Rethinking Money

by Mark C. Johnson

If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still. The increase from the land is taken by all; the king himself profits from the fields.

Whoever loves money never has enough money;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.
This too is meaningless.

As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owner
except to feast his eyes on them?

The sleep of the laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep.                                    (Ecclesiastes 5:8-12)

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.  (1 Timothy 6:10)

When they perceived his arrogance his people said unto him: “Exult not [in thy wealth], for, verily, God does not love those who exult [in things vain]! Seek instead, by means of what God has granted thee, [the good of] the life to come, without forgetting, withal, thine own [rightful share in this world; and do good [unto others] as God has done good unto thee; and seek not to spread corruption on earth; for verily God does not love the spreaders of corruption! (Sura 28:76-77)

As I traveled across the United States this past December through March on behalf of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), the conversation often turned to money. My trip had obvious development overtones, and most had felt the impact of a long recession, but still, gratefully, acknowledged the work of FOR as worthy of their contributed support.

Most people felt they had enough money, but few seemed to think they would see the economy return to its 2000 peak. While the talk of money often turned to the costs of continuing wars and to the issues of mal-distribution, it became clear that there were more shades to money than most conversations addressed. This issue of Fellowship explores a few of the many ways that our understandings of, and our beliefs about, money shape so much of our lives.

My favorite story of persevering in an intellectual effort is told of Gandhi, who, early in his career in India, gave a lecture on the role of education. In the audience was a young woman who would become the wife of E. Stanley Jones. She approached Gandhi after the lecture to say she expected she might spend a good part of her life in India in education, and, finding his remarks helpful, asked if she could have a copy of his speech. Gandhi answered that his remarks were rather extemporaneous, but, once he had put them in better order, he would be happy to share a copy with her. Then, for 25 years, Gandhi would send a card or letter to Mrs. Jones each year saying he had not forgotten his promise, but that the issue had proved more intractable than he had initially imagined and he had not yet been able to reduce his thoughts on the topic to a manageable document.

Sitting in the peace library located at FOR’s headquarters, below a hundred volumes of Gandhi’s writings, we can believe it was not for a lack of trying to understand the topic or the failure to commit ideas to paper. Some things are simply harder to understand than others.

Such it is with money. When I first proposed the “rethinking money” theme to the editor of Fellowship, I had just been at a New Spiritual Progressives conference with David Korten and Gar Alperovitz. Robert Reich’s book on Supercapitalism, Raj Patel’s The Value of Nothing, and Thomas H. Greco, Jr.’s The End of Money and the Future of Civilization had only recently appeared. The debate over the prospective impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission [130 S.Ct. 876 (2010)] on the mid-term elections was heating up, and the celebration of the “end of the recession” was taking place in the White House. The concern for the impact of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project [08-1498 (2010)] on the definition of “material aid” was unsettling the global world of humanitarian aid.

The topic of money expressed itself in a wide range of issues: military budgets and armaments, housing crisis, European economies in freefall, soaring prices of gold and oil, corruption in foreign governments, the long-term affordability to the nation of health care reform, to name a few. And below the surface was a longstanding, deep-seated anxiety about the relationship between the demands of stewardship for the work of faith-based organizations and being complicit with Mammon and the State in the accumulation and use of money. “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Understanding or misunderstanding of the role of money in our lives was widespread.

Then I discovered how deep an issue it was as well. I have had to come to accept that this will be a superficial, first pass at a subject which, like the environment, the costs of structural violence, and the global and historical impacts of patriarchy and militarism, must be resolved if we are to make our way to a “world house” in which truth and love define and create a condition of well-being for all.

The epigraphs demonstrate that religious communities have long been aware of and wrestled with the relationships between money, wealth, and social justice. One aspect of such consideration has been the role of interest, or usury, in economic systems. One thread in that debate continues to engage, in an almost esoteric rhetoric, a circle of thinkers who argue for a new money system that uses credit-clearing structures rather than loans, debt, and interest as a way of promoting exchange without the inevitably corrupting scourge of usury. While presented in the voice and from the conscience of Christian thinkers, other religious traditions could offer similar critiques of the intersection of changing economies by rewriting the rules of commerce.

The full-page graphic (in this magazine) from the War Resisters League illustrates one of more than a dozen campaigns – including Western Washington FOR’s “Bring Our $Billions$ Home” campaign – to educate, advocate, and drive policy changes on the redistribution of money from war-fare to well-fare. See the side bar for other campaigns collected at the War Resisters League web site, where you can also order their excellent flier.

A thought experiment I have been developing further deepens the questions of foreign military aid and U.S. military budgets. I was reminded recently that with the exception of military aid to Israel, no funds leave the country as cash to foreign powers; it all goes in the form of goods and services that in the end sustain the U.S. economy. Imagine an F16 fighter jet, a Tomahawk missile (oxymoronic wretched label of colonialism and genocide), or a Boeing, Northop Grumman, or Lockheed Martin drone. Break each component down in your mind to its component pieces and then trace their production paths back through the processes to mineral extraction, raw material production, engineering and design sequences, assembly and testing, etc. See the miners, the millers, the transportation of materials, the university courses and the research investments in corporate quarters all across America, the fabrication of wires and screws, nuts and bolts, computer chips from silicon, abrasive tools from garnet dust. Think about the energy produced and consumed in the course of manufacture, oil, coal, electricity.

The experiment does not need to go on for very long before we see the full extent of the military-industrial complex that virtually every one of us are a complicit part of every day. And then ask this question: Who gets rich? For every step of every relationship and process is now embedded in a cycle of contracts, loans with interest payments, capital leveraging capital, shareholder and executive compensation schemes that ensure enormous profits to remarkably few individuals.

Who gets rich? Why is it important that war continues to secure their profits? What control do they have over the decisions that lead to the flow of funds involved in all this structure?

What can money buy in the world of political influence? What are the risks of unconstrained spending on access to and the use of political speech to advance ideologies? What has “Citizens United” meant in terms of the recent election and prospectively for 2012 and beyond? Beyond elections how do the use of lobby dollars impact governance and democracy in the United States? The synopsis of work produced by Common Cause demonstrates leadership provided by Bob Edgar and his board, led by Robert Reich, to hold government accountable to the interests of the people. Common Cause celebrated its 40th year offering an ongoing Jeremiad on the influence of money in politics to the benefit of the few and the costs of the nation. Without investing in a full-blown analysis of the year’s archive, you will get a sense of the service provided by Common Cause to the commonweal.

Mark JohnsonWe can only suggest this in these few pages one might add to the facets of discernment we employ in our analysis and critique of the world today that we remember and employ the mantra of investigative journalism. Follow the money.

Mark C. Johnson is executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.