Karl Marx 'right' to condemn capitalism, says Rowan

See our news story on Rowan Williams and Karl Marx. The Archbishop of Canterbury has today delivered a video message on the Millennium Development Goals.'We feel very deeply that the witness and generosity of one church can inspire and change us all,' he says. More Rowan videos at his channel, LambethPress. Tomorrow, Thursday 25 September, the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu is joining Bill Clinton and Gordon Brown on the platform at an emergency session at the United Nations to discuss the MDGs.

Dr Williams has also written a piece for The Spectator on the credit crisis, in which he warns how, in our present attitude to money, we run the risk of idolatry. He speaks up for the anti-capitalist theories of Karl Marx.

'Like Trollope¹s hapless young clerics and feckless young landowners, individuals find that their own personal financial decisions and calculations have nothing to do with what is happening to their resources, in a process for which a debt is simply someone else¹s wholly disposable asset,' he writes.

'It is a sort of one-syllable nursery parable of what the last couple of weeks have illustrated in the world of global finance and, of course, a reminder that what we have been witnessing is not just the product of a couple of irresponsible decades.'

He in particular criticises the trading of debts of others without accountability.

'This crisis exposes the element of basic unreality in the situation - the truth that almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders,' he says.

'To grant that without a basis of some common prosperity and stability, no speculative market can long survive is not to argue for rigid Soviet-style centralised direction. Insecure or failed states may provide a brief and golden opportunity for profiteering, but cannot sustain reliable institutions.

'Without a background of social stability everyone will eventually suffer, including even the most resourceful, bold and ingenious of speculators. The question is not how to choose between total control and total deregulation, but how to identify the points and practices where social risk becomes unacceptably high. The banning of short-selling is an example of just such a judgment. Governments should not lose their nerve as they look to identify a few more targets.'

He questions whether we can recover a sense of the connection between money and material reality and warned of a kind of fundamentalism operating in the markets.

'Fundamentalism is a religious word, not inappropriate to the nature of the problem. Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else. And ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry.

'What the present anxieties and disasters should be teaching us is to keep ourselves from idols, in the biblical phrase. The mythologies and abstractions, the pseudo-objects of much modern financial culture, are in urgent need of their own Dawkins or Hitchens. We need to be reacquainted with our own capacity to choose - which means acquiring some skills in discerning true faith from false, and re-learning some of the inescapable face-to-face dimensions of human trust.'

In his sermon at the Mass for Anglican pilgrims at Lourdes this morning, Dr Williams spoke of Bernadette's visions. 'When Mary came to Bernardette, she came at first as an anonymous figure, a beautiful lady, a mysterious ‘thing’, not yet identified as the Lord’s spotless Mother.  And Bernardette – uneducated, uninstructed in doctrine – leapt with joy, recognising that here was life, here was healing.  Remember those accounts of her which speak of her graceful, gliding movements at the Lady’s bidding;  as if she, like John in Elizabeth’s womb, begins to dance to the music of the Incarnate Word who is carried by his Mother.  Only bit by bit does Bernardette find the words to let the world know;  only bit by bit, we might say, does she discover how to listen to the Lady and echo what she has to tell us.'

I wrote last week about the Church of England's intervention to help Christians cope with the credit crunch. I guess praying for a miracle at Lourdes might help, but my mum, a vicar's wife, always used to say to me: 'God helps them that helps themselves.'

The Pope is better able than me to point out the error of Marx's ways. His encyclical last year on Christian hope summed it up beautifully:

'After the bourgeois revolution of 1789, the time had come for a new, proletarian revolution: progress could not simply continue in small, linear steps. A revolutionary leap was needed. Karl Marx took up the rallying call, and applied his incisive language and intellect to the task of launching this major new and, as he thought, definitive step in history towards salvation—towards what Kant had described as the “Kingdom of God”. Once the truth of the hereafter had been rejected, it would then be a question of establishing the truth of the here and now. The critique of Heaven is transformed into the critique of earth, the critique of theology into the critique of politics. Progress towards the better, towards the definitively good world, no longer comes simply from science but from politics—from a scientifically conceived politics that recognizes the structure of history and society and thus points out the road towards revolution, towards all-encompassing change. With great precision, albeit with a certain onesided bias, Marx described the situation of his time, and with great analytical skill he spelled out the paths leading to revolution—and not only theoretically: by means of the Communist Party that came into being from the Communist Manifesto of 1848, he set it in motion. His promise, owing to the acuteness of his analysis and his clear indication of the means for radical change, was and still remains an endless source of fascination. Real revolution followed, in the most radical way in Russia.

