II.2 – The Conquest of the Public and the Punishment of the Undisciplined
Having argued that neoclassicism has disciplined the desire and imagination of the public, primarily by means of credit-debt, consumption-accumulation, and advertising, it is now worth demonstrating the ways in which neoclassicism dominates all areas of our public life together. In particular it has come to dominate public stories and symbols, public space, public time, public language and discourse, and public bodies.
To begin with, it comes as no surprise that capitalism-as-religion comes to dominate public stories. Storytelling, after all, is the core of a culture, and the foundational element of any philosophy, worldview, religion, or system of meaning.[100] So, what is the dominant form of storytelling within neoclassicism? It is branding. Branding is the process of applying a story to a product, and those who consume these products then receive their identities from that narrative, thereby forming “communities of brand users.”[101] Furthermore, there is no narrative, symbol, or story that is impervious to branding – the power of branding is that it is capable of appropriating all other religious symbols and narratives and using those symbols to produce profit and consumption.{102]
Yet all stories require liturgies. Liturgies are the formative telling and physical representation of foundational stories. When Marshall McLuhan tells us that “the medium is the message,” he has captured the importance of liturgies – how you tell a story is just as important, and formative, as the content thereof.[103] The liturgy of neoclassicism is found within, and produced by, television, film, and the popular entertainment media. As Benjamin Barber notes:
Hollywood is McWorld’s storyteller, and it inculcates secularism, passivity, consumerism, vicariousness, impulse buying, and an accelerated pace of life, not as a result of its overt themes and explicit story-lines but by virtue of what Hollywood is and how its products are consumed.[104]
Watching one’s daily shows is just as liturgical as attending daily Mass, and attending a weekly movie matinee, is just as liturgical an experience as attending a weekly church service.
However, advertising is the most prominent way in which neoclassicism tells its (religious) stories.[105] The prominence of advertising displays the dominance of neoclassicism’s stories. This prominence of advertising points to the second way in which neoclassicism has conquered the public—by dominating public space. Virtually all public space, and all public venues, have been branded or filled with advertising of one sort or another.[106] Furthermore, the local institution of neoclassicism, the shopping mall – which functions both as neoclassicism’s theme park and its temple – demonstrates this conquest of public space in another way: the birth of the (suburban) shopping mall brought death to vibrant inner-city communities.
Furthermore, although advertising and shopping primarily reshape local space, the globalization of neoclassicism has also accomplished a reconfiguring of global space. Globalization promotes a “myth of catholicity” in that it presents the world as a ‘global village’ or as a single united whole, and by doing so it makes the way in which real space remains rigidly segmented.[107]
Finally, not content to restructure local and global space, neoclassicism, through its alliance with computer technology, also causes people to reimagine bodily space.[108] With the birth of the internet and the creation of cyberspace comes the liberation of the “Self” from the physical body. Is one enters into cyberspace, the result is the loss of embodiment and of real space for engagement with representations and the simulacra of other people.[109] Here all the macro and the micro reorientations of space come together: in cyberspace, global space is collapsed and we become advertisements of ourselves.
This, then, leads to the third way neoclassicism has conquered the public. Along with conquering public space, it has also conquered public time. It is done this in two primary ways. To begin with, it has, to a certain extent, abolished time. Again, computer technology has played an important role in this as transactions that used to take days or weeks can now be accomplished by click of a button. The primary result of this is the loss of leisure time—the loss of rest. Because neoclassicism is premised upon competition rest and leisure, rather than being an assumed part of human existence, become something that is earned.[110] Ironically, precisely because leisure times is earned, it becomes a status sign and a locus of competition and is thereby transformed into another variation of work. Consequently, many people end of preferring work to free time![111]
The second way in which neoclassicism conquers public time is by appropriating the calendar and all public festivals. All festivals – from Easter, to Thanksgiving, to Christmas, to New Years – become consumption-festivals, just as other significant dates – like Birthdays – are also primarily celebrated through consumption. Regardless of whether or not one accepts the symbols and values that neoclassicism associates with those festivals, one demonstrates one loyalty to capitalism by participating in those events.[112]
The fourth way that neoclassicism conquers the public is by conquering public language and discourse related to economics. Neoclassicism establishes limits on the type of knowledge permitted (i.e. only descriptive knowledge, free of value judgments is permissible), by establishing the type of language that is permitted (i.e. the most authoritative language is that which is mathematical and can be expressed in using symbolic logic) and by establishing the boundaries of the discussion (i.e. economics is a distinct realm of science). This is a classic example of Foucault’s point that, rather than seeing power as a product of knowledge, we must see knowledge as a product of power.[113] Consequently, when a neoclassicist like Milton Friedman is questioned about the social cost of the economic advice he gave to General Pinochet he can simply respond by saying “silly question.”[114] Consequently, neoclassicism is also content to tolerate dissenting voices because it knows that, any voices of dissent that remain within these limits will be impotent, and any voices of dissent that violate these limits will be considered irrelevant.[115]
Finally, neoclassicism conquers the public by conquering all public bodies. The assault on the public is rooted in neoclassicism’s individualistic anthropology. By defining people as individuals, community is fractured on a fundamental level. Foucault expresses this well:
[t]he individual, that is, is not the vis-à-vis of power; it is, I believe, one of its prime effects… the individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power, exercised over bodies.[116]
Further, when people relate to one another primarily as commodities, producers, and consumers, then everything else that makes up a person’s life is relegated to the private sphere.[117] Consequently, the notions of civil society, community, politics, and ‘life together,’ are seriously weakened and, in general, reduced to one’s family, colleagues, and close friends.[118] Ultimately, this neoclassical assault upon all public bodies is now expressed in its assault upon the democratic State. Nowhere is this more clear than in the United States, where neoclassicism is strongest.[119] Increasingly, a corporate State-within-a-State has replaced the public State. Amazingly, prominent representatives of neoclassicism openly declared this agenda. Hence, Donald Rumsfeld (then the U.S. Secretary of Defense) stated the following in a speech that he delivered on September 10, 2001:
The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America… Perhaps this adversary sounds like the former Soviet Union, but that enemy is gone: our foes are more subtle and implacable today… The adversary’s closer to home. It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy… today we declare war on bureaucracy.[120]
However, there are a few bodies that have been greatly strengthened, and not weakened, by the advance of neoclassicism. In particular, multinational corporations, and international banks, have gained greater and greater power within the public realm – so that some, not satisfied with being granted ‘human’ rights, have also attained to the legal rights held by nation States.[121] Therefore, the result of this is the increasing dominance of corporate bodies over the public realm, as all other public bodies have become impotent, if not extinct. The result of this is like the “Panopticon” effect described by Foucault.[122] Whenever everybody is, for all intents and purposes, separated from everybody else, an intimate exchange is established between the individual and the power exercised over that individual, so that the individual, and all individuals, become self-disciplining.[123] The disciplined public is the in-habited public, possessed by neoclassicism. Consequently, the individual, living under the constant surveillance of the credit-companies and banks, voluntarily acts in the way that neoclassicism requires.
Having observed the ways in which neoclassicism both disciplines and conquers the public, it is worth concluding this section by asking what happens to those within neoclassicism who cannot be disciplined and conquered. It has already been observed as to what happens to many in the two-thirds world who have resisted neoclassicism – they have been tortured, disappeared, and murdered – but things tend to play out differently in the West. Within the West, the judicial, penal, psychiatric, and medical systems intervene, and the undisciplined are frequently imprisoned, medicated, or institutionalized; for, as Milton Friedman observes, “[f]reedom is a tenable objective only for responsible individuals. We do not believe in freedom for madmen.”[124] Thus, those who refuse the disciplines of neoclassicism are presented as marginal, dangerous, immoral, or insane, and are treated as such.[125]
____________
[100] Cf. Twitchell, 5, 21; N. T. Wright, Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 1, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 38-40. Doctrines, then, are merely shorthand ways of referring to elements within a greater story (and thus stories are not simply illustrations of doctrinal foundations).
[101] Twitchell, 24; cf. 4, 18. Twitchell sees this as a good thing, arguing that the proliferation of branding at a global scale will provide us all with common stories, thereby overcoming all conflicts and differences (298-301).
