Consumerism vs. Capitalism vs. “Capitalism”

In conversations about difficult topics it is important to share definitions.  Capitalism is a word of many meanings.

In this conversation I lay out a defense of what I consider pure Capitalism and how Christians ought to behave among themselves, and what positions they ought to advocate – if any – in public policy debates.  I invoke Rand and Hauerwas.

My discussant is one Ted Troxell, who was a worthy and helpful conversationalist.

I will now cut and paste the whole conversation, in the hopes of creating a smooth bit of prose rather than a dialogue on these ideas.  For now, you all have my notes:

  • The Lord warns us when He teaches us to pray to avoid vain repetitions, as the heathen do. Which is directly to the point. The repetitive nature of the rituals of evangelicalism as you have described them are particularly heathen. Or pagan-polytheistic. Let’s just say they run against the Christian Ethic.

    From the preacher’s point of view, such repetition is an easy way to get away with laziness. I heard so many sermons on the prodigal son at one church of my youth, that I groan inwardly whenever I discover I am about to hear one again. Unless, of course, the speaker directs us to consider ourselves the older brother. You have again refreshed me by encouraging me to empathize with the father.

    The political message communicated by repetition is static. It says: This is where we are, and where we have been, and as far as we can tell, where we will be. The action required of the believer is continued penitence, and subjection to the father, and His representatives, the preacher, and the state…

    The medium of repetition encourages stasis – lack of movement. Apathy.

    Capitalism, as the best that unregenerate souls are capable of on their own, is just as easily derailed by stasis and apathy. Capitalism has as its aim the satisfaction of human wants by the most efficient means. When a man becomes apathetic he stops acting productively and becomes nothing but a, a, a consumer.
    Capitalism works in such a way that in order for a person to become a consumer he has to act productively for others. But if a person can possibly get for themselves some privilege or entitlement to exact the production of others for themselves for nothing in return, well then its not capitalism any more.

    But that the aim is empty – consumption as a satisfaction of spiritual wants – well, that’s the old evangelical reading of the prodigal story.

    What seems to be true is that evangelicals, amongst others, are failing to move beyond stasis, to move past repentance, into action. The best they seem to achieve is empathy with the older brother. Hardly at all are we encouraged to live like the prodigal’s father.
    Nathanael Snow

     

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  • Ted Troxell 2 days ago

    Nathanael,

    Thanks for allowing my thoughts to springboard your own, which I enjoyed. To push things a bit farther, is repentance without action really repentance? This is not to make people feel bad or take them on a guilt trip, but to point out the poverty of a evangelical milieu (of which I am a part) that does not move them past the “narrative transaction” and seems to equate salvation with simply feeling really good about being saved. The point is not that we suck (which is unremarkable), but that we’re being cheated.

    I think we might have different assessments of capitalism. I don’t consider it to be the best of anything, nor do I recognize consumerism as an evil distinct from the system — capitalism — that gives rise to it. I would agree with McCarraher here: “Consumerism is not the problem—capitalism is. Consumerism is the work ethic of consumption, the transformation of leisure and pleasure into duties. Talking about consumerism is a way of not talking about capitalism, and I’ve come to think that that’s the reason why so many people, including Christians, whine about it so much. It’s just too easy a target.”

     

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  • jurisnaturalist 2 days ago

    I read the book of James with the rest of the cannon. I’m not hip to terminology like “narrative transaction”, but if that means it is keeping people under an ethic of exchange and inhibiting them from moving into an ethic of sacrifice, then you have captured my thought precisely.

    I don’t know McCarraher, but I will follow the link and see what I think.

    I can only defend Capitalism as “the best that unregenerate souls are capable of on their own” and limit the definition of Capitalism to “unlimited voluntary exchange.” I don’t know how a Christian can argue against unbelievers adopting this ethic of exchange. They are incapable – apart from grace – of anything better. What would you replace it with?

    The more loaded definitions of Capitalism – those which are intended to protect some set of vested interests, or those which intend to incriminate one class or another – are not what I am interested in.

