Archive / Magazine / Current / Financial crisis / Debate | 28/11/2008

The search for sense

The economic crisis is marked by growing uncertainty. Criticism of capitalism is making a strong comeback, and alternative social concepts are being put forward with reference to Marx and Christian doctrine. The European press comments on the current search for sense and the force of intangible values.

The choice of words speaks volumes. For weeks now the European press has been evoking society's "uncertainty" and "loss of confidence". After the financial bubble burst, doubt and uncertainty have spread rapidly as the mind struggles to grasp the phenomena which led up to the crisis.

"My common sense tells me that I can resolve recurring problems by removing their cause. ... But when it comes to the global economic crisis things get complicated - as if common sense no longer functioned", the Slovenian sociologist Andrej Fištravec wrote on November 4 in Večer newspaper. We are faced with a "colossal event", one whose "consequences cannot be foretold," a "zero hour of neo-capitalism", commented French journalist and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy in the weekly magazine Le Point on October 10.

Photo: Photocase (Jona-than)

Andrian Kreye maintained in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on November 11 that at present "the current financial crisis has reached an abstract level, which only few people can comprehend." Distrust is now directed not only at the bankers and others putatively responsible for the financial and economic crisis, but at the capitalist system as a whole. "The global crisis will additionally fuel the distrust people feel toward society," wrote Ulrich Schäfer in the same newspaper, also on November 11. "People sense that something is brewing here that will shake up their lives, and that this era of growing prosperity could be followed by one of increased penury with less confidence, less income, less stability and fewer jobs."

Trust in the capitalist market structure is dwindling: "The American crisis has become so widespread because trust in the system has taken a severe battering," wrote Sever Voinescu on October 22 in the Romanian daily Dilema Veche. No wonder, then, than many are suddenly turning to Karl Marx and his classic criticism of capitalism "Das Kapital". "Marx said long ago that capitalism will devour itself if it is left to its own devices," commented Portuguese journalist and writer Miguel Sousa Tavares in the daily Expresso on September 22, continuing: "What was lacking in this case? Morals on the part of the capitalists and a sense of duty on the part of those in power."

Marx lives

The insolvency of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers in September seemed to confirm Marx's theories. Even the conservative US government announced it would buy up the bad debts of the country's ailing banks for 700 billion dollars. On September 24 the Hungarian daily Népszabadság asked whether capitalism could have reached the end of its tether: "Even renowned economists are saying that the conservative Bush Administration has opted for a socialist solution in its bid to save American capitalism based on free competition."

In Germany, the country where Marx was born, commentators seem especially zealous in bringing Marx back into the picture. Faced with the chaotic situation in global banking which has also left its mark on Germany, even German finance minister Peer Steinbrück admitted on September 27 in conversation with the weekly magazine Der Spiegel that "certain aspects of Marxist theory are not entirely wrong." The leftist-liberal Frankfurter Rundschau headlined with "The failure of capitalism" on October 9, printing a caricature of Marx against a red background. "Was Marx right after all?" asked Ralf Dorschel in the Hamburger Morgenpost on October 11 about the prospect of state takeovers of banks, commenting that "the allure of the philosopher who called in the Communist Manifesto together with Friederich Engels for the 'centralisation of capital in the hands of the state by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly' is growing with the crisis."

"Marx lives" the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit then announced in its online edition of October 24. Marx's work Das Kapital is "seeing 'a renaissance' in view of the international financial crisis," wrote the paper. Berlin publishers Karl-Dietz Verlag, it reported, sold 417 copies of the socialist classic in the first three weeks of October alone. Annual sales have risen enormously: prior to 2004 the publishers sold barely 100 volumes of Marx's work per year. This year the figure has already reached 2,500, and sales continue unabated.

