(111) Good Business And Bad Business.
Little kid once asked his father,
Here’s a question for you, Dad,
Tell me, , if it’s not a bother,---
What is “Good,” and what is “Bad”?!
This was my translation of an immortal verse by the great Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The thrust of the present entry is the psycho-linguistic ambiguity of the ethics of our “economic” judgment. When we say that business is “good,” this does not imply its ethical goodness, but rather the reverse may be true: that we have achieved a higher level of profitability by probably cutting some moral, and occasionally legal corners. And on the other hand, my business can go really bad, just as I am so scrupulously trying to maintain a very high level of personal and professional integrity… In fact, our judgment of success or failure in business life may in itself create a contradiction with the basic standards of ethical conduct, and yet, we will persist in the use of this terribly misleading terminology, using the words good and bad “in vain,” that is amorally, as if to prove ipso facto that our worldly life, and our expectation of the afterlife, life eternal, are themselves locked in an irreconcilable metaphysical conflict.In the meantime, in our relentless pursuit of “good business,” as opposed to “bad business” we are so easily desensitized to the ethical meaning of the words good and bad, and become ourselves fertile ground for the burgeoning and flourishing of an alternative system of morality, which is inimical to our traditional system of values.
(112) Christian Politics And Christian Economics.
While pondering over the meaning of this double oxymoron, I am compelled to quote Tertullian, the early church father, whose solemn promise to the faithful of the pleasure of eternally watching the spectacle of God’s enemies eternally tortured in Hell I have elsewhere described as utterly reprehensible. However, the following passage from his Christian’s Defense is an ironic gem that screams to be quoted here:
“Nothing is more foreign to us Christians than politics,” he writes, and I am sure that he would also have added economics, had this word been at all familiar to him.
Incidentally, according to John 13:29, it was Judas, and not Matthew, who was the chief economist among the Twelve Disciples of Jesus. Apparently, Matthew, the former tax collector, had renounced economics as soon as he had made his choice to follow the Lord. Otherwise, wouldn’t he, Matthew, have been the natural choice for “the bag”?
(113) Iron As A Metaphor For Capitalism.
Iron is of course the most common element in our planet, making up some 35% of the earth as a whole. Yet, it is practically non-existent in its pure form, thus presenting us with an excellent metaphor for capitalism.--- Both of them can be artificially extracted as ‘free elements,’ but as soon as they are left on their own outside the lab, they rush to form compounds, which is precisely my point. Even the most ardent apologists of pure capitalism have to admit, although they might disguise their admission in various disingenuous forms, that pure capitalism as such is impossible in practical surroundings, having to be subjected to various degrees of government control, as well as forced to coexist with certain elements of quasi-socialism, even in the most explicitly permissive, capitalist-coddling environments, such as that in the United States.
I can push my metaphor even further by noting that steel is made more durable by introducing higher levels of carbon content into the iron compound, and, likewise, the future economic systems of the most advanced and socially-developed nations of the world may discover an even better formula, where the “iron-content” will be even less, to the advantage of other essential elements, liberally introduced into the mix.
(114) Selling God To Caesar And Caesar To God.
While I am on the subject of capitalism and Christianity in America, there is a curious parallel between the two. I am amused how many ardent champions of religion are hopelessly confusing it with science, trying to make it a science, for instance, by means of supplanting the hypothetical (and therefore, scientific) theory of evolution by the dogmatic (and therefore, non-scientific) belief of creationism. It appears that our Christian apologists are not satisfied with the spiritual sufficiency of their faith in God and seek formal rationalization of religion (as though turning religion into an exact science could reclaim this world from Satan, making the Second Coming a merely ceremonial, symbolic event).
By the same token, the most ardent champions of capitalism seem to be at odds with the fact that capitalism is fundamentally “heterogenous” from religion (in the sense that it takes its origin from a different source), and are going so far as to virtually confuse it with God’s most up-to-date “testament.” As if they were trying to supplant traditional religions by an alternative ethical system: the Good Almighty Lord Capitalism.
It is ironic how our Christians seek to formalize, scienticize belief, while our capitalists seek to moralize and spiritualize what is essentially an amoral (mind you, I am not saying that capitalism is immoral!) system.
And so, I see the former activity, conducted by our Christians, as an effort to “sell God to Caesar,” whereas the latter activity, conducted by their opposite capitalistically-minded numbers, as an effort to “sell Caesar to God.”
