The Gift in Commercial Relationships

In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, the late Pope Benedict XVI asked his sons and daughters to consider the following question:

“The greatest challenge before us (…) is to demonstrate, in thinking and behavior (…) that in commercial relationships the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of the gift as an expression of fraternity can and must find their place within normal economic activity”¹

The Pope wisely presents a principle and leaves it to us in the commercial world of work to apply it in new and varied ways. The purpose of this article is to identify practical ways of “thinking and behavior” that will respond positively to this challenge.

One dictionary defines gift as “something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone, honor an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance.” The concept of gift might include material items such as what we normally call “presents” as well as services, work, etc. We transfer something that is ours to another for the purpose of delighting them as a way of expressing love. The object or service given is a symbol of the love that the donor has for the receiver. We normally give gifts to those we have a relationship with. In the case of “charitable gifts” we only desire to benefit another even where we cannot know the receiver, such as in a blood donation.

Human beings “materialize” their love as a gift, as our intentions are mostly invisible to others. We hope to experience gratitude for the gift, not as our reason for giving and not as recompense, but to be shown that the gift has awakened some amount of joy in the recipient which was our purpose. Nevertheless, the recipient should express sincere gratitude for a gift even if it does not “hit the mark,” understanding the loving intention behind it.

How shall we think about gift embodied in exchange transactions? We could start with what is really being exchanged. While money is almost always the medium of exchange, we realize that what is really being traded is human work or the products of work. For many, work is mostly seen as an economic exchange. I work for you and produce. You pay me for producing. This arrangement seems to have nothing to do with gift — only justice. We need to examine what looks like a pure exchange from two points of view. The first is that no one is adequately paid for his or her work! This is true because of the nature of the human person. But we can also work with an intention that raises the subject of our work above what it is exchanged for.

The nature of the worker

People’s time is all they truly own. Their life is measured and poured out in seconds and hours. If people were only animals, like a donkey, then their time would only be valuable during the toiling part of their day and life. Their value would come from their effort and from nothing else. But if human persons have a unique dignity in the universe, then the value of their time is also elevated above the animals.

I once tried to teach this idea to a class in this way. I asked them if it was all right for a rich person to buy a new car and then, for fun, drive it off a cliff just to see it smash — of course without the driver in it! Most of the class thought that this would be acceptable. Some remarked that it was wasteful. Then I said, “Let’s move the cliff to a place where the workers who made that car are close by, on their lunch break. Now is there any problem with driving the car off the cliff?” Some now responded that the workers might feel bad that their efforts had been wasted. I then asked them what the workers’ time was worth. Was it worth $20 an hour or $50 an hour? One girl in the rear of the class got the message. She said, “Their time is priceless!”

Our time, as immortal beings whose actions for good or ill stretch through time, is not commensurable with any amount of money. Our work is both material and spiritual and has both meanings, just as we ourselves do. Time and effort are the currency of our lives, but they cannot be replaced with money.

The human being is a body-spirit. Our souls are immortal. The operations of such a being have significance not only in present time but radiate into the future. Of course, so that economic realities can be observed, there must be some way of establishing pay based on time, effort or outcome; nevertheless, from the point of view of the reality of human nature, this is not possible. We may, quite rightly, at times feel that no amount of money would be enough pay for our efforts, either because of a great and unique contribution we have made or simply because of our sweat. Our effort is ours and is never to be repeated. We are unique.

In addition, humanity was and is saved by the actions of Jesus Christ in the Incarnation and the sufferings of Calvary. In this light we see our value truly. Therefore, when thinking about our labor, we must acknowledge that our time and effort are more like that of an angel than a sheepdog. Imagine an angel showing up to help us clean the kitchen floor. He takes the broom and begins. When he finishes, are we going to offer him a monetary reward for his work?

I have observed that people know this in some minimal, intuitive way. They are never satisfied with their pay. Perhaps their dissatisfaction is just an expression of wanting more or believing that they are being unjustly underpaid. It can be motivated by the desire to have more of the things that money can buy. But this dissatisfaction may also stem from a deep-down belief that we are worth more than our pay, and this is because of the non-material value we have.

Therefore, since human work is in the truest sense incommensurate with pay, our work embodies a gift to the beneficiary of that work.

Intentionality and the approach to our work

Suppose we go back to the pre-monetary village, to a place and time where most exchanges of goods are made by bartering. I grow corn and you make shoes. We could each produce our own corn and shoes, but people have learned by this time that specialization leads to higher quality and productivity. It also takes into consideration personal talents and motivations.

