examination :: November 26, 2007
Britney Spears and the Downward Arc of Empire: An Interview with Eugene McCarraher
by Chris Keller
The Other Journal (TOJ): Let's start with Britney Spears, who was in the news all last week with experts decrying her parenting gaffs and bemoaning the fact that she has fallen so far that a judge would shift parental control from her to her burnout ex-husband K-Fed. Putting aside questions of why this is news and what is news, how do you account for our culture's nurturing of celebrity that seems to fluctuate between consuming (Britney as sex symbol) and discarding (Britney as burnout mom), between lust and contempt? Are we are seeing celebrities as commodities, and if so, what does this phenomena say about us and how we relate to one another as consumers?
Eugene McCarraher (EM): I don't think you can put aside the question of why Britney Spears is news because ignoring it means we're ignoring the production end of celebrity. Like the rest of the news, Ms. Spears is a product of the culture industry, one of whose chief purposes is to distract us from the tedium or injustice of our daily lives. Just as her premeltdown songs and videos were glittery commodified ephemera, created precisely for the purpose of being enjoyed and discarded, so her meltdown is a commodity, mediated for our entertainment pleasure.
But on top of that, Ms. Spears is a commodity fetish, to use Marx's still-relevant and illuminating language. Like any other commodity fetish, Ms. Spears is a screen onto whom consumers project their own repressed desires—in her case, to misbehave. And like many a repressed desire, its inexorable expression is malignant. Seeing its malignancy, consumers deride their fetish, often with a viciousness commensurate to the intensity of the identification with the commodity. So there's something insidious, not only about the consumption of her sexualized persona, but about the way that celebrities-in-distress like Ms. Spears are tossed aside. The celebrity cycle of consumption-disappointment-vicious rejection raises to a high degree of visibility and vividness the way in which all goods are handled in this culture. Unable or unwilling to confront their desires for what they are, or to discover how to transform those desires in accordance with their status as, oh, the imago Dei, consumers project [their desires] onto commodities, suffer [...] inevitable lack of fulfillment, and grow ever more cynical and full of rage. The telos of consumer autonomy turns out to be not so much freedom or license as a sullen emptiness and boredom that eventually requires different forms of violence—verbal, visual, military—for its satisfaction.
TOJ: So given the importance of what is news, do you understand our national obsession with sports in a similar light, as a commodity meant to distract us from the deeper injustices that plague our lives, similar I suppose to imperial Rome (gladiators, coliseum, et cetera)?
EM: Yes, but sports also retain some potential as a source of criticism of commodity culture. On the one hand, sports sell both capitalism and nationalism: during a typical football broadcast, for instance, you’ll get a standard ideological package of beer, food, cars, sexual titillation, and some patriotism thrown in. ("Are you ready for some U.S.A.?") But because even professionalized, commodified sports still insist both on achievement within rules and on standards of excellence that have nothing to do with money, they represent an oasis of sorts within the culture of avarice.
TOJ: You have argued that our culture in North America is one that thrives on death, "from poverty, unemployment, and alienation, to abortion, capitol punishment, and war," and that as Christians our most urgent duty is the affirmation of life. What do we, in the fall of 2007, urgently need to be doing to affirm life? Furthermore, if we are really to affirm life, how do we disinfect ourselves of the pervading libido dominandi, which you describe as "the love of domination, which corrupts everything we are and create"?
EM: On one level, it's quite simple: don't participate in wars; don't have an abortion; protest the state-sponsored murder of offenders; create an economy that provides useful, remunerative, and cooperative employment. But clearly there's more involved. First, Christians should practice the fundamentals: the sacraments, prayer, study of Scripture and tradition. As the defining practices of Christian faith, they're the template for a culture of life, as they afford both participation in the divine life and the growing realization of what a gift life is, not something we have to earn or deserve. So much of libido dominandi is traceable to our acting as though we have to gain God's approval or to acting as though we or others must be wanted or that we should deserve life—or death. (Fr. Herbert McCabe has some wonderful passages in his sermons on all of this.)
Some of the other advice I'd offer probably won't go down as easily. First, I think that Christians should stop yakking about consumerism. 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. There's a long history behind this, but the creation of consumer culture is very much about compensating workers for loss of control and creativity at work, and those things were stolen because capital needed to subject workers to industrial discipline. (I don't, by the way, believe that we inhabit a post-industrial society. Our current regimes of work are, indeed, super-industrial.) Telling people that they're materialistic is both tiresome and wrong-headed: tiresome because it clearly doesn't work, and wrong-headed because it gives people the impression that matter and spirit are antithetical. As Christians, we should be reminding everyone that material reality is sacramental, and that therefore material production, exchange, and consumption can be ways of mediating the divine.
As for abortion, I think we have to stop seeing it as the primary culprit in a culture of death. Abortion becomes conceivable as a moral practice once we take individual autonomy as the beau ideal of the self; but to recognize that is, if we're logical, to indict not only abortion but also our cherished idyll of choice or freedom. But that, then, is to indict capitalism, which employs a similar language of sovereignty both to legitimate itself and to obscure the remarkable lack of creative freedom at work. I know that I'll catch a lot of hell for saying this, but I think that a lot of opposition to abortion is sheer moral sentimentality which turns the fetus into a fetish. (You'll notice that I think fetishism of some sort or other is a pretty salient feature of the contemporary American moral imagination.) Many of the same people who oppose abortion are champions of laissez-faire capitalism, and they either don't see or don't care to see the linguistic and cultural affinities between themselves and the pro-choice advocates they fight. They'll retort that capitalism doesn't kill anyone in its normal operations, but first, that's just not true—capitalism has never been instituted or maintained anywhere, not even in the North Atlantic, without considerable coercion and violence—and second, it doesn't matter, because the exercise of market autonomy has devastating effects on individuals and communities regardless of whether or not they wind up dead. ("Yeah, the company cut your medical benefits or cut your job or left your town a mess, but hey, you're still alive!") When I say this, a lot of people retort that I'm changing the subject. In one way, yes, I am, but for a reason—because I want them to see that it is the same subject in a different guise. Talking about abortion is a way of not talking about the autonomous individual, the latest ideological guise of libido dominandi, discussion of which would topple quite a few idols and not just reproductive choice.
