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[introtext] => The idea that trade is more profitable than war, as Montesquieu said, falls short in the face of evidence, confirmed by economist Antonio Genovesi, that financial interests are one of the main causes of conflict.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Città Nuova on 18/10/2025
In one of the most famous books in European political history, Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws, we read: “The natural effect of trade is to bring about peace” (1748). A few years later, in his commentary on Montesquieu's book, the Neapolitan economist and philosopher Antonio Genovesi wrote the opposite: "Trade is a great source of war. It is jealous, and jealousy arms men" (1768). Montesquieu's thesis is the one that has most inspired and influenced modern hopes and illusions. We saw the development of trade, we also saw wars, but we hoped that wars would end on the day when trade reached all peoples, who would finally understand that trading was preferable to fighting.
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The whole of modern political economy was built on this idea and this hope, theorizing and showing that trade is much more beneficial to everyone than war. These hopes grew considerably after World War II, when we began to think that the market economy was definitively defeating war, and that the “regional” conflicts that still existed and arose here and there were only feudal remnants that would soon be absorbed by the great tide of economic and civil progress. Perhaps in the second half of the 20th century there was no social utopia more popular than this.
In 1977, the great German economist A.O. Hirschman wrote another small but highly influential book, entitled The Passions and the Interests, in which he took up Montesquieu's thesis (and that of other Enlightenment thinkers, including G.B. Vico) and developed it into a full-fledged theory. The pre-modern world, theancien régime, was characterized by passions—pride, honor, revenge...—which were very dangerous because they were unpredictable and irrational, not following the logic of rational calculation. And so, the people and peoples of yesterday destroyed and self-destructed, dominated by revenge or honor. If someone offended you, and given the infinite value of dishonor, you challenged them to a duel because either by winning you restored your honor, or death was better than a life of dishonor. With the advent of the market and trade, Hirschman continued, we moved from passions to interests, where the latter are based on rationality and calculation, and therefore actions become predictable and, above all, less dangerous and destructive than passions. Hence his reinforcement of Montesquieu's prophecy, the prediction of a future with more peace, serenity, and less conflict, thanks to the market. With these high hopes, we first encountered the war of 2022 in Ukraine, then in Gaza, and finally Trump's statements on tariffs.
And I thought back to Genovesi, to his thesis on trade as a ‘great source of wars’, which he had arrived at at the end of his life as the culmination of his reflection on the market and the civil economy. Genovesi was convinced that exchange, trade, and the market remained something very important for individuals and peoples, because he saw them as a form of civil reciprocity (“mutual assistance”); but he also knew that the powerful and the strong often use trade, especially international trade, as a means of increasing wealth and power. He said this clearly and with sadness because he too hoped that Montesquieu's prophecy would come true. He also knew, like all economists, that the archaic mercantilist logic of tariffs is only a dangerous illusion, because tariffs harm everyone, in primis those who impose them, because they quickly lead to a decrease in wealth for all parties involved – technically, it is a “prisoner's dilemma.” Putin, Trump, and many other politicians who emulate them tell us, unfortunately, that Montesquieu and Hirschman had dismissed passions from the repertoire of economics and politics too soon. The 21st century, in fact, is returning to being the century of destructive passions, populism, honor, patriotism, the idolatry of borders, leaderocracy instead of democracy, and the denial of science and therefore of rationality. The market economy has a vital need for rationality: rationality alone is not enough, humanity and pietas are also needed, but rationality is essential. It is likely that, if we do not put an end to this political season soon, democracy and the markets will be the great victims of this wave of passion. Young people are reacting all over the world: let us stand by them, support them, and learn from their different intelligence.
Photo credit: © Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash
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[text] => The idea that trade is more profitable than war, as Montesquieu said, falls short in the face of evidence, confirmed by economist Antonio Genovesi, that financial interests are one of the main causes of conflict.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Città Nuova on 18/10/2025
In one of the most famous books in European political history, Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws, we read: “The natural effect of trade is to bring about peace” (1748). A few years later, in his commentary on Montesquieu's book, the Neapolitan economist and philosopher Antonio Genovesi wrote the opposite: "Trade is a great source of war. It is jealous, and jealousy arms men" (1768). Montesquieu's thesis is the one that has most inspired and influenced modern hopes and illusions. We saw the development of trade, we also saw wars, but we hoped that wars would end on the day when trade reached all peoples, who would finally understand that trading was preferable to fighting.