    I am mostly concerned that the possibility of a pure form of Capitalism is being rejected based upon the mercantilist-empirialist system we now have which is wrongfully labeled “Capitalism.”

    Nathanael Snow

     

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  • jurisnaturalist 2 days ago

    Okay, so I’m reading a bit of McCarraher’s stuff here. In what I have found he is not laying out a very precise argument as to how the process he claims Capitalism performs actually works. Is there a simple outline of how these claims are linked together somewhere?
    One thing I keep coming across is a squishy idea of “formation of moral imagination” or some other such language.
    The claim appears to be that dwelling in a Capitalist environment shapes people’s morals in such a way that they find their only meaning in work and desire, not even consumption. Window – shopping defines the person living under Capitalism. Do I have that right?
    Suppose this is true. What are the alternatives?
    Of course, there is the Christian Ethic. We want to have our moral imaginations shaped to match Christ’s sacrificial love for others, sensitive to the unctions of the Spirit. But this is only possible for the regenerate soul.
    If we live in a pluralistic society (I hate that word), where the majority of unbelievers (and even professing Christians) can not (or have not) adopted the Christian Ethic, and where through the democratic process and the public forum we have the opportunity to help form the legal environment, what sort of economic system ought we to advocate?
    Shall we just avoid the discussion altogether? Just direct all of our energies to serving the least of these, and despair of influencing policy for the better? Perhaps.
    But supposing we are to get involved. We must advocate voluntarism. We must seek to have privileges repealed. We must seek equality for all under the law. We must seek limits to (if not elimination of) arbitrary political mechanisms, which are the granters of unjust privileges. I perceive each of these as effective power-under methods of serving the poor and oppressed. I also see them as being consistent with pure capitalism. I set distributive justice aside as a peculiar function of the church, as I do all concern for the least of these. While many do, I don’t see why unregenerate people *should* give a damn about the poor or least of these except out of empathy, which is really selfish in its motivations.
    McCarraher seems to have been reading all of the wrong economists. Marx and Engels on the one side, and I am supposing the mainstream on the other. I’d recommend looking into Murray Rothbard and Friedrich von Hayek instead. Rothbard, in particular, has as his aim when constructing his capitalist system a “principle of non-aggression” which is entirely consistent with the Christian Ethic, and he’s an Anarchist.
    Again, my concern is that in rejecting Capitalism we instead advocate some other more statist system. The question becomes: would we rather the poor be constantly starving – as is the case under statism, or constantly hungry – as McCarraher implies would be their condition under Capitalism.
    Inasmuch as both are inferior to them being satisfied, I think we would both prefer them hungry rather than starving. Satisfaction seems to me only possible for the Christian.
    Many imagine that the random altruism we observe among people might be organized and systematized in order to make it more effective. Again, this is a pagan desire to concentrate and centralize power, even power for good. I might argue that power-under actions should not and cannot be centralized. To do so is to subjugate them to some other law than the movement of the Spirit. It is to create an idol. All such imaginations should be rejected. We really are much stronger when we don’t work together for the sake of working together, but only so much as the Spirit directs us to.
    I may simply have a more pessimistic understanding of unregenerate human nature. But my outline works whether or not I am right. Systems which depend upon a more optimistic view of human nature risk failure if they are wrong.
    Nathanael Snow

     

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  • Ted Troxell 2 days ago

    I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Nathanael, and willingness to dig into things. I also appreciate your lack of interest in the present economic system that many of us refer to as “capitalism,” even if that upsets hardcore market enthusiasts. At any rate, you’re right to point out differences in the capitalism of cultural theory (in which nerdy people say things like “narrative transaction”) and the capitalism of economists (which would involve, like, numbers and stuff). I appreciate as well your concern that we not neglect a “pure form” of capitalism based on the social critique of capitalism by people in the humanities.

