RESPONSE TO READING QUESTIONANAIRE

Allen Johnson

Spring, 1996

1. Bibliographical Data:

For the Common Good by Herman E. Daley and John B. Cobb, jr.

Boston: Beacon Press. 1989, 1994.

2. Summary:

For the Common Good proposes a third way over against capitalism and socialism for an economic order that is sustainable, just, and community enhancing. Theologian John B. Cobb and economist Herman Daley combine an extensive critique of the present individualistic, greed motivated, short sighted, and growth oriented economic milieu with a visionary construct of decentralized and regionalized communities living within the carrying capacity of the environment. Central to the authors' thesis is the "wild fact" that "the scale of human activity relative to the biosphere has grown too large" (p. 2). Never-ending economic growth is simply untenable; something must give, most likely the marginalized poor and their environments. The issue is thus moral and ultimately religious as well.

Cobb and Daley do indeed advocate a market economy, but with modifications such to facilitate community-based, environmentally-sustainable social orders. They argue that externalities such as pollution and resource depletion should be internalized as production costs; that trade protections are necessary to avoid labor exploitation; that renewable land and energy use must be enhanced; and that economic health indicators should measure true income as it reflects sustainability factors. Finally, the authors share their theological orientation to a theocentric vision in which "the way to serve God truly is to serve the neighbor" (p. 392).

3. Comment from a Personal, Critical Perspective:

Having anticipated reading this heavy volume for two years, I was not disappointed! Cobb's and Daley's vision and construction is compelling, and seems quite congruent with a Christian world view. Why then does the neo-classical economic model gain the upper-hand influence in most evangelical churches? James Dobson invites Larry Burkett to his "Focus on the Family" programs, not Herman Daley. I am convinced that any beneficial economic paradigm shift will be carried on the shoulders of the church. But where have such winds gathered?

Among this book's lessons I can point to several highly instructive to me. The section on fallacies of misplaced concreteness demonstrated that much market economic theory is built as a "house-of-cards" on abstract premises that omit entire factors such as people as community, resource finiteness, land rent value, equitable competition, and humankind as more than an insatiable consumption machine.

Cobb and Daley advocate a protectionist trade policy as enhancing community, citing the comparative advantage argument as fallacious in the light of global capital mobility. However I kept looking for commentary on specific international trade agreements such as NAFTA, to be disappointed by the authors' silence.

The only disturbing section was that of population, in part because its explosive growth coupled with increased consumption spells disaster. The authors hint abortion, euthanasia, and legislated family size options as unpalatable lesser of evils. But exponential population growth is directly derived from modern technologies such as in medicine, sanitation, epidemic control, nutrition, and famine relief. People who are already born want to stay alive irrespective of the cost, so new technologies will not be rolled back. Population is the great ethical frontier yet unresolved—but it must be!

4. Two Quotes:

The authors do not have a positive prognosis for the market's beneficence for lesser developed countries following their analysis of history. "We have come, as have many others, to the painful conclusion that very little of First World development effort in the Third World, and even less of business investment, has been actually beneficial to the majority of the Third World's people. On the whole, just as government policy in the United States has driven most farmers off the land while enriching a few, so development policies in the Third World have made many landless, filled the vast slums surrounding Third World cities, and added to the problem of hunger..... Assessments such as these have led us to the painful conclusion that for the most part the Third World would have been better off without international investment and aid. This investment and aid have destroyed the self-sufficiency of nations and rendered masses of their formerly self-reliant people unable to care for themselves.... We think in the long run it is better in most cases that we de-link their economy from ours" (pp. 289, 290).

Speaking about the Protestant form that emphasizes spirituality focused on the individual soul, the authors contend for added dimension. "We would combine that truth with another one, the truth powerfully affirmed in the biblical origins of the prophetic tradition that we are persons-in-community, that there is no genuinely human life when community is destroyed. We would affirm that all community is to be celebrated.... This message, we think, is now the one of greatest urgency for the world" (p. 391). The focus of Cobb and Daley in this book is that economics must facilitate people toward enhanced community life, over-against the present economic order that places individual self-interest within a competitive framework as the good. For the Christian, the question must be asked, which of these two thrusts are more compatible with the way of Christ?