Luke 16: God and wealth
Angelo's illustration for Luke 16:1-13 stimulates me to write about corporations, conservatism, and Jesus' teachings. Yeah, again with the corporations.
It really seems so simple and straightforward to me.
1. Jesus said "You cannot worship God and wealth."
2. Business corporations whose stocks are publicly traded in the market have, under current law, only one duty -- a fiduciary duty to their stockholders. That means they're obligated to put stockholders' financial interests above all else. Net income and net worth are their only bottom lines. The production of wealth is the sole interest of these fictive legal persons.
3. As a legal person, a corporation of this type is literally a soulless person and feels unconstrained by any human values other than "wealth is good", "more wealth is better", and "no amount of wealth is enough". Thus, maximizing profits is at all times its only operational goal. Providing products and services are but means to this goal.
4. This strange wealth-seeking person is given perpetual life by its charter. It nevertheless may die, but if it makes profits, it need not ever die. With perpetual life comes the absence of 'death taxes'. The 'estate' is never broken up and redistributed to its human heirs; its wealth can build to a level far beyond that which is possessed by a single human person. The most successful corporate persons become economic entities that are larger than most nation-states. With size comes financial power. With financial power comes political power.
5. The human persons who own stock in this fictive legal person are free from any legal responsibilities for what their corporation does. If they don't like what the corporation is doing, they can sell their stock. If they continue to hold their stock, they have no practical influence on "their" corporation's behavior. The structure of corporate governance makes it extremely hard for stockholders to have any significant impact on corporate policy and behavior.
6. Except as restricted by governmental regulation, the corporate personages are therefore set free to do as they like. The cumulative effects of what they like to do have, over the last couple of centuries, changed the face of the earth and changed the terms of human existence . Thus, the true revolutionary force in 'modern times' has been the corporation, aided by corporate-enabling and corporate-promoting nation-states. The Soviet Union's counterrevolution couldn't hold up against the corporate-based system' ability to harness science and technology to produce wealth and power. And China's has been absorbed by the same system within which it is now a major contender for power.
7. Wealth and power, relatively concentrated in key sectors, have made the corporation the dominant and defining institution in our society. People adapt to its needs more than it adapts to people's needs.
8. Our society has thus created a class of fictive legal individuals who constitute a totally new type of ruling class. These rulers are beyond the reach of the teachings of Jesus. Serving Mammon (I like the old words sometimes), they are unable to serve God. Is it any wonder we non-fictive human individuals and our human societies have problems?
9. Those who serve these servants of Mammon as executives and highest-level support staff have generally taken for themselves the respectable term "conservative". They function as the human part of the new ruling class. (It's estimated that perhaps only 30,000 people constitute the "ruling class" part of the "upper class".) Their definition of "conservative", stripped of parochial social and cultural issues (the materials of "the culture wars" in the USA), comes down to maintaining the status quo of corporate domination.
10. Our constitutional structure and the structure of our election laws make for a two party system which is hard to challenge or change. Both parties are conservative in that they work to maintain the corporate system. One party tends to work to enhance corporate power, the other to improve the terms of the deal through incremental changes and reforms which help to stabilize the corporate system. FDR is the prime example of the latter, despite the fact that his reforms weren't experienced as merely incremental by the diehards of the corporate enhancement bloc. He took the label of "liberal" rather than "progressive" as "progressive" had become an outmoded and pejorative term. It was associated with basic challenges to the corporate system which had failed and which no longer had any traction.
11. The term "liberal', having been demonized and made into a pejorative by the Republican corporate party, was in turn rejected by many reformers within the Democratic corporate party, as well as by outsiders to the "left" of that party. "Progressive" became the term of choice for many. It had the virtue -- and the vice -- of blurring distinctions between the incrementalist reformers within the Democratic Party and the "leftist" system-challengers outside of the party. The virtue is that it has made it easier to form some coalitions across ideological lines in order to resist, in mostly ineffectual ways, some of the most extreme actions of the Republican Party. The vice is that it blurs ideological differences in a way that confuses thought and diffuses action. It makes it harder to discern what changes improve and support the corporate system, and what changes actually start to change the system.
12. Jesus said "You cannot worship God and wealth."
What do we mean when we call this place "CrossLeft" and ask people to "Join the Progressive Christian Movement"? Do we see connections between the words "You cannot serve God and wealth" and our institutional life? Are we to abet those who worship wealth? If we oppose them, how? And how do we discern the difference?
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| photo-WIP thumbnail 4 +Left 2.jpg | 15.04 KB |
- wpeltz's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Taking my stab
Taking my stab at answering your questions now...
What do we mean when we call this place "CrossLeft" and ask people to "Join the Progressive Christian Movement"?
