Capitalism And Christianity: Some Thoughts
There is something inexorable about natural selection. It happens, but the criteria for the choices of nature remain a mystery.
When man emerged from Africa, there was space on the globe for him to flourish, though it was sometimes a nasty process. Strength and ruthlessness were part of this process, but cleverness was also important and each of these attributes is necessary for survival in the world of competition we live in.
Christ came to save us from all of this, if not in this world, then in the world to come. He taught us to love, to be humble and to use our talents for others. He also taught us that we cannot take our wealth with us when we die.
Capitalism has developed over the years as a system for allocating resources. If we work, we may survive and we may prosper. Indeed, God condemned Adam to a life of work.
If we are clever, we may prosper, either by our ingenuity in producing something people want and are prepared to pay for - or by cheating other people (which appears to be what has happened in the recent financial crisis).
If we are strong, we can obtain wealth by extracting oil and gas from under the North Sea, though, if we do not respect the world we live in, nature or our fellow man, we get the disaster of Makondo in the Gulf of Mexico, where BP’s oil well came to grief.
If we are ruthless, we dispossess the American Indians or slaughter the invaders of our land, as the Taliban are doing in Afghanistan, or even take over Cadburys and send the jobs overseas.
In the wake of the financial crisis, some people are questioning the system called capitalism, but it is not easy to find an alternative, because, in recent years, we have become used to individual freedom. What is, or can be, the alternative to what we have got?
There is a global battle going on. The Chinese have strength and ruthlessness, based on the country’s natural resources and political dictatorship, but may be lacking in terms of cleverness, because people in a mental straight-jacket may not be very creative. This may not be a fair assessment, because, as the disputes over intellectual property show, Chinese cleverness may be manifesting itself in different ways.
The Americans may have strength and ruthlessness, but have shown themselves profoundly unintelligent in some of the things they have done, or allowed to happen, recently (like middle-east invasions and letting the banks run rampant), though, technically, they are very creative.
One could go on like this with other countries and groups of countries. One can also ask the same questions of individuals - each individual is struggling to survive and to prosper with all their strengths and weaknesses, advantages in life and disadvantages. One also needs to look at the matter of loyalties and globalisation.
From all of this, I think one can come to some conclusions:-
1. Capitalism is a set of rules that regulate commercial transactions and the ownership of property and related to money. Many of these rules derive from the balance of power in societies in historic times. Many of these rules are compromises, but they are not God-given or fixed in stone, and they certainly are not necessarily compatible with Christian teaching.
Recent circumstances show that changes in the structure of capitalism are necessary (e.g., on tax havens and on contract law), but politicians will be frightened of making changes because they, the politicians, are not cohesive at an international level and they are in awe of big business and big finance.
Failure to effect change will boil down to a failure of democracy to control the power of wealth, with supra-national government, de facto, being in the hands of big business and big finance. So much for the Nation State.
2. There will be an on-going argument about “nanny state” versus individual liberty. It may be time for the left to stand up and be proud of the nanny state, which has, after all, just, more-or-less, rescued the bankers and the financial system.
[N.B. Events may turn out to show that we should have let the banks all collapse.]
3. A feature of private enterprise is the tendency for individuals to promote their own little private empires. This happens in government, too, and shows that some individuals need to be cut down to size from time to time.
This is a matter of good government and the question of what is good government. There are no absolutes in this area and individuals’ hubris and vanity gets most of them in the end (Thank God for the ballot box).
4. It cannot be assumed that everyone is working for the common good. There is a tendency in human nature to domination, to greed and so on. Nor can it be assumed that everyone who calls himself a Christian is acting in a Christian way all the time.
Finally, a solution.
This is not a perfect world, so there is no one super-solution.
What one can do is something here, something there, while keeping the discussions open, the information flowing, the abuses exposed. If anybody talks about commercial secrecy, I suspect there is a fiddle going on (who would have thought that a policeman could get five weeks at a health spa for free!). If you want to find out what is going on in the world, go out there, amongst it - only then are you able to know what you are talking about. | 
