The study of the economy does not begin with supply and demand curves, the profit motive, or any other predictive properties of a large body of people. It begins with the home.
Ancient philosophers and medieval Christian scholastics all agreed: you cannot have a political order until you have multiple economic orders, from oikonomia—a Greek word meaning “household management”—by which they meant self-sufficient families. People famously like to point out that the ancients had a different conception of economics than we do, that the etymological origins of our “economics” does not tend back to what they considered. My contention is that our modern economic analysis should consider what they did. Whereas modern economic thought considers market systems in tandem with human behavior, so did the ancients. But whereas contemporary economics is largely neutral between ends, the ancient pagans unequivocally believed that the end of economics was “acting as a philosopher or as an active participant in the life of the city-state.”[1] The economy began in the home and moved outward. Pope Leo XIII held to the same starting point: “We have the family, the ‘society’ of a man’s house—a society very small, one must admit, but nonetheless a true society, and one older than any State. Consequently, it has rights and duties peculiar to itself which are quite independent of the State” (Rerum Novarum §12). As does the Catechism:
The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. (CCC 2207)
If we understand economics to discuss how people produce and exchange the goods by which they and others need to survive and flourish, then there is no doubt that economics begins in the home. As the parents hold the authority of the household, they must provide for the family, and, as Pope Leo XIII said again, “In no other way can a father affect this except by the ownership of productive property, which he can transmit to his children by inheritance” (Rerum Novarum §13). Historically, this fact was a bit more obvious, especially in Christendom. The family would divide their labor, work their fields, and freely share among themselves. They participated with other families to extend their fraternity and increase their provisions. But one may object: “No one owns any land today! There are 69,468 people per square mile in Manhattan! How are we going to farm on that?” But it is precisely the fixed structures of modernity (including cities populated by permanent renters) that Catholic economics calls into question. In saying this, I am not advancing that everyone should return to the land (but given that those in Feudal societies ate very well [2], had greater festivals, prayed more, had no need of a welfare system [3], and hardly paid any taxes at all [4]—it shouldn’t be ruled out). What I am arguing is that the family needs to be a model for the economy as a whole—but an economy that has the Gospel as its lodestar.
That’s precisely what the Catechism says next: “The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society” (CCC 2207). In a mysterious sense, the family is for the sake of the society—but not the city-state, as the ancient Greeks believed, but the ideal society, the Church. As the family is to be the domestic church, it is the first taste of entering into the universal Church of God (CCC 2204). The family is the place in which we are to come into contact not only with the ideals of Christianity but also its life, a manifestation and a microcosm of God’s larger family. The Church guides a family how to live and the family, in turn, sends out people ready to reinforce the kind of society that justly cares for man and praises God.
Bringing money in
Because the family is a domestic church, it is in danger of idolatry, of becoming a formation into the false church of liberalism, in which the life of the matured liberal informs how we are to live in our families, and family life is reduced to a school preparing children to face the free market and the dangers of the world. To offer a basic example of this, consider a child’s allowance: “If you do your chores, you’ll get $7.50 at the end of the week.” Some say this is prudent, that such parents are instructing their kids in how to save, budget, and prepare for a life beyond the home. I say this is introducing an exchange-relationship in the family.
Money is a substitute for trust and for love. Think about it—if you ask your mom for an apple, she’ll just give you one; but if you ask a stranger, he’ll say, “That’ll be $1.20.” In a fallen world, where only some are buoyed up by the sacraments, money is a good solution to the precarious situation of lending freely to strangers. And don’t get me wrong—the market does have a place within a Christian economy, but the details of that market is for Christian Economics 201. With money, you can interact with more people, but those are not real relationships formed in God, virtue, and love; they are transactional ones. Society expands as money is introduced into it. Considering small tribal societies illuminates this idea. Anthropologists have demonstrated that these societies never use money, nor do they barter. They give and take freely. The members of such tribes do not need money—they know everyone and everyone knows them, and they care for all. [6] But they have to remain small; because they depend on knowledge and trust, and not on money, they cannot afford to grow too big. [7]
In contrast, money does not merely enable unknown people to have a successful exchange, it threatens to cause more alienation among friends. The enlargement of the economy goes hand in hand with the individualization and independence of its members. As Michael Sandel has said, “When we decide that certain goods may be bought and sold, we are deciding, at least implicitly, that it is appropriate to treat them as commodities, as instruments for profit and use.” [8] This is a dangerous thing—especially when we are trained to expand markets and use our ingenuity to find new ways to make money. The more we habituate ourselves to using money, the more we shrink from natural relationships. The more we think in terms of capitalist economics, the more we feel the need to repay and reimburse or be repaid and reimbursed by those whom nothing but a life of self-giving is owed. This is most obvious among friends whom we wonder if they’ll pay us back when we hand them the receipt after purchasing something small for them at the store.
