The fall
of the Berlin Wall on 9 November, 1989 and the break-up of the Soviet Union on
26 December, 1991 seemed to mean the failure of communism in Europe in
general. It continued in Asia, notably in China, although with a
duplicitous and aggressive control of capitalist enterprise, including an
economic colonialism in Africa. Western Europe continued with
various forms of socialist governments. European countries have
typically supported a democratic socialism, which affirms democracy by the
people and big government as the means by which a country can bring about more
equity and care for the poor. This is all an ongoing experiment in
theory and in practice that never manages to get the same results, and the
debates continue. Communism, however, always meant the oppression and
persecution of Christians, whereas many Christians have hoped to find in
socialism a good form of government because of its purported concern for the
poor and a more equitable justice. Many other Christians have found in
capitalism not only a better working economy but also a freer economy for them
to distinguish themselves from and have a voice in economic and political
systems. This all too brief essay for the size of the topic is offered to
raise considerations for what is, of course, a complicated matter that requires
further study and discussion.
We are
here interested mostly in how Scripture weighs into the discussion of
communism, socialism, and capitalism, being well-aware that it was not
supporting government or economics as we know them today. That is, we
need to be cautious when applying words from antiquity to situations today that
Scripture did not have in view: we need to avoid anachronism. Some
general discussion is possible, however, where Biblical views about governance
and social morality are addressed in both Scripture and society today.
The moral concerns in Scripture about wealth and poverty contribute to this
discussion; here, however, the relation of government to those concerns are
primarily under consideration.
Two
primary Biblical concerns address governments: the enslavement of the people
when power is centralized in the Old Testament’s monarchy in Israel (1 Samuel
8.12-17), and the replacement of God with an imperial tyrant who oppresses
God’s people in the New Testament’s notion of an antichrist (Revelation
13). Governments fulfill a God-given role of establishing justice (Romans
13.1-7), but this is no endorsement of any centralization of power in the
State. While the Bible’s concerns with monarchy and tyranny do not express
the view of government under communism, they do relate to totalitarianism: the
centralization of power in government. There is an overwhelming argument
in Scripture that big government does not provide prosperity and promote
religious devotion but results in oppression.
Government
ought to be conceived in terms of protection for citizens rather than of power
over them. A man of government, says Cicero (Roman statesman, 1st c. BC), should make it his first concern
to protect what belongs to private citizens, such as preventing the state’s taking his
property. He continues:
For the chief
purpose in the establishment of constitutional state and municipal governments
was that individual property rights might be secured. For, although it was by
Nature's guidance that men were drawn together into communities, it was in the
hope of safeguarding their possessions that they sought the protection of
cities (De Officiis 2.73).[1]
Thus, Cicero says, the government should do what it can to avoid levying a property tax (De Officiis 2.74).
Yet the
state’s collectivisation of private property is exactly the socio-economic platform laid out
by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for communism. The initial plan states
up front that, in order for the poor masses, the proletariat, to wrest control
from the bourgeoisie, power must be centralized. To do so, private
property and inheritance would need to be eliminated by the state. This is the exact opposite of God’s plan for
the families of Israel to have their own allotted land that would be
inherited. Marx and Engels sought the elimination of private property first
by means of a graduated tax, where those with more would pay more in
taxation. It would involve the confiscation of property and credit by the
State. The State would control the farms and factories and the people’s
labour. It would control where people lived, re-engineer society, control
speech, and provide a free, State education that would allow government control
of the curriculum. These points are laid out in the Communist
Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (II. Proletarians and
Communist, Communist Manifesto):[2]
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of
land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of
a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in
the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by
the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of
the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial
armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the Proletarians and Communists populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
These
points provide a view into what State control entailed under communism, all
with a concern for equity instead of the oppression of the masses by the bourgeoisie.
As stated, and particularly as the plan was put into action by the Bolsheviks
in the early 20th century, this State control was not only
oppressive but also murderous. For example, the kulaks, Ukrainian
farmers owning their own, small farms, had their property confiscated so that the Communists
could establish their collective farms, and they were either murdered or
relocated within the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Communism has oppressed
religion, including Christianity, by re-education, suppression of beliefs,
closing churches, incarcerating believers, controlling their children’s
education, and executing people for their faith. At the time of writing,
there are regular reports of how this is continuing in Communist China, and the
history of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia present the same narrative.
