Hello Reader,
Let’s talk about capitalism.
If you live in America — and despite what your VPN says, I know you do — then you are necessarily steeped in a centuries-old conversation about capitalism.
Whether you think you are a fan of capitalism (or not) depends in part on what intellectual traditions you have inherited from others.
In America — particularly if you’re an American conservative — there are two great intellectual traditions which have shaped our way of thinking about capitalism.
The first is the tradition of civic republicanism, which began in Classical Greece, carried on in Ancient Rome, and was revitalized during the Renaissance in Italy in places like Florence.
Civic republicanism influenced America’s original culture and founding, but also Western European culture broadly — it developed alongside the birth of modern capitalism.
The second tradition that must shape our thinking — whether you like it or not — is Christianity.
Commerce and markets developed through the stages of industrialization underneath Christendom, and largely in response to changes in Christian theology.
Neglecting Christian thought on commerce would therefore be paramount to ignoring a smoking gun at a crime scene.
In order to understand not only what capitalism is, but how it affects society — what moral hazards it may bring, its evils, its virtues, etc. — we should first understand how these traditions viewed it.
Why? Because none of us exist in a vacuum. We interpret the world around us in great part through the categories that are handed-down to us by our cultural traditions.
In order to assess the validity of those “categories” (i.e. the intuitive ways in which we view the world), we need to have an appreciation for the history of those traditions..
With that in mind, today I’d like to begin a series on How To Think About Capitalism.
I anticipate this will be a five-part series that focuses on the two traditions I just mentioned — how they viewed commerce, how they changed over time, and how we got to today.
This series will not serve as a complete introduction into the intellectual history of capitalism of course — that would require an entire book! (Hmmmm….)
Over the next few weeks, however, I will give you a good introduction into how the traditions of civic republicanism and Christianity thought about capitalism, and what changed over time.
America has always been deeply commercial, and it has always drawn from the traditions of Christianity and civic republicanism.
How surprising, then, to learn that neither of these two great traditions was historically favorable towards capitalism! Explaining this discrepancy will be the focus of this series.
In order to do this I will be relying primarily on the amazing work of Dr. Jerry Muller, who published a fantastic book in 2003 titled Mind and the Market: Capitalism In Western Thought.
I would recommend anyone who wants a complete introduction into the intellectual history regarding capitalism to read Dr. Muller’s book.
Here is the outline for the series:
Introduction: Conversations About Capitalism
Christianity and Capitalism
Civic Republicanism: The Virtuous Society and Commerce
What Happened: Lockeing Down Leviathan
Final Thoughts
As we cover the two great traditions of Western Civilization, I think you will be impressed to find just how many questions, nearly three millennia old, are still relevant to our modern debates.
Without further adieu then, let’s begin with today’s post — Conversations About Capitalism — which will serve as a helpful introduction into the next four weeks.
What Is a Cultural/Intellectual Tradition?
Before we jump into a study of the traditions themselves, it will be useful to say a few words on the nature of intellectual and cultural traditions, and why we ought to study their histories.
I had a professor in college who told his students the same story every year:
He was a PhD candidate at Oxford at the time, and was running late for a dinner party hosted by one of his professors.
He arrived shortly after dinner began, but had missed a cocktail hour entirely before the meal. When he sat down, the group was already in the midst of a philosophical disagreement.
My professor listened to the conversation for a few minutes, and then began to make some points which he thought were persuasive towards his position.
The room fell awkwardly silent.
When he inquired what the matter was, they explained to him — somewhat patronizingly — that they had already addressed those points about an hour earlier.
In other words, he was Miss Tardy-to-the-party, and he shouldn’t butt in unless he knows what he is talking about.
That is why we study the history of ideas.
We cannot help interpreting the world without being inside a conversation that has long preceded our existence, and we cannot hope to say anything remotely useful in that conversation unless we have a basic understanding of what has already been said.
Otherwise, we end up making fools of ourselves.
These “conversations” are the subjects of the great intellectual traditions, and we ought to study them so we have a chance of actually saying something useful.
But what are these traditions exactly?
