We Really Need To Think Things Through Before It Is Too Late
One of the problems of the modern capitalistic society is that capitalism is, at best, a-moral, and at worse, immoral, and those who use capitalist ideology as a hermeneutic for life are incapable of understanding the pursuit for virtue. Money is turned into the end one must seek, so that money becomes identified with the good. Clearly this is idolatry, because only God is the good. But even if we do not engage in the religious significance of identifying money as the good, we can see how identifying money as the good invalidates all traditional morality – for the pursuit of virtue shows that such virtues are self-validating in their good but capitalistic hermeneutics only validates that which has an economic value as worthwhile. Virtues, because they often prevent the accumulation of wealth, and indeed, because they often require one to abandon wealth, become seen as something negative and to be abandoned for the continued success of a capitalistic society. Is it any wonder that when vices, such as lust, can be used to make money, they are embraced by a capitalistic society, while the virtues are slowly seen as outdated and worthless for the world of today? If capitalism and its ideals are what one embraces, the virtues hinder the progress of those virtues, and so the sooner one moves on to the accumulation of one’s real “good,” wealth, the better and more praiseworthy and “modern” they will be.
If this is not bad enough, the capitalistic ideology, when combined with a drastically increased “working class,” due to the fact that most families feel as if both parents need careers in order to just have enough financial success to live, means children are going to gravitate more and more to consumerism and its lack of any sense of virtue. Children not only will have no guidance from their parents because their parents are working, they will find themselves, as they grow up, having to fight an ever-increasing population for the limited economic resources available to them. Again, when money is the end, when money is turned into the good, then the question of means is easily dismissed: money becomes the means and the end, therefore guaranteeing everything done through money is “good” according to the new way society looks at the world. Over-population and a capitalistic ideology lead only to social self-destruction. Those who scream the most about “culture wars” often do not understand their support of capitalistic ideology without any kind of regulation or restriction to that ideology is what is making for those culture wars and the neglect of morality.
Interestingly enough, voluntary celibacy – such as for priests or for religious life – was often seen as helping to deal with overpopulation. That is, overpopulation was recognized as a problem and celibacy was one way the problem could be overcome. Matteo Ricci had to explain to Confucians why celibates are not to be discouraged. Confucians believed that children had the duty to their parents to have children of their own. It was a part of their obligation to their parents. Ricci suggests that those who pursue virtue, such as himself, over children are doing society great good, for they can promote virtue in others. By helping the common good, they are still fulfilling their obligation to their parents:
A father cannot avoid thinking about trade and commerce. Since in these day there are many fathers and sons the number engaged in acquiring wealth is also considerable. As the number of those who seek to acquire wealth grow, it become increasingly difficult for each man to obtain what he wants. If I were to allow myself to be involved in secular affairs I would be unable to detach myself from the mundane, and would be bound to count myself fortunate if I were merely able to remain alive. How could I carry out my ambition to encourage people to live a righteous life? The most important thing in the cultivation of virtue is to despise wealth and goods. How can I persuade others not to concern themselves with wealth and goods if I pay serious attention to, and have an inordinate affection for, such things?[1]
The promotion of life is not the same thing as the promotion of large populations – the promotion of life is the promotion of the dignity of life, which requires the promotion for the common good and the virtues required for social harmony. When populations are low, and in need of more workers to sustain themselves, increasing population sizes can be good. The ancients, because they lived in smaller communities, did not face the problems of over-population and the moral decay which comes from it. “The troubles of today are not due to the smallness of the population, but to the fact that the population has grown large without a corresponding growth in virtue.”[2] Without having a plan to promote the virtue of a growing population, they become like animals.
Again, the so-called culture warrior needs to understand this if they want to get to the root problem in society. As long as they keep promoting an increase in population as if it were in itself always a good and an increase in capitalistic ideology with its inability to see any value to the virtues, the same ones decrying the state of society today are a part of the problem.[3] They must stop, look and think. If they want to be a part of the solution, the real solution, they must stop promoting those things which help cause the problems they detest. Without it, all their hard work, all their screaming and shouting to the world, does no one any good.
[1] Matteo Ricci, S.J., The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven. Trans. Douglas Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuo-chen, S.J. (St Louis, Missouri: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985), 419.
[2] Ibid., 415.
[3] Clearly, the way one deals with overpopulation is a different issue. It must be done through just means. This is why Ricci’s suggestion of having celibates (priests or religious) as an honored part of society is a good suggestion, while forced abortions on women with too many children would be a bad one.
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Henry writes, “Money is turned into the end one must seek, so that money becomes identified with the good.”
That’s like saying that football is bad because in football, “points are turned into the end one must seek, so that points become identified with the good”.
And as to virtues (such as loving your oppoent and seeking his good before your own), “because they often prevent the accumulation of points, and indeed, because they often require one to abandon points, become seen as something negative and to be abandoned for the continued success of a football team.”
In either football or capitalism, if you make it the basis of your entire life then of course it’s bad. The rules of football can’t be the rules of life, and the same goes for capitalism. But it doesn’t seem necessarily the case that you cannot engage in either football or capitalism without making it the basis of your entire life.