As for talk about empire, it can obscure the fact that, while the U.S. is indisputably an empire, it's also an empire in decline. If the American empire were as strong as the rhetoric of many Christians makes it out to be, there'd be no point in doing anything other than retreating into ecclesial enclaves, talking sagely about practices, and—oh, gee, that's what a lot of theologians and pastors and seminarians are doing. But if, as I believe, the empire is now on the downward slope of its historical arc, then Christians can be optimistic as well as hopeful. (Yes, there's a difference, but many then go on to think that optimism is always foolish. It isn't.) Although I don't believe that we'll be leaving Iraq any time soon—since we invaded for the oil and for geo-political advantage, it stands to reason that we're not going to exit—it's also quite apparent that the insurgency, together with the lack of genuine domestic support (how many war enthusiasts do you know who've enlisted out of patriotic fervor?), have demonstrated the limits of our vaunted military might. Moreover, the extremely fragile state of finance capital, the knowledge that we can't rely on oil for much longer to propel our corporate consumer economy—all of that should indicate that the empire is very much in the condition of Edwardian England, or Hapsburg Spain, or fourth- to fifth-century Rome.
Given that we're an empire on the downslope, Christians should be preaching the good news that America can decline gracefully, and that Americans will be saner and happier when they relinquish the imperial imperative. (I have no patience with the providentialist bullshit shoveled by Richard Neuhaus or Stephen Webb. That star-spangeled drivel has gotten and will continue to get a lot of people killed.) Talking about empire is a way of not talking about the world we could build in concert with the many non-Christians who also see the impending erosion of American power.
So what, then, should Christians do to create a culture of life? If economics is part of a culture of life, then we need a political economy of life. And I am unashamed in saying that some form of socialism remains the most inspiring and practical way of arranging our economic affairs in the light of the Gospel. We should wind our way back to the road not taken in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century: Christian socialism, which now has to be a post-secular socialism, undertaken in concert with non-Christians. Work to transform capitalism, not into a more efficient way of producing and distributing "illth," as John Ruskin called so much of the shabby and dangerous and unedifying crapola that truly is a gross domestic product, but into a political economy of genuine wealth, "the possession of the valuable by the valiant." At a minimum, that means a metamorphosis in the ethos and curricula of business and professional schools at Christian colleges and universities. Christians should be pioneering a whole new economics, not just tacking values onto capitalism. They should be affirming abundance, not scarcity, as the primary ontological fact of economics. They should be offering courses not in management but in how to do without management as a distinct class. They should be offering courses and training in union organization, or in dispossessing those useless people otherwise known as stockholders and putting firms into the hands of people who actually work in them.
I'm convinced that working toward such a political economy of life would increasingly render abortion more and more inconceivable for the simple reason that libido dominandi wouldn't leaven the entire society.
TOJ: In this issue, we are looking at psychopathology and sin—what sins define our culture? How are they deforming our psyches and our hearts? Are they representative of acute psychopathologies or broader personality deformations? One of the foundational questions then, in approaching this topic, and one that indeed undergirds psychology and politics, is how do we conceive of the self? Within our modern political discourse, how do our views of freedom and inalienable rights fashion the idea of the secular self? How is the late-capitalist secular-self at odds with the Christian account of personhood?
EM: I don't believe that the modern self is secular, at least not in the way that's usually understood, and I don't believe it because, however deeply deformed we become, we're still the imago Dei, and that means that we're always yearning, even despite ourselves, to participate in the divine life. In discussions of the person as well as in discussions of history, economics, et cetera, it's absolutely crucial to not give an inch to the secularization narrative, because to the extent that you do, you surrender any serious claim on the disputed territory. Once you concede the essential legitimacy of the secular account of the person—or of economics, or politics, et cetera—you end up relegating Christianity to the realm of spirituality or values or some other gaseous invertebrate that hovers around an essentially secular self. Rather, Christians should contend that the secular marks the repression, displacement, and renaming of our desire for a sacramental way of being in the world. Indeed, the history of the person is both the history of those perversions and of attempts to mitigate or undo the perversions. So I think that it's better to say not that the Christian account of personhood is at odds with the secular account, [but that] the secular account is a disfigurement of personhood.
In this view, the self under late capitalism is a perversion of our desires for a beloved, sacramental community of labor. If you look closely, I think you'll find that, for instance, a great deal of management theory—as dullard or cynical as it truly is—represents an effort on the part of corporate capital to simulate such a community. Advertising, to take another example, is the devotional iconography of late capitalism: it arouses, in the very act of disfiguring, our sacramental longing for a land of milk and honey, for a New Jerusalem.
All that said, I've come to dissent somewhat from William Cavanaugh and Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank and others who see almost nothing but perniciousness in the liberal tradition. Look, let's be honest: the heroes of the antislavery movement, of the movements for women's rights and for civil rights for nonwhites, all employed the language of liberalism in addition to the language of Christianity. Why? In large measure, because Christian tradition had legitimated a language of hierarchy and duty and subordination that even Cavanaugh and Hauerwas and Milbank can't stomach anymore. Perhaps because I'm a mere historian, I have to respect the indisputable evidence that Christians certainly weren't citing the church fathers when they demanded that the slaves' shackles be loosened or that women get the right to vote and be educated. For all that it's perverted the Christian account of personhood, the liberal account of freedom and rights has preserved and, yes, even enhanced vestiges of the Christian tradition. So enough liberal-bashing; it has gotten boring, and it's not entirely accurate historically, anyway.
