Category: Commentary

Today, October 27, 2022, is the one hundredth anniversary of Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome, the insurgent action which brought him to power in Italy a few days later.  As the Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini, a former mainstream socialist and a follower of the syndicalist Georges Sorel, would build out an economic and political system of national socialism.  He would call it “fascism,” using an ancient Latin metaphor for binding individuals together in a corporate unity.

We have almost entirely forgotten Mussolini, but that is a grave mistake.  His version of socialism – a nationalist one, turning its back on class conflict and promoting a “volk” – has proved to be the more successful version of socialism.  Along with international proletarian communism, fascism is also an anti-capitalist mode of organizing a society, using corporatist management of enterprise under the suzerainty of one political party and its leader, its “Duce” or its “Fuhrer.”

While experiments in proletarian, Marxist socialism failed, Mussolini-ism is still very much with us.

Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China are quite obviously “national” socialist states, centered on the mythos of their respective “volk” community.

The October issue of our newsletter Pegasus, soon to be published and sent to you, will contain a longer essay of mine on the lasting impact of national socialism.

We often struggle with the abstraction of ethics and morals, compassion and responsibility.  They are not tangible assets, though they have tangible impacts.  They are, are they not, like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” which we can’t touch, but which process can give us our daily bread.

At the Caux Round Table, we more and more feel an obligation to point out and even attempt to “measure” intangibles, like social capital and human capital, as essential to a moral capitalism.

So, I was struck recently when reading this account in a report on the fighting in Ukraine: “Sergo’s story, and many others that I heard like it, illustrates the real reasons for Ukraine’s success, which go far deeper than the critical U.S. supply of long-range, precision weapons or the shoddiness of the Russian army.  The Ukrainians know why they are fighting; theirs is an existential war for survival. … “We are smaller than Russia and don’t have so much artillery or manpower, but we have social capital,” said Yehor Soboliev.

Jesus said something about the value of the intangible, of the spirit: “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)

The Dao De Jing notes that: “We make a bowl from a lump of clay; it is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful.  Thus, while the tangible is of selfish advantage, it is the intangible that creates that usefulness.”

The New Criterion is a monthly journal on arts and the intellectual life published in New York City with Roger Kimball as its Editor and Publisher.  It derives from the articulate and avant-garde tradition of New York City intellectuals, only its non-conformity takes on the conventional wisdom of progressive intellectuals and activists to expose the underside of those narratives.

Kimball is an eloquent writer, never at a loss for a good turn of phrase and unabashed about being judgmental.

In this recent essay, he deconstructs the adoption of woke virtue signaling by the Wharton Business School.

In effect, he refuses to accept “virtue signaling” as a constructive morality for business.  In this, he indirectly ratifies the position of Adam Smith that the morality, the prudent usefulness of business is to create wealth and so improve the conditions under which humanity can live.

Someone must pay for most everything we need or desire and where, do you suppose, the wealth to make all those payments will come from?

Under Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, he supposes that we want to move from meeting basic needs of food and shelter to higher order, more intangible desires to experience self-actualization.  But to live a life that permits self-actualization (the way most of us want to self-actualize) takes money.  So, again, to live as most of us would wish, we need wealth.  Those who create the wealth which flows our way do us a great service.

Making possible those better circumstances for us all is virtue in action.

Kimball’s disdain for the superficial in business education reminds me of the old saying, “If you want golden eggs, the first thing you must do is catch the right goose.”

You can read his essay on the American Greatness website, where he frequently contributes, here.

After reading Michael Hartoonian’s essay on technology in our September issue of Pegasus, Professor Hashim Kamali sent me his draft article on technology and the moral purposes of Sharia law in Islam – the maqasid.  In my judgement, study of the maqasid should be of priority for all non-Muslims and more widely emphasized within the Muslim ummah, as well.

You may read his essay here.

Prof. Kamali draws on the maqasid to make an important distinction between the black letter law and the higher purposes, which give law its virtuous legitimacy.