‘Equity’ sounds like a good value, since ‘inequity’ suggests injustice. In 1875, Marx proposed that, if Communism is successful in producing an abundance of co-operative wealth, society will be able to claim the socialist slogan, ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ (Critique of the Gotha Project). Communism, like socialism, is all about both the State’s access to wealth and the State’s control and redistribution of wealth. The redistribution of wealth might be done through taxes, land reform, welfare programmes, paying off student debts, etc. Wealth redistribution is a form of equity in the sense not of enabling equal opportunity but achieving equal outcomes. Cicero calls this for what it is: 'And what is the meaning of an abolition of debts, except that you buy a farm with my money; that you have the farm, and I have not my money?' (De Officiis 2.84). Scripture not only protects private property but is also far too skeptical of human nature and governmental power to believe that anything of the sort would result.
As
practiced in the early Jerusalem Church (Acts 5), equal distribution was,
crucially, voluntary. (Paul makes the same point regarding the collection from
Corinthian Christians for the relief of the Church in Jerusalem: ‘Each one must
give as he has decided in his own heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion,
for God loves a cheerful giver’ (2 Corinthians 9.7; cf. 8.3).) State
control under Communism is not voluntary and has always meant oppression.
Thus, when one reads in the Communist Manifesto (point 10,
above) that there will be free education for children in public schools, one
has to understand that this actually means State control of children’s
education—control of the curriculum and no private education. Also,
devotion to God is considered competitive with devotion to the State or, more
particularly, to the Communist Party. Being a Christian is thereby
rendered antisocial.
The attack
on the Church comes in another section of the Communist Manifesto,
where it is depicted as a bourgeois institution that gives only the
appearance of socialist concerns.
As
the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical
Socialism with Feudal Socialism.
Nothing
is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not
Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the
State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy
and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian
Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the
heart-burnings of the aristocrat (III. Socialist and Communist Literature, 1.
Reactionary Socialism, A. Feudal Socialism, Communist Manifesto).
As Marx
had written in 1843, ‘religion is the opium of the people’ (A Contribution
to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right). The context of the
quotation suggests his point was that it was an emotive response to oppression
that, unlike Communism, was ineffective and placating: ‘Religion is the sigh of
the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of
soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.’ Yet it was not
irrelevant because it worked as a numbing agent on the open wound of social
(economic) oppression that really needed surgery. Thus, Communism, a
typically atheist ideology, has always opposed religion.
Socialism,
on the other hand, claims that religious concerns for justice and the poor are
concerns that can be given concrete expression in its organized response to
social issues. Poverty, education, oppression, social justice—a socialist
society takes such concerns seriously and responds with a view of government
that aims to achieve results. Socialism overlaps with some of the aims of
communism, such as inheritance and graduated taxation and free public
education, but especially State control. The concerns of society are not to
be addressed in the Church or by voluntary aid but through the State—therein
lies the challenge.
While
Christians obviously cannot trust the control of the State in communism,
we might ask as Christians whether we can trust the socialist State’s use
of our labour, taxes, and property. Socialism is a system of
governance that involves a large role for government as it controls resources,
production, and dissemination of goods. It may do this to a greater
or lesser extent: public housing, the railroad system, public schools, health
care, elderly care (Medicaid), etc. This control by the State inevitably
involves the curtailing of individual freedom.
The Old
Testament entertained a concern for a safety net for persons who faced
poverty. First, opportunities to work for food were set in place with the
rule that people were not to glean at the edges of their fields (Leviticus
19.9; 23.22). This entailed voluntary participation by those with means
in a cultural practice. Of course, in Israel's theocratic society, it was
divine Law. Second, a state-run food programme for the poor was
established. Every third year, the tithe of produce that people gave was
collected for those without land--the Levites, sojourners (aliens), fatherless
(orphans), and widows (Deuteronomy 26.12).
