God is a Capitalist

by Roger McKinney

  But the former Soviet Union stands out as the most fascinating example in modern times of the impotence of pure science to generate wealth. The Soviets put the first man in space and matched the scientific advances of the free world until the atomization of the USSR. At the same time, the Asian Tiger nations impressed no one with a reputation for world leadership in scientific research, but they have surpassed Russia many times over in per capita income.

  Socialist assumptions about the innocence of human nature and the power of science to change it through social engineering have become so pervasive that most Christians subscribe to them. Almost everyone in the West looks to the structure of society to determine the causes of crime and find solutions. Even the temperance movements of the late nineteenth century were nothing more than attempts at social engineering. If Schoeck is correct in his estimation of the role played by Christianity in taming envy in the West, it is not a coincidence that enthusiasm for capitalism faded with a decline of traditional Christianity over the past century. The eclipse of Christianity forecasts a bleak future unless the West experiences an old-fashioned gospel revival.

  Individualism domesticated envy

  Schoeck argued that Protestant Christianity corralled envy by freeing the individual from the irrational constraints of collectivism based on envy. It did not provide absolute freedom, but enough freedom from envy to unleash the envy-constrained powers of economic growth. Another way to put this is to say that Christianity invented individualism. But why did it take 1,500 years for Christianity to tame envy? First, we need to clarify what we mean by individualism because dishonest people have muddied the pool of ideas with innovative definitions and made discussion of the subject almost impossible.

  For example, the English word “sanction,” can mean to endorse something or to penalize it. Like sanction, the word “individualism” can mean one thing or the opposite. The context can sometimes clarify the author’s intent. Another example is the confusion caused by the word “liberal.” In the nineteenth century it meant freedom from government coercion but in the twentieth came to stand for such coercion in the U.S. and U.K., whereas it retained much of its original meaning on the continent of Europe. We can say the same can be true for the term “individualism.”

  What do we mean by individualism? Clearly it means something more than that humanity is composed of people with their own physical bodies because that is kind of obvious. At its most basic level, individualism is a way of organizing society and that is why Western societies have very different institutions from those of most of the rest of the world. In the same way that Schoeck asserts that societies organize around envy, individualism is the flip side of envy, so societies’ views of what it means to be an individual form part of the focus point around which they organize themselves. That is still a little vague I am sure, so let’s look at some examples that should clarify the concept.

  Larry Siedentop in his book Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism writes that the Western view of individuals did not exist in the ancient Greek and Roman world. I would add that it did not exist in ancient China, India, Persia or any other world, either. The ancient Greeks worshipped their ancestors and organized their societies around that worship. The hearth was the center of the home because the flame in it kept the ancestors close to the living and content. Siedentop put it this way:

  Around the family hearth – with the father tending its sacred fire, offering sacrifices, libations and incantations learned from his father – members of the family achieved union with their ancestors and prepared for the future. The fire on the family hearth could not be allowed to die out, for it was deemed to be alive. Its flickering, immaterial flame did not just represent the family’s ancestors. It was their ancestors, who were thought to live underground and who had to be provided with food and drink, if they were not to become malevolent spirits...The ancient Greek language has a very significant word to designate a family. It is...a word which signifies, literally, that which is near a hearth.

  As the priest and head of the family, the father literally owned all family members and all family property. He could execute any family member or a slave with impunity. The oldest son would inherit the father’s role as priest, family head and all of his property, leaving young sons and daughters with no property. Daughters had no choice for survival but to marry, in which case they became members of their husband’s family and subject to that family’s head. People outside of the family did not share even a common humanity with the family, as evidenced by widespread slavery. Members held no identity or will outside of their family. Siedentop wrote, “Charity, concern for humans as such, was not deemed a virtue, and would probably have been unintelligible. But fulfilling obligations attached to a role in the family was everything.” Ancestor worship and the family structure it created survived in Europe as late as the seventh century when pagan families newly introduced to Christianity used the Eucharist to feed ancestors.

  Greek and Roman societies evolved as families formed clans then tribes by identifying a common ancestor to worship. Tribes combined in a similar way to build cities. Along the way ancestor worship never waned and the family provided the basic building block of society. Within cities, kings were the high priests and later under a republican form of government the magistrates of the city were the chief priests.

  Cities were confederations of families, not of individuals. Only family heads, and later the oldest son, enjoyed citizenship or had any rights within the city. Along the path to full citizenship, the son would go through initiation in the family cult, then the cults of the clan and tribe and finally the cult of the city, each stage involving a ceremonial meal.

  Membership in the religions left no space for individuality in conscience or choice. They asserted authority over actions, thought and relationships. “There was no sphere of life into which these rules could not enter – whether it was a matter of dress, deportment, marriage, sport, education, conversation or even ambition,” as Siedentop wrote.