This distinction was also drawn by Jesus Christ in this passage from the New Testament:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You tithe a tenth of your spices–mint, dill and cumin.  But you have neglected the more important matters of the law–justice, mercy and faithfulness.  You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. (Matthew 23:23)

Prof. Kamali is the founding CEO of the International Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  He previously served as Professor of Islamic law and jurisprudence at the International Islamic University Malaysia and also as Dean of the International Institute of Islamic Thought & Civilisation from 1985 to 2007.  One author has described him as “the most widely read living author on Islamic law in the English language.”  Prof. Kamali received his BA from the University of Kabul, his LLM in comparative law from the London School of Economics and Political Science and his Ph.D. in Islamic and Middle Eastern law at the University of London.  He features in the book, The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World (2009, 2010, 2016, 2019 and 2020).

The other month, before Putin invaded Ukraine if memory serves correctly, a wise friend of mine just said of our increasingly troubled times: “The Enlightenment has run out of gas.”

In short, there is a crisis of faith unhinging Western civilization and the world order it built after defeating Fascism and Soviet Communism.

The European Enlightenment privileged human reason as the giver of truth and certainty.

Nietzsche, however, as many of us can recall, pointed out the hubris of that position.  Reason, manipulated by our minds, can go haywire and fall in love with narrow extremes and intolerances.

One of the giants of the Enlightenment was Immanuel Kant.

He once asked, “What is the Enlightenment?,” answering that it was “man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.”

So, to promote our personal and presumably also our collective maturity, Kant challenged us to “Dare to know!”

But … what if Kant took his ideas to extremes, in the process losing a sense of proportion, balance and equilibrium?

Then, what he called “immaturity” might actually be maturity of judgment and character and his “maturity” only a turn towards infantilism, with its myopic self-absorptions and will to power over others.

Recently, I ran across a short observation drawn from the life of Saint Therese of Lisieux, “The Little Flower.”  Not a Catholic, I was only vaguely aware of her name.

The observation – by an attorney – that her following “the little way” to saintly honor, not with heroic martyrdom or other remarkable accomplishment, applies to the implementation of moral capitalism.  Her “little way” in life starts from the knowledge that “our Lord does not so much look at the greatness of our actions or even their difficulty, as the love with which we do them.”

The observant lawyer wrote “Small deeds … are everywhere, and when done with great love, they cease to be small.”

I thought how fitting her advice would be as the “mindset” of a moral capitalist – just take small steps, do small deeds, but many of them, day in and day out, out of due care and concern for outcomes.

That application of the moral sense would turn the ordinary and mundane into the extraordinary and meaningful.

What is to prevent us each from doing so?

Last Sunday, Italian voters in an election for Parliament gave a small plurality to the Brothers of Italy party and its leader, Giorgia Meloni.  The Party’s history harks back to the Fascist movement of Benito Mussolini.

Previously in an election in Sweden, a party of the right also won impressive support from voters.

The emotional issue activating voters to support both parties seems to have been immigration – too much immigration, that is.

Those voters raise the ethical issue of the right of nationals to maintain their own culture and not have it diluted by newcomers who think and behave according to the cultures to which they were born and in which they were raised.

From a standpoint of open societies and democracy, is there an ethic for immigrants to assimilate when they move to a new nation?  Or, is there an ethic of respect for “indigenous” people and their values and traditions?

This question was discussed at the Caux Round Table’s 2018 Global Dialogue in St. Petersburg, Russia.  A statement was drafted addressing the challenges of immigration.

In part, the statement concluded that:

The ethics of an immigrant: serving as prospective citizen and holding the offices of friend and guest.

Immigrants – refugee, asylum seeker, worker, student, retiree – become residents of a nation state with the intention of making a life as part of that community.  As such, they have the status of prospective citizen, learning how to assume the privileges and obligations of citizenship and the status of friend, obligated to perform the office of friend in their new homeland.

In gratitude for receiving permission to become a resident and then, perhaps, a citizen, immigrants should be particularly alert to being a gracious guest.

You may read the statement here.

I want to share with you a response from Hector Garcia, an old friend with a deep connection to Moral Re-Armament, now Initiatives of Change, which inspired the creation of the Caux Round Table in 1986.  Hector adds his thoughts on the importance of “labor” as a worthy force in our living, not merely as drudgery or that which is only there for exploitation by those more powerful or wealthy than the “worker.”

