Conclusion: The Turning of the Tide: Theology, Religion, and Economics
Free-market economics—capitalism—is in crisis. A rising tide does not lift all boats, and wealth flows up rather than trickling down. This insight is independent of economic cycles, or whether we find ourselves in bear or bull markets. It is true not just in times of downturn, but the logic of downturn helps us see better what is going on all around us. Yet, although free-market economics is in crisis, it continues to shape everything. This is not just true for how we do business or politics but also for how we think and feel, and even for what we believe. It is for this reason that we must address economics, theology, and religion together. For theologians, this means that we can no longer do our work without taking into consideration what is happening in the economy and how it affects us; before religion can become part of the solution we need to understand how it has become part of the problem.1 As we take into account what is going on in the economy, we will not only be better able to understand what is happening to us, but, out of this understanding, we might also be able to provide alternatives and to contribute to a turning of the tide.
As the market takes over all areas of life and the flow of money determines who we are, those who do not benefit from the market are at an ever-greater disadvantage. Those without employment or funds are the worst off, but any workers who have nothing to rely on but their labor power cannot expect to fare well in this system. Even the middle class will need to reevaluate itself along those lines. The ruling classes, who command capital and control or own substantial shares of the means of production, on the other hand, have every reason to assume that the system is working in their favor, to the point that they often deeply identify with the system. As a result, all classes are in need of an alternative vision that points beyond this system, rooted in an initial sense that not everyone benefits from the market equally and that this system cannot provide a true home for anyone if it does not provide a home for everyone. Religion can support or sabotage this alternative vision in various ways. There is a sense of not belonging at the core of Christianity that finds expression in Jesus’ recognition that “he has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58), and in an early Christian understanding that “here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb 13:14). At the same time, there are also calls to conform in Christianity that have often been used to keep in line those who are in positions from which alternative visions tend to develop—and who might become a threat to the status quo. These calls to conformity include reminders to wives to obey their husbands, to slaves to obey their masters, or to church members to follow their leaders.2 As we have seen, those who are thus conditioned to follow religion blindly are the ones most likely to follow economics blindly as well. The results of much of this faith throughout history have been destruction and even death.
In this context, a first step is to realize the ambiguity and ambivalence of this situation. Those whose lives are being ruined by the market—literally and figuratively—have a deep sense of this ambiguity and ambivalence, no matter how much the system tries to cover it up. Those who are forced to subordinate themselves to the powers that be have the opportunity to see these powers in ways that these powers cannot see themselves. The truth about an oppressive system is best seen from the positions of the oppressed.3 Yet, even those who feel that they benefit from the system can become aware of the ambiguity of the situation, if they develop an awareness of what the free-market economy is doing to the majority of humanity. This demands taking sides, however, as such an awareness does not come naturally and cannot be developed simply by taking in the relevant information; the awareness of what is going on at the underside of the market economy needs to be developed in solidarity with real people whose lives are being destroyed.4 This will take time and effort, and this is one thing that this book cannot accomplish. All that can be done here is to extend an invitation to spend some time in the world of downturn that affects more and more of us: to push beyond secure positions, and to get in touch with those most affected. A deepening sense of ambiguity and ambivalence will be the result. Without this sense, no alternatives—whether theological or economic—can be envisioned, and everything will remain as it is.
While free-market economics claims that it has in mind the common good—the rising tide that will lift all boats—we are not able to identify this common good in the real world. Free-market economics, it appears, promotes an eschatology which resembles those misguided Christian eschatologies that promise a pie in the sky. If we wait just a little longer, we are assured, things will improve for everyone. Even John Maynard Keynes, whose approach Milton Friedman and other neoclassical free-market economists sought to overturn, affirmed this point in his reflection on “economic possibilities for our grandchildren.” Some day in the future, Keynes states, we will “return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue—that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable.” That day, however, we should not be surprised to hear Keynes state, has not arrived yet: “For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.”5 Even if Keynes were right with this assessment, made in 1930, we still would have to wait another twenty years—and, as Keynes himself said so well: “In the long run, we’ll all be dead,” a statement that even Milton Friedman saw fit to use.