On the
other hand, others were given private ownership to inheritable lands--quite the
opposite of a socialist society. If they lost their lands due to a
reversal of circumstances, or even if they lost their own freedom and became indebted
servants, the Sabbath Year returned the land or freed the bondservant
(Deuteronomy 15). As a social programme, however, this practice of a year
of release functioned as a social control to avoided systemic poverty.
This social practice mirrored God's action of blessing those who obeyed His
voice (Deuteronomy 15.4-5). Israel's care for the poor was not conceived
of as an entitlement programme but as an obligation that comes with concern for
others:
If
among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within
your land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart
or shut your hand against your poor brother, 8 but you shall open your
hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be (Deuteronomy
15.7-8).
If people
are taxed to pay for government programmes to care for the needy, their giving
is a legal requirement and not a moral act. Care for the poor, however,
is Old Testament moral law. The passage continues,
For
there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You
shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in
your land' (Deuteronomy 15.11).
This is
why countries advocating freedom and capitalism need a culture that promotes volunteerism
and philanthropy that cares for the poor in the land. When this occurs,
there is no leaning toward a socialist state where bureaucrats are hired (not
elected) to manage the redistribution of wealth through impersonal systems of
government.
Socialism
requires big government, and its authority over individuals' lives easily
becomes homogenizing at best and oppressive at worst. Democracy has to
answer the problem of the minorities: how will they be respected when the
majority wins elections and assumes power? Similarly, even as socialism
as big government can try to help minority groups, like the poor, it can
equally exercise power in ways that oppose minority groups. The question is
often asked of socialist governments, 'Will socialism oppose religious
freedom?' The more the State controls wealth and its distribution, the more it
is a challenge to the Church fulfilling that role. The Church is, from the
socialist State’s perspective, a competitor. Its ownership of property,
its exemption from taxation, its different moral standards (such as opposition
to abortion or what children are taught in schools) are problematic for the
socialist State. Why is it that social democracy has no place for the Ten
Commandments, wants State control of the Church, wants to use taxes to provide
abortion on demand and transgender surgery in opposition to the Church’s moral
convictions, wants enforced health insurance plans that requires nuns to pay
for birth control, supports the control of speech by hate speech laws rather
than freedom of speech, insists on educating children against their parents'
values, and so forth? Of course, the State could hold more Christian
values. Yet it does not in country after country, and the same problem
encountered with communism also persists in socialism: the concentration of
power in the State and the control of its citizens. Those who swallow the
idea that socialism does good have to believe that the State is poised to
deliver not only a moral society but also that it will do so equitably and
efficiently. Nothing in Scripture’s warnings against concentrating power
in the State supports such naïve trust. The history of various attempts
at socialism, beginning in ancient Greece, is a history of economic and
political failure.[3]
Apart from
the actual programmes of social democracy, there is also the question of
whether it is an efficient means to achieve good in society. (Let us
imagine its goals are good, for argument’s sake.) In fact, government
control is highly inefficient and always costly. The argument is false
that socialism puts the economy into the hands of the people through their
election of officials to government. Government’s elected officials are
middlemen between the people and the programs that replace what would otherwise
develop in a free market system. Moreover, elected officials regulate
rather than run government agencies: a ‘deep state’ develops around the
government funded agencies such as for education, health care, and
environmental regulations. Such agencies are notoriously costly,
unresponsive, inefficient, self-serving, and so forth. This is precisely
because they do not have to respond to a competitive market and the preferences
of consumers. When a profit incentive is removed from work, work grinds
to a slow pace. Think of the agony of dealing with the department of
motor vehicles. A health system in a country that leaves nobody out by giving
control to the government is a system that is costly, inefficient, and, once
again, forces Christians to pay for State approved 'procedures' like
abortion. The suspicion of centralized control in both Old and New
Testaments does not address inefficiency, but it does see the danger of
self-serving, centralized government that eliminates the free decisions of the
property owning families, clans, and tribes who can control matters in their
own interest.
