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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Capitalism, a bastard child of Christianity
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I could have perhaps also said the same about communism, but it is hardly relevant any more. I don't think I could say this about balanced social democracy in the form of the classic welfare state.
Is there really any Christian justification of the intensely competitive world of capitalism as currently operates? Exploiting people to work so certain scheming or lucky people can become rich and live in luxury? So that entire countries are organized to produce goods to transfer to another such that inequalities grow and people are poor, and have worse health status? So that the gap between rich and poor grows in even the developed world? Does this not mean that conservative, individualistic economic theories have shown themselves to be socially and morally bankrupt, and anti-Christian? My answer is yes. Can anyone possibly justify a "no"?
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
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Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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malik3000
Shipmate
# 11437
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Posted
I have thought the same for quite some time. That is one reason I think it is distressing that the dominant strain of what in the US is called Christianity supports so much that is not only un-Christian but actually anti-Christian (obviously as i understand Christianity to be -- ymmv)
[ 20. April 2012, 01:53: Message edited by: malik3000 ]
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God = love.
Otherwise, things are not just black or white.
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
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Posted
Actually, capitalism is incompatible with most (if not all) religions. "Love your neighbor as yourself" doesn't fit with "Pay your neighbor as little for his labor as you can get away with, and sell stuff for as much as you can get people to pay." And if people became free from craving, as Buddha advised, the capitalist economy would grind to a halt. And Muhammad (PBUH) forbade lending at interest. One could go on.
The truth is that everything that makes life worth living--love, friendship, family, community, morality--is just grit in the gears of the market.
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
The other thing to be said here is that Christianity is changed/ influenced/ distorted by its host culture - it's been distorted by the patriarchal culture in which it arose and again by Roman culture. Its festivals were (it seems) consciously adapted in response to paganism and, yes, it's certainly been distorted by capitalism. I suspect that the same can be said of all religions - certainly there are many practices linked to Islam which many Muslims would argue are cultural baggage, rather than an intrinsic part of the faith.
It's far more difficult to argue that capitalism is the child of Christianity, though a good stab has been made at a specific link to Protestantism. Personally, I think it's more a case of unholy wedlock than a parent-child thing.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
quote:
Can anyone possibly justify a "no"?
I think not, but I would be interested on an intellectual level in hearing a counter argument, and the Ship is probably not the place to find it! I have read snippets of intellectually coherent (if unconvincing to me) arguments in defence of capitalism from a Christian POV, but can't really remember them well enough to argue them out. Perhaps try googling 'Archbishop Cranmer' (UK pro-Tory Christian blog) if you want a counter-argument.
Anywaays, much though I dislike capitalism I'm extremely wary of assuming that there is some wonderful alternative out there. From a traditional Christian POV, we are fallen beings, and therefore inherently frail and fallible. No political system is going to be free from the effects of our sin and selfishness.
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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Soror Magna
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# 9881
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Posted
I am starting to believe that some aspects capitalism are corrosive to democracy. It's true that capitalism has made many, many goods and services much more accessible to everybody - the up side of capitalism - and in some ways is an equalizer. The down side is that wealth is inevitably concentrated among fewer and fewer people, along with political power. Society and culture become divided along monetary lines and it becomes harder for people whose lives are completely separate (NASCAR teams, anybody?) to see each other as equal citizens. We've reached the point where it is accepted that a person's worth to society is determined by their ability to accumulate wealth, and that therefore our economic priorities should be keeping the rich happy and making sure they get richer. A democracy that not only allows, but deliberately strives to increase the privileges of a minority is seriously messed up. OliviaG
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
Just wanted to add that, whatever about capitalism, individualism quite probably IS a bastard child of Christianity. The Christian gospel is essentially a call on the individual to chose, and to chose a path which leads away from their own family and culture if necessary. It is inherently disruptive of established communities and cultural norms (think of Jesus talking of setting children against their parents), because it calls us into a new community of Christ based on our individual choice of him. I've never been a huge fan of the current fashion for decrying individualism, so the idea that Christianity might be at the root of it doesn't bother me much, but a culture which prioritises individual freedoms and individual choice is probably more likely to take a capitalist path.
[ 20. April 2012, 07:06: Message edited by: Yerevan ]
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
Just wanted to add that, whatever about capitalism, individualism quite probably IS a bastard child of Christianity.
I'm not sure, but I think this means that capitalism is the twice-bastard grandchild of Christianity, in that it is an attempt to find an exchange value and currency for exchange for these various individuals and their enterprises in a social context. The urge to be social is, as I was hearing this morning on Radio 4 (sorry, over-Pondites) as hard-wired into humanity as any individualism, and as nearly all human activities and enterprises contain elements of both, some means is clearly therefore needed for exchange between the two.