To me it means that those in this movement are left-wingers, on the non-conservative side of the aisle. The Cross is Jesus of course, the one thing we depend on being true of our group members is that each of us love and serve Jesus. Progressive (v. Liberal) is harder. I think, because most self-labeled Liberals (including me) do include corporate oversight, the difference is mainly nuance. And people like me use them interchangeably. I actually think the term Progressive is easier to use now, because of the baggage the term Liberal picked up through the '90s.
Do we see connections between the words "You cannot serve God and wealth" and our institutional life?
Yes, I think we do. I know I do. In my own business I do make moral judgments now and then on if I really think I should provide web hosting and/or site design to companies or sole proprietorships. Not judging these as people, but as entities I want to (or don't want to) do business with. My decision to not work with shady internet businesses means little to them, there are tons of web hosts available. It means a great deal to me.
Are we to abet those who worship wealth? If we oppose them, how? And how do we discern the difference?
I don't think we have to make decisions on people who might join us, if they worship wealth they won't find us a comfortable group to hang with. We don't have to oppose them because they will self-remove themselves from an uncomfortable situation. And I don't think we have to worry about discerning the difference, uh what difference? I read this as the difference between those who truly worship wealth and those who are struggling with getting their lives and their businesses into alignment. Those who are struggling will see us as a life raft, those who worship wealth will not be comfortable here and will choose to leave. That takes US out of the judgment game, which is definitely my preference. God judges, we're just here to give and get support in keeping our own lives in line with our beliefs.
So how did I do? Did I pass?
Grading the questions
Well, it looks like my questions get a C-, at best. When I wrote about connections with "our institutional life" I should have written "our American institutional life". CrossLeft comes in only as the "we" who are doing the seeing and, it is to be hoped, making the connections.
Similarly, with abetting and opposing. The "those who worship wealth" to whom I was referring are the corporations and their human fellow-servants of Mammon. I wasn't suggesting judging those who visit CrossLeft.
Do we take corporatism on as a major opponent? What constitutes real opposition and what doesn't?
Those are the questions that will do much to define what we mean by CrossLeft and Progressive Christian Movement. The tags "left-wing", "liberal", and "progressive" are far less important than the issue of where you draw the boundary between conservative and non-conservative.
Corporate Accountability
When do we need to regulate the corporation and what standard do we use to determine this need? I offer a simple answer, when the corporation doesn't serve or hurts the common good. If they corporation pollutes the waters, the air, hurts the environment, abuses workers either domestically or overseas,or misleads and steals from the the public or the buyer as it would be, it needs to be regulated.
This isn't a cry for Socialism, just corporate responsibility and accountability. Make a buck!There is nothing with that, just don't abuse in doing that.
re: corporate accountability
Regardless of where one wants society to go, to socialism, to a reformed capitalism, to a decentralized mixed system with elements of both socialism and capitalism, or to something like "Participatory Economics" that doesn't fit neatly into existing paradigms, it seems to me that the first steps have to be in the direction of reining in the large corporations.
I think that means we have to reconsider the whole process of how a corporation comes into being -- how it gets its charter.
There was a time when each corporation had to be individually chartered by an act of Parliament or, in the USA, by an act of a state legislature. Charters were carefully designed for specific designated purposes, often of a public or quasi-public nature. The laws were focused on protecting the public interest rather than the interests of the stockholders. Their interests were protected by making sure they had an equal role in corporate governance. Charters could be revoked for cause. And the life of the charter was often limited and had to come up for re-examination before being renewed.
That began to change in the mid-19th century. States began to compete with each other in attracting corporate business and chartering fees -- the looser the laws, the more competitive a state became. That's why so many corporations list Delaware as their home state: Delaware became the most corporate-friendly state of all, and still is host to most US corporate charters. Corporate purposes became non-specific -- just to engage in business. Corporate oversight was fragmented among many states, and the states didn't want to be so tough as to drive away business. In many states, charter revocation laws are still on the books. I can't remember when they were last used against a large corporation.
A needed reform is to standardize corporate charters so that a state doesn't have a vested interest in non-regulation. We could institute standardized public-interest provisions concerning environmental and health impacts, and fair treatment of labor with the right to organize being strongly promoted and protected. Charter revocation or putting corporations into protective trusteeships could become a normal thing -- or a normal and believable threat.
I also think that overturning the doctrine of corporate personhood is basic. Corporations should have jus the limited rights that are specifically given in their charters. The free speech that is a human right is not a corporate right. Their commercial speech needs to be regulated for fairness and accuracy. Their political involvement should be nil.
