Comeback kid?

Why was I wondering out loud about a Marxist comeback in a class titled The History Reformed Thought in America? Well, the professor was reading from Cornell West, who was lamenting that the American theological landscape is populated by so many Lilliputians. There are the ones who just want to read and re-read and regurgitate Barth, and then there are the Liberationists whose theology is oh-so-thin. Yes, Cornell West said that.

Which got me to thinking about the strongly Liberationist bent of my MDiv education. I couldn't see it at the time, but Liberation Theology in 1993 was a dead man walking. I mean, the Wall had come down, and with it the Marxist analysis that under-girded Liberation Theology. History wasn't hurtling toward a showdown between labor and management that would yield a worker's paradise. History had ended well short of that prophesied event, and we'd been bequeathed a realized eschatology of  401k investments in tech stocks.

But in the seminaries nobody noticed. So we read a lot of theology that castigated consumerism, and longed for the American Empire to get her comeuppance. Oh, how they longed to gloat with the heavenly hosts over the whore of Babylon's fall!

Are they gloating now? With global capitalism collapsing, will the Liberation theologians get to say, See, I told you so? Will Marx get a fresh hearing, especially in those second world nations who've made so many advances over the past two decades, only to see their gains evaporate in a haze of greedy, dishonest, unregulated speculation?

My professor says No. Except for sub-Saharan Africa and South America the rest of the world is so economically enmeshed with the dysfunctional U.S. financial system that gloating is the farthest thing from anyone's mind. "Everyone's" hoping and praying that we can get our fiscal house in order, lest we take down with us hundreds of millioons of people who've clawed their way out of absolute poverty. In other words, so many people are in bed with the Whore of Babylon, both Christian and pagan alike, that the theologically responsible reply is to mourn with the merchants and seafaring men, rather than sing, Burn, baby burn.

So what say you? What's the appropriate lens through which one might evaluate the global depression and what's the appropriate Christian response?

Comments

[Camassia]

Maybe one reason people seem to be taken by surprise by these things is the overly dramatic reading. Did capitalism "win" over Marxism in the Cold War? Kind of ... although not the nineteenth-century capitalism Marx knew. Instead it was capitalism with Social Security and unemployment benefits and farm subsidies and anti-trust laws and so on (including, in much of the west, socialized medicine). The current expansion of government in the U.S. seems to be only hastening the post-industrial convergence on some hybrid model.

Conversely, it seems a bit early to say capitalism is collapsing now. The Great Depression went on for ten years with twice the current unemployment rate, and still it didn't collapse. It's also premature to say all the financial gains in middle-income countries in the last 20 years have been erased. Economic growth in China, for instance, is only slowing down, not going backward.

I say this because I think the Christian urge to see things through Revelation could be tempered with a little Ecclesiastes. The things of this world are transient and flawed, and pure ideologies tend to give way to cobbled-together solutions. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it still is.

Having said that, I know little of Marx and even less of liberation theology, so I can't say how they speak to all this. Maybe if all this does turn out to be bigger than the Great Depression, they will become more relevant. I expect, though, that your average Christian has more pressing concerns right now, which the church can certainly play a role in addressing.

[Camassia]

On another note, why does your professor think South America isn't enmeshed with the same global financial system as everybody else? I realize Hugo Chavez has been talking a big game, but oil prices aren't under his control (nor is the continent outside Venezuela).

