Pursuing the Common Good (4): Luigino Bruno on the Economy of Communion and Charism

I’m continuing to report on the Vatican conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, held May 2 to 6. Amongst the interesting social-Catholic topics presented there was Luigino Bruno, whose intervention I’m presenting by excerpting his paper, covering two topics.

1. The Economy of Communion

Luigini Bruni:

The EoC is a project that currently involves hundreds (754) of businesses in five continents and has attracted the interest of scholars and economists alike. The project started in 1991 when Chiara Lubich visited the city of San Paulo in Brazil. Whoever arrives in that metropolis is confronted with a scenario that powerfully symbolises the potential contradictions within capitalism: a forest of skyscrapers surrounded by a savannah of slums. Chiara was deeply moved by this sight and felt the great suffering of humanity: a humanity that is increasingly able to conquer technology and produce wealth, but has not yet been able to overcome misery. What she saw in San Paolo, instead, showed her that the gulf between the rich and poor was growing. Within a few days of that trip to San Paolo at the end of May 1991, what has come to be known as the Economy of Communion was born: businesses which are managed with a new culture (the ‘culture of giving’) and put their profits into communion, with the aim of demonstrating a part of humanity ‘with no-one in need’, and becoming a model for many.

The sharing of profits in three parts was the first way in which the EoC became a practical proposal:

(1) one part of the profits would be re-invested in the business in order to develop and create new jobs;

(2) the second part would be used to create a new culture which would inspire women and men capable of living communion in their lives;

(3) and the third part would go directly to the poor so as to reinsert them fully into the dynamic of communion and reciprocity.

This three-way sharing of profits is a ‘pre-economic’ intuition, since it neither represents a new juridical form nor an organisational business model, nor a measurable technique, but rather a vision of the economy and society. This vision points to the principal institution of the market economy – the business – as an economic phenomenon… but not exclusively so. Besides their growth, businesses of communion are also directly concerned with culture, need and poverty. For these businesses, profit is regarded as the means, rather than the end of entrepreneurial activity as the profit is put into communion.

EoC is about firms. Nevertheless, the EoC is not primarily an organisational formula for a business to be more ethical or socially responsible. The EoC is a project for a more just and fraternal humanism.

The EoC came about from an encounter with favelas or shanty towns. The original intuition of the EoC emerged as a result of the suffering that Chiara experienced when she realised that there were persons who were living in those inhumane conditions. Rather than the need to make businesses more ethical or more human, it was the need to do her part, through the Movement, to build a more just world, where there would be fewer people forced to live in often inhumane conditions. This is why the EoC cannot and should not become a corporate social responsibility project. It did not come about to renew businesses, but to renew social relations. The specific novelty of 1991, its novum, is elsewhere, as I will now try to explain in the next sections.

At the same time, there is also something that is relevant to business as an institution. EoC thought of the business as an institution as the natural ‘instrument’ to respond to what is essentially a problem injustice and the incorrect distribution of goods. Normal logic could have led her to think of other institutions: foundations, NGOs, fundraising activities. In fact, the natural mission of traditional businesses is to create jobs, produce products, goods and services. In the normal course of events, the aim of redistributing wealth is not prevalent in business (even if it cannot be totally excluded: there are taxes, but also salaries). Instead, in the EoC are the traditional business that is invited to go beyond its “normal” social function or “vocation”.”

2. The Economy of Charism

Bruni on the four characteristics of the economy of charism:

“The first characteristic: The experiences that come about as a result of charisms affirm the primacy of life over theory. They are therefore popular experiences, which always come about through praxis, and never as a result of experts or professionals sitting round a table. It is not a case of implementing projects, but carefully listening to life, from which intuitions come about, which are always richer than ideas alone. Therefore, when faced with a mismatch between what is being lived and what should be lived according to a good theory (even the best), the mismatch can never be resolved by simply changing the praxis, since the vital experience in and of itself embodies elements of inescapable truths, which then reveal themselves as essential for the success and authenticity of the project itself. This first dimension is very evident in the EoC. Faced with the spectacle of misery and unequal distribution, Chiara did not exclaim: “Let’s start a study centre to study a new economy”. Her proposal, instead, was an immediate action, based on few intuitions (essentially the sharing of profits in ‘three thirds’, industrial estates inserted in the small towns of the Movement, and ‘we are poor but many’). She left it to life to indicate how to proceed one step at a time. There are many projects to ‘fight poverty’, which are promoted by institutions, by the State for example. In the charismatic economy, like the EoC, life comes before the theoretical reflection which always accompanies it, because life is more dense with truth than whatever theory (which serves life in as much as it comes from life and is nourished by it.)

There is then a second typical aspect of charismatic economy experiences. These experiences come about as a response of life to the problems of specific people. Chiara was crossing the city of Sao Paolo and she was struck by the thought that there were people of the Movement, members of her family, in those favelas. The EoC came about for them, it did not come about in an abstract but in a practical way. It is always something vital, alive, rather than a humanitarian project to build a better world. Then, once they come into existence, if they are authentic charismatic projects, they will also demonstrate their universality, but nearly as an unintentional effect, which was not part of the original inspiration.

The third characteristic: These charismatic experiences call into question the idea of wealth and of poverty. Here St. Francis is a paradigmatic model. After his conversion he returned from his journey to Spoleto, and straight away threw away the proceeds of his business, since he understood that the true goods are others: the choice of poverty became his new wealth. More in general, every time a charism arrives in economic history, it calls into question the concept of ‘good’. It says that true goods, ‘good things’, are not those commonly understood: money, power, success. Goods become poverty, the least, communion, not having but giving. A charism, especially a great charism, turns the ordinary vision of things and goods on its head.

There is a fourth characteristic which also summarises the preceding ones: charismatic experiences are gifts of ‘different eyes’ which make us see beautiful things in problems we face. When a charim is at work, those who are part of it see something different, it is the gift of a new gaze. For example, when Mother Teresa of Calcutta spoke of the poor, she loved to repeat: ‘do not call them problems, call them gifts.’

Source: THE ECONOMY OF COMMUNION. Luigino Bruni?Draft of essay written for the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, 2008.

Leave A Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.