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Fifty Years on from Populorum Progressio Louis Lebret 2017 VOLUME 1, NO.7 Fifty Years on from Populorum Progressio Louis Lebret: The Legacy of the Mentor of Populorum Progressio Fernando de la Iglesia Viguiristi, SJ BEATUS POPULUS, CUIUS DOMINUS DEUS EIUS Copyright, 2017, Union of Catholic Asian Editor-in-chief News ANTONIO SPADARO, SJ All rights reserved. Except for any fair Editorial Board dealing permitted under the Hong Kong Antonio Spadaro, SJ – Director Copyright Ordinance, no part of this Giancarlo Pani, SJ – Vice-Director publication may be reproduced by any Domenico Ronchitelli, SJ – Senior Editor means without prior permission. Inquiries Giovanni Cucci, SJ, Diego Fares, SJ should be made to the publisher. Francesco Occhetta, SJ, Giovanni Sale, SJ Title: La Civiltà Cattolica, English Edition Emeritus editor Virgilio Fantuzzi, SJ Giandomenico Mucci, SJ GianPaolo Salvini, SJ Contributing Editor Luke Hansen, SJ Contributors Federico Lombardi, SJ (Italy) George Ruyssen, SJ (Belgium) Fernando De la Iglesia, SJ (Spain) Drew Christiansen, SJ (USA) Andrea Vicini, SJ (USA) David Neuhaus, SJ (Israel) Camilo Ripamonti, SJ (Italy) Vladimir Pachkow, SJ (Russia) Arturo Peraza, SJ (Venezuela) Bert Daelemans, SJ (Belgium) Thomas Reese, SJ (USA) Paul Soukup, SJ (USA) Friedhelm Mennekes, SJ (Germany) Marcel Uwineza, SJ (Rwanda) Populorum Progressio: the Fulfillment of a Prophecy Fernando de la Iglesia Viguiristi, SJ The world of Bretton Woods The encyclical Populorum Progressio (PP) was published on March 26th, 1967, just as the decade of the sixties was coming to an end. It was an extraordinary time. After rebuilding the 1 wreckage left after World War II, national economies, especially in Europe, were suddenly and steadily growing. At that point, it was becoming clear how timely the agreements were that had been reached at Bretton Woods (New Hampshire, U.S.A.) to establish a postwar, international economic order with the creation of three supranational institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the area of finance, the World Bank in the area of development, and the International Trade Organization (ITO). After the United States Congress, afraid of losing autonomy in trade matters, failed to ratify the third of these, 23 countries gathered in Geneva in 1947, and through negotiations aimed at reducing trade tariffs, approved the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT), an international accord on duties and commerce. The aim of both the GATT and the WTO was to obtain a free market system on a global scale, beginning from a situation riddled with difficulties. The first five rounds of negotiations from 1947 to 1961 basically established product-by-product negotiated tariff reductions. The “Kennedy Round” (1964-1967) of negotiations, which basically covered the three years leading up to Populorum Progressio, went on to confront a wider range of issues and procedures. FERNANDO DE LA IGLESIA VIGUIRISTI, SJ During the peace of the next twenty years, a Keynesian type of economic politics guaranteed economic stability and made possible sustained economic growth. This allowed Western societies to finance various means of providing federal welfare. In terms of breadth and depth, the economic progress in the wake of Bretton Woods was greater than in any other period. Not without reason was it said that if there was ever a golden age of globalization, that was it.1 By 1967 most of the former colonies had achieved independence; an achievement in which they placed great hopes and expectations. The socioeconomic choices of these countries greatly varied. There was no general sense that they would eventually suffer an economic crisis. But symptoms 2 were already emerging that the world situation simply could not endure. There were unacceptable inequalities in levels of production and revenue between First World countries and their former colonies. It was within this socioeconomic context that Populorum Progressio came to light. It appeared two years after the closure of Vatican II. In a moment of such ecclesial renewal and hope, Paul VI’s encyclical made explicit the points that the Council had dedicated to the topic of development in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes. The conciliar fathers were aware both of the fact that the economy had become an instrument with the capacity to meet the growing needs of the human family, and the agonizing fact that enormous swaths of the world’s population were living without basic needs being met. It was time to introduce deep reforms in socioeconomic life and serious changes in mindsets and habits (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 63). Toward an integral development in solidarity Populorum Progressio revolves around one central idea: development. The first part of the document asserts that development must be integral. The second part insists on solidarity for a common development. The encyclical offers a theology and a philosophy based on these two concepts with interesting implications. 