If the realization of the common good is, thus, pushed further and further into the future, the common good loses its character. The question of what will happen to our grandchildren is not unimportant; but what will happen to these grandchildren if our generation and the generation of our children cannot survive as human beings? The common good also loses its character and turns flat if it does not take into account differentials of power and the deep divisions between human beings that have been created by the free-market economy. These sorts of divisions are not “natural”—as we are often made to believe. Only in the current economic system does it appear to be possible that one person (a top investor) can earn twenty-thousand times what another person (an average worker who may own a house and a car) makes, and many more times more than what informally employed or unemployed people make. Faced with these grave imbalances, which no free market could possibly balance until the end of time, we need to think about the common good in fresh ways.
Our reflection on the common good gains depth if we take into account the logic of downturn. The common good cannot be perceived by identifying some statistical middle ground, it can only be perceived by identifying the weakest members of society. As Ulrich Duchrow and Franz Hinkelammert have pointed out, only if these weakest members of society can live, all can live.6 This perspective on the common good is deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian traditions. The rejoinders in the Hebrew Bible to respect widows, strangers, and orphans are not moral rules that protect special interests. Just the opposite: concern for widows, strangers, and orphans is tied to the well-being of the community as a whole. Only when they can live can everyone live. Conversely, if their humanity is disrespected, everybody’s humanity is disrespected. In this perspective, it is quite meaningful that the first bill that President Obama signed into law was on equal pay for women. In light of our broadening understanding of the common good, a matter like this can no longer be considered special interest, and Obama made this clear in his own way when he noted that this new law addresses not just a women’s issue but a family issue. We might broaden the picture further and note that this is an issue that also relates to the interests of communities and of the globalizing economy as a whole. Consequently, if the good of women—or of any other marginalized group—is not taken into consideration, it becomes meaningless to talk about the common good.
Yet the common good is about more than equal distribution. The common good also needs to be considered in relation to productive participation in life. Do all people have the opportunity to develop and employ their creativity for the common good? The opportunity to employ one’s creativity is usually seen as one of the privileges of those who occupy higher-level jobs in politics, industry, or intellectual production through the academy and other outlets. But the notion of the common good reminds us that this is not enough, and that no one should be deprived of the opportunity to labor creatively, so as not to stifle the creativity of work as a whole. Such a situation might be considered true progress, as opposed to a situation where only a few really get to participate, while all others are told to hold their hopes and to defer their dreams into some future that may never come. Here, the focus on production rather than on distribution is crucial. While it may be argued that more people have color television sets now than fifty years ago, opportunities for creative and productive labor have not increased at the same rate, if at all. The fact that so many people around the world have no televisions and no employment only makes matters worse.
What has been said so far also applies to the question of common interest, discussed in chapter 2. Common interest is best constructed from the bottom up rather than from the top down. This may sound odd, for in the ideal realm of economic and theological thought, common interest is considered to be just that: common, without up and down. In the reality of economic life, on the other hand, up and down are quite real, and it is the top that shapes not only the order of things but also that which is commonly accepted as valid; religious life shows little difference here, as the mainline tends to be shaped by the ideas and expectations of those who are in charge and those who fund it. This top manages to project its interests in terms of common interests and, thus, to cover up its special interests: tax cuts to the wealthy, for instance, are presented as beneficial to everyone and rising tides are eulogized. But little hard evidence for these beliefs has been produced. The economic formula S = I, that tax savings (S) translate directly into investments (I), on which part of this top-down view of common interest is based, does not hold up to investigation and has not propelled the economy forward as much as was hoped.
While the mainline considers questions from below as special interest, the reality is the reverse. In economic reality, neither workers nor small-business people—and certainly not the vast armies of the unemployed and underemployed—benefit much from tax cuts at the very top and from government subsidies to the largest corporations, since these often fail to trickle down below a certain level: both workers and small-business people, however, share an interest in resisting the monopolies that are formed at the top.7 In this regard, the Keynesian shift to subsidies for workers and middle class, a limited form of which is now becoming economic policy again with the Obama administration, brings some relief, as it draws the circle of common interest broader—recognizing that subsidies are more likely to trickle up than down. Here, common interest is, indeed, supported from the bottom up to a certain degree. Nevertheless, the top is not challenged here, and the lion’s share of profits ultimately ends up at the top again. While Keynesianism was particularly successful in Europe, where large industries were often nationalized and public health care and welfare were established so firmly that they have lasted until today, common interest needs a stronger foundation yet, rooted in the biblical concern for the “least of these.”8
Constructive Critical Theology and Economics
If faith images are, indeed, at work in economics, interdisciplinary conversations between theology and economics assume a new level of urgency. Theology, understood as constructive and self-critical reflection on faith and ultimate reality, can make important contributions, since it cultivates investigations into where different images of God and ultimate reality come from and where they might lead us.