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yerevan:
Just wanted to add that, whatever about capitalism, individualism quite probably IS a bastard child of Christianity. The Christian gospel is essentially a call on the individual to chose, and to chose a path which leads away from their own family and culture if necessary. It is inherently disruptive of established communities and cultural norms (think of Jesus talking of setting children against their parents), because it calls us into a new community of Christ based on our individual choice of him. I've never been a huge fan of the current fashion for decrying individualism, so the idea that Christianity might be at the root of it doesn't bother me much, but a culture which prioritises individual freedoms and individual choice is probably more likely to take a capitalist path.
I think this is stretching a particular understanding of Christianity rather further than ought to be in order to serve the purpose of your argument. Until the sixteenth century, Christianity was and always had been essentially communal - it was simply incomprehensible to think of salvation in Jesus Christ apart from the body of believers, the Church. That's why the disputes of that century almost always resorted to ecclesiological debate at some point.
I think you are on much stronger ground if you see individualism as a result of the soi disant Enlightenment and its notion of the human being as autonomous, even autocephalous. It is probably difficult to see the Enlightenment not as a product of Protestantism and, despite it's distinctly mixed blessings, something for which we have every reason to be grateful. However, this notion of autonomy - which is at the heart of so many debates which pit conscience against Church - is really not about Christianity but, at best, a deistic "Divine Watchmaker" approach to God that is fundamentally a denial of the Incarnation or, at worst, a denial of God at all.
As for capitalism: probably no more than a term to express how human economic activity, commerce, natural organises as soon as you have a way of capturing (to use a Marxist term) surplus value, and, because of the previously noted effects of damaged human appetites, one which needs the leaven of a morality mediated through society to prevent the injustices that would otherwise result. Any historian of the laws of the ancient world could tell you that from Hammurabi onwards, law makers and judges have been engaged in that task. That rather suggests that it isn't the bastard-child of Christianity so much as the natural child of humanity.
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by FooloftheShip:
I'm not sure, but I think this means that capitalism is the twice-bastard grandchild of Christianity, in that it is an attempt to find an exchange value and currency for exchange for these various individuals and their enterprises in a social context. The urge to be social is, as I was hearing this morning on Radio 4 (sorry, over-Pondites) as hard-wired into humanity as any individualism, and as nearly all human activities and enterprises contain elements of both, some means is clearly therefore needed for exchange between the two.
Sorry for the double post but I think this is a really important point.
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
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Custard
Shipmate
# 5402
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Posted
Lord Sacks (Chief Rabbi of the UK) did a really interesting and helpful lecture on the relationship between capitalism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition last year. Full text can be found here.
I think I'd try to summarise it roughly like this:
quote:
The Judaeo-Christian tradition produced market capitalism as an efficient way of alleviating poverty. But a key part of "Biblical capitalism" are the limits placed on the power of the market - the rules enabling the poor to work for food, the Sabbath and Sabbath year, very strong view of the family, and so on. We have made free markets our god, and let them ride roughshod over their proper boundaries, and in doing so we have lost our soul.
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blog
Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp thine image in its place.
Posts: 4523 | From: Snot's Place | Registered: Jan 2004
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Part of the problem is that most capitalism is not done between human beings. It's done between companies. Who, despite having human beings working for them there as their agents, lack human qualities. As the documentary The Corporation put it, companies are psychopaths and are DESIGNED as such. It's therefore not surprising that they fail to exhibit the desire for social interaction that we are ascribing to the average human being.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
Anyone out there who has read 'Religion and the Rise of Capitalism' and 'The acquisitive Society', by R H Tawney? He was a historian, socialist and Christian in, I think, that order and while he foresaw and advocated the welfare state and nationalisation I think he could also see the rise of self-interest, as we encountered in the 1950's, to some extent and to a greater degree since 1980, since when the welfare state has been rolled back in corporate economic interests.
[ 20. April 2012, 10:41: Message edited by: Sioni Sais ]
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Anyone out there who has read 'Religion and the Rise of Capitalism' and 'The acquisitive Society', by R H Tawney? He was a historian, socialist and Christian in, I think, that order and while he foresaw and advocated the welfare state and nationalisation I think he could also see the rise of self-interest, as we encountered in the 1950's, to some extent and to a greater degree since 1980, since when the welfare state has been rolled back in corporate economic interests.