[102] Hence, a golf club can be described as ‘forgiving,’ a kitchen appliance as ‘revolutionary,’ and so on and so forth.
[103] Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, with an introduction by Lewis H. Laphan (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994), 7-21; cf. Baudrillard, The Consumer Society, 122-23.
[104] Barber, 97.
[105] Another revelation of the religious nature of neoclassicism and its storytelling is the way in which ads plant a sense of inadequacy, insecurity, sin, guilt or shame within the within the consumer, before it then presents a remedy (i.e. redemption, absolution, relief, etc.) in the purchase of a certain product (cf. Horsley, 118).
[106] This point is explored in some detail by Naomi Klein in No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 200), 3-8, 38, 59-60; cf. Barber 64.
[107] On globalization as a “myth of catholicity,” f. William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism (New York: T & T Clark Ltd, 2002), 97-112.
[108] The alliance between neoclassicism and computer technology should come as no surprise as, from the beginning, capitalism was wed with technological advances. Indeed, the form a culture takes as constantly been related to technological development. Hence, feudalism is related to the invention of the stirrup (cf. Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change [Oxford: Clarendon, 1962], 1-38), industrialism to the invention of the clock (cf. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization [New York: Harcourt & Brace, 1934], 9-59), and capitalism to both computer technology and the dominance of a technological mode of thinking and being (cf. Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology [New York: Vintage Books, 1993]; Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology” in Basic Writings, ed. by David Farrell Krell [New York: HarperCollins, Publishers, Inc., 1977], 307-41).
[109] Be that interaction through blogs, sites like Myspace and Facebook, or through virtual worlds like Second Life. Cf. Zizek, On Belief, 48-49, 52-55.
[110] Cf. Baudrillard, The Consumer Society, 154.
[111] Ibid., 155-57.
[112] Cf. Horsley, 106-23, wherein Christmas is explored as the festival of consumer capitalism.
[113] Cf. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, ed. by Colin Gordon, trans. by Colin Gordon et al. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 133; Discipline and Punish, 27. This is a point further developed by Deleuze and Guattari in their discussion of “overcoding,” the “order-word,” and “regimes of signs” (cf. Anti-Oedipus, 199-206; A Thousand Plateaus, 75-148). It also leads Lacan to conclude that “the impact of the market structures is not null in the field of truth, but it is scabrous there” (Lacan, 33).
[114] Which is exactly what Friedman did say when questioned on this topic; cf. Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 97. Hence, as Klein also notes, the human rights abuses that often come with the expansion of neoclassicism are rarely connected with economics per se – “just as economists don’t talk about torture, human rights groups don’t talk about economics” (Ibid., 148).
[115] Cf. Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, 48; Baudrillard, The Consumer Society, 194-96.
[116] Power/Knowledge, 98; second emphasis added. Cf. Discipline and Punish, 192-94, 218.
[117] Cf. Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, trans. by James W. Leitch (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1967), 308-15.
[118] Cf. Chomsky and Hermann, xiv-xviii; Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 319-20.
[119] What is significant about the United State (although a great deal of this holds true for other countries with a long democratic tradition) is that it has demonstrated that neoclassicism is able to overthrow well established democracies, and not simply democracies in the making; cf. Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 121, 501-508.
[120] Cf. Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 343-44. Accessed 3 November 2007. Online: http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=430. Emphasis added.
[121] Cf. Chomsky, Profit Over People, 142.
[122] Foucault is drawing on Bentham’s work; cf. Discipline and Punish, 201-202.
[123] Ibid., 237; Power/Knowledge, 155
[124] Friedman, 33; cf. Foucault, Discipline and Punish; Madness and Civilization; The Birth of the Clinic.
[125] Cf. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 14-17.

The Means
Having demonstrated that neoclassicism disciplines both desire and imagination, one must ask how capitalism accomplishes this. There are three primary means: credit-debt, consumption-accumulation, and advertising.
Credit and its necessary other half, debt, is a powerful means of socializing people into a disciplined existence. As Baudrillard observes: “credit pretends to promote a civilization of modern consumers at last freed from the constraints of property, but in reality it institutes a whole system of integration which combines social mythology with brutal economic pressure… credit is a social realm.”[90] He goes on to say that “credit is in fact a systematic socio-economic training… for generations of consumers who would otherwise, in a life of subsistence, have escaped demand planning and would not have been exploitable as consumption power. Credit is a disciplinary process.”[91] Debt becomes a means of enslaving the members of society so that, even if they have not been fully disciplined, they are incapable of escaping the control imposed by the credit companies, with whom one must deal if one is to participate within society.[92] Credit-debt is the universalisation of slavery to the neoclassical powers.
Secondly, consumption and its corollary, accumulation, become a means of discipline because “the consumer internalizes the agency of social control and its norms in the very process of consuming.”[93] Alfred Marshall’s observation that it is new activities that give rise to new wants (rather than vice versa) is quite significant – we are then equipped to realize that it is the act of consuming that drives one to consume (rather than vice versa).[94] Consequently, for as long as we participate in consumption-accumulation, we will be displined by neoclassicism. Thus, we become capitalists, regardless of whether or not we ‘believe’ in capitalism.[95] Here it is important to maintain a distinction between ‘faith’ and ‘belief.’ Faith is distinguished from belief because of its active commitment – thus, for example, the Hebrews believed in many gods but only had faith in YHWH.[96] Moreover, while one can believe something but not have faith in that thing, one can also have faith in something without believing in it. This, in fact, is the situation of most Christians who live within the realm of neoclassicism – many of them do not believe in capitalism, but, as consumers-accumulators, they demonstrate their faith in it.
Thirdly, advertising is also an essential means of disciplining the desire and imagination of the public. It is advertising that continually influences the desires, and tastes of consumers. Further, advertising transforms and blurs the distinction between a ‘luxury’ and a ‘necessity’. Ultimately, within neoclassicism, advertising operates as the simulacrum of the gift – they come to us free of charge![97] Consequently, one must realize that ads themselves are objects of consumption, and it is in this way that advertising becomes so effective at disciplining the public. Baudrillard, again:
even though we may be getting better and better at resisting advertising in the imperative, we are at the same time becoming ever more susceptible to advertising in the indicative – that is, to its actual existence as a product to be consumed at a secondary level, and as the clear expression of a culture.[98]
Hence, ads are a means of forced consumption – which is precisely why ads must be made enjoyable, and which is why the boundary between advertising and entertainment has now been almost completely abolished.[99]
____________
[90] The System of Objects, 175-76; emphasis added. Bell Jr. adds: “the credit card has surpassed the time card as the dominant mechanism for insertion into the economy” (Liberation Theology After the End of History, 32).
[91] The Consumer Society, 81.
[92] Hence, debt becomes what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as “savage inscription,” a means of marking, and possessing a person (Anti-Oedipus, 185-90); cf. Wallis, 50. A striking example of this was a recent television ad campaign that promoted a “MuchMusic” credit card. The credit card was presented as a way in which youth could be liberated from their parents. In reality, however, the credit card simply transfers the youth’s dependence from (in this case) his parents to the credit company itself. Essentially, one has moved from a situation of dependence, to a situation of slavery!
[93] Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 192.
[94] Alfred Marshall, Principles in Economics: an introductory volume (London: Macmillan, 1920), 76. Hence Canvaugh’s observation that “dissatisfaction and fulfillment cease to be opposites” (“Consumption, the Market, and the Eucharist”); cf. Zizek’s comments on the ‘looping’ of desire in On Belief, 92-94.
[95] Cf. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 375; Massumi, 128-39; James B. Twitchell, Branded Nation: The Marketing of MegaChurch, College, Inc., and Museumworld (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 273. This is a point not sufficiently addressed by Jean-Francois Lyotard when he defines postmodernity as “incredulity toward metanarratives” (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 10, trans. by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984], xxiv). Regardless of one’s incredulity, capitalism still functions as a metanarrative (in the worst possible way).
[96] Zizek, following Octave Mannoni, provides this example; On Belief, 109.
[97] Baudrillard, The Consumer Society, 164-65.
