Dr. Stefano Zamagni is a contributor to the Economy of Communion project, and was an advisor to Pope Benedict on the forthcoming encyclical Caritas in Veritate.
In a book of readings, The Economy of Communion (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), Dr. Zamagni has a thoughtful paper entitled "On the Foundation and Meaning of the 'Economy of Communion' experience."
In this paper, Dr. Zamagni makes distinctions between altruism and reciprocity, and between reciprocity and exchange of equivalents (e.g. market exchange). Why do these matter? In our current society, we tend to categorize every transfer of value as either altruism or market exchange. The Economy of Communion is trying to create a space for a third kind of transfer of value: reciprocity.
The altruist gives because he sees the recipient as helpless, and this can be perceived as demeaning to the other, when "it creates dependency in the one who receives" (p. 132). Market exchange requires an exact equivalence between what is exchanged--i.e. a fair price should be charged/paid for whatever is bought/sold.
Reciprocity, by contrast, recognizes that both the giver and the receiver are putting something into the relationship, even if their contributions are wildly "unequal."
Dr. Amy Uelmen of Fordham Law School, a consultant to the Economy of Communion project, illustrates this idea of reciprocity in a recent article, with the words of Archbishop Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria, during the Pope's recent trip to Africa, who was responding to a journalist's question about how the West should help Africa:
You asked how the West can ‘help’ Africa. We’re not interested in ‘help’ in that sense [that] we are exclusively the receivers of your generosity. We’re interested in a new kind of relationship, in which all of us, as equals, work out the right way forward.
The Economy of Communion says that it is possible for one to sometimes pay more than the market value of someone's work, or to ask for less than the market price for your goods, for the purpose of promoting the common good. While such an exchange will be something other than a market exchange, it does not make you an altruist, because the beneficiary of such an exchange is also contributing something (strengthening a relationship, for example), even if that contribution is not strictly 'equal' in value.
Is this naive? Can such a company stay in business? Well, there are over 700 such companies world wide right now, operating in this way. Back to Dr. Zamagni:
The Economy of Communion says to us that the market, under a very precise condition, can become an instrument which can reinforce social ties, favoring both the promotion of practices of wealth distribution through its mechanisms ... and the creation of an economic space in which it is possible to regenerate those values (such as trust, sympathy, benevolence on which the existence of the market itself depends (p. 134).
...
The Economy of Communion offers a practical demonstration that it is possible to give without losing and take without taking away (p. 139-40).
This kind of thinking--and acting--is exactly the kind of creativity and originality that papal encyclicals are supposed to inspire (rather than misguided attempts to force fit Church teaching into pre-existing theories). I do hope that the Holy Father has indeed chosen to refer to the Economy of Communion project in his new encyclical, because that will give the project the wider attention it deserves.
Recent Comments