Global Recession: the Future of Capitalism

It is often said that the current global recession poses a threat to the future of capitalism. Or that Marx is proven correct by recent events on the world’s financial stage. I am sympathetic to the tenor and basic motivation of these comments. But I think there are several reasons why one might question these well-meaning assertions. And it seems to me that these are interlinked.

Firstly, I do not believe that the rulers of this world will allow capitalism, with all the power and illusory luxuries it appropriates to the powerful and greedy at the expense of the masses, to fail any time soon. The Great Depression provides one historical example (barely!) within living memory of a very grave global economic system failure. But the governments of that time believed that contractionary fiscal and monetary policy together provided a panacea for a capitalist economy’s ills. They thought that by deliberately suppressing and constraining economic activity (notwithstanding existing deflationary pressures) an economy would be rescued.

The rationale behind this was plain and, frankly, stupid. It was thought that a deflationary fiscal policy package would cause prices to fall at a faster rate, and, eventually, the pace of price reduction would outstrip the pace of nominal aggregate economic output and (oh yes!) wages. So people would in real terms get richer again; and the economy would regain its equilibrium.

It didn’t work. Instead, it made an existing problem worse. The crisis was caused ultimately by the inherent instability of capitalist economic cycles; specifically, manifested in a frenzied worldwide investment of resources into global stock markets and the inevitable concomitant collapse; set into motion by the collapse of an Austrian bank. Eventually, the Savage government here in New Zealand got its people out of the hole by borrowing to pump stacks of dough into public works, job creation programmes, and handouts to ordinary people. They adopted capitalism Keynesian-style; and it worked like a charm.

We now know enough about how capitalism works; how its evil machinations operate. We know how to keep the system afloat during its inevitable crises. And there is no indication that with counter-cyclical fiscal and monetary policy being implemented by all capitalist governments and central bankers, that this current malaise will not right itself. Eventually it will be ensured that money is printed to stimulate demand for goods, capital investment in industry and enterprise. And of course we have seen how readily the apostles of neoliberal free market ideology will swallow their ideological rhetoric when it comes to bailing out large conglomorates.

All will be well for capitalism for a long time yet. I am a young man; but I will probably, even given the pace of change today, never see the destruction of the system and way of life I detest. And this, I think, in turn suggests why we ought to demur at the claim that the present economic malaise vindicates Marxism. Marxism is vindicated during capitalism’s ostensible triumphs as much as it is during its times of doom and failure. For economic growth in capitalist societies visits upon society members, communities and indeed the natural environment the most grievous indignities. Someone’s gain is always another’s loss. Capitalism is tragic when it is flourishing; and it is tragic during its failures. Growth often is accompanied by low wages, poor working conditions, depletion of natural resources, and the general shallow, hedonistic promises of a mechanistically materialistic lifestyle and culture. One important caveat, however: economic downturns are always accompanied by increased joblessness.

But we know that low unemployment is only a transitory state of affairs in a capitalist society; particularly in a context in which international trade conventions and agreements impose uniformity in trade turnover fluctuations; such that no economy is really immune from the constant threat of economic battering. Capitalism is always and everywhere an affront to human dignity, creativity and flourishing. And the present downturn is witness to that just as is the (associated) earlier economic progress which precipitated it.

Apologies to the late Canon Henry Scott Holland

In my reflection for Easter Sunday I accused Canon Henry Scott Holland of subscribing to the view expressed in the poem of his authorship “Death is Nothing at All”.

Well, I should have had enough faith in theologians (!) to know that an eminent theologian like Holland probably didn’t think that death was nothing at all;just a matter of slipping into the next (much more pleasant) room. My research on the web soon led me to suggestions that in fact Scott Holland’s words were actually an attempt to articulate what many of us sometimes wish was true about immortality and afterlife; not what the Canon or the Christian tradition actually hold. For evidence of this, see here and here.

I’m very intrigued as to how these musings of Henry Scott Holland on erroneous wishful thinking about mortality were in recent decades wrenched out of context and turned into an appallingly saccharine poem of superficial comfort to be used as a reading at (mostly secular, thank God) funeral after funeral.

My apologies to the late Canon Henry Scott Holland!

Easter Sunday- the Resurrection of Jesus Christ

 

 

 

 

The powers of death could not contain Christ. Death and suffering were not for him the final word. And his Resurrection reveals for us sinful humans where persecuted love can ultimately end: in the highest possible form of love. Christ’s descent into Hell- which I had determined to reflect on for Holy Saturday- is no event; hence I kept my blogging silence. For death is nothing at all- not in the sense presumed by Henry Scott Holland in his awful poem, often read at secular funerals today, by that title. Death is nothing at all not because it involves “just slipping away into the next room” but because it constitutes the most radical privation and alienation possible for us. Hell is irrevocable death- final separation from the divine love. Heaven is infinite life in the divine Godhead; and the message of Easter is that the nature of that divine love, though itself ineffable and incomprehensible- is now revealed to us in glory through the triumph of the Word Incarnate.

There are heretics who argue that the “core meaning” of the Easter proclamation is that Jesus has died and entered blissful union with the Father. But why then did the Church not retain Saturday as the Sabbath day in continuation of the Jewish observance? If the Easter message is that Jesus has gone somewhere very nice, why the significance of Easter morning?

The Resurrection is not about some kind of Houdini-act; some kind of wondrous sign designed to foster people’s faith. The Resurrection is about a new life of completeness, love, and happiness. The Resurrection did not end: it continues in the Body of Christ, the Christian community, in the Eucharist which is its central collective act; and in the highest forms of interpresonal relationship. The Resurrection though is not merely about community; it literally is Heaven. Herbert McCabe once wrote that Jesus did not enter Heaven, he is Heaven. Right; and the Resurrection is Jesus at his most majestic, showng to us what the infinite being of love looks like in historical reality.

This is why all the recent debates about “literal”  Resurrection miss the mark. What is a literal Resurrection? The Resurrection is sui generis: it belongs to its own category. It’s not the lifting or recomposition of a body; it is the manifestation of the Triune God. And so debate as to the literality of the Resurrection accounts is bound to go nowhere. Of course, as St Paul says (1 Cor 15:12-20), if Christ be not raised, our faith is in vain. And that faith depends upon the historicity of the Resurrection narratives in the canonical Gospels. But we must be sure not to try to force the content of those historical narratives into a category in which it cannot fit. The Resurrection is so much more than the reconstitution of a body. Metaphysical talk about how such reconstitution is possible is futile for understanding the Easter mystery.  I was once remarking to a friend with a thoroughly atheistic background that I did not believe that God was an individual. My friend asked how I could hold that and still believe that Jesus was raised from the dead.

But to think that the Resurrection faith necessitates the anthropomorphisation of God is to betray a total misunderstanding of what Christianity claims about Jesus being raised. No invisible hand brought Christ out of the tomb. Christ the eternal God conquered sin and death by his own divine power. No one has seen God, wites St John, but the only Son has made him known (John 6:46). John’s words could not be truthful without the Resurrection, through which we know that not even death could silence Christ’s love.

What of the Gospel narratives of Easter morning? The women came to the tomb and were dazzled by a message that he had been raised. The tomb was empty. They and then Peter went to proclaim that He had risen. They did not understand. They believed; and they witnessed. And the glorious body of Jesus began appearing in Galilee. The New Testament tells us nothing more of the tomb; only of Jesus.

 

What can we learn from that this Easter?