These are the sorts of things that I think are needed just for us, the US citizenry, to begin to be able to deal adequately with regulating corporations. Right now, they control the regulatory mechanisms. They will fight with unlimited vigor and power any attempts to change things. And they have tremendous leverage. They can take their business elsewhere and get their charters in another country. And then there'd be a big battle over tightening up the standards for registering foreign corporations.
We will be kept in line by appeals to the threat of the Law of Unintended Consequences, as well as other threats. And there is the genuine issue of unintended consequences. Revolutions shouldn't be started lightly. Attempts to change the underlying institutional structures that determine our whole "way of life" are very threatening. (If "determine" is too strong a word for your taste, then I'd use "undergird" instead.)
Corporate Change and Brainwashing
As I read this Bill I thought of the Clinton's attempt to change the way health inusrance was delivered in America,shortly after Bill got elected.do you remember the endless propaganda in the media about big governemnt making our health choices for us and undermining our doctors? People that really needed some of the reforms the Clinton's were proposing were definetly against the proposals. To change anything corporate, how are we going to beat the coroporate media and the power of corporate propaganda?
Change and Resistance
Corporate media and corporate propaganda are huge hurdles or roadblocks or distractors. There's no answer beyond fighting them at the street level, so to speak, with a national movement that's learned how to frame issues better so as to communicate better and thus cut through the mind-numbing fog of endless spin. It takes local community organizing and campaigning, and virtual organizing and campaigning. And some passion 'in the streets', in public venues.
The Clinton health insurance proposal is an instructive example. The Clintons ruled out single-payer right from the start and worked out a plan that benefited the large insurance companies. HMOs were the conceptual models for her plan -- and we know now that HMOs aren't the answer. So, although we needed reforms, hers weren't exactly what we needed.
The propaganda that we saw didn't come from the big guys in the health industry. The 'Harry and Louise' ads came from the national organization of small insurance companies, who would have been big losers if the plan had gone through. And the Clinton plan wasn't the kind of thing that had passionate advocates taking to the streets in its defense.
That makes the issue of the power of corporate messaging even more scary. Think how much more the Big Guys could have done if their interests were being threatened. And how much more of a committed activist response would have been needed.
I keep thinking back to how the Anti-Global-Corporatization movement was building up steam before it was derailed by the 9/11 blasts. It was only in its early phases but showed promise that it might have real political impact. Unfortunately, our necessary focus on Iraq and on preventing preventive war against Iran tends to make the corporate issues recede, even though they're the underlying the structures for empire and war.
So, "there's a long, long trail a-winding..."
The Liberal v Progressive Debate
Well I am back and my mind has been renewed. It is 8 below out, with blizzard conditions, and very poor road conditions, so church is out this morning. I hate driving in "white outs".
I see Bill has chosen to get back into the Progessive vs Liberal debate. Which term, if either, do you prefer, Bill?
I have understood for twenty years now that the basic difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats believe in throwing the peasants a few bones to keep us appeased whereas the Republicans think so little of our intelligence that they believe they can hoodwink us into believing that what is best for the corporation is best for us. And with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck,and the whole corporate media propaganda network backing them up, they are at least partially right.
I think it is significant that there needs to be a "Progressive Caucus" in the House. The last I looked there were 69 memebrs. They include people like Dennis Kucinich, Jim McDermott, Lynn Woolsey, John Conyers, and Barbara Lee. In the Senate, Bernie Sanders has became the first member of the Senate Progressive Caucus. These people represent my point of view.They have to have a seperate caucus because their politics are differnt from the rest of the Democrats who are predomianntly "Liberals".
Yes the terms are blurred and confused and some calling themselves "Liberals" are completely in sync with the beliefs of those calling themselves "Progressives".I am hoping to be one who strives to define "Progressive" in such a manner that it includes corporate accountability and regulation. Corporate regulation and accountability would be the antithesis of what Liberalism originally stood for. Progessivism is a whole new ball game. Now how do we regulate and control the corporation? That will be another reply.
influenced by Zinn?
No. I'm slightly embarrassed to say that I've never read any of his books. I've read some articles on-line, that's all.
The one book that I read that got me started in this direction was written in the early 70s, "Global Reach" by Richard Barnet of the Institute for Policy Studies in DC, co-authored by Ronald Muller. It was perhaps the first big book on transnational corporations. The subtitle was "The Power of the Multinational Corporations". I read it after I started working for the Peoples Bicentennial Commission in 1974 or 5.
I had worked as a very small-time stock broker on Wall Street between periods of graduate school back in the late 50s and early 60s, so "Global Reach" immediately made a lot of sense to me.