This is the problem with paying kids for their chores: it habituates them, not only to think in terms of the competitive free market, but to extend it, work within its bounds, manifest exactitude in their hearts, when, in contrast, the family is supposed to train children in absolute love. This is the same problem of paying a nursing home to care for our parents and schools and after-school programs to raise our children. These things certainly can have a remedial place in society, but they are to catch those who fall through the cracks and not offer parents the chance of a few more hours of freedom. But even within this liberal system, the family’s love often remains intact. Families are points of resistance to a bad society, insofar as they continue to hold, as a kind of divine spark, the image and life of the Church where free gifts are given and received. To ignore this spark dismisses the catechism’s insight—that, whether you like it or not, “family life is an initiation into life in society”—which could mean initiating children into an order of money instead of an order of love.
The gift economy
God gives us a great task in this life: to clothe ourselves with Christ and to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven. And there is no money in heaven. All the gold will have been used to pave the roads, apparently (Rev 21:21). In his superb telling of Mr. Wingfold’s fictional ascent to heaven, novelist George MacDonald recalls Wingfold’s amazement when finding that in heaven, “No man paid, and no man had a book wherein to write that which the other owed!” This captures the prophecy of Isaiah: “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost” (Is 55:1). If heaven is to be wherein we enter God Himself, who is Love, then there is no need for exactitude or for fear of future provision. There is only free giving and receiving, begetting and proceeding.
This is supposed to be the economics of the family—everyone working to help one another, not out of self-interest, but love. And it is this model that we are supposed to cultivate in our homes that we may extend it out into our communities. We allow our children to practice loving, sharing, rejoicing, and, yes, even receiving undeserved gifts, that they may know what it is to be a child of God and to then take these sacred dispositions to better love their neighbors.
Some readers, if they have gotten this far, will be shaking their heads, calling me an idealist, and saying how impractical this is for the modern world. And while, like C.S. Lewis, I won’t balk at the term “idealist,” replying that we must know our guiding North Star so that we can march toward it, I want to suggest that this theory is much more obvious than the economic theories of free-market capitalists today (and, while at it, socialism, which I find so obviously wrong it is not worth bothering to argue against here, but AWJ does so here). The capitalist may say that this idea of self-giving sounds a lot like socialist handouts, that the idea does not lead people to be independent, self-sufficient, or motivated to get out of the house. They may object by turning to F.A. Hayek’s plan for hope:
It was men’s submission to the impersonal forces of the market that in the past has made possible the growth of a civilisation which without this could not have developed; it is by thus submitting that we are every day helping to build something that is greater than anyone of us can fully comprehend. [9]
Hayek specifies that we must submit to the profit motive, to the mechanisms of supply and demand, and specifically not to do otherwise. But this, I counter, is not realistic. Beyond being idolatrous (the market is greater than us; that we must submit to it; that the market creates civilization), his theory misses the obvious fact that the building block of society, the family, just does not work that way.
In fact, it never really works this way. People obsessively point to the profit motive (at worst) or the rational orientation toward preservation of self and family (at best) to describe the deepest economic impulses in man. And while, doubtless, it is true that we want to provide for ourselves, it is a figment of a lame Lockean imagination that says this is what we most profoundly desire. Take the top business leadership books—they’re not about creating the best system or subtle tips for increasing cash flow. They all tell you to inspire employees, have a clear mission, change the world. The good boss, one is told, gives his employees a vision beyond themselves that they must accomplish for the betterment of all (in some way or another). The hard data backs this up, too. From motivating students to raise donations for cancer research [10], and from motivating citizens to have a nuclear plant put in their neighborhood [11], to giving blood [12]—money dampens motivation, and if it doesn’t, then motivation doesn’t last all that long. [13]
Our deepest desires are beyond dollars and bills, so much so that management typically only gets workers to produce more by appealing to higher goods: to their love for their family, to their desire to change the world, make an impact, build community, and so forth. And we certainly are far more prone to give, and give freely, than most gloomy liberals would say we are.
Capitalists often remind us of the line: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” But that’s a bit silly when you consider the family: we do give people fish everyday, and we call those people children. It would be barbaric otherwise. But this is what distinguishes familial handouts from condemnable socialism: It is not a system or regulations that force unjust redistribution; it is virtue modeling after God that leads to gift. All of our economies begin with a gift economy, with an order of love. It was that way ever since the beginning and still is now as God gratuitously sustains us at every moment. In the Levitical code, God commands that we give the needy handouts—whether he’s down on his luck because of his own foolishness or because life has brought unexpected predicaments. But these gifts are directed toward raising people up so that they in turn can go about doing God’s work. Every father is ecstatic when his son takes his first steps. But any father would be mortified if his teenage son still stumbled around like a one-year-old.
This is where Locke’s labor theory breaks down. The liberal founder suggests that the right to nature’s common property (i.e. land) is based upon one’s ability to work it. But in a family, everyone uses their property. This is not only a justification for the medieval commons, but also a clarification that, despite the Church’s unequivocal support for private property, private property must be “considered in relation to man’s social and domestic obligations,” as Pope Leo XIII said. The owner has an exclusive right to use his property for the sake of others. This is how we expand the care of the family beyond itself. What we are to do is nurture this disposition to give so that it extends beyond the home and into society—for starters, to get money out of neighbor exchanges and neighbors back in community together.
