Introduction to an exchange: Dr Bruce Wearne is a sociological theorist who has been working for decades toward a new approach that would encompass an overall historical/critical communal sociology, the philosophy of society, and a sociological-philosophical introduction to the various social sciences, including diverse and often-contradictory special-science methodologies. All this preoccupies Dr Wearne in linking the ensemble of his specialist concerns, to the best directions discerned thru a dialogical reformational-Christian philosophy as such.
As an Australian with such a vocation, among Wearne's related endeavours have been some promising efforts to offer advisory comment (articles, interviews with leading refChristian thinkers, and editorials)--a number of which have seen publication in the public press, not only in Australia but elsewhere also in the SouthWest Pacific--notably most recently in the Republic of Fiji press, where a military coup has eroded democratic parliamentary and electoral process. Along with his avenue of articulation in the press and his more fully academic studies, Dr Wearne aims to help the reformational intellectual community clarify the key idea of public justice, and help cultivate more widely a sense of normative direction for Christian-democratic sentiment wherever it appears around the globe and for the far-flung small groups now existing and emerging in the future, around the philosophically-rich reformational version of Christian Democracy.--Owlb
We are ... confronted with cumulative problems that derive from how we typically understand the world in which we live - so we have to find a path that will allow us to make a contribution to public justice while also critically uncovering the taken-for-granted political dogmas that we have inherited and by which we, in repentant retrospect, confess we have been compromised and would still be content with that compromise if God Himself hadn't spoken into our lives His love and reassurance.
The perspectives that have been proffered in recent years by such colleagues as Jon Chaplin, Jim Skillen, Bob Goudzwaard and Paul Marshall [all with earned doctorates, the first two in political studies, the third in economics, and the fourth in political theory - Owlb] are important but I think we'd agree with them and say that such work is but a beginning. The main thrust of their many critical questions raises for me from the prior question of how we are to develop social political analysis from a normative perspective, that is from a standpoint that accepts our God-given stewardship. I'm not so sure that we can say that reformational social-political theory has made much of an advance in this regard, even though I think the "beginning" is itself extraordinarily profound.
Bob Goudzwaard made this comment back in 1978 regarding "Norms for the International Economic Order" :
Thinking from the perspective of norms creates the greatest certainty concerning the steps which ought to be made at the beginning; the thinking from the perspective of future goals renders uncertain precisely those first steps which ought to be taken. However, in thinking and acting from the perspective of norms, the final future remains considerably more vague than in thinking from the perspective of goals. (This holds at least on paper; after all, how many goals that were set have ever been achieved?) Yet if we should begin with turning in these concrete directions, and comparable ones; the question arises whether anything at all can then be said about the possible structure of world society.As I read our situation, that approach 30 years on is still only barely developed. Part of that is due to the lack of engagement with social-science thinking that has burgeoned since that time. But though our movement may have big ideas, we are still a small and slender outfit.
The best characterization of such a world society that might possibly emerge - whose more specific content we shall consciously omit - would be that of a decentralized responsibility. To clarify that characterization it may be meaningful to contrast it with two other possible types of constructing the world society - decentralized freedom and centralized responsibility.
Jim Skillen made this comment in 2000. "Politics in One World" (Philosophia Reformata 2001):
In contrast to liberalism, Christians should view the state as a genuine community of public-legal solidarity that ought to protect the diversity of non-political responsibilities and organizations through which the image of God also expresses and develops its capacities of service to God. In contrast to socialism, Christians should see the state as a differentiated, public-legal institution, which exists to recognize and uphold human freedom and responsibility to the God who always transcends the limits of political solidarity.Jon Chaplin's recent Cambridge inaugural is another discussion which would allow us to put such questions into a framework where meaningful answers can be sought.
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Notes
1.) Jonathan Chaplin "Speaking from faith in democracy"
URL: [ http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/KLICE/pdfs/Inaugural.doc ]
2.) Bob Goudzwaard and John van Baars "Norms for the International Economic Order" in Justice in the International Economic Order - Proceedings of the Second International Conference of Reformed Institutions for Christian Higher Education; Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan (Aug13-19,1978: pp. 223-253) with replies by J D van der Vyver (pp 254-267); and James Skillen (pp.268-271). My cited text of Gouzwaard, at p.247. Skillen refers to the same material at p.268 (it is slightly different and gives strong indication that Goudzwaard's Dutch English was edited from an earlier version - but then the editing was somewhat uneven).