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At the end of May, 2011, everyone in the EoC will meet again in Sao Paulo to rediscover the roots of this experience and outline new prospects. The EoC is alive and growing in today’s history, through the crises and the hopes of our time. Chiara Lubich’s proposal to begin businesses and industrial parks, and then (in May of 1989) to start a cultural movement that would give “scientific dignity” to the praxis of the businesses, did not fall into an empty abyss. It was embraced by thousands of people, mostly within the Focolare Movement but recently even outside of it. They are people and institutions who are trying to make that seed produce fruit.
through some of the first moments of the project. It made me remember a not very well-known episode from those days, and this memory struck me in a particular way. Chiara, returning from that trip to Brazil, had noticed a detail in a painting of Mary Desolate which was in her office and which Igino Giordani had given her many years earlier. In that painting, Mary had a crown of thorns tightly pressed to her chest. For her, it was an immediate connection with the “crown of thorns of poverty” that she had seen in the favelas of Sao Paulo and which had been the inspiration of the newly born EoC.
I’m invited to dinner; I bring a tray of pastries, and my host says “thanks”. I drink a coffee at the train station, and after I’ve paid a price, I say, “thanks” to the waiter. These are two thank-yous said in seemingly very different contexts: gift and friendship in the first, contract and anonymity in the second. Still, we use the same word, “thanks”. What do these two facts have in common? They are free meetings between human beings. The thank-you which we say not only to our friends but also to waiters, bakers or cashiers at the supermarket, is not only good manners or habits. That thank-you expresses recognition that, even when we’re doing nothing more than our duty, by working, there is always something more involved. Besides, we could say that work truly begins when we go beyond our duty and put all of ourselves into making lunch, tightening a screw, or giving a lesson at school.
At first, the Strali had arrived at the mayor´s office in Adro (Brescia), who had decided that children whose families had not settled accounts would not be allowed to eat the school lunch. Then, when an (initially) anonymous entrepreneur paid the debt so that these faultless children would not go with an empty stomach, the author of this magnificant gesture fell under a barrage of fire. People said that it is too easy these days for someone who wants to be clever to take advantage of others´generosity. Nearly 200 families had announced that they would not pay the school tax as a sign of protest. Plus, the mayor declared to the Corriera della Sera that Silvano Lancini - the name of the entrepreneur - had made a "political act", made to favor the opposition. Whether authentic generosity or a calculated move, this episode centers on the value and role of gratuitousness in the context of citizenship. We spoke with Luigino Bruni, professor of economy at the university of Milano-Bicocca and author of a book written specifically on this topic (The Price of Gratuitousness, Cittá Nuova).
Florence, 28 June, San Lorenzo Church. In the rooms below the church, the
It is not easy to understand what is really happening in the growing phenomenon of the so-called sharing economy. Also because some very different experiences, sometimes too many are incorporated in this expression.
In large enterprises of our day the attention paid to the management of emotions is growing quickly. Economic organizations are beginning to feel instinctively that we are in a profound anthropological transformation, and so they try, as much as they can, to find the solutions. Because of its ability to anticipate the needs and desires, capitalism is now realizing that in our time there is an ocean of loneliness, famine for attention and tenderness, lack of respect and recognition as well as desire to be seen and beloved, in an unprecedented and immense measure. And it is gearing up to meet even this 'demand' for new markets.
That clock tower on Amatrice church indicating 3.36 is a powerful image for what happened this night. That minute was the last minute for many victims, it will be a minute forever remembered because it is written in the flesh and hearts of their families. And it will be remembered by our country, whose recent history is also a series of clocks stopped forever by the violence of men and of the earth.
I was in London, pursuing economic studies when in the morning of 8th May 1998 Chiara Lubich reached me on my house phone. Even if I had been member of her movement since the age of 15 – this is the great adventure of my life – I had never spoken to her personally. I can still remember how moved and surprised I was, but above all I remember her words: ‘Would you like to help me to attain scientific dignity to the Economy of Communion?’ The she added that on her return from Brazil, seven years after the launch of the EoC she understood that unless there developed an economic thought to accompany the entrepreneurs, the EoC would never really take off. I said yes, I left London for Rome and started working with her and many other fellows – and it all contributed to giving a bit of that scientific dignity to the life we all wanted to live then and now. I understood that life has priority, but thoughts and theory are also life and when they are not there, practice becomes poor and short lived.
Returning from Paris, from a summer school on the Economy of Communion, flying up in the sky above Europe I am thinking about our capitalism. Perhaps because in France there is a newly appointed minister of economics, perhaps because I have just greeted fifty young people who are fascinated by a more fraternal and inclusive economy. Or perhaps because my heart goes out to too many aircrafts that are in the wrong, flying over many war-ravaged lands; I cannot help thinking of our market economy, our crises, the many Africans and North Africans I've seen in the subways of Paris and its existential, economic and cultural peripheries.
about this flight as I remember the young people from different countries of the world that I have just left, with some nostalgia.
In our hedonistic, consumeristic, and finance centric culture, love may be the most used and worn out word. However, Benedict XVI made it the core of his social doctrine. Deus Caritas est and Caritas in Veritate, are, respectively, his first and last encyclicals.