Catholic social teaching calls us take this economic responsibility seriously:    

Individual Christians who are shareholders and those responsible within church institutions that own stocks in U.S. corporations must see to it that the invested funds are used responsibly. Although it is a moral and legal fiduciary responsibility of the trustees to ensure an adequate return on investment for the support of the work of the church, their stewardship embraces broader moral concerns. As part owners, they must cooperate in shaping the policies of those companies through dialogue with management, through votes at corporate meetings, through the introduction of resolutions and through participation in investment decisions. (Economic Justice for All, 354)

The work of promoting corporate responsibility involves all the issues that are of social concern to our Catholic faith. However there was one issue that was raised at the ICCR sessions that I would like to profile here as an issue that calls us awareness and action. The issue involves the production of cotton in the country of Uzbekistan. The product is now called Uzbek cotton. Cotton is a prominent commodity in the world. It’s primary use is in textile goods and our clothing wear. Cotton is also a key ingredient in the food supply. Uzbekistan is a major producer of cotton. There are two major issues revolving around Uzbek cotton production and they both are critical issues of social injustice.

The first issue that needs to be raised is with regards to forced child labor. In this case we are not talking about individual private enterprises that engage in this practice. Instead we are referring to a government sanctioned program that forces children to work in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan forces children officially from the age of 10 (although children as young as 7 have been found working the fields) to pick cotton. There are approximately 2 million children that are sent to work for 2-3 months a year and they are given a specific quota that they must pick. Children are forced to work in the field unless they are able to buy their way out. The government of Uzbekistan owns all the cotton gins and this have a purchase monopoly of cotton through 3 state owned trade organizations. Uzbekistan pays their farmers $.03 per kilo of cotton. The basic dignity of these children are being violated on these grounds

The second issue that is no less troubling is the critical environmental degradation that is taking place with regards to water, the most basic necessity for all humans. The Aral Sea was once the 4^th largest inland sea in the world. Since 1960, when the Soviet Union diverted all their rivers in order to irrigate the cotton fields, the Sea began to decline steadily until now it is less than 10% of its original size. All native species of fish are gone. Because of the nature of the cotton industry the remnant of the Aral Sea and the diverted rivers have been horribly polluted, dyes have contaminated the fresh water rivers and because the sea has shrunk so dramatically what remains is a highly salinized. Ironically the area now has 70% unemployment (ironic in that the reason for the environmental degradation was for the promotion of a particular industry.) This unemployment has been particularly felt in the fishing industry which is practically non-existent.

Even with international pressure Uzbekistan is unwilling to seriously address this issue. As religious investors the Passionist and the other ICCR members are strategizing how to utilize our investment portfolio to organize on this issue. Investors can go to ICCR to take part of these strategies as Socially Responsible Investors (SRI) advocates. As consumers however everyone can take part of this issue. The Uzbek cotton campaign is a very popular movement and many companies are boycotting Uzbek cotton in their own products. Most recently LL Bean, Hanes and J. Crew are now part of this movement. However there are still a number of American garment companies that are using Uzbek cotton like Gymboree, Abercrombie & Fitch and Fred’s. Here are two organizations that offer updates on the boycott of Uzbek cotton.

The Cotton campaign: http://www.cottoncampaign.org/

Environmental Justice Foundation: http://www.ejfoundation.org/page141.html

For our part the U.S. administration will argue for four things:

• A robust global stimulus package that will commit all countries to financially shield the world economy from a dragged out global recession.
• Expanded regulations of financial institutions and other rules regarding the flow of capital
• A robust readjustment of the International Monetary Fund  to aid it in its mission of helping the developing world. This would triple the financial resources to the fund and offer emerging powers a stronger participation with the IMF.
• A concrete pledge against protectionism.

Certainly I will not argue the issues of global economic policies here. The onus will be on the people siting at the table in London to do this monumental task of redesigning the future of capitalism. There has already been a call to have a “group of experts” exist which can assess the efforts that may come out of this talk and I for one believe this is very appropriate since in many ways these national economies are walking through terra incognita and whatever comes out of these talks ought to be continuously evaluated and tweaked in order to adjust for unforeseen development.

My contribution with this post  is to do two things. First I would like to raise the moral position from our Catholic social tradition regarding the unsustainable global economy. Catholic social teaching has warned us against the unregulated free market time and time again as an instrument that is incapable of serving the global human community. This is because its narrow focus on quick short term profitability and the limited measurement of GDP produces an unsustainable system that does not assess long term repercussions.

But it is unfortunate that on these new conditions of society a system has been constructed which considers profit as the key motive for economic progress, competition as the supreme law of economics, and private ownership of the means of production as an absolute right that has no limits and carries no corresponding social obligation. This unchecked liberalism leads to dictatorship rightly denounced by Pius XI as producing “the international imperialism of money”. One cannot condemn such abuses too strongly by solemnly recalling once again that the economy is at the service of man. – Populorum Progression #26 (Pope Paul VI, 1967)

When the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops offered the document “Economic Justice for All” they offered an economic vision for collaborative capitalism that at the time (1986) could have help steer the American economy in a more sustainable global direction.

Completing the unfinished business of the American experiment will call for new forms of cooperation and partnership among those whose daily work is the source of the prosperity and justice of the nation. The United States prides itself on both its competitive sense of initiative and its spirit of teamwork. Today a greater spirit of partnership and teamwork is needed; competition alone will not do the job. It has too many negative consequences for family life, the economically vulnerable, and the environment. Only a renewed commitment by all to the common good can deal creatively with the realities of international interdependence and economic dislocations in the domestic economy. The virtues of good citizenship require a lively sense of participation in the commonwealth and of having obligations as well as rights within it. The nation’s economic health depends on strengthening these virtues among all its people, and on the development of institutional arrangements supportive of these virtues. #296

This vision unfortunately went undeveloped and today we are now living with the crisis that this moral vision tried to avoid.

The second purpose for this post is to offer the general public resources and a forum that could help move the community ahead in assessing and, at some level, to participate in a constructive exchange regarding this economic crisis. This is not to time to offer punitive legislation to punish those we feel are culpable for this situation. There is certainly enough blame to spread around. This is also not the time to produce unnecessary fear and promote isolationism. The solution, whatever it may be, exist with the global economy. To argue against some unqualified fear of either socialism or fascism and to prop up a retrenchment into isolated nationalism will destabilize of global society in such a way that we would be led down the same path that economic isolationist policies led to prior to World War II.

I offer the following resources for your consideration:

• The Carnegie Endowment for Peace is a good think tank monitoring the G-20 here is a link to that site.
• The Brookings Institute offers a recommendation for global policy coordination. Here is a link to that site.
• The Financial Times offers an interesting dialogue on the future of capitalism. I offer this link below for further study and engagement of this critical issue of our times. In depth coverage of The Future of Capitalism from the Financial Times.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVIewK9n6qw