Читать книгу Oikos: God’s Big Word for a Small Planet - Andrew Francis - Страница 9

There is a new generation of internationally respected economists who work across continents, writing intelligible patterns of alternative economic theory. What they share is an understanding of what is happening as the developing, corporately accepted theories of last century’s economics do not seem to be working in our new economic world order.

Twentieth-century capitalism has created “the new monsters”:

• I have a brave UK-born friend, who has retired with his Chinese wife to a provincial city in China. Many of our mutual acquaintances have voiced concerns for them because of the increasing inequalities that may re-erupt in the new Chinese capitalist economy. How long before that economy becomes the world’s largest, overtaking the USA’s, and is then deciding the “ground rules” for us all?24

• A few years ago, I heard one of the new generation economists, Yanis Varoufakis, speak in a London School of Economics public lecture. He spoke of the new global minotaur within economics. The minotaur is a mythical beast that devours all in its wake, ultimately bringing tragedy upon the nation that does not comply with its demands. I found Varoufakis, his thesis, and now his writings totally credible;25 he is a Keynesian, believing in altruistic economics.

• Both my own and my friends’ world travels beyond the civilized free world tell of inequality. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the planet still burns in its own carbon emissions as the “haves” seek to acquire more at the expense of the “have nots.”

If you are uncertain, think about what is happening to the Nenet, those caribou herders in Arctic Yamal.

Crashes and the failure of corporate theory

Humanity naturally favors a capitalist system, because of greed. We have to work against our very human nature not to “acquire bigger barns” (Luke 12:18) and then fill them. I have many friends and acquaintances who believe in a “simplicity of living,” in developing low-impact lifestyles; more of them in chapter 9. But the faith of those Quakers, Mennonites, and other radical Christians can seem like “foolishness to the Greeks” (1 Cor 1:22–25)—those who live in their orbits of self-centred philosophy, greed, and acquisition.

Even the Romans conquered Europe with a capitalist model. The old joke that their legions’ standards, declaring SPQR, meant “Small Profits, Quick Returns,” is of course false. But its true Latin meaning of Senatus Populus Que Romanus is “the Senate and People of Rome,” and was attached to the coinage and documents of the Roman Empire; possession of either implied acceptance of the empire’s dominion over one. In other words, every aspect of life and death was based on the empire’s rules. That is also how monetary systems work—or not.

The South Sea Company formed in 1711 was a public-private company designed to consolidate and thus reduce national debts, which naturally occurred in the development of the British colonies, including the Americas. The company was given the trading monopoly for South America, attracted much inward investment without any realistic trading prospect or even transactions, then financially collapsed before 1720. The bubble had burst, huge losses by investors were sustained, and the phrase “South Sea Bubble” became subsequently applied to any form of dubious investment. As a result, the UK Bubble Act of 1720 forbade the creation of any similarly styled joint stock companies. Yet after the great Wall Street Crash of 1929, the phrase “South Sea Bubble” was applied to the trading euphoria that preceded it. This crash had involved much speculative investment, stock/commodity prices free-falling and heralding a decade-long financial depression for all the industrialized nations.

But did the Western world learn? The previous chapter about economic theory tells of the postwar crawl for the free world to become partners rather than slaves of US-led capitalist domination. It was not just Gordon Gekko who thought he was a god on Wall Street. The plain fact is there are too many more, thinking they could live without much regulation in their expansionist speculations. Either side of the Atlantic, the worker power of unions was crushed and statutorily emasculated. For nearly twenty years, the US promotion of almost unpayable subprime mortgages occurred, spiralling many families down into poverty and once-fine cities (e.g., Detroit) into decline. Traders operated from less-regulated market centers, with insufficient supervision, occasionally with calamitous result. Do you remember the collapse of Barings Bank—and why it happened?

In 2008, all three of Iceland’s national, privately owned banks had huge commercial investments in UK and Dutch infrastructure projects. Then because of the international trading crisis they could not create the necessary short-term refinancing. Therefore the whole Icelandic domestic economy tumbled, forcing austerity upon its people, overseas financial losses, and the nationalization of one of those three banks. Bolstered by its growth through US dollar support, Japan’s economy majorly stuttered as both the “Asian tiger” and Pacific Rim economies slowed by 2008.

