The Reading Warehouse

". . . Christ, Capital and Liberty: A Polemic is a spirited and detailed defence of the fundamental compatibility of Catholicism and Austro-Libertarianism. . . .

T]he multiple, mostly short, chapters . . . provide so many insights, engage the perspectives of so many thinkers and attack the central topic of the compatibility of Catholicism and Austro-Libertarianism from so many angles that no reader can fail to achieve a greater insight into the matter after reading it than he had before he began."

Hostility to markets can take many forms, not only that of the frankly socialist specter haunting America. Sometimes it's disguised as Christian piety. Exemplary of this is Catholic polemicist Christopher A. Ferrara's ignorant attack on the Austrian School of Economics (ASE) as incarnated in his 2010 The Church and the Libertarian. Championing Distributism and the social democracy that's vended under the label "Catholic Social Teaching," Ferrara claims that the ASE is morally and intellectually at variance with Catholicism.

Anthony Flood (Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness) responded with anarcho-catholic, a blog on which he argued for the compatibility, even harmony, that Ferrara denied. His book is an object lesson in how a Christian ought not to conduct controversy, and Flood counts the ways. Believing that the evidence and arguments marshaled in his blog posts should have a wider platform, Flood has resurrected them as Christ, Capital and Liberty: A Polemic.

Included are several of Flood's well-received essays: on Lord Acton as a libertarian Catholic; a review of The Church and the Market by Thomas Woods (Ferrara's former collaborator); and a defense of the idea of international "anarchy" against David Ray Griffin's argument that it is a "cause of war." Introducing them is Flood's uncompromising criticism of the pro-abortion stance of his late mentor and friend, the Dean of the ASE Murray N. Rothbard.

In his preface Flood outlines his current views, which move beyond (without denying the insights of) Austro-Libertarianism (which is theologically neutral) while suggesting a Biblically based attitude toward the politics in the present dispensation as ultimately futile, if inevitable.