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SERMON ARCHIVE

Economic Fundamentalism

In the aftermath of September 11, U.S. President George W. Bush poignantly asked, "Why do they hate us?" The truly frightening thing is that his might NOT have been a rhetorical question. However, as attractive a pastime as it might be, my purpose is not to belittle the American President. Rather I want to suggest that the current tensions between the United States and its allies and a number of peoples and nations who view the first world with distrust and disdain is a war of fundamentalisms. But it is not a battle between religious creeds. No, it is a war of economic and cultural beliefs held with religious fervour. I suggest that the western capitalist world is the aggressor here. Many in this room will no doubt agree.

I further suggest that most of us who grew up under Capitalism are largely blinded by the pervasiveness of this economic form. We have been indoctrinated into its notions of what is good and right and just. Even when we criticize elements of Capitalism, we do so from a place comfortably inside that model. We seek only to change the inside of the box rather than challenging the box itself. There are very few in this land who would do away with Capitalism entirely. Instead, people work to humanize it, to add ethical and moral restraints to its practices and to put limits on its degree of exploitation of resources. We oppose Capitalism unrestrained, not Capitalism itself.

Even those of us who do challenge the capitalist model and try to moderate it with a liberal social justice agenda; even those of us who march to the "Leg" and try to stop the profitization of health care, even we who see ourselves as enlightened, fail to see how fully we are a part of the capitalist world.

And let me admit that I place myself in this category. The lifestyle I enjoy is due in large measure to the success of Capitalism. I may critique it and its excesses, but I still prefer it to the alternatives. I'm a Canadian city boy. I like cars and TV's and a good refrigerator and a better furnace. While I'm ready to reduce, reuse and recycle, I have little desire to surrender those perqs of Capitalism so I can live in a mud hut on a mosquito infested jungle riverbank.

When we see Mr. Bush ask, "Why do they hate us?" and quickly answer something like, "Because you are trying to control the Middle Eastern oil supply," we may be right to a degree. But we miss the deeper implications of the battle between Capitalist Economic Fundamentalism and those who truly resist it from outside the box. Now I have tied 'Economic' to ' Fundamentalism'. That needs explaining. Perhaps a place to start is with a definition of 'fundamentalism', and then we can look at how it can be a term applied to economic beliefs.

Grant Wacker cites this definition, "Fundamentalism is a global religious impulse, particularly in the 20th century that seeks to recover and publicly institutionalize aspects of the past that modern life has obscured. It typically sees the secular state as the primary enemy."

Now this definition serves pretty well if one looks at Christian fundamentalism. By the way, the term comes from Christianity and has been somewhat misapplied to other faiths. Indeed, Christian fundamentalism today is exactly about recovering some mythical age of purity, devotion and family values that may have existed for 10 or 15 minutes in 1954. And while Christian fundamentalists may not be physically attacking governments yet, they certainly point to a lax criminal justice system and the weak moral fiber of society and politicians as North America's chief ills. So by and large the definition of fundamentalism works in North America.

But it falls down when one looks at what is popularly but incorrectly called Islamic fundamentalism. The definition and the label both suggest that the core argument these groups have with the west is religious in nature. Western media have been content to use the adjective "Islamic" because it's convenient. It also serves to produce a useful fear response that is such a desirable support for the U.S. military agenda. They focus on a common religion as if it were the only characteristic linking the diverse groups who vocally or violently oppose the imposition of western cultural, political and economic values on their homelands.

True there is a slight legitimacy in the label because terrorist leaders have twisted Koranic teachings in order to whip suicide bombers into a blood lust. But in truth this conflict has no more to do with religion than do the sectarian battles in Northern Ireland. The Middle Eastern disputes have to more do with the battle of competing sets of cultural values, and particularly with the desire to resist the imposition of a western capitalist model with all of its attendant vices onto developing or resource rich nations. Because of our indoctrination under Capitalism, however, we can't imagine why another nation might not desire shopping malls with bars and Big Macs or 200 channel television, DVD players, stereos and a computer in every home. For most of us our world is not complete without a house in good repair including at least five appliances, one, two or three cars in the garage, at least one landline telephone and one or more cell phones and pagers.