The outworking of this was the Great Crash of 2008, regarded as worse than that of 1929, which precipitated a global liquidity crisis. Should governments devalue their currency and print more money? The consequent downturn in economic activity led to a five-year (2008–12) global recession, significant rises in commodity prices (including oil), overwhelmingly contributing to the European “sovereign debt” crisis. Multiple African and Asian nations reported that their previously growing economies had stalled or even entered decline. There were runs on several UK financial houses, including the one that bankrupted Northern Rock, as well as in the USA and Europe. Internationally renowned companies such as Lehmann Brothers went to the wall.

What must be recognized is that we live in an interwoven global economy as one household/oikos. No amount of US legislation, such as the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act (to protect consumers and investors) can reach beyond their national boundaries, nor protect America from the effects of another global recession. Given current economic practice, if the USA cannot protect itself, no other country can—as global recession is spectacularly devastating and one day will be irredeemable.

An even more crass development is the current US-European Union Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, which is opposed by many Europeans, socialist groups, green, and other “people parties.” Basically this will allow transnational conglomerates to sue governments/nations for loss of trade if their national restrictions diminish those transnationals’ profit margins or right to trade.

The question remains—how much has corporate theory got it wrong? And if so, is there a present alternative? What happens to defaulting countries now and how can we arrive at some consideration of an alternative future? That future is the subject of the next chapter, and the journey which answering these questions entails forms the balance of this one.

Did Kropotkin, Marx, & co. get it wrong?

The problem is not necessarily capitalism, in itself, but that voluntary socialism has failed the world and its nations. Commentators speculate as to whether it was this dilemma that caused Marx and Engels to write The Communist Manifesto.

Since my teenage years, I have been an avid reader of Kropotkin and Tolstoy. Kropotkin (1842–1921) was a polymath and philosopher who renounced his aristocratic background to align himself with the peasantry by conviction. The titles of his three major works—The Conquest of Bread,26 Fields, Factories and Workshops,27 and Of Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution28 (all on my shelves since I was a teenager) tell of his desire for and advocacy of an egalitarian society, free from centralized government control and organized by local voluntary associations of workers and their families. He was critical of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution’s violence, having already warned in The Conquest of Bread that any such communistic state, predicated upon violence, had already sown the seeds of its downfall, including an almost logical return to capitalism. Subsequent events in the USSR and China have proved him to be correct in this.

Tolstoy (1828–1910) also renounced his aristocratic background, undergoing a profound Christian conversion in the 1870s to become a fervent anarchist, pacifist, and coworker with his former estate servants (much to the chagrin of his domineering wife). His pacifism influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., just as his writings have alerted millions to the plight of the common man or woman when forced to live within the hierarchy and economic system of prevailing Russian society.

It is clear that Marx knew the thought and writings of Kropotkin and Tolstoy (as well as similarly minded others) and, as the notes for his economic work reveal,29 was profoundly affected by the inability of ordinary people to have control of their economic and social destiny. Obviously that sits in diametric opposition to those who believe in self-seeking and capitalist hierarchical societies. But, to the radical Christian, Marx’s economic reflections are clearly on the same page as the egalitarian “reign of God” teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, revealed in the Christian Gospels.

It becomes more than a Greek tragedy when the contest between common humanity and the ruling economic system becomes overwhelming—as our next section reveals.

Agony30

The creation of a common currency—the euro—across the majority of nations of the European Union in 1999 was fraught with many potential and ongoing problems. The participating countries became known as the Eurozone and, without formal political and federal union (such as in the USA or former USSR), relied on each participant nation’s government acting within the defined rules and economic treaties. The latter tied all those nations together with demanded monetary policies, requiring all—whether at the top or bottom of the financial “elastic”—to behave and act similarly. Before joining the Eurozone, EU member countries must spend two years within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, to help create this compliance.