[98] The System of Objects, 180.
[99] MTV and MuchMusic are early examples of the blurring of the boundaries between entertainment and advertising. One also think of advertising compilations that are presented as television specials (“World’s Best/Funniest/Whatever Ads!”), and the amount of product placement within entertainment media – and especially good example of this was the recent “Transformers” movie which was funded by a film studio (DreamWorks), a car manufacturer (Chevrolet), a toy company (Hasbro) and the United State Army!

II. The Disciplines of Capitalism and the Conquest of the Public
Before we begin to look at the Christian way forward out of capitalism, it is worth exploring the ways in which capitalism dominates our life together, lest we think we are moving forward when we are not. This section will explore the ways in which capitalism disciplines our desires and our imagination, and conquers the public by dominating our stories, space, time, language, and bodies (individual and public). This section will conclude with a note on what capitalism does to those who refuse to be so disciplined and dominated.
II.1 – The Disciplining of Desire and Imagination
The Disciplines
As noted above, one of the distinctive features of fascism is the way in which it operates as a mass movement, wherein the majority pursues its own repression and desires the very things that dominate and exploit it. This is an accurate description of the state of affairs found within neoclassicism. But how can this be? Neoclassicism, in the West where it was born, does not, by and large, operate through the use of violence, threats, and coercive force (although violence, threats, and coercive force have been very much a part of the globalization of neoclassicism). Why is it, then, that so many freely choose their own repression? The pursuit of the majority of their own repression is best explained by the ways in which neoclassicism, rather than using violence to control the masses, disciplines both the desires and the imagination of the masses so that they then control themselves.[71] This section will first explore the ways in which desires are disciplined, before turning to the disciplining of imagination.
The suggestion that desire can be manipulated runs against the dominant theological ideology of neoclassicism, which asserts that desire is a force found within people that is free from external influences. Consequently, neoclassicism argues that, rather than disciplining our desire, it provides us with a society wherein we are free to pursue every desire that we (inherently) possess. However, deeper analysis reveals that this is a false ideology imposed by those who knowingly manipulate desire and sustain their ability to manipulate desire precisely by proclaiming that desire is free.
To begin with, neoclassicism disciplines desire by rooting desire in the notion of lack. Observe the allegiance that exists between neoclassical economics and modern psychoanalysis (which, it should be noted, was born out of capitalism): while capitalism rooted us within a world defined by lack, psychoanalysis, from the very beginning, expanded that notion by situating lack within the human psyche itself. Sigmund Freud begins this process with his reflections on desire (i.e. the libido) wherein lack is definitive of ‘Oedipal’ existence, and psychoanalysis, despite its move away from Freud, continues to operate with this understanding of a foundational internal lack.[72] Furthermore, not only is desire defined by lack, but neoclassicism also presents desire as insatiable, precisely because – as the market economy continually reminds us – there is always something that we are lacking.[73] In particular, there is always something that we are lacking, in comparison to somebody else and so lack becomes a part of the process of endless competition with one’s neighbour.[74]
This, then, leads to the second point: the way in which desire is disciplined by being rooted in self-interest.[75] Here, desire is reduced to the infantile cry of “I want, I want, I want” and “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”[76] However, an economy driven by self-interest is an economy that is driven by greed.[77] The result of this is “the institutionalization of envy” and the ubiquity of coveting.[78] Again, when neoclassicism is understood as a form of paganism, this comes as no surprise for, according to Paul, coveting was the primal sin of Adam and the badge of Adamic humanity.[79] Furthermore, this explains both the competitiveness and partisanship inherent to neoclassicism for, as Paul also notes, coveting is expressed in divisiveness and leads naturally to violence.[80]
Thirdly, desire has also been disciplined because it has been aligned with the notion of entitlement: one is entitled to that which one desires. This is especially evident by the way in which the language of ‘human rights’ has been co-opted by the wealthy and the powerful, and used as a means of sustaining that wealth and power.[81] The language of ‘human rights’ has become the means of justifying the pursuit of one’s desire, without concern for the needs of others. Consequently, ‘equality’ has become a function of inequality.[82]
Therefore, by rooting desire in (insatiable) lack, by reducing it to greed (envy, and coveting) and by aligning it with entitlement (rights), neoclassicism produces a form of desire that is thoroughly disciplined.[83] The result of this is a reversal of the traditional Platonic understanding of the body as the prison of the soul. When desire is so disciplined, the soul becomes the prison of the body.[84] Yet, this form of disciplined desire is one that has become radically alienated. As Zizek argues:
Jenny Holzer’s famous truism ‘Protect me from what I want’… can either be read as an ironic reference to the standard male chauvinist wisdom that a woman left to herself gets caught up in a self-destructive fury… Or else it can be read in a more radical way, as pointing towards the fact that in today’s patriarchal society, women’s desire is radically alienated: she desire what men expect her to desire, desires to be desired by men… ‘what I want’ has already been imposed on me by the patriarchal order that tells me what to desire.[85]
Having explored desire, it is now worth exploring the ways in which neoclassicism disciplines our imagination. Primarily, neoclassicism does this by employing the rhetoric of independence, security, and responsibility in order to mask the way that it disciplines our (individual and corporate) imagination with fear and despair.
Neoclassicism elevates the autonomous individual and defines maturity and success by the ability to live independently of others. However, there is a great deal of fear underlying this presentation. When society is dominated by self-interested individuals, there are few good reasons for one person to care for another and so one is driven to independence because, in the end, one can rely on nobody else. Further, because the world is defined by lack, and because there is so much disparity within the system, one becomes afraid of the other who will try to take that which is mine which he lacks. Hence, one withdraws and hoards one’s goods, not only because one cannot rely upon the other, but because one is afraid to lose the little one has (whether by a disaster that takes my home, an immigrant that takes my job, an addict that takes my wallet, or a terrorist that takes my life). However, rather than saying that fear drives us into independence, the language of ‘responsibility’ is used to justify this sort of lifestyle. As documented by Max Weber and R. H. Tawney, connecting economic independence to responsibility is well rooted in Puritan and Reformed traditions, and this provides neoclassicism with a foundation that sees such responsibility as virtuous, rather than fearful.[86] However, what is been much less observed is the way in which the language of ‘stewardship’ performs exactly the same function within much of contemporary Christianity. ‘Stewardship’ now provides Christians with a religious veneer that justifies fearful living.[87] Recall, then, the words of Eduardo Galeano: “The Devil of Fear disguises himself to deceive us. The deceiver offers cowardice as if it were prudence, and betrayal as if it were realism.”[88]
The other means by which neoclassicism disciplines the imagination is despair. Precisely because neoclassicism presents us with a consummated eschatology, we are left without hope. There is no escape and there is no possible alternative because there is, a priori, no imaginable alternative. Thus, capitalism becomes “the party of counter-revolutionary despair.”[89]
____________
[71] This notion of the disciplining of desire and imagination as a means of social control is largely indebted to the writings of Michel Foucault, cf. esp. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977); but also Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Random House Inc., 1965); and The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Knowledge (New York: Vintage Books, 1973).
[72] Hence, within the ‘Oedipus complex’ the male child desires that which he lacks – the mother – and the female child desires that which she lacks – the phallus (cf. The Ego and the Id, ed. By James Strachey, trans. by Joan Rivere [New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1989]). For further reflections for the way in which psychoanalysis after Freud continued trajectory, cf. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus.
[73] Cf. Baudrillard, The Consumer Society, 77; Cavanaugh, “Consumption, the Market, and the Eucharist,” Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 28, 342.
[74] Consequently, the notion of lack is divorced from the notion of necessity and becomes and endless process of competitive differentiation of oneself from others (cf. Baudrillard, The Consumer Society, 61-67).
[75] As Smith writes: “we address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages,” (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, I.ii.2).
[76] Barber, 93.
[77] In particular, it requires an ongoing greed for more profit and, reciprocally, an ongoing greed to consume more (Loy, 286).