If you’re saying that our society does in fact make capitalism the be-all and end-all, I can certainly agree that that’s a bad thing. But I don’t think the fact that capitalism is engaged in at all can be branded an inherently bad thing, any more than football. Even if capitalism is considered a good thing for making money which in turn supports a lot of people’s livelihoods, we certainly do need to bear in mind that making money isn’t everything, as also playing or watching football.
Football can be idolatry if people make it their teleological goal.
Now, it is good we both agree the goals established in capitalism should not be the goals for our life. Good. But yes, our society — especially as seen in political debates — has people viewing the ideals of capitalism as leading to the goals of life. People judge others by their wealth. “I’m a success, look at the money I made. Oh, you didn’t make this much? Loser!” That’s the attitude. This is exactly the attitude of many in relation to the common good — you can reject the poor losers because, by making no money, they prove they did wrong. But this runs against the moral view of Christendom and many other religious tradition. Again, money is seen as proof of success or lack of it. That says what the goal in life is… and it isn’t God.
I’m completely with you, Henry, and I do think that we have, to a distressing degree, embraced capitalistic goals as normative for life. Three subtle but representative examples:
1. The prevalence of books with titles like Leadership/Management/Business Strategies of Fill-in-the-Blank. There’s even The Bhagavad Gita on Effective Leadership and Leadership Lessons of Jesus! As if spiritual lessons might not be more important, or as if the great minds of history are important mainly in insights they purportedly will give you on how to be a richer and more powerful corporate exec….
2. The use in business circles of the evil term “human capital”. Because humans are, from the perspective of capitalism, ultimately no different from real estate, machines, and such–except that they have this pesky tendency to want living wages, benefits, etc.
3. Articles you see from time to time along the line of, “Companies have found that by offering free flu shots they can save over a million dollars of lost workdays a year!” Many progressive ideas (flex time, day care, etc.) have been justified on this basis. As if preserving a human being from illness, or allowing him a schedule that allows him to take care of an ill parent, or helping him keep his children in quality care is important only to the extent that it makes him or her a more productive cog in the corporate machine. When I read articles like this I want to rip them up, stomp on them to just short of exhaustion, and toss them in the nearest incinerator.
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on it.
Wow. The indignation I feel on reading your astute examples, turmarion, is only offset by the encouragement of finding someone who shares the same righteous zeal. How very CST your observations are.
Henry,
Well the real-world answer to a lot of these matters is of course not a different system, but a parallel one. Namely , barter. Barter is more egaliatarian. In my previous line of work one of the amazing perks was the seemingly endless things I could barter services for. Haircuts for me and the spouse, meals, other services, all kinds of goods, etc. etc. It is important to keep in mind that there is nothing evil in capitalism, even though it seems to be leading some bad consequences. But it is hard for people to admit that because it means that they must also admit that any system — even one like “free trade” — can be rigged by people more smart and avariciously dedicated than we are. It lays bare that ANY system is available to rigged by a clever enough person. Once that is admitted it is an easy step to see that things more basic like religion can be rigged with comparative ease. And sure have been. So virtue can only be found not in vaunted systems but in a network of people you know you can trust. That is all we have in the world.
It is important to keep in mind that there is nothing evil in capitalism, even though it seems to be leading some bad consequences.
I think the jury’s out on that. How many Communists liked to argue that the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, etc., didn’t represent real Communism; that real Communism hadn’t really been tried, and that the horrors of Communist states resulted from other factors. I’m not comparing Wall Street to Stalin; but it’s quite possible that our descendants centuries from now might puzzle over how ardently we defended capitalism, insisting that all kinds of “bad consequences” did not flow from something intrinsic in the beast, but that there was “nothing evil in capitalism” per se.
I’m not a Communist or socialist, though I am sympathetic to Scandanvian-style social democracy; but I’m more and more inclined to agree with Marx to the extent that he argued that sooner or later the “bad consequences” are intrinsic to capitalism, and not accidental products of “bad” capitalism. My actual feeling is that neither capitalism, nor socialism, nor Communism have solved the problems of industrial economies of scale, and that such problems either can’t be solved (which I hope is not the case) or can be solved only through some paradigm no one has actually come up with yet. Time will tell.
BTW, “free trade”, market economies, and barter economies are not the same thing as capitalism properly so-called. Also, anthropologist David Graeber has written a fascinating book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, in which he gives strong evidence that no barter society ever existed or exists until after monetization of the economy. Here is just one article about it, and here is a longer one in which Graeber responds to his critics. Thoughts to ponder.
Again, that is so CST – all the way back to Rerum Novarum, in which Pope Leo XIII solidly rejected both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism, the former perhaps all the more strongly for sharing some of its socio-political critiques.
turmarion,
I am always impressed and slightly annoyed when someone actually uses verifiable historical details to smack down my own cherished simplicities. What is good for the goose…..so you are right. It is not all the same between “free trade” and capitalism, or barter. Let me just take refuge in the notion that this is only a blog and I gotta generalize somehow. . But there is one huge difference between those who defended capitalism and those who defend capitalism. And it is a biggie. As far as I know all forms of state communism have used terror as a normal tool of political and governmental action. This makes it easy to argue that state communism was always intrinsically evil. The same can not be said for capitalism. Capitalism has facilitated many evils, it is true (like slavery), but its action in societies never involved terror as a basic tool. One can say that when pushed into the fasicst extreme capitalism involves that. But then you have already admitted that it is a mutant form of it, not the basic operation of it. Whereas communism even in its most basic form involves itself unapologetically with terror. This schema does not make capitalism necessarily good, but it shows it is not evil. By contrast, it shows communism is always evil….even if amazingly it produced some good art and music and opthamology.