TOJ: The Gates Foundation, powered with staggering capital from Bill Gates' fortune as well Warren Buffett's billions, promises to do what governments in the developing world have not been able to do, things such as eradicate malaria in the third world and provide aid to the poorest of the poor. Two of the richest men in the world, who have thrived in the marketplace and become inconceivably wealthy from corporate profit, seem to be following the soteriological script of capitalism to a tee—a script that says eventually wealth will trickle down, aid the needy, and the market will mete out justice. (Such crises in Africa and generally in the developing world are terrible situations, and I am, like everyone else, relieved to see mosquito nets distributed and vaccines being tested to eradicate malaria, a disease that kills one million impoverished people a year.) How can we understand the Gates Foundation phenomena in light of your statement that "a vital task of any genuinely pro-life gospel and politics should be the demolition of the corporation's material and cultural power"?
EM: I think we must understand the Gates Foundation in exactly the way you described it: as a capitalist soteriology. That’s a basically Augustinian way to frame it, and as Augustine says, not everything about the earthly city is rotten. Still, even compassionate actions are performed with the ultimate intention of preserving and extending the libido dominandi that propels the earthly realm, and those actions are inevitably further compromised by the conditions that made them necessary and possible. There is, for instance, a correlation between Western economic policies and health pandemics. Witness, for instance, the infamous Bhopal incident in India a while back, caused by Union Carbide's reckless conduct. That wasn't just a correlation, but a direct cause-effect relationship. Moreover, there is clearly more than a correlation between the (often coerced) adoption of agri-capitalist practices (single-crop farming, the use of various pesticides and other chemicals, etc.) and large-scale famine.
What should also trouble us about the Gates-Buffett initiatives is the idea that the poor—or the rest of us, for that matter—should have to depend on the benefactions of the super-rich rather than on the ministrations of government or of religious institutions. These acts of bourgeois-oblige, so to speak, exemplify the utter privatization of public services, among which should be the provision of medical care. Indeed, Gates and Buffett are idols of the corporate-benevolence complex: these are people who exploit workers and extract resources and then shower benefits on the world's wretched, soaking up praise for their charitable endeavors. Thank you, thank you, oh nabobs of wealth, for deigning to notice our plight. So while Gates and Buffett's actions are certainly better than nothing, they shouldn't warm our hearts for too long.
TOJ: It is said that we live in a therapeutic culture and that psychotherapy has begun to supplement authentic community, intimate friendship, and authentic confession in the context of the church. Celebrities often erase past mistakes in a public-relations sense by going into rehab; therapeutic terms such as repression and projection are common within the parlance of our time; and the therapist's office has become somewhat of a holy place where authenticity and healing can thrive. As a Christian psychotherapist, I recognize the value of psychiatry and psychology. I also am often struck in a broader sense by the enabling nature of the psychiatric and psychological industries, where normalcy is subtly and not-so-subtly couched in terms of being free from suffering, and being yourself is prized regardless of vice or virtue. Are we a therapeutic culture? Is the account of wellness that the psychiatric and psychological industries are importing congruent with the therapeutics of the Gospel?
EM: The phrasing of your last question underscores why we have to be careful when using terms like therapy or therapeutic culture. A lot of scholars often invoke Philip Rieff when trashing our therapeutic obsessions, but Rieff was much more meticulous and insightful in his use of these terms than a lot of his subsequent enthusiasts have been. Rieff is very clear, in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, that all cultures are therapeutic—that is, all have ways of forming personal identity and integrating it into the larger community. Rieff distinguished not between therapeutic and non-therapeutic cultures but between rival therapeutic modes and communities, their ideals of health and methods of cure. He also made a crucial distinction between positive therapeutic communities—which link interior well-being to commitments outside the self and seek a transformation of desires in accordance with certain communal purposes—and negative communities—[...] which lack integrating symbols and communal purposes and thus register rather than transform desires. In his view, the contemporary West was a negative or purely therapeutic community. (Rieff's prose can be maddeningly abstruse, and I think this is why it's easy to misread him.)
Now, I think Rieff's characterization of our culture as purely therapeutic is right as far as he goes, but I think we have to understand that Western capitalist democracies do, in fact, have an integrating purpose: the production and consumption of commodities. Rieff didn't clearly relate the triumph of the therapeutic to the cultural and psychic impact of capitalism—mainly, I suspect, because he comes out of a tradition of conservative cultural criticism which just doesn't like to dwell on capitalism. (They think it's reductive or Marxist or materialist—in short, it's bad intellectual manners—to mention economics.) MacIntyre's association of the therapist and the manager in After Virtue highlights this connection.
In my view—and I used this to frame a good part of the argument in Christian Critics—The Triumph of the Therapeutic traces, not a shift from religion to therapy, but a transferal of therapeutic powers from religious authorities to secular experts, as well as an uncoupling of personal therapy from aspiration toward a broader collective destiny. That's not to say that Christians can't rely on psychological or psychiatric professionals—I certainly don't think that preaching the Gospel to people is a cure for obsessive-compulsive disorders or for schizophrenia or for any number of personal troubles. But I do think it's pretty obvious that many people, including Christians, now take certain troubles to mental health professionals that require more than talking cures or prescriptions. And I think they do so because the notion of cure that's at work is one very much like industrial efficiency: you do this, you take that, and you'll be free of whatever malady is bothering you. The Gospel doesn't assure you that you'll be cured of a certain malady; it proclaims that you're forgiven, not that you're free of any number of obsessions or sins.