Yes I have. It's helpful to read it alongside Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" Weber's central argument is that the rise of Calvinism and similar protestant strands paralled a the rise of modernism as individualism began to take precedance over community. Whewther the two are tightly connected is a moot point IMHO, but there are links in the rise of reformed theology "encouraging" hard work and advancement, allied to economic prosperity.
You can pick this up too in the work of E P Thompson "The making of the English Working Class" One of his conclusions suggested that it was the methodist faith and work ethic amongst the working classes of northern england which prevented a revolution in England in the 1790's.
There is, IMHO, a causative link between many modern expressions/strands of "spirituality" and individualism both within the Christian church and outside it. There's a link to narcissism too.
Although post modernism claims otherwise, its very individualistic nature promotes these expressions of narcissism ("me" and "my" interpretation/understanding of the world being the "revealed" truth.
This simply reinforces the modernist positions and their causes as laid out by Weber and Tawney, linking the increased understanding of self with a post exchange and subsistence economy. Incidentally Tawney was an economic historian and Weber a sociologist which makes the study of the links betweeb faith, spirituality, postmodernism, modernism, and capitlaism very interesting.
Has our understanding of faith, and its subsequent expression, sown the seeds of our ultimate destruction in exploiting the world? If you take Thompsson, Tawney and Weber - then yes it has.
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Bishop Richard Harries attempted to justify capitalism some years back in his book 'Is there a Gospel for the Rich?'
Much as I admire him, I was unconvinced.
I seem to remember our rector's reply mentioned a camel and the eye of a needle (cf Mt 19:23). He emphasised that it isn't impossible, as Grace is all-powerful, but the rich sometimes find it difficult to accept the Grace of God.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Bishop Richard Harries attempted to justify capitalism some years back in his book 'Is there a Gospel for the Rich?'
Much as I admire him, I was unconvinced.
The gospel is for everyone. But, as one Shipmate (I forget who) has in their sig, "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off." No-one - rich, poor, capitalist, socialist, or whatever - can dodge that basic fact. But all those people will be pissed off by the gospel truth in very different ways.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
There are those who say free-market capitalism is the political theory that best aligns with Christianity, because it is the only one that allows people to freely choose to help the poor, sick and needy. Just as they wouldn't see forced conversions as being genuine, so they don't see forced charity as such.
And it's not like free-market capitalism obliges people to act like selfish bastards - it's just that the inevitable consequence of leaving people free to make their own decisions about such things will leave people free to be selfish bastards if they so wish.
It really does come down to whether Christianity is about the means or the ends. If you see the primary purpose of the religion as being about changing people and genuinely converting them to God's Ways so that they will want to care for the poor and needy, then you'll see it very differently than if you see the primary purpose of the religion as being about ensuring that the poor and needy are provided for whether the people doing said providing want to or not.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Mockingale
Shipmate
# 16599
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Posted
The evangelical Christian churches that fester like a boil on the ass of the Republican Party in the US are convinced that capitalism is the natural result of Christianity.
Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention, stated with conviction that the Bible speaks out firmly against "socialism" (naturally, socialism wasn't a concept in the days of the Gospel...). He said this the day after we read in church Acts 4:32-35:
quote:
Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.
Posts: 679 | From: Connectilando | Registered: Aug 2011
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
There are those who say free-market capitalism is the political theory that best aligns with Christianity, because it is the only one that allows people to freely choose to help the poor, sick and needy. Just as they wouldn't see forced conversions as being genuine, so they don't see forced charity as such.
And it's not like free-market capitalism obliges people to act like selfish bastards - it's just that the inevitable consequence of leaving people free to make their own decisions about such things will leave people free to be selfish bastards if they so wish.
It really does come down to whether Christianity is about the means or the ends. If you see the primary purpose of the religion as being about changing people and genuinely converting them to God's Ways so that they will want to care for the poor and needy, then you'll see it very differently than if you see the primary purpose of the religion as being about ensuring that the poor and needy are provided for whether the people doing said providing want to or not.
The fundamental problem in modern capitalism (I hesitate to call it free-market for the dice are loaded) is that corporatons were never envisaged in scripture. The conduct of them, and the conduct of men through them, is governed by company law and articles of association.
However good one's personal intentions, those who run corporations have to do so in the interests of the shareholders/stockholders and to do otherwise can be illegal, let alone contrary to their wishes. Let's face facts, even when times are good, will institutional investors, yet more corporate bodies, want to see profits that could bolster the stock price and their dividends go to charity?
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I seem to be taking on Marvin in several places lately. Please Marvin, tell me about converting corporations to Christianity, because they are the "people" with all the money. And their taxes have fallen to record low levels since the disastrous idiocy of Reagan, Thatcher and other anti-people politicians (we have Mulroney in Canada) who set out to screw over the average working person, enriching the rich and their rich corporations in the process.