[78] Cf. Bell, 22. Significantly, when a monetary economy was first being born in Western Europe, precisely this result was foretold by the early Franciscans (cf. “The Sacred Exchange between Saint Francis and Lady Poverty” in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Vol 1, The Saint, ed. By Regis J. Armstrong et al. [New York: New York Ciety Press, 1999], 541). The result of this, as Jacques Lacan notes, is that one’s desire, rather than being free, is transformed into desiring what the other desires (cf. Ecrit, trans. by Bruce Fink [New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006], 79, 92, 98, 148).
[79] Cf. Ro 7.7-8; 13.9; 1 Cor 5.10-11; 6.10; 2 Cor 9.5; Eph 5.5. In contrast, the guiding principle of Old Testament economics is summarized in the tenth commandment: “Do not covet” (cf. Christopher Wright, 162).
[80] Cf. Ro 1.29-30; 1 Cor 5.9-11; 6.9-10; 2 Cor 12.20; Gal 5.20-21; Col 3.5-8; N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 29; James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 635-36; Sobrino, 67. Therefore, just as Adam – the first coveter – lingers behind Ro 7.7-12, Cain – the first murderer – lingers behind Ro 7.13-20 (cf. N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993], 226-30).
[81] Foucault explores this in detail (Discipline and Punish, 80-87). Cf. Bell Jr., Liberation Theology After the End of History, 124-29.
[82] Hence, Baudrillard: “there is no right to space until there is no longer space for everyone… Just as there was no ‘right to property’ until there was no longer land for everyone” (The Consumer Society, 58). Several others have made similar observations; cf. Bloch, 31-32; Zizek, The Fragile Absolute, 110).
[83] Many, apart from Foucault, have also drawn this conclusion; cf. Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 194; Bell Jr., Liberation Theology After the End of History, 2, 9, 13; Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 3, 54; Massumi, 123; Zizek, Lacan, 42.
[84] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 30; cf. Barber, 83.
[85] Lacan, 38-39.
[86] Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Routledge Classics, trans. by Talcott Parson (London: Routledge, 1992); R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., 1954). This is why the Puritans and those of the Reformed tradition were so opposed to Christians, like the Franciscans, who embraced poverty. Calvin, in fact, forbid begging, and the Puritan ‘battle-cry’ was that ‘giving alms is no charity’ (Weber, 108-109, 116, 240 n45; cf. Tawney, 200). It is notable that of the begging friars, the early Franciscans were able to foresee the connection, not only between ‘responsibility’ and fear, but also between ‘responsibility’ and greed (cf. “The Sacred Exchange between Saint Francis and Lady Poverty,” 542-45, wherein Greed goes by the names of Discretion and Foresight and accuses Lady Poverty of being laze and depraved).
[87] Cf. esp. Kelly S. Johnson’s exceptional study of this topic in The Fear of Beggars: Stewardship and Poverty in Christian Ethics, The Eerdmans Ekklesia Series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 71-99. Amongst other things, Johnson observes that this language was first employed by holders of substantial wealth and power, in order to reinforce that wealth and power; thus, for example, the language of stewardship was frequently employed as a means of justifying slaveholding.
[88] We say No: Chronicles 1963-1991, trans. by Mark Fried and others (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992), 237.
[89] Trotsky, 10; emphasis removed.

I.2 – The Clash of Christianity and Paganism
However, the analysis of neoclassicism employed above does not yet touch upon the core of the confrontation of Christianity and neoclassicism. Ultimately, the clash of Christianity with neoclassicism is a clash between Christianity and paganism.
Neoclassicism must be understood as a religion.[30] In particular, neoclassicism is best understood as the religion imposed by the Powers and Principalities mentioned by Paul.[31] The clue to this interpretation of neoclassicism is the ongoing mention of the market’s ‘invisible hand’, and the belief that the market runs on ‘automatic pilot’ because it is a ‘natural force’ akin to other forces in nature.[32] Note N. T. Wright’s argument:
when a human being or a group of human beings, are totally in the grip of a force other than themselves, then it seems appropriate to talk of ‘demons’… idolatry has the power to call up, perhaps even to call into being, forces that are then beyond the control of the idolaters.[33]
Similarly, Jurgen Moltmann argues that capitalism, in its evolution into neoclassicism, has become precisely this sort of “quasi-objective compulsive force.”[34] Therefore, as Richard Horsley notes, “[t]he very secularism that supposedly protected cultural and religious pluralism now serves also as a veil for the religious function of consumer capitalism.”[35] Thus, life lived within neoclassicism, is lived under the Powers (particularly the power of Mammon).[36]
This further explains the partisanship and violence found within neoclassicism. According to the biblical witness, idols always demand (human) sacrifices and produce victims. Consequently, the idolatry of neoclassicism is verified by the victims it produces.[37] Indeed, even apart from the overt violence of neoclassicism, its very efficiency transforms the majority of the world’s population into disposable excess.[38]
To further illustrate the religious confrontation between Christianity and neoclassicism, it is worth highlighting the fundamental differences in their core theological doctrines. To begin with, Christianity is a religion that is premised upon grace, whereas capitalism is premised upon merit and credit. For Christians, everything is grace: creation, the ongoing sustenance of daily life, redemption, and the kingdom of God, all these come as gifts from God.[39] Indeed, the language of grace is the language of ‘gift’ and it presents us with a God who is, fundamentally, a giver so that we, in turn, can becomes givers and not simply “self-absorbed receivers.”[40] However, capitalism in general, and neoclassicism in particular, has no room for the gift.[41] Hence, Thomas Malthus argues that gifts only encourage idleness and vice, and indiscriminate spending is comparable to promiscuous sex![42] The result of this is a culture “stripped of grace,” wherein one only receives according to one’s abilities, and not according to one’s needs.[43] In this culture, credit becomes the parody of grace.
This foundational difference between Christianity and capitalism leads to different conceptions of the world. Whereas Christianity affirms a world defined by abundance, capitalism affirms a world defined by lack. Because Christianity is premised upon grace and the gift, it affirms a world that is full of abundance as a sign of God’s “extravagant generosity.”[44] Although the abundance of the world was marred by the fall, the restoration of creation that comes through Jesus renews the fruitfulness of creation and restores abundance.[45] Thus, Jesus comes so that we might have “abundant life” and that abundance is amply demonstrated in both his ministry and in the testimony of the Church in Acts.[46] Capitalism, however, is based upon the assumption of scarcity. It assumes a world where there is not enough for everybody. Consequently, rather than manifesting abundance, what capitalism produces is a profusion of commodities that functions as a parody of abundance.[47]
These different foundations, and different perspectives on the world, then lead Christianity and capitalism to develop antagonistic doctrines of freedom. For Christianity, freedom is understood as liberation for service, whereas for capitalism, freedom is understood as choice in relation to consumption. For Christianity, freedom is liberation from the power of Sin-and-Death, and the host of other spiritual and material Powers that are in the service of Sin-and-Death. However, freedom from Sin-and-Death, is inextricably linked to freedom for loving service to one’s God and one’s neighbours and, in this way, Christian freedom is revealed in obedience (i.e. obedience to the Lord who liberated them, and obedience that manifests their liberated state). This, then, is why the martyrs – as those who have entirely been deprived of choice – end up becoming the greatest witnesses to Christian freedom; it is also why Christianity is called to move into solidarity with other movements that understand freedom as liberation from oppressive powers.[48] Capitalism, however, understands freedom in an altogether different manner. In a world of scarcity, freedom becomes the ability to choose to consume whatever one desires, regardless of the desires of others. Hence, Milton Friedman defines freedom in this way: “Each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what color the majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit.”[49] Therefore, ‘liberation’ from the neoclassical perspective, is understood as being freed from any sort of government that would impose restraints upon my consumption options.[50] However, such an understanding of freedom-as-choice does not lead to any sort of genuine freedom or liberation. Jean Baudrillard explains:
[W]hat our industrial society always offers us ‘a priori’, as a kind of collective grace and as the mark of a formal freedom is choice… Indeed, we no longer even have the option of not choosing… Our freedom of choice causes us to participate in a cultural system willy-nilly. It follows that the choice in question is a specious one: to experience it as freedom is simply to be less sensible to the fact that it is imposed upon us as such, and that through it society as a whole is likewise imposed upon us… the important thing about the fact of choosing is that it assigns you a place in the overall economic order.[51]
What is the result of this? A society where “unparalleled freedom of choice” is coupled with “a profound sense of resignation,” and where one lives out a “dominated existence” under the “Domination System” during the “Domination Epoch.”[52]
