The Moral Challenges of Jubilee
Voices of Sophia Breakfast - PW Gathering 2000
Rebecca Todd Peters, Ph.D. candidate
Union Theological Seminary in NY
A distinguished historian, Lawrence Goodwyn of Duke University, once said in frustration: "You cannot teach American history to American students. You can teach the iconic version that portrays America as beautiful and unblemished or you can teach a radical version that demonizes the country. But American culture does not equip young people to deal with the 'irreconcilable conflicts' embedded in their own history." The Civil War provides an example. For those who had slave-owning ancestors we are caught between wanting to believe that our ancestors were good people, but knowing that slavery is abominable. An irreconcilable conflict. A contradiction in our past that was never resolved. Globalization provides us with a similar problem. One version lauds the success and progress that globalization has made as the stock market booms and technology draws the world closer together. Another blames globalization for destroying cultures, promoting the dependency of developing countries and decimating the environment. As with American history, the truth lies somewhere in between. Globalization presents us with contradictions on a daily basis. Do we shop at Wal-Mart when we know that the lower prices are a result of low wage labor from the two-third's world? Do we drink Coke or hold stock in the company when we know that products like this are part of the promotion of a global monoculture that reflects US sensibilities? Contradictions like these only become "irreconcilable conflicts" when they are not addressed and they become part of our history. Understanding that we have agency in addressing the contradictions of globalization can help us to see that it is within our power to shape and change globalization in response to God¹s call to Jubilee. But first, we must identify the problem.
What is the problem?
In May 1993, the worst industrial fire in the history of capitalism occurred at a toy factory on the outskirts of Bangkok. Survivors told of main doors that were locked and windows that had been blocked to prevent pilfering. The stuffing and animal fibers used to make the toys littered the factory. While Thai law requires that the fire-escape stairways of such a large factory be sixteen to thirty-three feet wide, this factories¹ were a mere four and a half feet and cheap construction allowed steel girders and stairways to crumple easily in the heat. Official reports listed the dead at 188 and the injured at 469.
Previously the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911 in New York City had ranked as the worst industrial fire in history. But the Triangle fire became legendary, ushering in a new era of regulatory protection for American workers. Not only was the Bangkok fire barely noticed by those outside of Thailand, similar tragedies are commonplace in the developing world. Rather than the moral indignation that followed the Triangle fire, the Bangkok fire primarily elicited moral indifference. It is too easy to distance ourselves from tragedies that happen "over there." The era of globalization has made tragedy ubiquitous. Every day the media brings us more news of death, destruction and devastation. It becomes simply too much to process. The repetitiveness of disaster has inured us to the tragedy of each individual incident and the question of our own culpability is rarely, if ever, raised. But the case of the Kader Industrial Toy Company of Thailand raises two important factors that can help us see some of the problems of globalization in a new light.
First, this was a fire, not a natural disaster. Shoddy construction, failure to follow legal safety codes, dangerous inattention to the storage of flammable materials, and carelessness regarding fire safety procedures were all within the arena of human control. In short this was a tragedy that most likely could have been prevented. Second, this was a factory in Thailand, but it manufactured Bugs Bunny, Bart Simpson, and Sesame Street toys destined for American consumers. The Kader factory had contracts with Toys R' Us, Fisher-Price, Hasbro, Tyco, Arco, Kenner, Gund and J.C. Penney. I would be willing to bet that every person in this room has bought a toy from one of those companies in their lifetime. I know I have. Whether they were for our children, our grandchildren, a neighbor or a niece - most of us probably gave no thought to where the toy came from. The truth is, we make too many purchases every day to stop and think about where each product originated, who grew our food, whose hands assembled our electronics, whose blood was shed in the manufacture of our toys. But, my friends, this is exactly what globalization requires of us. We live in a complex world full of contradictions waiting to become the "irreconcilable conflicts" of our history. Is it wrong that we buy toys for our children, food for our table, televisions for our entertainment? Of course not, but what is wrong is our continued support of and participation in an ideological system that privileges profits over people. Wait a minute, what was that? An ideological system that privileges profits over people? Just what does that mean? Let¹s take a closer look.
