Vale Michael Novak

When CIS hosted Michael Novak in 1995, he noted — with concern — people’s tendency to envy those who are more prosperous than ourselves.

Novak, who died last week, insisted that enactment of a religious duty to help the poor lift themselves from poverty, and to help those incapable of doing so for themselves, need not be joined with resentment of the rich.

He argued that the material prosperity of the wealthy need not be what concerns us; it is lifting the living standards of the poor that matters. And the market economy has proved the best means of doing so.

Novak’s analysis of ‘democratic capitalism’ in his landmark work The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, published in 1982, is the most formidable account of the moral and economic strength of capitalism.

Samuel Gregg has said that the book was “the first effort by a theologian to offer an in-depth, moral, cultural, and political analysis of the market economy in a systematic way.”

For many people, “capitalism” remains a term of contempt. Novak knew well enough about the shortcomings of capitalism, and was a stern critic of the amoral pursuit of profit. The creation of prosperity, he argued, needed to take virtue seriously.

He showed how democratic capitalism instantiated key moral goods such as individual liberty and the rule of law. He was also concerned with the strength of civil society, and advocated reforms to welfare to free people from the snares of state dependency.

 Novak continued to face stern criticism, especially from other theologians and church leaders. His arguments nonetheless gained widening acceptance both within the churches and the academy, and beyond.

“It is a testimony,” wrote Gregg, “to the truth that ill-conceived propositions can be discredited by the promotion of alternative ideas through good scholarship and intellectual conviction.”