Absolute claims of faith—images of God and of ultimate reality—that operate below the surface or that cannot be questioned, even in situations of downturn and great pressure, result in problems for both theology and economics. The challenges faced by a growing number of us who now experience economic downturn firsthand push us to take another look. In this context, an approach to theology that refuses to see its interconnectedness with economic realities, and that conceives of theology as an autonomous discipline, not only deceives itself but reinforces unconscious dependencies. Exploring economic structures in terms of the pressures of real life can enable theology to take into account its own formation by the now all-pervasive forces of the economy, and to develop a more self-critical perspective.
In regard to economics, the question, as should be clear at this point, is not whether there are images of ultimate reality and the divine in economics and whether this is appropriate or not. Like it or not, such images pervade and support our economic system. The question is whether those images are supporting life. For Christians, the question is also whether these images match Christian notions of the reality of God as the one who offers life to all, including the “least of these” and those members of the economy on whose shoulders it rests: the workers, broadly conceived. Does the current economic theology of the free market merely sanction and sanctify the status quo, or does it contribute to a better life for all? At stake is not the question of honest belief in the market, but whether there is an awareness of the vast numbers of people who at present do not benefit from the market, and what role this awareness plays in economic theory. We do not need to doubt that many economists honestly believe that they have found solutions for the problems of the world and that they trust that at some point in the future everything will be fine. Such faith in the free-market economy keeps them on track even if the economic reality looks dismal for more and more people and—this matter should give us pause—even if millions of lives are lost. What happens, though, when the question of divine and ultimate reality is posed not from the perspective of the economic status quo but from a broader perspective that includes all of humanity? What happens when the economy is viewed not primarily from the perspective of the select few at the top but from a perspective that includes the billions of people on the underside? What gives hope and comfort to all those who are being crushed by the economic success of a relatively small group of people? The theology that trusts in the “invisible hand of the market” has had little to offer to the majority of people, who do not benefit from free-market economies.
An alternative perspective might take a cue from alternative theological approaches that—in the midst of the catastrophes of the early twentieth century, which included two World Wars and the Holocaust—have developed resistance to the theology of the status quo and its endorsements of top-down power. These theologies of resistance talked about God as the “Wholly Other.” God was described as “Other” not because God is located in some isolated transcendent realm, far removed from the world, but because the true God is Other than the familiar gods of the status quo. God is Other than the authority and power of those on top—the elites, those whom we commonly consider to be in control and who seem to determine the order of things. This God comes as a surprise, because this Other God is in solidarity with those who suffer; with the weak, the widows, and the orphans of the Old Testament; and with those on the margins of society in the New Testament. It is often overlooked that even Karl Barth, the most prominent theologian of otherness, saw God not as an abstract “Wholly Other,” but as the Other who locates Godself alongside the oppressed and against the oppressors. In this context, transcendence does not first of all refer to what is otherworldly. Rather, transcendence means a break with certain kinds of immanence in favor of other kinds of immanence—the sort of immanence where Jesus Christ is found.9 The contemporary Roman Catholic theologian Jung Mo Sung, arguing from a different perspective, arrives at a similar insight. Sung notes the transcendence of the cry of those who suffer from the market, because it breaks through the totality of the oppression and transcends the boundaries of the system. Those who do not hear this cry, Jung observes, are unable to grasp the work of God in the world.10 Here is one of the most crucial challenges posed to economics by Christian faith—a challenge deeply rooted in many of the voices that come together in the biblical sources, from the Old Testament to the Apostle Paul; the latter even includes an awareness of the suffering of non-human creation.11
There is one more step, however, that constructive and critical theological and economic reflection needs to take. It is not easy for those of us who still benefit from the economy, or who feel, at least, that we have a stake in its future through personal investments and retirement plans, to step outside the theology of economics. This is true not only for professional economists but also for professional theologians and for the members of mainline Christian churches. In order to resist the almost inevitable accommodation to the status quo of those who benefit in some ways from the free-market economy, the awareness of God as Other will have to be tied very closely to an awareness of other people, and anchored there. Those other people, in this case, are particularly the ones who are designated as “other” by the logic of the free-market economy, perhaps because they cannot compete in the market or because they are prevented in various ways from performing at what counts as superior levels of success. In building relationships and ties of solidarity with these others, we have an opportunity to gradually developing greater respect for that which is other, the sort of respect that ultimately will also shape our images of God as Other.12