Neo-liberalism - the dominant model of globalization
Growth and trade are the watchwords of the dominant model of globalization known as neo-liberalism. The argument goes something like this. Growth is the primary indicator of economic well-being and growth can best be achieved through developing commodities for external trade. As I am sure you have heard this week, this model is one of the leading factors in the international debt crisis. There are at least two aspects of this model of globalization that need to be unmasked.
First is the assumption that economics is a hard science. Adam Smith, often hailed as the father of economics, was a moral philosopher, his articulation of economic theory was conceived as part of a larger social world. Smith knew that economics was merely an element of human society. His economic theory was consciously located within a moral framework. One of the fatal flaws of the development of economic theory has been the separation of economics from morality. At this point in our history it seems "rational" to conclude that a scientific approach to the fundamentally social phenomenon of the economy has not only been misplaced, but it has had devastating consequences on the majority of the world¹s population.
The second assumption that needs to be unmasked is the idea that one model of development is sufficient for a wide variety of cultures, climates, peoples and nations. Wall Street, the World Bank and IMF, and multinational corporations have decided that there is a "formula" for successful development. This formula does not care whether children are fed and immunized, whether pregnant women get prenatal care, whether open sewage runs through the streets of major cities. No, the formula for successful development according to the economic heavyweights requires that countries focus their development on creating goods for export. Even when there are food shortages in their own country farmers are encouraged to grow crops for export because they can get higher prices abroad. But once again, it is easy to distance ourselves from these economic institutions and deny both our complicity in the process and our moral agency to change an economic system that requires some people to be kept in deprivation in order to survive. What is Wall Street but the investments and retirement funds of American people? And the very presence of the World Bank and IMF in Washington, DC tells volumes about the influence and control that the US has in shaping their policy directives. And Multinational corporations - Disney, Kraft, General Motors, Microsoft - all of these exist because consumers buy their products and who are those consumers? We are, my friends.
Jubilee calls us to do justice and one of the tasks of justice is to right wrongs. As Christians, when our eyes are opened to see sin for what it is, we are called upon by God, our faith tradition and our community to insist that the injustice cease, that the sin stop and that that which is wrong be made right. As educated, intelligent and resourceful women and men of the First world, it is our moral responsibility to address those structural inequalities that allow fires in toy factories to kill hundreds of people. Let us be clear. I am not just talking about the corporations or individuals who are "bad" or "immoral" or the worst-offenders. What I am suggesting is that an economic ideology or way of thinking that primarily values profits is an ideology that is morally bankrupt. As First World people who benefit from this economic model, let us be very clear what we are talking about. The current model of globalization, a neo-liberal model of capitalism that promotes export-oriented economic development, free trade and deregulation, is a model of globalization that creates wealth at the expense of the entire earth community. What I mean by this is that all that God holds sacred - human life, plant life, animal life, the earth, the atmosphere - all of God's good creation - is being destroyed by the current model of globalization.
Now, this is not to argue that globalization, per se, is bad. Globalization is happening, but what is often overlooked in the globalization debates is the fact that this phenomenon was created by humanity and that we bear responsibility - to ourselves, to each other, to future generations and to God - to ensure that globalization is modeled in a socially responsible and just way. God does not afford us the luxury of opting out of moral responsibility. One of the defining factors of our humanity is that we are moral creatures. It is incumbent upon us, as historical agents at the forefront of this process of globalization to understand our own responsibility in defining and shaping the way forward that globalization will take.
What does this mean for me?
This is a difficult topic for many Presbyterians. As a mainline, mainstream Christian denomination, most of us are middle class people. We live in the First World. We undoubtedly benefit from globalization. Probably 90-95% of the people in this room own some kind of stocks, mutual funds, bonds, or IRA's that have profited from the booming bull market of the past several years. We check the stock reports or our quarterly statements with excited anticipation as we watch our retirement accounts grow. But, my friends, as morally responsible Christians, we must each ask ourselves whose backs are bearing the burden of our growing mutual funds? Whose eyes or fingers are being destroyed in the manufacture of the clothing in our closets and electronic equipment in our homes? And what will the world be like for our children's children?