TOJ: As you know, post-9/11 pro-atheism publications are plentiful and have often launched acerbic attacks on the Christian tradition. Is this a new intellectual current that you are seeing in the academy, which has primarily been nurtured by the Bush administration's religious language and the 9/11 attack by religious fundamentalists? Beyond the War on Terror and anti-Bush sentiments, why in 2007 are such publications wildly popular with the culture at large?
EM: Looking at these books in purely intellectual terms, I don't think that the current spate of anti-religious books indicates anything strikingly new. The arguments you get from Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens are basically the same arguments we heard from Voltaire, Marx, Nietzsche, Bradlaugh, Ingersoll, O'Hair, et cetera: religion is scientifically absurd; it is sponsored superstition and slaughter, et cetera. What's new is the extent to which these arguments are now common currency among wide swaths of the upper-middle classes, who are, given the price of books these days, the primary audience for these writers. So I don't think this is simply an anti-Bush phenomenon, and I don't think it's simply a reaction to the religious right or to radical Islam. These sentiments have been out there for quite a while, and the vitality of fundamentalist religion has elicited a suitably exuberant reaction.
I also doubt that this is only a recoil from Bush and Evangelicals because support for the new atheism doesn't necessarily translate into opposition to the War on Terror. Everyone knows that Hitchens has been an especially virulent and bloodthirsty warmonger; it's rather less well-known that Harris is also a stalwart supporter of the use of U.S. military power against terrorists. (As you and many of your readers may know, I wrote a long review of Hitchens' God is Not Great for Commonweal in which I explored these issues at some length.)
TOJ: In your Winter 2004 the New Pantagruel article, "Embedded Christian Intellectuals," you gave a call to arms for Christian intellectuals, in which you said—"What is to be done? First, we must demolish unrelentingly the illusions promulgated by Novak, Elshtain, Weigel, Neuhaus, and other embedded Christian intellectuals. Whether ignorant or heedless of American hubris, they sanitize their accounts of the imperial order; pervert the critical intelligence of Christian faith; and bivouac in the discursive parameters drawn by the corporate regime. Stale and obscurantist, their rendering unto Official Sources merits rebuke and inattention. It’s time for regime change among Christian intellectuals."
Could you elaborate on the need for regime change using some recent examples of Christians sanitizing their accounts of the imperial order, and have you been encouraged by indicators of such a regime change among Christian intellectuals in the last three years?
EM: From a legion of disgrace, the two best-known examples of Christian fealty to empire have been Jean Elshtain and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Elshtain’s work had been heading in this direction for over a decade. Disturbed by some trends on the left, and especially among feminists, she appointed herself something of a Lady Bracknell to preside over cultural and political discourse. In the course of becoming an ideological cop, she morphed into one of these virtue- and civility-meisters, wagging her finger at everyone to mind their intellectual and polemical manners. She started seeming a lot like William Bennett, adopting this schoolmarmish, moralizing tone. Then along came 9/11 and Iraq, and she went over to the dark side, pontificating on Just War and spouting all sorts of Augustinian tautologies. Along with Michael Novak, she got to be one of the media’s go-to people for a quick exposition of why God wants us to go to war. You don’t hear much from her now that everything’s gone down the crapper.
Neuhaus was always a bellicose sort, even when he was on the left. Like most other intellectuals who opine so sagely about Just War, he’s a chickhawk whose relationship to violence has always been of the most conceptual and literary sort. (In The Theocons, Damon Linker traces Fr. Richard's attraction to violence.) Add to that his supine deference to competent authorities—this, from a man old enough to remember Tonkin, My Lai, and Cambodia—and you have the classic authoritarian personality.
Against the embedded Christians, I’ve been immensely encouraged by the emergence of a motley and diverse group of Christians unwilling to enlist their talents in the service of Caesar. When I read and talk to people like Bill Cavanaugh, Mike Budde, Shane Claiborne, Kelly Johnson, Charles Marsh, Lauren Winner, Richard Hays, or Steve Long—all of whom are indebted to Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder—I know there’s hope, enormous hope.
TOJ: Finally, we usually leave open space at the end of our interview if you have any final thoughts you would like to share. Final thoughts?
EM: No. I think I’ve probably said quite enough to inspire, provoke, or anger your readers. My work here is done. Serenity now.
ashdabashley says: (Sunday :: December 2, 2007)
If he is arguing for "Christian socialism," what exactly does that look like politically. And doesn't the nature of sin, and the vices of greed and gluttony eventually lead to the fall of BOTH capitalism and socialism?
Andy says: (Friday :: December 7, 2007)
Dostoevsky gave Christian socialism a go, and ended up leaving the movement and becoming a Christian existentialist. I actually think a Christian existentialist makes more sense than a Christian socialist, given the doctrine of the Fall.
emccarra says: (Saturday :: December 8, 2007)
Andy says: (Monday :: December 10, 2007)
If we had to dismiss every thinker who expressed anti-Semitic thoughts in the 19th century, then we’ve got a lot of books to burn. But a man can have terrible flaws and still write the truth. It happens in art all the time. Something I’ve learned from Dostoevsky’s characters is that the noblest and most diseased impulses can coexist in the mind of a single individual. I don’t believe in socialism, because I’ve never encountered a socialist theory that accounts for the disease. In “The Power and the Glory,” the priest, who is a very flawed (fallen) man, tells the lieutenant that the reason socialist ideology won’t work is because it won’t function unless its proponents are good people, whereas he is living proof that Christianity requires no such thing. Of course, Christianity and socialism aren’t exactly opposing ideologies (after all, one is religious and one is political), but it’s not an accident that socialism has been associated with atheism since Marx. Christianity teaches that man is fallen, and this is significant, because any political system can only be as good as the people who make it function. Socialism is based on the idea of sustainable political progress, something I’m not aware of as having ever happened in a truly socialist state.
