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Jonathan Aitken: Reconciling
the market economy with the teachings of the Gospel
Featured in the Independent:
19 June 2003
For most of my years as a participant in the market economy,
I was a close geographical neighbour of the IEA living a few
doors down the road at 8 Lord North Street. As a property
owner, as chairman of a merchant bank and as a Treasury minister
I learned more than I care to remember about the acceptable
and unacceptable faces of capitalism. However the one thing
I would never have dreamed of doing was attending a lecture
on whether or not the market economy could be reconciled with
Christian teachings. So it is with amazement mingled with
gratitude that I thank you the audience for coming to hear
a talk on this topic tonight.
This is such a complex subject that any attempt to cover it
in the appointed 20 minutes will inevitably be more of a canter
than a lecture. So in opening tonight's discussion I am going
to limit myself to five topics which I have alliteratively
labelled:
Greed, Good Capitalism, Grey Areas, Globalisation and The
Gospels.
GREED
We would all be kidding ourselves if we did not admit that
one of the major engines of motivation in the market economy
is human greed. At best it is unattractive and at worst it
is unlawful. Unfortunately, there's a lot of it about and
there always has been. Think about King Midas, Cardinal Wolsey
(the Tudor one) or Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street
rallying an AGM of shareholders with the slogan "Greed
is Good". You don't have to look back to history or to
fiction to find up to date examples of thoroughly un-Christian
avarice going wrong. A roll call of contemporary scandals
such as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Global Crossing, Imclone or
Martha Stewart reveals abundant evidence of greed, wrongdoing
and criminality in today's market economy.
But I would be falling into the worst superficialities of
a partisan debater at the despatch box in the House of Commons
if I were to use these examples to assert that ergo the market
economy cannot be reconciled with Christian teachings.
For it needs to be emphasised that while capitalists can be
full of human frailties and vices, the market economy in which
they operate is at worst morally neutral. At best it can be
an encouragement to Christian virtues. Those virtues could
include:
Exercise of free will in a responsible and philanthropic way;
Creation of wealth and employment for the good of the community;
Encouragement of personal responsibility and the development
of talent;
But for all these fine sentiments and ideals, is there really
any such thing as good capitalism based on Christian values?
GOOD CAPITALISM
In the world of academic debate some highly articulate voices
are now championing the idea that business life is a moral
calling which needs, more than ever before, to be underpinned
by Christian values and ethics.
On this side of the Atlantic the most prominent protagonist
of a market economy rooted in faith-based values is an old
friend of the IEA and indeed of mine, Lord Brian Griffiths.
As a banker and deal maker in the City of London, Brian Griffiths
knows a lot about the practices and malpractices of the market;
As an academic he sees the need to separate moral capitalism
from the determinist capitalism of libertarians such as Friedrich,
Hayek and Milton Friedman;
And as a thoughtful Protestant evangelical he likes to emphasise
a number of Judaeo-Christian principles which should guide
the market economy.
They include Biblical exhortations in both the Old and New
Testaments in favour of wealth creation, property ownership,
family involvement in business, and the alleviation of poverty
by work. There are also Biblical warnings against extravagance,
selfishness, attachment to materialism and economic injustice.
Now I would love to believe in the Brian Griffiths model of
the Christian world view applied to the market economy. It
is undoubtedly a noble ideal, but does it correspond to the
reality of what's happening on the ground, in the market place?
Alas, I fear not.
For the values of the modern market economy are largely Mammon's
values. Brian Griffiths in his writings has at least succeeded
in showing us that market capitalism founded on Christian
values would be very different from the Mammon driven capitalism
all around us today. But he hasn't shown us how the market
economy is going to be led back towards those Christian, dare
I say, Calvinistic principles that governed the commerce,
the culture and the community life of 16th century Geneva
and other cities of the Reformation.
However you don't need to be an evangelical Christian apologist
like Brian Griffiths to recognise that modern business all
too often suffers from a moral ethics gap. How is this gap
filled? Not yet by Christian ethics.
The answer is by compliance enforced by bodies such as the
FSA, the SEC, the take over panel and other regulators. So
today we have a de facto situation in which legal compliance
has replaced Christian conscience as the arbiter of the market
economy's moral standards.
The replacement of conscience by compliance is far from satisfactory.
That is because compliance leaves a lot of grey areas in which
market practices go on which are not against the law but they
are still wrong.
GREY AREAS
Most business schools teach that a corporate manager's primary
responsibility is to maximise shareholder value by taking
all possible actions within the bounds of the law. As a result,
many so called "good" executives think it their
job to look for grey areas in legal and accounting standards
and to push their companies to the limit of those grey areas.
Usually they get away with the questionable ethical practices
that this involves because they are just within the limit
of the law. Some of this brings us back to echoes of the Pauline
debate on the "Law versus the Spirit" in Romans.
Maximising profits and shareholder rewards as a priority above
all other concerns is within the law of business but it's
against the spirit of Christian values in business, so this
is one obvious grey area where it is going to be difficult
to reconcile the pressures of the market economy and the teachings
of the Gospel, and there are many others.
GLOBALISATION
Such difficulties are likely to get highlighted even more
sharply in the new arena of international business known as
Globalisation. Trying to define globalisation has been compared
to trying to nail a blancmange to a wall, but what it means
in broad terms is the multinational corporation's world of
interconnected international capitalism.
Globalisation's most obvious attraction to Christian and non-Christian's
alike is that it offers huge new opportunities transcending
national frontiers for the creation of wealth and employment,
not least for poor workers in less developed countries.
However, there is a great wariness about globalisation because
it is accused by its critics of operating in a moral vacuum.