4.) James W Skillen "Politics in One World" Philosophia Reformata [66:1 2001 pp.117-131); with replies by Turaki (pp. 132-138); Jeong-Kii Min (pp. 139-141). Quote at p.121.
5.) Paul A. Marshall. Essay > "Liberalism, Pluralism and Christianity" in Marshall and Chaplin eds Political Theory and Christian Vision: Essays in Memory of Bernard Zylstra (University Press of America: Maryland, 1994; pp. 153-162). Book > Thine is the Kingdom: A Biblical Perspective on the Nature of Government Politics Today (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986). Address > "Human Rights Theories in Christian Perspective" (ICS Inaugural, Toronto, Ontario; 1983). See also his more recent material on Islam, Christian life-style.
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A reply from Albert Gedraitis, publisher, refWrite blogs (Apr28,2k7)
The idea of an international economic order is a welcome one to me, because to my mind it brings into a single concept several structures and dynamics that have been present in the world for a long time, but which already have undergone such extensive restructuration (without an inner reformation of humanity's communal economic life) that we must think in terms of something newly arrived, yet of which we "ain't seen nuthin' yet." The dynamics hurtle on, thresholds appear and are surpassed, and structures are impelled to further change, further restructurations.
But coming to that conclusion as a student of the Vollenhoven-Dooyeweerd Cosmonomic Philosophy and the expansive explication of its value for economics by Dr Bob Goudzwaard puts one in the awkward position of looking at other "totality" terms in Herman Dooyeweerd's New Critique of Theoretical Thought. My caution on this score arises from a longtime struggle with the NCTT's text in regard to Dooyeweerd's apparent rejection of both the term "society" and the term "universe" as indicative of totality-concepts. Compared to the totality-concept of, say, Marxism regarding "society," Dooyeweerd can look momentarily much like a nominalist. However, of course, Dooyeweerd in regard to a normative concept of society is neither a conservative (organic society) nor a liberal (each human individual is real but everything else societal is only nominally so, except insofar as group words denote contracts between sovereign individuals). "International economic order" or, as I prefer, "global economic order" would have similar problems in the V-D's Cosmonomic framework. The key to their difference of conceputalization--different from Marxism, conservatism, and liberalism all at once--is the two philosopher's idea of sphere specificity (with sphere universality and sphere sovereignty).
Our concept then is one of an economy as a specific differentiated sphere still underoging development in the 21st century, a universal sphere that pervades all of life without defining the whole of that life (as there are other spheres with which it must interact without destroying them), and a sovereign sphere with its own internal but not absolutely autonomous law, governance, and decision-making by responsible persons.
How do we get to a normative concept of "the economy" (or, in order to avoid any tendency toward reification or platonizing, perhaps we should prefer to speak simply of "an economy." Until now it has been easiest to conceive of each national economy as "an economy" (tho in external relation, perhaps formatively so, with other national economies). One important reason for that priortization of national economies has to do with the determinative power of a modern state by various means to constitute the leading formative power in constituting a national economy within its territorial jurisdiction (contra reformational political philosopher Jonathan Chaplin, I still think along with Dooyeweerd of a national state as territorially specific at any given time, normatively speaking ... but contra Dooyeweerd, I think of its specific territoriality as a good candidate for indicating the "foundational function" of a state, despite Chaplin's suggestion that Dooyeweerd's entire line of thinking about "foundational fuctions" is obsolescent). A national economy has tended for a long time to receive prioritization among economic levels, with a specific national state as the leading formative power over each such economy--yet without any exclusion within a national economy of subeconomies, or regional economies, and/or local economies. You gather my drift I'm sure.
Local economies, regional economies and/or subeconomies, national economies, the global economy. You will also understand from the very starkness of the term "the global economy" that national economies under constraint of one or another nation-state, do not entirely control the h+er reaches of our present constantly restructurating global institutions of economic qualification (here I'm using V-D's notion of qualifying function typifying each societal sphere). In theorizing this way, of course, no judgment is implied that "everything is in order" in the continually emerging and restructuring global economic order. "Order" here does not imply normative realization of what could and should be an empirically normative global economic order, God willing.
Can we get there from here? In turning both "norms" and "goals" into technical terms in the language of christianly-motivated economic theorizing, and then assigning "goals" to Enl+tenment-originated conceptualizations (could this be a case of what Dr Albert Wolters has called "the genetic fallacy"?), I tend to wonder just how I may use that word at all in expressions like "economic goals." The immediate concern for Goudzwaard, you, and myself is how best to take a communal stance vis a vis the UN's Millenium Development Goals, which were adopted to move humanity toward a more just global economic order, in part by making sure every human being has clean air, clean water, and poverty is reduced by one half by the year 2025, let's say.