The legacy of this sort of anti-people activity includes the bail out of criminal bankers ofrecent memory (should I say 'recent nightmare') because of their housing funding speculation. If this is not the very extortion you over-rhetoricized - well, I'll just thank tclune and leave off there.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
However good one's personal intentions, those who run corporations have to do so in the interests of the shareholders/stockholders and to do otherwise can be illegal, let alone contrary to their wishes. Let's face facts, even when times are good, will institutional investors, yet more corporate bodies, want to see profits that could bolster the stock price and their dividends go to charity?
Is there anything in capitalism that prevents those shareholders from deciding that their interests are best served by investing their profits in charitable ways?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no_prophet:
Please Marvin, tell me about converting corporations to Christianity, because they are the "people" with all the money.
It's quite simple really. Corporations are owned by shareholders. Even where those shareholders are other corporations, the chain of ownership eventually ends with human beings. Convert them, and their corporations will follow.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Anyone out there who has read 'Religion and the Rise of Capitalism' and 'The acquisitive Society', by R H Tawney?
Yes!
Also known as "the Prophet Tawney" by some Christian Socialists, no entirely with tongue in cheek.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
There are those who say free-market capitalism is the political theory that best aligns with Christianity, because it is the only one that allows people to freely choose to help the poor, sick and needy.
I think you are confusing capitalism with something else. "Liberalism" in the classic sense maybe. That element of free choice is nothing inherently to do with capitalism. You could have capitalist economies where almost no-one had any free choice about anything.
Capitalism is not about not having government or tax or any kind of social coercion. Can you think of any example of capitalism that didn't have such things?
Capitalism is about the legal definition of property. Its the idea that people can own the results of other people's work. And also that large productve enterprises are normally controlled by those owners.
You could, imaginably, have free trade without capitalism, and you can certainly have capitalism without free trade. You can have capitalism with low taxes, or capitalism with high taxes.
You can have capitalist enterprises with individual owners, or with corporate owners. And corporate owners need not be limited liability companies trading in shares - they could be partberships, clubs, religions, government. There are capitalist corporations owned by the Chinese Army. They don't cease to be capitalist because their owners are run by the government - any more than British banks ceased to be capitalist when the government took them over.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trisagion:
I think you are on much stronger ground if you see individualism as a result of the soi disant Enlightenment and its notion of the human being as autonomous, even autocephalous. It is probably difficult to see the Enlightenment not as a product of Protestantism and, despite it's distinctly mixed blessings, something for which we have every reason to be grateful. However, this notion of autonomy - which is at the heart of so many debates which pit conscience against Church - is really not about Christianity but, at best, a deistic "Divine Watchmaker" approach to God that is fundamentally a denial of the Incarnation or, at worst, a denial of God at all.
I agree. But how is deism doing these days? Didn't the Incarnation introduce a kind of materialism (in the sense of taking the physical world seriously) that uniquely laid the groundwork for science, the Enlightenment, and capitalism?
Newton and other scientists explained astronomical and physical observations with such elegance and simplicity that the attractiveness of deism at the time is understandable. It appeared plausible, in the light of these newly discovered "laws", that God created a universe that was, and would long remain, friendly to human life without further intervention.
But further discoveries since then have only emphasized how remarkably coincidental this hospitality is-- how very many things could have been otherwise, or still could go awry in such a way as to obliterate human life, or even all life, on earth very quickly. According to chaos theory, tiny events can have a major influence on large-scale events. Stability and predictability are no longer taken for granted. The last piggy-back flight of a space shuttle on an airplane, in the news just this week, is a small reminder of a great reversal: the nation that put the first man on the moon only a little while ago, with a tremendous sense of achievement, has all but given up on was once called the New Frontier. With how little regret Americans, at least, seem to have given up the venture as impossible, or at least not worth the effort, so hostile to human life the conditions are out there.
One can say that there is no creator-God. Or one can say that there is a God Who cares a great deal about us. These positions look like relatively live options to me. But the idea that there is a creator-God who has lost interest must seem much less compelling or relevant now than three hundred years ago. The Incarnation is a two-edged sword for the faith that propounds it, and it may have gotten the worst of the intellectual bargain in recent centuries. But the long-term auspices look more encouraging to me. Is the prodical son returning home?
