This is part of a mixed series between my Substack and this website, complete with a jumbled posting order. Go here for the first in the series (I, II).

The next article in Islander #5 is an intriguing argument by Dr. Neema Parvini, contending that capitalism’s basic urges are the foundation of feminism and (more ultimately, more importantly) community collapse. With many parts of this argument I fully agree. With its full scope, however, I must find issue. The conclusion and certain elements of its reaching are flawed.

Dr. Parvini’s argument, summarized, is that capitalism’s pursuit of productivity (profit) requires, leads to, and consists in integral part of the effort to minimize the cost of labor. In order to minimize labor’s cost (maximizing productivity), capitalism first enlists women, producing feminism, then follows the societal degradation (lower wages; two-income households; falling birth-rates; dysfunction in marriage; more) by importing more cheap labor via legal or illegal mass immigration. This leads at last to a complete collapse, he avers. In the main, as I said, the argument is sound. My problem I will explain briefly below; the greatest is with the solution he gives: government regulation.

Dr. Parvini speaks ill of capitalism. Here my response is multiheaded, though no hydra, for ‘capitalism’ is a racked term. Part of my response is this: ‘capitalism’ as an idea is the product of Communist theory, particularly of Marx, and thus the term, with its philosophical implications, is fraught and tainted, an invective from the beginning, defined in one way but applied beyond that definition (source: Gordon Clark, if I remember correctly. Check out his history of philosophy). Another part turns in a different direction: the unbridled pursuit of productivity and profit is not the thing which is beautiful about ‘capitalism,’ insofar as capitalism is real; it is instead the excrescence and perversion wrought by Godlessness.

I do not flinch, however, from acknowledging that an unbridled search for profit, for productivity, for mechanical efficacy, has mutilated our world. The Romans did it, and so did the plains Indians who put themselves on the edge of starvation by over-hunting the buffalo (it was not merely Americans who caused issues with the supply of the Buffalo. The power of the horse was only a few centuries in the hands of the Sioux and similar tribes; they were going through the prey at an unsustainable rate and would have likely suffered famines and forced societal change if not for the European settlement interrupting their development. Source: ACOUP). This is not capitalism’s evil, though.

For what is meant by ‘capitalism’? Undoubtedly this: free enterprise; private property; the minimization of government to effective punishment of theft and violence. Our modern ‘capitalism,’ however, presents little kinship with this, except as remnant. Regulations are the standard; regulatory capture is a standard part of life; private property is a joke to the government; the government’s power is wielded to suppress competition. More, we find that sophisticated theft or the theft of the powerful goes often unpunished, while the honesty of the weak is no protection. Even punishment of violence is mutilated, what with the proliferation of imprisonment (an immoral institution, as punishment), the use of radically sub-sufficient punishments (rape & murder should be capital crimes; it is a curse to us that they are not, in direct effects and in spiritual terms), and the effective immunity of the powerful (see: Epstein and the lack of prosecutions among those he trafficked with. Even the British lord recently embarrassed looks to be going down as much for financial malfeasance as aught else, and he’ll likely face only professional-social retribution).

We don’t have ‘capitalism.’ We have government regulations, Dr. Parvini’s solution to capitalism’s problems, but of course we have the wrong regulations, the ones he doesn’t like. Yet Dr. Parvini’s brief list of proposals includes immoral suggestions, centralizations of power historically shown to be deadly to a society (the way we transitioned from the 1800s vitality to our modern decline)- wage controls, etc. More, he fails to consider that there can be community-wide efforts not built on the state (and also, o Presbyterian, not built on the institutional church). The linkage of the state’s coercive power with any part of society besides the establishment of punitive justice (including on the border) is not only morally unsound (and immorality curses a people); it is an invitation to tyranny and further evil, however pleasant the beginning.

Now, I am in favor of tariffs. I made the argument from principle here: link to part one. So I do agree with Dr. Parvini in a sense. Making capitalism or economics, in any sense, the governing principle of our society, that’s a bad idea, whichever way it decays. However, we must be careful not to cast out one demon only to have seven return, al a Matthew 12:43-45. Replacing free enterprise with government regulation is what we already did- and look how it worked out. Perhaps this time, we should try to replace them all with God’s righteousness, with justice, with the love which is the fulfilling of His law (Rom. 13:8-10), love by fulfillment and consisting of fulfillment.

As Dr. Parvini has observed a real problem, however, in seeing modernity’s obsession with production, it behooves me to give a positive vision to explain my disagreement with his ‘positive’ vision (government regulation).

We must replace the center of our culture with love of God, from which flows true love of man. Under that rubric, profit becomes ‘fruit,’ a gift of God, and it becomes not a final goal but only intermediate. To the Christian, righteousness is the greatest fruit; children and family are a part of this righteousness, more important than ‘profit.’ Profit, however, is still important as a part of caring for that family and for other relationships in society: church, state, friends, associations. Moreover, it connects to ‘vocation,’ a crucial idea to functional Christianity. A Christian’s vocation is his calling, the task given him by God, containing a thousand parts but including, typically, a call to some economic work, however menial or glorious. Within vocation, profit may come, but profit is always subordinate to relationship with others and relationship with God, so that it may not become the idol man has made it.

In parting, then, I would note that feminism and antifeminism have distorted the Christian view of the feminine role in the economy.¹ A topic too large for today and not my expertise, admittedly. So I simply point out here: the Christian woman seen in Proverbs 31 is the manager of her household. This ‘household’ includes what we would consider business, much business. However, it is not the business of a corporation or the like; it is the business of her family, a part of its interaction with the economy. Thus it avoids the trap Parvini sees of familial disintegration because it is instead a part of thorough familial integration. How to adapt this to more wage-oriented household economies, where the father-husband works outside the immediate reach of the home, requires a little thought but is truly no difficult task, at least in the abstract. (In the specific, life is hard.)

Footnotes

1. I don’t remember where, but Chesterton makes a piercing observation when he notes that the working woman often finds herself or makes herself effectively wifed to the job and the employer, personal or otherwise. ↩︎