If I understand Goudzwaard correctly, he is uncomfortable with prioritizing, in our economic discussions and theorizing, human-set goals that we (all the people and institutions of earth) may or may not meet, or be able to meet. He insists that we stress what should be: breathable air, drinkable water, enuff food and adequate shelter for all humans, and sufficient income to enable functioning adequately in our contemporary monetized economy/ies. From the standpoint of the coming of the Kingdom of God, the summum bonum of a Christian ethos, according to Herman Bavinck, that's what starting with norms, rather than goals, in economics, is all about: simple justice due to each human person by way of communal caring.
Beyond that, when I look at this stance--this principial stance in regard to the global economic order--I find myself faltering in regard to the shouldness of Goudzwaard's formulation. I have no problem with deontological ethics as such. But what about the road from should to will, do, achieve. Don't we need to translate our ins+ts into all-embracing norms of simply economic justice for all, translate them into some kind of goals, with a lesser standing perhaps than norms in our economics systematics, but with some sort of standing somewhere? I note in passing that Paul Marshall presented a lecture a decade ago on the difference between norms and goals in the task of the state, and he did not find the norms of/for the state to include elimination of poverty. For him, that could become a state's main goal, but its normative task was more purely juridical and swordful. (Sorry, but I can't document this lecture-text at present and haven't begun to do justice to Dr Marshall's thinking at the time in these regards. Here's a guess at the source > Paul Marshall, "Two Types of Rights" Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 661-676; 16 pages.)
Having outlined some of my questions on the subject matter of your initial mini-essay, I now must mention my strong doubt about the normativity of raising the hopes of the 2/3s world living in poverty by campaigning to end poverty by such-and-such a date. Rather, the mentioned agenda is a perfect example to me of goalism--whether of the UN's MDG variety, the Make Poverty History variety, or the Micah Challenge variety. I find myself bewildered as to whether these are designed to whip middleclass people into activism with delusional schemes, or to offer soporific hope to those multiplied millions who are living at death's edge each day for lack of food, or are simply designed to salve the consciences of those who create these programs and the people they hire to man their activistic campaign-and-propaganda institutions, thus qualifying to name themselves a "movement." Other than such presumably subconscious motives, I don't want to call into question the good intentions of any.
But a problem leads me to such bewilderment: The number of poor grows daily and exponentially. Those with the least means, or even with no means, to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate offspring, these are the most fecund segment of the human population as to reproduction of our species. It seems to me that the best activism would teach people in dire straits to restrict the number of offspring they bring into the world of guaranteed misery, humanly speakingm and remaining respectful of those who make it out of the morass into an economically participative life, with help or without.
My other sense of a program and the utility of proximal goals would have to do with creating an economic non-charity non-state movement of enterprises that can help influence the global economic order from the inside, toward its more normative structuration. There are many forms of enterprise that could be created or could be renewed thru inner reformation of already-existing enterprises. Such enterprises, when committed to working together, could link to do what can be done to provide education for work and income also in the 2/3s world, and jobs. A whole host of questions of development would then have to be answered in regard to each and every particular, as is the case for every other notion of global economic order. But when businesses and corporations of christian-motivation are competently qualified for economic leadership (as aside from political leadership as such), some of the millions of souls in poverty's miseries can "move on up" to participate in expanding opportunities for others born into poverty.
But not all. Very far from all of those born into poverty can be drawn into productive economic life, however modest. Besides greed, demographic realities also play their anti-normative roles. Sad to say. And campaigns offering false hope must be confronted, and hopefully re-directed.
Another round in the discussion: Bruce to Albert (May1,2k7)
Thanks for your extensive comments on my reflection - I hope we can stimulate some further comment from any readers who pass by.
The issue of economics in a needy world immediately raises questions about the "leisure" we have to do the kind of work we are now discussing. Pierre Bourdieu has developed a concerted sociological critique of the assumptions of the scholarly leisure basic to 20th century social science (skholè) and when we consider the momentous problems you have outlined we begin to sense how certain ideas about scholarly "leisure" undermine a "normative" social scientific calling in service to all our neighbours. "Academic freedom" becomes a goal we want to preserve (see Bourdieu Méditations pascalienne 1997; Pascalian Meditations 2000). This is right at the heart of the topic at hand when we realise that ours is now a scholarly stewardship which has been internationalized and globalized and even if we remain a tiny fragment - let alone remnant - of helpful scholarship, we still need each other to prod us into good works with the hope of our calling in Christ. So thanks for your efforts and your prognostications.