The apparent scriptural encouragement of capitalism depends largely on two parables, it seems to me: the parable of the talents, and the parable of the "dishonest" steward. On the face of it, assuming an economic and ethical environment similar to ours, in both of these stories Jesus smiles on the resourceful and industrious man who invests money and is justly rewarded. It is easy for us to hear Our Lord saying, go thou and do likewise. An exegesis more aware of the culture to which He was speaking probably complicates the picture considerably. Shouldn't we learn more about it? Usury was forbidden, but there was a great deal of hypocrisy in practice. I've heard a sermon to the effect that the steward about to be fired was not being dishonest in what he did, but was ceasing to be dishonest. He had been his master's agent in conducting usurious transactions, so that the master could claim that he wasn't doing it and could remain ignorant of the details. In reducing the debts, he was canceling the interest and only asking for the principal back, as every good Jew was supposed to do.
In the parable of the talents (which I find more inscrutable if it is about money at all), we should bear in mind that burying money in the ground was the standard and morally upright way to save it. Was Jesus really encouraging usury and capitalism here?
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
And yet the point about the existence of capitalism - pretty well defined in ken's recent post - prior to the incarnation remains.
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
It really does come down to whether Christianity is about the means or the ends. If you see the primary purpose of the religion as being about changing people and genuinely converting them to God's Ways so that they will want to care for the poor and needy, then you'll see it very differently than if you see the primary purpose of the religion as being about ensuring that the poor and needy are provided for whether the people doing said providing want to or not. I don't believe that God thinks of the poor as nothing more than opportunities for the rich to prove their virtue or lack-of.
My answer is why not both? It would be a mistake to think that "forced charity" is some kind of wayward latter-day innovation. The Jewish law provided it. Neglecting these practices and ignoring the poor was a major complaint of the prophets, who spoke not just to individuals but to the nation. And as far as I can recall, Jesus thought highly of the prophets. We must distinguish carefully between those features of the culture that He wished to change and those He approved of. Although it leaves many details up to us, I have no doubt that the Bible is, among other things, a political book.
quote:
Corporations are owned by shareholders. Even where those shareholders are other corporations, the chain of ownership eventually ends with human beings. Convert them, and their corporations will follow.
It's not as simple as that. I have only a minuscule vestige of direct ownership in a corporation, left over from an investment years ago made when I lived where the company's headquarters were located. It would simplify my life if I just sold those very few shares. The rest are under the auspices of the manager of a retirement pension in the form of shares of various mutual funds. Only a few of these reflect conscience or various social values in their strategies. In any case, the only practical way I can express my approval or disapproval of the way a fund is managed (let alone a single corporation among the dozens of "positions" in a fund) is to buy or sell it. And even that is somewhat discouraged by the retirement company, which would like to sell me a plan that puts everything on autopilot by automatically "rebalancing" investments to maintain a diverse portfolio. This state of affairs gives the corporations I supposedly own a very long leash indeed. Not even boards of directors are very effective at controlling the policies of management-- even their salaries, evidently. When Citicorp's board managed to say no to demands for multimillion-dollar raises, they made headlines.
All of this is just by way of illustration. Mitt Romney has said that corporations are people. Do you agree with that characterization? I've lost track. The concept of "corporate persons", in any event, doesn't seem particularly controversial in this country. The theology of such terminology is (unfortunately) all too perspicacious.
[ 20. April 2012, 19:22: Message edited by: Alogon ]
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
Correction. Fighting the edit-window, I added "I don't believe that God thinks of the poor as nothing more than opportunities for the rich to prove their virtue or lack-of." That accidentally went into a quote from you. ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif) If you want to take the credit, I'd be delighted, but suspect that you don't.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trisagion:
And yet the point about the existence of capitalism - pretty well defined in ken's recent post - prior to the incarnation remains.
Can you elaborate, Trisagion? I didn't draw that conclusion (although when he posted, I was still writing, so I didn't have the benefit of his wisdom).
Is capitalism logically prior to the Incarnation? Maybe. But chronologically prior, I'm not so sure, especially in light of the usury issue as explained by Ingo several years ago. According to him, the teaching of the Roman Catholic church, to reconcile its prior condemnation of usury with the fact that it has no objection to modern interest-bearing bank accounts and the like, is that the nature of money changed. Charging interest for the use of gold (so the rationale goes) would still be as sinful now as was in Christ's day.
By the same token, perhaps one could argue idly that if modern money existed in Christ's day, then it could have been used capitalistically and no moralist need bat an eye. But that is a little like a free-market enthusiast (such as Heinlein, perhaps) gushing about what a wonderful place the moon must be, because a free market exists there in pristine condition.
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trisagion:
And yet the point about the existence of capitalism - pretty well defined in ken's recent post - prior to the incarnation remains.
