Thus, while the entire encyclical is a plea for the products of industrial wealth, it is scornfully indifferent to their source; it asserts a right to the effects, but ignores the cause; it purports to speak on a lofty moral plane, but leaves the process of material production outside the realm of morality— as if that process were an activity of a low order that neither involved nor required any moral principles.
I quote from Atlas Shrugged: “An industrialist—blank-out—there is no such person. A factory is a ‘natural resource,’ like a tree, a rock or a mud puddle…. Who solved the problem of production? Humanity, they answer. What was the solution? The goods are here. How did they get here? Somehow. What caused it? Nothing has causes.” (The last sentence is inapplicable; the encyclical’s answer would be: “Providence.”)
The process of production is directed by man’s mind. Man’s mind is not an indeterminate faculty; it requires certain conditions in order to function—and the cardinal one among them is freedom. The encyclical is singularly, eloquently devoid of any consideration of the mind’s requirements, as if it expected human thought to keep on gushing forth anywhere, under any conditions, from under any pressures—or as if it intended that gusher to stop.
If concern for human poverty and suffering were one’s primary motive, one would seek to discover their cause. One would not fail to ask: Why did some nations develop, while others did not? Why have some nations achieved material abundance, while others have remained stagnant in subhuman misery? History and, specifically, the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the nineteenth century, would give an immediate answer: capitalism is the only system that enables men to produce abundance—and the key to capitalism is individual freedom.
It is obvious that a political system affects a society’s economics, by protecting or impeding men’s productive activities. But this is what the encyclical will neither admit nor permit. The relationship of politics and economics is the thing it most emphatically ignores or evades and denies. It declares that no such relationship exists.
In projecting its world of the future, where the civilized countries are to assume the burden of helping and developing the uncivilized ones, the encyclical states: “And the receiving countries could demand that there be no interference in their political life or subversion of their social structures. As sovereign states they have the right to conduct their own affairs, to decide on their policies and to move freely toward the kind of society they choose.” (54)
What if the kind of society they choose makes production, development, and progress impossible? What if it practices communism, like Soviet Russia?—or exterminates minorities, like Nazi Germany?—or establishes a religious caste system, like India?—or clings to a nomadic, anti-industrial form of existence, like the Arab countries?—or simply consists of tribal gangs ruled by brute force, like some of the new countries of Africa? The encyclical’s tacit answer is that these are the prerogatives of sovereign states—that we must respect different “cultures”—and that the civilized nations of the world must make up for these deficits, somehow.
Some of the answer is not tacit “Given the increasing needs of the underdeveloped countries, it should be considered quite normal for an advanced country to devote a part of its production to meet their needs, and to train teachers, engineers, technicians and scholars prepared to put their knowledge and their skill at the disposal of less fortunate peoples.” (48)
The encyclical gives severely explicit instructions to such emissaries. “They ought not to conduct themselves in a lordly fashion, but as helpers and co-workers. A people quickly perceives whether those who come to help them do so with or without affection . . . Their message is in danger of being rejected if it is not presented in the context of brotherly love.” (71) They should be free of “all nationalistic pride”; they should “realize that their competence does not confer on them a superiority in every field.” They should realize that theirs “is not the only civilization, nor does it enjoy a monopoly of valuable elements.” They should “be intent on discovering, along with its history, the component elements of the cultural riches of the country receiving them. Mutual understanding will be established which will enrich both cultures.” (72)
This is said to civilized men who are to venture into countries where sacred cows are fed, while children are left to starve—where female infants are killed or abandoned by the roadside—where men go blind, medical help being forbidden by their religion—where women are mutilated, to insure their fidelity—where unspeakable tortures are ceremonially inflicted on prisoners—where cannibalism is practiced. Are these the “cultural riches” which a Western man is to greet with “brotherly love”? Are these the “valuable elements” which he is to admire and adopt? Are these the “fields” in which he is not to regard himself as superior? And when he discovers entire populations rotting alive in such conditions, is he not to acknowledge, with a burning stab of pride—of pride and gratitude—the achievements of his nation and his culture, of the men who created them and left him a nobler heritage to carry forward?
The encyclical’s implicit answer is “No.” He is not to judge, not to question, not to condemn—only to love; to love without cause, indiscriminately, unconditionally, in violation of any values, standards, or convictions of his own.
(The only valuable assistance that Western men could, in fact, offer to undeveloped countries is to enlighten them on the nature of capitalism and help them to establish it But this would clash with the natives’ “cultural traditions”; industrialization cannot be grafted onto superstitious irrationality; the choice is either-or. Besides, it is a knowledge which the West itself has lost; and it is the specific element which the encyclical damns.)
While the encyclical demands a kind of unfastidious relativism in regard to cultural values and stressedly urges respect for the right of primitive cultures to hold any values whatever, it does not extend this tolerance to Western civilization. Speaking of Western businessmen who deal with countries “recently opened to industrialization,” the encyclical states: “Why, then, do they return to the inhuman principles of individualism when they operate in less developed countries?” (70)
Observe that the horrors of tribal existence in those undeveloped countries evoke no condemnation from the encyclical; only individualism—the principle that raised mankind out of the primordial swamps—is branded as “inhuman.”
In the light of that statement, observe the encyclical’s contempt for conceptual integrity, when it advocates “the construction of a better world, one which shows deeper respect for the rights and the vocation of the individual.” (65) What are the rights of the individual in a world that regards individualism as “inhuman”? No answer.
There is another remark pertaining to Western nations, which is worth noting. The encyclical states: “We are pleased to learn that in certain nations ‘military service* can be partially accomplished by doing ‘social service,’ a ‘service pure and simple.'” (74)
It is interesting to discover the probable source of the notion of substituting social work for military service, of the claim that American youths owe their country some years of servitude pure and simple—a vicious notion, more evil than the draft, a singularly un-American notion in that it contradicts every fundamental principle of the United States.
The philosophy that created the United States is the encyclical’s target, the enemy it seeks to obliterate. A casual reference that seems aimed at Latin America is a bit of window-dressing, a booby-trap for compromisers, upon which they did pounce eagerly. That reference states: “If certain landed estates impede the general prosperity because they are extensive, unused or poorly used … the common good sometimes demands their expropriation.” (24)
But whatever the sins of Latin America, capitalism is not one of them. Capitalism—a system based on the recognition and protection of individual rights—has never existed in Latin America. In the past and at present, Latin America was and is ruled by a primitive form of fascism: an unorganized, unstructured rule by coup d”6tat, by militaristic gangs, i.e., by physical force, which tolerates a nominal pretense at private property subject to expropriation by any gang in power (which is the cause of Latin America’s economic stagnation).
The encyclical is concerned with help to the undeveloped nations of the world. Latin America is high on the list of the undeveloped; it is unable to feed its own people. Can anyone imagine Latin America in the role of global provider, supplying the needs of the entire world? It is only the United States—the country created by the principles of individualism, the freest example of capitalism in history, the first and last exponent of the Rights of Man—that could attempt such a role and would thereby be induced to commit suicide.
Now observe that the encyclical is not concerned with man, with the individual; the “unit” of its thinking is the tribe: nations, countries, peoples—and it discusses them as if they had a totalitarian power to dispose of their citizens, as if such entities as individuals were of no significance any longer. This is indicative of the encyclical’s strategy: the United States is the highest achievement of the millennia of Western civilization’s struggle toward individualism, and its last, precarious remnant With the obliteration of the United States— i.e., of capitalism—there will be nothing left to deal with on the face of the globe but collectivized tribes. To hasten that day, the encyclical treats it as a fait accompli and addresses itself to the relationships among tribes.