of the fittest" misinterpretation of Darwin.Essentially,neoclassical economomics replaced the views of philosophers from Aristotle,Aquinas,the Scholastics,and Smith , from the fifth century,B.C. through the seventeenth century,A.D.,with the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham,David Ricardo,and James Mill.
The result has been that there is no longer any concern with how 3 billion humans currently live in various levels of poverty.
Unfortunately,the author,while familiar with the standard economist treatment of Keynes's GT ,is unaware that that treatment overlooks fundamental conclusions derived by Keynes in his technical analysis in chapters 20 and 21 of the GT.Keynes's policy analysis,in chapters 22,23,and 24,is also overlooked.

Keynes's analysis essentially represents a return to the major policy position advocated by both the Scholastics and Smith-provide tolerable security for society as a whole so as to minimize hoarding ,use usury laws to maintain low rates of interest permantently in the long run ,and prevent projectors,prodigals,and imprudent risk takers(Keynes's speculators and rentiers)from being able to obtain bank loans to extract wealth and profit without production by the mere manipulation of a firm's financial assets and balance sheet.

Keynes demonstrated that neoclassical,Benthamite,Ricardian economics was based on the assumption that the world was risky but not uncertain.In fact,human societies operating under different degrees of uncertainty has always been the general case.Neoclassical economics is only operational in the very special case where there is no uncertainty and risk can be represented reliably by the standard deviation of a normal probabiltiy distribution.All of Milton Friedman's work in economics is based on the assumption that all decision makers operate in markets that are normally distributed.There is no uncertainty only risk.Naturally,Friedman accused Keynes of having assumed the existence of an excessive liquidity preference(hoarding).Friedman would be correct only in the special case where he could demonstate that the actual distributions were normally distributed.Benoit Mandelbrot,on the contrary,has demonstrated since the late 1950's that practically all financial markets worldwide have distributions which are Cauchy or Power Law and are not close to being normally distributed.The normal distribution is a special case of the Cauchy.Keynes,Smith,and the Scholastics turn out to be correct while the Benthamite utilitarians turn out to be generally wrong.No economist in the 20th century ,or so far in the 21st, has demonstrated, using any goodness of fit test ,that any markets have data that is normally distributed.


The author can make use of this additional information to provide overwhelming theoretical and empirical support for his position in a revised edition.I recommend the book be purchased,however,in its present form.The reader will learn a lot.