    I’m not sure a pure form of capitalism exists — or, if it existed at one time it led to what we have now, and I don’t think it’s possible to go back. Whether it ever existed or not, to suggest that it would be better is, to me, a little like suggesting that riding a unicorn to work would be more environmentally friendly than driving my old truck; it’s true enough, but I’m not going to spend a lot of time trying to work it out.

    Since I’m piling on the colorful (or just lame) analogies, I don’t fault you for taking an interest in the political and economic landscape of the world at large, and you’re correct in your intimation that I don’t have a ready substitute — but there’s an extent to which arguing global or national economics is like asking my opinion as to the best way to get to LA when I’m convinced that we simply don’t need to be going to LA in the first place (no offense to LA, I just picked it at random).

    The only economic system that I can enthusiastically endorse is a gift economy (which might mean Paul and I agree on something) or some form of anarcho-communism. But these are not practicable on a national scale, and I think your recognition that whatever the ideal might be is not available to the unregenerate speaks to this (even if your concept of the “ideal” differs considerably). So pondering the most workable economic system for the world and coming up with some kind of pure capitalism is fair; I’m just not sure I buy it (pun shamelessly intended).

    I picked on capitalism (as I understand it) in this piece not because it is the most heinous example of economic injustice imaginable but because it is our present economic environment, and it is unjust.

     

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  • jurisnaturalist 2 days ago

    Of course a pure form of capitalism does not exist. There does not exist a pure form of anything, save Christ.
    I want to point out that certain systems are dependent upon central direction, and others emerge spontaneously. I claim that those which emerge spontaneously are better reflections of human nature as it really is. Power-over influences distort these reflections. Free markets emerge spontaneously in the absence of too-strong power-over agents. Free markets are the exact image of how people would interact with one another if power-over were suppressed. Altruistic cooperation is emphatically not how self-interested individuals (unregenerate) would interact if power-over were suppressed.
    So, in our interactions with public policy it makes more sense to try to encourage public opinion toward adoption of free markets and other emergent voluntaristic mechanisms rather than the expansion of political franchises and privileges.
    For example, as Christians we can recognize that the state affords a privilege to married couples which functions as a discount coupon on transactions with the state. That such a privilege is denied to homosexuals should not make us want to expand the franchise and provide the privilege to homosexuals as well, but rather to repeal the privilege altogether.
    Again, when some complain that illegal immigrants take advantage of welfare programs, we ought not to encourage the state to extend the welfare programs to all, but rather to repeal them to all, and assume full responsibility for the least of these ourselves.
    Whether or not any such changes in policy ever take effect, we at least have a right understanding of what the ideal is in each debate and can, by making an argument for radical practice of the Christian Ethic by Christians, and unfettered free voluntarism for others, challenge every premise of the power-over structure. Such a testimony shuts the mouths of Christian progressives and fundamentalists alike, and surprises those who have never heard the gospel applied to real life and politics so radically.
    There is incredible value or clout gained, and amazing opportunity for sharing the gospel, when we adopt such a stance toward policies.
    Again there is both an ideal for Christians to adopt, the Christian Ethic, or the gift economy you spoke of, and a separate ideal for Christians to advocate on behalf of the unregenerate – that is, for public policy – which is unfettered voluntarism / anarchism. Any other system advocates for some power-over agent or other. It is this advocacy for the power-over which I cannot abide, which must be rooted out from the church wherever it occurs, which has enslaved evangelicalism, fundamentalism, progressivism, and so many other –isms alike.
    We must have an ideal in order to know which direction to push policy in (at the margin – or in individual debates) consistently. Otherwise we wind up pushing in one direction on one issue and then in the opposing direction on a similar issue. Witness the right-to-life / pro-war dichotomy, for example.
    What is difficult about all of this is that in the end, only Christians can do volitional good. We have to be brutally honest about the self-interested nature of the unregenerate man. Almost every other system tries to overcome this obstacle by power-over methods. Only anarcho-capitalism allows each person’s self-interest to work to the benefit of his fellow man, and avoids employing the power-over explicitly.
    There remains the question of whether the formation of moral imagination by capitalism is a power-over mechanism. If it is, then it is only so implicitly, certainly not explicitly. Perhaps that makes it all the more demonic. I am unclear of the precise way this occurs, and would appreciate being directed to good resources for understanding the mechanisms involved. Too often I hear that such things all occur through narrative, etc. Such arguments are too squishy for me, and would be completely un-compelling to most audiences. I am reluctant to accept or employ them. I might just have to get over that.
    I am vitally serious about understanding these issues clearly and honestly. It is my life’s work, most likely. To have Stanley Hauerwas meet James Buchanan, if only conceptually in my writings, would be climactic for me.
    Nathanael Snow
    ndsnow@gmail.com