[Sky Bison]

Dude!
You come mighty close to sounding like a Neo-Con! Most intriging! Sure you're not exactly in bed with Richard Pearl... but the classic neo-con justification is to take the long-view of thier position, policies and global actions... they say..."just give Neo-con policies & practices adequate time to make in-roads" (including aggressive marketing, modernization of media outlets, corporate infrastructure and finance development all backed by Western military and a few contract security firms) and in about 150 years no theocratic Islamic nation or socialist totalitarian state will be able to hold in there, corporate capitalism will win the minds of any population (given enough time). The neo-con promoter cites that humans all yearn for security, stability, recreation, safe-ego-boosting competition (via competitive capitalism), a little PC deathmatch, alittle UFC and alot of football, but we all generally yearn for peaceful existant to such a degree that once offered on a corporate plastic (but tactfully molded) platter... all forms of nationalism, socialism or even religous fundamentalism will be toned down and ultimately drowned-out by clever advertising and pleasurable diversions. Neo-con global Corporatism is the ultimate hybrid. It takes the communal "common good" ideas from communism/socialism and blends it with human desire to progressively and methodically climb from the bottom of an organization to the top, feed the ego, vent basic hedonism and aggression just enough along the way and softly train all exposed that philosophical absolutism or extremism of any sort is bad for the corporate profit. "Their" corporate profit transforms into "our" corporate profit very quickly once you've entered the emerald city. I know, cause I'm the guy with the scooper that follows the horse of many colors all around town. Sure the Wizard is a farse... but he's galvanizing! Sure it's Capitalizing Marxism! Sure the Whore of B. rides this horse into a lather on some weekends tromping alot of poppies and a few puppies a bit along the way...But its an honest job, and I don't make bombs, and I still get to live (and even work) in Michigan... which really is a nice place to live... even though its getting alittle less populated every week... who's to complain?! Until the largest global corporations own (control) all the best food producing land and distribution centers... not me?

[Sky Bison]

I got so excited about trying to call you a Neo-con I forgot to answer the question.

The correct Christian response to the Great Collapse (coming from one who is at best a Christian wanna-be) in my opinion is:

1. TEMPERANCE (and frugality) gets to make a comeback? Jesus was right to suggest not focusing too much on earthly treasure that usually gets stolen, molds or rusts away.

2. COMPASSION for our fellow Americans who (mostly) didn't do anything to get unemployed nor did they get us into this mess... and even compassion for the workers in where-ever... folks that now make most the stuff we buy at Walmart or on-line or at Walmart Online. Its no treat working for a company that is purely motivated by maximized short-term greed and at the same time in-bed with the Chinese (or other) government officials who are motivated by short-term bribes and kickbacks.

3. REPENT (and mean it when you tell yourself you'll not make yourself a slave (debtor) again!). Selfish Greed & Usury get appropriate black-eyes once again. Although I think the sub-prime mess (and predatory lending) is big example of how stupid American bank leadership and borrowers became, I think it is unfair to lay the majority of the collapse mostly at the feet of crappy lending and stupid borrowers like me. People (like me) who thought we could go big and still go home have certainly made things worse... but... The real source of the collapse started much earlier and was truly the cause of our massive USA economic engine to throw a rod... that was: (drum roll)...bogus and cooked double-digit growth numbers reported to investors for 15 -20 years across most US stocks and the rash rush for globalizing corporation's officers and managers to offshore USA manufacturing to try to match that reported lie. That and quite a few old-school (1920's)greedy schmucks who felt compelled to rapidly capitalize on cheap foreign labor markets with little regulation. That and those same schmucks selling the cheap foreign junk directly back to all of us schmuckee's who clamored to buy their "bargains" at Wal-mart. It wasn't just a real-estate bubble that finally popped after being prompt up by insanely stupid lending ... it was mostly a 20 year run of massive public consumption bolstered by wide-spread corporate investment and finance sham... a bloated zombie in a cheap suit that had been animated by madmen that stole the heart and guts right in front of the zombie's TV-filled eyes...these corporate "smart guys" who for years called themselves good "Americans" moved too fast and too much USA manufacturing overseas for personal short term gains and clearly a nice respite from union "nonsense"... leaving fat, stupid, luke-warm stakeholders (the average corporate investor and US taxpayers alike) all hanging in the breeze still wearing our Walmart best. We've all just participated in the greatest 20-year experimental trial of short-sited disaster capitalism of all time boys (and girls), but its Not exactly loving your neighbors (American nor Chinese neighbors) now is it?