But specialization also creates dependency. I cannot provide shoes for my family if I am always farming. You cannot provide corn for your family if you are always making shoes. Once we are done making shoes and corn, it is time to barter for the goods we need — that is, I need shoes and you need corn. We can imagine that we could try to find some parity in the exchange based on labor-time necessary to produce a unit of goods. If it takes me ten hours of time to make a pair of shoes and it takes you ten hours on average to produce four bushels of corn, perhaps that is a fair exchange. We try to maximize what we get for our labor, and so we negotiate so many ears of corn for so many pairs of shoes, each for his own benefit.

But imagine the workers’ motives as they are making their respective goods. Imagine that the shoemaker is thinking about making the shoes with the personal good of the recipient in mind, so that the corn grower will get a great pair of shoes. He wants to make the best shoes he can so his neighbor will find them comfortable and long-lasting. In his mind, he is personalizing the work and is working for the intention of pleasing and providing for the other in the work he is doing. It is not just the normal skill of the trade he is employing, but something of “personal care.” We can say that with this personal motive and excellence of work, the shoemaker puts something extra into the shoes that the corn grower is not strictly paying for with his barter. It is something spiritual as well and incommensurable within the agreed upon terms of the barter that is directed at the person receiving the shoes. It is a gift. The corn grower can act in the very same way.

I witnessed a great example of this infusion of work with gift during a documentary program on factory work in Japan. A woman was working on an assembly line doing some function involved in making toy robots. The robots were on a conveyor belt, and at each station a worker would accomplish a single task. It is hard to watch this kind of work without thinking it must be mind-numbing. The narrator asked her what she was thinking while she was making the robots. She said, “I am thinking of how much joy the children will get when they play with this robot. I want to do my work very well so that they will get the most fun out of this toy.” This was a surprising response to me. Clearly, there was something going on in the mind and soul of the worker that was more than a paycheck. Today, when work is so specialized and disconnected from the consumer, it is harder to see how such personal care can be applied to work. Nevertheless, as the Japanese worker shows, it is not only possible but commendable to work this way. It elevates both the quality of the work and the meaning for the worker.

Perhaps it is easiest to see this attitude toward work in the teacher, the doctor or nurse, the social worker, and the priest — professions in which the actor is not primarily motivated by a paycheck. I eventually learned this new motivation as a teacher. At the beginning of my career, when I prepared for a class, I would limit myself to coming up with the best possible explanations of what were difficult concepts for high school students. I became good at this, but it was still not enough. Later, I found myself loving my students more. Love became the primary reason to see my work as a gift to them. It would impel me to spend more time in preparation but also to ensure that I offered my students humor each day as well as empathy and affection. I thought of my class preparation as similar to a chef’s preparation of a great meal. I would come to my class with my prepared feast, eager to spread it out before them.

In a time when certain American industries are regularly producing products with poor design, poor workmanship, or even planned obsolescence, we can see that there is an underappreciation for the work as a gift to the client. In addition, these manufacturers open themselves up to competition from foreign entities that take quality and the consumer more seriously.

Ironically, the view of gift involved in labor even enters the analysis of Karl Marx, but of course, in a different way. In the words of Genevieve Vaughan, “Marx believed the capitalists’ profit came from surplus value, the part of the value of labor not covered by the workers’ salary. This unpaid labor can be considered a (leveraged) gift from the worker to the capitalist.”²

Unfortunately, Marx did not see the spiritual actor in the work, only the dividing up of the economic value-added increase of labor on materials. If he had seen the spiritual actor, he would have understood that the work of the laborer already adds value that the worker will never get paid for, even if the capitalist kept no profit for himself at all!

While not referring directly to work, the philosopher Kenneth Schmitz also describes this added value when speaking about a situation in which the exchange of presents is expected:

If presents in such situations do take on the genuine aura of a gift, it will be because the one who presents them has invested them with personal attentiveness beyond what is called for by the formal exchange of presents. Not satisfied with discharging the minimal conditions of the exchange, he or she will have seized its deeper possibility, endowed the presentation with his or her own care, and thereby transformed a mere present into a genuine gift. Now the “extra” beyond the mere present is the gratuity that animates the gift.³

Viktor Frankl makes the same point about the integration of gift into paid labor. He says “The medical profession merely provides a framework” for “what he brings to his work as a personality, as a human being”:

For it would come to the same thing whether he or a colleague gave injections, etc., if he were merely practicing the arts of medicine, merely using the tricks of the trade. Only when he goes beyond the limits of purely professional service, beyond the tricks of the trade, does he begin that truly personal work which alone is fulfilling.

