William T. Cavanaugh, Being Consumed; Economics and Christian Desire: Review Part 3

Finally in chapter 4, “Scarcity and Abundance,” Cavanaugh uses the logic of communion to challenge the logic of the market. We are desiring beings, but only in God can our desires be put to rest. An economics that bases itself on the assumption of scarcity is not only based on hunger but also on endless human wants. Shopping, then, is finally about the “pleasure of stroking desire,” for in “scarcity is implied . . . the daily erotics of desire that keeps the individual in the pursuit of novelty” (91). Such a lifestyle, Cavanaugh insists is “the death of Christian eschatology” (93). Instead, of placing our hope in Christ’s kingdom breaking into this fallen world system, we continually distract ourselves with more consumption even as we shrug before “a tragic world of scarcity.” Worse, we come to develop a taste for hearing of global tragedies: “Even the suffering of others can become a spectacle and a consumable item: tsunamis sell newspapers” (94). Cavanaugh holds that the Eucharist should teach us of “the communicability of pain from one person to another” within the Body of Christ. Rather than individuals facing off in competition over a scarce supply, we become truly individual as we impart help to each other, becoming dependent upon each other. We cannot give into despair but must respond in eschatological hope, for Christ daily gives of his self that we may know “where we are going” (100).

There are numerous ways to go about responding to Cavanaugh’s claims. One, for instance, could place his theology within numerous streams of Christian reflection. He draws off the Christian personalism of John Paul II and the economic distributism of early 20^th-century Catholic ethics. He also shows a great debt to the tradition of virtue ethics currently taught by Stanley Hauerwas at Duke Divinity School. Likewise, Cavanaugh is much indebted to the Augustinian tradition of reflection on ordered and disordered loves within the City of God and the City of Man, as well as the new Trinitarian insights of Hans urs von Balthasar, to name only one theologian. Each of these streams of Christian reflection has strengths and weaknesses. One could also ascertain whether he has truly understood the experience and logic of late, global capitalism in the last few decades. Has he, for instance, ignored counter-examples that might go against his theses of hypermobilization of capital, of the creation of constant, movable desire, and of globalization as a false parody of true Christian catholicity?

However, I want to respond more personally as one First World, Christian individual to his book. In my experience, much of what he claims rings true, at least some of the time. I am ashamed to say that I have found myself at various points in my life addicted to the buying of things, and of late, equally tempted by the consumption of short bursts of image and experience though online social networking and news. I, too, have often thrown up my hands in despair at the news of overseas economic abuses, wondering where to buy my clothing, my coffee, or my children’s toys. And I, too, have taken a kind of superficial pride and joy in my “diversity,” listening to African music while I eat fajitas, read a Russian novel, and look forward to watching a Dutch film on video later that evening. I would rather play it safe and not have to interact with the truly poor, unless, of course they seem grateful and don’t smell too much. After I finished reading Being Consumed , I struggled with what I should do in response, and my first desire was to simply and sadly think I could do nothing. Of course, this would simply be to “consume” Being Consumed as part of the endless diet of ideas in a collegiate environment. Instead, I am praying and seeking how my family should act differently in what we eat and buy and give. I have talked to my wife some about the book and will continue to do so.

It does not seem to me that you need be convinced by everything that Cavanaugh claims in order to respond to it with repentance and action. For example, I am somewhat dissatisfied with his theology of the Church and world. He seems to conflate the distinction between them too much at times, the logic of the Eucharist almost dissolving the need for individual repentance. I can’t always tell if his doctrine of the Supper actually merges nature and grace or simply brings them into a particular and local relationship for our time. Likewise, his portrait of multi-national abuses does not reflect the experience of local managers who are attached to their workers and seek to work for change for their benefit. Nonetheless, I am still left crying mea culpa. Well, not only “my fault” per se, for that too is part of his point. I am joined to the Body of Christ, and I must learn to work within the messy, faulty life of that local community called a church if I am to develop with others the habits and practices that help address some of these matters. Happily, Cavanaugh has provided some examples worth learning more about:

• Mondragón Cooperative Corporation, based on the principles of distributism, is worker-owned and governed and contributes greatly to neighborhood health, education, and lower crime.
• CRS Fair trade program in coffee, chocolate, and handcrafted items seeks to deal directly with growers and local artisans to promote fair payment, as well as promote a sense of solidarity with those overseas.
• Church Supported Agriculture (CSA) seeks to create a direct market between local family growers and local churches in hopes of providing a face-to-face buying environment with growers and helping to promote sustainable farming.
• The Economy of Communion Project associated with the Focolare Movement promotes a business model that divides profits into 1/3 aid to the poor, 1/3 education promotion, and 1/3 business sustainability. As of 2006, 700 businesses worldwide had adopted their model.

I would challenge us all to learn more about these and other Christian options like them.

