A Response to Dr Andy Woods of Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr Dr Woods,

I have recently read your interesting article on the Bible Prophecy Blog entitled , How an Evangelical Christian President can Support a Mormon for President. I was sufficiently  concerned about some of the premises that you say you hold that I thought I ought to make some sort of response.

I should stress at the outset that I have no issue with who you vote for in November. I am more concerned about the underlying assumptions that are shaping your decision. 

Please allow me to respond to some of the points in the order you raised them:

Economic Matters

Firstly, I find your definition of economic policies to be too narrow. Like you, I value Biblical teaching against stealing and in favour of economic self-sufficiency through labour (excuse the British spellings!) These values, however, are not the only things that the Bible has to say about economics, wealth and labour. The Pentateuch not only prohibited theft, it also created the conditions for Israel under which economic self-sufficiency could be achieved by all. This was through the equitable distribution of the primary means of production - land - to tribes and extended households (Num 26:52; 33:53, et passim)  This aspect of Biblical economics appears lacking from your analysis. 

It is a challenge to think through what such a Biblical value might mean in a pluralist society today. But, since we both agree that Biblical values should influence public life, I think we need to do the hard thinking about what a fair distribution of the means of production looks like in a post-industrial society.

Traditionally, those on the political left have sought to tax wealth as a means of re-distribution. However, it is questionable whether this approach goes far enough in ensuring genuine economic opportunity for all. Not only that, it has a tendency to create a vast and bureaucratic state apparatus, which itself can be problematic.

It is apparent that wealth is generated primarily through the judicious management of assets. In both the United States and Britain, the long-term trend has been for assets such as land, factories, property, businesses, and more recently, copyrights and patents to become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The result of this trend over centuries is that the vast majority of citizens find themselves not as owners of potentially-productive assets, but as wage labourers. Their only "asset" is their time and skills. This employer-employee model of work has become so embedded in developed capitalist economies that we often find it difficult to imagine how "work" could be widely conceived in any other way. This model contains in-built vulnerabilities. A widely distrubitist model, by contrast, is more secure, just and sustainable, as an asset holder will never put themselves out of work.

In seeking to think about who to vote for, I would want evangelical Christians to also give consideration to the candidate most likely to empower the asset-less through the re-distribution of the economic means of production. 

Distribution

Your concern about wealth being distributed to the non-earner (the 47%, I believe they were recently controversially described as by Mr Romney) also requires modification, in my view. While I agree that people who refuse to work should not be supported by those who do, you must surely recognize the Biblical category of those who are brought into poverty through adversity,  injustice, (Prov 13:23)  illness, and a whole range of economic and environmental factors outside of their direct control (Lev 25:35). 

Government

The conservative view that such individuals should be helped through their own savings, families and/or private charity (more on that later) does not, in my view, do justice to the Biblical teaching on the matter. Rather, the prophets who denounced Israel's sin in the pre-exilic period often focused their preaching on economic injustice (Isaiah 1:16-18, et passim) and, significantly, called on the rulers (Isaiah 10:1-3) and kings (Isaiah 32:1-3) to act. The issue of poverty in Israel was not to be solved solely through private philanthropy but also through government intervention. One of the tithes mentioned in the Pentateuch, moreover, was specifically designed for distribution to the poor (Deut 26:12-13).  This was not private charity, but a form of co-ordinated and compulsory proto-taxation, to be directly used for assisting the needy. 

On the issue of charity-versus-the-State (your second paragraph under the heading of economic matters), you seem to miss the very obvious point raised in Romans 13:1-7, that governments are mandated to protect their citizens through the "punishment of the wrongdoer". While this certainly implies protection from criminals and foreign powers, it also implies protection from internal predators who would harm those who seek to live peaceful and quiet lives.

It is difficult to see how those greedy financial institutions largely responsible for the current economic crisis should not have the sword of the state wielded against them, and that "God's servant for your good" should not seek to ameliorate the human damage caused by these evil-doers. The same could be said about the idea of limited-liability companies - such as BP - who will be emboldened to take economically and environmentally reckless decisions as long as they know that the state will not hold them responsible for the full economic effect of their carelessness.

Family

On the matter of the family, I agree with you that a Biblical value in politics will be to strengthen families not only relationally but also in economic terms. My comments above about the re-distribution of assets, should be incorporated into this pro-family agenda. It is not enough to merely roll back regulations, as if they in themselves are the cause of unemployment, without looking at the larger economic context. The Joads, if I may throw in a cultural anecdote, were not helped by and did not need greater de-regulation. They needed assets.