These contradicting understandings of freedom also reveal that Christianity and capitalism proclaim two different gospels as elements of two opposed soteriologies. The gospel of Christianity proclaims the triumph and Lordship of Jesus, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit which enables believers to proleptically participate in, and contribute to, the new creation of all things.[53] The gospel of capitalism proclaims the triumph and Lordship of neoclassicism, and promises happiness to all people. That capitalism comes as a form of gospel is already evident in Smith, who argues that capitalism that which will meet all our needs.[54] However, the true gospel of capitalism, does not come to fruition until neoclassicism, when the triumph of capitalism itself becomes the good news.[55] The triumph of capitalism in neoclassicism is, therefore, supposed to make us all happy – “Happiness,” writes Baudrillard, “is the strict equivalent of salvation.”[56] There are, however, at least two significant problems with this utilitarian soteriology. The first, as Alasdair MacIntyre notes, is that the notion of “greatest happiness” lacks clear content; it is, in fact, “a pseudo-concept available for a variety of ideological uses.”[57] The second problem is that people within neoclassicism generally are not happy. However, having been confronted with the proclamation that the good news has come, they are ordered to be happy – you are free, so you must be happy![58]
These different gospels also reveal that Christianity and capitalism are operating with fundamentally different eschatologies. Christianity operates with an inaugurated but not yet consummated eschatology, whereas capitalism operates with a now fully consummated eschatology. The starting-point for Christian living, is the recognition that the ‘new age’ began in the resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the (eschatological) Spirit at Pentecost.[59] However, what was born then, still awaits its consummation on the day when Christ will return, defeat the final enemies, and hand the kingdom over to his Father, who will make all things new. Therefore, Christians live in a time of tension where they anticipate the new in the midst of the old. For capitalism, however, things are rather different. In the triumph of neoclassicism, history (understood in the Hegelian sense of society in pursuit of its telos) has come to an end.[60] Hence, the “trump card” of neoclassicism is that there is said to no longer be any alternative to it.[61] Therefore, as William Cavanaugh notes, this signals the demise of Christian eschatology – “There can be no rupture with the status quo, no inbreaking Kingdom of God, but only endless superficial novelty.”[62] However, it is precisely this eschatology that Christians must reject. There is an alternative, the Kingdom of God that is confessed, and received as a gift, by Christians.[63] For this reason (and the others listed above), Christians must reject the notion that they must work within capitalism as the only viable, albeit “second best,” option.
Finally, the result of these different theological doctrines, is two contradictory anthropologies. Of course, as the biblical witness reminds us, it is no surprise that this result should occur as anthropology is a subcategory of theology and fundamentally related to worship (i.e. one will become the sort of being that reflects the nature of that which one worships).[64] Here is the contrast: Christianity presents people as beings created in and for relationship, whereas capitalism presents people as individual units of capital. The Christian God, as a Triune God, exists in and for relationship. Consequently, people, who collectively bear this image, also exist in and for relationship.[65] Furthermore, because God exists as Giver, to be in the image of God is also to be a giver of gifts.[66] Consequently, the way in which Christians relate to the other undergoes a fundamental shift. As Moltmann argues: “I become truly free when I open my life for other people and share with them, and when other people open their lives for me and share with me. Then the other person is no longer the limitation of my freedom; he is an expansion of it.”[67] Capitalism, however, by presenting people as individual units of capital, offers a very different anthropology, one that treats people as things.[68] Perhaps the most striking example of the results of capitalism’s anthropology is the way in which globalization has operated as a massive catalyst for human trafficking, wherein the notion of the person-as-commodity comes most fully into its own.[69] However, capitalism does not only dehumanize people by treating them as things, it also dehumanizes people by making them into solitary individuals. Once the individual is divorced from the community, and is understood to exist apart from relationships with others, then dehumanization is already well established. The result of this is endless competition and the view of the other as both limit and threat.
Having completed this overview of the theological differences between Christianity and capitalism-as-paganism, it should be clear why a reformed version of capitalism is not desirable. Paganism cannot be reformed. It can only be abandoned for the worship of the one true God. Consequently, if Christians are to confront capitalism as it appears today in neoclassicism, they must be rooted in that true worship. In light of these things, it is worth recalling these words from Gregory of Nyssa: “Concepts create idols. Only wonder understands.”[70]
____________
[30] This is a point made by both David Loy and Dwight N. Hopkins. Loy, arguing from a functional perspective, asserts that the Market, by teaching us about the world and our role therein, has replaced the function of religion (“The Religion of the Market,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65:2 [1997]: 275-90), and Hopkins arguing from a structural and doctrinal angle explores the god, institutions, theological anthropology, values, theology, and means of revelation found within globalization (“The Religion of Globalization,” The Other Journal 5 [April 2005]. Accessed 3 November 2007. Online: http://theotherjournal.com/print.php?id=53). While agreeing with the basic insights of Loy and Hopkins, this paper chooses to examine capitalism-as-religion from another angle.
[31] Cf. 1 Cor 10.20; 15.26; 2 Cor 4.4; Gal 4.8-9; Eph 6.12; Col 1.13; 2.15, 20. For an excellent exploration of the role this language plays in Paul’s theology cf. Walter Wink, The Powers, Vol. 1, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984). Such Powers were never intended to be understood as spiritual rather than physical, but were always understood as both spiritual and physical (cf. Walter Wink, The Powers, Vol. 2, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986], 5).
[32] For a direct correlation of the ‘principalities and powers’ with ‘the invisible hand of the market’ cf. N. T. Wright, Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 14-16.
[33] New Tasks for a Renewed Church (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1992), 31.
[34] The Spirit of Life, 138-39. Moltmann argues that neoclassicism, as a world-wide economic order, has become sin in a supra-national form and, although created by our choice and perpetuated by our habits, it now operates through compulsion.
[35] Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 133. Walter Brueggemann refers to this as the religion of “technological, therapeutic, military consumerism” (Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church [Louisville: WJKP, 2007], 63.
[36] On Mammon as the god of contemporary culture cf. N. T. Wright, New Tasks for a Renewed Church, 36; Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 100.
[37] Cf. Sobrino, xxx, 132; N. T. Wright, New Tasks for a Renewed Church, 32, 130.
[38] Cf. Daniel M. Bell Jr., Liberation Theology After the End of History: the refusal to cease suffering (London: Routledge, 2001), 11.
[39] Cf. Mortimer Arias, Announcing the Reign of God: Evangelization and the Subversive Memory of Jesus (Lima, OH.: Academic Renewal Press, 2001), 69-82; Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People, trans. by Matthew J. O’Connell (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1984), 107-13; Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 85-93; Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 28-37.
[40] Volf, 28. Indeed, as David A. DeSilva notes, the word ‘grace’, within the first-century context, was a secular word that spoke of a relationship of ongoing reciprocity where favour always gave birth to favour, and giving to further giving (Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000], 104-106, 117).
[41] Indeed, as Jacques Derrida demonstrates, it cannot even imagine the possibility of the gift (cf. Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. by Peggy Kamuf [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992]).
[42] Cf. The Works of Thomas Robert Malthus, Vol. 3, ed. by E. A. Wrigley and David Sonden (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1986), 363-64. Malthus goes on to write the following: “A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get his subsistence from his parents on whom he had a just demand, and if society does not want his labour, has no claim of right to get the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is” (438).
[43] Volf, 14; cf. Walter Brueggemann, Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 31.
[44] Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 203; cf. 482-83; 529, 559, 562.
[45] Ibid., 547
[46] Brueggemann, Mandate to Difference, 5; cf. Jn 10.10; Mt 14.13-21/Mk 6.30-44/Lk 9.10-17/Jn 6.1-13; Mt 15.29-39/Mk 8.1-13; Acts 4.34. Probably the most humourous example of this abundance is one Jesus is scolded for not paying the Temple tax and so he sends one of his disciples to catch a fish that will contain, in its mouth, the money necessary for the tax (Mt 17.27)! Here, then, one is able to meet the first objection raised by A. M. C. Waterman in his article, “Economists on the Relation Between Political Economy and Christian Theology: A Preliminary Survey” in International Journal of Social Economics, 14.6 (1987): 46-68. As a Christian one meets the objections raised by the “dominance of scarcity” by, a priori, rejecting that dominance and affirming abundance.
