Question

Short Answer 250-500 words: Summarize Cavanaugh’s critique of the Market Economy

Answer 1

Recent research by William T. Cavanaugh, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, is a timely reading for those who try to focus on how their Christian faith can be brought to bear not just on their consumer habits but also on the business system through which those habits are instilled and fostered. Instead of reaffirming the misconceptions about the unity between Christian values and the so-called "heart of capitalism" or railing against any coercive alliance between the two, Cavanaugh wants to change the terms of the debate. His novel, given his enthusiasm, is not provocative, nor did he intend it to be

The anemic principle of human liberty found in the theoretical paradigm of the free market is much needed corrective. Cavanaugh starts by sketching a realistic description of how democracy is perceived by economist Milton Friedman and Catholic writer Michael Novak according to the traditional free market economics. Essentially, the philosophy of the free market views individuals as free when educated, and their transactions are voluntary within the market. Cavanaugh stresses two ramifications of the deprived perception of human rights. Second, free market economic advocates describe freedom in a negative way, that is, freedom from intervention and external coercion in trade

The philosophy of the free market conceives agents without a specific telos or end towards which their acts are guided. The effect is an economic model in which individual choices are dictated by subjective desire and not by shared interests or dictated goods. In the notion of objective goods, the mind endlessly wanders, driven by the variegated marketing forces, consuming in the interests of consumption. Goods and objects essentially in arbitrary and capricious fashion are endowed with subjective meaning. The question of where the consumer's desires come from and what they are directed towards is irrelevant to the free market scheme

Cavanaugh's Being Consumed is probably one of the most important books in recent years on Christian religion and economics. He seamlessly employs and interweaves the wisdom of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, von Balthasar, and Pope John Paul II, showing us how to turn the free market into a real instrument of justice and love. Cavanaugh's critique of free-market capitalism is not sparing, but true to the heart of Christianity, he believes grace permeates all types of natures.

Accordingly, Christians are called to take their belief in human dignity, the Incarnation, and the Eucharist seriously, and to devote themselves to reforming and completing the free market's formal values, and to remedying its material shortcomings.