The EU required its constituent national governments to be strong enough to put their “own house in order.” No longer could individual nations simply decide to lower taxes or increase pension levels without ensuring they could “balance their own books” and not exceed agreed borrowing levels. I was living in France when this really began to bite and noted how the French government had to resist the calls for a statutory “working week” of fewer hours, or for lowering the pensionable age for state workers, or raising pensions but not taxes. This took cross-party strength and philosophical resolve. Other countries such as Ireland, Portugal, and Spain found their economies faltering, requiring strong fiscal remedies upon their own peoples, in order to meet the demands of the European Central Bank and their partner nations within the Eurozone. The fear of domino economic downfall brought forward the word contagion in our economic vocabularies. The nation that fell hardest was Greece.

Following the ending of the Greek military junta in 1974, many restrictions were lifted—including letting long-haired backpackers (like me) travel relatively freely and bring in the so-called tourist dollar, which was traded for a sackful of drachmas. But Greek government policies were at best somewhat erratic. The über-rich could choose whether to join in or how much state taxation they would pay. There was political expedience and laxity in policy, increasing pensions, guarantees of state employment, etc. Some tell me there were allegations of political corruption . . . while those same politicians had to comply with the conditions for becoming part of the Eurozone. Many of the island or rural poor lived in subsistence poverty, hardly earning enough to pay any tax. In any household (Greek: oikos) or nation, the bills have to be paid and Greece’s were not.

I found I was a natural supporter of PASOK, the PanHellenic Socialist Movement, using my visits and increasing Greek fluency to chat with islanders, ferrymen, and small farmers about why this social democratic movement commanded so much popular support. One major reason was that Greeks are proud of the civic understanding of being a polis—a democratic people with a 2,500-year history. Even the illiterate had a stronger understanding of “the people’s decision” than I encountered in Britain, northern Europe, or North America. PASOK only lost their political dominance when the Eurozone’s imposed austerity measures hit the Greek populace in the successive 2010 and 2012 bailouts. It was little surprise to me when the harder-left Syriza coalition was elected in January 2015 on an even tougher anti-austerity platform. An inevitable collision was set up—as Greece defaulted again on its international loans (against its background of political inabilities to comply with financial needs/policies)—between Syriza’s own hard-line stance and the European Central Bank’s demands for immediate compliance, which would mean accepting further austerity.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the understandable decision of the Greek Referendum in July 2015 to reject the imposition of further austerity measures, one casualty was Yanis Varoufakis, the internationally respected economist and then Greek Finance Minister. He resigned the morning after the referendum’s results was known, saying that Greek Prime Minister Tsipras had agreed with him that other Eurozone finance ministers would find it easier to try finding a different “bailout package” for the Greeks without Varoufakis in the room. Across Europe, media reports stated that Varoufakis tweeted to his international followers: “I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.”

To many outside Europe, it was hard to immediately understand the reasons why the Greeks should reject the bailout package offered by the Eurozone countries. However, tracking both societal and financial restrictions during the period from the 2010 crisis through the 2012 bailout to 2015 reveals many human reasons for this. In that five-year period:

• Many salaries had been gradually halved to a level of €600/US$675/£450 per calendar month.

• Nearly 60 percent of all pensioner families’ incomes had become less than €500/US$560/£375 per calendar month.

• Over 50 percent of workers aged under twenty-five were unemployed. For workers aged over twenty-five, that figure was approximately 25 to 30 percent, depending upon location (e.g., city, tourist resort, island). Many city and government workers went to their offices daily, simply to retain their jobs despite not being paid.

• The provision of universal healthcare had undergone a 25 percent cut in both provision and delivery.

For many of those already living in isolated—mountain, rural, or island—poverty as well as the middle classes, who were possibly supporting their adult, college-educated children on a single, halved salary, further austerity could not be contemplated. They had to vote “Oxi”—“No”—and reject the Eurozone’s further bailout because of the increasing austerity measures and higher taxation demanded.

