“Are there
no prisons?” Asked Scrooge. “Plenty of prisons.” Said the gentlemen,
lying down the pen again. “And the Union workhouses?” Demanded Scrooge.
“Are they still in operation?” “They are. Still” returned the
gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.” “The Treadmill and the
Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” Said Scrooge. “Both very busy,
sir.” “Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something
had occurred to stop them in their useful course.” said Scrooge. “I'm
very glad to hear it.”
“Under the impression that they scarcely
furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” Returned the
gentleman, “a few of us are attempting to raise a fund to buy the Poor
some meat and drink, and means of warmth. What shall I put you down
for?” “Nothing!” Scrooge replied. “You wish to be anonymous?” “I wish
to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish,
gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas
and I can't afford to make idle people merry.
"I help to support
the establishments I have mentioned: they cost enough: and those who
are badly off must go there.” “Many can't go there; and many would
rather die.” “If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better
do it, and decrease the surplus population.” 1
In
Dickens’ great novel, possibly his greatest, Ebenezer Scrooge is of
course the bad guy. What is lost on the average person enjoying their
presents and dining with relatives as they watch this spectacle each
Christmas is that Scrooge is a Capitalist in the very model of today’s
Capitalist. One often wonders how may investment bankers, how many
wealthy owners, how many members of economic think tanks, and how many
government bureaucrats pat themselves on the back each Christmas for
their work, while feeling deep down that Scrooge has gotten a bad rap.
After all, Scrooge has a right to make the investments he wants, he has
the money through his ingenuity and his skill, what right have these
socialists got to come demanding it for people who lack initiative?
What is also lost on them is that statements such as those above return
to haunt poor old Ebenezer when he is reminded of a little bit of
humanity at the sight of sickly Tiny Tim by the second spirit.
“If
these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race”
returned the Ghost “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die
he had better do it and decrease the surplus population.” Scrooge hung
his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit and was overcome
with penitence and grief. “Man” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart
not adamant forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the
surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what
men shall die? It may be that in the sight of Heaven you are more
worthless than millions like this poor man’s child.” 2
To
our modern economics, our global economy, our pundits and talking heads
of course we do not find such sentiments, or such lively contrition.
Christmas comes, and then it goes. How many employers watch renditions
of Dickens’ classic and yet fail to employ their employees at a living
wage? Rather, to translate their view into the terms of the book, Bob
Cratchit should have been thankful that he was employed at all, and not
like the man under the bridge in the next scene.
One hundred
and sixty years after Dickens, and sadly we understand less than his
peers. Dickens’ England knew quite well what he was on about. Today, in
as much as modern man is able to know anything other than shopping and
television, we are forced to warp his meaning into something which
makes us comfortable at Christmas. Economist Steve Landsburg declares:
“If Christmas is the season of selflessness, then surely one of the great symbols of Christmas should be Ebenezer Scrooge—the old Scrooge, not the reformed one. It's taxes, not misers, that need reforming.” 3(My Emphasis)
Although
I can’t say that taxes are perfect and in no need of reform, the
statement is so blaringly stupid that only a modern person could have
made it. Yet there it is. And there is more. “Dickens tells us that the
Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders
to his 50 cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's
household should—presumably for a houseful of guests who lavishly
praised his generosity. The bricks, mortar, and labor that built the
Mansion House might otherwise have built housing for hundreds; Scrooge,
by living in three sparse rooms, deprived no man of a home. By
employing no cooks or butlers, he ensured that cooks and butlers were
available to some other household where guests reveled in ignorance of
their debt to Ebenezer Scrooge.” 4
He is not
joking! Perhaps the most pernicious element of modern Capitalism is how
it is based upon the exchange of goods and services, and not their
effect on human beings. Perhaps this is a function of the reduction of
economics to mathematics. Economics however is not a science, and it is
not math. It employs math and social science to predict and explain the
investment trends and the buying patterns of people. Human beings
possess free will, unless one is a Determinist, and therefore they do
not conform to scientific models. In the quotes I have just pulled from
Steve Landsburg, the whole moral of Dickens is turned upside down and
inside out. The Scrooge so clearly opposed to the received
Judeo-Christian morality of Western Civilization is placed in the
manger, while the reformed Scrooge, the one so clearly in line with it,
is cast out where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. Why? Not only
by refusing to pay his employee better does Scrooge avoid the dilemna
of Bob Cratchit having more kids to feed which depletes available work
from others (deplete the surplus population), but by not even using his
money to enjoy himself, he creates opportunity! It is bad enough that
the mass of people are not truly happy, finding no fulfillment in their
work and have nothing they actually own except cheap rubbish, but on
top of that, Scrooge is better off not enjoying himself too!