     

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  • Ted Troxell 2 days ago

    I find this very interesting because I resonate with a lot that you say here, but I have been resistant to libertarianism. The common articulations of libertarianism retain the state for precisely the purposes — the use of force — that many anarchists reject the state. What you seem to be saying is that something like gift-economy anarchism or anarcho-communism would be great for the church, wherein regeneration makes such arrangements possible, but that for the world at large, the closest possible thing — anarcho-capitalism, which substitutes the play of market dynamics for the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit — is as good as it gets, and better than the alternatives.

    Is that close? And let me be honest: I’m intrigued but I’m probably not going to get on board, at least partially because you seem to have a more reified sense of what regeneration means (I’m guessing a Reformed background?) among other things. I’m not convinced you can get Hauerwas and Buchanan in the same universe, but it might make an interesting book.

     

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  • jurisnaturalist 2 days ago

    Your first paragraph has summarized my position brilliantly.
    I’m unfamiliar with “reified” and google didn’t help. What do you mean?
    I like Piper a bit, but my background is mostly Baptist/evangelical, with a strong helping of Calvary Chapel, until I snuck into a class Hauerwas was teaching at Duke.
    I attend a Presbyterian church, but still doubt I know how to spell presyptyrian correctly. I also ask a lot of questions that surprise people in Sunday School.
    How would you contrast our different perspectives on regeneration? These fundamentals are often the key to understanding the rest of the conversation.

     

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  • Ted Troxell 2 days ago

    I’m sorry about “reified.” To “reify” is to make real, or to take as having real substance, or to regard something abstract as having concrete reality. I don’t tend to use the term “regeneration” myself; the fact that you do, and the way in which you use it, suggest to me that you see something concrete happening in an individual that I don’t see in quite the same way.

    The reason I guessed you as Reformed is because of the role regeneration plays in Calvinist theology, and the fact that the word doesn’t get used a ton outside those circles. Of course that doesn’t automatically make you a TULIP 5-pointer, but I was guessing it put you somewhere in the flower patch.

    It probably won’t surprise you at this point that I’m more of a “social construction of reality” guy. I don’t draw a hard line between the power of the Holy Spirit to effect change in a person’s life and our formation in the habits of faith learned in community, which I submit is the normative means by which such power is made manifest. For some this is too bleak or reductionistic, and I understand that.

    So I bristle at a phrase like “only Christians can do volitional good” because I don’t have a theological mechanism for locating the point at which someone goes from being incapable to capable of such good.

    Now, I’m curious: when dealing with Christian anarchists, people love to bring up Romans 13. There are ways that the Christian radicalism with which I’m most familiar handles this, but the more robust of those ways are rendered unavailable by your “two anarchisms” rejoinder to “two kingdoms” theology. Can I ask how you handle that?

     

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  • jurisnaturalist 1 day ago

    I probably am not in amongst the flowers, but the vegetables. If I’m going to flower, I’d like it to produce some fruit. I’m probably an eggplant, and not the skinny kind. I taste great once I’ve been grilled (as in this conversation!)

    I do accept most of TULIP. I also employ mostly modernist methods of discourse. And I bristle a bit at social construction of reality theories. I’ve also read too much Ayn Rand.