21. Together with the victory of the revolution, though, Marx's fundamental error also became evident. He showed precisely how to overthrow the existing order, but he did not say how matters should proceed thereafter. He simply presumed that with the expropriation of the ruling class, with the fall of political power and the socialization of means of production, the new Jerusalem would be realized. Then, indeed, all contradictions would be resolved, man and the world would finally sort themselves out. Then everything would be able to proceed by itself along the right path, because everything would belong to everyone and all would desire the best for one another. Thus, having accomplished the revolution, Lenin must have realized that the writings of the master gave no indication as to how to proceed. True, Marx had spoken of the interim phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessity which in time would automatically become redundant. This “intermediate phase” we know all too well, and we also know how it then developed, not ushering in a perfect world, but leaving behind a trail of appalling destruction. Marx not only omitted to work out how this new world would be organized—which should, of course, have been unnecessary. His silence on this matter follows logically from his chosen approach. His error lay deeper. He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favourable economic environment.'

Comments

[George Parr]

David Cohen: "The usual depressingly familiar blather from the Archbishop. [and most other gloomy religionists] Set up some bogeymen, [Satan, Muslims, liberals, homosexuals, women, secularists, atheists, choice and notions of freedom] warn about veering too far in one direction or another, [away from: 'family values', spirituality, tradition, the church in general, monogamous sexual relationships, stultifying marriages, and towards: ordaining women priests; abortion, open-mindedness, free-thinking, embryonic research, common sense, rationality and a society based on available evidence rather than myth] and get in the word 'risk', ['sinning', 'repentance', 'ungodly', 'blasphemy', 'damnation', 'eternal life']. All sounds very analytical and impressive, [and familiar] but as always, no answers, no solutions, no lead in any direction."

[George Parr]

"No time for Hob-knobbing with politacally connected...Rich People and alike and meddling in world affairs...."

So Bush, Chaney et al are all pseudo-Christians?

[alan]

If supporters of "capitalism" haven't yet realised that it is based on and kept alive by selfishness and greed, then they never will.
Capitalism works, because humans are naturally selfish and greedy.
But selfishness and greed are certainly not Christian virtues.

[Rick Beekman]

Lapinbizarre;

"How about Things done over the past two millenia in Christ's name....."

Most of The evil things you most likely are referring to were committed by pseudo-christians. Start with the Vatican. Real Christians are only interested in sharing with others the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus.No time for Hob-knobbing with politacally connected...Rich People and alike and meddling in world affairs....

[Athanasius of Alexandria]

The stuff the Bearded Wonder said at Lourdes is more interesting than this tired old warhorse - where's the coverage of "Archbishop of Canterbury affirms Immaculate Conception"?

[Lapinbizarre]

How about some of the things done over the last two millennia in Christ's name, R I Williams?

[Robert Ian Williams]

Look at Karl Marx's legacy...70 years of economic regression in eastern Europe and Russia.

Human beings are basically capitalist...its greed that is a sin, not enterprize.

[Malcolm+]

Ruth, you have misrepresented what he said. And all the usual suspects are prepared to jump on the pile, condemning Williams for theings he hasn't said. Bloody typical.

I offer you, Ruth, his own words:

"Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, IF ABOUT LITTLE ELSE."

Perhaps you should all learn to read through to the end of the bloody sentence.

[Merseymike]

I'm no RW fan, but I think that a somewhat more sophisticated approach is required which actually looks at what he did say - and I'm not convinced that actually reflects Marxist belief in any case.