Inheritance

On the subject of inheritance taxes, I would be interested to discover your views on the Year of Jubilee principle (Lev 25), which set a structural limit not only on debt, but also on the handing down of wealth and assets, through the requirement for all land to be handed back to the descendants of its original owners. 

Such a system would have (if faithfully implemented) prohibited the creation of a permanent class system, and restrained the unlimited accumulation of capital and assets and the corresponding driving down of incomes on the part of the dispossessed. Unpopular though such a system may be to some on the right, here we find in scripture a structural economic policy intentionally designed to limit the accumulation of wealth over the long term. Would you agree that, compared with this Biblical law, Adam's Smith's invisible hand is a far less effective mechanism in restricting the vast accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands? 

Environment

I found your comments on the environment particularly disappointing. Firstly, your quoting of Genesis 8:22 as some kind of proof text disproving anthropogenic global warming is, frankly, unworthy of an evangelical scholar. The verse merely states, in context, that God will not destroy the earth again through a flood and that the seasons, including "heat and cold" will be features of life on the planet until its end. This can be interpreted in both a micro-scale (day to day) and a macro-scale (the ice-age, for instance). The text does not tell us whether and to what extent human activity can increase strain on the planet, locally or globally, nor whether mankind will or will not in fact do so in the future. The doctrine of sin certainly suggests that such action is at least a strong possibility! 

The Bible does, elsewhere, have things to say on the inter-relationship between human activity and the physical environment, at both a micro and macro scale.

What do you make, for instance, of the shout of the 24 heavenly elders declaring that the time has come, 

"for destroying those who destroy the earth" (Rev 11:18)?

Or God's declaration through Jeremiah that:

“I am against you, you destroying mountain,

    you who destroy the whole earth,” (Jer 51:25)?

Truth

As an evangelical Christan concerned about man-made climate change, I obviously recognise the reality of seasonal and long-term variations in the earth's climate. I also take seriously our call to think truthfully about life's issues (Psalm 15:2 et passim). This commitment to truth requires us to use our God-given minds to consider and weigh claim and counter-claim. 

The overwhelming scientific consensus (summarised below by the US National Research Council) is that the 

"climate is changing and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities."

I infer from your article that you are somewhat mistrustful of international and inter-governmental bodies. Nonetheless, the scientific consensus on the role of human activity on climate change is also summarised in the findings of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change here. 

For the Christian, this reality is both an issue of stewardship, and also one of justice. I have written elsewhere of the relationship between global warming and global poverty. The real victims of this current environmental crisis are the world's poorest and, frankly, it is very unedifying to hear a gospel minister apparently overlooking their suffering in order to enable American Christians to continue to drive their SUVs with a clear conscience.

  

Evil Days

The apostle Paul calls us to "be careful how we live - not as unwise but as wise...because the days are evil." One of the evils being carried out by the global oil conglomerates is the deliberate feeding into the public discourse misleading suggestions and pseudo-scientific research over the issue of global warming (source). Research shows that these wealthy billionaires - including Koch Industries who also support Mitt Romney's campaign as it happens - have been remarkably successful in their PR efforts. 

This is an area where discernment is needed to see what is really taking place - a reckless and ungodly destruction of God's world in order to ensure financial profits for a small cadre of billionaires. As Christians, we need to oppose this ungodliness and defend the rights of the poor in the face of the Koch brothers and their ilk.

Debt and War

I agree with your concerns about public debt. The only sane and Biblical way forward is to reduce it. I hope, therefore, that you will continue to be vocal in your opposition to expensive and ill-founded military campaigns in Asia. The Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns have cost many lives and, according to research from Brown University, have also cost the American economy approximately 4 trillion dollars. That's trillion, please note, not billion.

I was intending to go on to compare social matters and foreign policy, but I think this may result in an overly-lengthy article, so perhaps I will leave it there for now. Suffice to say, I agree with many of your conclusions on social matters - though, briefly, I must ask you to seriously search your conscience and consider whether Jesus really meant what you have represented him as meaning in Luke 22:36. 

On foreign policy, I confess to being, like Stephen M Walt  "a realist in an ideological age." But perhaps that is for another day. 

As I said at the outset, I am not writing to challenge your conclusions about who you or others should vote for. I am more concerned about some of your premises. 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read (if you have) and I wish you God's blessing.