    That is, I usually want to hold individuals accountable, and not communities. It seems very difficult to me to relocate the decision-making agency from the individual to the community.

    However, I fully recognize that the whole is seldom the sum of the parts. This is actually the vanguard of the sort of macroeconomics being taught by Richard Wager at George Mason University, where I am. He’s a little late to the game, but he’s first among economists. The interactions among independent individuals combine to create macro movements which none of these agents intended. The cars in a traffic jam are all moving forward, while the traffic jam itself is moving backwards.

    I do see salvation as a transforming moment in a person’s life. I see empowerment of the Holy Spirit as the invitation to join God in His continuing creative work. I see regeneration as a moment when the self-interested nature of fallen man can be cast off in favor of Christ-interestedness.

    With Ayn Rand and other Objectivists I find it inconsistent with human nature for people to act charitably. Most charity is imposed by irresponsible people, or is a signaling of power to the recipients and those who observe the gifting. It is a manipulation, a power-over weapon. Society itself is an aberration, a power-over construct, a squelching of individuality and dignity.

    But regenerate people are no longer solely self-interested. We are Christ-interested. We want to do what we see our Father doing, even as Jesus did. We want to have a sensitivity to the Spirit to know what He is doing. We want to say with Brother Lawrence that we don’t even bend to pick up a straw except for the love of God. We do nothing for reward or personal gain. We already have our reward, Christ is our reward! What more could we want? Our charity asks for nothing in return. It seeks no political advantage, favor, or position. We do it in response to the Spirit. We receive joy alone, the sensation of being used by Him, as our motivation.

    Rand’s philosophy removes the right of anyone to make a claim on the life of anyone else. The wealthy have no obligation to the poor. The mother has no claim to her son’s produce. All social norms which imply such claims are evil. I’d have to agree that such claims are vehicles for powering-over others, even for the poor to power-over the wealthy.

    As believers we first give up our rights to ourselves to Christ, in acknowledgment of His deity and in acceptance of his salvation. We remember this in communion. We then give up our rights to ourselves to the body – the church – and grant them the right to make claims on our life. This is the act of baptism, and the entry point to the community, the only legitimate collective on earth, because it renounces power-over and practices mutual power-under. Some marry and give our spouses the right to make claims on our lives. I count marriage among the sacraments for this reason.

    I am resistant to the concept of habit formation in general because I prefer intense sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. Habit forming cannot tell you when not to help the sick person. Yet Jesus did not heal everyone. The goal is not to help and love people, but to love God (ah, here I am reformed again), and to glorify Him. God is sovereign over the suffering of His innocents. We don’t have to save them all. Yet we alone are empowered to save. It is a hard thought to know that some will not be saved.

    Now, Romans 13. I often backpedal from anarchism at this point to a minarchism including courts which operate according to common law processes. God provided Israel with Judges and with a basic set of laws, out of which the people could count on protection of property and enforcement of contracts. He also established precedents and appeals processes.

    So the authority wields the sword for justice. Some anarchists suggest the function of courts could be decentralized and subjected to market discipline. It may be possible. But I can accept a monopoly among courts.

    Romans 13 is mostly telling the Christian that the method for practicing the gospel is not political rebellion. Pay your taxes – just don’t expect them to do any good.

    Beyond this I recognize that the unbelievers will construct power-over institutions, despite our power-under attempts to dismantle them. We are to be subject to these institutions, recognizing God’s sovereignty, and to use interactions with these institutions as opportunities to demonstrate to peculiarity of the Christian Ethic. Where such institutions generate injustices were are to step in and offer ourselves as surrogates, or offer to redeem the innocent at our own expense. We are never to rebel. Again, the practice is to constantly push public opinion and policy at the margin in the direction of the ideal, never deceiving ourselves as to the possibility of achieving that ideal. It would be vanity if it were not purely service to Christ.

    There is then, no justification for the formation of a movement. There are only individuals choosing to be in community, and to be responsive to the Spirit. There is complete decentralization of action, which God sovereignly directs to His macro-purpose. We are just to obey.

