REDEEMING CAPITALISM
Kenneth J. Barnes
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 www.eerdmans.com © 2018 Kenneth J. Barnes All rights reserved Published 2018 Printed in the United States of America 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ISBN 978-0-8028-7557-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Barnes, Kenneth J., 1957– author. Title: Redeeming capitalism / Kenneth J. Barnes. Description: Grand Rapids : Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017060601 | ISBN 9780802875570 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Capitalism—Religious aspects—Christianity. Classification: LCC BR115.C3 B38 2018 | DDC 261.8/5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017060601
The author is represented by MacGregor Literary Inc. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version , NIV . Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.
®
®
™
™
CONTENTS
Foreword by Miroslav Volf Acknowledgments Introduction
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.
ix xiii 1
Capitalism—What Went Wrong? 3 Economics: A Very Concise History 21 Adam Smith—Morality, Money, and Markets 30 Karl Marx—A Critique of Capitalism 48 Max Weber—The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 58 Postmodern Capitalism 67 Utopia or Redemption? 78 God and Mammon—A Biblical Perspective 91 Theology and Economics 105 Common Grace, Wisdom, and Virtue 116 Faith, Hope, and Love—Reclaiming the Theological Virtues 141 Redeeming Capitalism from the Bottom Up 162 Redeeming Capitalism from the Top Down 188 Bibliography Notes Index of Names and Subjects Index of Scripture References
208 215 225 232 vii
FOREWORD
This book matters because capitalism matters. Arguably, global capitalism is among the most pervasive and most powerful forces in the world today, and it is a force for good and for ill—for much good and much ill. This is why capitalism needs reforming, or “redeeming,” as the title of the book puts it, using a favorite Christian metaphor for overcoming sin and its consequences. Redeeming Capitalism is a nuanced and critical Christian procapitalism voice in the important debate about the future of capitalism. Very few people today would contest the claim that capitalism needs reforming, but increasingly many are questioning whether capitalism deserves reforming. One pillar of Barnes’s argument is his claim that no economic system today represents a better, workable alternative to capitalism. It is important to note this right at the outset, for much of the book depends on this claim. I don’t read Barnes to say that a better alternative to capitalism cannot be imagined. It would be strange for a Christian to argue that capitalism is unsurpassable in principle. Christian hope for the “end of history,” to use the phrase popularized by political scientist Francis Fukuyama, is not the victory of capitalism, not even the victory of some superefficient, eco-friendly, and humane form of capitalism. Christian hope is for the new world that comes from God, a world that John the Seer describes as “the home of God among the mortals.” According to the first two books of the Bible (Genesis and Exodus), the goal of the creation is the establishment of the “tabernacle,” God’s dwelling place among the people of Israel. The last two chapters of the last book of the Bible (Revelation 21–22) record a broadening of this vision: the entire world, nature and culture, is God’s holy of holies, the place of flourishing life, justice, abundance, and security that God indwells. ix
Foreword From the perspective of this grand vision, all economic systems, capitalism included, are interim arrangements. But as an interim arrangement, capitalism is irreplaceable, at least it is so in today’s globalized world. Loosely using some terms from soteriology, the branch of theology that explores the nature of salvation, you might say that capitalism is justified not so much by the goods it helps create but by its irreplaceability, by the facts that better alternatives are unavailable and that, in any case, the abolition of global capitalism would require something like a worldwide revolution and therefore cause more harm than good. Justified in this twofold way, capitalism remains a sinner. That’s why it both deserves and needs reforming. In soteriology, the process of reform is called sanctification. Capitalism is badly in need of sanctification. That’s one of the main points of Redeeming Capitalism. To know that capitalism needs reforming we don’t need to appeal to the lofty perfection of the eschatological vision! Simple moral convictions will suffice, convictions formulated with the view of the world as it presently is, inhabited by finite and fallible beings living in fragile environments. To illustrate the need for reform, take just one Christian conviction. Christians have always believed that the poor are “God’s first love,” to use a felicitous phrase of Pope Benedict XVI, not known for his radical politics. For the capitalism of today, however, the poor seem to be the last concern. True, unprecedented economic growth over the last half century or so has lifted many out of poverty. Still, a long, dark shadow of growing disparity in wealth and power has trailed this stunning economic growth, with opulent and powerful elites living alongside an underclass made up of millions upon millions of hopelessly poor, overworked, and disenfranchised people. The sufferings of the poor are an indictment against current forms of capitalism; their groaning, like the groaning of the Jews in the ancient Egypt of the great pharaohs, is a cry for redemption and therefore reform. (A parallel line of argument for the reform of capitalism, the one that concerns its relation to the entire ecosystem, could start with the biblical statement, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” [Genesis 1:31].) It isn’t only on account of its effects that capitalism needs reforming, however. Many students of capitalism have noted inner tensions and inherent instabilities in the functioning of capitalism itself, the most famous—not necessarily the most compelling!—among them being Karl Marx, who argued that capitalism’s inner tensions will inevitably lead to its eventual collapse. Barnes is much more nuanced; he is no Marxist. In Redeeming Capitalism, he x