(115) Success And Greatness.
The core of my premise in Capitalism And Christianity is the philosophical incompatibility of the pursuit of the Capitalist Dream (with its emphasis on money) with Christianity’s condemnation of money as an object of man’s pursuit, while it sets its sights on the loftier pursuit of life eternal. There is thus a boundless chasm, exactly like there is one between Heaven and Hell, between these two ways of pursuing happiness: the quest for spiritual greatness and the desire for a down-to-earth success. The following is a definitive passage from Nietzsche’s essay On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life [Section 9], that raises the same question, and in essentially the same terms as I raise it myself, which only shows how simple and deep is the idea behind the basic principle of “contradiction in terms,” as I have stated it in the full title of this section: Capitalism And Christianity: A Contradiction In Terms. It also demonstrates the point which I’ll be making on numerous occasions throughout this book that Nietzsche’s obsession with Christianity is a classic “odi et amo” affair.
The noblest and highest has no effect on the masses; the historical success of Christianity proves nothing as regards the greatness of its founder since basically it testifies against him. Greatness is not to depend on success, and Demosthenes had greatness even though he had no success. The purest and most truthful adherents of Christianity have always questioned and impeded, rather than promoted, its worldly success, its so-called historical power; for they took a stand outside the world and concerned themselves not with the “process of the Christian idea,” which is why they have mostly remained unknown and unnamed by history. Expressed in a Christian way, the devil is the regent of the world and the master of success and progress. He is the real power in all historical power, and so it will remain, even though it may ring quite painfully in the ears of an age that deifies success and historical power.
Nietzsche’s elitist treatment of greatness, which he denies to “the masses,” puts it in direct opposition to our earthly success, which is apparently what the masses are after, according to him. I am by no means eager to demonize the idea of “success” as such. My opposition is to the pursuit of success, as the goal of man’s life, but I have no qualms about a success which is not deliberately pursued. To stand in opposition to accidental success in life would be the pinnacle of sanctimoniousness.
Note the organic connection of Nietzsche’s thinking in this case to Kierkegaard’s theological bombshell, as he points to a very similar disconnect between the religious essence of Christianity and its worldly practice by politically-established Churches. While the great Dane insists that only a religion under persecution, one that is totally deprived of political power, can preserve its pure spirituality and be free from insincerity, the great German proves once again, that his iconoclastic attitude to Christianity is aimed primarily against the practitioners, rather than against its founder, the only Christian who ever lived.
The good news for America, from all of this, is that, apparently, the almost-proverbial American pursuit of success does not originate on this side of the Atlantic, but has a long and infamous history in the old world, as was hinted by Kierkegaard and made clear by Nietzsche!
(116) Communist Manifesto And Mount Sinai.
In my ongoing analysis of the basic contradiction between capitalism and Christianity, it is essential to see that, as soon as even a hint of moral significance is attributed to the former, the resulting moral antagonism between the religion of the soul and the religion of the wallet becomes hopelessly irreconcilable.
Here is a good quote from Marx’s and Engels’s Communist Manifesto, which further strengthens my point. (I must advise the readers of this, that the Communist Manifesto remains an important document of history and political philosophy, and it does contain some invaluable insights into a subject matter which has never lost its relevance and is surely no less topical today than it was eight score years ago, when it first appeared. It will be therefore professionally counterproductive and outright silly to dismiss it in its entirety merely for the subjective reason of personal animosity to it.)---
In bourgeois society, capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
It is easy to exclaim “I told you so!” here, namely, that freedom and independence are positively preferable to unfreedom and dependence. But, as Spinoza sharply observed, nobody is really free, and those who think that they are owe such a conviction to their ignorance. It is therefore for us, endowed with the double-edged freedom of choice, not to demagogically “choose freedom,” but, in fact, to choose our dependence. It is up to us whether we choose to depend on a genuinely ethical entity, that allows us to preserve our individuality, or on an amoral idol (such as capital in the quotation above), which drains us of it.