[47] Cf. Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, trans. by Chris Turner, Theory Culture, and Society, ed. Mike Featherstone (London: SAGE, Publications, Ltd., 1998), 26.
[48] Cf. Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God:The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 318.
[49] Friedman, 15; et passim; it is telling that Hayek opens The Road to Serfdom with the following quotation from Alexis de Tocqueville: “I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it” (vi, emphasis added).
[50] Cf. Friedman, passim; Hayek, passim.
[51] The System of Objects, trans. by James Benedict, Radical Thinkers Set 1 (London: Verso, 1996), 151-52. Baudrillard has made this point in various ways on a number of occasions (The Consumer Society, 72; Fragments: Cool Memories III: 1990-1995, trans. Emily Agar, Radical Thinkers Set 2 [London: Verso, 1997], 122) as have several other thinks; cf. Barber, 72, 98, 237, 243; Naomi Klein, Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2002), 46; Slavoj Zizek, Lacan, How to Read (London: Granta Books, 2006), 12; Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 105.
[52] On choice and resignation, cf. Cavanaugh, “The Unfreedom of the Free Market”. Domination of this sort is Walter Wink’s description of Paul’s view of pagan life under the Powers (cf. The Powers, Vol. 3, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992], 52-62).
[53] Precisely because this new creation is related to all things, it must be noted that the Christian notion of salvation is applied to all areas of life, including economics (cf. Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Holy Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, trans. Margaret Kohl [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993], 173.
[54] “We trust with perfect security that the freedom of trade… will always supply us with [whatever] we have occasion for” (An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, IV.i.11).
[55] Of course, the “neo-evangelist” of neoclassicism is Francis Fukuyama (cf. The End of History and the Last Man [New York: Avon Books, Inc., 1993]). On Fukuyama as a gospel-bearing “neo-evangelist” cf. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, 70-85; and, implicitly, Sobrino, 32.
[56] The Consumer Society, 49. After all, as John Stuart Mill asserts, surely God’s greatest desire is “the happiness of his creatures” (Utilitarianism [Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1979], 21.
[57] After Virtue: a study in moral theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 62.
[58] This observation has been made by several philosophers. Baudrillard argues that we now have “no right not to be happy” (The Consumer Society, 80), and Zizek argues that “permitted enjoyment” has turned into “ordained enjoyment” where enjoyment now functions as an ethical duty (i.e. people now feel guilty, not for violating moral inhibitions, but for not being able to enjoy themselves) (cf. The Fragile Absolute, 133; Lacan, 104).
[59] Cf. N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 221-22, 237.
[60] This is the point that Fukuyama makes time and time again.
[61] Cf. Robert W. McChesney’s introduction in Chomsky, Profit Over People, 8; Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 219; Galbraith, 396; Marcos, 31.
[62] “Consumption, the Market, and the Eucharist,” in The Other Journal 5 (April 2005). Accessed 3 November 2007. Online: http://theotherjournal.com/print.php?id=52.
[63] Cf. Daniel M. Bell, Jr., “What is Wrong with Capitalism? The Problem with the Problem of Capitalism,” in The Other Journal 5 (April 2005). Accessed 3 November 2007. Online: http://theotherjournal.com/print.php?id=55.
[64] On worship as that which defines that state of one’s humanity cf. N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Saul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 136-40. With all the talk about the loss of the imago dei found within Christian criticisms of capitalism, it is surprising that most (all?) of the critics never then go on to ask the following question: if capitalism does violence to the imago dei within us, and prevents us from embodying that image, into whose image does capitalism form us? The point is that people are never imageless – they are always being formed into the image of someone or something. Indeed, when we receive our image from our possessions, from brand-identities, and so forth, the appropriate name for this is idolatry.
[65] That the image of God is found in humanity as a collective is made clear in Gen 1.27.
[66] Volf, 49, 59-67.
[67] Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 215-16, emphasis added; cf. The Spirit of Life, 118.
[68] For this reason, Bell Jr. argues that discussions about how well capitalism works miss the point because, at its core, capitalism deforms human desire and distorts human relationships (“What is Wrong with Capitalism?”). Such a dehumanized understanding of people is especially evident in the writings of Gary S. Becker when he discusses issues like drug addiction (cf. Gary S. Becker, Kevin M. Murphy, and Michael Grossman, “The Economic Theory of Illegal Goods: The Case of Drugs,” Working Paper 10976. Accessed 3 November 2007. Online: http://home.uchicago.edu/~gbecker/illegalgoods_Becker_Grossman_Murphy.pdf), the family and charity (cf. “A Theory of Social Interactions,” Working Paper 42. Accessed 3 November 2007. Online: http://home.uchicago.edu/~gbecker/papers/w0042_v5.pdf; The Economic Approach to Human Behavior [Chicago: Chicago The University of Chicago Press, 1976]).
[69] Human Trafficking now makes more than twelve billion dollars annually by moving more than two million people both within countries and across borders into other countries. It is the fastest growing form of organized crime and the third most profitable (next only to the sale of illegal weapons and drugs); cf. Victor Malarek, The Natashas: Inside the Global Sex Trade (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003); Louisa Waugh, Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking and Resistance (London: Phoenix, 2006).
[70] Quoted by Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 73.

On Partisanship: The View across the Barricades
At this stage, it is important to comment on partisanship. It has already been asserted that neoclassicism is partisan, in that it favours the few over the many.[17] This assertion directly contradicts the claims that neoclassicism benefits everyone and favours no one.[18] However, in actuality, the neoclassical vision coincides precisely with the interests of large multinationals and turns the wealthy into the super-rich, and the working class into the disposable poor.[19] Herein one discovers an economic order premised upon looting, full of winners and losers, victors and victims.[20] To this, neoclassicists often respond with some variant of the ‘trickle-down’ argument, but this is essentially giving the poor (i.e. the ‘losers’) the option of trading one form of misery for another.[21] Consequently, one quickly learns that the partisanship of neoclassicism results in “[the] freedom of the powerful to rob, and [the] freedom of the dispossessed to live in misery.”[22]
However, it is essential to realize that Christianity is also partisan – but in the opposite direction. Neoclassicism favours the rich while plundering the poor, but Christianity advances God’s ‘preferential option for the poor’.[23] Consequently, Christians and neoclassicists end up opposed to one another. Here one must realize that partisanship and objectivity are not rivals but allies, because, as Terry Eagleton notes, “true judiciousness means taking sides.”[24] Christians side with the poor and against those who oppress them, precisely because the poor suffer unjustly. For this reason, Christians must abandon the myth that, in order to maintain one’s perspective, one should not take sides.[25] Maintaining perspective means taking sides.
This, then, has implications for the methodology employed by those Christians who seek to write in response to neoclassicism today. First of all, it is important to recall, and dialogue with, the witness of Christians who have come together and written from such partisan places.[26] Secondly, this means that Christians should also listen to other subversive voices – to revolutionaries, (post-)Marxists, and others who end up on the “same side of the barricades.”[27] For, as Eagleton notes: “Marxist ideas have stubbornly outlived Marxist political practice… We do not dismiss, say, feminist criticism just because patriarchy has not yet been dislodged. On the contrary, it is all the more reason to embrace it.”[28] Thirdly, it means that Christians should write from a place of embodied partisanship. A Christian theology that responds to neoclassicism must follow from action, it must be “critical reflection on Christian praxis.”[29]
Therefore, because Christians hold contradictory allegiances to those held by neoclassicists, one should expect Christians to offer another way of structuring life together, a way that opposes the fascist-imperialist structures imposed by neoclassicism.
____________
[17] That such partisanship is often overlooked in public discourse should come as no surprise once one comes to understand that all the (significant) communication media are owned by the same oligarchies that benefit from the partisanship of the system; cf. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), xi, 298-303; Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 8.