In particular there are allegations that multinational corporations
are damaging the environment with ecologically unsound projects
that cannot be described as sustainable development and are
a long way from the Biblical command in Genesis 2 on land
"Till and keep it."
There are concerns that the rules of the World Trade Organisation
are intrinsically unjust because they are so patently biased
in favour of rich Western countries particularly when it comes
to agriculture.
The unfairest statistics I know that arise out of WTO rules
is that for every dollar rich Western countries spend on aid
to poorer countries they spend seven dollars on themselves
subsidising their own agriculture in order to protect their
rich economies from receiving agricultural exports from those
same poorer countries.
The actual figures are $360 billion in subsidies and $50 billion
on aid - a bad imbalance. And partly because of that blockage
on agricultural exports from poor countries there are real
fears that the most indigent people on this planet, the 2
billion people who live on less than £1 a day in rural
economies, will go on getting poorer and go on missing out
on the benefits of globalisation. That's a situation which
should trouble any Christian conscience.
Merely to outline such areas of concern is enough to flag
up that the jury is still out on globalisation. Is it a curse
or a blessing? Which way will the verdict go as we enter the
21st century, which is likely to be the Century of Globalisation?
A jury consisting of Christian believers, or for that matter
believers in almost any known code of religious or secular
ethics, would surely need to see a great deal more evidence
before concluding that globalisation is good for the poor
as well as for the rich.
That's worrying, because to Christians the God of the Bible
is undoubtedly the God of the poor. He must surely be dissatisfied
by all the unanswered concerns and questions about globalisation's
effect on the poor and on their rural environments that I
have just summarised.
However just as there can be good capitalism so there can
surely be good globalisation, rooted in the Judaeo-Christian
ethic.
And there is considerable hope and evidence to suggest that
the forces of good globalisation are gaining momentum and
gaining ground.
For example our own government, and particularly the Chancellor
of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, deserve credit for publicly
championing the policy of phasing out agricultural subsidies
in rich countries and opening up agricultural export markets
for developing countries. As Gordon Brown has said that offers
the best and quickest route for reducing poverty. The British-led
agreement at last year's World Trade Summit in Doha to this
policy has the potential to be an enormous breakthrough in
the battle for good globalisation.
Meanwhile other significant breakthroughs are happening all
the time.
Take China, which is a major beneficiary of globalisation.
A World Bank report published last year estimated that between
1993 and 1998 the number of Chinese citizens suffering from
extreme poverty fell from 33% of the population to 17%. That's
an escape from poverty for well over 100 million Chinese people.
There's good globalisation for you! Interestingly it's happening
in a country where there's explosive growth in Christianity.
The most reliable statistics suggest that there are now between
70-100 million Chinese Christians, and growing at the rate
of about 30,000 new converts per day - a phenomenon I witnessed
first hand when I visited the persecuted house churches of
China a few months ago on behalf of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
I don't want to draw any sort of linkage or comparison between
the spectacularly good effects of globalisation in China with
the spectacularly good growth of Christianity there. Indeed
I would want to make the opposite point that the Christian
faith has little or nothing to do with systems defined by
words that end in "ism" or "isation".
But it does have everything thing to do with the hearts of
the individuals who are leaders or workers in fields like
capitalism or globalisation whether in China's market economy
or anywhere else.
This emphasis on human hearts brings me to the last of my
alliterative subject headings:
THE GOSPELS
Finally I want to examine briefly the idea that there may
be found in the Gospels some form of Christian theology which
defines good business behaviour in the market economy. So
far, even after reading Brian Griffiths, Michael Novak, David
Prior and other advocates of the idea, I am unconvinced of
the existence of this market place theology even though I
am totally convinced by the Christian teachings that define
good personal behaviour - period.
Perhaps we need to remember that Jesus was neither a capitalist
nor even a member of the property owning democracy. From his
birth in a borrowed manger to his burial in a borrowed tomb
he was a man unencumbered by possessions. Yet he stirred the
conscience of many who had great possessions. From the rich
young man who went away sorrowful to Zacchaeus the corrupt
tax collector Jesus had an uncomfortable effect on the prosperous.
Not because he was against wealth. Indeed one of his parables
encouraged us to use our talents for creating wealth. But
he was extremely critical of those whose hearts were so in
love with treasure on earth that they failed to love their
neighbours or their God.
For me the subtlest and deepest of the teachings of Jesus
that relate to the market economy are found in Luke Chapter
12 and if I may I will read you just four verses of it because
it will remind us of a certain type of capitalist with whom
we are all familiar.
Luke 12
16-21
And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain
rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What
shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'
"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down
my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all
my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have
plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy;
eat, drink and be merry."'
"But God said to him 'You fool! This very night your
life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you
have prepared for yourself?'
"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things
for himself but is not rich towards God."
Now many hearers of that parable in secular Britain may be
puzzled by it. What exactly did the rich man do wrong?
In contemporary terms he fattened up his pension and enjoyed
himself on the golf course and in the best restaurants. We
might even speculate that he got on to The Sunday Times
Rich List. Nothing wrong with that many will think.
BUT:
1. He confused enough with excess
2. He was a hoarder not a giver
3. His materialism had no purpose beyond hedonism
4. He was a creature of time with no understanding of eternity
5. He put himself first and God a very poor second
Consider a practitioner in the market economy who reverses
all those positions: Someone who is satisfied with enough;
who is a generous giver; who has a moral purpose underpinning
their materialism; who thinks of the day of judgment and the
next world of eternity beyond it and who puts God before all
else.
Such a person would have no difficulty in reconciling a life
in the market economy with the teachings of the Christian
gospel.
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