Artist Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923) rose to fame as the “master of light” for paintings that marvelously captured the Mediterranean sun of his native Valencia: its light filling his beach scenes with color, revealing the faintest details of his portrayals of common folk, and imbuing his images of idyllic and lush gardens with life. Another son of the Spanish Mediterranean coast, Antoni Gaudí, the renowned architect, claimed that the angle of sunlight at the Mediterranean latitude was the most appropriate for the perfect viewing of nature and its elements. Gaudí held that those who grow in the Mediterranean light can better see things as they are, whereas the dimmer light of northern climes and the brighter one of the tropics lend themselves to abstractions and distortions. Sorolla would likely agree.
One of Sorolla’s famous paintings, completed in 1894 and now in the Prado Museum in Madrid, shows the inside of a fishing boat. Within the cramped space, two older fishermen, with serene but resigned faces, tend to a young one, who is lying on the floor, injured; one holds the youth up, while the other presses the bleeding wound on the young man’s naked torso. This work could easily be taken for yet another one of Sorolla’s depictions of the laboring fishermen of his hometown, but it is in fact much more than a pictorial record of their way of life. It is an indictment of the entire economic system.
Spain underwent a series of radical transformations during the nineteenth century. Liberal reforms aiming at modernizing the country’s economy resulted in the confiscation of all communal lands held by traditional corporations, such as the Church, municipalities, confraternities, or guilds. The reforms sought to transform the agrarian economy into an industrialized, capitalist economy: the idle lands were to be made productive by subjecting them to market forces. The confiscated lands ended, for the most part, in the hands of wealthy landowners, and all those who had depended on resources from communal lands had to emigrate either to the cities to work in factories, or to the New World. The reforms broke apart the communal character of social life and replaced it with the individualism proper of the Liberal order; they disrupted the traditional way of life of the Spanish people and offered an alien imposition in its stead.
If the market is indifferent to the good, it is also, necessarily, indifferent to justice.
These economic reforms had their theoretical underpinning in Adam Smith’s influential work The Wealth of Nations. There, the Scottish thinker famously stated, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.” An overly simplistic reading of this passage might conclude that all economic transactions are driven by greed and selfishness, but that is not what Smith is implying. What he is saying is far more pernicious. What he argues is that the market operates independently from the benevolence (from Latin, “to will the good”) of its participants. The market is indifferent to the good. Left to its own devices, it will perform efficiently regardless of whether people are selfish, even though, Smith would argue, they should not be.
Self-interest is to the market what gravity is to planetary motion: the engine of a mechanism that works best without interference. The “invisible hand”—a secularized parody of Divine Providence—will ensure that it produces the most beneficial outcome for all, despite individuals’ motivations. But if the market is indifferent to the good, it is also, necessarily, indifferent to justice. Justice pertains to what is owed to the other, regardless of what one might gain. It is an other-directed virtue. Smith’s market does not require it, because in it, one’s concern for the other is primarily manipulative: the other’s interest matters insofar as it can be used for my advantage. Thus, the medieval notion of “just price” was banished from economic discourse: there is only a market price, reached by the equilibrium of the opposing forces of supply and demand. Smith rightfully saw that a certain order can emerge from individual interactions without a directing authority. But he was mistaken in assuming that such an order would necessarily be good.
By the end of the century, the situation had become unbearable for many Spaniards. A whole genre known as social realism, documenting and often protesting these radical social changes, gained popularity precisely when Sorolla was starting his career as a painter. The painting mentioned above falls into this genre. The shaft of Mediterranean sun that penetrates the bowels of the boat from above does not reveal this so much as the title of the painting: And They Still Say Fish Is Expensive! The title and subject matter are based on the closing lines of the novel Flor de mayo by Sorolla’s friend Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, where the mourning aunt of a fisherman who has died at sea utters a furious reproach: “And after this they’ll come to the Fishmarket, the harlots, and beat you down, and beat you down! And still they’ll say fish comes high, the scullions! And cheap ‘t would be at fifty, yes, at seventy-five a pound!”
Buying and selling exist for the good of both parties; justice demands that in every exchange, the good of the other be an integral part.