Yours respectfully in disagreement,

Al Shaw

Bristol, England

          

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London's Olympic Opening Ceremony Unwrapped - for the Benefit of the Rest of the World

American sprinter Michael Johnson summarised the issue when asked on the BBC whether the rest of the world would "get" the messages of London's Olympic opening ceremony. Since he worked and travelled here often, Johnson replied, he felt he could appreciate it at a cultural level, but he thought that many of his fellow Americans and the rest of the world would not.

Or, as one contributor put it on Twitter: "This is just plain weird."

 

So, without further ado, here is the opening ceremony unwrapped, for an international audience.

The key to interpreting director Danny Boyle's extravaganza, in my view, is to understand the opening scene. While the crowds filtered into the stadium in the hours before the official start, they were greeted with a stadium filled not with ranked masses of drummers or dancers, but by a green field on which grazed sheep, cattle and goats, tended by farmers and labourers dressed in outfits reminiscent of pre-industrial Britain. Bearded gentlemen played cricket on a village green; white clouds floated gently over the idyllic pastoral scene.

source: gorgeaux

The official opening of the ceremony involved the singing of the traditional English anthem Jerusalem, supplemented by national songs of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

Written by nineteenth-century poet, artist and mystic William Blake, the words of his poem And Did Those Feet were put to music by Hubert Parry in 1916. The song - known ever since simply as Jerusalem - has come to be widely adopted as an unofficial national anthem for England, sung regularly at international sports matches, and even at the wedding in 2011 of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.

The poem has been sung at party conferences by several of the main political parties since the second world war. The song Jerusalem has come to be seen as critical of the damaging effects of industrialisation and of the consolidation of economic power by a landed, industrial and ecclesiastical elite. Blake, raised as a Moravian, was a life-long critic of the established Church of England. In place of such a history, Jerusalem articulates an alternative vision of England - one shaped at every level by the mysterious presence of Christ.

And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen!

Drawing on mythical themes such as the visitation of Jesus as a youth to the British Isles, accompanied by his supposed-uncle Joseph of Arimathea, the poem combines religious, mystical and political themes and has come to be seen as expressing a longing for a just, political and economic settlement in the British Isles, infused with Christian ideals.

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green and pleasant Land

This imagery was not lost on the British audience last night. Phillip Blond, author of the influential book Red Tory: How Left and Right have Broken Britain and How we can Fix It, was tweeting lyrical throughout the ceremony. The political think-tanker, economist and one-time theologian enthusiastically tweeted of the opening scene's imagery representing

"A pre-enclosure and pre-capitalist haven - this is already so political - magnificent - romanticism at our heart."

Daily Telegraph blogger Tim Stanley, meanwhile writes of the opening scene's depiction of

"The brutal uprooting of rural Britain. Was this written by GK Chesterton? It's fantastic."

Blond affirms this interpretation of British history:

"It's essentially a Catholic theory of British history" which sees "enclosure as the original crime." 

The idea that the enclosure of common agricultural lands from the 16th to 19th centuries is a root of much of Britain's current economic problems was explored in the early twentieth century by Roman Catholic social theorists such as Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. More recently, socialist historian EP Thompson argued in his The Making of the English Working Class that "Enclosure (when all the sophistications are allowed for) was a plain enough case of class robbery."

 

It is perhaps not coincidental to learn that Boyle himself was raised in a Catholic household in the north of England and was at one time considering attending seminary to become a priest.

 

Much else that followed in last night's Olympic extravaganza was a re-telling of this British story. The achievements of the industrial revolution, for instance, were set alongside the fruits of its ugly expression in the efficiency of modern warfare.

The idea that the common assets of the British working class have been appropriated by their rulers continued through the ceremony's subsequent tableaux. Although framed in terms of children's fairy tales, dreams and nightmares, the lengthy section filled with nurses, pyjama-clad children in hospital beds, and frightening apparitions appeared linked to the story of the enclosures. The message was that Britain's greatest human asset - its National Health Service - is under threat from dark forces.

Source: Julie70

The allusion to the highly controversial NHS reform bill recently passed through Parliament - which gives greater access to the Service to private companies, and which was strongly opposed by all of the main professional medical organisations - will not have been lost on a British public widely dissatisfied with the legislation brought in under the current coalition government. The implication that J.K Rowling's Lord Voldemort could be compared to health secretary Andrew Lansley was both excruciating and exquisite.

