Y Safle

The question was recently asked of me as to whether I thought capitalism was the system with the most in common with Christian ethics. Also whether the involvement of government in restraining capitalism was less ethical as it prevented people from acting ethically owing to its regulation.

Now before we can take a position on this, we need some definitions. What do we mean by Capitalism? I’ll start with this definition:

Capitalism: An economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and controlled and which is characterized by competition and the profit motive.
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oecon/chap12.htm

Now here is my problem with capitalism as defined above. The underlying assumption of capitalism is that the greatest incentive is the profit motive. The greatest good therefore is the generation of wealth, and the most successful people are those who generate this wealth.

Now this need not be an all or nothing criticism. If one is generating profit so as to survive, or to support some noble occupation, then that profit is not itself evil. Jesus told us the parable of the talents, and the mundane level of the parable assumes that one will invest talents in the hope of improvement of the investment.

St Paul supported himself as a tent maker. He did not burden the churches he served, because he made enough profit from his business to support his ministry.

St Paul could not have told us to be a follower of him, as he was a follower of Christ, if the generation of profit were a sinful thing.

But with these caveats laid out, consider where capitalism takes us.

We live in a world where companies produce products that we don’t really need, using resources and fuels we cannot really afford to sell to people who are to be called consumers, because their role is to take and consume those products so that the producers can produce more for us.

In the process of production, the demand for efficiency insists that the producer consume as little as possible to maximise its profit. If labour is too expensive, then cheaper labour must be found. If materials cost too much then cheaper materials will be sought. There is no consideration for the ethics of what we do in the raw capitalist ideal. Recycling, fuel conservation, decent wages for decent labour, good employment practices – none of this is endemic to the capitalist system – the pursuit of the profit motive.

So this wasteful process is not exactly a Christian process. It may be restrained by Christian principles, but the underlying god of capitalism is Mammon, and in that sense it is wrong.

Do we abandon capitalism? There is no need. Capitalism is a secular system, essential to our economy. It is the world, and Jesus’ response to the world was “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”. We need not break out of capitalism, but in our pursuit of justice and mercy, we should oppose its excesses.

Thus I believe a Christian approach to capitalism demands that we work towards justice in the system, and restarint from its excesses.

A Christian may wish to invest in companies, but if they invest in a company that behaves unethically then they become responsible with the other owners of that company.

We should be careful where we invest. We should support regulation that ensures that people are not exploited in our country and abroad. We should resist the desire to make money at any cost, refrain from companies whose business is killing their customers (or the enemies of their customers).

And we need to take a stand against the cultural assumptions of capitalism. Success is not measured by the size of our pay packet. Net worth is nothing more than an accounting of all the “barns” we have acquired. As Andrew Carnegie said: He who dies rich dies disgraced. We need to be salt and light in this world – and often that means chalennging the conventional wisdom – especially regarding the value of money.

Then maybe we can be honest about our Christianity with compromising our principles for the sake of our wallets.

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