  To the ancient Greek and Roman, patriotism to one’s city was the highest possible virtue because the city protected the ancestors and gave meaning and identity to every citizen and his family. Siedentop wrote, “For the Greeks, to be without patriotism, to be anything less than an active citizen, was to be an ‘idiot’. That, indeed, is what the word originally meant, referring to anyone who retreated from the life of the city.” Exile from the city was the worst possible punishment; it became a living death. In that world, a person’s identity issued from his role in the family and city. A natural hierarchy existed in which some were born to rule because nature had endowed them with superior abilities, others to serve or to fight. “For Plato, everyone is born with an attribute that fits him or her for a particular social role, his or her ‘proper’ place.”

  The organization of the cities by tribes and the welfare of the city having the highest priority had enormous consequences. Society was stratified into castes. It allowed no space for personal judgment or will. Individuals could not claim rights that limited the authority of the state or family head. In other words, individualism as we know it in the West did not exist. The next chapter will follow the long difficult birth of the Western idea of individualism. Schoeck explained the history and influence of envy on social organization and how envy crushes individualism. The stamp of ancient Greek and Roman culture is evident in the cultures Schoeck analyzed, even among native tribes in the Americas. Research in cultural anthropology demonstrates that with regard to individualism, most of the world thinks and acts like the ancient Greeks and Romans.

  Culture rules

  Schoeck insisted that the rise of individuality in Christianity broke the envy barrier in the West and unleashed the productive forces of free markets. To examine the importance of individuality today, let us turn to the field of cross-cultural anthropology and the works of Geert Hofstede, Shalom H. Schwartz and others. In the 1970’s and 1980’s Hofstede researched the cultural diff
erences across subsidiaries of International Business Machines Corporation in sixty-four countries. As a result of these studies, he identified five dimensions that describe cultural differences. They are power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation. The following compares the measures for power distance, individualism and uncertainty with Schoeck’s depiction of envy and their impact on economic development.

  Societies in which individuals are loosely tied to each other in groups, where everyone is expected to look after himself and his immediate family score high on the individuality index (IDV). The opposite of individuality is collectivism, but not in the Marxist sense. In collectivist societies people belong to strong, cohesive groups, such as extended families and tribes which protect them in exchange for loyalty.

  People in collectivist societies are tradition-oriented and hardly think of themselves as individuals. For example, Chinese tradition has no equivalent for the Western concept of personality as a separate entity distinct form society and culture. Hofstede wrote, “The Chinese word for ‘man,’ (ren) includes the person’s intimate societal and cultural environment, which makes that person’s existence meaningful.”

  Collectivist societies consider individualism an evil thing. Mao Zedong for example, saw individualism as representing the manifestation of selfishness and an aversion to discipline. Placing the interests of the group ahead of one’s own interest is the best way to provide for one’s wellbeing. In contrast, an individual in the U.S. who can stand on his own, think for himself, depend on no one and admits to no master is often admired and portrayed as the hero of many films and novels. Hofstede wrote,

  Modern man…is open to new experiences; relatively independent of parental authority; concerned with time, planning, willing to defer gratification; he feels that man can be the master over nature, and that he controls the reinforcements he receives from his environment; he believes in determinism and science; he has a wide, cosmopolitan perspective, he uses broad in-groups; he competes with standards of excellence, and he is optimistic about controlling his environment.

  Traditional man has narrow in-groups, looks at the world with suspicion, believes that good is limited and one obtains a share of it by chance or pleasing the gods; he identifies with his parents and receives direction from them; he considers planning a waste of time, and does not defer gratification; he feels at the mercy of obscure environmental factors, and is prone to mysticism; he sees interpersonal relations as an end, rarely as means to an end; he does not believe that he can control his environment but rather sees himself under the influence of external, mystical powers.

  Most countries in Asia earn low scores on the IDV scale, with the important exception of Japan. Five of the six countries that score highest on the IDV scale include the U.K. and her offspring, the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Netherlands is the sixth, with a score between Canada and New Zealand. Cultural attitudes toward individualism have a direct impact on economic development because they structure institutions in ways that encourage and reward innovation or strangle it, and, as noted earlier, innovation is the artesian well that nourishes economic growth. Hofstede’s work demonstrates the power of individualism to break the envy barrier in development. As Schoeck wrote:

  Institutionalized envy...or the ubiquitous fear of it, means that there is little possibility of individual economic advancement and no contact with the outside world through which the community might hope to progress. No one dares to show anything that might lead people to think he was better off. Innovations are unlikely. Agricultural methods remain traditional and primitive, to the detriment of the whole village, because every deviation from previous practice comes up against the limitations set by envy.

