Are Catholics Anticapitalists?
Ascending Bookstacks #1: Eric Olin Wright's How to Be an Anticapitalist and Pope Francis' Evangelii Gaudium
We’re all consumers but consumerism can make us uneasy. So maybe we buy locally instead of on Amazon, go to farmers’ markets instead of Wal-Mart, use open-source software, or convince ourselves we won’t stop at McDonald’s for fries—after today.
Maybe our discomfort with consumerism stops with that—an uneasy discomfort while we continue to consume. The fries are tasty and two-day shipping is convenient, after all.
But to be outright anticapitalist? Almost sounds un-American.
What’s Wrong With Capitalism?
Eric Olin Wright (1947-2019) wrote How To Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century (2019) at the end of a long career in sociology. From his perspective:
Capitalism is an inequality-enhancing machine as well as a growth machine.
More precisely, capitalism creates chronic—
poverty in the midst of plenty. This is not the only thing wrong with capitalism, but it is the feature of capitalist economies that is its gravest failing. In particular, the poverty of children who clearly bear no responsibility for their plight is morally reprehensible in rich societies where such poverty could easily be eliminated.
Studies back Wright’s assessment. According to the Pew Research Center, “The highest-earning 20% of all families made more than half of all U.S. income in 2018,” and “Among the top 5% of households - those with incomes of at least $248,729 in 2018 - their share of all U.S. income rose from 16% in 1968 to 23% in 2018.” Concurrently, “the wealth gap between America’s richest and poorer families,” which includes assets beyond salaries, “more than doubled from 1989 to 2016.” Some critics trace this disparity’s growth to Reagan administration’s neoliberal polices, including trickle-down economics, tax cuts for corporations, privatized government services, and a hostile stance toward unions. Indeed, only 10.8% of American laborers were union members in 2020—half as many as in 1983. Freed from government restraint, corporations could grow wealth unhindered. And in so doing American capitalism became an inequality engine.
Wright claimed that capitalism is inherently unjust, because: “The idea of equality is at the center of nearly all notions of social justice.” In contrast, justice would entail equality: "[i]n a just society, all persons would have broadly equal access to the material and social means necessary to live a flourishing life."
The Anticapitalist Alternative
So what does the other side look like? How do we get from capitalist-now to anticapitalist-later?
Wright outlined five different ways to counter capitalism—by smashing, dismantling, taming, resisting, or escaping capitalism—while proposing a sixth. The five “strategic logics” of the past ranged from Leninist revolution to corporate spending laws to communes leaving the market altogether. Wright empathized with but rejected these logics in favor of eroding capitalism, which he defined as:
…a new strategic idea … that combines the bottom-up, civil society-centered initiatives of resisting and escaping capitalism with the top-down, state-centered strategy of taming and dismantling capitalism.
In practice, this means legislative and grassroots measures. From above, Wright suggested universal basic income (so that even the poorest workers can afford to build lives beyond the workplace), cooperatives (where workers have tangible ownership in their workplaces), state-operated social services that served the poor, as well as investments in public arts and infrastructure. From below, Wright emphasized the need for "the existence of a web of collective actors anchored in civil society and political parties committed to such a political project.” Things don’t change unless people band together and innovate new solutions in their local communities.
Anticapitalism means living and working in ways that slowly but steadily erode capitalism’s hold on our lives. Consume deliberately. Work intentionally. Start unions and cooperatives. Know your neighbors and advocate for your community together. Support the poor and the existing organizations that help them. Support—or draft!—legislation that cubs corporate excesses. And so on.
We know, Wright admitted, that capitalism will remain with us for a while—just like climate change will still get worse in the near future, even if we take radical steps now (more on that next week). This does not mean we simply accept a grossly unjust status quo. We are allowed to want more equitable futures than two-day delivery and consistent fries. But we have to want better and act better if better is to become our future.
Catholic Critiques of Capitalism
Wright made me think of Pope Francis, who wrote in Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel, 2013) that contemporary capitalism should break the Christian heart:
Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality.
Continuing to not mince words:
As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills. [emphasis mine]
I think this is hard to hear as American Catholics. My parents’ and grandparents’ generations were told capitalism was the free world’s answer to communist oppression. There’s truth to that. I, too, was taught that invisible market hands elegantly moved goods and services to meet our every need and want. I’ve argued so! Yes, some people would get rich along the way, and others would stay poor, but didn’t Jesus tell us that the poor would be with us always, anyways? And what about capitalism’s opponents? No need to imitate Che or Mao, the argument would go.