Roger
Crook defines capitalism as
the
system of private ownership of the instruments of production, distribution, and
exchange, and the use of those instruments under a plan of individual
initiative and open competition to earn private profit.[4]
Capitalism
can sound and at times be harsh. As Adam Smith notes in The
Wealth of Nations, the marketplace is impersonal and therefore is not
based on altruism.[5]
Thus, it operates by self-interest: the consumer’s interest in purchasing, the
salesman’s interest in selling. Human productivity increases when one does not
simply labour for his or her own needs but sells his or her labour to acquire
capital enough to purchase what is produced by others. The need for a
variety of goods that one does not purchase oneself requires a division of
labour in which many people contribute to the production of an item and to the
marketplace. Working together, as in an assembly line, the workers can
produce more than they might were they to labour independently. This
self-interest of the labourer may be interpreted as greed, but this is so only
for some: self-interest and greed are not equivalent. In fact,
self-interest is based on satisfying the wants of consumers who make their own
decisions about what to purchase. It can be a powerful mechanism that brings
benefits to more than just the powerful. Where the accumulation of wealth
is a result of production, this can and often does benefit the worker.
Self-interest leads to market exchange, specialization (division of labour),
efficiency (it is timesaving), and an increase in productivity.
Pricing is
another factor in a market economy. The natural price of an item reflects
the actual cost to produce the item. The market price reflects the
relationship between supply and demand: the availability of an item (how many
are available for purchase?) and the demand for it (how much is it needed or
desired by consumers?). Due to supply and demand, the market price tends
to head in the direction of the natural price of an item if the market is left
to itself. The reason for this is that producers’ self-interest in
maximizing their gains will tend to develop efficient means of production to
produce more items at a cheaper cost for consumers to buy their items, and this
is increased when there is competition among producers. A bottom-up
rather than top-down impetus in economic development is far better.[6] Regulation
will stifle the economy. People need to be allowed to produce what is in
their best interest (to earn money to feed their families) and not be told what
to produce. Also, the principles of ‘never do yourself what you can
purchase at a cheaper price from someone else’ and ‘only produce what is
locally available so as to be competitive in trade’ would lead to natural
growth. Taxes, foreign wars, and burdensome government undermine natural
growth and lead to economic stagnation. In such ways, then,
self-interest, not altruism, becomes the means by which to improve the ‘wealth’
(well-being) of ‘nations’ (people). Adam Smith called this the ‘invisible
hand’ in the economy: without intending altruism, the free market benefits the
people.
Smith was
also aware that the aristocracy, companies, guilds, or business owners tended
to want to maximize their earnings over against the free market system, such as
by holding onto lands, creating monopolies, regulating production, or paying
low wages. Self-interest, then, can work against the interest of the
people. Smith argued that this self-interest was mistaken. Instead of
protecting one’s assets from others, using them to stimulate trade would not
only produce more wealth but be beneficial for the population as a whole.
The vast estates of the aristocrats might be put to use, not by seizing the
land for the populace but in a productive way to benefit everyone. The
wealth of a nation lies in its productivity, not in, for example, the
acquisition or protection of wealth. The Spanish stealing of gold during
its colonization of South America did not lead to sustainable wealth for the
nation as the country was not itself wealth-producing. For Smith,
monopolies like the East India Company of Great Britain were not only
oppressive (it had its own military and sought to extract wealth from Britain’s
colonies); it was also a large and expensive business that was not that
productive (the government at times had to bail it out). Government
regulations that protected monopolies were not Smith’s understanding of
unregulated, bottom-up capitalism.
Another aspect to Adam Smith’s economic
arguments is morality. His first book, The Theory of Moral
Sentiments in 1759 was published well before The Wealth of
Nations in 1776. He returned to revise it after the latter work
was published. Thus, Smith’s interest was the morality of individuals and
the morality and good functioning of an economy. His interest in the
economy develops out of his concern to address the needs of the poor.
Scripture, too, defends the private property of individuals over against the
collective ownership and powerful government of Egypt, Assyria, and
Babylon. It, too, looks to the exchange economy of the marketplace
and the produce of small-hold farmers. Yet, like Smith, the right functioning
of such an economy is also largely dependent on the morality of the
people. Dishonest weights, land seizure, exploitation of the poor,
corruption, theft and so forth are often condemned. One might well ask
how much the morality of a people is essential for its economy to have any
chance of functioning well.