That a fictional character - the magical Mary Poppins - was instrumental in driving away the threats to the sick children illustrates an additional strand within Boyle's ceremony, namely that of the British romantic tradition. As blogger Cath Elliott noted:

"So Mary Poppins bravely fought off the tories and saved the NHS. Or something."

Romanticism was a key element in William Blake's creative work, expressed in part in Boyle's opening ceremony through humour. Rowan Atkinson, James Bond and the Queen parachuting into the stadium were all part of this tradition of self-deprecating British humour. Mr Bean also performed the first scripted fart at an Olympic opening ceremony. Blond again:

"And it just gets better - this is the true Britain - romantic, visionary and arcadian - and very very funny." 

 

Comparisons with the opening ceremony in Beijing four years earlier are inevitable and the contrast between creative London's story-telling and formal massed ranks of well-drilled citizens could not have been greater.

The ceremony was visionary in the best sense of the word - even as William Blake saw visions throughout his unconventional life. Here was a view of modern Britain with Christian and egalitarian roots, overcoming the forces that would create a harsher, more oppressive future.

William Blake's etching/watercolour "Ancient of Days" ( Wikipedia)

The young artist George Richmond was at the bedside of his visionary mentor and friend William Blake when he died in 1827 and describes the scene in moving detail:

He died ... in a most glorious manner. He said He was going to that Country he had all His life wished to see and expressed Himself Happy, hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ.

– Just before he died His Countenance became fair. His eyes Brighten'd and he burst out Singing of the things he saw in Heaven.

Danny Boyle has expressed things slightly differently: "We can build Jerusalem. And it will be for everyone."

 

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Albert Schweitzer on Colonialism, Labour, Race, Freedom, Trade and the Role of the State

Image via Wikipedia

Am currently reading Albert Schweitzer's collection of contemporary reports from his time as a missionary doctor in what at the time was the French colony of Equatorial Africa (now Gabon) from 1912 to 1917. The reports are grouped together in the book On the Edge of the Primeval Forest.

As well as providing insights into tropical disease and medicine, the book later on gives scope for Schweitzer's developing thoughts on the nature of colonialism, particularly as it relates to the issue of labour.

In a chapter entitled "Social Problems in the Forest", written in the summer of 1914, the doctor-philosopher addresses the "labour problem" in the French colony. His observations are worth quoting and reflecting on. They highlight themes that seem very relevant to our world as it lurches from one economic convulsion to another, and as growing numbers of people ask fundamental questions about the economic system we have come to regard as normal.

The doctor introduces the "problem" as it presents itself to the European:

"People imagine in Europe that as many labourers as are wanted can always be found among the savages, and secured for very small wages. The real fact is the very opposite." 

Schweitzer's frequent use of the term "savages" may be jarring to modern readers, but it is worth seeing beyond the crudeness of language to the wider points he is making.

"This [lack of labourers] comes from their laziness, people say; but is the negro really so lazy? Must we go a little deeper into the problem?"

 

After describing the strenuous efforts of native villagers in clearing virgin forest in order to create plantations for bananas and manioc (a root staple) and their ability to row the Ogowe River and its tributaries for up to thirty-six hours without a break, Schweitzer concludes that,

"I can no longer talk ingenuously of the laziness of the negro."

What, then, can explain the apparent difficulties that the white colonists have in obtaining paid labour from the black native population? Schweitzer offers the opinion that,

"The negro, under certain circumstances works well, but - only so long as circumstances require it. The child of nature - here is the answer to the puzzle - is always a casual worker."

European attitudes towards "the African" during the 19th and early 20th centuries ranged from a view of the natives as "uncivilised savages" to a belief that they were "natural" or "free men." This latter view was expressed for instance by fellow Frenchman Paul Gaugin, particularly in his Primitivist phase of painting.  Schweitzer, as have already seen, seems to oscillate between the two views of the Africans as savages and as children of nature.

Continuing with this latter theme, Schweitzer notes that,

  

"In return for very little work, nature supplies the native with nearly everything that he requires for his support in his village. The forest gives him wood, bamboos, raffia leaves. and bast for the building of a hut....He has only to plant some bananas and manioc, to do a little fishing and shooting, in order to have by him all that he really needs, without having to hire himself out as a labourer and to earn regular wages."

The local tribesmen will hire themselves out only to raise money for a specific and particular object - some sugar, tobacco, an axe or a dowry to pay in return for obtaining a wife.

"If he has no definite object in view for which to earn money he stays in his village."

Schweitzer's conclusion from this approach to labour is interesting:

"The negro, then, is not idle, but he is a free man; hence he is always a casual worker."