A similar trend can be seen in France, where until very recently barely 50 copies of Das Kapital were sold per month. Suddenly demand has tripled. "Spurred on by the fear of a systemic collapse," wrote Le Figaro on November 24, "the work is once more adorning shop windows." Regardless of what one thinks of Marx, commented the paper, at least he understood that capitalism is "a global matter." Yet the "crisis of confidence in corporate finance" is not global, but rather a "crisis of faith", commented the religious economist Peter Seele in the Austrian daily Der Standard of November 15/16. For Seele what we are seeing is a "confidence crash" of almost religious dimensions. In search of a "philosophy of the financial crisis" Tomáš Sedláček – leading financial strategist at ČSOB bank – used a Biblical example in the Czech weekly magazine Respekt of November 24. Before the "arrival in the promised land", we must first "cross the desert", Sedláček wrote. Before "sins are forgiven" comes the "crucifixion of Christ", and before our "ascension to heaven" there must be a "descent into hell".

Man in the middle

Marxism and religion share similar ground when churches invoke principles of the Christian social doctrine. Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Church of England, evoked in a commentary published in the weekly magazine The Spectator on September 27 the "unimaginable levels of fiction" as well as the widespread alienation caused by the crisis. Williams called for the reintroduction of the "connection between money and material reality", and better regulation of financial markets. Although this does not mean introducing "Soviet-style centralised direction", wrote the Archbishop, Marx was right in interpreting capitalism as a "mythology" which ascribes "reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves". The time has come, Williams continued, to distance ourselves from the "idolatry" of capitalism.

Bishop Wolfgang Huber, Chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, similarly claimed that the global economic crisis is founded in the "dance around the golden calf … whose actors fall victim to their own greed." Wolfgang Thiedemann then warned the churches in the weekly newspaper Rheinischer Merkur of November 6 "to think carefully about how they comment on the crisis," because criticism of the credit economy has "great public appeal, but is not very productive." One book with enormous public appeal is the latest work by Reinhard Marx, the Catholic Archbishop of Munich and Freising. The author's name is not all that brings to mind his eponymous predecessor. In his provocatively titled book "Das Kapital" the Catholic Marx calls on those in power to place humans in the forefront of economic transactions. But that is far from making him a "leftist", say Marx's spiritual brothers in the Church. Anton Rauscher wrote on November 6 in the same paper that "if the new Left sees fit to use the failures of certain individuals to mount an attack on the social market economy and to brand the liberal order as 'capitalist'," it is "pure calumny".

But the interest of the Christian Churches in economic matters is not entirely new. Already on March 15 the Jesuit Luciano Larivera had called for new rules for the financial market in the newspaper La Civiltà Cattolica. And even the Pope is writing an encyclical on the financial crisis with his work "Caritas in Veritate" which is to come out next year, reported the Italian magazine Panorama on October 30.

New structures

Church leaders should nevertheless not intervene too much in economic debates, admonished Alexander Kissler in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on November 14. For the moment it may be that "those who castigate capitalism and criticise competition" are the most applauded, Kissler wrote.
Nevertheless the Church should "not delegate its traditional responsibility in matters of forming one's conscience and salvation … to a Leviathan of any stripe."

While the churches in Germany were being criticised for their intervention in the crisis, Alberto Gatón Lasheras wrote in the Spanish regional newspaper El Diario Montañés on November 14 that Spain can be happy it has the Catholic Church because it comes to the aid of "those forgotten by a society that has become heard-hearted through materialism." Whether the state is secular or not, the Church is the "flame of life for the first victims of the capitalist crisis."

In their search for sense, Christians who speak out for social justice do not want to be seen as leftists, while Marxists – although they may endorse the Christian principle of social justice – fail to see a long-term solution in voluntary social action. Philosopher Frieder Otto Wolf wrote on November 21 in the weekly newspaper Freitag that the Christian social doctrine "will be pushed to one side as irrelevant in the impending crisis". What is called for are new structures, Wolf maintained, writing that the real question at hand is "what kind of transformation project will prevail in view of the structural crisis."

Gaby Mahlberg

Gaby Mahlberg, born in 1976 in Euskirchen, is a freelance journalist and editor at euro|topics. Before that she worked as sub-editor for dpa News International ...
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