Foreword highlights two related tensions within capitalism. One is between the kinds of structural interventions capitalism needs to function well and the resistances to these interventions that the inner logic of its operation generates. The other is a tension between the moral ecology presupposed by a responsible capitalism and the kind of amoral world in which it operates today and which it in fact helps to generate. Barnes’s main concern is the second tension, the “moral vacuum at the heart of capitalism,” as he puts it. For without bringing a moral vision to bear on capitalism, the first tension cannot be addressed and its deleterious effects cannot be remedied. Three central claims give Redeeming Capitalism urgency: ◆ no good substitutes for capitalism are available; ◆ capitalism is self-undermining and destructive without moral convictions to regulate it; ◆ capitalism has insulated itself against these convictions. The book is a call to reimagine and reform capitalism as a moral enterprise so it can become a morally steered servant rather than a cruel, amoral master. Subduing global capitalism is a difficult mountain to scale, a Mt. Everest of social engagement. But climb it we must. And climb it we can, even if it is one step at a time and only part of the way. Redeeming Capitalism isn’t just about bringing morality to capitalism, though. It’s also, and below the surface perhaps primarily, about the place of economics in who we see ourselves to be as humans and about how we understand the basic orientation of our lives. It’s an endeavor to align capitalism not just with common morality but with our very humanity. The very first words of the book, a quotation from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, are meant to set the direction for the entire project: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). Note the relation between the treasure and the heart: the heart doesn’t determine the treasure (as Christian champions of unredeemed capitalism have often insisted); it’s the other way around: the treasure pulls the heart to itself. Where should human treasure be so that the heart would end up in the same place as well? In the same sermon, Jesus gives the answer: “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (v. 33). For Christians, the great challenge behind the moral challenge is to reform capitalism so that, “sinner” that it will always xi
Foreword remain, it can still be integrated into the striving for the “kingdom of God” as the true “location” of human hearts and the true goal of our lives. Consider the first temptation of Jesus in the light of the need to reform capitalism. “Turn these stones into bread,” the Tempter taunted Jesus, famished after a forty-day fast in the wilderness. Jesus resisted, responding, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Jesus was quoting the Hebrew Bible. Moses, the great deliverer and lawgiver, first uttered these words to the children of Israel as a summary of the main lesson they were to have learned in the course of their forty years of wandering in the wilderness before entering the promised land. Bread was what they needed in the wilderness; that much was never in doubt and that trite truth, as insistent as a growling stomach, they didn’t need to learn. But they needed more than bread, and that truth, not as obvious as the hunger, but as real as the possibility of losing our very humanity, they did need to learn. All humans do, perhaps especially we moderns. In the course of modernity, we have made our greatest temptation into the chief goal of our lives and the main purpose of our major institutions (that is, the state, the market, science and technology, and education). Modernity isn’t just an age in which people believe that “only the world can be the case” (Peter Sloterdijk). More significantly, it’s also an age in which people act as if only the world were the case, whether or not they believe in transcendent realities. Most of our social and individual energy and imagination revolves around turning stones into bread. And yet we, both the rich and the poor, are still in the wilderness, plagued by hunger and thirst. Once we are convinced of the deep poverty of living by bread alone, we’ll be ready to start the great endeavor of morally taming capitalism so as to push it into being less of a master and more of a servant. Redeeming Capitalism is an important resource in helping Christians engage in a serious debate about how best to undertake an endeavor critical for the future of our world: how to reform capitalism both by lessening the importance in our lives of the goods capitalism can deliver and by bringing moral conviction to bear on its functioning. Miroslav Volf Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology, Yale Divinity School Founder and Director of Yale Center for Faith & Culture xii
Like what you’re reading? Purchase the complete book at Eerdmans.com, Amazon, CBD.com, BN.com, or your local independent bookstore.