Ahistorical gospel

Competing Gospels: Public Theology and Economic Theory
By Robert G. Simons
E. J. Dwyer, 1995. 211pp, 24.95 (pb)
Reviewed by Sean Moysey If humans could change society through the expression of "good ideas" then we would already live in utopia. In Competing Gospels, Simons sets out to convince us about what society "should" be like — an admirable sentiment — but unsuccessfully attempts to pull together ideological currents that are poles apart. He takes theory at face value rather than examining the actual social relations in a historical context. Competing Gospels, according to Simons, "offers an anthropological, theological and economic rational for making decisive moves toward locally managed economies more readily accountable to already existing sets of human relationships and communities". The aim of Competing Gospels writes Simons is to "engage people of goodwill to think more seriously and deeply about the negative impact which market economies have had upon the possibility for community-based economic organisation". Simons, like others, has an opinion on what society should be like. The problem is that opinion is presented as fact. "The economic system of feudalism could not be incorporated into the market economy because the latter, even in its origins, systemically ignored the social realities of the human person", Simon writes in what he describes as "a brief survey of the history of the market". The fact is that feudalism was usurped by capitalism. The social organisation of feudalism was an obstacle to nascent capitalism; capitalism overpowered feudalism and removed obstructive feudal social relations. When Simons refers to the "social realities of the human person" who is he talking about? Kings and queens, or serfs, or nobles, or priests perhaps? Simons writes that "those who were profiting from the advances did not stop to notice the disruption and dislocation in the lives of so many people". They noticed all right, but they didn't care! In fact the oppression of the working class was justified ideologically by the new ruling class, which relied on the church to instil the hope of a better afterlife, rather than advocate struggle for one today. The underlying problem with Simons' approach is the assumption that social change is a lineal process of thinking up a new social system then convincing people to create it. What causes the ills and contradictions in society aren't examined by Simons beyond, "We often treat people as things, rather than as other persons like ourselves. We see them only as means to an end". Why? Simons doesn't discuss it, preferring instead to state what should be. Competing Gospels is an ideological gym session, but after the big work-out it meekly advocates a "nicer" capitalist society. "Investors need to become aware of the human, social and environmental consequences of their investments. People and politicians also need to start questioning whether it is still appropriate that the return on capital investment is potentially unlimited", writes Simons. He then appeals to "people of goodwill" to stem big business' domination, while ruling out the "nasty" option of having to replace capitalism altogether. In chapter three Simons sympathises with the Marxist theory of alienation outlined by the "young Marx", but regrets that "Marx short-circuited the possible outcome of his analysis [of alienation] by making the condition for free creativity so dependent upon overthrowing the capitalist process of production". Simons naively suggests that workers could have discussed their grievances with capitalists during a period when the right to vote was limited to white males with property (only one adult in eight could vote in 1866 England), strikes were brutally suppressed and capitalism was still in the process of consolidating its rule. Simons is either oblivious to the history of the 19th and 20th centuries, chooses to ignore it, or has decided to opt for a post-modernist interpretation of history. In chapter six Simons takes us through the "wisdom" of the Catholic church from the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII to John Paul II's Centesimus Annus in 1991. For Simons the Catholic church is a source of progressive thought. While the encyclicals are palatable pieces of liberal ideology, the actual practice of the Catholic church shows it is not an agent for progressive social change. Written in user-unfriendly language, Competing Gospels requires time and energy to read. My advice is to spend them otherwise.