Irving Kristol on Jewish and Christian attitudes toward business
I stumbled upon the following passage by Irving Kristol, so-called father of the neoconservative movement, in his 1978 speech “The Spiritual Roots of Capitalism.” I’m posting it here
in the hope of generating some discussion.
Christianity and Judaism in the United States today face many of the same problems, though they do not share all the same problems. When I talk about religion, I talk as an insider, but when I talk about Christianity, I think it will be very clear that I talk as an outsider. When I say I am not a Christian, I do not say it polemically, of course. But whether one is Jewish or Christian does, it seems to me, affect one’s attitude toward capitalism.
Orthodox Jews never have despised business; Christians have. The act of commerce, the existence of a commercial society, has always been a problem for Christians. Commerce has never been much of a problem for Jews. I have never met an Orthodox Jew who despised business–though I have met some Reformed Jews who are businessmen and despise business.
Getting rich has never been regarded as being in any way sinful, degrading, or morally dubious within the Jewish religion, so long as such wealth is acquired legally and used responsibly. I was raised in a fairly Orthodox Jewish home, and everyone I knew was in business, including most of the rabbis. No one could make a living in those days as a rabbi, so rabbis ran shops, or their wives ran shops for them. It was generally assumed that the spirit of commerce is perfectly compatible with full religious faith and full religious practice. I think that is true in Islam as well, but it is not true in Christianity. The difference is that both Islam and Judaism are religions of the Law, and Christianity is a religion that has repealed the Law. This difference gives Christianity immense advantages over both Judaism and Islam in terms of spiritual energy; but in its application to the practical world, it creates enormous problems.
May 15, 2008 at 11:36 am
I’ve often wondered whether Catholicism is a stumbling block to economic success, and political liberties. Looking at historically Catholic countries, there might well be a point to it. Apart from Latin America, the most obvious example, one might also consider Ireland. Is it coincidence that its economic success and decline in Catholic influence (from what had been an utterly domineering position) are linked causally, or is it just that people have less need for religion when they prosper economically ?
May 15, 2008 at 11:49 am
The likely break-up of Belgium along ethnic and religious lines might also be instructive.
May 15, 2008 at 11:51 am
Uh, *Ireland* is hardly the country to illustrate Catholicism as an obstacle to economic growth.
First, well, you see, there were some foreigners who controlled the Irish economy for century upon century, and did everything possible to prevent it from becoming economically competitive. And Ireland’s role as a economically colonialized country is a clue to Latin America (which, while having an important boom in the 18th century that created local elites who became ready to claim independence once Napoleon decapitated the Spanish and Iberian monarchies, were gradually re-colonialized on an economic basis by nice Protestant powers like Britain and the USA. But I digress).
Second, Ireland has been the best economy in the EU for the past couple of decades.
* * *
Now, as for political liberties. After the Reformation, two Catholic states were long the best places to live in Europe in terms of both civil liberties and economic development: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the republic of Venice. Most Americans have no clue about the first (for a variety of reasons I won’t go into here) and tend to underestimate the importance of the second.
Then the Dutch republic caught up in the 17th century and Britain in the late 18th century.
May 15, 2008 at 11:52 am
Every time I read things like this I am reminded of what were commonly called the “Jew Stores” in the towns and especially the rural towns down here. My Grandmother always had great memories of them and remarked to me on numerous occasion that it was well known when the Jews left town it was as sign of that the economic wise was going to pot.
May 15, 2008 at 11:53 am
Moral of the story: much of what passes for history in American popular imagination is still heavily derivative of the Whig narrative of history (Gibbon and then his 19th century heirs). And that narrative is, well, just wrong. But it’s a great read.
May 15, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Aren’t the last couple of decades exactly those of waning Church influence ? Contraception was illegal until 1979, divorce even longer. There need not be a connection of course.
