Common Goods

Economy, Ecology, and Political Theology

Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Catherine Keller, Elias Ortega-Aponte, Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Catherine Keller, Elias Ortega-Aponte, Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780823268443, 9780823268436
• eBook ISBN: 9780823268450
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Globalisation

In the face of globalized ecological and economic crises, how do religion, the postsecular, and political theology reconfigure political theory and practice? As the planet warms and the chasm widens between the 1 percent and the global 99, what thinking may yet energize new alliances between religious and irreligious constituencies?This book brings together political theorists, philosophers, theologians, and scholars of religion to open discursive and material spaces in which to shape a vibrant planetary commons. Attentive to the universalizing tendencies of "the common, " the contributors seek to reappropriate the term in response to the corporate logic that asserts itself as a universal solvent. In the resulting conversation, the common returns as an interlinked manifold, under the ethos of its multitudes and the ecology of its multiplicity.Beginning from what William Connolly calls the palpable "fragility of things, " Common Goods assembles a transdisciplinary political theology of the Earth. With a nuance missing from both atheist and orthodox religious approaches, the contributors engage in a multivocal conversation about sovereignty, capital, ecology, and civil society. The result is an unprecedented thematic assemblage of cosmopolitics and religious diversity; of utopian space and the time of insurrection; of Christian socialism, radical democracy, and disability theory; of quantum entanglement and planetarity; of theology fleshly and political.

Economies and Ecologies of (Un)Common Good/s

Reconfiguring the Common Good and Religion in the Context of Capitalism: Abrahamic Alternatives

JOERG RIEGER

It is quite common to hear accusations of selfishness and greed when people talk about what is wrong with the world. Often, these accusations are leveled against people of privilege such as CEOs of large corporations, whose salaries are hundreds of times higher than the salaries of their workers. Sometimes these accusations are also leveled against members of the middle class whose lives appear to be largely self-centered, without much concern for the wider community. What these accusations overlook, however, is that what is perceived as selfishness and greed in these cases is part of a broader vision of how the common good—i.e., that which is most beneficial for all—is to be achieved. Moreover, this widely embraced vision does not understand itself as one way toward the common good among others; it understands itself as the only way.

Capitalism, the economic system in which we find ourselves, is built on the assumption that when people pursue their own interests, they automatically pursue what is in the common interest, the common good. Adam Smith, often considered the father of capitalist economics, was quite clear about this assumption.¹ Businesses will provide better products and services, it is believed, if they are focused strictly on profits and not on how they might benefit their workers or the community.

Smith also noted that the common good is curtailed when people act in altruistic fashion and seek to pursue the interests of others. Those who refuse to follow their self-interest in order to pursue the common good are seen as doing more harm than good: “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good,” states Smith. Fortunately, he continues, “it is an affectation . . . not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.”² In other words, according to the logic of capitalism that is accepted even today, caring for one’s workers, the community, or the environment is detrimental not only for business interests but also for the common good. And, like in the days of Smith, I see little danger that capitalists would feel tempted to waste much effort caring for what Smith called “the public good.”

Today, Smith’s arguments that were developed in the context of small businesses marked by personal relationships in towns and villages of eighteenth-century England are applied to giant corporations whose revenues exceed those of small countries, as well as to large-scale structural adjustments that affect the economies of whole nations. Tax cuts and subsidies for corporations and the wealthy, for instance, are justified because it is assumed that the economy as a whole will benefit from them. The self-interest of corporations and the wealthy, it is assumed, will automatically translate into the common good. Vice versa, it is assumed according to this logic that forcing corporations and the wealthy to contribute to the common good via taxes and other social commitments will damage the economy as a whole.

Despite its popularity, however, there is little solid evidence that this economic system has worked as advertised. Even the bipartisan Congressional Research Service has pointed out the flaws of its assumptions: “There is little evidence over the past 65 years that tax cuts for the highest earners are associated with savings, investment or productivity growth.”³ As some economists have argued, economics resembles religion when it promotes big ideas that are not backed up by empirical evidence. This is the way economics now functions at the top levels of the field, according to the economist Robert Nelson, and the dominant logic of capitalism appears to prove him right.⁴ Religion, according to this position, is defined as the promotion of big ideas or as a kind of idealism, in opposition to other approaches that are based on observation and analysis. Nevertheless, this is not the only way to define religion. There are other definitions of religion that are more promising, with the potential to reshape how we understand economics and how we understand the common good.

In the following argument, the goal is to develop robust notions of the common good that are able to address the tremendous suffering and the power differentials that mark our age, together with robust notions of religion that grow out of communal struggles against oppression and exploitation.

COMMON CONCEPTIONS OF THE COMMON GOOD AND OF RELIGION THAT DO NOT WORK

It is important to grasp what we are up against. As noted, the dominant logic of capitalism intends to promote the common good, that which is most beneficial for all, rather than selfishness and greed as ends in themselves. Capitalism perceives selfishness and greed as contributing to the common good via the “invisible hand of the market,” which supposedly balances the selfishness of the various parties involved in the market without fail. Capitalism’s logic is built on the confidence that this invisible hand consistently serves the common good. This confidence, as I have argued elsewhere in greater detail, resembles religious idealism since it is promoted despite mounting evidence that capitalism destroys the common good. Many indicators point to the fact that this confidence in the workings of the invisible hand of the market is harmful, as it was one of the key factors that have pushed us into the current erosion of the economic and political common good that we are experiencing, where the wealthiest few benefit at the expense of the many.⁵

Without dealing with the basic logic of capitalism and its quasi-religious confidence that “a rising tide will lift all boats,” which is endorsed to some degree by the two large political parties in the United States, alternative visions of the common good will not only be shallow but ultimately fail to be effective.