Most of the comments on this thread are irrelevant to the question and are just American conservative extremists bemoaning the fact that RW won't support their cause and wishes to take the middle ground

[Dr. Michael Chilton]

Yes, Rick, we may as well address the ABC as "Comrade Williams", though, as a matter of fact, I know that modern-day Russian communists would wince if addressed as "comrade". More seriously, however, one has to agree that what Rowan Williams and most of his fellow-clerics peddle is just superstition. To go to church expecting to hear a Biblically-informed sermon nowadays is truly to exhibit great faith.

[Rick Beekman]

..how should we now address Rowan Williams since he agrees with Karl Marx?
Comrade Williams??

[saint]

Perhaps the man with the owl eyebrows and the frightwig should look in the mirror and talk to himself about turning the MDGs into an idol - and leave the analysis of the financial crisis to someone who knows what they are talking about.

Laughable.

[Lapinbizarre]

Strange priorities where the deposition of xDuncan trumps a world economic system on the verge of collapse fueled and precipitated by out-of-control, "free market" greed. Where do our Scripture-based brethren stand on the Bible's and the early Church's strict ban on usury? As late as 1179 the third Lateran Council decreed that persons who accepted interest on loans might receive neither the sacraments nor Christian burial.

[David Keen]

That's not a very helpful headline, Ruth! We should be debating the behaviour of the banking sector, not that of Rowan Williams.

Personally I think it's staggering that the US government can find $700bn to bail out the banking sector, but never found even 1% of that to help when people were starving. The best source of that money is a retrospective windfall tax on city bonuses.

Sentamu's critique is easier to follow, but then it always is. I'm just happy to see both of our Archbishops singing the same hymn for once, even if it is in a different key.

[Fr. Van Windsor]

My wish is that The Archbishop of Canterbury would choose better analogies. To use Marx as an authority, is at best controversial, which further confuses people about what he thinks and means. To put himself in the position to be summarized by a header that reads "Karl Marx 'right' to condemn capitalism, says Rowan" colors the facts and turns off some that he probably wanted to hear him, and need to hear him most.

[robroy]

What a disaster Rowan Williams has been for the Anglican Communion. Why doesn't he go back to academia?

Rowan quickly condemns Changing Attitude's baseless accusations of "homophobia" against a Nigerian bishop. He can pontificate about Marx. But as Mark points out, he doesn't condemn the outrageous "deposition" of Bp Duncan???

[David Cohen]

The usual depressingly familiar blather from the Archbishop. Set up some bogeymen, warn about veering too far in one direction or another, and get in the word risk. All sounds very analytical and impressive, but as always, no answers, no solutions, no lead in any direction.

Understandable enough if he is presuming to venture into a subject about which he knows little or nothing. But sadly typical of his public statements about religion, as well.

There is a great crisis in the Anglican Communion, and when it matters - such as the illegal "deposition" of the Bishop of Pittsburgh - what does the Archbishop have to offer?

Nothing. No comment.

If the Archbishop of Canterbury can not bring himself to say or do anything, then we should not be at all surprised to see people take matters into their own hands.

[j]

It seems to me that the archbish would have made stronger points if he had kept away from the link with Marx, as that has another agenda.

I agree with what he says about the emperor's new clothes attitude towards money and debt that has been in operation. I am old enough to have worked in the City throughout the 1980s and we were sweetly unworldy in comparison.

I am pleased to see a less blatantly materialistic set of attitudes- well I wont say, operate, perhaps "make the news" is more accurate as people have always been careful. Thought I feel very sorry for those people caught in debt.

Do I remember though that he did not make this kind of criticism of money culture so much when it was all still rampant? I remember Soros saying, this will all end in tears, but not a church leader. What a shame, if so- it would have good to be able to say, look, our moral leaders always wanted us to pay more attention to ethics and we didn't listen.

maybe I'm wrong? did he say anything *before* the balloon went up?