But just because I don’t believe in political revolution doesn’t meant that I don’t believe in solutions. People’s suffering is not a joke to me, and I do not cry crocodile tears.
Also, I am obviously not the first person to call Dostoevsky an existentialist:
Click here
jonnycakes says: (Tuesday :: December 11, 2007)
"Conservatives always pull it out whenever they want to be able to justify something awful while shedding crocodile tears about it."
...Wow.
msubracko says: (Tuesday :: December 11, 2007)
one thought: yes, the fall does not prove anything in regard to affirming existentialism over socialsim. however, to dismiss the fall as nothing other than another strategy for conservatives to maintain their ideals or ways of living, is, in my mind naive. it seems the only point that an understanding of the fall had any influence on dr. mccarraher's thoughts on culture surfaced in his comments regarding therapy. do i think that capitalism creates a context where many blind spots prevent true christian living - yes i do. however, i think the fall being the fall means that whatever political system you construct, people will use that system to justify living against what the bible would lay out as faithfulness.
Andy says: (Tuesday :: December 11, 2007)
I don't think it "proves" that existentialism is more compatible with Christianity than socialism. I regret linking the two ideas in the way I did, since they're not opposites, however, I will say that when I read "Notes From Underground" I identify more with that wretched soul than with the idealized ubermen we find in socialist propaganda.
emccarra says: (Thursday :: December 13, 2007)
Andy and Mscubracko are both right to remind us that no political system is going to be free from the taint of human sin. The objective of a Christian approach to politics and economics, then, would be that of the Catholic Workers Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day: "a society in which it's easier for people to be good." I would contend that a socialist order would achieve that goal better than capitalism. Obviously, that's a debatable assertion, but let's be clear about the point under contention. Unlike Marxists -- from whom I still think we have a great deal to learn -- I don't believe that socialism is the unbounded unfolding of human powers. Some human powers need to be bounded, as perverted as they are by sin. And I would simply reiterate that there's a lot more in the socialist tradition than "idealized ubermen." ("Ubermen" isn't very felicitous in any case, as Nietzsche despised socialism as another form of Christian charity.)
Andy says: (Thursday :: December 13, 2007)
Mcgarnacutty says: (Thursday :: December 13, 2007)
Moreover, your worries about power consolidation should be refocused on our current hyper-capitalist state: in what ways has capitalism provided its own consolidation and corruption of power? Who is really controlling things here?
Andy says: (Thursday :: December 13, 2007)
And regarding who is controlling what in this our capitalist state, believe it or not, I have thought about that once or twice.
strabes says: (Sunday :: December 23, 2007)
I'm a fan of Marx as far as his identification of problematic symptoms goes. But he was desperately wrong in his overall diagnosis and proposed solution. I'm a harvard business school grad who went into corporate life in order to avoid ivory tower theory. I suppose I'm one of those evil mysterious people who works in secret with other evil mysterious power brokers behind some big curtain manipulating the masses that Eugene blames for the world's fallenness. Nope. I'm just an individual struggling to find my way in the world like everyone else (I wish Eugene would exhibit similar Christ-like humility). I just left the business world in order to attend Mars Hill Grad School. I originally wanted to be an economist, but realized it was impossible to have a realistic perspective without serving in the system I was going to study. Unfortunately, most economists, whether from the right or left, are terribly uneducated in the reality of the system they critique or support so they come across as ideologues. This justifies some of Eugene's attacks on them and those who read their writings and take them as Gospel. But Eugene likewise demonstrates a lack of real understanding. The fact is, capitalism is not the problem; post-Enlightenment removal of Christ as the foundation for existence is as it results in unchecked materialism, consumerism, and what Francis Schaeffer called the insidious philosophy of "personal peace and affluence" (yes, I know Eugene thinks he has debunked this, but he's wrong). Capitalism has worked wonders in the world. The most recent, powerful examples are rescuing much of SE Asia from the depths of poverty and despair and lifting the yoke of control from the lives of east europeans. It also provides untold opportunity for individual growth and self-fulfillment, which Eugene apparently doesn't understand. Perhaps his frustration with being in the stifling bureaucracy of academia frustrates him. But that's not capitalism. I've been struck how my old colleagues in business and the thousands of people they work with thoroughly enjoy their lives, whereas my family, most of whom worked in state government bureaucracies feel despair and the very stifling aspects of work that Eugene rightly attacks, as did Marx. Business has come a long way since the Industrial Revolution. The old us vs. them perspective of "management" vs. "worker" is childish. It's also un-Christian, un-Buberian to be so hateful toward people, but it's what Eugene angrily voices.
Eugene, I'd love to chat and provide some exposure to the institutions you're attacking. Clearly massive problems emanate from the business world and the individual and corporate actors within that system. But if you're a historian, you know better than most that every other system exhibits far more problems in addition to the problems you blame capitalism for (selfishness, possessiveness, exploitation, diminution and violation of the imago Dei, etc).
Unfortunately I can't dive deep into any of this since I'm just writing a comment. Perhaps I'll submit an article.