In
reality of course, human beings have a right to be treated with
dignity; which means the opportunity to own property. This is why Pope
Leo XIII taught that the solution to the crisis is helping man acquire
property:
“If working people can be encouraged to look forward
to obtaining a share in the land, the consequence will be that the gulf
between vast wealth and sheer poverty will be bridged over, and the
respective classes will be brought nearer to one another. A further
consequence will result in the great abundance of the fruits of the
earth. Men always work harder and more readily when they work on that
which belongs to them; nay, they learn to love the very soil that
yields in response to the labor of their hands, not only food to eat,
but an abundance of good things for themselves and those that are dear
to them.” 5
If the poor who own their means of
production were to utilize local resources to produce the goods needed
in a local economy and have the capital to provide for themselves
modestly, you won’t need to give people handouts. The arguments for
welfare and socialist concepts would disappear; the need for Scrooge’s
vaunted work houses would be non-existent.
But that might take
possibilities for the wealthy to be super wealthy and yet live in three
barren rooms away! In reality of course, the success of modern
economics is a paper success, a few individuals have had a tremendous
increase in their bottom line while the ability for the less wealthy to
own property has vanished. It is a faux prosperity created by easy
credit and the ubiquity of cheap, easy to attain goods which have no
inherent value and are made to be thrown away. Likewise this is the
case for middle class jobs. Ask any business owner, the largest
controllable expenses are wages. A business is always seeking to
minimize expenses, and the good jobs people value today will be gone
tomorrow when they can be done somewhere else for less. Ask any former
call center worker whose job was replaced by someone from India working
for a third of what they once made. When the easy credit disappears so
will the buying and the perceived economic strength, and given the
credit meltdown that may not be far off. One pressure in which
economists don’t officially take into account (they do take it into
account when they work with marketing, but do not say it in the public
square) is that people are affected by peer pressure. The pressure
exerted on someone to conform is an element which contributes to the
decision to buy. This is why clothing styles change so frequently, as
do the size of women’s high heeled shoes, and why so many electronics
items are made to be thrown away. Personally I think it’s stupid, but
it is also human nature, which can either be exploited for good or ill.
Only the woefully ignorant could argue that our culture does not
exploit human nature for ill.
The wasteful society and all of
its faults, the pollution, and the thousands of hazardous toxins which
are in all the products we handle daily, are effects of the greed
inherent in the Capitalist system. What did President Bush do in the
wake of 9/11? One might have missed it if they weren’t paying
attention, he said to “Shop”!6 It is a system which can
never be Catholic because it denigrates core Catholic principles, such
as prudence, temperance in our habits, thrift, and charity. It depends
on people going out to shop. The proof is in the pudding. If all of
America was converted to Catholicism tomorrow, and lived like serious
traditional Catholics fasting, despising the things of the world,
living with thrift and temperance, the economy would collapse within a quarter from lost revenue.
Economic success, not our moral goodness, or our ideas or our
achievements now determines greatness. Instead of wanting to assist our
fellow man in living, we merely presume that he is on the street
because he is a drug addict, or lazy. According to the system, we
shouldn’t pay attention to them, they deserve what they have, and thus
deplete the surplus population. Oh well.
--------
Notes:
1) Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, pg. 9, found at
http://books.google.com/books?id=f8ANAAAAQAAJ&dq=
dickens+a+christmas+carol+text&pg=PP1&ots=t6rl1k0WXx&sig=WK0WFavo-yDHHHOpu9u0_
30ZZ20&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3DDickens,
%2BA%2BChristmas%2BCarol%2Btext%26ie%3Dutf-8%26oe%3Dutf-8%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:
en-US:official%26client%3Dfirefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-
with-thumbnail#PPA9,M1
2) Ibid, pg. 59
3) Landsberg, Steven What I love about Scrooge, http://www.slate.com/id/2110817/
4) Ibid
5) Leo XIII, Pope, Rerum Novarum, no. 47,
6) Manav Tanneeru , 9/11 trauma persists five years later, CNN,
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/08/911.overview/index.html, 11 September
2006
Ryan Grant for Volume I, Issue 4