Good comment. I think this article blurs the distinction between capitalism and capitalistic ideology. It makes a valid point about the role of parents in the development of virtue, though.
I had a real problem with this sentence: “The ancients, because they lived in smaller communities, did not face the problems of over-population and the moral decay which comes from it.” If overpopulation is defined in terms of how the strain on resources affects the residents, then Rome and Jerusalem were far more overpopulated in ancient times than they are now.
@ PPF –
American capitalism may not have needed to resort to terror on the domestic front all that much (although you apparently know little about the tactics employed in the failed attempt to destroy the labor movement, on the one hand, and organized opposition to Jim Crow and the war in Vietnam, on the other). But American capitalism has certainly consistently employed terror all around the globe in defense of its market interests. If campaigns with labels such as “Shock and Awe” are not terrorist campaigns, then I don’t know what to call them.
Rodak,
To answer, let’s start with last things first. Is there any human governmental style or philosophy that is immune to being rigged and twisted for evil. NO. We are talking about human beings here, and we may be children of God, but that in itself raises for theological questions, or moments for theodicy. So my basic answer to you is– is the sky blue, is the Pope Catholic?? The issue is are some systems intrinsically evil. I am not aware of a communist philosophy which does not in principle allow terror as a basic tool. This is not the case for capitalism, in fact often the opposite– it is wrapped in positively humane language. Yes, such language looks hypocritical in light of what happens. But the principle makes some difference.
As I have said before here, all we get with us humans is less tragic, at best. Blame that fact on anyone of anything if you want – maybe a Demi-urge in form of a giant Quentin Quisp is vexing all our efforts. Still, we can make things a little better, and less worse.
Some of these issues are subtle and easy to write off.
What made this clear to me was when I realized that certain people (who considered themselves the height of conservative Christian orthadoxy) desired to buy biger and biger homes, higher status cars, and make more and more money because that is what it meant for them to improve their lives.
@ PPF –
I would also suggest, PPF, that you seem to be using capitalism in a way so as to make it essentially synonymous to “democracy” and using communism in such a way as to make it synonymous to “dictatorship” or “police state.” I don’t think that to do this is to play the game quite fair. Both capitalism and communism are economic systems; neither is a system of government. There is nothing intrinsic to either of these economic systems that would support your thesis. Your point is supported by anecdotal historical scenarios. Given other circumstances, things might have gone quite differently for both capitalism and communism.
Rodak,
No. Read Marx and Engels. From the start terror was a tool. It is in the philosophy. I am not talking about socialism here at all. I think socialism has many possible virtues, and none of the intrinsic evils, and much less likely to be religious intolerant as well. Now where is my copy of Swedish Agricultural Policy autographed by Dukakis??
Excellent, thought-provoking post, Henry. The very essence of capitalism is competition and accumulation. The essence of brother-love is cooperation and sharing. It is no exaggeration to characterize capitalism as amoral, or even immoral. Capitalism represents a kind of moral Midas Touch; it enflames the appetites which are the nemeses of the virtues.
@ PPF –
Okay, quote me a passage from the Communist Manifesto, or any of the writings of Marx that advocate terror as a tool. It advocates “struggle” — and that might “terrorize” those entrenched powers against whom the struggle is to be waged. But, as I said, capitalism will do the same in defense of its turf, wherever it needs to do so. The difference is that capitalism has been on top, shooting down; communism has always been on the bottom, fighting against the odds. Asymmetrical warfare is never pretty.
It is also the case that all warfare since the advent of air power and rocketry has been waged primarily against civilian populations. So both sides have used “terror” as their primary “tool” throughout the last century.
Rodak,
I will answer you in two ways. First, by arguing against what I see as your over-simplification. There is no question in my mind that all political actors in the modern world can lamentably be easily drawn into using terror as a tool. But here it matters greatly if it is used primarily and nakedly, or secondarily and covertly. In the real world an evil that gets mollified somewhat by having to be hidden is better than one that is out in the open. Not a very rosy-scenario, but that is our world. So it is not a question of any country really escaping the problem entirely. That is not the issue. It is, again, whether the very philosophy of government allows for even greater latitude for terror. Look, I lived in DC the whole time during the Bush regime. The populace here was terrorized, let me tell you. All the incessant warnings and code yellows or whatever, were a form of terror. And I will never forgive those people and their friends for terrorizing us all. I like Obama generally. But even if I didn’t I would vote for him simply because living in DC under Obama has been heaven compared to living under Bush and his terrorizing friends. But even if I take Bush and Co. as de facto terrorizers, i do not think it fair, or just coherent, to say that their enunciated political thought was advocating terror or intrinsically evil. We have to make these distinction, or we are lost in a dangerous vagueness. Even if we, as I do, consider the whole lot of them quite evil.
