James Carville, strategist to Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, famously quipped “It’s the economy, stupid”. It is a phrase that captured the idea that the primary concern of electorates is always the economy and its impact on people’s personal finances.
Just as electoral politics and the economy are inseparable, so too are movements for social justice bound up with markets.
Economically inseparable
All movements for social change have to grapple with economic questions. If people experiencing homelessness need housing, should we increase the affordable homes quota for developers? What impact might this have on the broader housing market? Does it reduce developers’ overall incentive to build and increase prices in the rest of the market?
If people in extreme poverty are forced into modern slavery through predatory loans and exploitative labour practices, how do we rewire the economic models that predicate these impossible choices? What changes might that require of Western attitudes towards consumption?
Economics is at the heart of social injustice.
Identity politics
We live in a period where different forms of identity politics are in competition.
On the left, identity politics focuses on race, gender, and sexuality, and how the intersection of these identities impact a person’s experiences of the world. I believe this has led to significant social progress for marginalized groups, but has left some groups out of the conversation.
On the right, identity politics focuses on nationality, religion, and the family, as well as combatting progressive identity politics. I believe this has attempted to conserve community cohesion, but has often ended up fueling prejudice.
However, on both the left and the right, identity politics has come to supersede conversations about the material conditions in our communities. This risks reversing any positive progress we have achieved in the era of identity politics. Whilst loud debates around national identity are causing deep division in the UK, particularly between white and migrant working class communities, and a rise in prejudiced attitudes towards minorities, much of the country is actually quietly united on the rank injustice of today’s economic realities.
Economic agreement
According to More in Common polling, a significant majority of Britons believe big business takes advantage of ordinary people. An even larger majority would prefer a system where the gaps between the rich and poor are smaller, even if people are less wealthy overall.
Our efforts to improve social cohesion and social justice would both be helped if the volume of this voice of concern grew louder and more unified. How can it be that 60,000 people – less than 0.001 per cent of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity?
Should we accept a society where millions of emergency food parcels are distributed every year while private equity companies profit off British public services?
What do we do about the fact that the vast majority of my generation can’t afford a place to live, with house prices nearly eight times disposable household income in England, and are now at risk of losing their jobs to AI?
Inspiring history
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Christian socialist R. H. Tawney was asking similar questions. The industrial revolution had drastically altered the British economy and intensified both poverty and inequality.
This sparked Tawney’s thinking about the nature of modern economic systems. In his 1921 book, The Acquisitive Society, he argued that free-market capitalism had detached economic activity from any moral or communal purpose.
This represented a genuine problem for Christian formation, he insisted, because capitalism encourages acquisitiveness – the excessive interest in acquiring money or material things – which corrupts all of its participants.
Unbridled free markets
The twenty-first century has seen Tawney’s argument develop further. Not only has unbridled free-market capitalism encouraged extreme acquisitiveness – we now have the modern world’s first trillionaire – it has also provided fertile ground for the individualism that is fracturing our communities.
This is because capitalism has asserted that the fundamental nature of humanity is competitive. Every person should fight to be more than their neighbour: Wealthier, more skilled, more knowledgeable and, in the age of identity politics, more worthy of solidarity.
But competition is not the fundamental nature of humanity. From the very beginning, God created humans as co-operative beings. We co-operate with one another to raise children. We co-operate with nature to grow crops. We co-operate with God to develop our characters. In fact, it was only when Adam and Eve chose to try and compete with God that things started to unravel. Capitalism, with its assertion of competition, has left us in the same mindset of perpetual competition that the Bible warns us about at the very beginning.
Looking back to shape our future
One hundred years ago, Tawney challenged this mindset of competition. Beyond his intellectual argument about the acquisitiveness of capitalism, he campaigned for specific policies which he believed would lead to a more collaborative society.
His book, Secondary education for all, informed Labour policy for a generation, and his calls for reform in health and education were important in laying the basis of Labour’s plans for the welfare state. These ideas were strongly based on the cooperative nature of humans.
Returning to economics
One hundred years on, those of us interested in faith, transformation, and social justice have an opportunity to do the same. Poverty and inequality are rife, workers in the supply chains that produce western goods are being exploited, and AI risks undermining the dignity of work.
Social change will require us going beyond identity politics, without losing all that it has taught us, and returning to economics.
Now, as in Tawney’s day, James Carville’s maxim remains true. Let’s not be stupid, it really is about the economy.
Tommy Sharpe lives in London and is the co-founder of Better Story, a movement of Christians who believe in Jesus’ radical call to compassion, hospitality, and self-sacrificial generosity.
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