As to the power discussion in the comments above, unfair distribution of power will always exist. A beneficial aspect of capitalism is that it diffuses power into competing factions such that no single entity has complete, corrupting power. It is PRECISELY the type of "syndicalist" structure Mcgarnacutty describes in his comment. Corporations are syndicates--mini command economies within an overall market system. They incorporate "workers" into the power structure, but again the notion of "management vs worker" is archaic. Sure, you can point to examples of corrupting power in our current corporate system. But that is the power that comes from a government that is willing to collude with corporate entities. Corporate entities don't get that type of power themselves. Selfish government officials who want to line their own pockets provide that type of power to corporations in the short-term. In the longer-term, even that power is eventually trumped by another.
jarcher says: (Sunday :: December 30, 2007)
Andy says: (Tuesday :: January 1, 2008)
strabes says: (Wednesday :: January 2, 2008)
My purpose in mentioning where I went to school and my job wasn't to name drop, though I understand how it can look that way, but to point out that I'm not on the sidelines...I'm participating in the system, hopefully helping to redeem it, though probably stumbling like all of us.
I can't replicate Schaeffer's argument about post-Enlightenment rationalism here either. Read "How Should We Then Live" for that.
In terms of the SE Asia point, look at history over the last several decades of S Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. It has been a remarkable demonstration of the benevolence of capitalism when it comes to significantly reducing povery, toil, disease, income inequality, and creating an environment within which people can be more human rather than strictly worrying about food, shelter, survival. The World Bank has publications on this topic...google "asian miracle" or look it up on amazon. Ron Sider briefly mentions this point in his book "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" and he's largely a socialist. In terms of Eastern Europe, I doubt there's books on this yet, but again just look at what has happened to quality of life in those countries since 1990 or talk to folks with family in Poland, Hungary, Romania, or the Czech Republic.
Andy, thanks for noticing the last paragraph. :) But even that really requires a few books: 1) a book on power distribution in different systems like capitalism, feudalism, tribalism, communism, socialism, anarchy, etc. By the way, all of these systems have the same problems we blame capitalism for--possessiveness, selfishness, power differentials, resource extraction, oppression. 2) a book on the history of unionism and its decline, the end of "us vs. them" management, and the communal nature of market activity. 3) a book on cronyism, mercantilism, and the other corrupting systems that occur when government and business collude (this happens in all systems, but those that keep it to a minimum have the smallest problem with power differentials).
Andy says: (Wednesday :: January 2, 2008)
So as a humble representative of the uneducated Christian establishment, when I hear people suggesting a major overturning of the capitalist system, my thinking goes something like this:
I have two conflicting feelings: 1. I'm frightened of any major political change, because I am not personally in a desperate situation (better the devil you know, etc); and 2. I know there are people in a desperate situation, and I have a Christian impulse to help them, with the understanding that gross economic disparity is at the very least permitted by our economic system. So there's already a tension between my selfish desire for personal security and my Christian desire to sacrifice for others. It's possible I could be persuaded to give into my Christian desire over my selfish desire and become some sort of Christian socialist, but I'd have to be convinced, not only that a socialist revolution (nonviolent or otherwise) would be no worse for society than capitalism is, but that it would be significantly better, because I'd need to justify to myself the risk and the energy required for change (and not just my own risk and energy, but the risk and energy of others.)
By reading this interview and participating in this discussion, I'm placing myself in an extreme minority of Christians who have even considered the possibility of Christian socialism in America, so if it's impossible to have a substantive conversation about it in this format, where it at least reaches me, then I'd suggest that the road to this particular revolution is much too steep to climb, because the people you need to convince are not going to get the message.
I think the strength of the Gospel is that it reaches the educated and the uneducated simultaneously. (There's a Lewis quote in there somewhere.) For a time, it seemed that Marxism had the same advantage, but a hundred and fifty years later, your man on the street (in America anyway) is a capitalist. People don't trust the government, they hate paying taxes and they'll vote against any candidate who campaigns on more government and more taxes. Some of those people are motivated purely by selfishness and some of them are motivated by some combination of selfish and selfless impulses.
Marx thought the revolution was inevitable, but apparently it isn't. The idea that the working class would embrace his philosophy and revolt has reached a limit. So then how do socialists in America get their message across? People with money have a low risk tolerance, even when they have good intentions, and people who come from poor backgrounds aren't likely to flood graduate schools. So if the message can't be transmitted on message boards and through interviews, and if the uneducated voter has no hope of understanding, then what hope is there for the revolution?
strabes says: (Thursday :: January 3, 2008)
Laymen can ask themselves these questions and be armed with powerful evidence for capitalism rather than reading all the texts and going to grad school:
1. Which sector has seen unions virtually disappear because their members realized they were holding them back from income mobility and wealth--private sector or public sector government jobs? Private. Unions exist in the public sector since the profit motive doesn't keep management in line. But the private sector is a different story. It's in management's interest to take care of its workers. In the private sector, unions pretty much no longer exist except in Detroit auto plants and other manufacturing areas. All the new plants the auto industry has built (in areas like North Carolina, California) are non-union because workers know it doesn't make sense to "fight" management as the enemy. That would be like football teams treating their coaches as the enemy. Just like coaches and players are on the same team, so are management and workers.
2. What countries experience overwhelmingly net inflows of immigration--those with flexible capitalist markets, or those where socialism dominates? Capitalist. Hmm...if capitalism were so bad, why would so many millions want to live in it, and some risk their lives to escape their countries and find it?
3. Which country increased quality of life for its people--West Germany or East Germany? West. Great lab test for capitalism vs. socialism. Not even close...millions tried to emigrate from east to west, and the east had to put up a barbed wire, booby-trapped, machine-gun-lined wall to stop them from leaving. Hmm...something tells me Marx was just a tad bit wrong.
4. Where does one work under oppressive bureaucracy in the US job market today--business or in government staff and academic staff jobs? Government and academia. The business world is quite dynamic. The type of oppression Marx wrote about is far more prevalent in non-business work nowadays.