When
capitalism creates powerful monopolies and wealthy businessmen whose wealth is
not wealth producing for everyone, people begin to imagine that the solution is
socialism, a government-controlled economy. This step requires enormous
faith in government and in big government. Smith’s view is to protect the
natural economy of exchange, not to defend tycoons and plutocracies like
corporatocracies or technocracies or aristocracies. Where Smith looks
down to the local businessman, socialism looks up to the government. Big
government, even if altruistic (at first), quickly runs into a number of
problems itself. For example, it is not as productive and efficient as
capitalist economies for the general population, its manipulation of supply and
demand prices can drive prices up, and its opposing self-interest and promoting
social interest means that incentive and responsibility are impersonal and
bureaucratic. Its promoted social values are often questionable (e.g.,
when ‘health care’ becomes protection of abortion). Its hand-outs to the
poor tends to keep the poor in their situation and develop in them a sense of
entitlement and victimhood rather than help them to become participants in the
economy. Like the wealthy company owner wanting to pay his workers low
wages to maximize his profits, so socialist societies want labourers to give up
their freedoms and self-interests for the collective group. Instead of
helping the poor, socialist governments become overseers of a poor class,
undercut the middle-class’s economic growth, and partner with big businesses.
Marxism
expected the workers of the world to unite and overthrow the bourgeoisie, but
this did not happen in the richer, capitalist countries. The workers had
benefitted from the economic growth of the capitalist countries where they
lived. Marxism also claimed that a communist system would produce the abundance
of goods so that each may receive according to his need. Marxist economies,
however, mainly created needs, not an abundance of goods. The problem for
communism was always that everyone, including the labourer, was better off in
capitalist societies and anything but a social utopia followed communist
revolution.
Marx was
writing against feudalism (Russia still had serfs when the Manifesto was
written) and the relatively new industrialism of European society. The
Bible’s perspective was more about agrarian society. Today, we discuss
economics in an industrial and technological society. Each of these looks
at how society works differently. Powerful landowners reduced people to
slavery or serfdom. Powerful industrialists worked their labourers long
hours at low wages. A number of large companies use the power they derive
from wealth to try to shape society’s politics, speech, and morality. In
each case, the concentration of wealth and power is configured differently, but
it is always about wealth and power. In turn, these wealthy powers in
society that arise because of capitalism become, as Joseph Schumpeter argued,
its loudest critics. Why is that? It is because, while their wealth
and power protect them from their own views, they have a concern for the less
fortunate, the poor. Schumpeter argued that capitalism would necessarily and
eventually collapse—as did Marx. His contribution to the point was that
it would collapse not because of the proletariat rising up in revolution but
because of these ‘intellectual’ capitalists pushing for a more socialist
society.[7]
They do so because they believe that this will produce a more equitable justice
for others. As long as they can send their own children to top schools,
have private police protection of their wealth, and keep earning high salaries,
they are happy to advocate (give a voice to) socialism for the rest of society.
This
apparently has, by and large, proved to be true. Big tech companies tend
to be liberal. Yet this analysis may be deficient. The
entrepreneurial, innovative, and competitive drive in these companies is
capitalist. Their very involvement in social issues is an indication that
they want control over the government itself. The heads of social platform companies do not like being called to Washington, DC to account for their
control of free speech. They want their own monopolies. Western
consumer societies want surplus wealth to buy things. Even as people
clamor for greater care for the poor, they do so with a capitalist edge.
The exception, however, is in their political views: the more that the people
are willing to give power (through taxation, social engineering, control of
curricula, etc.) to government, the more they put themselves in the situation
that they will lose their own voluntary involvement that democracy has
offered. That is, the bigger the government, the more democratic
socialism edges toward the totalitarianism of communism. It is a question
of degree, not of a qualitative difference. Europe, in any case, has
moved to a social democracy at the same time as it has become overwhelmingly
secular. Christian views are regularly attacked, and ‘hate crime’ legislation and lawsuits are
often turned against Christians. (America’s freedom of speech has kept it
from having as many cases against Christians as Europe, which has ‘hate speech’
laws instead of the protection of speech. This is also why socialists in
America dislike the First Amendment.) Christians do live in such
countries, but they are too small a percentage of the population to be of much
concern, and their religion is expected to be private.
Crook
critiques capitalism in the following points:[8]
1. Problems
with property: property might fall into the hands of a few; it
might be misuse of property.