Greece was the first modernized postwar country to default on its loan from the World Bank. This put the Greeks in the same dubious defaulter’s “bucket” as the Taliban’s Afghanistan or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Summer 2015 wore tortuously onward, as the Tsipras government was humiliatingly forced to accept an IMG and ECB package that was even more austere than that rejected by the July 2015 referendum. France tried to help Greece draft domestic measures to receive that bailout. Nations such as Finland became increasingly hawkish as did the penitent but previously failing Portugal. Finally, by autumn 2015, that Eurozone bailout had been agreed on, but at what cost to Syriza, and the poorest of the Greek taxpayers and pensioners, as well as national pride in the meaning of democracy?

Even so, summer 2016 saw that bailout demanding the increase of VAT (purchase tax) from 16 to 25 percent on all goods and services, inflicting further damage upon Greek tourist income, precipitating further hardship.

Was it not Aristophanes who had his Athenian hero, Dikaiopolis, say of the conflict with the Spartans: “Greeks will never be free until we sack the clowns who rule us”?31 As the condition of Spartan austerity hurts more Greeks, there is much more to come as increasingly that proud people questions what it means to be ruled from afar. As Joseph Stiglitz, the World Bank’s chief economist, maintained: “Europe’s austerity measures are a suicide pact.”

Taxation

A major part of Greece’s recent problems has been the (political) inability to create and sustain a progressive but uniform taxation across all its people. The lesson for us is in the key question: what kind of society and state intervention do we want?

Religious/church taxes

The Bible is full of encouragement to bring of our best before God. At harvest time we are to “put the first fruits in a basket and go to the altar” (Deut 26:1–10). Yet we are also enjoined by Jesus that if we are at enmity with a sister or brother, we should leave the basket and go and seek reconciliation first. The Hebrew practices of offering animal sacrifices are still part of what we often call “pagan cultures.” It is unsurprising that human nature seeks to get away with the minimum and so there was almost a temple tariff of what needed to be sacrificed to expiate for one’s individual sin. It was graduated or progressive: the poor man might need to sacrifice only two doves while the rich man might need to offer a goat.

Alongside this, the biblical practice of “tithing” occurred. This means giving the first 10 percent of one’s income or harvest to God or his earthly representative! My friend, Stuart Murray, has written a penetrating analysis of this practice, in Beyond Tithing, arguing that although tithing may be biblical, it is not Christian. The promotion of tithing by evangelical Christians must be interrogated, not just on those grounds, but also because it creates a minimalist attitude to Christian generosity. It allows tithers to say “job done” easily—particularly if US tax breaks are involved. This is in marked contrast to the generous lifestyles of my politically radical friends, family, Anabaptist and Mennonite compañeros.

Before the Industrial Revolution, every English parish had its tithe barn so the priest could oversee and collect the due tithes from every parishioner. In Lutheran countries, the tithe was converted into a tax and collected by the state authorities, who passed it on to the church. Gradually Lutheranism has moved from an “opt-out” to an “opt-in” church tax policy, across Germany and Scandinavia, massively reducing denominational income and its stewardship theology built upon tithing.

Learning from “secular” Europe

Late nineteenth-century Germany provided a model of “state socialism,” which found echoes in US “progressivism” and the UK’s “social liberalism.” Chancellor Bismarck’s policies then have evolved into present-day Germany’s welfare state. Benefits apply equally to all German citizens but it is an individual’s contribution and positive taxation history that determines what they receive. Similarly in France, French nationals (or more precisely their employers) pay highly to provide social benefits and high-quality health care to workers and their families, both during employment and in retirement. However the French have “top-up” payments for everything, including doctors’ appointments, health tests, and medication; the French poor can reclaim some or all of those payments through a convoluted bureaucratic process. In other words, benefits are “means-tested” for all citizens but refugees, incomers, etc. in both France and Germany receive fewer automatic benefits.

This is unlike Britain, where the post-1945 Beveridge Report created a nationwide system of non-means-tested benefits, including the National Health Service. That was fine when most health care was palliative, surgery was risky, and life expectancy lower. In today’s UK, the country cannot afford universal health care without making difficult choices:

• What treatments should be freely available to all? E.g., should infertility treatment or cancer care or diabetes clinics take priority? What happens when different regions (therefore zip codes) have different answers?