The pejorative connotation of the word “bourgeois” above allows us two things: first, to broaden the moral context of Marx’s dictum to include all money-driven societies and secondly, to find the cure for the disease observed by Marx in his condemnation of capitalist ethics, in “de-bourgeoising” the driving forces of social morality in capitalist societies. Otherwise, the capitalist world must inevitably turn itself into another Israeli camp at the foot of Mount Sinai, where a molten calf of gold had once become a living god, thus acquiring an independent and distinctive individuality, while the people had become dependent on their new idol, and were all on the verge of losing not just their own individuality, but also their life and soul, being threatened with death and destruction by a wrathful true God.
(117) Is Private Charity Uncharitable?
The horrors of early British capitalism famously exposed by Charles Dickens, had been warned against long before him by none other than Thomas Hobbes, as he wrote about the responsibilities of the sovereign in the Commonwealth. One of the aspects of Hobbes’s warning is particularly ironic, as certain practical ideas and ‘initiatives’ of the George W. Bush Administration have flown in the face of Hobbes’s admonition and plain common sense, while also revealing a cosmic-sized black hole of ignorance. I wrote this comment initially on the hot trail of events, but although the Bush Administration in no longer in power, the issues raised here are by no means laid to rest. In fact, the so-called ‘private charity’ initiative is not limited to a particular era, but it reflects the very nature of capitalist mentality. Why should the government under capitalism waste the taxpayers’ money on social (read socialist) programs, when all, or almost all, such programs can be given to the care of private charitable organizations?
Such a concern for public welfare promoted through private charities is commendable when it comes from a private charity source, but it is utterly unacceptable coming from the government, which in this case appears to be passing the buck from where it ought to rest, namely with itself, to a third party; and this delegation of responsibility is plainly immoral.
So, here is the promised quote on this subject, coming not from some fire-throwing socialist revolutionary, but from a sensible monarchist visionary, which only proves that capitalism cannot be practiced in its “pure form,” but that a healthy infusion of socialist principles into government policy must be the mainstay of any ‘capitalist’ society.
“…And whereas many men, by accident inevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labor, they ought not to be left to the charity of private persons (sic!), but to be provided for, as far forth as the necessities of nature require, by the laws of the Commonwealth. For, as it is uncharitable in any man to neglect the impotent; so it is in the sovereign of a Commonwealth, to expose them to the hazards of such uncertain charity.”
Ipse dixit! Here is an open invitation from the chief impresario of monarchy, to open the doors of society to socialist practices. According to Hobbes, private charity is “uncertain charity.” To translate it into a larger message of this section, social practicality demands a mixed basket of capitalism and socialism, no matter how one calls it, and the proper balance between the two should never be upset by irresponsible and stupid declarations about the moral superiority of one over the other. In fact, socialism easily trumps capitalism on moral grounds, but for a militant socialist to demonize capitalism wholesale is proper only in self-defense.
And finally, to capsulate the point of this entry in an aphoristic form, socialism is the charitable alternative to private charity, whether our capitalist ideologues like it or not.
(118) Pax On Both Your Houses!
The title of this entry is of course my jocular allusion to Shakespeare’s forever-jester Mercutio, which to me perfectly captures the sadly-ironic spirit of what I am about to comment on.
My subject here is the most recent book by the Pope Benedict XVI, called Jesus of Nazareth. In it, the Pope speaks very harshly of the two ostensibly antipodal historical experiences in socio-economic order, namely, Marxism-totalitarianism, on the one hand, and our modern, new and allegedly improved, capitalism, on the other. Here is what he has to say about them:
“After the experiences of totalitarian regimes, after the brutal way in which they trampled on men, mocked, enslaved and beat the weak, we understand anew those who hunger and thirst for justice.”
And now this: “Confronted with the abuse of economic power, with the cruelty of capitalism that degrades man into merchandise, we have begun to see more clearly the dangers of wealth and understand in a new way what Jesus intended in warning us about wealth.”
Clearly, from what the Pope says, capitalism is no physician, and it cannot even self-medicate itself. A new economic philosophy is required, which will put capitalism in its right place as a purely economic system of certain advantages and certain shortcomings, which would once and for all defeat the insidious ideology of capitalism with its false faith in its own ethical value. With the Pope speaking out against the inherent moral deficit of the capitalist system, how long will there be tolerated a “Catholic” defense of the capitalist virtues in America? Will American Catholics ever split from the rest of the capitalist America on this issue, and what would happen then?