My second way of answering you is to address your challenge to provide a quote. Here I will simply say that if you are willing, as you appear to be, to make the classic Marx term “struggle” mean something less than terror often, then I think you are engaging in a re-writing of history. Perhaps one could argue that not every element of “struggle” equated with terror. But the
very fact that it was intrinsic — which you have even tacitly admitted here — and the historical fact that such struggle at least sometimes did equate with simple terroristic means shows that there was an internal advocacy of the same.
Fortunately, I do not even need to rely on such an analysis. Through the glory of Google I quickly found a Marx quote that makes the identification with more pin-point accuracy and sharpness. All the more so because Marx here contrasts his “terror” with that of “royalists” who hide it behind some other name or description, and there fore calls it “disreputable” . He may
have been descriptively right about that; but at the same time it shows that he thought the “reputable” thing would have been to explicitly embrace terror from the get-go with no “excuses.”
Thus:
“Did you not read our articles about the June revolution, and was not the essence of the June revolution the essence of our paper? Why then your hypocritical phrases, your attempt to find an impossible pretext? We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror [!!!]. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.”
–Karl Marx, in the final issue of Neue Rheinische Zeitung (18 May 1849) Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, Vol. VI, p. 503
Excellent post Henry. Let me chew on it some more before I try to respond in a substantive fashion. But thank you for something to chew on!
Thanks. Of course there are many side issues which could be brought up — I was very broad based in this — however, I think the general spirit is something one should be able to understand, even if the details are something which need to be thought over.
Henry writes, “‘I’m a success, look at the money I made. Oh, you didn’t make this much? Loser!’”
Of course the idea that more money makes one person better than another, is wrong. But since it predates capitalism, I don’t believe it is caused by it.
The way to counter that view it is not necessarily to abolish capitalism, but to inculcate virtue. In this regard the problem with our society, in my view, is not capitalism, but the idea that the authority to govern rests with the governed. How can you inculcate virtue in people, while also teaching them that they themselves are the arbiters of what is virtuous?
@ Agellius —
How would you address the charges I made against capitalism on 12/28/11 at 8:43 p.m.? My contention is that capitalism and virtue–particularly Christian virtue–work at cross purposes.
Rodak writes, “How would you address the charges I made against capitalism on 12/28/11 at 8:43 p.m.? My contention is that capitalism and virtue–particularly Christian virtue–work at cross purposes.”
I would observe that any good thing, if valued inordinately, can work at cross-purposes to virtue. Money was valued inordinately long before modern capitalism came along, and will continue so after capitalism is gone. Any economic system ever implemented is bound to provide occasions of sin in one way or another, to those who lack virtue.
If virtue is not being taught and valued publicly, then inordinate desires, whether for money or sex or alcohol or what have you, will run rampant under any “system”. And people who are accused of having inordinate desires will demand that they not be “judged” or have values “imposed” on them. Pope Leo XIII said this long ago in his critique of political systems purporting to base themselves on principles of “self-government”.
@ PPF –
Not buying it. The mere use of the word in that context makes Marx perhaps guilty of situational ethics, but it does not show that “terror” is a tool intrinsic to the philosophical basis of communism. He is merely saying: Since you are intent on opposing us with terror, we will fight fire with fire, unapologetically.
When Western capitalist nations make war of civilian populations, it is “collateral damage.” When Third World peoples engage in armed struggle to gain their freedom and their small slice of the pie, using the only weapons available to them, it is called “terrorism.” There is little doubt which side of any such conflict actually inflicts the most terror.
Rodak,
Oy vey!
Wow, I walk away for a few hours, and what a discussion! Anyway, I’m with you Rodak.
The coming stuff has far too much to link to, so anyone who’s interested should be prepared to Google!
PPF, first: Capitalism is a) decentralized, b) usually transfers its effects elsewhere, and c) involves everyone systemically, making opposition difficult. Let me unpack.
a) One could say that Stalin was responsible for the purges, or Pol Pot for the killing fields, or Mao for the Cultural Revolution. Easily done, given monolithic, dictatorial states. Capitalism doesn’t work that way. No king or president or prime minister ever said, “Hey, let’s start kidnapping Africans and making them slaves,” nor did any Parliament or Congress do so. It just “happened” by the magic of the Invisible Hand of the Market. Thus millions were enslaved and their descendants continued to suffer for generations, and yet it was, in a sense, nobody’s fault. There’s no one person or institution you can point to and say, “He/she/they/it is/are at fault,” as you could with Stalin or Mao. It’s just like in a modern corporation–no one is ever to blame. This diffuseness and decentralization (compared to Communist states) makes the evil effects of capitalism–slavery, the United Fruit Massacre, the Coalfield Wars, etc.–difficult to pin on any one entity, making capitalism seem–falsely–to have less blood on its hands than it does. In this respect, I vehemently disagree with you, PPF, when you say, “In the real world an evil that gets mollified somewhat by having to be hidden is better than one that is out in the open.” At least open evil like Hitler or Mao can be recognized and opposed. Covert or hidden evil allows the rest of us to be “comfortably numb” and go about our business as evil is done without our awareness or even in our name. There’s a reason C. S. Lewis portrayed Screwtape as a petty bureaucrat–read the introduction!