William T. Cavanaugh, Being Consumed; Economics and Christian Desire: Review Part 2

Cavanaugh offers an insightful critique of consumerism, which he charges as being driven not by ownership of things but by consumption of things: “Consumerism is not so much about having more as it is about having something else; that’s why it is not simply buying but shopping that is the heart of consumerism” (35). Strangely then, consumerism is a kind of parody of the Christian call to be detached from things and, in giving things away, to become attached to others. Cavanaugh believes the problem is that currently we as consumers are disconnected from almost every stage of the making of things, including being separated from those who make them. Most of us, he believes, are not comfortable with the plight of exhausted and desperate workers in overseas sweatshops, but we are unable to know exactly where and under what conditions our clothing, our toys, or our electronic devices are produced, and since many of these might also be produced in conditions that are somewhat better than starvation in the fields, we are left mostly with a vague ennui and free-floating guilt. What’s worse for us is that increasingly we are even detached from the things we consume, so that marketers must produce simultaneously an “organized creation of dissatisfaction” and yet also invest the products we purchase with positive emotional associations. “Products are made in the factory, but brands are made in the mind,” as one marketer observed (45). What, then, are Christians to do? Cavanaugh, writing in the tradition of Antony of Egypt, Clement of Alexandria, and Thomas Aquinas, suggests that we return to the pursuit of God as our chief desire. To be the Body of Christ is to identify with the “least of these.” We must take practical steps to overcoming our detachment by giving to others in a way that supports a sustainable life for them. We must also make our homes places where food is prepared, musical instruments are played, and people are engaged in making things.

Chapter 3, “The Global and the Local,” is the most densely theological of the book, yet I suspect it is also the heart of Cavanaugh’s attempt to provide a Christian vision that runs counter to consumerism: “[C]ulture and economics are not autonomous spheres with no mutual effect. Economic relationships do not operate on value-neutral laws, but are rather carriers of specific convictions about the nature of the human person” (59). Globalization is a false catholicity; it purports to offer a universal world of multicultural communication and exchange, but it actually tends to flatten out local cultures into a world of McDonalds and Disneys, even as it also works to dismember communities into atomistic individuals. Here, he returns to his concern with the “hypermobility of capital” which can abandon its people easily, thus creating a situation that makes labor unions fairly impossible, as well as negotiations for better working environments, higher wages, and more ownership in the means of production. Cavanaugh is equally suspicious of the claims of religious pluralism and multiculturalism. Both doctrines, he believes, really perpetuate a post-modernist version of persons and reality that is still radically individualistic. We can consume surface-level, multi-cultural experiences without necessarily changing anything about ourselves and our patterns of First World consumption. The global village is a comforting fiction. In response to this, Cavanaugh looks to Jesus Christ as the “concrete universal: “Only in the Incarnation can an individual be universal and the universal be individual” (76), and only in the mission of Christ can we truly discover ourselves, for Christian discipleship teaches us to lay ourselves aside for others: “The true identity of each unique human person is thus founded on the overcoming of an illusory self-sufficiency” (83). This practice is deeply Trinitarian, for we enter into an exchange of mutual giving and receiving. But this Christian exchange is always realized in local places over time. Only then can we truly be and model what God intends for Creation.

William T. Cavanaugh, Being Consumed; Economics and Christian Desire: Review Part 1

Jekabs Bikis and I reviewed together Cavanaugh's Being Consumed. We've both agreed to post our reviews and our responses to each other here. Below is the first section of mine:

William T. Cavanaugh’s book is a slim volume on a broad topic. Just under a hundred pages, Being Consumed brings to our attention the impact of consumerism, commodification, and globalization on personhood, free markets, multinational corporations, marketing, shopping, tourism, self-identity, and human freedom. Yet despite such a wide range of concerns, Cavanaugh’s target is much more defined. As “a contribution to a kind of theological microeconomics,” he desires above all to help Christians “to discern and create economic practices, spaces, and transactions that are truly free” (viii). To do this, requires a theological critique of the spiritual and moral temptations of global capitalism. So rather than mount a macro-level reform of multinational markets, Cavanaugh is more concerned with how Christians might live differently at the local and particular level, and how by living in such a way they might further incarnate the eschatological promises that God has extended in the Lord’s Supper.

In chapter 1, “Freedom and Unfreedom,” Cavanaugh asserts that “true freedom requires an account of the end (telos) of human life and the destination of creation” (2), which for the Christian is to desire and participate in God. We need to keep this end in view because otherwise we cannot distinguish true and false desires. A model that judges the freedom of economic exchange as simply equal to the exchange itself is not truly free, for it has no standard by which to judge human flourishing. A model that values exchange in itself doesn’t care whether that exchange is about bread and beans or pornography and breast augmentation. Christians, on the other hand, are called to cultivate true desires, and we must do this in the face of marketing that seeks to create imprudent yearning in us and to addict us to the constant stimulation of those desires. We also have to work against large-scale organizations which ignore the needs of their employees. Charges Cavanaugh, we delude ourselves if we think that late capitalism is truly free for all its participants. Multinational corporations may choose to relocate their operations from one cheap source of labor to the next, quickly abandoning their workers, who after all, cannot easily move without disrupting their lives and communities. The ownership of property, Cavanuagh insists, is intended by God to serve the common good, not to pursue the maximization of profits at the expense of people. Christians then should work to create companies which keep this as one of their preeminent purposes.