5. Which system has pulled millions out of poverty--capitalism or socialism? Capitalism. See above story about SE Asia. See the recent history of Ireland, E Europe, Chile. Also see the rest of human history. Socialism results in poverty for most and riches for the controlling few. Capitalism results in millions escaping poverty and toil.
jarcher says: (Friday :: January 4, 2008)
I think your other questions (previous comment) encourage ignoring colonial activity by simply not talking about it. I would also raise several questions about power, not to mention a major question of what standard of good you assume, but dishes need to be washed and food needs to be cooked.
strabes says: (Saturday :: January 5, 2008)
my standard of good: I let people determine their own measure of good. I simply look at the evidence of where and how people want to live--a fierce desire to live in a capitalist nation and escape the oppression of socialism, communism, tribalism, feudalism. or, a clear desire to escape the control of unions so they can enjoy the flexibility of an elastic labor market. would you say they're all wrong because they don't agree with some philosopher's view of "good?" anti-capitalists want to force their more anointed version of good on people...the common trait of all socialist thinking..."I know better than all you people how to manage your lives."
Chad says: (Saturday :: January 5, 2008)
But these positions, to which you hold, can also be ascribed to "some philosopher's view", as you say, and are not the self-evident outworking of certain fundamental behavioral or social processes or merely the natural inclination of people's choice. There are significant genealogies (and not merely those told by Marxists) behind the ideas and practices that support our current capitalist reality which suggest that the rise of capitalism is far from innocent and natural but itself a deliberate development to eschew questions of truth and goodness and justice in light of the “real” pursuit of a more expedient mastery and possession of the earth for one’s self. The genealogy of this shift, from questions of a transcendent good and the harmonious communal pursuit of such by individuals reaching beyond themselves to questions merely of individual self-possession as now the highest “good” itself—which became the implicit metaphysical assumption paving the way toward the fate of a capitalist world where no other possibilities can exist—follows a long list of certain “philosopher’s views” that slowly became cemented over time. Whether through Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Suarez, Hobbes, Lock, Smith, Descartes or Malthus, etc., these thinkers, among other things, significantly aided in opening the way toward absolutizing something like capitalistic social structures. This was by setting the new understanding of what it meant to be human and what questions of truth, justice and goodness should look like in a more reductionistic mode, which also meant removing a more creational and Christological emphasis in all thought and practice. Herein it can be seen that capitalism is not merely an innocent bystander but one of the very results of this devious turn away from these more profound assumptions and pursuits. And as Christ has been removed to make way for this base form of reality, Christ is then relegated to the role of a mere heavenly bystander, there to only privately console souls and pick up after the unfortunate collateral damage of this system.
But you fail to see the complexity of this historical development of reductionistic thought and practice. This is because it seems you have already unquestioningly bought into this line of reductionistic thought and practice, as you represent its final outworking where questions of truth and goodness are finally obviated in light of the only remaining sovereign criterion by which every knee shall bow—that of, practical efficiency. Thus the conversation becomes futile as you do not even question why and how it came to be that the question of practical efficiency is the only one that can remain plausible for setting the discussion. Rather, in your discussion there is nothing other than a blitz of current empirical data thrown at everyone, as if self-evident in itself, in order to overwhelm questions of a transcendent truth and goodness on a more holistic, incarnational register as at best quaint and at worst tyrannical. But it is, however, your own reading of these “facts”, as if self-evidently true because they build a majority case according to the absolute of practical efficiency, that seems to be itself only a lazy reading at best, and tyrannical at worst. Lazy because the task of diligent judgment, where one must read the facts continually according to what is more than merely there, is avoided by the simple appeal to what “most” people are currently doing or feeling according to your own purview—that is, to majority rules as you see it. (but what then of any minority, whether prophetic or not, that might try to challenge the supposed majority?) And this consequently leads to a reading of the facts that at worst is tyrannical, where the case is closed by the majority rule, or moreover by the subtle mesmerizing hegemony of practical efficiency that forces only one view upon things. The empirical data does need to be whole-heartedly engaged and judged but it constantly seems, despite all your devotion to analyzing the concrete facts as opposed to ideal musings, that you give them only short shrift because unable to bring into consideration how transcendent ideals and immanent data can be understood otherwise.
You cannot, then, possibly claim that you are a champion for the people against some supposed elitist/intellectualist aristocracy who wants to force their own esoteric conniving upon others. This is simply a false view, a caricature that is so often propagated to relieve us from thinking through the issues in a more thorough and thoughtful manner and to pacify our guilt and anxiety about taking part in such a system that we know should be redeemed and transformed in a more substantial manner. But to settle with capitalism because it “works” over against its other options that have failed seems to falsely eliminate any hope of the people for something other than the status quo and its technical refinements. Furthermore, with all questions being set by the criterion of practical efficiency it is not clear whether any ultimate answers are allowed to have significance other than those finally determined by new priestly class of scientists, specialists and technical experts.
