While Distributists will sometimes use “capitalism” to describe themselves, its in an ancillary way. Distributism is actually a “third way” it is neither capitalism or socialism, not just a “blending” of the two. Its a different animal all together.

Nice on paper. Really nice idea. Good luck w/ it in reality, though.

It does seem to me that the roots of modern capitalism and the roots of the abortion rights mentality are found in the broad cultural current of modernity, born proximately out of the Enlightenment and remotely out of those darn Franciscan theologians of high (yes, I’m talking about you, Bl. Duns Scotus) and late (everyone’s favorite [but justified] pinata, William of Ockham) medieval scholasticism. And it’s also the case that the major opponents of democratic capitalism in late modernity (fascism & communism) are likewise born out of the same deep cultural current, despite the obvious oppositions at other levels.

Also relevant here is Pinckaers’ analysis of “freedom of indifference” and “freedom for excellence”… it’s the former which typifies the contemporary understanding of freedom, at least in the West. But it’s deficient, at least with regard to the latter.

What’s needed is a development of capitalism which roots it in a more authentic philosophical (and theological) anthropology… (cf. JPII).

It isn’t that they all must be resisted. It is that their self-justification – they are freedoms, and therefore they are good – must be resisted.

Sorry, I’ve been out this evening. Do I agree with this statement? No. The Enlightenment trajectory, which I describe here (I notice you make no mention of having read my analysis) and which gives rise to Western democratic liberalism/capitalism runs through Locke, Hume, Smith, and Mill (among other interlocutors). This would be the underlying tradition to which I refer. Marx defines himself against this tradition, but his reductionism keeps him within the Hume/Kant/Hegel matrix, maintaining a link with liberalism despite his attempt to excoriate it from German thought. During this same time, there are lines of unMarxist socialism, monarchist/constitutional hybrids, and the Thomistic traditions. The first and the last are very alive today, despite their many integrated instantiations.

You allude to some all embracing philosophical foundation to all forms of government in the present age. Of course this wrong, whether or not you are actually claiming this. And if you are, perhaps you can sketch this foundation and its line as I have with respect to what I (and many other contemporaries to whom I have referred) have narrowed to the liberal democratic paradigm.

Good night, all!

No, not all the philosophical assumptions. Just the one that Poli identified, i.e., the (extremely vague and abstract) belief in the human capacity to will and do things. Indeed, I find it hard to imagine a system of government that did not somehow assume that human beings are able to will and do things.

Thanks for the link to McCarraher’s essay, although I find myself a bit allergic to his style of using colorful but quite overdrawn rhetoric in place of spinning out a precise argument based on empirical reality (rather than mostly strawmen).

The demonization of the “corporation” in particular seems very sophomoric. “Corporation” is just a term for one or more people who have gotten together and are making some product or service that other people want to buy. Yes, some corporations make bad stuff (given that humanity is sinful and people often have an appetite for buying bad stuff).

But, wouldn’t you know it, the story is more complicated than that, because not everything about humanity is depraved (I’m not a Calvinist). Thus, lots of people like to buy good and useful things, and corporations have filled that need. Thus, lots of corporations make good and useful stuff (like the paper and the typewriter on which McCarraher typed his essay, or the water filter that keeps people from getting sick, or the antibiotic that cures an otherwise fatal infection, or any number of other things). McCarraher’s depiction of corporations is so ideologically-driven and one-sided that I read it not to be informed but amused.

The philosophical assumptions of capitalism, socialism, anarchism, etc. are all the same?? Seriously??

Perhaps in the overlapping phenomenon of state capitalism, american style capitalism and anarcho-capitalism/liberatrianism, you might have a point. But otherwise, I think you’re wrong.

McCarraher’s argument boils down to:

1. Capitalism and abortion both depend on the notion of “choice.”
2. Therefore, they both must be resisted.

I don’t think this is a good summary of McCarraher’s argument at all.

I think the people who seem to “get” the McCarraher quote are familiar with the ideas he is critiquing. SB, you don’t seem to be as familiar. Try reading the entire essay to get a feel for what he is doing. Otherwise we will continue to talk past one another:
http://ethicscenter.nd.edu/archives/documents/McCarraher.pdf
(PDF)