Huh? People were buying and selling stuff, sure, but they didn't have capitalism. There was some merchant capitalism in Europe in the Middle Ages, but there was also the feudal manorial system, which was by no means capitalism. Capitalism didn't take over till feudalism collapsed.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
Sorry, the syntax of my previous post was so tortured as to obscure what I was trying to say.
What I meant to say was that ken had very well defined capitalism in his post. The chronological priority of capitalism to the incarnation goes back to my very much earlier post. There is plenty of evidence of commerce that looks a lot like capitalism in the ancient world. The various laws regulating aspects of commerce (biblical proscriptions against usury were only necessary because of the prevalence of lending surplus value captured in monetary forms of exchange) seem to be pretty clear evidence for the existence of capitalism.
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
Posts: 3923 | Registered: Nov 2003
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trisagion:
The various laws regulating aspects of commerce (biblical proscriptions against usury were only necessary because of the prevalence of lending surplus value captured in monetary forms of exchange) seem to be pretty clear evidence for the existence of capitalism.
Yes, but back in those days it was called uncialism. I'll get my hat...
--Tom Clune
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Tom Paine's Bones
Apprentice
# 17027
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Posted
Some of the best critiques of capitalism I've read recently don't come from Marxism but from the Catholic Social tradition.
Apparently, E. F. Schumacher's 'Small is Beautiful: Economics as if people mattered' was based on the application of Catholic Social teaching.
So, if Capitalism is a bastard child of Christianity, it is more properly a bastard child of the reformation.
It is interesting that the embrace of neo-liberalism (the Reaganite, Thatcherite, cut, deregulate, privatise model) was strongest and deepest in those countries with a very protestant independent heritage, and was more strongly resisted in Catholic / Lutheran countries.
Posts: 25 | Registered: Apr 2012
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Trisagion:
The chronological priority of capitalism to the incarnation goes back to my very much earlier post. There is plenty of evidence of commerce that looks a lot like capitalism in the ancient world. The various laws regulating aspects of commerce (biblical proscriptions against usury were only necessary because of the prevalence of lending surplus value captured in monetary forms of exchange) seem to be pretty clear evidence for the existence of capitalism.
There was commerce, of course, and there was lending in the ancient world. But capitalism is a whole economic system, and historians of capitalism see it as very different from the economic systems that predated it. The differences among historians about when capitalism started tend to depend on their exact definitions of what it is, but they don't push the date of the rise of capitalism back to the ancient world. There was lending at interest in the ancient world, but no one had a stock exchange before the Dutch in the 16th century.
Some rummaging around on the interwebs yielded this: Joyce Appleby dates the beginning of capitalism to the Netherlands' Golden Age (source). Michel Beaud's history of capitalism goes back 500 years (source). Encyclopedia Britannica says "antecedents of capitalist institutions existed in the ancient world," but that capitalism per se didn't get going till the 16th century (source).
This German historian discusses the different ways that historians have defined capitalism, which leads them to date the beginning of the economic system at various times. He argues that the Romans didn't really have capitalism because they depended too much on slave labor and the military and because they didn't have market integration and enterprise continuity. He sees evidence of capitalism in trade throughout the late medieval and early modern periods, but says there isn't growth of capitalism in production until the 16th-18th centuries. In his opinion, "It was only with industrialization that the recruitment and allocation of work was thoroughly organized according to capitalist principles: labor markets emerged, contractual work for wages and salaries becamse widespread, and work became a commodity." So for him, we don't strictly speaking have capitalism until the 19th century.
I don't know if I'd say capitalism is Christianity's bastard child, though. More like Protestantism's evil twin.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
Corporate capitalism as we know it dates from the 1600's and the foundation of the great Venture Trading companies in England and the Netherlands: The Dutch East India Company (controlled Indonesia), the British East India Company (initially a trading company, became a government by gaining the ability to collect taxes in Bengal and formed the government there, eventually liquidated in the 1850's) and of course the Hudson's Bay Company, still in existence.
These companies were often literally robber barons, the East India Company was accused (and found guilty of) of tolerating a famine in Bengal in order to collect taxes. The HBC confined itself to trading posts but would charge an arm and a leg for its goods to Aboriginal traders (a musket cost the height of the musket in beaver pelts. That is a LOT of beaver.)
The modern era of corporations starts in the railway age. Initially railway corporations had to be chartered directly by Parliament or a state legislature in the US, when that got too bothersome standard Corporation Acts were passed and corporate capitalism as we know it was born.
