The New Gospel of Wealth

Here's my review of THE WORLD WE WANT by Canadian philosopher Mark Kingwell. I posted it to Amazon in May, 2002. Little has changed since then: the idea that free-markets bring freedom continues to be sold and accepted as Gospel.

Slipping Out of the Soft-Noose Consensus, May 13, 2002

Along with other clear-thinking Canadian writers such as Norma Klein (NO LOGO), Stephen Dale (LOST IN THE SUBURBS), John Ralston Saul (THE UNCONSCIOUS CIVILIZATION), Mr. Kingwell cannot ignore the many perfectionist proclamations emanating from the U.S. Like them he is able think constructively about the political implications of the ideology of global consumptionism down here in the McMegastate.

Kingwell, a philosopher, refers to this latest eruption of economic imperialism as the "soft -noose consensus of production andconsumption," just one well-turned phrase among many in this fascinating meditation upon the meaning of citizenship and the importance of dissent in an environment where dissent is either marginalized or co-opted by commercial culture. For instance, he explores today's diminution of the polis through the "soft-noose consensus" by discussing Leibniz's 18th century theodicy of the "best of all popular worlds."

This neat bit of legerdemain hypothesized that since God could create any kind of world he wanted, and that since God is perfect, the world we live in is "the best of possible worlds." As Kingwell points out, Liebniz's contemporary critic, Voltaire says this idea does not take into account the existence of evil, i.e., if God is "omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, " then he would not allow evil in the world. Leibniz would reply by claiming the problem is not that God allows evil in the world, the problem is that we mortals cannot see his larger design, which indeed is benevolent.

Kingwell's point is that we no longer talk about the potential for evil in capitalism, because the same kind of "theodicy" can be found in capitalist ideology, which now "brooks no rational challenge." The only "debate" we are treated to here in the States is that we're living the "best of all possible worlds" a world being created by that best of all possible engines -- the free market -- case closed. Thus any caviling about disparities in wealth, or the misery that abounds in the Third World and pockets of the First, is met with a "chorus of incredulity" by the faithful. For them, the great Market God has "omnibenevolent designs" and to question Him is to doubt Him and his great works. This "rhetoric of inevitability" as Kingwell calls it, is so omnipresent here in the States and has come to explain everything we do, that our leaders can only think in terms of the marketplace. For example, only recently, we Americans were told that the best way to fight the "terrorist threat" was to go out and buy something. By charging a big-ticket item on our Visas, we too strike a blow for freedom.

A corollary to this theodicy not mentioned by Kingwell might be that the Market God's ultimate purpose is to bring all and sundry into the best of all possible First World, despite their kicking and screaming. The "rationale" directing this belief is that once all barriers are trampled down -- cultural barriers, religious barriers, geographic barriers, the barriers of unions, wage scales, etc. -- the dream of perfect production and consumption will be fulfilled, the telos of the Almighty Dollar will become immanent, and we will all enter Paradise together.

Here's Kingwell on some of the manifestations of the consumptionist theodicy: "...the contemporary branding and narrativizing of consumer products, which compresses desire and expectation intothe slick miniature plot of the television commercial, makes all of us de facto experts on names and logos and spokespeople. Our overwhelming exposure to these microtales of success and beauty transforms acquisition into a kind of hypercompetitive graduate school, with Phil Knight, or Bill Gates, or Michael Jordan our presumptive professors. All the buying and selling of cool naturally comes down to this: I know more than you about the available brands, I am more 'au courant' with the latest narrative, I discovered this logo sooner than you, and therefore I have an advantage over you. ...We all know this is true because marketers and their critics (who are sometimes in another elision the very same people) ....and yet we seem unwilling to act on that knowledge." Kingwell argues, overall, that a new humanist telos can take root and flower in the dry and cracked ground of the current theodicy, even in the fearful shadow of the Market God, and that is up to us to begin to think about to what that new telos should point.

Apologists for the free market may say the publication of books such as Kingwell's shows how free, and therefore morally good, the free market really is. They might further argue that the lack of popularity of such views indicates they are not shared by most Americans (thereby reflecting the true market "disvalue" of his thinking). This is, of course, a disingenuous argument at best, and it is the same familiar argument used to justify most of the free market project. In a time when the din of hypercapitalism drowns out everything else down here in the States, where its acolytes pounce on any idea which deviates from free market scripture because it might actually spark a public debate about the world we want, thinking like Kingwell's is dangerous, as dangerous as those pesky questions Socrates kept asking in Athens.

If the current "marketplace of ideas" were truly a free market, if Kingwell's probing ideas were broadcast in a weekly column in The Wall Street Journal, featured prominently on CNN, on Bloomberg terminals and TV stations, in Businessweek and Forbes, my guess is that the long twenty year huzzah for the miracles of the free market would sputter to a stop in about two months. Replacing it would be a realistic discussion of what we value in society, and how we might achieve it. How invigorating it would to converse about where we are going instead of bowing to a Market God as the Divinity that shapes our ends.