b) Capitalism suffers from the inherent contradiction that it must lower costs (including labor) as low as possible, but sell as high as possible–to consumers, who are also employees, who might not have the money if their wages are the ones being lowered. Thus, capitalism has always astutely shifted the negative effects away from the consumer base. Slaves did the dirty agricultural work in the antebellum South. In the early Industrial Age, it was successive waves of (easily ignored) immigrants who greased the “wheels of progress”. Now the sweatshop labor that makes our iPads and tennis shoes and shirts is overseas. Lest the post WW II era of booming prosperity be held as a counterexample, keep in mind that most other industrial competitors had been–literally–destroyed in WW II, that our global hegemony ensured cheap resources which compensated for labor cost. The point is that the costs of Communism were very clear domestically, whereas those of capitalism are transferred, as long as possible, to other classes or ethnic groups or countries where they can be ignored. Until, perhaps, now.
c) It was clear that Stalin or Mao were the bad guys, and that heroes like Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov were good guys. Capitalism has everyone co-opted. If I buy textiles built in sweatshops or cars built in non-union factories or use products the production of which damages the environment, then I’m complicit in the whole system in a way that a Solzhenitsyn wasn’t. In short, capitalism makes us all bad guys in a way that other systems don’t (at least, not to the same extent).
Second: The Enclosure Laws, which expropriated the land of peasants and expelled them was arguable necessary for capitalism to begin in its homeland of England to begin with. An extremely cheap labor force somewhere (read: slaves, 12 hour days and child labor, Third World sweatshops, etc.) is necessary for capitalism. The victories of labor in the First World between WW II and the late 70′s are arguable anomalous, and even then were at the expense of people in other countries, horrible dictatorships we supported for cheap resources (there’s a reason for the term “banana republic”, you know), etc.
The point of all this is that it is arguable whether capitalism in some abstract Platonic realm can be separated from all the evils done in its name. In short, it’s at least arguable that the evils produced by capitalism are not unfortunate byproducts of human sin, or not doing capitalism right, or insufficient virtue, but are the nature of the beast. PPF says, “This makes it easy to argue that state communism was always intrinsically evil. The same can not be said for capitalism.” I argue that it can be said of it, for reasons detailed here and by Rodak. You also say, “One can say that when pushed into the fasicst extreme capitalism involves that. But then you have already admitted that it is a mutant form of it, not the basic operation of it.” I’m not sure where I said that!
OK, this is way too long, but I had to get some of this out!
@ Turmarion — Thank you for fleshing that out so eloquently. I now understand my own points more comprehensively.
Turmarion,
That is an impressive explication of your views, and I admit it throws me back on my heels for a minute. But then I come upright again, with the simple insight that your problem is ultimately not with capitalism but with the Creator. He made us, and we are scheming, selfish, duplicitous, conniving, two-faced, self-aggrandizing and self-servingly pious thrown in with the mix. Capitalism’s unique feature is that it allows all that to become obvious. But it also allows a lot of good things as well. Not incidentally, the wonderful ability we are all enjoying in this very discussion is one of those things. Don’t for get this sort of freedom was unknown for most of human history, and certainly unknown in places where the other economic systems discussed held sway.
In fact capitalism makes virtues and demerits more open, not covert. My point about a hidden bit of nastiness being better than the open one has nothing to do with capitalism per se, and everything to do with the simple truth that has always extends across cultures which Catholic wit Lord Acton put so well: power corrupts. If the system is capitalistic and thus mostly propped up by ideals of civic virtue, then that is simply at bottom a great form of constraint on the ruler’s corruption, which in some form must always be factored in. But in fact history shows that there are more corrupt and less corrupt rulers in history. They are not all the same. Similarly, there are more corrupt and less corrupt systems. Notice that this leaves not conceptual room for even the existence of an uncorrupt or non-corrupt system. Thus, there never will be a non-corrupt capitalistic system. I am guessing that we would all agree that we are going through an especially corrupt phase of our own capitalistic trajectory as a country. But the best human beings can get is a waxing and waning of corruption, in a more free system like capitalism. In communism it was nothing but corruption from the start.
@ Agellius –
You have neatly sidestepped the core of my argument. I stated that capitalism is based on competition and accumulation of wealth. My challenge to you is to show where competition and accumulation of wealth are compatible with the Gospel message and the teachings of Christ.
I’m not saying that capitalism is not an effective engine for the development of wealth. And I’m not saying that there are not obvious degrees of addiction to that wealth and abuses of the power that the wealth generates, ranging from bad to worse.
What I’m saying is that capitalism is intrinsically un-Christian; that its intrinsic values are specifically negated by the Beatitudes, among many other teachings and sayings of Christ.
What can you show me that contradicts my contention?
Rodak writes, “My challenge to you is to show where competition and accumulation of wealth are compatible with the Gospel message and the teachings of Christ.”