2. Problems
with free enterprise: unrestricted accumulation and use of money
may run counter to the needs of society as a whole.
3. Problems with competition as the basis for trade: competition to regulate the quality of products, set prices, establish wages, determine which products will be produced may not always be decided best by unregulated competition in the market-place.
4. Problems with profit as the primary motive for driving the economic system: profit may turn a blind eye toward exploitation of others or the environment, or it may be profit for a few while the labourer is exploited.
What Crook suggests in order to address the
problems that capitalism produces is not a turn to socialism or
communism. It is not a different system that is needed but a check on the
system, one that creates capital without the extremes noted above. His suggestions are as follows.
Crook identifies the following values to place a
check on capitalism’s potential to exploit the environment and others for
gain. First, nature has an intrinsic value (Gen. 1.31 (‘it was very
good’); Ps. 19, 89, etc. (nature praises the Creator); Ps. 8 (nature reflects
the Creator’s glory); Rom. 8.19ff (‘nature will take part in the final
fulfillment of God’s purposes). Second, human beings are part of the
natural order and interdependent with it (Gen. 1-2 (part of creation); Gen.
3.19 (made from the dust)). This leads to valuing resources more than profit
margins. This value is related, however, to the value or right of private
property (two of the Ten Commandments imply private property ownership
(stealing and coveting (Exodus 20.15, 17)) that is, itself, checked by an
understanding that we are trustees of God’s world (Ps. 24.1 (‘the earth is the
Lord’s and all the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell
therein’). Third, the worker must be valued, such as in connecting the
worker with the product and not treating him or her as a mere cog in an
industrial machine. Fourth, work must be valued as a vocation—the worker
needs to be free to choose careers. This opposes treating the worker as a
slave or serf. Fifth, returning to Scriptural references, Crook notes a
Biblical valuing of one’s neighbour. The commandment to love one’s
neighbour as oneself (Lev. 19.18) stands at the head of a work ethic.
Crook also identifies some virtues alongside
values for a capitalist economy. There are labour virtues, such as
industriousness, diligence, efficiency, and faithfulness on the part of the
worker (cf. Gen. 2.15; 2 Thes. 3.10—more texts might be identified than
these). There are also social virtues: being caring (cf. Acts 2.44-45;
4.32); compassionate, fair (just), honest (a virtue related to justice and the
valuing of the worker), and respectful of each other’s dignity and the eternal
worth of people as human beings. Also, there are vices that can be
identified: the endless accumulation of wealth (cf. Mt. 6.19-21; 19.24), and
greed and selfishness in competitive, free market economies.
Further, Crook identifies some individual and
communal actions that might be taken in capitalist societies. Individuals
should conserve energy, reduce waste; and perform acts of compassion towards
the needy (Mt. 25.40). Communities should stop any unfair distribution of
wealth—unfair wage distribution (jobs, gender, age, race, abilities), unfair
control of wealth by a few, and unfair entrapment in poverty. They should
assist the poor (Mt. 6.3; Lk. 18.22) and poor nations. This may involve
land reform, sharing technology, helping to improve or provide education, and
assisting a group entrapped in poverty that might be shut out of the
marketplace (such as women in some contexts). Crook also mentions taking
action to stop exploiting natural resources.
Such a listing of values, virtues, and actions
provides some helpful points to consider. Much more, of course, could be
added from Old Testament ethics (such as from Proverbs) to Crook's
examples. From these, though, several observations may be
offered. First, there is the recognition that a capitalist
free market system that creates jobs and is productive and competitive is good
for the economy. It encourages growth, and it values freedom. Second,
it recognizes that checks are needed to keep such a society from being
immoral. These checks do not turn the economy into a centrally controlled
society, as in socialism or Marxism. They are, however, needed, and the
way to provide checks is through just laws and just courts. The actions
that Crook suggests taking will lead to such laws. Yet, third, laws
governing our actions are insufficient for a more just, capitalist
society. They require individual and social values and virtues.
Why, for example, would a capitalist businessman willingly curtail his
exploitation of workers if he is making a handsome profit? Society needs
a moral foundation that gives rise to its values and virtues. The same
problem that a socialist government runs into with its centralized control is the
problem that capitalist societies run into with their unchecked free economy:
both require societies with a moral foundation.
