Discussions at this national roundtable session got underway with the opening premise that the economic crisis and its social consequences have profoundly called into question the prevailing economic paradigm – a model based on competitive individualism, maximizing the profit of the individual, and an “invisible hand” regulating the market. The result is that the idea of the common interest merely being the sum of individual interests no longer seems sustainable in the current economic and social climate. The participants accordingly perceived a need to go beyond this concept of economic activity, which is confined solely to a commercial logic bereft of distributive justice, solidarity, subsidiarity and the concept of the gift, citing in support Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate, which indicates that “development, if it is to be authentically human, needs to make room for the principle of gratuitousness”.
All this – it was suggested – holds equally true for the market: commercial logic should be directed towards the pursuit of the common good. This necessitates economic forms based on solidarity. In short, “both the market and politics need individuals who are open to reciprocal gift”. In such a scenario, business management is called upon to assume a higher ethical responsibility and concern itself with all categories of stakeholders who contribute to the life and growth of the business. The State, for its part, will need to ensure a redistribution of wealth that reduces inequality and ensures social cohesion, without dampening the willingness of businesses to adapt and evolve.
These considerations led the participants to pose the question of where to start rebuilding the economic paradigm, and how the concept of gift might be accommodated in times of crisis. Inspiration for responding to these questions was found in the example of the Court of the Gentiles, built in the temple of Jerusalem: an area that everyone could traverse and remain in without distinctions of culture, language or religious profession. It was a meeting place and a melting pot of diversity. Using a framed painting as a metaphor for the new model proposed, it was argued that if the surrounding frame represents the dialogue made possible by the Court of the Gentiles, then the picture is one of commerce and gift.
The participants then turned to address the issue of how this new paradigm might take shape. It was noted that the English-speaking countries – chiefly the United Kingdom and the United States of America – are often cited as examples of societies where subsidiarity is prized. This way of organizing power relations, based on a very precise anthropology, transposes a holistic notion of the human being and society into political, economic and social life. Thus conceived, the linchpin of the legal order is the person, understood as a relational individual, and hence public responsibilities must in the first instance lie with those most directly proximate to people, their needs and their resources.
At the same time, however, it was acknowledged that European culture also has other roots that stretch back to distant times. Europe would not be as we know it today, including in social and economic terms, without the Benedictine and Franciscan movements, from which originated innovations that also proved fundamental for what would later become the market economy. The humanitarian sensibilities of many religious orders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which saw hospitals and schools established and charitable works carried out, marked the birth and development of the modern welfare state.
It was further highlighted that, in almost all industrialized countries, significant growth is now being witnessed in the so-called third sector, or rather, the entire range of social and economic initiatives that do not belong to the private for-profit sector nor to the public sector. These initiatives were noted as often springing from voluntary organizations and take various legal forms. In many senses, they represent a new (or renewed) manifestation of civil society, at a time of economic crisis, weakening social ties, and increasingly beleaguered public welfare systems. In Italy, there are around 600 social enterprises. It was suggested that for social enterprises to take off, they need to be able to rely on an extensive process of fiscal harmonization being undertaken, as well as on greater recognition being accorded them by local authorities and the State, in the form of incentives, including financial ones, or by being made fully eligible to be potential awardees of calls for tenders or proposals hitherto reserved solely for commercial companies.
It was stressed that while the market is undoubtedly about competition, it is nevertheless necessary to find space for purely charitable works, and hence, to redraw a boundary line between business and the concept of gift.
Once again, the participants pointed to Caritas in Veritate as an aid to understanding this notion of “going beyond”: “The human being is made for gift… charity transcends justice… but it never lacks justice… I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice…”.
In summing up, the participants reiterated that, on the one hand, charity demands justice, and on the other, it transcends justice and completes it in a logic of giving and forgiving. Returning to the metaphor of picture and frame, it is about re-discovering within the frame (the Court of the Gentiles) a shared space, breaking down cultural and attitudinal barriers and repainting the picture in new colors.