For the purposes of this series, we will understand "Western Civilization" to mean a large collection of cultural traditions of the West, from various ethnicities and societies.
A cultural tradition can be thought of as a collection of both intellectual and non-intellectual traditions.
My wife, for example, has heritage in the French, British, and Argentine cultural traditions.
These traditions are all quite distinct in some ways, yet all possess certain core features which connect them as properly “Western.”
Finally, an intellectual tradition — like the Christian intellectual tradition or civic republicanism — is a series of interrelated concepts.
Concepts have often been compared to a flashlight.
In a dark room, a flashlight helps to illuminate a certain part of the space, while keeping other parts dark.
Concepts are like flashlights in that they help us to see a small part of the world, while keeping other parts unilluminated.
An intellectual tradition can be thought of as a series of interrelated concepts — the concepts are logically connected, and when taken together explain more than any single concept.
An intellectual tradition, then, is like having a large number of flashlights together in a dark room. Only these flashlights have been put together over long periods of time.
When we interpret the world, it is next-to-impossible for us to turn off all these flashlights and start anew in the dark. We necessarily build off of the work of our forefathers.
If we want to improve upon the tradition, we need to go back and understand why this crazy edifice of flashlights was arranged in this or that particular way.
Only after we understand the logic of a tradition, can we reasonably improve upon it.
Only after we appreciate the course of a conversation, can we contribute to it.
Capitalism, Commerce, Civics, and Christians
When we look at the traditions of Christianity and civic republicanism, we find that neither conversation began favorably for capitalism.
Next week, we’ll look at the evidence for the sheer condemnation that capitalism received from Christian thought.
But one question may already be going through your mind, and if you’re a regular reader of my blog, then you know where I’m going…
What do you mean by “capitalism"?
A prerequisite for good thinking is always clearly and unambiguously defining terms.
If we don’t know what we mean by "capitalism," for example, then how is it possible to talk about what 4th century christians thought about it? Or what 14th-century Florentines thought about it?
If capitalism is just a market philosophy that arose in the late 18th century, then these groups cannot possess opinions about it, since they obviously predate its existence.
Conversely, capitalism cannot be understood so broadly as to refer to simple barter — even cavemen would trade for things they wanted.
Yet to confine capitalism to 18th century market economies is overly-restrictive, and there are prototypes of capitalism that existed priorly.
In his book, Muller offers a working definition of capitalism —
“A system in which the production and distribution of goods is entrusted primarily to the market mechanism, based on private ownership of property, and on exchange between legally free individuals.”
Of course, this is an ideal definition.
No society, for example, has ever let the market entirely determine the production and distribution of goods.
Nevertheless, real market economies that fit this description began dominating Western Europe in the 18th century.
In order to better understand how Western intellectuals have thought about capitalism — from the 18th century on — we will study how Christians and republicans viewed the features of capitalism that predated the 18th century:
Trade for profit — trade that goes beyond mere subsistence
Commerce as a profession
Banking
Private property
The pursuit of self-interest
In this series then, I will use the terms capitalism, commerce, trade, and the market interchangeably to refer to these broad features of a capitalist society.
Conclusion
Hopefully this introduction to the series has been enlightening, I thank you for bearing with me if it hasn’t.
Next week, I will cover the Christian intellectual tradition’s view on capitalism, examining evidence from the Christian scriptures, canon law, and teachings of the historical churches.
As always, thanks for reading!
Further Reading
Mind and the Market: Capitalism In Western Thought by Jerry Muller
Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and The Recovery of Greek Wisdom by Victors Davis Hanson and John Heath
This book, written by two great historians, is a very accessible description the cultural traditions imbued into Western Civilization, why they are superior to other traditions, why its morally okay to believe that, and the role of education as the process of transferring that culture to future generations.
Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged by Roger Scruton
This book is a more advanced treatment of the ideas I introduced today, and that are dealt with broadly in Who Killed Homer?. In his typically brilliant fashion, Roger Scruton defends Western Culture form its various critics, and re-emphasizes for the reader the need to participate in tradition — so we might as well participate in the best one.
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