Free Markets and Human Persons (John Paul II series)

Here's some of the juicer passages from the 1991 encylical Centesimus Annus. John Paul II clearly condemns the collectivism and state-ownership practiced by communism, and he also clearly praises the free market for many things, particular monetary ("solvent") matters. Yet he also decries a business model that sees the maximization of profits as its own reason for existence. He warns against the potential idolatry in the consumption of goods, and insists that business must be guided by moral and ethical concerns that profit the community of persons. The conditions of the workplace matter to Christians, he says, because they matter to proper human flourishing everywhere:

It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs. But this is true only for those needs which are "solvent", insofar as they are endowed with purchasing power, and for those resources which are "marketable", insofar as they are capable of obtaining a satisfactory price. But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied, and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish. It is also necessary to help these needy people to acquire expertise, to enter the circle of exchange, and to develop their skills in order to make the best use of their capacities and resources. Even prior to the logic of a fair exchange of goods and the forms of justice appropriate to it, there exists something which is due to man because he is man, by reason of his lofty dignity. Inseparable from that required "something" is the possibility to survive and, at the same time, to make an active contribution to the common good of humanity. . . .

[I]t is right to speak of a struggle against an economic system, if the latter is understood as a method of upholding the absolute predominance of capital, the possession of the means of production and of the land, in contrast to the free and personal nature of human work. In the struggle against such a system, what is being proposed as an alternative is not the socialist system, which in fact turns out to be State capitalism, but rather a society of free work, of enterprise and of participation. Such a society is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the State, so as to guarantee that the basic needs of the whole of society are satisfied.

The Church acknowledges the legitimate role of profit as an indication that a business is functioning well. When a firm makes a profit, this means that productive factors have been properly employed and corresponding human needs have been duly satisfied. But profitability is not the only indicator of a firm's condition. It is possible for the financial accounts to be in order, and yet for the people — who make up the firm's most valuable asset — to be humiliated and their dignity offended. Besides being morally inadmissible, this will eventually have negative repercussions on the firm's economic efficiency. In fact, the purpose of a business firm is not simply to make a profit, but is to be found in its very existence as a community of persons who in various ways are endeavouring to satisfy their basic needs, and who form a particular group at the service of the whole of society. Profit is a regulator of the life of a business, but it is not the only one; other human and moral factors must also be considered which, in the long term, are at least equally important for the life of a business. . . .

It is the task of the State to provide for the defense and preservation of common goods such as the natural and human environments, which cannot be safeguarded simply by market forces. Just as in the time of primitive capitalism the State had the duty of defending the basic rights of workers, so now, with the new capitalism, the State and all of society have the duty of defending those collective goods which, among others, constitute the essential framework for the legitimate pursuit of personal goals on the part of each individual. . . .

Certainly the mechanisms of the market offer secure advantages: they help to utilize resources better; they promote the exchange of products; above all they give central place to the person's desires and preferences, which, in a contract, meet the desires and preferences of another person. Nevertheless, these mechanisms carry the risk of an "idolatry" of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities.

Marxism criticized capitalist bourgeois societies, blaming them for the commercialization and alienation of human existence. This rebuke is of course based on a mistaken and inadequate idea of alienation, derived solely from the sphere of relationships of production and ownership, that is, giving them a materialistic foundation and moreover denying the legitimacy and positive value of market relationships even in their own sphere. Marxism thus ends up by affirming that only in a collective society can alienation be eliminated. However, the historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.

The historical experience of the West, for its part, shows that even if the Marxist analysis and its foundation of alienation are false, nevertheless alienation — and the loss of the authentic meaning of life — is a reality in Western societies too. This happens in consumerism, when people are ensnared in a web of false and superficial gratifications rather than being helped to experience their personhood in an authentic and concrete way. Alienation is found also in work, when it is organized so as to ensure maximum returns and profits with no concern whether the worker, through his own labour, grows or diminishes as a person, either through increased sharing in a genuinely supportive community or through increased isolation in a maze of relationships marked by destructive competitiveness and estrangement, in which he is considered only a means and not an end.

The concept of alienation needs to be led back to the Christian vision of reality, by recognizing in alienation a reversal of means and ends. When man does not recognize in himself and in others the value and grandeur of the human person, he effectively deprives himself of the possibility of benefitting from his humanity and of entering into that relationship of solidarity and communion with others for which God created him. Indeed, it is through the free gift of self that man truly finds himself. This gift is made possible by the human person's essential "capacity for transcendence". Man cannot give himself to a purely human plan for reality, to an abstract ideal or to a false utopia. As a person, he can give himself to another person or to other persons, and ultimately to God, who is the author of his being and who alone can fully accept his gift. A man is alienated if he refuses to transcend himself and to live the experience of selfgiving and of the formation of an authentic human community oriented towards his final destiny, which is God. A society is alienated if its forms of social organization, production and consumption make it more difficult to offer this gift of self and to establish this solidarity between people.