{"id":16257,"date":"2018-02-01T19:11:29","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T03:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=16257"},"modified":"2018-02-01T20:59:58","modified_gmt":"2018-02-02T04:59:58","slug":"__trashed-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/__trashed-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Christianity and Capitalism Coexist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have always been a proponent of a free market system. I came of age in the era of capitalism and the last twenty years of the cold war. I grew up in an upper middle class home. The son of a Neonatologist and a mother with a Ph.D. in counseling. We never lacked for anything, even after my parents divorce. I never have known what it means to be in dire need. I always have seen socialism and communism as evil things. Ronald Reagan called the U.S.S.R. the evil empire, and proceeded to spend them out of business, so to speak. The arms race inflated our economy, defense spending put much money in pockets, and in an attempt to keep up, the Soviet Union bankrupted themselves. It is against this backdrop that I began to read\u00a0The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time\u00a0<\/em>by Karl Polanyi.<\/p>\n

“Karl Polanyi, once a World War I officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, a lecturer at the People\u2019s University, and a member of the editorial staff of Vienna\u2019s leading financial newspaper, who had been forced first from his native Hungary and then from Vienna by the turmoil of revolutions and dictatorships, began\u00a0The Great Transformation<\/em>s an exile in England at the end of the 1930s.” [1] Polanyi had to flee his home due to the Anchluss or Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938. He is decidedly socialist in his economic leanings and that was one of the difficulties I had with his book. I have seen the devastation wrought by changing of a country from a free market system to a socialist government taking over the private sector. Venezuela, at one time, was one of the most prosperous countries in the world. When Hugo Chavez ascended to the Presidency in 1988 and the subsequent taking over of the oil industry by the government has resulted in a country in complete crisis. Where once people had plenty, one only has to watch the news to see the poverty rocking the nation. Citizens now stand on line for up to eighteen hours a day to by food, and sometimes they are rewarded with rotten meat. A dozen eggs cost 150,000 Bolivars, even though a teacher makes approximately 300,000 B’s per week. Socialism has failed its people in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

Polanyi makes the argument that a free market system makes fictitious commodities out of labor, land, and money.[2]\u00a0He argues that market systems did not exist until the creation of these free markets at the beginnings of the industrial revolution in the 19th century. [3] There are those who would disagree. Geoffrey Hodgson writes “Much previous criticism of Polanyi\u2019s argument has centred on his claim that markets played a marginal role in economic systems prior to the nineteenth century. Subsequent scholars have claimed that markets and prices had a substantial economic influence in ancient civilizations such as in Rome and Babylonia.” [4] The free market system and the capitalism that comes with it may or may not be a product of the Industrial Revolution, but in its present form there are certainly problems.<\/p>\n

So that brings me to my question from the beginning, can Christianity and capitalism coexist? On the one hand one cannot deny the prosperity capitalism has brought, in this capacity it has allowed the Church universal to take the gospel to all the corners of the earth. But, there is also no denying the perversion of the gospel in the name of the almighty dollar. All one has to do is google preachers begging for money, or prosperity preachers and you get headlines such as Creflo Dollar asking for 65 million dollars for a new airplane, or Greedy Megachurch Pastor builds a $1.6 million mansion. [5] You see these things and how they push people away from God and understand the aversion to them from someone like Polanyi. Admittedly, these preachers did not exist when he wrote his book, but there has never been a shortage of money and power in the church. There are some who would argue “democratic capitalism allows man more freedom to achieve his rightful place in the universe as a creature of God than any other socioeconomic system” [6] I cannot come to grips with that statement, but I also cannot accept that socialism is the answer either. I think the answer lies somewhere in between, but I am not an economist, as evidenced by this post.<\/p>\n

I am not sure those who would argue that Jesus would be a socialist or a proponent of the free market system have strong footing. In scripture we are told “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world; the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world–the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life–is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” 1st John 2:15-17.\u00a0 In other words, I am not supposed to covet money, or materials. I am supposed to be about the spiritual things of God.<\/p>\n

Neither side of this coin is palpable to me. I see good in both, the ability to take care of the needs of others because of the money that comes from living in a free market society, in a socialist society there is equality. I also see evil in both,\u00a0haute finance<\/em> putting control of all economic gains in the hand of a few elites, Communism, fascism, socialist regimes have all perpetrated some of the most heinous crimes against humanity (see Nazis, Stalin, etc). In the end, as Christians, we are to understand that God has put us under authority, where we are, and we are to live the gospel under those circumstances.<\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0Mayhew, Anne. “The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.” EHnet. Accessed January 31, 2018. https:\/\/eh.net\/book_reviews\/the-great-transformation-the-political-and-economic-origins-of-our-time\/.<\/p>\n

[2] Polanyi, Karl.\u00a0The great transformation: the political and economic origins of our time<\/i>. Boston: Beacon Press, 2014. 71.<\/p>\n

[3] Ibid. 71-74.<\/p>\n

[4]Hodgson, G. (2017). Karl Polanyi on economy and society: A critical analysis of core concepts. Review of Social Economy, 75(1), 1-25.<\/p>\n

[5] Google Search\u00a0https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=greedy+pastors&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVkeWfsobZAhXE54MKHbQhBI0Q1QIIaCgF&biw=1250&bih=635<\/p>\n

[6]Williams, T.T. “Is Capitalism Christian?” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 69, no. 2 (1987): 498-498.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have always been a proponent of a free market system. I came of age in the era of capitalism and the last twenty years of the cold war. I grew up in an upper middle class home. The son of a Neonatologist and a mother with a Ph.D. in counseling. We never lacked for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,383],"class_list":["post-16257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-polanyi","tag-the-great-transformation","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16257"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16287,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16257\/revisions\/16287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}