If we accept Smith’s understanding of market exchange, the title of Sorolla’s painting makes no sense. Why should fishermen be upset about buyers haggling over the price of fish? That is simply how the market works. That most of us would be as perplexed as Smith simply goes to show how the dim light of the Scottish Enlightenment (of which Smith was a leading figure) has distorted and disfigured our perception of reality. Smith’s view has become the commonly held view. To correct our vision, we should have recourse to another son of the Mediterranean: St. Thomas Aquinas.
In question seventy-seven of the Secunda Secundae of his Summa theologiae, Aquinas turns to the question of cheating in buying and selling. This question falls under his discussion on the virtue of justice. His questions—and the answers he gives—are likely to baffle us even more than Sorolla’s choice of a title. For instance, in article one, Aquinas asks whether it is lawful to sell a thing for more than its worth. Our likely answer would be, “Of course it is! That’s what everybody wants!” Aquinas had already anticipated this, framing it as the second objection: “Further, that which is common to all would seem to be natural and not sinful. Now Augustine relates that the saying of a certain jester was accepted by all, ‘You wish to buy for a song and to sell at a premium,’ which agrees with the saying of Proverbs 20:14, ‘It is naught, it is naught, saith every buyer: and when he is gone away, then he will boast.’ Therefore it is lawful to sell a thing for more than its worth.” He then refutes it thus:
As Augustine says ‘this jester, either by looking into himself or by his experience of others, thought that all men are inclined to wish to buy for a song and sell at a premium. But since in reality this is wicked, it is in every man’s power to acquire that justice whereby he may resist and overcome this inclination.’ And then he gives the example of a man who gave the just price for a book to a man who through ignorance asked a low price for it. Hence it is evident that this common desire is not from nature but from vice, wherefore it is common to many who walk along the broad road of sin.
But why is this desire “from vice,” as Aquinas puts it? Aquinas is not talking about a desire to commit fraud, which is patently wrong; he is talking about the desire to buy as cheap as possible and, on the flip side, to sell at the highest price possible. What is vicious is the desire to gain the greatest advantage in an exchange. Aquinas justifies his claim in this way: “Buying and selling seem to be established for the common advantage of both parties, one of whom requires that which belongs to the other, and vice versa, as the Philosopher states. . . . Whatever is established for the common advantage, should not be more of a burden to one party than to another, and consequently all contracts between them should observe equality of thing and thing.” Buying and selling exist for the good of both parties; justice demands that in every exchange, the good of the other be an integral part. Contrary to Smith, Aquinas maintains that willing the good of the other, benevolence, is necessary for a just economic order. An economic order where benevolence is lacking might be efficient, it might produce unimaginable wealth (for some), but it will be inherently unjust. Where self-interest reigns, there is no justice, only power struggles, which the strong inevitably win. In the modern, Smith-inspired economy, the usurer is allowed to charge a premium for the risk of losing his money, while the fisherman, for the risk of losing his life, is not.
We can look once again upon Sorolla’s painting, enlightened anew by the Mediterranean sun. Under the apparent serenity of the scene boils a righteous indignation. The title of the painting cries out like one of the ancient prophets of Israel:
Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’ The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds (Amos 8:4–7).
The indictment is not only against Smith’s perverse view of the economy, but also against all those who have embraced it. Christians have not been innocent in this respect, often ignoring St. Paul’s injunction to “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” (Phil. 2:3–4) or Aquinas’ in the sed contra of the question quoted above: “It is written (Matthew 7:12): ‘All things . . . whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them.’ But no man wishes to buy a thing for more than its worth. Therefore no man should sell a thing to another man for more than its worth.” Commenting on how Europe had gone astray, C.S. Lewis wrote in a 1953 letter to St. Giovanni Calabria:
But (this) did not happen without sins on our part: for that justice and that care for the poor which (most mendaciously) the Communists advertise, we in reality ought to have brought about ages ago. But far from it: we Westerners preached Christ with our lips, with our actions we brought the slavery of Mammon. We are more guilty than the infidels: for to those that know the will of God and do not do it, the greater the punishment. Now the only refuge lies in contrition and prayer. Long have we erred. In reading the history of Europe, its destructive succession of wars, of avarice, or fratricidal persecutions of Christians by Christians, of luxury, of gluttony, of pride, who could detect any but the rarest traces of the Holy Spirit?
Sorolla’s painting is as eloquent a social critique as the social encyclicals of the Church, but, like them, it is far more than that. It is a call to repentance.