This casual approach to paid labour - that it is to be engaged in only as necessary to purchase specific items above and beyond the daily necessities of food and shelter - inevitability found itself in conflict with the economic aims of the French colonists, whose primary concern was in felling and exporting the jungle's rich supply of quality hardwoods for transportation and sale to European markets.

"There is, therefore, a serious conflict between the needs of trade and the fact that the child of nature is a free man."

The colonists therefore have to think about how to convince the natives to work for them. The strategy of the State and its commercial allies is summarised thus:

"Create in him as many needs as possible; only so can the utmost possible be got out of him."

Image via Wikipedia

The creation of artificial needs in the indigenous population took two main forms in the early 20th century. The first method was the imposition of "involuntary need" in the form of direct taxation. Every native of French Equatorial Africa aged 14 and above was required to pay a poll tax of five francs a year. 

The second area of artificial need was created by the trader and involved the offering to the natives of goods and commodities that they did not have and could not create within their own local environment. Dr Schweitzer describes seeing the stock offered for sale in a single white-owned shop located in the middle of the jungle. The items ranged from the "useful" such as knives and axes, to shoes, material and tools, to the frivolous or harmful such as alcohol, glasses, tobacco, collars and ties, lace, corsets, gramophones and music boxes. Like today's iPods, the latter were apparently extremely popular. Schweitzer describes the local women who "plague their husbands until they have earned enough to buy one."

In conclusion, Schweitzer advances the view that,

"The child of nature becomes a steady worker only so far as he ceases to be free and becomes unfree."

By hiring labourers and transporting them some distance from their locality, and by holding back half of their wages until the end of a twelve-month employment contract, the plantation owners and loggers attempted to break the ties that the natives had with their local tribes and families, and to bind them in economically with the company. Barracks and labouring settlements  therefore became the dominant model for ensuring a steady supply of local labour in the French colonies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Rejecting the idea of compulsory paid labour (followed in several European colonies in Africa), Schweitzer advocates allowing the native population to live in their own villages and equipping them them with skills to create their own local industries for their own use and for trade.

Applying Schweitzer's analysis to the current economic scene, a few immediate thoughts occur. Perhaps I will be able to elaborate on them at a future date. For now, they remain bullet points:

• almost no-where in the current economic turmoil can a single voice be heard that is asking the basic question, "what do people actually need?" There is no distinction made between the creation of goods that are needed and goods that are mere luxuries. In fact, were such a distinction made, it would be regarded as Utopian by the mainstream media and culture. 
• Linked to the above, the assumption is made by politicians of all types that all economic growth is good, however it is promoted. 
• No distinction is made in today's discussion between "work" and "paid jobs". It is assumed that the employer-employee model should be regarded as the only, or at least the primary form of productive employment.
• casual work is seen as second best under the current economic system. This is, in part, because such part-time work does not allow the worker to buy the luxury goods produced by global firms as a means of extracting wealth from the workers. For Schweitzer, by contrast, such casual labour is the essence of economic freedom. 
• There is no serious discussion at the present time about the rights of communities or families to obtain a living directly from the physical land around them, without recourse to private ownership or job dependency. The historic British model of communal local land use has been stripped away through waves of enclosure over the centuries, resulting in a population who are essentially landless. This makes it almost impossible for citizens to use the natural environment in sustainable ways to obtain food and building materials. This has happened so long ago, that most workers have no concept that land (or other productive property) could ever be widely owned by free local communities. This collective loss of consciousness and of imagination has resulted in a narrowing of the perceived options as far as economic survival is concerned. And this loss empowers large corporations at the expense of individuals or local communities.

   

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Capital Kills Its Own Market - Hilaire Belloc

Image via Wikipedia

Capital Kills Its Own Market

Some quotes from Hilaire Belloc, in an essay re-published recently in The Distributist Review:

Those are the two principal material disadvantages of capitalism as we now have it. They are translated, in the actual world, into the terms “Unemployment” and “Insufficient purchasing power.” So long as control is in few hands and gets into fewer and fewer hands-these evils must grow larger and larger.

But the spiritual disadvantages of control by few and yet fewer men, over the process of production, transport and the rest, are  even worse than the material disadvantages.

These spiritual disadvantages take three main forms. First there is loss of choice.....

Second ... is the counterpart of this: an increasing uniformity in the pattern of existence.....

The third ... is that the mass of men fall under the will of a few.....

