Gross National Virtue

We need a new language for a new economy. For too long we have measured economies in terms of goods produced rather than good done. And it is quite understandable; goods are far more easily quantified than good. Yet it is a fatal flaw.

The primary measure of an economy is justice, not productivity. As we are witnessing, productivity can very quickly ebb and flow. Justice however, forms the condition under which humanity can flourish. Whether the market is up or down, and the GNP is skyrocketing or tanking, the most important measure is the justice of the economy.

We need to begin to assess our gross national virtue instead of our gross national product. When we do, we will be ashamed of where we are, but will be in the only point from which a healthy economy can be established: from confession and repentance.

Evil in the economy

Yesterday I saw this headline in Business Week: Wall Street's Economic Crimes Against Humanity. In the article, Shoshana Zuboff assails the moral judgment of the suit and tie folks who work on Wall Street in the 'banality of evil' in which they indulged. In shocking terms for a major article in Business Week, she pounds and the personal responsibility of those involved, and not merely of the gigantic entities for which they worked. For the first time in a long time, the word evil has entered the vocabulary of capitalism. It recalled to me this insightful section from Lesslie Newbigin:

"But to say that capitalism requires a certain kind of moral foundation is to say that capitalism cannot survive permanently in a purely secular society. To quote a recent writer, 'The disinterested devotion which was vital to the creation of the capitalist world order and to the public life of industrial nations and which rested on a religious idea-system appears to be a type of moral capital debt which is no longer being serviced.' but this means that capitalism cannot be a self-sustaining system. It depends on the moral-cultural system and cannot be separated from it. But moral imperatives cannot operate merely as useful props for a profitable economic order. If they are not rooted in some belief about how the universe is in fact ordered, they collapse; and if they are so rooted, then the economic order cannot be isolated from their jurisdiction. If capitalism depends on the insights of a moral conscience, then that conscience has to have authority over the working of capitalist economics. (Foolishness to the Greeks p112).

Why is it that those whom Zuboff condemns so strongly were unaware of their banal evil? It certainly has to do with the mediation which Zuboff identifies in shielding them from those whom they exploited. But far more profoundly, the story that they had embraced - the story of limitless growth - was separated from the moral-cultural system which it rejected.

If there is to be real reform now, moral imperatives cannot be used merely as 'props for a profitable economic order.' They must be rooted in reality - which is precisely why Christians must engage in the public discourse about the purpose of society and economies. We testify to the One for whom, and by whom all things exist.

Market economics

In the past several weeks, all eyes (or at least many eyes) have been on the global financial markets. That focus, in conjunction with Newbigin's writings have caused me to think a lot about market economics. Newbigin observes:

In an earlier age, as in contemporary premodern societies, farming and the various skilled crafts were mainly for the use of the family or the local community. The market in which money operated as a means of exchange was only a minor and marginal part of the economy. But as the principle of division of labor gained ascendancy, the market moved into the central place as the mechanism that linked all the separate procedures with each other and with the consumers. The modern science of economics was born. Once again teleology [the study of purpose] was removed, because economics was no longer part of ethics. It was no longer concerned with the purpose of human life. It was no longer about the requirements of justice and the dangers of covetousness. It became the science of the working of the market as a self-operating mechanism modeled on the Newtonian universe. The difference was that the fundamental law governing its movements, corresponding to the law of gravitation in Newton, is the law of covetousness assumed as the basic drive of human nature. (Foolishness to the Greeks pp30-31)

As I have reflected upon it, I cannot see how a motive other than greed would drive a market economy. 'The market' does not add value in the way that individuals, cooperatives or businesses do. So the impulses of justice, love and mercy have no object on which to rest.

In contrast, an individual or group of people can work in ways that express justice, love and mercy. They can add value to a society through creativity and hard work - and in the process create wealth.

Based on this appraisal of the market economy (and I'm open to being challenged), it seems Christians are called to engage not in the financial markets, but in endeavors that employ creativity and hard work to show justice, love and mercy to one's neighbors. It is a call to Christian work, and Christian entrepreneurship.