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
Posts: 7646 | From: Peterborough, Upper Canada | Registered: Jun 2007
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
The documentary video series "The Medicis, godfathers of the Renaissance" is fascinating. I would like to do some reading on the subject. They became a wealthy and powerful family by means of banking, first in Fiorenza (Florence), Italy, soon opening other banking branches all over Europe. In Florence, they were enlightened and progressive patrons of the arts, architecture, and (with Galileo) science-- although this interest was not entirely altruistic. The video often explains the motive of burnishing their own influence. They arose in a medieval world and had a tremendous influence in furthering the Renaissance. On the negative side, the two Medici popes were so unusually corrupt in various ways that they precipitated the Reformation.
Of interest here is that they built their banking business well before the Enlightenment, and before the onset of capitalism as identified by most of the authorities that RuthW helpfully cited. It was also well before the church gave the green light to loaning money at interest. How did they escape censure early on? And how did their banking system differ from a capitalistic one?
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Sir Pellinore
Quester Emeritus
# 12163
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Posted
I think Usury was still regarded as a grave sin then, Alogon.
The Medici probably got away with it because of their power in both Florence and Italy.
Things, as you say, were changing then. The international wool trade might have started the ball rolling. Perhaps we have to date the roots of capitalism earlier than others have done?
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Well...
Posts: 5108 | From: The Deep North, Oz | Registered: Dec 2006
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
History of Banking - Wikipedia
Jump down to "Medieval Europe" for some of the ways you can charge interest without charging interest. The Papacy and the Knights Templar were spectacularly good at it (maybe too good, in the case of the Templars). OliviaG
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Sir Pellinore
Quester Emeritus
# 12163
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Posted
Ah Yes! There are, interestingly, current very clever reasons by Islamic scholars why you can do the same thing.
"Riba"(interest) in Islam is religiously prohibited according to Quran and Sunna.
Interesting parallel.
Will Islam "progress" to religious, as against de facto recognition by many of its adherents, of the modern banking system and its basis in charging interest on loans?
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Well...
Posts: 5108 | From: The Deep North, Oz | Registered: Dec 2006
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd):
...
Will Islam "progress" to religious, as against de facto recognition by many of its adherents, of the modern banking system and its basis in charging interest on loans?
Given how well the modern banking system has worked recently, why would anyone want to? OliviaG
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Sober Preacher's Kid
Presbymethegationalist
# 12699
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Posted
The problem seems to me in part to be limited liability and corporate personhood. It separates the interest of the company from that of shareholders, it also separates responsibility. Sometimes this is good, it was a great way to fund and operate infrastructure projects like railways, canals and telephones. But it's nemesis of reduction of personal responsibility has come to light recently.
I can't see that corporate lawyers who peddle methods and legal structures to reduce liability while retaining profits actually contribute anything worthwhile economically or socially.
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NDP Federal Convention Ottawa 2018: A random assortment of Prots and Trots.
Posts: 7646 | From: Peterborough, Upper Canada | Registered: Jun 2007
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Sir Pellinore
Quester Emeritus
# 12163
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
quote:
Originally posted by Sir Pellinore (ret'd):
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Will Islam "progress" to religious, as against de facto recognition by many of its adherents, of the modern banking system and its basis in charging interest on loans?
Given how well the modern banking system has worked recently, why would anyone want to? OliviaG
Opt out? Well, as I said in the case of Islam, people could for valid religious reasons.
Not sure whether you are being ironic about the modern banking system or not. Especially after the horrendous GFC.
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Well...
Posts: 5108 | From: The Deep North, Oz | Registered: Dec 2006
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:
It was also well before the church gave the green light to loaning money at interest. How did they escape censure early on? And how did their banking system differ from a capitalistic one?
Clever legal fictions, at least at first.
They couldn't charge interest - but they could charge legitimate business expenses.
They could make loans with bills of exchange to be paid in foreign currency - as most of their loans were to merchants this was a large part of their business - say a Genoese merchant was going to London to buy wool, rather than carry gold he'd carry a bill to get English money from a bank there. And the Medici were the ones who decided the exchange rate. Also they knew the current exchange rates in Munich or Paris or London or Lisbon because they had agents or branches everywhere. So they fixed foreign exchange in their favour (as banks do today).
They could make loans to merchants or manufacturers in return for a share in the profit - as this was taking part of the risk it wasn't usury.
They couldn't give interest to their depositors. But they could make them occasional gifts. There is no law against that. Mysteriously the value of these gifts often added up to something like the current interest rate - maybe a little more for especially valued customers. As their largest depositor for most of their early period was the papacy, which quite liked these recieving these "gifts" there was little incentive for the Church authorities to investigate them.
