Free Enterprise and the Common Good: Economic Science and Political–

Social justice is the link between the imperative of the common good and the principles of political–economic organization that enable persons and communities to flourish.9 The idea of social justice, despite recent misappropriation and abuse by progressives, has a rich his- tory going back to classical antiquity. [...] To meet this challenge, “the teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which ‘a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with. [...] Beyond this, mandating a specific political constitution is outside the Church’s purview: “If authority belongs to the order established by God, ‘the choice of the political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the free decision of the citizens.’ The diversity of political regimes is morally acceptable, provided they serve the legitimate good of the communities that adopt them.”17 So l. [...] They see in the political–economic order that has prevailed since the end of the Cold War “the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor.”18 Governing the economy “solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice.”19 Increasingly globalized financial markets and supply chains make “[r]easonable regulation of the marketplace and economic initiatives” too daunting a ta. [...] Above all social maladies, Röpke strug- gled with a problem he called proletarianization: “economic and social dependence, a rootless, tenemented life, where men are strangers to nature, and overwhelmed by the dreariness of work.”34 Röpke located the causes of proletarianization in the breakdown in moral communities “such as the neighborhood, the family, the parish, the Church, the occupation.”35.