Anti-Capitalist Christian College Professors Who Know Nothing About Economics
Professors of liberal arts courses other than economics at obscure little Christian colleges -- virtually all Christian colleges are obscure and little -- are generally opposed to the free market.
They got their Ph.D. degrees way back when, and all they really remember about economics is what they learned in a sociology course. That course satisfied the social science requirement for the B.A. They might have taken a course in economics, but they took one look at the textbook, and they could not figure it out. It looked complicated. So, they took a sociology course instead. It qualified for the three-semester credit hours that they had to have a as social science. Or maybe they took three units in a government class. But that was about it.
Basic fact: they did not take a course in economics.
They now teach literature. Or maybe they teach philosophy. They have strong opinions about the free market. They don't like it. They read The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Huffington Post. So do all of their friends, all of whom are seeking tenure but have not yet received it. Their friends don't like the free market, either.
They think they understand economics because of that sociology course way back when. But they cannot follow an economic argument. They have no intention of following an economic argument. They have never read a free market economics book. They have no intention of reading a free market economics book. The important thing is this: they love Jesus, and they love the editorials in The New York Times. That combination, they firmly believe, gives them the right to have unimpeachable opinions about the free market economy. They teach these views to the English major students.
I have been dealing with these people for approximately 60 years. They never change. Their opinions never change. Their inability to follow an economic argument never changes. Their complete ignorance of the corpus of economic thought never changes. They have strong opinions, and they are not going to listen to economic arguments. They know all about economic arguments. "It's just a bunch of self-interested pro-business claptrap." They read this in The New York Times.
Some of these critics of capitalism are Protestant evangelicals. Maybe they read Ron Sider's first edition of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study (1977), co-published by Protestant evangelical Inter-Varsity Press and the Roman Catholic Paulist Press. They never heard about his retractions 20 years later in the fourth edition. They never read David Chilton's comprehensive refutation, beginning in 1981, three editions in a row: Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators: A Biblical Response to Ronald J. Sider. I have posted the final edition here. Sider tried in two successive editions to evade Chilton's arguments, but prudently never mentioning Chilton by name. Then, in his 1997 edition, the year Chilton died, Sider backed off from his radical anti-market position, and he even adopted several of Chilton's suggestions, but still never mentioning Chilton by name. Sider then disappeared. I have surveyed Sider's strategic reversal here: "The Economic Re-Education of Ronald J. Sider."
Other critics are Roman Catholics. They usually invoke some version of distributivism, the poorly named, never explained economic wail of despair offered by G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton defended it as follows in his little read book, The Outline of Sanity (1926).
They say it is Utopian; and they are right. They say it is idealistic; and they are right. They say it is quixotic; and they are right. It deserves every name that will indicate how completely they have driven justice out of the world; every name that will measure how remote from them and their sort is the standard of honourable living; every name that will emphasize and repeat the fact that property and liberty are sundered from them and theirs, by an abyss between heaven and hell.Distributism may be a dream; three acres and a cow may be a joke; cows may be fabulous animals; liberty may be a name; private enterprise may be a wild goose chase on which the world can go no further. But as for the people who talk as if property and private enterprise were the principles now in operation—those people are so blind and deaf and dead to all the realities of their own daily existence, that they can be dismissed from the debate.
This book is as far as he got in explaining his system. It is not the basis of a complete re-structuring of the world's economy.
Who would do the re-structuring? With what threat of which sanctions? Imposed by which politicians?
There is an old political slogan: "You can't beat something with nothing." There are lots of criticisms of capitalism. Because of price competition in a free market, these criticisms are a dime a dozen. The initial questions to ask the critics are these:
1. What is the title of your movement's treatise on the recommended alternative economic system -- a treatise that is the intellectual equivalent of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) or Ludwig von Mises' Human Action (1949)? [Note: there is none.]2. What are the titles of the books that defend your view from published critics of your primary explanatory treatise? [Note: there are none.]
3. What academic journal defends and develops your view? [Note: there is none.]
4. What is the website that discusses the position?
Then there are these questions:
1. What are the five main criticisms you offer of capitalism?2. What are the solutions that your system has for these five criticisms?
3. What historical examples are there of societies that have adopted any of these five solutions?
4. Why haven't these examples been adopted elsewhere?
5. What do we need to do to get our society to adopt them?
If you ask these questions, you will discover that the critic has no understanding of economic theory. He has never read a treatise on economics -- not one. He cannot explain any secular economic treatise in terms of what he says that Jesus said. He has cited Jesus, but he cannot cite any developed theoretical application of what Jesus said that defends his proposed reform of the economy.
If this is the case, then you can safely ignore his criticism of the market in the name of Christianity. He is faking it.
I have written 31 typeset volumes showing that free market capitalism is the only possible outcome of the Mosaic law. It took me from 1973 to 2012 to write them. They are published here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/department180.cfm.
I have written a dozen support volumes explaining my exegetical volumes. They are published here: https://www.garynorth.com/public/department180.cfm.
Does the critic of the free market in the name of Jesus refer to these materials in his published criticisms? If not, he is a fake. He is either abysmally ignorant of Christian economics (likely) or else he is deliberately concealing my existence from his readers.
There are a lot of fakes out there.