On the loss of the habit of economic freedom:

When any bad process begins there is, in its first stages, a memory, a tradition, of better things. The old and better state of affairs still possesses what physical science calls “acquired momentum.” So it is with freedom when monopoly of control is growing up. All the older people can remember real competition and a fairly good division of property.

A human generation is short. When it has lost what it once knew, habit turns the new conditions into matters of course till the new conditions come to seem almost part of the universe. At least it becomes impossible for men to imagine what the older and better state of affairs was like.

Now this habit in any evil, but especially the habit of dependence, is what makes evil permanent; and as things are now going there is a rapidly increasing dangers that his condition of dependence upon a few, and of accepting monopoly of control over our lives, will become second nature. If we allow that to happen by allowing the gradual decay of individual property and freedom to continue unchecked, it will be impossible to return. That is the real danger when we pass the point after which reform becomes practically impossible because the mind cannot conceive it.

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Do it Yourself

Interesting thoughts from Kevin Carson at C4SS today:

Even though the micromanufacturing movement is in its very early stages, a garage equipped with homebrew digitally controlled machine tools can do most of what once required a mass-production factory — at a cost two orders of magnitude cheaper. We’re now seeing a reversal of the technological shift that brought about the concentration of economic power and the predominance of wage employment two centuries ago: a shift from expensive machines affordable only by large organizations, back to general-purpose craft tools affordable by individual workers.

Projects like Open Source Ecology are rapidly expanding the range of tools that can be built cheaply for the garage factory, while 100kGarages is continuing its pioneering efforts in networked micromanufacturing. We’re approaching a time when most of the stuff we consume can be produced in a microfactory with under $10k worth of tools, using open-source digital designs, and marketed to the surrounding neighborhood. When the cost of a factory is three months’ wage, “how ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm?”

Source





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What Are Public Services For? Reflections on Res_Publica's Report on Community Ownership of Public Assets

Philip Blond, director of think tank Res_Publica, advocates allowing local communities in Britain to take over failing state-owned assets in order to run them as community enterprises.

At the heart of the concept is what Res_Publica describe as a

"shift in emphasis from public spending to public investment."

The fact that the launch of today's report, To Buy, to Bid, to Build: Community Rights for an Asset Owning Democracy was attended by Greg Clark MP, Minister of State for Local Government and Communities, lends credence to the critics of Res_Publica that the think tank is too close to the Conservative Party.

Certainly, an article in today's Morning Star criticises the report and sees it as paving the way for the "Ultimate Sell Off" of public assets, including hospitals, schools and libraries.

At the heart of the Star's critique is an interesting quote from Andrew Fisher:

"Leisure centres and libraries meet social needs. They should not be run for profit no matter who owns them."

Some questions occur to me for both Res_Publica and Morning Star (should they not have better things to do than read this blog):

1) How does Fisher define a "social need"? Is food a social need? If so, does the Marxist world view that underpins Morning Star logically lead to statist-capitalism, where the state (albeit in the name of the working classes) owns all property and directs its use?

2) If "social needs" are defined more narrowly, the question of profit still requires examination. If we accept that there is room for a "not-for profit" sector within the economy, who or what should occupy that space? Soup kitchens? Homeless shelters? Swimming pools? Libraries?

It is interesting to note that many groups that have traditionally occupied the non-profit sector in the UK (charities, primarily) have been at the forefront of running profitable enterprises in recent decades, rather than relying exclusively on traditional fund-raising methods. The host of charity shops occupying commercial space on every high street in Britain have, in turn, contributed to an upsurge in social enterprises which have sought to combine and integrate business with socially beneficial or charitable ends. Examples in my own city of Bristol include Aspire; nationally, the Divine Chocolate Company.

3) Is Fisher of the opinion that profit per se is inherently undesirable? This perspective is, in my view, limiting and self-defeating. The desire to benefit from one's labour is a natural and ethical human instinct, in my opinion. Having said that, it is an instinct that is capable of unethical outworking. Witness BP's careless destruction of the physical environment, XE's profiteering from the illegal war in Iraq, or the creation of products which serve no social use.

4) Are Res_Publica concerned about their perceived closeness to the Conservative Party? Do they see their social policy ideas as capable of adoption across the political spectrum? Is Philip Blond's Red Toryism really red? Or mostly Tory?

5) Have Morning Star and Res_Publica thought of getting together for a pint and a natter? The Star, after all, is owned by a worker's cooperative (The People's Printing Press Society), the kind of employment vehicle that has received much praise from Res_Publica in recent years.