[18] Cf. Hayek, xi-xiv, 262; Friedman, 5-6.
[19] Cf. Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 66, 101, 534. This point has also been explored by many others; cf. Chomsky, Profit Over People, 34; Jon Sobrino, Where is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope, trans. by Margaret Wilde (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004), 99; Jim Wallis, The Call to Conversion: Recovering the Gospel for These Times (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 45-46; Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1973), 84; Barber, 28; William Cavanaugh, “The Unfreedom of the Free Market,” in Wealth, Poverty & Human Destiny, ed. Doug Bandow and David L. Schindler (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2003), 103-28. Accessed 3 November 2007. Online: www.jesusradicals.com/library/cavanaugh/unfreedom.pdf.
[20] On an economics of looting, cf. Wallis, 42. This is especially evident in the recent Bush administration wherein those in power refused to divest stock holdings that were directly impacted by their roles in office (an illegal act): Rumsfeld kept his shares in Gilead Science, Cheney, his shares in Halliburton (while his wife held shares in Lockheed-Martin), Perle, his shares in Trireme Partners, Baker his shares in Carlyle Group and Baker Botts, Schulz, his shares in Brechtel (Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 377-84). Some would take this to be evidence of a State-imposed imperialism, but it is better understood as evidence of the neoclassical conquest of the State.
[21] For example, multinationals have argued that sweatshops in the two-thirds world provide women and children the opportunity to escape from prostitution – often considered the only other job alternative. Of course, working long hours within a sweatshop, and breaking one’s own body for less than a living wage, is hardly a true alternative – it is simply another form of misery and prostitution. It should be noted that this argument emerged with capitalism itself, as Adam Smith argued that it would be a ‘philanthropic gesture’ to allow poor children to work in factories (cf. Heilbroner, 45).
[22] Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Our Word is our Weapon: Selected Writings, ed. By Juana Ponce de Leon (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), 65.
[23] A point first made by Latin American liberation theologians, and now widely accepted within global Christianity. Cf. Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, trans. by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), xii, 75; The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions, trans. by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 101-102.
[24] After Theory (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 137; cf. 131-37.
[25] As Walter Brueggemann notes, it is the powers-that-be that benefit from those who “understand both sides” (The Prophetic Imagination [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1978], 24-25). Consequently, it is for this reason that Donald A. Hay’s advice that “Christians should be particularly circumspect in their policy prescriptions, and cheerfully tolerant of other Christians who take different lines” is so misguided (Economics Today: A Christian Critique [Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1989], 312; emphasis added).
[26] One thinks, for example, of the witness that came out of an illegal ‘Confessing Church’ Seminary at Finkenwalde, Germany, during WWII – Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, trans. by John W. Doberstein (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1954). A second example would be the writings of the liberation theologians, and a third example would be the writings that came out of the Sojourners community in Washington, D.C. – Wallis’ Call to Conversion.
[27] The reference is to a comment made by Zizek on the relationship between Christians and Marxists (The Fragile Absolute, 2). Moltmann’s comments on Ernst Bloch, a Marxist atheist, are significant in this regard. He writes: “God’s defenders are not necessarily closer to God than God’s accusers. It is not Job’s theological friends who are justified, but Job himself. In the Psalms, protest and jubilation ring out in the same voice. Wherever in history [that] combination ceased to work, the theologians would learn as much about God from atheists as the atheists could perhaps learn from the theologians” (Ernst Bloch, Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, with an introduction by Jurgen Moltmann, trans. by E. B. Ashton (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 28.
[28] Marxism and Literary Criticism, Routledge Classics (New York: Routledge, 1976), viii-ix. Of course, as noted above, this does not mean that Christians should wholeheartedly accept the Marxist agenda.
[29] This is the definition of liberation theology’s methodology (Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 11-13; cf. On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, trans. by Matthew J. O’Connell [Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987], 103).

[Over the next little while I'll be posting a series of entries on 'The Church and Capitalism', which is a paper that I have been working on for quite some time. I'll repeat a few of the points I made in my earlier series on 'Christianity and Capitalism' but I trust that there is much greater detail, and much that is new, in this series.]
I. The Confrontation
I.1 — Neoclassicism and the Triumph of Capitalism-as-Fascism
Whither Capitalism?
In 1776, Adam Smith gave birth to the modern science of economics by predicting that the liberation of the market from various forms of state control would lead us into the best of all possible worlds.[1] In 1848, Karl Marx challenged Smith and predicted that capitalism would be overthrown in the inexorable rise of socialism.[2] Since then, there have been endless competing prophecies about where capitalism is leading our life together. However, from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, we can see that what has arisen is the global dominance of neoclassicism.[3] What, then, are we to make of the various predictions about capitalism?
To begin with, it is clear that capitalism has not developed into the utopia foreseen by Smith. Rather, we now live in a time when inequality, famine, and economic oppression affect more people around the world than ever before.[4] Consequently, it is necessary to emphasise that Smith’s vision was, in fact, utopian (in the worst sense of that word). Smith’s vision promised us that which could not be attained by the means provided.[5]
Secondly, the triumph of neoclassicism has made it clear that capitalism does not lead to socialism, as predicted by traditional Marxists and others.[6] In fact, we have seen exactly the opposite occurrence: the majority of socialist nations have converted to capitalism, and even so-called ‘communist’ nations, like China, espouse what is, by and large, a neoclassical form of economics. Why has this happened? There are a number of reasons for this (not the least being the greater military power of the capitalist nations, who were able to destroy many socialist governments in their infancies), but the primary reason for this was that socialism was too closely wed to capitalism. Slavoj Zizek makes this argument:
Marxian communism, this notion of a society of pure unleashed productivity outside the frame of capital, was a fantasy inherent to capitalism itself… ‘Socialism’ failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism, an ideological attempt to ‘have one’s cake and eat it’, to break out of capitalism while retaining its key ingredients.[7]
Socialism represents a failed utopianism, precisely because it simply continues the utopianism of capitalism (i.e. instead of arguing that capitalism leads us directly to utopia, it argues that capitalism leads us indirectly, through socialism, to utopia).
Thirdly, others who have predicted that capitalism will lead us to anarchy have also been mistaken.[8] Certainly, capitalism has lead to the fracturing of most social bodies, but the result has not been chaos. Rather, within neoclassicism we have seen the birth of massive oligarchies that hold power over an increasingly fractured public.
So who has correctly predicted the movement of capitalism into its neoclassical form? Surprisingly, it was those Marxists, who rejected the fatalistic element of Marxism, who were able to foresee where capitalism was leading us.[9] It was the likes of Bukharin, Lenin, and Trotsky who were able to see that capitalism, if left to its own devices, would develop into a fascist form of imperialism.[10] To be clear: the global conquest accomplished by neoclassicism, with its focus on privitisation, deregulation, and cuts to social spending, is the conquest of the globe by capitalism-as-fascism.[11] It is important to define what is meant by ‘fascism’ here. Traditionally, fascism has been understood as the subordination of individuals, and all other corporate bodies, to the State. What has occurred within neoclassicism, however, is the subordination of individuals, and all corporate bodies, including the State, to the regnant economic powers – the oligarchies, the multinational corporations, and those who serve them (like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). With this distinction in mind, the other elements of traditional fascism hold for our contemporary experience of capitalism-as-fascism (also referred to as ‘corporatism’): (1) it assaults all forms of collectivity, and all public bodies; (2) it is, therefore, defined by the drive for conquest; (3) it favours the interests of a few over the interests of the many; and (4) it makes the many favour their own repression.[12] The damning proof of this is in the specific examples of the ways in which neoclassicism has played out at ground level in the various countries to which it has been applied.[13]
Furthermore, it is important to realize that the neoclassicism does not appear as a perversion of ‘capitalism proper’; it develops from the root of capitalism itself.[14] Consequently, the question is not ‘where did capitalism go wrong?’ because it was wrong from the very beginning – as George Weissman says: “The germ of fascism is endemic to capitalism”.[15] Therefore, it is a mistake to try to redeem or rectify capitalism. The effort to return to the form of capitalism that preceded neoclassicism is akin to trying to escape Germany in 1945 by returning to Germany in 1934! Here the words of Simone de Beauvoir are quite apropos: “To protest in the name of morality against ‘excesses’ or ‘abuses’ is an error which hints at active complicity. There are no ‘abuses’ or ‘excesses’ here, simply an all-pervasive system.”[16] Consequently, the challenge for Christians is not the pursuit of ‘capitalism with a human face’ or ‘moral capitalism’; rather, the challenge is to move out of capitalism into an altogether different system.