Jubilee is a gift from God. But it is also a challenge from God. Every fifty years God mandates that the fields lie fallow, that the earth be given a rest. Every fifty years people must be freed from bondage and be allowed to start over. Every fifty years God challenges us to regenerate ourselves, our lives, our communities and our relationships. But, there is no evidence that a Jubilee year was ever actually observed in Israel because the idea is so utopic. Get people to give up land that they have acquired? Ask the Native Americans how well that approach works! Or free slaves or bonded labor that someone feels is their rightful property? Our country fought a war over that one.
Like the Hebrews, we do not always pay attention to God, particularly when God challenges the comfortableness of our lives. We sit in the air-conditioning of our homes, well-fed, mostly satisfied or at least entertained by our possessions and it is easy to believe that God rejoices with us in our success. After all, doesn¹t God want what is best for us? Here is another one of those contradictions. For it seems to me that the answer is both yes and no. Of course God rejoices in our success and wants us to be healthy and well-fed and happy, but this cannot come at the expense of the livelihood of the rest of the earth community. It cannot come at the expense of the burning of Thai workers or the blinding of Mexican maquiladora workers or the labor of Indian children. These are structural problems that require two levels of response systemic and personal - neither of which is sufficient alone.
What are the moral challenges of Jubilee?
The first moral challenge of Jubilee is that our lives must change. The biblical model of Jubilee is clear that the redistribution of land every fifty years is in order to help people meet their basic needs. In our world today land issues are critically important as indigenous peoples everywhere struggle to reclaim land that has been stolen from them. But this Jubilee challenge is metaphorical as well as literal. In a world where the gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow dramatically, the challenge of redistribution is very personal. When one fifth of the people living in the highest income countries own 86% of the goods and the bottom fifth just 1% - the moral challenge of Jubilee is radical. Unless you are an international friend, everyone sitting in this room is part of that top fifth percent. If Jubilee is really to occur, our lives will have to change. It is time to cycle back from the rampant consumerism that has overtaken us to a model of life that is simpler, slower and more earth centered. We must own our own moral responsibility as consumers in a global world. We must be aware of where our food is coming from, under what conditions our clothes are made, and how the corporations in which we have investments treat their employees. Cooking, gardening, cloth diapers, composting, supporting local farmers, walking to work, using bicycles for transportation, buying less of everything! Jubilee challenges us, not to long for a romanticized, fictional past, but to learn lessons of simplicity from our ancestors. If life is to be sustainable for the entire earth community, we all have to reorient our lives.
The second moral challenge of Jubilee is that our systems must change. While it is morally imperative that we forgive the debt, what good is forgiving the debt if the IMF and the World Bank continue the dependency cycle by pumping money into developing countries? Debt forgiveness is important, it must happen - but it is not a solution to the problems that globalization has wrought. Debt forgiveness is a step in a very long process of changing how the dominant economic system functions. Growth and profits cannot continue to be the driving values behind globalization. Jubilee calls us to a more just and compassionate system of organization and accountability. And other systems must change as well. While we don¹t have time to talk about them -public transportation, education, health care, manufacturing, criminal justice and the prison system are just a few places to begin. For our personal lifestyle changes will be like drops in a bucket if the social structure of our society doesn¹t change as well.
So where does this leave us?
With the ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor and the spiraling debt crisis in most two-third's world countries, it ought to be increasingly apparent that the current economic model is not working. I am sorry to say that I cannot offer you an easy answer here this morning. A viable alternative economic model does not yet exist. Our challenge as a Jubilee people is to create a new model that incorporates values into its rationality. A new economic model that is rooted in a moral framework of compassion and the elimination of poverty. An economic model that doesn¹t focus on growth and trade as its primary indicators of success, but a model that focuses on reduction of infant mortality, starvation relief, health care delivery, countries that can feed their people, and the elimination of HIV/AIDS for all people, rich and poor. If we are to avoid turning the contradictions of our life into the irreconcilable conflicts of history, our moral task is to ensure that globalization proceeds in ways that honor creation and life.
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