  Hofstede’s power distance index (PDI) measures the extent to which the less powerful members of society accept the unequal distributions of power in their culture. High scores on power distance suggest that the followers as much as the leaders endorse the society’s level of inequality in both material wealth and under the law. Countries with low PDI scores tend to have democratic governments with much discussion and little violence in the political process. The government recruits bureaucrats from a broad cross section of the population. Citizens take ownership of the government, cooperate with it and trust the police. Corruption is relatively low and scandals end political careers. Philosophies and religions tend to emphasize equality before the law and power sharing.

  The highest PDI score indicates a dictatorship or monarchy. Leadership changes are sudden and violent. The road to power and wealth leads through loyalty to the leadership. Administrative elites are unrepresentative of the larger population. Citizens trust the press but distrust the police while corruption runs rampant and political scandals are covered up. Citizens wait for the government to make major decisions and rely more on the state for assistance.

  In Hofstede’s research, nations with the highest PDI scores cluster in Asia, with the exceptions of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and in Africa and Latin America. The English-speaking world, along with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, take up the middle of the scale, while the lowest scores go to Northern European countries that lean toward socialism, such as Sweden. This seems to suggest that high levels of PDI are worst for economic performance, followed by very low levels with moderate levels encouraging development. This may seem odd, at first, until we remember that too much emphasis on equality of material goods leads to high tax rates and policies which redistribute wealth and discourage productive activity. High levels of PDI encourage corruption and destroy the security that owners of private property need as incentives to invest in plants and equipment. In high PDI countries, those who manage to accumulate wealth tend to keep it by sending it out of the country to safe havens like the U.S. or Switzerland. The optimum is in the middle where the people tolerate higher levels of inequality in wealth but low levels of inequality under the law that holds the elites to the same legal standards as the masses.

  The uncertainty avoidance index (UAI) captures a society’s tolerance for ambiguity. Extreme uncertainty about the future creates an intolerable anxiety in some cultures. Nations with high scores on the UAI try to minimize novel, unknown, surprising and unusual situations by enforcing strict laws and rules, safety and security measures, and a particular absolute “truth.”

  Societies have developed a variety of ways to cope with uncertainty through the use of technology, law and religion. They employ technology to defend people against uncertainties caused by nature, while laws protect people from the unpredictable behavior of others. Religion helps people accept the uncertainties that the other two cannot guard against. Societies with low UAI scores in Hofstede’s research tend to be more open to innovation, more trusting of others and are more willing to accept foreigners in their midst. Also, they allow more individual decision-making and are more comfortable with competition.

  Other characteristics of cultures with a high tolerance for uncertainty (indicated by a low UAI score) include an acceptance of uncertainty as part of life, an openness to change and innovation, willingness to take risks, curiosity about things that are different, comfort with ambiguity, attraction to novelty and convenience and the belief in one’s own ability to influence one’s life, one’s superiors and the world.

  On the other hand, societies structured to avoid uncertainty exhibit tendencies toward prejudice, rigidity, dogmatism, intolerance of different opinions, traditionalism, superstition, racism and ethnocentrism. These societies interpret freedom as a threat to the established order, because freedom implies uncertainty in the behavior of oneself and others. Often, citizens accept totalitarian governments in order to avoid uncertainty. Cultures that score high in UAI view uncertainty in life as a threat they must fight. They prefer the status quo to change, view things and people that differ from the norm as dangerous, take very few risks, have a strong need for clarity and structure, desire purity, and possess a feeling of powerlessness
toward external forces. Hofstede wrote that the authoritarian personality syndrome is related to uncertainty avoidance and is characterized by an

  intolerance of ambiguity, rigidity, dogmatism, intolerance of different opinions, traditionalism, superstition, racism, and ethnocentrism next to pure dependence on authority. Fromm (1965) has suggested that fascism and Nazism were a result of a need to ‘escape from freedom,’ a response to the anxiety that freedom created in societies with a low tolerance for such anxiety. Freedom implies uncertainty in the behavior of oneself and of others. Totalitarian ideologies try to avoid this uncertainty.

  People in uncertainty-avoiding cultures look for structure in their organizations, institutions and relationships that make daily events predictable and easy to interpret. On the other hand, they may take extreme risks in order to reduce ambiguities, such as starting a fight with an opponent instead of waiting for the threat to materialize. Uncertainty avoidance affects the politics of a country. In societies that chafe under ambiguity, the citizens have a low rate of participation in local politics, preferring to leave the decisions to experts. They often feel alienated from the government and social systems that affect their lives.

  On the other side, people in cultures that embrace uncertainty feel more competent to direct state policies and consequently reduce the ability of authorities to make fast, autonomous decisions. They demonstrate a lower sense of urgency and an acceptance of familiar and unfamiliar risks, such as changing jobs. Uncertainty avoidance plays an important role in economic development. Aversion to uncertainty produces laws that limit the freedom of markets. For the majority of people in the world, free markets appear chaotic, messy and frightening. Socialists have often advertised their system as offering freedom from the chaos of the market.