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Related articles

• Minister backs plan for massive state sell off of assets (telegraph.co.uk)
• Calls for 'public sector sell-off' (mirror.co.uk)

Turning Public Servants into Service Partners | ResPublica

Turning Public Servants into Service Partners | ResPublica

Devaid Erdall puts forward the case - and the steps needed - for turning public service providers in the UK into worker-cooperatives or employee-owned businesses.

I agree with the tone and general direction of this proposal and believe this represents a genuine alternative to slashing public services or maintaining them at a time of unsustainable levels of public debt.

The Mutual Way To Put Britain Back On Its Feet | ResPublica

The Mutual Way To Put Britain Back On Its Feet | ResPublica:

"Employee-owned firms have outperformed the FTSE-All Share Index over the last 18 years by an average of 10pc.

When shares are distributed to all employees we see a minimum 5pc productivity gain and often more, according to research."

Worker-owned businesses, co-operatives, distributism. It's the future....

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Blond on Practical Economic Policy

Shattered Society | ResPublica

While agreeing with much of the critique of neo-liberalism found among distributist writers, I have been less clear about the specific public and economic policies that such writers would wish to see, particularly in a British context. In the United States, for instance, one wing of the movement against perceived statism seems to have evolved into a Libertarian form through the Tea Party movement, which, I must confess, is not one that I am indistinctly drawn to.

I'm not sure whether Philip Blond would describe himself as a distributist, but some of the ideas in this essay are consistent with the economic theory espoused by Belloc and Chesterton.

In any event, Blond does set out several practical policy directions that he believes would provide workable solutions to the failures of both statism and developed capitalism. If I've understood the article correctly, these include:

1. Turning public services into employee-owned co-operatives without the current layers of management characteristic of existing public services.

2. Empowering "citizen's groups" to take over the budget of central government, in areas such as welfare/social service payments and to use it for their own economic empowering rather than subsidizing their existence - giving capital rather than income.

3. A "doctrine of radical democratic subsidiarity" would see political decision making radically devolved. Blond is short of specifics on this one, unfortunately!

Much to ponder.

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Red Toryism

Subtitled Liberalism and the Loss of Liberty, Michael Merrick's essay on Red Toryism is the best short piece I have read so far on Philip Blond's political philosophy.

Interesting quotes abound in this well written piece, as well as direct and indirect links to issues of localism and distributism, which I have commented on elsewhere in this blog.

I am particularly interested in Merrick's central thesis, that although Blond has been welcomed into British Tory circles, the true nature of his critique of liberalism has probably not been understood by the right.

In my own very limited experience, I have found than whenever I tentatively put forward ideas around localism, I am often perceived to be expressing views to the right of centre.

I don't think I am. My starting point is a critique of developed capitalism and its destructive effect on individuals, families and communities, especially the poorest, and its related contribution to the destruction of the physical environment. These have tended to be seen in recent years as issues of concern to those on the left.

Anyway, who cares about these labels?

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Responding to Michael Schluter on the Relational Economy

I'm always interested in listening to thoughtful Christians who are prepared to reflect deeply about social policy issues from a Biblical perspective, and Michael Schluter of the Jubilee Centre and the Relationships Foundation must be regarded as one of the foremost such thinkers in the UK at the present time.

His recent essay on the Relational Economy drew me in with its working title of Beyond Capitalism, excited me with his critique of the current economic model and his emphasis on putting human relationships at the heart of social and economic policy, and then raised some concerns in me about the practical outworking of some aspects of his social welfare proposals.

Schluter's emphasis on putting relationships at the heart of social policy is, I think, an excellent perspective and one that is capable of receiving widespread support both within and outside Christian circles.

More specifically, Schluter is a small-government localist - certainly as far as economics and social security provision is concerned - and explicitly states in the essay that he sees the natural allies of such a worldview being, "those of other religious faiths with relational priorities, those in regional and local government ..., those in the environment lobby ...., and those among the wider public who understand the importance of family and other relational ties. These disparate groups could together form a Relational Movement to persuade political parties to adopt part or all of the Relational agenda."

His critique of the problem of debt - personal and national - is fascinating, and his assertion of the role of the extended family is, in many ways, truly radical. Elements of Schluter-ism also resonate with Distributism, which asserts the importance of small, family-owned businesses against the interests of multi-national firms, and about which I have previously written here.

