{"id":4100,"date":"2016-09-08T17:45:47","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T00:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/?p=4100"},"modified":"2020-01-09T04:03:36","modified_gmt":"2020-01-09T11:03:36","slug":"capitalism-and-the-united-order-pt-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newcoolthang.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/capitalism-and-the-united-order-pt-1\/4100\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitalism and the United Order – Pt. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

This will be a new series of relatively short posts that will center around Jerry Z. Muller’s lecture series “Thinking About Capitalism<\/a>” (follow the link for transcripts of the first 18 lectures). \u00a0 In previous posts, I have strongly recommended his “The Mind and the Market<\/a>“, and I wish to reiterate that recommendation. \u00a0While there is a lot of overlap between the lecture series and the book, I will stick to the former since 1) it breaks things down into manageable, 4,000 word chunks and 2) it doesn’t require anybody to go out and buy a book. \u00a0For these and other reasons, I strongly suggest that people read the lectures that I have linked above.<\/p>\n

First, a little overview of what to expect. \u00a0Muller is an intellectual historian who has a clear but guarded preference for free-market capitalism. \u00a0He knows that capitalism is not perfect and is fraught with several\u00a0dangers and moral costs, but thinks that its benefits justify those costs. \u00a0Like most liberals (I will insist upon the European sense of this term\u00a0while reserving “socialist” for left-wing despisers of the free market), he has a tendency to draw strong connections and parallels between\u00a0right and left-wing critics of free market liberalism. \u00a0While we should be on guard for this, his approach does provide a lot of historical context and continuity to various left-wing criticisms of capitalism. \u00a0Now, moving on….<\/p>\n

Muller’s first lecture, “Why Think about Capitalism?<\/a>” is mostly a preview of what is to come. \u00a0Nevertheless, he does raise a few questions that address the ambiguous relationship between the united order and capitalism. \u00a0If there is any person in the church that hasn’t wondered what differences, if any, exist between communism and the united order, I haven’t met them. \u00a0On the one hand, during and after the Cold War quite a few church authorities strongly declared that the united order was grounded in private property. \u00a0On the other hand, we read in Acts that the saints had all things in common. \u00a0I don’t think it’s unreasonable if this gives us a little bit of confusion.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the worse thing we can\u00a0do when approaching this question is to phrase our options in terms of an either\/or. \u00a0The united order was quite obviously not the state ownership of the means of production since 1) there wasn’t a very powerful state, let alone one that owned the early church members’ land and 2) there wasn’t really\u00a0any industrial means of production that could have been nationalized and\/or given to the workers. \u00a0If these things are what one means by “private property”, then the united order was absolutely compatible with it.<\/p>\n

But this does not automatically imply that the united order was fully compatible with capitalism either. \u00a0A lot of this has to do with what one means by “capitalism”. \u00a0Consider the Muller’s\u00a0list of economic changes that taken place\u00a0in the West and see if you can confidently decide which\u00a0features a capitalist society must have or which are fully compatible with\u00a0the united order:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The mass increase of overseas trade that was pioneered by the Portuguese, then the Spanish, then the Dutch.<\/li>\n
  2. Cottage industry where a household makes a surplus of\u00a0some good with the aim of selling or trading that surplus at the local or\u00a0national market.<\/li>\n
  3. The financial revolution where national banks created a market for state bonds and low-interest loans.<\/li>\n
  4. The consumer revolution where households begin purchasing\u00a0“luxury goods” that had previously been available only to the relatively well to do.<\/li>\n
  5. The industrial revolution where factories based in a strong division of wage labor mass produced goods for the purpose of trading them within the larger, international market.<\/li>\n
  6. The invention of limited liability corporations, where ownership extends far beyond a single person or family thus diversifying liabilities and minimizing loses of each investor.<\/li>\n
  7. The bureaucratic revolution where a salaried management becomes something totally separate from ownership.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And so on…. \u00a0The point is that “capitalism” is not a simple or uniform practice, and we should not expect an unambiguous answer to the question, “Is the united order compatible with capitalism?” \u00a0This is especially the case since the united order was implemented within a historical context in which many of the practices and institutions above simply did not exist yet.<\/p>\n