    Nathanael Snow
    ndsnow@gmail.com

     

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  • paul munn 1 day ago

    I’m not a fan of Rand (or TULIP), but I’m very impressed by the conclusions you have come to, Nathanael. Especially your understanding of the (at least potential) working of the Spirit in us.

    And I mostly agree with your explanation of Romans 13, except I think the Judges were much more like prophets (sensitive to God’s wisdom and will, and chosen by God) than like our modern (elected) enforcers of state law. And then Jesus calls us to much more than the OT models, doesn’t he?

    Your understanding of the church also seems quite accurate to me (have you seen what Kierkegaard wrote about it, such as this, or his words here?).

     

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  • Ted Troxell 1 day ago

    You win the prize for the most interesting use of Rand I think I’ve seen. Like Paul, I’m not much of a fan, at least philosophically, but she did have a knack for giving her characters boring philosophical monologues (kind of like the Matrix movies).

    In a nutshell, you’re suggesting that Rand was right, at least as pertains to the world, and the only way out of Rand’s quasi-nihilistic maelstrom of competing self-interests is to have our interests changed through the regenerative power of the Holy Spirit. Since this will happen to a limited number of people, the answer for the rest is the mediation of a free market that allows for something like the “greater good” as an emergent property of the interplay of interests, along with a minimal legal apparatus that serves to protect the freedom of the market and wield the sword for the limited purposes suggested by Romans 13.

    To sum up: for the elect, a new heart and a new spirit; for everyone else, the Invisible Hand.

    What I find interesting here is that while other versions of Christian anarchism generally (and it is notoriously difficult to generalize radicalism, but those who study it can’t resist trying) recognize that a power-under society is not practicable in the world at large, and will only become universal in the eschaton, you are suggesting that some limited version of such a society is at least theoretically available to the world even if it is unlikely to be realized.

    This would serve to function as a guidepost for involvement in the democratic process — as Greg Boyd puts it, they ask our opinion, we might as well give it — while retaining a realistic sense of what is possible in the world.

    But this almost seems an extra step: if the church is a sign, a foretaste, and a herald of what God will bring about in the eschaton, and thus a testimony (however faltering) to an ideal, why a separate ideal for the world that is no more likely to be embraced by the powers that be? I can think of answers that would seem to be consistent with your reasoning, but I don’t want to presume.

     

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  • jurisnaturalist 22 hours ago

    Haha! Many Christians who read Rand walk away believing she’s on to something. Few make a leap to anarchism. Fewer still embrace peculiarity. I’m guessing most Christian Randians haven’t read anyone in the pacifist tradition. I have even read Piper on Rand, and he misses several key things to be learned from her.
    And, again, you have summarized my position eloquently.
    That my thesis provides a guidepost for involvement in the democratic process is most likely the reason I developed it. You may be quite right that we don’t need to be involved. I don’t suppose I shown that we must be. However, if we are going to be involved, I find my thesis most consistent with the Christian Ethic as I understand it. There are several focal points where my understanding may be significantly flawed. The only venue for having my thoughts rigorously tested has been the blogs. (You should see what happens when I make some of these suggestions over at Sojourners or World magazine!)
    Perhaps my thoughts are useful for radicals who must converse with conservatives who say they believe in free markets, but really just want to maintain the current oligarchy. Each set of beliefs must be pushed to its limits and tested under various assumptions. Otherwise the robustness of the theory is left unknown.
    Anyway, if I have successfully defended my thesis here, I feel very excited indeed. Not only have I had the opportunity to articulate it more carefully than before, but I have learned to be more careful in explaining my assumptions and in drawing logical connections. Most importantly I have shown a way to challenge progressives and fundamentalists on their own terms and to move them toward a purer Christian Ethic.
    Thanks for listening.

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Comment (1)

  1. Jordan Peacock wrote::

    Just lurking, nothing to contribute (yet). Thanks for the exchange!

    Monday, July 6, 2009 at 6:17 pm #