Book Review: John Schneider’s Defense of Capitalism

Book Review

John R. Schneider
The Good of Affluence: Seeking God in a Culture of Wealth
(Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2002), 244 pages, paperback

This book is most interesting as a marker of how far the debate has shifted within the evangelical discussion of capitalism. Both Dave Chilton’s Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators (1985) and Schneider’s The Good of Affluence (2002) focus intently on Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (1977). This gives both a dependent, uncreative tone. But if Chilton’s response is the first historical marker and Schneider’s the second, then clearly the capitalists have shifted much closer to Sider. Schneider certainly ignores or historicizes fewer biblical texts than did Chilton; Schneider realizes, for example, he must grapple with the OT jubilee provisions that Chilton quickly dismissed. I was once a young, dedicated fan of Chilton’s response, but we all quietly knew that Chilton had to make up in tone what he lacked in argument. The bravado provided a screen so that we didn’t have to stare too closely at the biblical texts. Schneider’s gentlemanly disagreements with Sider often seem very narrow and minor, focused on odd confusions unique to Sider. So much time is spent on correcting relatively trivial points that much of the text feels irrelevant to more current discussions in the secular press. At key points, Schneider just agrees or concedes much to Sider. Still, Schneider is much more careful with the texts, but the more careful he is, the more he concedes to Sider’s fundamental claims.

Less interesting, though, is Schneider’s main thesis, namely, that Scripture does indeed hold forth an affirmative view of wealth. I know the gnostic Left still needs to hear it, but no one in my circle does. That affirmative point has to be central to any good critique of capitalism; one can, like Chesterton, have a good view of wealth and still heatedly reject a certain form of capitalism. And I’ve grown more skeptical about who on the Left truly embraces a genuine hostility to possessions anymore. Sider, himself, has always had his goofy side-claims (quite apart from his statism), but I still have yet to hear any of his gang make the sort of extreme claims Schneider assumes — “the inherent evil of having possessions.” Come on. Why must most conservative reactions bayonet this kind of straw so regularly?

One quickly loses some confidence in Schneider when he defines globalism, at the beginning and end of the book, as “technical connectedness.” Does he really think that the Seattle 1999 protest was about technology? Does he think the impoverishment of Russia, South America, and Africa is about easy media connections? Yikes. Conservatives have a lot of catching up to do. Again, he’s just not connecting with the current debate as found, for example, in Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. Schneider simply doesn’t connect with the deeper questions about capitalism and free markets. In a sense, Chilton was better at grappling with specific economic moral claims; Schneider sticks to his affirmative-wealth thesis, but that keeps him from dealing with serious questions about how capitalism plunders the poor. There are plenty of modern texts making this case, but Schneider just gives the typical naive conservative denial: “I see nothing clearly immoral at all.” Exactly. But he hasn’t even considered specifics. At one point, he seems to draw close, wondering, whether “our economic habits are the direct (or indirect) cause of poverty in these other societies.” He doesn’t dig any deeper, and, later, seemingly assumes the objection has to do with overconsumption rather than the IMF, WTO, NAFTA, and American wars for markets and resources. This particular chapter, one, leads with a promise to answer the Hauerwas objection that if capitalism is a criminal enterprise, then its successes won’t justify it, much like the successes of the Mafia don’t justify it. Schneider agrees that you can’t just point to all the great things capitalism has done to prove its justice, but then he begs the question in a long section: “Who has done more to eradicate poverty and suffering in the Third World, Bill Gates or Mother Theresa?” Odd. (Part of the answer, by the way, is that there would be no Bill Gates or computers without a massive Cold War wealth redistribution from American middle and lower class citizens to military-technology industries for decades, a transfer that also involved the deaths of millions of Third Worlders; Mother Theresa never reached those heights.). In the end, Schneider, in cliche fashion, just repeats DeSoto’s claims blaming the Third World for its own problems. It turns out it all stems from a primitive lack of property law. Nothing about Third and First World elites rigging the system to maintain poverty. It’s all the poor people’s fault. Try that one on Amos and Jeremiah.

Schneider wants to provide “a distinctly Christian way to be affluent,” but in the end we just get more middle class America, a vision that naively assumes capitalism and the free market are the same thing. What’s distinctive about that? More importantly, he has no central place for the Church. It’s a weak, minor afterthought. It doesn’t shape capitalism; it has to fit into it. Notice the metaphors that structure his picture of the relationship between the Christian Church and capitalism; it’s not organic at all: “guidance for living within capitalism,” “under capitalism,” “the church needs our help in knowing how to go about navigating it the right way through very new waters,” “integrated into…the culture of capitalism.” Capitalism is something we live within or under or through. In Schneider’s vision, the world of enterprise and trade doesn’t flow from the Church; the Church has to find a way to live inside it like an alien. Now that’s defeatist and servile.

Despite my complaints, the book does a good job at fighting wealth gnosticism, even if that thesis isn’t as pressing as he thinks. The book will be helpful to some business beginners, though its own blinders will keep beginners naive.

Doug Jones

See also prior posts: Even Kuyper Sided with the Poor; Luther’s Take on Globalization; Jonathan Edwards on Giving; The Third World Wasn’t Always Destitute; Free Trade Myths for Mexico; Free Market Anti-Capitalism; John Calvin Against Globalization; How We Keep Capitalism Free from Criticism

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Review Postscript: Be sure to read Andrew Sandlin’s ticked off but innocuous review of my review above (linked, in case the pings don’t work below). It’s a grand view of how the conservative mind works. That he finds the claims about the Cold War redistribution “reckless” and “inconceivable” explains much. We conservatives really do live in cocoons (I especially enjoyed K. Johnson’s implosion in the comments). I am grateful, though, for Andrew’s passion on these important subjects; I wish more would show this sort of anger, and I thank him for giving it the time of day. — DJ

Review Postscript Postscipt: My friend David Bahnsen also replied to this review, and I’ve replied here.

See also: Schneider’s Low View of the Church Shapes His Economics