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The world is not for making money at other's expense, but a place to exercise love, mutual aid and sharing. An alternative viewpoint to neo-liberal and Marxist economics comes from early Christians philosophers. This insists on the absolute and innate value of the human being. It says that the world is created purposefully for the enjoyment of all, to be a world of plenty, for all to share in common, a place to exercise love, mutual aid and sharing. Private property comes about by excluding people from land that was originally common to all. So it is a form of theft, a form of violence. It also encourages conflict since it pits individuals against each other to enclose for themselves as much of the world as they can. It leads to pathological greediness with people tormented by their desire to keep their revenue flowing, to keep growing their enterprise, leaving them in a constant state of anxiety. However if one lives one’s life for others, one is truly living as a human. The purpose and joy of production comes from caring for the needs of others. Anything one has beyond one's needs is illegitimate and immoral and ought to be distributed to the poor. In a market system one is constantly judging one’s surroundings, not based on the well-being of oneself and others, but rather on how to profit from one’s surroundings. If one's neighbours are satisfied with life then this is a disaster, as one can't profit from their neediness. Everything becomes reducible to profit: grain no longer is something which one bakes into bread, wine is no longer something one enjoys with friends, rather, it is a price and potential profit. This pathology ends up destroying human relationships, as it pushes away neighbors as one replaces human relationships with property relations, and hides the interconnected dependence humans have with each other, and with nature. Usury (the charging of interest on debts) is even worse. Usury is the trafficking in the calamities of others. Instead of showing mercy the usurer is driven to make a profit out of it and make the calamity worse. The greediness of the usurer increases as he profits without labor, without production, but merely with money making money. The more he profits the more he can lend out and make more profit. The limit is only the desperation of others. adapted from churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-patristic-critique-of-political-economy |
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