Law, Politics, and Corporate Enterprise

First Quarter 2002 

First in a Series on Poverty, Wealth, and Globalization

In recent issues of the Public Justice Report, we have published excerpts from the book by Bob Goudzwaard and others (the 1999 Kuyper Lecture) titled Globalization and the Kingdom of God (2001) as well as several articles on globalization and related economic issues. We have also announced or reviewed books on poverty, hunger, and international economics, including Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Human Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (2000).

Although world attention since last September has been focused on terrorism and the military and diplomatic efforts to stop it, questions of global wealth and poverty have not been set aside altogether. Many have argued, for example, that one of the primary fuels of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda movement has been the economic injustice experienced in much of the Muslim world and in other parts of the poor South. Moreover, the big news of China entering the World Trade Organization, of progress on debt forgiveness for the world's poorest countries, and of the next step of financial integration of the European Community—all of these keep before us the continuing process of international economic integration and of struggles over the imbalance of wealth and poverty in the world.

With this introductory article we begin a series of reflections on economic justice, focusing on legal and economic institutions rather than on public policies that take those institutions for granted. There has been a significant tradition (or traditions) of Christian reflection on, and shaping of modern economic institutions dating at least as far back as the Industrial Revolution. Notable in this regard are several of the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and the efforts of Christian business, labor and political leaders in Europe. A fine introduction to these developments was first published in 1957 (and reprinted in 1974—Greenwood Press) by Michael Fogarty, titled Christian Democracy in Western Europe, 1820-1953. Much from that tradition is highly relevant and alive today when corporations are going global, labor unions are in decline in many parts of the world, and poverty intensifies in certain regions. The reflections we intend to publish in this series will come not only from our contemporaries but also from past contributors.

One of the books from which we will draw excerpts, for example, is Curing World Poverty: The New Role of Property (1994), edited by John H. Miller, an articulate proponent of the work of the Center for Economic and Social Justice in St. Louis. In the preface Miller explains that all contemporary traditions from communism to libertarianism find capital necessary. "In communism, capital is used, but it is owned entirely by the State. Socialism indeed requires capital, but it is completely controlled by the State. Laissez faire capitalism uses capital solely for the personal profit of a few. Even 'democratic capitalism' is a well-intentioned but unworkable attempt to harmonize political democracy with economic plutocracy." By contrast, the Center for Economic and Social justice proposes "expanded ownership of the means of production" so that "every worker—that is, everyone who works—has the God-given natural right to have the opportunity to own the most technologically advanced forms of capital, the means of production, exercise his right in deciding how that capital is to be used, and earn profits from what that capital produces."

From Magnus Verbrugge, who has studied the work of Dutch Christian philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, we will present reflections on Dooyeweerd's argument for greater economic justice through the sharing of corporate ownership by workers, managers, and those who invest capital. And also, in this tradition, we will hear again from Bob Goudzwaard, who in an earlier work showed that a corporation is a work community, in which all participants have a stake, and is not merely the property of those who supply the capital.

Part of the aim of this series of reflections is to encourage contemporary Christian business people, workers, investors of capital, public officials, economists, and political scientists to weigh in with their reflections. And one way this aim will be achieved is through the introduction and review of important books in this arena.

If it is true both here in the United States as well as in the poorest countries that poverty is overcome or alleviated over the long term by work and entrepreneurial activity that bring the rewards of income, meaningful service, and cooperative human activity, then questions of how to properly define the legal structures and relationships of labor, management, and capital investment are as important in this day of globalization as they were in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. The special concern of the Public Justice Report will be with government's responsibility and the laws that define and structure the institutions of contemporary economic life both domestically and internationally.

—The Editor
 

Subsequent articles in this series:
Second: What Is Corporate Enterprise? (2nd Q., 2002)
Third: The New Institutional Economics (1st Q., 2003)
Fourth: Owning Capital or the Enterprise? (3rd Q., 2003)