Narrative
ethics provides an answer to this concern for a moral foundation.[9]
The foundation for ethics cannot rest in principles that fallen human beings
and societies employ—only to distort them for their own interests.[10]
The great moral systems of Immanuel Kant (deontology) or Jeremy Bentham and
John Stuart Mill (utilitarianism) were far too simplistic, rationalistic, and
vague, and they depended on the reasoning capacities of men and women whose
reasoning is, inevitably, self-justifying and sinful. Ethics, in fact,
derives from the shaping of a community’s values, virtues, and practices
through the narratives it tells and embodies. The ethics that result may
be hopelessly corrupt and full of vice, or they may be just and virtuous—or
something in-between. That is, it is important to be the right community
and have the right narratives and to embody them well.
If so, we
may well ask whether the capitalist societies of the West that have been held
in check by the virtues, values, and actions of Christian communities living
out the Biblical narratives were not essential for somewhat just
societies. The expanding trade and economies of European countries in the
pre-industrial age were characterized by greed and exploitation of human
beings—the slave trade. While Christians themselves often justified their
involvement in this practice, it was, after all, Christian countries that also
brought an end to the slave trade. That is, these Christian societies had
within them a moral foundation that could bring out values and virtues to stop
actions that, while in the interest of the traders and landowners, were evil.
The line
of argument here is that the moral character of communities is distinct from
their economic systems, and what makes them better or worse is both a matter of
the moral character and the economic system. Biblically, it has been
argued, there is a strong current of critique of centralized power. This
makes sense in a canon of literature that takes for granted that humanity is
morally depraved and not essentially good without God and that the righteous
are few on the earth. The history of the monarchy in the Old Testament is
testimony to this, as well as to the evils that centralized power can
bring. Freedom, however, is never unqualified in Scripture. To be
set free from slavery to sin means to become a slave of righteousness (Romans
6.16). As to economic theories, Christians should find themselves better
situated as prophetic voices in a democratic government and capitalist economy
where they have freedom and a voice to call for values, virtues, and actions
more than in a socialist system where they have no independence from the
collective and are coerced into performing the desires of a centralized
power. In either case, the role of the Church is to distinguish itself
from the world—even the world’s good virtues and values—because our moral
foundation is in a Scripture that only we call Holy, our moral society is a distinct
community from the world, and our moral economy is life lived in the Kingdom of
God. Whenever we chase after the politics, economies, and ethics of the
world—whether for evil or for good—we relinquish our role of being the Church,
through which ‘the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers
and authorities in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 3.10).
[1] M. Tullius Cicero, De
Officiis, trans. Walter Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1913).
[2] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist
Party,’ trans. Samuel Moore with Frederick Engels, in Marx/Engels
Selected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Pub., 1969; orig. written in
1847 and published 1848).
[3] Victor Davis Hanson, ‘Our Socialist Future?’; online at: https://www.scribd.com/document/476901034/Our-Socialist-Future-by-Victor-Davis-Hanson (accessed 20 November, 2020).
[4] Roger H Crook, An Introduction to Christian Ethics (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), pp. 228.
[5] This description of Adam Smith’s arguments for capitalism is dependent on a lecture in the Emory Williams Lecture Series given by Professor Jerry Muller entitled ‘Adam Smith on the Uses, Abuses, and Limits of Self-Interest’ on 29 October, 2013. It is available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQbd_8krZXM (accessed 22 November, 2020). See further, Jerry Muller, The Mind and the Market (New York: Anchor Books, 2002).
[6] Adam Smith opposed the views of François Quesnay and his
‘Physiocratic’ school of economics in France. They advocated a top down
reform of the economy that, indeed, did prove itself disastrous during the
French Revolution.
[7] Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and
Democracy (New York: HarperCollins Pub., 2008; originally published
1942).
[8] Crook, Ibid.
[9] Cf. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a
Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IL: University of
Notre Dame, 1991); The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian
Ethics (Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame, 1991).
[10] Cf. James W. McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol.
1, 2nd ed. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012).
No comments:
Post a Comment