[Tony B]

"Without a background of social stability everyone will eventually suffer, including even the most resourceful, bold and ingenious of speculators. The question is not how to choose between total control and total deregulation, but how to identify the points and practices where social risk becomes unacceptably high."

etc is all stuff that "New Labour" talked about at great length pre-1997 and completely forgot about once they had won the election. So to GB's talk of a "fairer Britain" I say "we've heard it all before".

At least someone is still talking about it.

[J Pearce]

Errr…how can I put this…Christians perform acts of idolatrous worship every day!

The Cross is a "thing which has no life itself". Yet Christianity ascribes to it exactly the sort of "reality, power and agency" that the ABC decries in capitalism.

Ditto images of the Virgin Mary. Ditto the carvings, murals and paintings which adorn Chruches worldwide. Ditto images in stained glass.

All of these things posses no intrinsic value, apart from the value projected onto them by Christians (and in the case of the Church, the monetary value alone makes certain objects most desirable!).

What about the font? It holds tap water, but somewhere along the line, the tap water is magically transformed into "holy water" with which a child is blessed. The water is ascribed an agency that in reality, it simply doesn't have - its still tap water - but because its in the font and its been blessed, the mythology of Christianity has abstracted the water from its actual physical properties and ascribed it a divinity which simply doesn't exist.

Attacking capitalism is fine, but the ABC is a bit slow on the uptake here; capitalism creates its own mythology which in effect mirrors Christian mythology, that is, the accumulation of wealth and the concomitant symbols of wealth makes a person intrinsically "superior". Christians believe in the same ultimate goal - superiority - they just go about it differently.

In Christian mythology, observing arcane rituals, eschewing material trappings, acting beneficiently to others and displaying the symbols of Christianity - the Cross, for example - are the means of displaying "superiority", as defined through Christian culture.

It should be noted that although some capitalist adherents behave in ways which are detrimental to society - behaviour which has been exposed over the past few weeks - the ABC ought to be aware that exactly the same can be said of some Christians.

[Huw Richardson]

I think the Archbishop and the Pope agree in that Marx had an "acute analysis" of what went wrong with Capitalism. I see nothing contradictory in the the words of the two prelates. Marx noted a problem - he just had the wrong solution. Marx was no less a materialist than most capitalists. That doesn't mean his critique of our greed was off base: but it was the pot calling the kettle black.

What bothers me is that both the Pope and the Archbishop seem to think there is a Christian economy that can be put in place in secular gov't. Unlike the vicar's wife: the Gospel seems to say God helps us help others. It says nothing about getting the gov't involved, however.

[Fr Mark]

The Archbishop doesn't have anything to say about Pittsburgh and the shameful way six of his English bishops are publicly supporting someone who has been deposed as bishop by his own church... yet he can always find time to lob in a naive comment on politics. It does seem a bit odd, doesn't it?

[Michael]

Gosh. My gracious Lord of Canterbury fiddles so well as the Anglican world burns....

[Timothy Fountain]

Well yes, Marx had some trenchant things to say.

But, like Christians who don't do what Jesus said, Marxists don't do what Marx said. How about it, Archbishop?

Why is it that supposedly Marxist countries always take the means of production and the products away from the workers to give to non-productive bureaucrats?

Why do Marxists bring their ideology to the Third World? Marx talked about transforming industrial/capitalist societies, not creating dictatorships in impoverished places. The redistribution of zero = zero.

Why do your revolutions never get around to creating utopia, preferring to stay with coercion and repression?

Isn't it nice to be part of a movement that is above self-criticism. The seared consciences of many Marxists are what lead me to prefer Christianity, warts 'n' all - at least Christians stumble over their own hypocrisy. That's why Christianity is able to exist in countries with all kinds of social realities... it isn't the product or property of any one class or culture - unlike the elitist thing that Marxism became. (sorry, Karl).

[Mark]

He is a joy isn't he?

Do you think there are any debt market executives who wish to have a shot at pontificating on the meaning of 'agape' in St John's Gospel in the Spectator from a position of equal ignorance?