Competition and the accumulation of wealth per se are not opposed to the teachings of Catholic morality. If you assert that they are, then you may try to demonstrate it if you wish. Like any number of things, they can be abused or valued inordinately, but in and of themselves they are morally neutral.
@ Agellius –
I didn’t say they were opposed to Catholic morality. That’s none of my concern. My point was that they are contrary to the teachings of Christ as presented in the Gospels.
Rodak writes, “I didn’t say [competition and accumulation of wealth] were opposed to Catholic morality. That’s none of my concern. My point was that they are contrary to the teachings of Christ as presented in the Gospels.”
I disagree.
Re competition: Matthew 20:20-26, Matthew 23:11-12, Luke 14:10, John 13:12-17. Re accumulation of wealth: Matthew 6:19-24, Matthew 19:16-24, Luke 6:24-26, Luke 12:13-34.
One could argue, based on Luke 16:1-14 that Jesus teaches that we must realistically make some compromises given the fallen world in which we live (though note carefully the coda in verse 14). In short, just as Jesus said the poor will be with us always, he is here perhaps saying that the secular values of competition, wealth, greed, etc. will also be with us; not in an approving way, but just as a statement of fact as to how things work in this fallen world. To survive, we may need to make a partial truce with such values; but this is a far cry from saying that competition and accumulation of wealth are seen as morally neutral from the perspective of the Gospels or that they’re not opposed to Jesus’ principles.
Turmarion writes, “Re competition: Matthew 20:20-26, Matthew 23:11-12, Luke 14:10, John 13:12-17. Re accumulation of wealth: Matthew 6:19-24, Matthew 19:16-24, Luke 6:24-26, Luke 12:13-34.”
I don’t accept a list of verse citations as an argument. If you want to use the content of one of those verses as a premise and draw a conclusion, go ahead, and I’ll see if I can rebut it.
Agellius,
I would like to make a point that has been tried again and again in the history of Christianity. That is to take the ipssissima Verbum Jesu seriously on this matter. You are quite correct in terms of the traditional development of Catholic thought on the accumulation of wealth. But with all deference to that as an historical fact, I think only an utter revisionist can believe that Jesus of Nazareth thought that accumulation of wealth, regardless of moral disposition, was an impediment to salvation. I think this amounts to a good reason to not take every word jesus said utterly seriously. But if we are to treat him seriously at all we have to admit what he really thought. And an eye of a needle is pretty small.
“An extremely cheap labor force somewhere (read: slaves, 12 hour days and child labor, Third World sweatshops, etc.) is necessary for capitalism.”
Yes. This (on the part of the capitalist entrepreneurs) is knowingly and deliberately using other human beings as a means to their ends. I believe that such a practice is intrinsically evil. We consumers, in our smug comfort and self-congratulatory blindness, have negligently failed to recognize what is being done (largely off-camera) to support us in our unprecedentedly (in its breadth) high standard of living. I have a feeling that we are soon to have our eyes pried open.
Rodak,
It cannot be denied that that quote reflects what capitalism has often lead to. But if we take one of the archetypal examples of a country using cheap labor, namely that of the Spanish Empire and its use of the New World, which is concomitantly often used as a bolster for such an analysis as your quote, the facts say the opposite. In fact the whole things became a drain on the country, and Spanish boats became fronts for other countries more clever than they were. So, it was not the people who ruled that benefitted, but those who did not. We have some of the same situation in the US today. The problem, such as it is, is the one of human nature which is quite conniving. That is why the Beatitudes are the greatest spiritual wisdom that has been created. They hit us where we live, so to speak, all of us.
PPF writes, “The problem, such as it is, is the one of human nature which is quite conniving.”
For once I agree with you! : )
@ PPF
“So, it was not the people who ruled that benefitted, but those who did not. We have some of the same situation in the US today.”
I don’t know how you can say that when the rich in the US are richer today than they have ever been, and the middle class is falling apart. That is the domestic situation.
It has been a historical truth that colonialism has proven too expensive to maintain since the time of Rome. But the United States has been wise enough not to colonize distant lands, but to utilize gunboat diplomacy, economic hegemony over market zones, and reliable (but always dispensable) autocratic and plutocratic puppet governments to ensure its profit-taking. So I don’t know that your analogy to 15th and 16th century mercantilism holds for the U.S. as it arguably does for Western Europe, which is still paying a price for its various fallen colonial empires.
Agellius,
Well, thanks, I think. One could say, O felix culpa. But in fact most followers of that great old insight don’t seem very felix, and are a lot more culpa. Even ironically if they are not culpable. Ah, religion! But don’t worry, I suspect I will get the boot here at one point or another, so savor this moment of rare agreement.