We have grown accustomed to a set of benefits thanks to Capitalism that have been virtually accorded the status of rights. We have grown so accustomed to them that we assume that what we have, the rest of the world wants. One popular answer to, "Why do they hate us?" is, "They're jealous of our lifestyle."
As evidence I cite a picture from Iraq in the Edmonton Sun (the week of Nov, 11-16) . Of all the things they might choose to show in that intriguing country, the editors ran a photo of the front of a movie theatre showing a James Bond film. Proof positive that real Muslims want to be just like us with the implication that it's the crazy fundamentalists holding them back. Of course, Islamic fundamentalism has no place in the power structure of Iraq, but never let the facts get in the way of a good prejudice. What we miss in the "Because they're jealous," dismissal of Middle Eastern concerns is any awareness of our western culpability in creating their grievances. We ignore the part our Capitalist financial structure plays in the invasion of the Middle East and the undermining of cultural values there. Our lifestyle comes with several costs. The one of concern in this discourse is the rapacious need to find new materials, new resources and new sources of cheap labour. Capitalism lives on constant growth. In search of the necessities of market, raw material and labour we have invited ourselves into other cultures and other lands. If they welcome us, no problem. But if western Capitalism is resisted, there is a long history of undermining governments and eroding cultural values until these cultures either adopt our views or come to depend on us for defense, financial aid or even basic foodstuffs.

Of course, we don't admit that this undermining has anything to do with Capitalism. Instead our governments speak of bringing 'democracy' and 'freedom' and 'free speech' to 'oppressed peoples'. Of course, we haven't actually asked these folks if they think they are oppressed, or if so, how they would like their oppression addressed. I recently heard a Canadian man from Iraq on CBC radio. He said the Iraqi people want rid of Saddam, but they fear that a U.S. "cure" would be worse than the disease. The First World seems to have a rather male approach to foreign policy, one where the guys assume they have solution before asking about the problem. We guys do so hate asking for directions.

Whether or not the peoples in question see themselves as oppressed is of little consequence to economic fundamentalists. We want to encourage their 'individual initiative' by bringing them to a 'market economy'. All these are, of course, buzz words covering the economic agenda of Capitalism.

And finally Westerners tend to lack a good grasp of the ills of our own economic system. Drugs, the sex trade, crimes against property, white collar crime, rampant materialism and yes, even the erosion of the spiritual dimension that so concerns fundamentalists are all real aspects of the downside. Money does indeed become an idol if not a god. But we see few of these problems as the product of Capitalism. If anything, in a wonderfully twisted bit of logic, they are seen to be the failures of a liberal social agenda that seeks to temper and humanize the greatest excesses of capitalism.

"There's nothing wrong here that the fear of harsh punishment and a damn good dose of hard work won't cure," is the cry, "You're just coddling these lazy bums. You're just encouraging them. All these problems come from those layabouts sucking on the welfare tit and doing drugs!"

This analysis is short-sighted, incorrect and groundless, of course, but it does describe in broad strokes one view of pure Capitalism that advocates small government and laws designed to protect business. No, we tend to see only the benefits of Capitalism But not everyone looks at western society as we do. People who grew up in a different economic world with different cultural, religious and moral backgrounds see the First World very differently from those of us who grew up here. Few of us enmeshed in North American culture as we are, can even begin to grasp their viewpoints.

Having seen what other societies have lost in the conversion to Capitalism, has given some people in developing nations pause. It has even provoked resistance. And this resistance is focused on the United States as the flagship of Capitalism and as the chief police presence for western business around the world. As UNB scholar David Orton has noted, "There seems to be a relationship between the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and U.S. foreign policy.

There are real grievances in the Islamic world: depletion of its oil wealth; corruption and lack of basic democracy in many Islamic countries - Persian Gulf states ruled by "royal" families (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates); the treatment of Iraq by the west; the situation of the Palestinians, who face systematic militarized and brutalizing occupation by the Israeli state; the subservience of countries like Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to U.S. foreign policy, etc. There will be no social peace unless these grievances are addressed." But western governments, especially the U.S. are unwilling to address these claims.

The United States has occasionally tried to broker peace in the Middle East, but it is obvious to anyone outside the conflict that the U.S. has never stopped backing Israel, the one nation in the region who most completely identifies with the goals and principles of Western Capitalism. It should come as no surprise then that angry militants located in that part of the world should identify western economic practices as the real enemy and condemn as immoral the cultural practices which stem from and feed into that economic model. The so-called Islamic fundamentalists have no grievance with Christianity or even Judaism as a faith, but with Western style Capitalism.

And so they attack the very temple of Capitalism, the World Trade Center in the heart of the most economically powerful city in the world and George W. Bush dares to ask why they hate us? Please! Friends, the thing under attack is Western economic fundamentalism, for I think our attitude to this Capitalist model does indeed fit the fundamentalist definition. Like most philosophies of conservative ilk, it looks to a more perfect - if imaginary - past where trade was unrestrained, where unions did not interfere and where environmentalists weren't always challenging the extraction of resources and the means of production.

To expand on this notion of religious conviction and to explain some of the underlying ideas further, I have taken the liberty to prepare: Ten Commandments of Economic Fundamentalists:

1. Capitalism is our economic system. Thou shalt have no other form before it. Thou shalt be open for business always and live only to generate profit.
   
2. Thou shalt engage in competition and place no trade barriers or tariffs before it (unless they protect our industries). Second place is first loser.
   