And furthermore, if we contrast the Catholic socialist spirit with the Protestant capitalist spirit, discovered by Max Weber, and apparently still in currency as legal tender among the American Protestant economists, how soon will these two colossi of Christianity clash over this issue in a decisive ethical battle between the religion of God and the religion of the Dollar? And whenever, and if at all, that happens, will their place of battle by any chance be called Armageddon?
(119) Capitalistic Dynamism Versus Socialistic Complacency?
It may be argued that capitalism is the prime mover of economic progress, encouraging enterprise, and the spirit of perpetuum mobile, in the best sense of the word, while socialist mentality breeds dependence and complacency, stifling the progress in the society that falls victim to it.
The partial truth of this argument is supported by the well-known folk saying to the effect that necessity is the mother of invention. The problems of post-Stalinist Soviet economy, leading to stagnation and effective degeneration, have been cited in the same context. It is also true that the spectacular successes of the Soviet economy under Stalin were caused not by its stiff command structure, but by fanning the patriotic zeal of the nation, coupled with forceful coercion and threat of severe punishment for the underachievers.
This argument would have held water, and ought to have been seriously considered, in conjunction with the thesis of Protestant Ethic, expounded by Max Weber, had we been reduced to the basic elements of social development in isolation from reality. Then, perhaps, we might have cheered the pushy vigor of capitalist enterprise, and allowed it to lead the way of economic development, provided that we found a suitable way of helping out the weak and the disadvantaged, the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid, to use the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In other words, had capitalism really worked in reality, we would need only an infusion of common social morality, to make the system work.
But alas, we are not dealing with that kind of benign productive capitalism, to whose defense the argument has sprung in the first place. Noam Chomsky is perfectly right in asserting that capitalism in this sense is no longer in existence anywhere in the world of today. In fact, a good mixture of capitalism and socialism is at play in most places in modern Europe, whereas in America the course of economic policy is decided on the ideological front, in the fight between two competing schools of thought, which are Globalism and protectionism. In the meantime, the best of capitalism, its productive spirit, is being steadily outsourced to foreign markets, leaving America with the ugliest, meanest, the most repulsive of its manifestations which is financial capitalism (in other words, usury), meaning a very deliberate departure from the production of actual national wealth, concentrating instead on speculation and profit-making for profit’s sake. Needless to say, this form of capitalism is the least compatible with morality, but rather, encouraging and rewarding the worst excesses of immorality.
Returning now to the original argument of capitalistic dynamism versus socialistic complacency, there can be only one thing left to discuss, which is how to make good socialism work, minimizing its propensity for complacency, and maximizing its social drive for economic progress. As to capitalistic spirit of enterprise, the kind of capitalism taking over modern America, and with far less success trying to take over the world, contains all the negatives of quintessential capitalism, having now lost all its positives (through its practice of deliberate outsourcing), and it is therefore philosophically and socially indefensible.
(120) Economics And Human Nature.
“A war of all against all,”-- this is how Thomas Hobbes describes the human situation in the state of nature. This “state of nature,” according to Hobbes, is not a state of what things ought to be, as it is in Locke, but in effect, it is the state of human nature, which is frankly not very nice. Of these two opinions, I take Hobbes’s as more realistic, whereas Locke engages in religion-based didactics, treating ‘nature’ as God’s “very good” creation. It may well be so, I admit, and Locke may have been influenced by Cicero in this matter, to whom “whatever befalls in the course of nature should be considered good.” The same goes for St. Augustine, to whom “all nature is good.” But, just like Locke, Augustine talks about a different kind of nature than does Hobbes. The difference is highlighted by Pascal in his Pensées: “Nature has some perfections to show that she is the image of God, and some defects to show that she is only His image.”
But enough of the classics, who predictably line up on both sides of the understanding of what nature is. By this time we are ready to conclude that Nature, as God’s original design, is very-very good, whereas human nature, as God’s design corrupted by man’s freedom of choice is horrid.
How does this all apply to the subject of the present section, which is economics? The answer is obvious: in the state of laissez-faire, human nature shows itself most reprehensibly, and needs to be restrained, if we are to have a civilized society. Unfortunately, under the conditions of modern laissez-faire capitalism there may exist an appearance of civility, but the essence of Hobbesian war of all against all seeps through as soon as we start scratching the surface.
To capsulate this line of thinking, capitalism is human nature unleashed, whereas socialism is human nature restrained. Take your pick.
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