• Should there be automatic “means-testing” (anathema to UK socialists) of all benefits? The British already pay for much dental and optical care and prescriptions in England.

Those who favor a universal “Obamacare” health provision need to recognize these arguments, as well as the growing US problems associated with diabetes and advancing medical science, when making their long-term policy decisions.

To return to the key question: what kind of society and state intervention do we want? Crudely, the choice lies between a “high taxation-high welfare-free education” society or a “low taxation-low welfare-basic education” package. Scandinavia and the Netherlands favor the former. In Sweden, taxation is progressive, rising quickly to 50 percent. For a single person, with subsidized housing, this level bites at a US$45,000/UK£32,000 salary level. Little is means-tested, except housing subsidy and city taxes. Philosophically, the USA, Canada, Australasia, and Germany have few problems with means-testing, whereas Britain and Scandinavia do.

How we encourage (and vote for) society’s organization not only determines its financing and social polity but often also our thinking about how we share both monetary and community wealth with others than our historic citizens.

Both US Republicans and UK Conservatives would disagree with me but, for the record, I am a “high taxation-high welfare-free education” advocate. But I am also a vocal supporter of the debate that says that every country should have both a minimum and a maximum wage, incurring 95 percent taxation beyond the top hourly level. Elsewhere, I have already detailed my much lower income needs32 but essentially I believe in simplifying our lifestyle and needs sufficiently to thrive on the state-recognized living (minimum) wage while using any surplus for charitable and other pro bono work.

Finally, I want to commend the Irish system that enables artists, musicians, sports stars, actors, etc., who are relatively temporary high earners, to spread their income over several years, paying the appropriate level of tax in each of those years. With a maximum number of applicable years, dependent upon career length, this seems equitable to both the individual and the wider society.

What would Jesus do?

Jesus shared our human nature and well understood the innate desire to get something for nothing that afflicts us all. Indeed, he reminded his closest followers to “render unto Caesar . . .” (i.e., pay the due taxes), he confronted the corrupt tax collector Zacchaeus, inspiring the latter’s reparation, and taught many parables about the value of money. Jesus taught that money, resources, and food are to be shared if God’s intentions are to be fulfilled—and those who follow his words and ways now must share that same intention.

Therefore, I believe that the Western world must increase taxation to provide both overseas aid and interest-free development loans. Failure will bring the alternative that rich nations get richer and the poor countries poorer. The current European migrant crisis is symptomatic of that. Tragically, the guys in my local bar who complain about such migration are not always the first or worst to avoid paying tax. Rich people pay accountants to do that for them.

Serving God and Mammon

Jesus was very clear in declaring the dilemma between the intentions of God’s reign and serving one’s self-interest in pursuit of money: “You cannot serve God and money” (Matt 6:24). Unequivocal! Jesus declared God and money to be two distinct masters, between whom choice has to be made. For the disciple of Jesus, there is no choice but to accept God’s intention, as revealed in the words and ways of Jesus.

For too long, there have been many rich men (and women) metaphorically stuffing camels through the eye of needles to try to prove otherwise (Matt 19:24). But “Go sell all that you have and give it to the poor” (Luke 18:22), “If anyone has two coats, let him give one to the man without a coat” (Luke 3:11), and the Parable of the Rich Man’s Feast (Luke 14:12–24) are also unequivocal. When I open my closet full of shirts and suits, I know that Jesus’ direct word is just as much for me as for the richest people in the world—and you as well.

Jesus’ own ministry, and that of Peter, Paul, and the other apostles as well as the ongoing early church has always relied upon the unstinting generosity and hospitality of its materially blessed supporters. There is nothing wrong with making money but we must do it in both ethical and Earth-friendly ways. Then it is what we do with it and how we share our material resources that will demonstrate our commitment to the “reign of God,” as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.

Just as voluntary socialism and brutally enforced Communism have failed as alternatives, the endless pursuit of capitalism is being questioned by both our finite environmental/ecological limitations and an exponentially growing global population. How we live with those constraints demands some prophetic alternatives. The next chapter seeks to offer some initial pointers, thinking, and questions.

24. Jacques, When China Rules the World.