    That said,\u00a0Muller does focus on three features that he (and I) will take to define capitalism:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Private property<\/strong> that excludes the moral, traditional or legal appropriation of property against the owners will after the manner of fiefdoms.<\/li>\n
    2. Exchange<\/strong> between legally free individuals through contracts, wages and prices rather than centralized redistribution or collectivist provision.<\/li>\n
    3. Production and distribution is operate primarily through the market<\/strong> mechanism, rather than being geared toward household subsistence.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Such a\u00a0definition suggests\u00a0that the united order was not at all compatible with capitalism.<\/p>\n

      Before addressing the incompatibilities, I will deal with that aspect that the united order absolutely did endorse: private property. \u00a0In order to understand what private property was, it is important to understand what it arose in opposition to. \u00a0Traditionally, all land was owned by the King who granted land to nobles while retaining ownership rights. \u00a0In other words, the King retained the right to re-appropriate this land at will to his own purposes. \u00a0This same relationship basically held all the way down the great chain of being. \u00a0Private property said that from nobles all the way down to peasants, the owner of some property\u00a0did not stand in any continuing moral dependence or obligation to their lord. \u00a0The united order to absolutely compatible with this…. Although we will complicate this picture in later posts.<\/p>\n

      Let’s skip to (3). \u00a0Production and distribution within the united order were clearly not done “primarily” through the market mechanism. \u00a0The united order functioned much more like a large, collective of households – ideally tending toward one, collective household – in which at least 90% of what a household\u00a0consumed was produced by and within the household itself. \u00a0Yes, some things were bought and sold within a very limited market, but this is not the defining feature of capitalism.<\/p>\n

      Now for (2), which is the most difficult to answer in any definitive sense. \u00a0The starting point should be an understanding the difference between exchange and reciprocity. \u00a0Within smaller, tribal communities, different people produce or gather various forms of subsistence for the entire group. \u00a0This process is regulated by moral condemnation and social status. \u00a0Thus, such societies are very much structured around charity and gift giving. \u00a0As these groups grew\u00a0over time, they introduced a form of centralized redistribution where goods flow into a centralized, governing power who then distributed these goods along traditional and morally enforced lines. \u00a0(The bishop’s storehouse is a partial\u00a0example of this.) The main point is that neither of these types of groups are structured around exchange. \u00a0Communists love this point since it shows\u00a0that the supposedly “timeless and universal” laws of modern, free-market economics are nothing of the sort. \u00a0The united order agrees with the communists’ criticism, but totally rejects their solution, but I’m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n

      While the above mentioned societies are structured around reciprocal charity rather than self-interested exchange, they almost always did engage in self-interested exchange with outsiders. \u00a0The easiest\u00a0way to understand this is the difference between the goods and service we provide for our spouse, children, siblings and parents vs those that we provide to complete strangers. \u00a0The traditional “household” was a larger version of\u00a0this familial relationship that\u00a0included several families that lived within the same “oikos” (oikos<\/em> is the Greek word for “house” and is the origin of the word “economics”). \u00a0Civic republicanism, as advocated by the Ancient Greeks, sought to extend these same reciprocal relationships – to some extent – to the entire polis <\/em>(this being the obious root of the word “politics”).<\/p>\n

      It is in this same sense that the Deuteronomy says that usury should\u00a0never be charged to a brother, but only to outsiders. \u00a0Communism takes this point to the extreme by suggesting that we extend this reciprocal relationship to the entire world, thus abolishing exchange altogether! \u00a0Whereas most moralities have sought to either reinforce or perhaps\u00a0expand the boundary between reciprocity and exchange, capitalism seeks to shrink this boundary, if possible, all the way to the individual. \u00a0It is in this sense that the united order is a rejection of (2): it seeks to – at minimum – preserve relations of reciprocal charity and gift giving within Zion.<\/p>\n

      That said, the united order most definitely did endorse the “freedom” of labor such that a person was not legally bound to any guild or occupation within or without the united order. \u00a0The legal freedom that communists often dismiss as “merely formal” played an integral part within the united order.<\/p>\n

      In summary and conclusion, the united order absolutely did accept private property and in this sense cannot be conflated with communism. \u00a0It also accepted the importance of formally free labor in which no person is legally bound to some profession or land. \u00a0It did not, however, seek to structure Zion along the lines of self-interested exchange – this rejection is pretty much its defining feature. \u00a0Finally, as a matter of historical fact, it did not orient production to the market either.<\/p>\n