Moral Trade

It is seriously time for American consumers who also call themselves Catholic to start thinking about ways to promote fair-trade policies between the US and other countries.

There is a baseline that we can keep in mind when deciding what is acceptable in a business partner: “would I want my children to work at this place?” If the answer is no, then there is no reason why anyone else’s children should work there.

But if that isn’t enough, we can turn to paragraph 301 of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church and insist that at least the minimum of human rights be met as a condition for continued partnership.

In many countries with which America does business, for instance, the right to form associations, such as unions, is denied to workers. The right to “social security connected to maternity” is also denied as young female workers are forced to obtain abortions as a condition of keeping their jobs. Even within America there are millions of undocumented workers denied many of these same rights.

Moral trade doesn’t necessarily mean a halt to global trade with countries that have less than perfect human rights records.  It isn’t realistic to assume that we can stop doing business with China tomorrow because of how it treats its workers. But in conjunction with what I have previously written about – the need to form cooperative enterprises in America – we can consider rebuilding some of our own manufacturing base through our own initiative, and reducing the dependency we currently have on immoral firms that abuse worker’s rights.

For instance, a movement known as “New Monasticism” holds as one of it’s tenants “reclaiming the abandoned spaces of the Empire” (that means America). Presumably this could include old factories, Argentina-style; the capitalists walk away but the workers keep working.

In our own backyard and under the guidance of a Catholic vision of man and his rights, we might be able to remove at least some of the moral hazard of global commerce. It may mean higher prices for fewer consumer goods in the short-term, and for that reason such schemes have often been dismissed as playgrounds for the middle class affluent who can afford them.

If a firm’s prices can’t compete, that firm cannot exist; sometimes that is a polite way of saying that if a firm wants to respect human rights, it should take care to stay out of a sector of the global economy dominated by firms that do not. There aren’t enough “socially conscious” consumers to make the project viable.

But at the same time we will see one of the most expensive costs of all involved in running a major manufacturing business eliminated – that of the millions, adding up to billions, in compensation demanded by American executives. The same Catholic vision that would guide workplace policies, wages, etc. would also guide executive compensation. Profit and wealth are not immoral, but they become so when they become the sole end of economic activity, over and above the common good.

“A business enterprise must be a community of solidarity, that is not closed within its own company interests.” (304)  If we start here, I think we’ll end up in the right place.  For all of the excuses and evasions that we are often given to justify a set of amoral economic “laws”, the truth is that simply putting people before profit does not mean no profits at all.