May 15, 2008 at 12:11 pm
The problem with stuff like this is the term “Christianity”. Christianity is the same yet different. Meaning Catholicism is different from Protestantism as a whole, and there is a wide range of diversity among Protestantism. What I see and appreciate about Catholicism is that is reasonable and orderly - it’s balanced - properly ordered. We don’t have a problem with business and even view it in a positive light. We also recognize that there are other (greater?) things too. That business is a good as long as it serves man, but like anything else can be disordered, like when its purpose is harmful or exploitive. It can be abused in other ways too, like if we view it in a disordered sense (either by placing too much value on it or despising it for it’s own sake wishing to eliminate it). While there may be some differences that are automatically differentiated between our faiths due to the nature of them, I think Mr. Kristol misses the boat on this one.
May 15, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I think there is some truth to Mr. Kristol’s point, but it’s important not to overstate it. If you look at Lawrence Harrison’s book The Central Liberal Truth, for example, you’ll find that Christian countries tend to be more market friendly than any other religious group (Harrison doesn’t include Jews as a category because the sample size is only one, but I don’t think Israel on the whole can be considered more pro-market than many predominately Christian countries). I would also suspect that if you polled people in the modern day U.S., you’d find that the average Christian is more pro-market than the average Jew (I would note on this score that Kristol explicitly limits himself to considering Orthodox Jews and implicitly seems to be considering only certain types of Christians). Still, it’s true that Christianity has been more suspicious of wealth and commerce than has Judaism, and I think Kristol’s point about working Rabbis is interesting, given the degree to which priests are isolated from the world of commerce and exchange.
May 15, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Is there any Evidence that “Catholic Business”people were less successful than their Protestant counterparts here in teh United States? If there is I have never seen it
May 15, 2008 at 1:21 pm
This whole line of thinking is absolutely preposterous: no single group has been more in favour of limiting the power and influence of big business than Jews, whose votes have consistently gone–at least in American politics–to “liberal” politicians who’ve been in favour of left-of-centre economic policies. And those Jewish-supported politicians have ALSO been supported, until quite recently, by Catholic hierarchs who’ve been following the social-justice line of many of the modern papal encyclicals. Who does Kristol think he’s kidding?
May 15, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Does it help to know that Kristol’s speech was given within a symposium coordinated and sponsered by the American Enterprise Institute and that the topic of this symposium was the theological aspects of socialism and capitalism?
May 15, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Kristol’s words here are truly bizarre in that it seems to completely gloss over the prophetic tradition of the Hebrew scriptures which most certainly DID have a problem with the accumulation of riches. The biblical worldview assumed that one’s riches are made by directly taking them from others.
This difference gives Christianity immense advantages over both Judaism and Islam in terms of spiritual energy; but in its application to the practical world, it creates enormous problems.
Ahh… good ol’ “practicality.”
What I see and appreciate about Catholicism is that is reasonable and orderly - it’s balanced - properly ordered. We don’t have a problem with business and even view it in a positive light.
Of course, Catholicism is more diverse than you make it out to be here, Rick. Both Catholicism and Protestantism contain traditions that are “pro-business” and traditions that are quite critical of business.
May 15, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Early on, Irving Kristol was a Marxist and a Trotskyist. Didn’t Marx and Trotsky have trouble with capitalism? Or do Marx and Trotsky not factor in to Kristol’s current memory?
I’m certain Kristol has read Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” and R.H. Tawney’s “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.” Why do they not factor into his analysis here?
The problem with Kristol’s thinking, here and elsewhere, is that everything he argues is always geared to what he is trying to accomplish. There is some political motive behind his work. In short, he has a purely instrumental view of human intelligence and language. For him, truth is too often not helpful!
May 15, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Has anyone read Rodney Stark’s book on Christianity and capitalism, Victory of Reason? I’ve been struggling with the questions of capitalism and liberation theology lately, and it seems that I just need to wait until Pope Benedict’s new encyclical comes out.
(I would recommend Schindler/Bandow’s Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny)