Christian Ethics versus the Market?

Having completed the analysis of the factual questions on socialism, Mises turned to a critique of the ethical doctrines that had served to justify socialist schemes. Here he devoted particular attention to Christianity and examined the question of how much it supported a free society, and how much it would tend to justify violations of private property.

Mises began by noting that of all the great monotheistic religions, Christianity alone was a living faith. Its doctrine covered all dimensions of human existence. It not only addressed the narrowly spiritual questions of man. It also dealt with his ethical concerns, that is, his social and political relationships with other human beings. This could not be otherwise, Mises argued, lest religion force its adherents “to look for an answer elsewhere. This would mean losing its hold on its adherents and its power over the spirit. Without social ethics religion would be dead.”⁴⁹ Thus Mises joined hands with the champions of the notion that Christianity was a living faith, not in spite of its meddling with politics, but rather because of its political dimension.⁵⁰

But in 1922, the acknowledgment of Christianity's social and political dimension was more than a point of doctrine. The advice of Jesuits, Catholic bishops, and Protestant pastors had a noticeable impact on daily life. The concrete embodiment of political Christianity with which Mises had long been acquainted was the Christian Socialist movement, which had emerged in the 1860s in the Austrian Alps and other rural areas predominantly inhabited by Catholic Germans. The movement arose as a reaction to the liberal reforms of the 1850s and 1860s, which had enabled efficient factory production, in conjunction with bank credit and railways, to displace the old handicraft-based modes of production. With amazing speed, this transformation had undermined the social positions of the old elites—landed nobility and clergy, who were increasingly challenged and displaced by industrial upstarts who were often Jewish. Christian Socialism was a product of old-elite intellectuals seeking to discredit these changes by contesting the legitimacy of liberalism and capitalism. Count Egbert Belcredi, Freiherr von Vogelsang, and Rudolf Meyer called for the reestablishment of medieval guilds, for credit organizations under state control, for factory laws, for the protection of national labor through tariffs and through social insurance schemes.⁵¹

This was how Mises experienced political Christianity firsthand. In chapter 29 of Socialism, he gave a theoretical interpretation of this experience. Was Christian Socialism actually grounded in the teachings of Jesus Christ? Mises answered this question affirmatively. Christ, he said, had left his disciples no rules whatever that could be of any use for building a society on earth, because he believed the Kingdom of God was imminent:

The expectation of God's own reorganization when the time came and the exclusive transfer of all action and thought to the future Kingdom of God, made Jesus's teaching utterly negative. He rejects everything that exists without offering anything to replace it. He arrives at dissolving all existing social ties. The disciple shall not merely be indifferent to supporting himself, shall not merely refrain from work and dispossess himself of all goods, but he shall hate “father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life.” Jesus is able to tolerate the worldly laws of the Roman Empire and the prescriptions of the Jewish Law because he is indifferent to them, despising them as things important only within the narrow limits of time and not because he acknowledges their value. His zeal in destroying social ties knows no limits. The motive force behind the purity and power of this complete negation is ecstatic inspiration and enthusiastic hope of a new world. Hence his passionate attack upon everything that exists. Everything may be destroyed because God in His omnipotence will rebuild the future order. No need to scrutinize whether anything can be carried over from the old to the new order, because this new order will arise without human aid. It demands therefore from its adherents no system of ethics, no particular conduct in any positive direction. Faith and faith alone, hope, expectation—that is all he needs. He need contribute nothing to the reconstruction of the future, this God Himself has provided for. The clearest modern parallel to the attitude of complete negation of primitive Christianity is Bolshevism.⁵²

The very fact that Christ's teachings were utterly unconcerned with the material conditions on earth, Mises argued, explains the great flexibility with which Christianity has adapted to a great variety of political systems throughout the ages.⁵³ But is the otherworldliness of the teachings of Christ really a sufficient proof for the contention that these teachings are at odds with political liberty? Mises thought so, moving on to exhibit B in the case against Christianity. Not only was it impossible to “find a single passage in the New Testament that could be read as upholding private property,” but Jesus Christ also topped this sin of omission with a sin of commission:

One thing of course is clear, and no skilful interpretation can obscure it. Jesus' words are full of resentment against the rich, and the Apostles are no meeker in this respect. The Rich Man is condemned because he is rich, the Beggar praised because he is poor. The only reason why Jesus does not declare war against the rich and preach revenge on them is that God has said: “Revenge is mine.”... Up to the time of modern Socialism no movement against private poverty which has arisen in the Christian world has failed to seek authority in Jesus, the Apostles, and the Christian Fathers, not to mention those who, like Tolstoy, made the Gospel resentment against the rich the very heart and soul of their teaching. This is a case in which the Redeemer's words bore evil seed. More harm has been done, and more blood shed, on account of them than by the persecution of heretics and the burning of witches.⁵⁴

One can only imagine how these passages must have endeared Mises to his Christian readers. But not only the Christian faithful will wonder if he had a proper understanding of political Christianity. It is clear that the Gospel of Christ had been abused many times in history. There is no doctrine that has been spared this fate, not even the doctrines of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. But Mises's claims seemed to be more than extravagant; they also raised a puzzle. How is it that Western civilization arose under the dominion of Christian doctrine, which seemed to be so steadfastly opposed to anything that makes society possible? Up to 1922, according to Mises's own admission, Christianity was a vibrant faith, and it had been so during the very centuries that witnessed the development of the West. How was this possible?

Mises answered that these cultural achievements were “the work of the Church, not of Christianity” and that the “social ethics of Jesus have no part in this cultural development.”⁵⁵

This evidence leads to the negation of the question asked above: whether it might not be possible to reconcile Christianity with a free social order based on private ownership in the means of production. A living Christianity cannot exist side by side with, and within, Capitalism.⁵⁶

Liberalism and Christianity were foes by their very nature, engaged in a struggle of life or death. Either Christianity would maintain the upper hand, or liberalism would crowd it out. No compromise was possible.

Ten years later, Mises had changed his mind. In the second edition of Socialism, he added two paragraphs that gave a much milder and reconciling tone to the conclusion. Mises now claimed that Christianity and liberalism might not be quite as antagonistic as he had at first assumed. They could flourish together, provided there was a new synthesis:

But there may be an alternative. No one can foresee with certainty how Church and Christianity may change in the future. Papacy and Catholicism now face problems incomparably more difficult than all those they have had to solve for over a thousand years. The world-wide Universal Church is threatened in its very being by Chauvinist nationalism. By refinement of political art it has succeeded in maintaining the principle of Catholicism through all the turmoil of national wars, but it must realize more clearly every day that its continuance is incompatible with nationalist ideas. Unless it is prepared to succumb, and make way for national churches, it must drive out nationalism by an ideology which makes it possible for nations to live and work together in peace. But in so doing the Church would find itself inevitably committed to Liberalism. No other doctrine would serve.

If the Roman Church is to find any way out of the crisis into which nationalism has brought it, then it must be thoroughly transformed. It may be that this transformation and reformation will lead to its unconditional acceptance of the indispensability of private ownership in the means of production. At present it is still far from this, as witness the recent encyclical Quadragesimo anno.⁵⁷

It is not known what changed his mind. It is possible Mises had second thoughts on Christianity and liberalism as a consequence of his activity as a counselor to Monsignor Ignaz Seipel, who according to many Catholic witnesses had a saintly character. He also came to realize that other scholars worked to bridge the gap that he saw between capitalism and Catholicism. Thus he would eventually characterize the influential Jesuit O. von Nell-Breuning as “one of the few German economists who in the Interwar period advocated economic freedom.”⁵⁸