I have no doubt at all about the title of this post. I hope it isn’t a bombshell to you.
(If it is a bombshell to you, I hope you survive intact and can carry on with me, regardless of our differences and how badly I write about this topic.)
For my own part, it has always been quite apparent to me that any system where it is the norm that people do as they’re told, rather than help decide what to do, is a tempered form of slavery. Sorry communists, just because you have political power, doesn’t mean you get to choose what other people do if they want to eat. Sorry capitalists, just because you have capital and money, doesn’t mean you get to decide what other people do if they want to eat. Both politics and capital are good. But systems or systematic biases based on these to the exclusion of the legitimate input of the little guy are bad.
You don’t believe me? How about Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain LBJ:
Communism, Capitalism, neither system is good; and to resign oneself to accept the lesser of two evils is unworthy of the human spirit.
For my own part, I can’t imagine how anyone could see Jesus in their neighbour and, at the same time, decide that their neighbour’s life (communism) or forty or more hours a week (capitalism) can be dictated by what the people with power or capital want. Maybe this is possible. To me it seems impossible. The mere fact of having capital is good; but it is not absolute and should not generate relationships of tempered slavery.
Friend, do you tell me you don’t like this? Well, my friend, I don’t know what to say. You will need much luck (I don’t consider it providence in this case) finding a true theologian, who cares about the virtues and about freedom, to agree with you!
Yes, I’m hard-nosed about this. But I have my reasons. For one thing, I’m pretty sure that anyone who worships either idol of Mammon – communism, capitalism – will have a hard time contemplating for long. How can we love if we do not love?
Yes, friend, I just said Mammon. I’m serious about this. We can’t accept the political dogmas of communism or of capitalism if we want to love God more. We cannot be bound to the earth if we want to fly! I’m pretty sure that, unless we want our love of God to get stuck at a pretty low, deformed stage of life, we’ve got to let go of these political ideologies.
This isn’t to say that communism and capitalism are all of the same badness. Of course not. I don’t think this, and I don’t think many people do. There are real differences in just how far each falls from being a “good system”. A very quick description of this is given by Little Brother Marcel Văn CSsR; at a young age, this Vietnamese brother’s country was being torn between the two worlds of communism and capitalism; in his conversations with Jesus, Jesus said to him,
This society [of capitalistic France], unlike the communists, will not harm you directly… but it will destroy little by little. Yes, little by little it is going to spread, little by little it is going to belch its infernal smoke in order that you die of asphyxiation. It will act in such a way as to distance you, little by little, from my love in order to bring you closer, little by little, to the love of the world.
For Little Văn, asphyxiation is associated with a lack of love, a drying up of the faculties of love, a smothering of the ability to become simple and loving like a child in the Father’s arms. No doubt the things and concupiscence and greed of materialism asphyxiate. But so does all of capitalism.
The religion of capital is always asking, “Do you accept that, if you buy into capital and somehow get capital, that it is absolutely yours to exercise with power?”
To which the Christian answer is no, goods have a universal destination and we can only administer them well and properly. The best we are is poor workers for God. There is no absolute, unapproachable right to property and capital. Yet, capitalism is based on that claim. It sings sweetly a song of wants, “needs”, and if-you-could-have-mes. It sings with serpentine sweetness of the rightness of capital in itself.
The only Christian answer to this song is no. “No, I will not let my lungs lose their love. No, I want to breathe still. Give us light, O Lord, because the world is dark. I want to love and see you in my neighbours.”
Some related posts:
Contemplative in the Mud 