Combining that with lots of anthropology and 5 years in Mississippi in the Civil Rights Movement plus another 3 years of going back and forth between Illinois and Mississippi working on a community development and health project got me right into the same flow of things that influenced Zinn.
Points 1-8 and bits of the others were the basis of the Bicentennial Bible Study series that I've mentioned before, written in 1975 with a theologically very conservative Christian Church pastor in Champaign-Urbana IL, where I lived for many years.
Those Bible studies were based primarily on the Jubilee, with this description of corporations being used for contrast. These Jubilee scriptures are quickly perceived by conservatives as threatening to the moral base of the corporate system. It bears repeating that our Bible Study was condemned by the Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee in 1975 or 76.
Thanks to you and Jim for the supportive comments. There are lots of arguable points, so I look forward to some discussion.
Bill
Corporatism and liberal reform
I think you'll like Zinn. His views on corporatism is very similar to yours. I started reading Zinn a few months ago, and though I don't agree with all his opinions, I love his take on activism in history. I'll check to see if the library has "Global Reach". Sounds like a good book. I also agree with Janet about the Jubilee study.
In your posts, I understand that you recommend the best way to curb the power of corporations is through government regulation and perhaps worker collectives and worker owned businesses (I think you wrote this in a past post somewhere). I support government regulations curbing the excess of corporations, but what kind of regulations would work the best?
By the definitions that I've read so far, I'm more a liberal reformer but I sympathize with progressive change. In the Chapter "The Socialist Challenge", which is where I'm at, there's a passage that you'd like. It's a contrast between the Socialists and the Progressives, which seems to me to be similar to the contrast between Progressives and Liberals today (Liberals now being what Progressives were in the early 20th Century).
"The Progressive movement, whether led by honest reformers like Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin or disguised conservatives like Roosevelt (who was the Progressive party candidate for President in 1912), seemed to understand it was fending off socialism. The Milwaukee Journal, a Progressive organ, said the conservatives "fight socialism blindly... while the Progressives fight it intelligently and seek to remedy the abuses and conditions upon which it thrives'...
It is hard to say how many Socialists saw clearly how useful reform was to capitalism, but in 1912, a left-wing Socialist from Connecticut, Robert LaMonte, wrote: 'Old age pensions and insurance against sickness, accident and unemployment are cheaper, are better business than jails, poor houses, asylums, hospitals.' He suggested that progressives would work for reforms, but Socialists must make only 'impossible demands,' which would reveal the limitations of the reformers.
Did the Progressive reforms succeed in doing what they intended- stabilize the capitalist system by repairing its worst defects, blund the edge of the socialist movement, restore some measure of class peace in a time of increasingly bitter clashes between capital and labor? To some extant, perhaps. But the Socialist Party continued to grow."
I personally think liberals and progressives need each other to enact change in society. The more radical people will always think changes don't come fast enough, while the more liberal won't be able to move without the radicals agitating for change.
Jubilee studies
Bill, I would really like you to start a study group using the Jubilee curriculum. Every time you mention it, I hunger more and more for this. I want to sit at your (virtual) knee, with my friends here, and learn. Will you sometime consider doing this? I know it's been a long time, but is it possible to gather back up your notes and teach/lead us in these Bible studies?
I mean, anything condemned by the Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee (under Nixon) has GOT to be a very good thing!
Think about it. I'm ready and eager.
re: Jubilee studies
It's a nice idea. I can't find the old notes or the final mimeographed sheets of texts and questions. (Remember mimeographing?) Too many moves since then, too many stacked boxes of old stuff.
I went over a lot of the same ground in a short course I co-taught with our priest a while back for a study group in my congregation -- but I seem to have misfiled that, too, or lost it in the innards of my computer.
However, together we should be able to come up with something. Let it emerge out of dialogue. I'll kick it off sometime reasonably soon. I'm kind of woozy at the moment with cardiac arrhythmias that have been kicking in more often than usual. Like Scarlett O'Hara, "I'll think about that tomorrow."
For starters, though, there's Leviticus 25. And then there's the connection with Jesus: Luke 4:17-21, via Isaiah 61:1-3.
A Bingo for Bill
Great post, Bill, incredible step by step logic from one who undoubtedly knows the subject of which he speaks. I have a few questions which I will ask in the next day or two when my mind is a little sharper, as I am tired tonight.Your concluding questions really should be discussed. I am one for self examination, understanding where you are going and what you want, and then going for it. Your questions should help in that area.
Glad my illustration inspired your post
I'm glad my illustration inspired your post, Bill. Right now I'm in the chapter about socialism and the progressive movement in Zinn's People's History and I recognize the arguments both you and Zinn have about liberal reform that supports the corporate system as opposed to radical reform that restructures the corporate system. Were you influenced by Zinn?