3. Thou shalt risk a portion of thy capital in the service of growth. Growth is always good. The social, cultural and environmental price tags of growth are merely the cost of doing business.
   
4. Thou shalt exploit resources available to you and seek ones presently unavailable. Thou shalt class human beings as either 'resources' or 'markets', ideally both at the same time.
   
5. Thou shalt show no mercy for the poor and dispossessed or those unable to afford health care. They brought it on themselves.
   
6. Thou shalt not kill except through payment of extremely low wages or in service of gaining access to resources or markets. Killing is bad business. The dead don't buy.
   
7. Nothwithstanding the previous Commandment, thou shalt battle all the forces arrayed against Capitalism with all thy might. Thou shalt exaggerate the capacity of these forces so that the victory may appear all the more sweet. Nothing shall be allowed to stand against thy God Capitalism. Thou shalt profit from selling the weapons of battle.
   
8. Thou shalt seek to control the media so that the Gospel of Capitalism may be preached to the faithful on an unrelenting basis. Advertisements will be thy devotionals, pundits thy priests, and stock market quotes thy prayer.
   
9. Thou shalt not get caught stealing or breaking any other law. It's bad for business. Thou shalt pay lip service to business ethics until they impede thy ability to generate profit. Thou shalt hire the best lawyers thou can afford.
   
10. Thou shalt heap scorn upon the not-for-profit sector. 'Not-for-profit' is a ridiculous notion. However, thou shalt support public projects that publicize thy corporate name.
    

My point in this satirical decalogue is not to make you laugh, but to impress on us all, myself included, how much we are all a part of economic fundamentalism, often without knowing it. By the very fact that we live in the West we participate in this form of oppression. Do you know for sure that none of the clothes you are wearing came from sweatshops? Are you sure the food you ate for lunch was produced in fair practice farms? Which nation produced the gas in your car today? I could go on at depressing length.

There is no simple solution, of course. It's not as easy as say 'wiping out the Great Satan of U.S. Capitalism' as the terrorists claim. They are shooting at planes with pea shooters. No, Capitalism is here to stay. Perhaps the best we can do is keep working from within to moderate and limit the excesses and make for a more humane Capitalism. In "Deschooling Society," Ivan Illich argues heretically that steady growth is not a necessity for a stable society. He claims a no growth economy would be both stable and more conducive to the communal health of society. The real needs of people would be met, but we would have to sacrifice upper and upper middle class prosperity to achieve it. I could live with that future, but only if I changed drastically the nature of my investments.

And Dr. Jane Kelsey of New Zealand, a leading light in the opposition to economic fundamentalism has written '26 Tips on How to Oppose Corporate Rule', something under which her nation suffers. It was printed originally in the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives 'Monitor'. I downloaded a reprint from the Sustainable Cities website. A couple of those tips are helpful to us:

Be skeptical about fiscal and other 'crises'. Examine the real nature of the problem. Look at who is defining the crisis and who stands to gain. Demand to know the full range of solutions along with their costs and benefits.
Take economics seriously. There is no longer a boundary between economic, social and environmental policies. They are all linked. We must endeavour to educate ourselves on the economic drivers and implications of all policy.
Expose the weakness of their theory. Challenge the dubious facts offered in defense of new laws or policy. They are often riddled in inconsistency and false premises. We have a special advantage in this province with a government gifted at generating absurd justifications for their actions.
Expose the masterminds. Name the key corporate players who gain to benefit from policy change. They tend to be creatures who prefer the dark shadows.
Maximize every obstacle. Federal laws, constitutional challenges, legal requirements and regulations and trans-national bodies like the UN can all provide barriers that slow the pace of corporate takeover. Make it as hard as you can.
That is our duty as citizens: to restrain the growth and temper the dehumanizing and exploitative forces of Capitalism, to 'make it as hard as you can." But it will not earn us love and affection. Economic fundamentalism is a vicious foe.

Economic fundamentalism emanating from the west has far more to do with the increase in terrorism in the world than anything even vaguely related to Islam. Yet like fundamentalisms of any stripe, it permits no criticism from without and especially from within. In a now famous interview this September past, Prime Minister Jean Chretien suggested that the west had to accept some responsibility for provoking 9/11 through our indifference to Middle Eastern grievances.

He was immediately and viciously attacked by members of the U.S. government and Canadian Opposition parties and by the media on both sides of the border, most especially the New York Times. Why?

Because he spoke a truth that has been declared heretical by those who lead the movement of economic fundamentalism. Capitalism and growth are always right. Those who stand in opposition are always wrong. Why it's a corollary to seventh commandment!

Friends, the first thing we can do is come to understand that the west started this war long before the bombs began dropping. It is incumbent on us to name that truth and to do all we can to undermine the power of these fundamentalists.

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