Usury was supposedly illegal in Florence at first. But the typical fine for it was set at maybe a tenth of the typical annual income of a moneylender or pawnbroker. The local authorities would investigate a jeweller or goldsmith, they would be shocked! shocked! to find out that illegal moneylending was going on in a supposedly respectable establishment, take their 2000 florins or whatever it was, and go away for another year. A fine? A tax? A licence? I have no idea if the Medici and the other thirty or so big banks in Florence paid fines but I bet if they did they were a tiny part of their profits.
By the height of their power it didn't matter. They were invulnerable, or thought they were. They ran the government of Florence, if they paid fines they paid it to their own servants. They literally had their own army and navy. They were supported by the kings of France and England. If the Church caused trouble they would bribe the Pope, or put one of their own friends in and the next Pope.
They weren't invulnerable of course. They lost control of Florence in the 1490s when Savonarola re-established the Republic. And they nearly lost everything in Italy when the French invasion put an end to the Middle Ages there, and the Borgia popes took their bribes from elsewhere. But less than 20 years later they were back again with their own Popes in Rome and even at one point their own Queens on the throne of France.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
The truth is that everything that makes life worth living--love, friendship, family, community, morality--is just grit in the gears of the market.
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif) That's going in the quotes file.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Sir Pellinore
Quester Emeritus
# 12163
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Posted
I'm not sure the old critique of juggling concepts to justify the unacceptable in modern economic life has quite gone away.
http://www.cts-online.org.uk/acatalog/info_S445.html
The above recent CTS pamphlet does discuss the Church's original ban on usury. It also talks about excess profit, exploitation of the vulnerable economically etc.
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Well...
Posts: 5108 | From: The Deep North, Oz | Registered: Dec 2006
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:
The problem seems to me in part to be limited liability and corporate personhood. It separates the interest of the company from that of shareholders, it also separates responsibility. ...
Bingo. And let's face it, the average stockholder* is about as involved in corporate governance as the average citizen is in real-life governance, which is to say, NOT. If shareholders were willing to forego some profit to operate in a more socially / environmentally / ethically responsible manner ... oh, wait. They don't. And they won't. OliviaG
*Also add the fact that many of us are in the stock market through mutual funds, or through our insurance and pension plans, rather than directly in corporate stock. So most "shareholders" aren't in a position to control the company they supposedly own, or they own the stock on behalf of someone else.
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
I've read both Weber and Tawney, albeit about a quarter of a century ago. I would say that it wasn't the Reformation per se - despite it's (re-?)emphasis on personal individual soteriology that was that problem, in that the Magisterial Reformation's subscribing to the cuius rex, eius religio of the Peace of Augsburg (ie: whatever the ruler's view is, that's the religion of the state) and its consequent establishment of state churches with the brooking of no dissent outside of it preserved the notion of 'Christendom' as much as the Catholic Church did. Thus, all state subjects were seen as Christian (not just Christian, but Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican etc) unless they proved otherwise and hence the notion of collective responsibility to ones brothers and sisters across the entire population of the state was preserved.
The real cause of the problem, I submit, was the Radical Reformation and its concept of a 'gathered congregation' of just True Believers™. This immediately created a 'them and us' mindset amongst the Christians of this tradition: 'brothers and sisters' means only those recognised as being believing members of one's congregation and everyone else are spiritual untermenschen who can go hang. It's no accident I think that the most vociferous proponents of untrammelled capitalism in the US can be found in the Southern Baptists and other representatives of this tradition (although not so in the UK....?).
On the other hand, without the Radical Reformation tradition, we would have been far slower in the West to adopt notions of freedom of religion, pluriformity and multi-faith positions...Swings and roundabouts.
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
Posts: 14304 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Jan 2002
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Matt Black:
I've read both Weber and Tawney,
I know nothing about Tawney.
Weber wrote a book as a response to Marxism before the Russian revolution, before the effects of Marxist theory were seen in practice. We have the hindsight to look at what he said knowing what practical as well as theoretical Marxism looked like.
So the conclusion, based on Weber, that Capitalism is a bastard child of Christianity (or to be specific, Calvinism) needs looking at.
I'd say it is something thaat developed, that Calvinism became something from which Capitalism developed, though that was not the Calvinism of John Calvin.
I look forward to hearing from Jengie Jon, whose knowledge of church history from this time far outstrips mine, on this point.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
I think in particular it was those 'material blessings as evidence of being among the Elect' developments of Calvinism, shorn of the obligation to regard the rest of society as part of one's 'brothers and sisters', that became at least part of the problem.
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
Posts: 14304 | From: Hampshire, UK | Registered: Jan 2002
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