Rodak,
Look, with due respect to your insights which are very manifest here often, you really have to be more precise. Who benefits in this society and who rules. The ones who benefit the most are never the ones ruling. With the rare exception of Michael Bloomberg in New York, those who rule are a notch or two down the later. This precise identification of stratum makes a big difference as to why this country is messhugenah right now. You cannot tell me that you think Obama is one of the ones who has benefitted most, and yet he is one of the most powerful rulers on the planet. The people who benefitted only live here part of the time, and the rest on a private island in Abu Dhabi or the like. In fact everyone else, even the very well heeled who do the bidding of the super-duper-rich live in an utterly frustrating society now. It takes 10X the money to live a really pleasant life in a major city than it took just twenty years ago, and believe me those lower rungs do not make 10X what they made 20 years ago. SO the dirty little secret is that basically even most of the upper classes have been screwed too. Whose kids do you think are in the Occupy Movement. The lower middle class?? Dream on. They are to busy working at Wendy;s to hang out in a park. This country shows almost exactly the same pattern as Spain long ago.
The real problem is an almost philosophical one. People want to find a way to bliss out on religion or its replacements and think the so-called good people with their families and yeoman virtues will step in to save everybody. We need a system that doesn’t make excuses for human nature. People have a great capacity for virtue, of you do not presume on it. For deep in all males psychologies is the desire not to be taken as the rube and the loser. Start with that and work up from there.
@ Agellius — “I don’t accept a list of verse citations as an argument.”
They don’t consist of argument. They are the recorded words of Jesus Christ. Together they form a comprehensive teaching. He is not “arguing” — He is telling you how it is, then and now, and always. But, go ahead — dismiss it and do what you want.
Jesus may be telling me how it is, but a list of verse citations isn’t.
@ PPF –
Why don’t you present us with a brief outline of the key features of a such society as well as a road map to get us to it?
My favorite song by Bob Dylan is titled “Sweetheart Like You”. Its lines are spoken to a woman newly arrived in hell, by a demon–not Satan, for we are told that “the Boss” has “gone north, for awhile.” Anyway, at one point this demon assures the newly lost soul “There’s only one step down from here, baby / It’s called the Land of Permanent Bliss…” That’s one step down from hell, we must understand.
No, blissing-out is not the answer.
What we are seeing today is the practical application of the scenario predicted by Ayn Rand in her allegorical novel, “Atlas Shrugged”–abandonment of the society and its people by the super-rich entrepreneurial class, with no loyalty to nation or people, but only to the generation of wealth for the benefit of those who generated that wealth, and for them alone.
Is this evil? Or is it beyond good and evil?
People tend to dismiss “Atlas Shrugged” because they don’t understand that it is allegory, and because they consider Ayn Rand to be a wretched prose stylist–which she most certainly was. Nonetheless, the book still sells like crazy. And it sells to the kind of yuppies who like to think of themselves as “Lords of the Universe.” It has been a much greater effect on history than even “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It has been the blueprint of recent history.
Rodak,
The irony of this discussion is that you and I see very much the same problem at work in our society. I agree with your assessment of our situation. What is to be Done? I’m not an economist, and therefore can’t anty up a lot as to precise solutions. I am not going to blather on like the fatuous talking heads as if I knew what should happen. Personally, I am a lower-level libertarian, and a sort of higher level Swedish Socialist. Don’t ask me if I have a worked out philosophy to combine the two, but I sure have a lot of discrete insights to with it. At least I admit the incommensurability. Because I believe in the first Beatitude. I think the government should get out of the business of regulating all sort of things like medicine and every other conceivable service, because it does such a spectacularly poor job of it anyways. Let people make money if they have a skill. You will see how fast people will make a good living!! Problematic people will easily be weeded out by legal and word of mouth, especially with the internet. In the real world it is not hard to find out if someone is an asshole and a creep. And by the way, apropos of nothing really but because it is on this point, this simple fact of real life makes the Catholic Church’s self-defense for why they “didn’t know” about all their perv priests completely unbelievable.
“In the real world it is not hard to find out if someone is an asshole and a creep.” I like that, and it’s true, it would go nicely on one of those Demotivator posters
Melody,
I was totally unaware of the huge cottage industry for “Demotivational Posters.” They are hilarious; I just never even knew of them. Here’s a good one for the Catholic realm: a big picture of Cardinal Bernard Law and the caption reading “If you pray hard enough you can have as much holiness as this guy.”
@ PPF –
If we boil down your existential nausea as indirectly expressed above the charred residue we find in the bottom of the pan will yield something like “Darwin is God.” Or, looked at in a (slightly) different light, “Kill them all and let God sort them out.” It yields: the strong and the gifted are fit to walk the earth, the rest…well…you know. They can always get temporary work building cages in which to house their peers.
“Snap out of it, boy! People are jealous of you! They smile to your face, but behind your back they hiss, “What’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this?”
Rodak,
Somehow I missed this part of the discussion, or did it just get passed through the censor?? If I understand your point you are pointing to something like Santorum’s recent statements that he believes people should make wildly different amounts of money, and that such is consistent with God’s law or something. usually people forget that one of the few places that such scientific views (a la Darwin, or St. Simion, or any of the grab bag of such types) ever actually got a hold as a governmental philosophy was in Mexico, with the “cientificos”. and well, that didn’t quite work out terribly scientifically. One can make fun of religion as hypocrisy, and I am drawn to that as well, but it does provide some sort of restraint that know-it-all scientism historically has not. I know that is not a terribly rousing defense of religion, but there it is.