I learned much from your Labor Day letter.  The diverse insights of religious prophets and teachers and their value were a good learning experience.  Personally, I believe Pope John Paul’s encyclicals focus on actualizing our potential role as co-creators of the universe (the missed opportunity presented in Genesis) holds the answer to the question you sent with the Bethel University meeting proceedings: “Where is the middle space in which we can find each other on good terms?”

Choosing to finally enact this role can prevent the apocalyptic option described in William Butler Yeats’ poem, “Second Coming,” which you included.  Enjoyed the political, economic and ethnic complementarity, which was present in the letter.

I believe the Founding Fathers accomplished an unprecedented bridging of the spiritual, economic and political.  Through arduous and inspired labor, they balanced the 3 realms, while factoring in human limitations and prioritizing the different values within each on the basis of ideals, historical experience and the Founders’ moment in time.

It seems to me that we have lost that balance and prioritization by gradually reducing reality to STEM through academic atheism and the prosperity gospel.  The latter is now attempting to reduce reality further to STEM because physical science is supporting the conclusion that humans are having a significant impact on global climate change.

The funeral honors given Elizabeth, the second of that name to be Queen of
England, were estimated to have been watched, at least in part, by 4.1 billion people globally.  It was the largest television event in the history of humanity, encompassing cultures, races, ethnicities, countries and religions.

We have arrived at an age of irrepressible globalism, thanks to technologies created by the private sector and sold for a profit, including not only television and cell phones, but also aircraft and waterborne shipping containers.

In retrospect, Queen Elizabeth lived with a grace and fortitude detached from the parochialisms created and sustained by culture, ethnicity, race, nations and religion.  And so her passing was noted by so many who were not her subjects.  The response to her passing gives evidence of a moral sense in most of us, whoever we are and wherever we live.

To me, the blessing given at the close of her burial service by the Archbishop of Canterbury, taken from the estimable Book of Common Prayer used for centuries by the Church of England, most appropriately echoed the humanity which can resonate in each of us after our own fashion:

GO forth into the world in peace; Be of good courage, hold fast that which is good, render to no one evil for evil; strengthen the fainthearted, support the weak, help the afflicted, honour all people, love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit; …

And so may each of you go forth into our world with all its tribulations and shortcomings.

This past Sunday, my wife Hoa and I were in Wellfleet, Cape Cod.  I decided, more or less on a whim or, more likely, to once again feel part of that New England Calvinist culture which centered my Father’s family for generations in this continent.  I went to the local Congregational Church, now part of the United Church of Christ.  The congregation in Wellfleet was 301 years old.  Its church had been built in 1850, very solid in design and construction, very Yankee without fuss or feathers, plain and utilitarian, as if built for use in a work of worthy substance.

Wellfleet is just a few miles from where, in 1620, the Pilgrims first came ashore after their voyage from Delft-Haven in Holland to what would be called “New” England.  Not finding the land well-disposed for settlement, they sailed farther along the coast to make their new home in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  As God-fearing, but very practical in worldly ways, the Pilgrims were on an “errand into the wilderness,” the better to find solace in their faith.  Their “errand” was to inspire and guide the American Republic ever since.  As one of our Caux Round Table Fellows says, “Behaviors are the residuals of values.”  Puritan values have had a long shelf-life in the behaviors of my fellow citizens for 400 years and through many of them, in the world beyond our shores, as well.

The service centered on hymns.  There was no sermon.  Most of the hymns were not familiar to me, raised a Unitarian.  One was new, from 1995.  It was “Restless Weaver.”  I was surprised how such new lyrics connected so well with the Puritan tradition of yore, when so much these days is a rejection of the past, of duty and sacrifice, of making a Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan’s 1678 tale), day by day, through a hard and cold world, into an unknown future, with head held high and courage at the ready.

The last verse was:

Restless Weaver, still conceiving new life – now and yet to be – Binding all your vast creation in one living tapestry: You have called us to be weavers.  Let your love guide all we do.  With your Reign of Peace our pattern, we will weave your world anew.

Remarkable, I thought.  Expressed here is the very sentiment which inspired the Caux Round Table’s Principles for Business, a sentiment shared by the Japanese, Europeans and Americans who drafted the principles, each in their own way a restless weaver seeking a better world for all of us.