The main goal of this constructive critical theological reflection is to discover and make use of new impulses and energies that can reshape our images of God and ultimate reality—whether those subconsciously held by economists or those consciously held by theologians—and lead us in new directions.13 What guides and reinforces our hope in this new paradigm is no longer an absolute and ideal image of the free market, as held by many economists and theologians, but a tangible world of real people that includes the least of these, a world in which all can not only survive (this, in itself, would be a significant improvement over the current situation, when over twenty-five thousand children die every day of hunger and preventable causes14) but also live productive lives. In this new paradigm, the now virtually ubiquitous preference for individual wealth would be replaced by a preference for those who have been severely crushed by the economy.15 This new type of preference is related to biblical notions of God’s own concern for those who suffer and are crushed by the powers that be—from the oppressed poor and the crushed needy mentioned by the Prophet Amos (Amos 4:1) to the “low and despised” mentioned by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor 1:28). This preference emerges also as the central issue when we consider the question of whether all can survive and live.
These theological considerations lead us back to economic matters. One of the biggest surprises in this respect might be that we can now claim a new place for self-interest, one of the key terms in free-market economics since Adam Smith. Rather than demonizing or sanctifying self-interest, as both ethicists and economists are wont to do, we need to realize that self-interest is part of life and of survival. When we encounter God as Other, however, we begin to see self-interest in a new light. Self-interest that is becoming aware of the challenge of otherness does not necessarily have to lead to the exploitation or the exclusion of the other; it can also lead to new kinds of relationship with the other and to the other’s inclusion. Even in the logic of free-market economics, of course, self-interest includes some awareness of the other—but what if self-interest came to include particularly those others whom we do not notice at present and those who, in terms of the dominant economic system, do not seem to be of much value to us? Jesus’ commandment, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31, with roots in the Old Testament), reminds us that self-interest is always tied to others, whether we notice them or not. At stake here are not primarily special acts of support or the distribution of alms, but the recognition that the neighbor is a part of who we are, even when are not aware of it. This flies in the face of mainline economic (and theological) wisdom.
That the neighbor is part of who we are is not religious idealism or wishful thinking. This is the (still mostly hidden) truth of the economy, which produces its profits mostly by extracting the surplus from the labor process on which trade and, ultimately, even financial capital rest. That our neighbors are part of ourselves today often means, first of all, that we are developing our own economic advantages on their backs; they are part of us because we benefit directly or indirectly from their exploitation—if only because we can buy certain goods very inexpensively and because certain services are cheap since labor costs are being pushed lower and lower. In these very particular ways, our neighbors are always part of us, even though we may never know them and even though we often prefer not to get to know them. In the midst of these oppressive relationships, however, other connections are created that produce an unexpected kind of “surplus,” which cannot be measured with current economic tools. This different kind of surplus has nothing to do with what is considered the “bottom line” of economic profit, but with a potential for alternative relationships among people who are brought together by the economic system, often against their will. These relationships can lead to new kinds of solidarity that typically emerge only under pressure, when people begin to realize their true common interests, and to new kinds of economic exchanges. In the words of the Apostle Paul, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26); or, in the language of the trade unions, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” Only when we become aware of these connections already in place can we realize the true complexity of our relationships and move beyond the crippling myths of individualism on which much of contemporary mainline economics and theology is built.
Without seeing this complexity of our connections to other people, including the severe distortions in these connections, we will never be able to transform them in life-giving ways. In this regard, seeing the complexity of our connections to the divine Other might be of help, too; more hopeful and life-giving alternatives emerge where the pressure is greatest and where the divine Other enters into our predicament and shares in it, rather than being envisioned at the lofty tops of this world. Is this not part of the Christian message of the incarnation of Jesus Christ—in a manger and under severe threat of persecution and annihilation (Luke 2:7; Matt 2:16)? When we realize our complex location between other people and the divine Other more fully, we have a better chance of becoming fully human and—herein lies our hope for the future—of developing a more humane economy.