But to specifically comment on your reply:
1. Totality Concepts
Dooyeweerd's 1950 address on the concept of sovereignty (a good candidate for a totalizing concept I'd think) discusses how the UN functions in relation to "the law of nations". He writes (my pidgin translation) "The realization of the idea of a civitas maxima would have entailed the termination of international law. The latter displays, as soon as it has developed, like all law, a correlation of coordinational and communal functions." Now here is one totality concept - civitas maxima - that Dooyeweerd suggests is purely speculative. His critical route around that scholastic doorway involves his preliminary transcendental "structural distinction between communal and interindividual or inter-communal relationships." (New Critique III pp.176-177). In this sense the global economic market-place - whatever that structure is - coincides with an incredible diversity of communal social relationships and inter-relationships at many levels. It will take much research and careful analysis to identify trends and to understand the issues before us in any one locale.
2. You are right to observe that so much of this builds historically upon the intense post-industrial revolution nation-building via the strengthening of national/ regional economies by national governments. And I would suggest that any attempt to identify the leading characteristics of the international or global economic order, not only has to also give an account of how international law is formed, and how it functions in national polities and international organisations, with their rich fabric of international "cross-stitching" but also rediscover the norm of stewardship in that context. If I read you right you seem to be asking, "OK how then should we interpret the normative demands that arise because of a globalised economic order and what are our responsibilities within that?" I'm not sure I have the thorough grasp of what is actually going on - in terms of financial investment, investment, trade agreements, the policies of WTO and WB and other such institutions, how banks and other financial institutions are locked into the system of "touring capital" (as Zygmunt Bauman refers to it) - to give much more than merely reiterate how we should begin such analysis. (As I pour myself a cup of PNG "Fair Trade" coffee).
3. The distinction between a goal-oriented and a normative approach to social science. You are right to suggest that a normative analysis of goal-setting (in organisations, by governments, at a personal level) is indeed part of the (reformational) scientific task. In that sense we wouldn't want to deny that the development of such an analysis is indeed a valid goal for Christian social science. As to the UN's Millenium Development Goals, I suppose that the problematic managerial goal-oriented ideology has worked its way into what is, after all, a highly commendable effort to reduce world poverty. But it is not only a matter of setting a goal to change the "global economic order" but also implies a reorientation (repentance!) in our "comprehensive economic responsibility"? According to Calvin it is not the Pope and certainly not Christian Philosophy, no matter how purged of pagan notions, that is Christ's representative on earth. No, it is the poor and needy who have that role, he says. It is with them that Christ identifies Himself in his lowly standing among us. That leaves us well and truly exposed with our trousers around our shoes, doesn't it! But then the prophets enjoin us to gird up our loins and get to work with deeds of righteousness.
4. I'd say the distinction between norms and goals - as formulated by Bob Goudzwaard - should be understood in terms of where we start the goal-setting process. If goal-setting is autonomous then norms are simply stuck in that autonomous treadmill we have decided for them. Then they become a kind of meta-goal, don't they? But then we need also to address that kind of perfectionism that gets obsessive about starting right, and instead undertake the kind of research that needs to be done to understand the situation we are claiming to address .... In A Christian Political Option Goudzwaard makes a plea for thorough and comprehensive research before political program formulation. In other words what was needed was "basic research of needs" in the political landscape.
5. Where you find yourself faltering with regard to Goudzwaard's "shouldness" I still would suggest that criticism of the neo-Kantian basis for contemporary economic theory needs to be done in a more thorough and complete fashion as well as ongoing thorough immanent critical analysis of J K Galbraith's theory of countervailing powers (and other prominent economic theorists as well).
6. I agree with you with regard to the UN Millenium Development Goals and the various efforts by our evangelical brothers and sisters and other Christians to wake up their fellow church members to their God-given global responsibilities. They confront the spiritual lethargy that results from "possessive individualism" having such a hold on churches but even such worthy efforts need careful and sustained understanding and analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of debt forgiveness and the Grameen Bank initiatives and the theories of Joseph Stiglitz.
I think Bob Goudzwaard got it right in the Preface to Capitalism and Progress: "Perhaps we are afraid of a genuine reflection because that would inevitably lead to a confrontation with ourselves" - ie the complexity we dare not confront is made impenetrable by the progressive hardness of "our" own hearts ... with our own makeshift solutions ...
Bruce
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Albert will reply in this second round, in due course.
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