After Darwin (Part 2)
Catherine of Siena on the mutualist market economy
In the previous post, I introduced this series with some quotes from T. H. Huxley documenting the intense ethical debates arising from the new Darwinian model of the natural world in the second half of the nineteenth century. One important element of those debates (which did not come up explicitly in that article) is the relationship between the “struggle for existence” and the British economic model of laissez-faire capitalism. The existence of a link between the scientific theory and the economic system has become a truism among historians of science (although the exact nature of the connection continues to be a matter of intense debate). To take a few examples (collected by historian Daniel Todes to set the stage for his presentation of Russian reactions to Darwin, p. 17-18 of the linked book):
The theory of natural selection and the struggle for existence of Darwinian evolution […] was a reflection of the free competition of the full capitalist era. (J. D. Bernal, 1954)
[The development of Darwin’s thinking was] a microcosm of the more general development from a philosophy of nature and man appropriate for an agrarian and aristocratic world to one suitable for the age of industrial capitalism. (Dov Ospovat, 1981)
Darwin’s evolutionary biology reflects a specifically British outlook in its conception […] In The Origin of Species biology and economics ‘joined hands’ or perhaps more accurately biology joined hands with Scottish political economy, sociology, and historiography, and with English philosophy of science. The political economy was that of Adam Smith and his disciples. (Sylvan Schweber, 1985)
Just as we saw last time for the case of individual morality, this situation creates a serious obstacle for all who attempt to oppose the grave injustices that continue to emerge from the British model, now perfected and globalized. If one remains within Darwin’s overall vision of the biological world, then this resistance means going against nature. But industrial capitalism is what currently provides the basis for the material domination of nature that makes this very resistance possible. This is part of the reason why a such a wide variety of originally idealistic leaders and movements have been successfully coopted by the neoliberal consensus, to the chagrin of the ‘faithful remnant’ of the radical Left.
In the face of this impasse, the example of the Italian commercial republics of the 14th and 15th century can inject a much-needed dose of fresh thinking. These city-states housed a well-organized and flourshing system of industrial production, investment and trade, analogous in many ways to the later British achievements, but operating within a radically different philosophy of nature. The city of Siena has a particularly important place in this story as the setting of the first systematic treatise on economics — the work of the learned Franciscan friar Bernardino (1380-1444). But even more important for the purpose of this series is a Siena native named Catherine (1346-1380) who never really learned to read or write, but was gifted with exceptional synthetic insight, closely linked to the frequent mystical experiences she received from the age of six onwards. Like Hildegard, she has been proclaimed Doctor of the Church, thus serving as a universal reference point for Catholic theology.
Today we’ll look at a brief passage from her grand synthesis of Christian doctrine, the Dialogue, situating economic activity within the overall cosmovision articulated over the course of the whole work. The speaker here is God the Father, who is explaining the reason behind the basic structure of human economic relations:
In this mortal life, while you are still wayfarers, I have bound you together in the bond of charity: willing or unwilling, everyone is so bound. If he should cut himself free through a desire incompatible with charity towards his neighbor, he is still bound by necessity. Whence, so that you might practice charity in deed and in desire — and if you lose the desire through your iniquity, you at least would be constrained by necessity to practice it in deed — I ordained that the know-how for everything that is needful for human life should not be given to one person, nor to each one for himself. But one has this, another has that, so that the one might have cause, for the necessities of life, to have recourse to the other.
Whence you see that the artisan turns to the laborer, and the laborer to the artisan: the one has need of the other, because the one does not know how to do what the other does. Thus the cleric and the religious has need of the lay person, and the lay person of the religious; and the one cannot do without the other. And so it is for everything else.1
The central concept of this passage is charity, which has a very specific meaning in Catherine’s theological context. It does not primarily refer to material care for the poor as in contemporary English usage (although it certainly includes that), but rather to the interpersonal relation of giving and receiving life within God himself. This flow of life extends first to the relation between finite beings and God, and then to the relation among finite beings. Charity in its proper sense involves a free and joyful participation in this flux of life, which is at least partially captured by the English word “love.” In thinking of charity as the origin and goal of the universe, Catherine is simply repeating standard Christian doctrine, but she does so as someone who directly experiences its truth.
Here, Catherine transmits her vital experience of this reality as truly present in the daily interactions between “artisans” and the “laborers” employed by them in the many workshops of her city. She does not sees this economic activity as a necessary evil, a step on the way to the dream of liberation from material limits, where real life can finally begin. Instead, she sees it as an important locus of life itself. The limitations that force us to turn to one another for the goods and services we need are the occasion for an exchange of love — or rather, they are already an exchange of love in a broad sense, whether or not the individuals involved are conscious of it.
This simple insight provides a coherent escape from the neoliberal trap, by placing economic development on an entirely different ethical basis. Just relationships among human beings are no longer dependent on a definitive conquest of nature, but are vivified and strengthened by the very challenges and limitations of material existence, which “force” us to work together on common projects, thereby coming to know and value the people we depend on and those whom we serve. This way of seeing and acting can begin here and now, within the neoliberal system itself, which survives on the basis of exchange of real, valuable services, even if it contains structural features that make the relational dimension difficult to perceive. Each one of us can testify to the example of at least a few colleagues, friends or family members who really understand the service that their profession provides, and find their joy in providing that service as well as possible — sometimes at great personal cost. This way of being is the engine of sustainable structural transformation, which advances each time these individuals run up against clear obstacles to their spirit of service and invest their full initiative in overcoming them.
But all of this is predicated on an implicit answer to basic question of this series: is this attitude still rationally credible? It is hard to avoid the sneaking suspicion that these people are really dupes and dreamers, maybe worth admiring at a distance, but not to be actually imitated. Based on what we now know about the world, can we still see charity as the origin and goal without cutting ourselves off from the real conditions of our existence? I believe the answer is yes, and see this answer at least strongly suggested from the purely empirical point of view. Catherine’s service-based economic vision provides a simple but potentially powerful paradigm for organizing and interpreting contemporary scientific literature on community ecology (extending and universalize the concept of ecosystem services — not just thinking of “outputs” that human beings happen to make use of, but casting the ecosystem itself as a network of service exchange). This intepretation could constitute the nucleus of an authentic scientific hypothesis, whose adequacy would be tested by its capacity to integrate past results and spark new discoveries.
In questa vita mortale, mentre che sete viandanti, Io v’ò legati nel legame della carità: voglia l’uomo o no, egli ci è legato. Se egli si scioglie per affetto che non sia nella carità del proximo, egli ci è legato per necessità. Unde, acciò che in atto e in affecto usaste la carità — e se la perdete in affetto per le iniquità vostre, almeno sete constretti per vostro bisogno a usare l’atto — providi di non dare a uno uomo, e a ogni uno a se medesimo, il sapere fare quello che bisogna in tutto alla vita de l’uomo; ma chi n’à uno, e chi n’à un’altro, acciò che l’uno abbi materia per suo bisogno di ricorrire a l’altro.
Unde tu vedi che l’artefice ricorre al lavoratore, e il lavoratore a l’artefice: l’uno à bisogno de l'altro, perché non sa fare quello, l’uno, che l’altro. Così el cherico e il religioso à bisogno del secolare, e il secolare del religioso; e l’uno non può fare senza l’altro. E così d’ogni altra cosa.
Dialogo della Divina Providenza CXLVIII (ed. G. Cavallini, 1995, p. 492-493)