As to your quote it reminds me of our trajectory here owning a house in DC. When we first bought a house in this neighborhood people literally thought we were crazy. They told me so. When they actually saw the house they liked it a lot. But as they would say….”Oh…..the neighborhood.’ And in fact since it was DC, it was not even that cheap in our terms when we bought it. By “our terms” I mean what we could pay and have enough left over to live life. I am glad I was young then and could work hard enough to give us some breathing room. Boy things have changed around here. I am not ashamed to say that if we were starting out now, there is no way we could arrange our lives as we do, and afford to live here. It has been amazing living through the ancient dictum of “everything is perceptions.” And in the the world of real estate, which is mostly not “real”, that is especially so, since it is mostly how people feel about themselves when they live in a place. To wit, most people would not fit their self-image into the reality we did of moving into a house that was just down the street from an active crack house. But of course instead of people saying — you were really smart or brave or whatever. They instead have convinced themselves that we payed a few bucks only for the place. That it took no real personal sacrifice to get it.
Of course if that were the case anyone could have done it. And would have. Instead, you had to actually have the gumption to spend your little pile on a guess. A guess that it would be different one day.
In fact we were always happy here, and I feel we were really lucky. Notice I say luck. There was some smarts involved, the main one being NOT MOVING every time the ennui of life set in. That is what does- in most people, in my experience, moving around. I know people who have spent the price of several houses just moving their crap across the country several times.
PPF writes, “… I think only an utter revisionist can believe that Jesus of Nazareth thought that accumulation of wealth, regardless of moral disposition, was an impediment to salvation.”
I think you meant to say, “was *not* an impediment to salvation”?
Anyway, since you apparently are referring to the “eye of a needle” statement, I agree that implies great difficulty getting into heaven on the part of a rich man. But note that Jesus does not say a rich man may not enter the kingdom of heaven (unlike a long list of persons whom St. Paul says unequivocally may not enter). This implies to me that it’s not the money per se that keeps one out of heaven, but the love of money — greed, as we know, is a deadly sin. But so are lust, sloth, etc. Having a lot of money is probably like having a lot of beautiful women around you all the time, or living a life of ease: Both pose great moral dangers and are likely to provide many occasions of sin.
But since Jesus stops short of saying a rich man may *not* enter — and in fact says that he may enter albeit “only with difficulty” — it cannot be the case that being rich, per se, is a sin.
In any event, if accumulation of wealth, per se, were sinful, then everyone would be required to “sell all that he has and give to the poor”, and live lives of poverty. It would be a sin to contribute to a 401(k) account which grows in value over time. I just don’t buy it.
Agellius,
Yes, thank you for inserting the “not” correctly, and sorry for the misprision of my hasty prose here. Fancy way of saying I am not a good typist really. Anyways, you are giving the standard explanation that has been given since Constantine made Jesus into a Roman religious figure. I don’t disagree with you. But I think Jesus disagreed with us. How many pages and anathemas have been created to dissemble on this simple fact: Jesus was rather extreme on this point. I think his whole ministry makes no sense as a whole except under that aegis of poverty. My deepest personal critique of orthodox Christianity is not that people cannot become better people and be saved by such a faith, but that they do so without acknowledging that part of that ability comes from rejecting part of Jesus’ extremism. “Poverty of spirit” as in Luke is the middle path. There is Enlightenment, and I say that only to tweak those who hate Christian-Buddhism.
Yes, PPF, it is impossible to live in the world as Jesus said one should live. All of the churches which allow their members to feel good about their lives in the world are, therefore, frauds. They pat their respective Agelliuses on the heads and send them out to syphon off the last dime from widows and orphans through good honest commerce and then pass the dish on Sunday to collect God’s 10% of the ill gotten gain so that Father can put money down on his new Volvo, or Pastor Sven can add a hot tub to the rectory. Can I get an “A-men”?
Rodak,
Don’t be so hard on people like me and Agellius for not being big fans of poverty. BTW, do you know the difference between an old guy who is “crazy” and one that is “eccentric”……money.
Also, about Father buying his “Volvo” I am afraid that the truth, at least when I was in the seminary, was worse than even that. It will please your sense of poetic symmetry on these matters that when Fr. Bernie Kirlin, the Rector of my seminary needed a new car he called a pastor of a local parish he knew and told him. The Pastor made him “loan” to buy the car outright. Cash. Later Bernie told me that the “loan” had been completely forgiven, or disappeared. I remember saying “Wow! That’s really nice.” But Bernie explained that that was “just the way it is done”. I remember him saying “How else can a priest get a car to do ministry??”…….I suspect all that has changed now, thirty years later, with much increased scrutiny. I think they have had to raise the salaries a bit so that they actually can afford a car. But in real terms it may be a lessening of disposable income if you actually have to par a car mortgage. Then again, there may be other, simpler way. When Gerry LaCerra, then Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Miami called me over to the Cathedral, he told me we were all going to have pizza that night and beer. He sent me straight away into the little room where the collections were kept to get the money needed to pay. Easy.
@PPF –
I wasn’t making a statement about you and/or Agellius, actually. I was making a statement about organized religion in general. In other words, I was making a statement about what Agellius has been attempting to defend. The conditioning of individuals is anecdotal and not that interesting in the larger context.