Prospects for Creative Synthesis

Abstract

Reflection on our efforts to probe the community dimensions of economic enterprise might concentrate on the interpretative theme which Peter Danner traces through Western history with gentle wit, expository grace, and a fine display of mellow erudition: the emergence, articulation, and moral legitimation of a specific, distinctive conception of economic activity. His paper shows how Western man has come to discern a controlling principle of action which provides moral justifica? tion and guidance for economic endeavor. Other program participants make a complementary contribution to our economic understanding ? showing how such a principle needs to be qualified and indicating how and why it might be given a more adequate, post-capitalist institutional implementation. Danner's analysis focuses on that most characteristic of all capitalist ?institutions ? the for-profit firm. The basic, controlling principle of action that motivates the firm is the drive for economic gain. A given bundle of inputs expand in exchange value when combined in an efficient production by the firm's management. The expansion of value is caused not by extraction of unpaid surplus labor from the workers (as in the Marxian view), but by the net production of new wealth. Due to the complementarity among productive factors, raw material (leather) expands in use value and hence in exchange value as it is converted into finished products (shoes). It is the mutual desire to share this positive sum of expanded value that induces participants ? workers, investors, managers, and customers ? to join in the continued functioning of the firm. It would be a mistake, so Danner's analysis indicates, to identify such a pursuit of economic with egoistic self interest. Quite to the contrary, the drive for receives moral legitimation from the realiza? tion that human history is progressive and that gain seeking by way of the economic process [Danner, p. 234] contributes to the wider of moral, social and cultural development. When combined with the virtues of moderation and justice, when informed by that spirit of poverty taught Western civilization by Benedict, Francis, and Ignatius and emphasized by Calvin and the Reformers, the pursuit of is given an ultimate, transcendant meaning. The wealth acquired through