This means parents must be dedicated to handing their children responsibilities as early as possible—looking after their siblings, helping prepare dinner, cleaning the home, fixing the broken chair, doing the laundry—dividing labors. They also must understand that their actions have real consequences: if they fail to do the dishes, they shouldn’t fail to receive an allowance, but they may have their, and the rest of the family’s, dinners delayed because they neglected this responsibility. Failing to earn their “income” suggests that failing to achieve their responsibilities primarily hurts themselves; the family not having dishes suggests to the children their work is needed for their little economy. If we fail to do this, then we do not raise our children but send them out into the world still as needy children. They become either avaricious Wall Street predators or violent BLM rioters—in either case they replace their duties with their liberal rights. The family economy is about raising children into brothers in Christ, developing a fraternal economy. Ultimately, it is about preparing the next leaders of the family.
Economic sciences today do not have heaven as their end. They replace the Beatific vision with personal gain, financial stability, and universal prosperity as their goal. The Christian end of economics, however, is not a liberal utopia but the Kingdom of Heaven. Sufficient money for all should not define the form of the economy; love for neighbor ought to. Love must be nurtured in a household. The family is the training ground of virtue. To understand care of neighbor to be the end of economics reveals that it is a moral science, not a mechanistic one. And as we labor to create a just economy, we should always remember Christian Economics 101, which reminds us of the lodestar toward which we march: being raised into the full stature of Christ.
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I’ll offer three practical ways our economy could be improved by modeling after, and in fact, depending more on, the family.
Limit time in school: We need to limit our children’s time in school so that the majority of prime waking and working hours are not away from home but in it. In grade school, in particular, children are segregated by age, which is improper. This means that there is no one younger they are responsible for and no one other than the teacher who has responsibility over them. They are not called upon to make lunch, tend the garden, break up fights. Several hours per day in school begins to habituate students toward being consumers who only receive information and never have responsibilities beyond meager assignments (that center around the nurturing of his own mind so that he can get a good job, etc. etc.) Education is essential, but exporting the raising of children in environments a-typical of the home for long periods is something to be avoided.
Nepotism: Give your lazy nephew a job and let him live at your house. Nepotism gets a bad rap in our merit-obsessed society. But nepotism—a good form of it—is not about favoritism but about loyalty and responsibility to those God has set you to love. Our current class of woke Gen-Zers will continue to burn down businesses across America until someone employs them and tells them what to do. This must begin at a young age so they are habituated toward hard work and not toward screaming until they get their way. So families must employ their children—not to work at their home but outside of it—earlier.
Mandatory Rent to Own: As all landlords know, it makes no sense to rent. If you are a student, a long-term visitor, or a start-up, you can get a pass on this one, but especially now when HFA down payments are so cheap and interest rates so low, there is little excuse for a renter not to buy. But apart from the financial benefits of owning one’s own home, a class of people habituated toward renting never allows them to cultivate the disposition of responsibility: they always call their landlord instead of fixing the dripping faucet themselves. Mandatory rent to own does two things: (1) It challenges the owner of a rental property to stop taking advantage of people when he knows it is financially better to own than to rent. (2) It forces renters to rise up to the responsibility of caring for their own things through owning their own things.
[2] Woolgar, C. M., Serjeantson, D., & Waldron, T. (Eds.). (2011). Food in medieval England: Diet and nutrition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
[3] William Cobbett’s History of the English Reformation tells of this transition in the last chapter.
[4] There is a great host of literature on this. A fine article is by Richard W. Unger, “Trade, Taxation, and Government Policy in the High Middle Ages”
[5] I must say that the benefits of feudal society mentioned would simply not be applicable with a mere “return to the land” solution outside of a feudal society itself. In other words, if we would all receive land in our modern economy, one would spend most of his day driving to get to church, see neighbors, etc. We must animate the just distribution of productive property with the sacraments, the Christian life in God.
[6] David Graber, in Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Ch 2 makes this point. Within the chapter he cites Cambridge’s Caroline Humphrey who says, “No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money; all available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing.”
[7] The literature states this maximum number is about 150 people.
[8] Michael Sandel, What Money Can’t Buy (New York: Allen Lane, 2012), 9.
[9] F.A. Hayek, Road to Serfdom (London: Rutledge, [1944]), 210.
[10] Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rstichini, “Pay Enough or Don't Pay at All” Quarterly Journal of Economics 115.3 (2020): 791-810.
[11] Frey and Oberholzer-Gee, “The Cost of Price Incentives: An Empirical Analysis of Motivation Crowding-Out” American Economic Review 87.4 (1997): 67-78.
[12] Richard M. Titmuss, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Polity (New York: Pantheon, 1971).
[13] Consider the following for starters: Jordan Lite, “Money over Matter: Can Cash incentives Keep People Healthy?” Scientific American, March 21, 2011; Michael S. Holdstead, Terry E. spradlin, Margaret E. McGillivray, and Nathan Burroughs, “The impact of Advanced Placement Incentive Programs” India University, Centre for Evaluation & Education Policy, Education Policy Brief vol. 8, Winter 2010.