Some quotes from Schluter to whet your appetite for the full article:

"The prize of localism in welfare is not primarily saving scarce resources; it is better relational support and care for vulnerable people. It is also the reactivation of families and communities, and their engagement in economic, judicial and political decisions, which reinforce relational bonds and incentivise political engagement."

"If Capitalism is not radically reformed, what is the alternative? Family and community solidarity will become increasingly dysfunctional, leading to high levels of unemployment, unsustainable demands on schools, hospitals and social services, and an increasingly angry, disillusioned and frustrated electorate. The door will be open for authoritarian politicians of the Left or Right, with an agenda of savage repression to maintain social order."

There's also an interesting interview with Schluter in Christian Today here.

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Small businesses are the new mass market | Media | guardian.co.uk

#wearethefuture: Small businesses are the new mass market | Media | guardian.co.uk



More evidence that increased numbers of small businesses are one of the by-products of the economic downturn.




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The Homebrew Industrial Revolution

The Homebrew Industrial Revolution

Interesting ebook about the history of manufacturing (no, really, it's fascinating!) in which the author makes a reasonable case for proving that the so-called Industrial Revolution was not a natural development but an example of state-subsidised political action in support of the existing economic elites and against the interests of small scale, local and household-based manufacturers and producers.

In particular, the book argues that the idea of a "national market" was essentially an artificial construct in the C19 sustained by the formation of national transport systems (road, rail and telegraph). Furthermore, the book argues that these systems were (and remain) financed by taxation but disproportionately benefited large manufacturers. The true costs, therefore, of mass production for a national (as opposed to local) market were never felt by the large industrialists. If these costs were paid by the factory owners (as opposed to by the taxpayer via the state), the much-heralded economies of scale of the industrial era would have been non existent.

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2010: A golden age for micro-business? | Marketing Donut

2010: A golden age for micro-business? | Marketing Donut

"In a post-recession economy characterised by slow recruitment, there are a lot of talented people who are either unemployed or underemployed. It’s entirely feasible for them to start their own business without taking considerable financial risks - or even to do so alongside flexible working options."

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Distributism Part Two

Although not yet a fully paid-up convert to the economic theory of distributism, which I introduced in a previous post, the system does have the advantage of combining in my mind a number of previously disparate strands of thought which have exercised me over the years.

Among these have included:

• a decentralised approach to life. My observation is that both the centralised planned economies of twentieth century socialism and the emergence of multi-national corporations over the last fifty years have tended to produce powerful oligrachies that end to reduce democratic actvity whil claiming to preserve it. Decentralism affirms both the ability and the naturalness of individuals taking actions that they percieve to be in their best interests without the stuperfying levels of management and bureaucracy that typify centralised organisations
• an emphasis on small scale business. Whatever our views about the causes and origins of the current financial collapse, there can be little doubt that the sheer scale of the institutions at the heart of it was a significant factor in their downfall. This was also a factor in their ability to hold nation states hostage with dire threats of the damage that their collapse would do to the economy as a whole if they were not rescued by those same states
• an emphasis on localism. Ever since reading Nick Spencer's essay Where do we go From Here? I have been convinced of the social, personal and environmental benefits of geographical rootedness. Much current environmental thinking - from issues as apparently diverse as transport, leisure, energy production and food - emphasies the ecological benefits of "acting locally". Although distributism did not arise historically from an explicit environmental agenda, many of its conclusions are compatible with the emphasis on localism that informs much current, progressive environmental thought.
  
• an emphasis on self employment. For whatever reason, I have always fouind the idea of working for myself, which I am currently doing, far more satisfactory an arrangement than being employed by another person, this latter arrangement appearing to me (personally) as merely a step up from servitude.
  
• its origins in a Christian worldview. The early distributionists were Roman Catholic thinkers and, although not a Catholic myself, I do identify with some of the ethical views that underpin distributism. These include an affirmation of the dignity and social usefulness of work, an acceptance of the legitimacy of private ownership, a rejection of the capitalist pursuit of excessive (or "artificial" wealth) and a recognition (contra classic marxism) that mankind is a spiritual being not merely a materialistic entity.
  

In essence, I can see how distributism (defined as the widespread ownership of private productive property) contains emphases that can be found in theoretical aspects of capitalism - its emphasis on private property and individual freedoms, for instance - as well as in socialist thought - its demand for structural economic change that takes away the means of production from "the few" and gives it to "the many". Time will tell whether distributism is robust enough to be sucessfully implemented against the backdrop of the powerful vested interests that currently pull the strings of the global economy.

I guess there's only one way to find out.....

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