1.Cf. D. Rodrick, La globalizzazione intelligente (Bari: Laterza, 2015), 112. FIFTY YEARS ON FROM POPULORUM PROGRESSIO In this, his second encyclical, Paul VI remains close to the thought of Father Louis-Joseph Lebret,2 and his oft-cited definition of development is significant: “development … cannot be restricted to economic growth alone. To be authentic, it must be well-rounded; it must foster the development of each man and of the whole man” (PP, 14); “this is what will guarantee man’s authentic development – his transition from less than human conditions to truly human ones” (PP, 20). But just what do economists mean by “development,” and what kind of vision emerges from the declarations made by international organizations? Simon Kuznets, a Nobel laureate in economics, wrote in 1990 that economic development is the enhanced capacity over time to furnish the population with economic goods that are increasingly diversified. It is founded 3 upon technological development and requires institutional and ideological changes. A few years later, we find the following declaration emerging from the United Nations: “And the purpose of development is to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives. This simple but powerful truth is too often forgotten in the pursuit of material and financial wealth.”3 From this we can derive a definition of human development as the continued improvement of conditions that allow people to live a long life in good health and in creative peace. This definition had been proposed for the first time in a report on human development issued by the United Nations’ Program for Development in 1990. The director of the program, Mahbub ul Haq, proposed and helped to design a “Human Development Index” (HDI) for all countries that made it possible to gauge this development with concrete figures. Even though this was a great step forward in the necessary task of comprehending and measuring the various elements implied in human development, it was not a completely adequate measure of the vision of development in terms of “capabilities.” This was the insight of another Nobel prizewinner in economics, 2.Cf. Paul Poupard, “Le Pere Lebret, le Pape Paul VI et l’encyclique Populorum Progressio vingt ans apres,” in Notiziario Istituto Paul VI, 14 (1987), 71-84. 3.Chapter 1, 11. FERNANDO DE LA IGLESIA VIGUIRISTI, SJ the philosopher and economist Amartya Sen, who held that development must be evaluated on the basis of how it allows both a widening of the range of alternatives – for example, between work and consumption – and also the possibility of choosing, or rather of being truly free. As Amartya Sen himself acknowledged, this is a very individualistic perspective that does not reconcile well with the social and institutional dimensions of development. Social justice, solid social relations, and assured continuity of a standard of living require both freedom for individual initiative and collective action. This makes it necessary to complete the Index of Human Development with indicators of social justice, the availability of public goods, cooperation and collective action. 4 Hence the need to insert into the index factors of economic inequality, gender inequality, and other inequalities among groups most susceptible to deprivation. Two results of the econometric studies need to be mentioned here. The first is that there is a positive correlation between per capita income and the index of individual development. Higher income levels are correlated with higher values in the HDI: in other words, there is a positive correlation – as they say in econometric jargon – but it is not linear: that is, there is no one-to-one correspondence. The second result is observed, or rather measured. It is that improvements in human development support economic development to the point that not a few experts consider the former (human development) a component or a critical input in the latter (economic development). The social dimension of development forces us to acknowledge that a society does not attain it if it is not able to reduce levels of absolute poverty drastically; or, more practically, to eliminate it altogether. Without attaining this social goal a society cannot consider itself evolved because, within it, there is a significant part of the population that must seek its means of sustenance every moment of every day. According to the established definition, anyone who cannot count on an income of at least $1.25 a day falls within this category. It goes without saying that this level of income signifies a very precarious condition. There is no human development if FIFTY YEARS ON FROM POPULORUM PROGRESSIO there is no improvement in the living conditions of the entire population. Here it should be noted that the battle against poverty cannot be reduced merely to the goal of increasing the Gross Domestic Product. There must also be some political action ensuring redistribution in favor of the poor, and more specifically, political attention to universalizing social services, social security, health, and education. Not always, but in some cases, economic growth in the early stages of development – the length of which is quite considerable at times – can result in an increase in inequality.
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