Rather than widening the gulf between laymen/academics, or fact/value, or practice/theory, or sensible/ideal, or action/contemplation, or private/public there needs to be a more robust understanding of the integral relationship between these dichotomies that no longer sees them as oppositions. I hope that your first year at MHGS brings you beyond the theological/philosophical resources of Schaeffer and Buber in order to break free of an absolute commitment to a liberal ontology and its privileging of practical efficiency. But until then it seems your discourse is stricken with too many blind-spots and naïve oversimplifications.
strabes says: (Sunday :: January 6, 2008)
All, note, Chad didn't address any tangible point or real-world application we've been addressing thus far--the classic tactic of thinkers who wouldn't deign to enter the practical world. His dialogue is a perfect demonstration of all "critical" academic disciplines--critical legal studies, critical social theory, etc. I appreciate these. I have been a student of them and other postmodern sentimentalities. However, for the same reason I'm glad we don't have postmodern civil engineering which ignores the laws of physics and kills people when buildings collapse, it is essential to have a grounding in the real world when it comes to economics and sociology--millions have been killed as a result of high-minded social and economic theories. Castro would love to employ Chad as his personal theologian to ontologically justify the imprisonment and torture of thousands and the abject poverty his people suffer because Chad would ignore those as "blind facts" and "naive oversimplifications" that get in the way of his anointed theories (I'm not aligning Chad with communism or suggesting he'd do such a thing...I'm using hyperbole, perhaps poorly, to make the obvious case that facts are important). Moreover, also note how academics and socialists love facts when they critique capitalism (resource extraction, exploitation, oppression, income distribution), but they want to ignore "facts" when discussing their solutions. That's academically dishonest. They adore facts, but employ them opportunistically. Don't fall for it.
Chad, your hyper-intellectualized elitism has so eloquently made my point. Your theological arrogance and ever so clever ad hominem directed toward great thinkers like Buber, Schaeffer, and anybody who talks about data, practicality, and the real world "seem to betray a dearth of" Christ's love. It's why people are weary of Christians yelling from the sidelines with no empathy for their situation. It's why attendance at arrogant intellectual religion schools is declining. It's why mainline churches are declining. It's why Jesus lambasted the divisiveness of the Pharisees. You (and Eugene previously) sound like Jeremiah screaming about the Babylonians. Despite your significant training in theology and philosophy, your lack of economic intuition and understanding of markets is terribly unfortunate. Contrary to your arrogant suggestion that I don't grasp it, I've written papers on the ontological dimension of work, economics, markets, capitalism. Clearly, much more matters than "what works." Not seeing ontology embedded behind some of my discourse just illustrates your lack of understanding of markets. Markets are by definition communal, regardless of how many theologians today blame capitalism for sinful individualism (one might more correctly blame the postmodern individualistic impulse against authority, tradition, and community for much of Madison Avenue's marketing/advertising which promotes consumerism and much of the affluent class' disregard for community, though again I think postmodern sentiment is essential to correct many of the problems emanating from business and markets). They simply don't understand markets. Thus far in human history, capitalism is the only economic construct which recognizes the imago Dei in humans--it incentivizes us to orient our activity toward somehow serving the needs/wants of other people (though clearly there are exceptions and businesses can also do damage to people). Markets are also the only economic construct which self-adjust over time. The system we have today has eliminated the horrific conditions which were considered normal 100 years ago (oh, I forgot that's an irrelevant fact). 100 years from now, people will look back at our system and wonder "can you believe they had to drive cars resulting in millions killed every year!?!?" which we accept as a necessary evil today. Only dynamic capitalism facilitates this type of eschatological, dialectical evolution because it's not a planned "system" put in place by elites--it is the system created by millions of folks with ideas. And if those ideas are grounded in a Christological, eschatological, ontological foundation, then the system incrementally and incarnationally improves. A planned system fails to incorporate those ideas. Socialists always forget history, i.e. it is precisely the free market which has fixed many problems of the past. And they don't recognize the evolutionary nature of markets, i.e. they incorrectly assume status quo equals capitalism, so they think revolutionary change is necessary. Quite the contrary. Markets evolve. Status quo today equals opportunity for entrepreneurial improvement in the future, but ONLY if markets exist.
I completely agree with you, Chad, that the system needs to be "redeemed and transformed" as you say. I loudly proclaim the problems we have in business, the problems I have with a lot of what passes for "good business practices," the behavior I see among the affluent in the developed world ignoring their obligation to live in real community. I am absolutely not an apologist for businesses or the people in them. That's one of the main reasons I have taken a sabbatical, perhaps a permanent one. But, I'll simply say again, capitalism is not the problem. The philosophy underlying the people who run businesses and markets is the problem. I look forward to attempting to tackle that problem in the future. The way to do it is to engage the real world rather than yell from the sidelines, no matter how academically enlightened the yelling sounds.
JJ says: (Monday :: January 7, 2008)
strabes says: (Monday :: January 7, 2008)
I get too frustrated when I read commentary which accepts as an a priori fact Capitalism = Evil without justifying the claim. That's the source of my ranting and my assumption that the person making such a claim doesn't understand it. I admit...not ideal...probably hurt my cause.
Generated a lot of traffic here though!
Mcgarnacutty says: (Monday :: January 7, 2008)
strabes says: (Monday :: January 7, 2008)
So, I wish I had avoided the polemics, but I stand by the substance.
Some are still curious of my standard of good: eschatology. Whatever serves Christ's eschatological purpose, which capitalism does in many ways we tend to take for granted today, is good. How do we determine what serves that purpose? I'm a newcomer to theology, as Chad points out, but I like Frame's multi-perspectivalism though it's 20 years old and might be criticized by folks on this string. So rather than looking at just one measure of good, we should evaluate through several lenses to determine consistency with the text. Frame identifies 3 lenses--normative (ethical, metaphysical), situational (empirical, social, cultural), and existential (emotion, psychology, etc). I don't know why we couldn't use more, but none come to mind right now. Perhaps you have ideas?
So bye for now. I'll stay away and let the dialogue develop without my silliness. :)
O God, Where Art Thou? A Review of A Serious Man
rwsmoore says ::
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hesed says ::
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jking says ::
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jking says ::
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The Way Mulattas Make Me Feel: Michael Jackson's Domination of the Feminized Other
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gilman says ::
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gilman says ::
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hesed says ::
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