Perhaps the shallowest affirmations of the common good are the ones that propose to fight individualism and selfishness, taken at face value, in the name of the common good. What is missing here is an engagement with the logic of capitalism and an analysis of the relationships of power that are at work in the current situation. Here, the big ideas of capitalism (for instance, that self-interest is good) are merely swapped for what are supposedly the big ideas of religion (for instance, that self-interest is bad). This approach is frequently taken by people of various religious traditions, who talk about the common good or about community without looking at the deeper causes of their distortion. Eastern religious traditions, in particular, are often used by Westerners when they want to affirm harmonious communities or a romantic notion of the common good. Others invoke Jewish and Christian traditions in similar idealizing fashion.

Two examples help clarify what the problem is: Blaming the individualism and selfishness of the powerful and wealthy in the name of the common good, my first example, not only fails to take into consideration that greedy individuals may not be the primary problem; this position assumes that individualism is real and that the powerful and wealthy are indeed the kinds of individuals that have built their success with their own hands by being selfish. As a result, this approach covers up the fact that the wealth and power of some is built not in isolation but in a relationship, on the backs of others. Furthermore, this approach covers up the relations of power that produce what has been called “structural greed,” a phenomenon that is largely independent of the disposition of individuals.⁶

Moreover, the common good that is affirmed in this approach is a rather idealist category that is amorphous and ill-defined, as people can supposedly contribute to it at will, as individuals who can act independently of larger networks of power. This overlooks the fact that not everyone is in a position to support the common good and that some are explicitly charged by the system with working against it, whether they like it or not: Even CEOs, often seen as powerful individuals who can do whatever they want, have little choice in the matter because if they choose not to support structural greed, they are likely to be replaced by others who do. After all, the mission of a corporation, according to a classical legal case against the Ford Motor Company, is not to work for the common good, that which is most beneficial to all, but to work for the benefit of their stockholders and against the benefit of their workers.⁷

Another example, also very current, would be the sort of affirmation of the common good or of common interest over against what is perceived as special interests, which is how the interests of minorities are often defined. The discourse of race as it has shaped up in the United States in the aftermath of the civil rights movement comes to mind: Even when racial minorities are accepted and affirmed, they are often expected to fit in with the racial majority that understands itself as white. This discourse overlooks the fact that common interest might not always be represented best by an idealized majority (white people only exist as such an idealized group)—a deep insight found in many religious traditions but often neglected by their mainline representatives.

More important, this discourse overlooks the fact that not even the majority of those who consider themselves to be white in our example are necessarily benefiting a great deal from their racial status in a capitalist economy where privilege is tied not only to race but also to class power. This is the famous mistake of the proverbial Joe the Plumber, a Caucasian plumber who supported Republican John McCain’s presidential bid in 2008. In his view of the world, shaped by the ideal of whiteness, Joe obviously failed to realize that he would have had a lot more in common with fellow African American and Latino plumbers than with a white multimillionaire.

Shallow affirmations of the common good—or of what is supposedly common interest over against self-interest—fail to be effective in part because they overlook the flow of power, which is a perennial problem with idealizing positions. Affirming an idealized notion of the common good in a situation of structural injustice is bound to fail because those who violate the community most effectively do so not necessarily by choice, and often they are not even aware of what they are doing. The wealthy, for instance, might think of themselves as staunch supporters of the common good because of substantial contributions to charity, without realizing how their collective interests contribute to the destruction of the common good. The popular image of Microsoft’s Bill Gates, which notes his substantial contributions to charity but not his efforts of creating monopolies and promoting low-wage production overseas, reflects similar views. What is lacking here is a robust notion of the common good built on more than just a conglomerate of isolated individuals and held together by the innocent-sounding question of why we all cannot just get along, which implies that there is no reason why we could not.

This naïve affirmation of the common good cannot think of any sense for reasons why we all cannot just get along. Among these reasons are the vast differentials of power that separate the various players, such as, for instance, buyers and sellers, in the capitalist marketplace. Adam Smith, the intellectual father of capitalism, assumed a rather level playing field between small merchants such as butchers and their customers, which served as the basis for his confidence that the invisible hand of the market would balance out any differences. Today, such confidence in the invisible hand is less warranted, as there are few level playing fields where sellers and buyers can interact without grave power differentials. Consider, for example, the case of a seller like the small butcher shop at the corner, which is forced to compete with other sellers like the Walmart corporation, and where there are various types of buyers, from individuals with limited resources to large corporations. In this scenario, the interests of little sellers and buyers with limited resources are unable to compete with the powerful interests of corporations and thus are forced out of business (the butcher shop) or determined by these interests (the consumers, via advertising and the need to save money).

In a context of grave power differentials, shallow and naïve notions of the common good are harmful, especially when they overlook the question of power and promote big ideas instead (like simple replacements of self-interest with common interest) that are not in touch with the shape that everyday reality takes. Religion in a context of grave power differentials will not make a difference unless it helps us in providing alternatives to these shallow notions of the common good. This means that religion has to amount...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Plurisingular Common Good/s
• Planetary Political Theology
• Economies and Ecologies of (Un)common Good/s
• Common Flesh, Common Democracies
• Acknowledgments
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Series List