And what about the work of nurses . . . They sterilize syringes, carry bedpans, change bedding — all highly necessary acts, but scarcely enough in themselves to satisfy the human spirit. But when a nurse does some little thing beyond her more or less regimented duties, when, say, she finds a personal word to say to a critically ill person — then and only then is she giving meaning to her life through her work. Every occupation allows for this, so long as the work is seen in the proper light. The indispensability and irreplaceability, the singularity and uniqueness issue from the person, depend on who is doing the work and on the manner in which he is doing it, not on the job itself.⁴

­­­I can work with the desire of excellence, creating a gift and providing for others so that my intention adds value to the work that is not strictly paid for within an exchange of money.

Exchange or gift

The big question in all of the transactions in life comes to this: Are we involved in exchange or gift, or at least, is there an element of gift in every exchange? Our understanding of the pure gift is obscured by the transactional state of affairs of our everyday life. The pattern of exchange is so ingrained that it becomes the lens through which we are tempted to see gift. Vaughan expresses it this way:

Before I try to describe elements of the logic of the unilateral satisfaction of another’s need, let me say that there is also a logic of commodity exchange for money that lays down a very strong base metaphor, or magnetic template, that influences us to interpret everything in its image. It is because of this strong pull toward the logic of exchange that we tend to ignore, discredit, or over sentimentalize unilateral gift-giving and overvalue exchange patterns. . . . The generalization of exchange results in a very different configuration of human relations than would be the generalization of unilateral gift-giving.

Since we are living in a society . . . in which commodity exchange for money is the order of the day, we are practicing exchange all the time and have become blind to the continued existence and importance of unilateral gift-giving. . . . It occurs in all areas of life and study, and it progresses from a denial of the existence of the unilateral gift-giving process to a denial of its validity, a knee-jerk delegitimization of gift-giving as instinctual, sentimental privilege, saintliness, or at the other end of the spectrum, victimization or masochism.⁵

She establishes what she calls “exchange relations,” which are no relations at all, and distinguishes them from true gifts:

Exchange is giving in order to receive an equivalent. It requires a return gift, which is determined by the value of what has been given. The exchange of commodities requires measurement, qualifications, and assessment in money. Exchange is ego oriented. The need that is satisfied by exchange is the exchanger’s own need. Therefore, it does not attribute value to the other, but only to the self. Commodity exchange for money mediates generalized private property, where all property is owned in a mutually exclusive way by private owners. Exchange is adversarial, in that in each transaction each person is trying to get more and give less. Exchange does not establish human relations beyond those of mutual equality as exchangers.

As a template or deep metaphor for other interactions, exchange is very powerful. . . . We think of consciousness as self-reflection, and we appeal to relations of equality, balance and justice. These seemingly positive qualities function in the mode of exchange, but by accepting them our way is blocked to the higher goods of unilateral gift-giving: celebrating qualitative difference, caring, mutual imbalance toward the other, attention to needs, and kindness rather than justice.⁶ 

Now I would like to take the logic of exchange, and the tendency of gift to be seen as a subset of exchange, and turn it on its head. Suppose instead of considering gift as a subset of exchange, exchange was thought of as always embodying a gift. Even in what we see as purely economic activity, where only exchange seems to happen, we can establish a means of gifts flowing back and forth. Pope Benedict XVI explains this idea clearly:

Charity in truth places man before the astonishing experience of gift. Gratuitousness is present in our lives in many different forms, which often go unrecognized because of a purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life. The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself, and it is a consequence — to express it in faith terms — of original sin.⁷

We see the world we live in as given and yet we do not consider who is the “Giver.”

Gift by its nature goes beyond merit, its rule is that of superabundance. It takes first place in our souls as a sign of God’s presence in us, a sign of what he expects from us. . . .

The unity of the human race, a fraternal communion transcending every barrier, is called into being by the word of God-who-is-Love. In addressing this key question, we must make it clear, on the one hand, that the logic of gift does not exclude justice, nor does it merely sit alongside it as a second element added from without; on the other hand, economic, social and political development, if it is to be authentically human, needs to make room for the principle of gratuitousness as an expression of fraternity. (CV §88)

The Church’s social doctrine holds that authentically human social relationships of friendship, solidarity and reciprocity can also be conducted within economic activity, and not only outside it or “after” it. The economic sphere is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner. (CV §34)

The whole point of Benedict XVI’s exhorting us to consider gift in commercial dealings comes to this. We and our partner in a transaction do not leave our humanity at the door when doing business. The benchmark is charity.

“Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other (…) charity transcends justice and completes it. (CV §6) “In the past it was possible to argue that justice had to come first and gratuitousness could follow afterwards, as a complement” but “today it is clear that without gratuitousness, there can be no justice in the first place” (CV 38)

In other words, to treat men with justice, they must be treated with love. In addition to justice, man will always need love which is expressed through gift. Gift implies love or at least the intention to establish a relationship of caring. When we work as a means of “creating a gift” we accomplish both excellence and charity at once.