_________________
[1] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1981), IV.i.11, et passim.
[2] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: International Publishers, 1948), 9-21.
[3] The term ‘neoclassicism’ as it is applied throughout this paper is intended to refer to both the theory and the practice of those who are both committed to, and participate within, the structures of the laissez-faire form of capitalism championed by Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and the ‘Chicago School’ (cf. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, with an introduction by Milton Friedman [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994]; and Milton Friedman with Rose D. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962]).
[4] Cf. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, Routledge Classics, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1992), 106.
[5] However, because the neoclassicists continue to promise us this same utopia, further discussion of this point must be deferred until our evaluation of neoclassicism itself. Here, it is worth noting Naomi Klein’s comment that, whereas the Marxists envisioned a “workers’ utopia,” the neoclassicists envision an “entrepreneurs’ utopia” (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism [Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2007], 60).
[6] A notable other being Joseph Schumpeter (cf. Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy [New York: Harper & Row, 1947]).
[7] The Fragile Absolute – or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? Wo Es War (London: Verso, 2000), 19. Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Workers’ movement, also makes this point: “The Bolshevist Socialist is the son of the bourgeois capitalist, and the son is too much like his father. All the sins of the father are found in the son” (Easy Essays, illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg [Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977], 115; cf. 116-17, 174).
[8] Cf. John Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (New York: The New Press, 1998), 207, et passim.
[9] However, it is quite possible that Marx himself abandoned the fatalistic approach later in life. When, shortly before his death, he stated “I am not a Marxist” it is not likely that he was then saying that he was abandoning the struggle on behalf of the proletariat. Rather, it is more likely that he realized that socialism would not necessarily replace capitalism, but would only come by the means of a sustained struggle. If this is the case, then the true legacy of Marx is not his fatalistic theory, but his lifestyle of solidarity and his action on behalf of the proletariat. This, then, goes against Robert L. Heilbroner’s understanding of Marx’s legacy, which by pretending to take Marx seriously, ends up not taking him seriously at all (The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives Times & Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963], 142).
[10] Cf. Leon Trotsky, Fascism: what it is and how to fight it, with an introduction by George Lavan Weissman (New York: Pathfinder Press, Inc., 1969), 6-7, et passim; Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy, with an introduction by V. I. Lenin (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1929), 10, 107-108, 112-15, 140.
[11] The irony here is that it was Hayek’s fear of fascism that prompted him to write The Road to Serfdom in the first place (cf. The Road to Serfdom, 4).
[12] All of these points will be developed in more detail later within this paper. For further comment on neoclassicism as fascism cf. Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: neoliberalism and global order, with an introduction by Robert W. McChesney (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999); Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 12, 17, 369; Brian Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992), 64, 106, 116, 125-26; and, especially, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 1, Anti-Oedipus, trans. by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983; Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 2, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
[13] The devastating impact of neoclassicism upon country after country, and the ways in which it operates as fascism, have been documented by Klein in The Shock Doctrine. Significantly, it is not only outsiders who have made this observation but those who have worked within the heart of institutions responsible for spreading neoclassicism have come forward and said the same thing (cf. John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man [London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 2004]; and Davison L. Budhoo, Enough is Enough: Dear Mr. Camdessus… Open Letter of Resignation to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, foreward by Errol K. McLeod [New York: Horizons Press, 1990]).
[14] Grey’s argument that ‘bad capitalism’ naturally drives out ‘good capitalism’ is helpful in this regard (Grey, 78-87), as are Lenin’s comments on Bukharin’s argument that fascist imperialism is the direct development of a system that relies on continual growth (Bukharin, 10).
[15] In Trotsky, 7. This is where those like John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Daniel Bell, and Benjamin R. Barber end up going wrong. Each of them is aware that capitalism can lead to fascism, but each of them does not believe that capitalism necessarily leads to fascism and so, each proposes some form of State, democratic, or civil control that they believe will both save capitalism and save us from capitalism (cf. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money [New York: Harvest/Harcourt Inc., 1964]; Galbraith, The New Industrial Society [Boston: Mentor, 1967]; Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism [New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1976]; and Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World [New York: Ballantine Books, 1996]).
[16] Quoted by Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 150.

For those who don't know, there is a fantastic website called postsecret.blogspot.com, run by a fellow named Frank Warren, who had the brilliant idea of asking people to (anonymously) send him postcards that contained secrets — secrets that the senders of the postcards had never told anybody else. The website is updated every Sunday, and today, when I was looking at the new postcards, I was struck by one in particular. It said this:
I am tired of waiting for God to find me. So I'll find myself. I started looking last night.
What struck me was a comment that a reader had posted in response to this postcard. The comment was this:
Once I found myself, I realized God was there all along.
Now, granted, this is all pretty standard pop-spiritual language these days. The whole notion of discovering yourself, and thereby discovering the 'divine spark' (or whatever) that already exists within yourself, is close to being the dominant spirituality in Vancouver.
(Of course, such thinking also has a long history and dates as far back as the pop-spiritual language espoused by the serpent in Genesis 3, when he assures the man and the woman that they will 'be like gods' if they choose to heed his advice. Isn't this contemporary spirituality just another expression of our age-old desire to take the place of God?)
However, I was struck with a particular thought tonight as a few things came together with some clarity. Essentially, my proposition is this:
That which promises us that we will discover the divine within ourselves, is that which hides from us our bondage to other gods.
Let me try to explain what I mean by this by providing some context for this thought. A few years ago, I began to ask myself this question: “who, today, is being worshiped by the members of our society?” For awhile, struck by the dominance of this 'the divine is within me' discourse, I thought that we were worshiping ourselves. As society has becoming increasingly fractured, as the 'rugged individual' has increasingly become the model to emulate, I began to think that we had all become gods in our own eyes and were, thus, actively involved in worshiping ourselves.
I have since grown suspicious of this analysis, and believe that it does not go deep enough.
You see, although society has become fractured, and although the individual appears to have been elevated to sovereignty, there are other Powers at work that are actively involved in fostering the division of society into isolated individuals. Isolated individuals can be told that they are sovereign but, precisely because they are isolated, they are also unable to create any sort of significant change. Consequently, even though society has been fractured, one is able to see a great deal of conformity around key issues — issues of values, of priorities, and of goals. Why is it that, in a society where the individual is supposed to be sovereign, where we are supposed to be fractured from one another, everybody ends up looking and acting almost exactly like everybody else? Because the individual is not sovereign. Because we are not fractured. Granted, we are fractured from one another (from our 'neighbours'), but we are all, one and all, united in our bondage and subservience to Powers greater than ourselves. Indeed, it is these Powers that spread the ideology of finding the divine within ourselves. “Look,” they tell us, “the divine is within you!” and in this way they hide the fact that they have become like gods over us.
(Wasn't this exactly the objective of the Serpent in Genesis, who is later revealed as the Dragon in Revelation? 'You will be like gods,' the Serpent said, but really his goal was to become like a god over the man and the woman. Hence, we see the same thing occurring in the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The Satan promises to make Jesus like a god ruling over the earth… if only Jesus will bow down and worship him!)
So who, or what, are these Powers? They are the Powers that Paul speaks of in Ephesians 6.12 when he writes:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
These are the Powers inherent to the form of free market capitalism that has come to embrace all areas of our life together. Stated in an overly simplistic manner, in the borrowed words of Walter Brueggemann, these are the Powers of “therapeutic, technological, consumer militarism.” The truth is we by acting, by consuming, and by living in the way that we do, we are not serving ourselves. No matter how much 'fun' we have along the way, and no matter how much we 'discover' about ourselves, we are actually destroying ourselves (and one another) as we serve someone (or something) that has become like a god over us.