What if We Became Like Christ?
In Evangelii Gaudium, Francis quoted multiple scriptures that, twenty-eight years as a Catholic, I may have heard but don’t remember. Look at these:
How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods, and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? (1 John 3:17)
The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. (James 5:4)
And, of course, this one—which happened to be in the Church’s daily reading rotation this week:
Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “For men this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:23-ff)
I’m not saying Jesus is a communist, or that Catholics must be radical egalitarians who live on streets in cardboard boxes. Nevertheless, if we are supposed to imitate Christ, to embody his word as his living icons in the world, then these passages have to mean something in our lives, in our economics, and in our politics. These divine words have to burn like embers in the eyes of our souls.
Catholic Justice
The Catholic approach to justice begins and ends with Christ. What, for example, do we owe the poor and vulnerable as temples of the Holy Spirit? What do we owe nature as a gift from God? What do we owe our neighbor—who is everyone—out of love for Christ?
Pope Francis believes that seeing Christ in the poor demands outward action. We can’t just venerate the poor as great examples of humility and suffering, we have to help them:
An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better than we found it.
Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully part of society. This demands that we be docile and attentive to the cry of the poor and to come to their aid.
This is far more than a demand that everyone gets the same house, car, and toy. When Francis condemns inequality and admonishes us to care for one another’s needs, he makes such statements after a lengthy exhortation about evangelization. Responding to the poor comes from serving the face of Christ we recognize in our neighbor. There is a joy in knowing that God became man, that Christ came out of love. That joy should drive us to spread the good news to others, said the pope, and spreading the good news changes the world. Changing the world means a radical conversion of our own heart, yes, but it also means changing our politics and economics.
There’s this idea in The Weight of Glory, a sermon-turned-essay by C.S. Lewis, that we humans really don’t understand who we are. Lewis suggested that, if only we knew what we were, we would be different. He wrote:
The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. [emphases added]
I love that passage. It reminds us that we are all temples of the Holy Spirit, no matter our socio-economic system, while admonishing us that this reality should still drive us to act differently. Lewis’ anthropological vision is what should inspire our thirst for righteousness in our world.
So What Do Catholics Do?
I’m going to paraphrase Fr. Josh Johnson to summarize the pope, but we should delight in the Lord and let the Lord delight in us. In turn, that intimacy with the Lord must guide all of our politics and economics and social visions.
I think Francis states it best:
We become fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being. Here we find the source and inspiration of all our efforts at evangelization. For if we have received the love which restores meaning to our lives, how can we fail to share that love with others?
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say: Rejoice. (Philemon 4:4)
The Lord didn’t come and tell us to build isolationist communes—he came for the lost sheep. And so our contemplation and joy should not stop at economic or political conversations. We ought to engage in Wright’s suggested actions in order to sanctify them, their participants, and society as a whole.
Francis, again:
The Gospel joy which enlivens the community of disciples is a missionary joy.
In fidelity to the example of the Master, it is vitally important for the Church today to go forth and preach the Gospel to all: to all places, on all occasions, without hesitation, reluctance or fear. The joy of the Gospel is for all people: no one can be excluded.
There are organizations today who believe that capitalism is the most moral economic system, that it does not need reformed, that greed is good, that markets are God’s way of provisioning humanity, that any reform hints of totalitarian constriction.
Given the empirical evidence of capitalism’s global harm, the secular case for reform, and the Catholic cause for the poor and against audacious wealth, I think there’s a substantial case to be made for Catholic anticapitalist action. We can support legislation that opposes corporate excess and supports the vulnerable. We can build local coalitions to aid the poor. We can consume better. We can work differently.
We don’t control the outcome when we embrace the Gospel. Let our plans follow our joy.
One last Francis quote to that end:
I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day … The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms … Let me say this once more: God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy.
I’m inspired by Wright and Francis.
I hope you are too.
See you tomorrow.
Super-duper short bibliography of scholarship about capitalism and economic inequality, off the top of my head:
Alec MacGillis, Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America (2021).
Kevin A. Young, Tarun Banerjee, and Michael Schwartz, Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It (2020).
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (2019).
Cristina Salinas, Managed Migrations: Growers, Farmworkers, and Border Enforcement in the Twentieth Century (2018).
Lane Windham, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide (2017).
Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016).
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012).
H.W. Brands, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900 (2010).
Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: the Making of Christian Free Enterprise (2009).
William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991).
Well of course all Christians should be anti-capitalist….duh. I just wish more Catholics were Christian.