Teaching against the “False Religion” of the Market: Toward Explicitly Anticapitalist Teaching and Research in Religion and the Environment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very important article. I commend the authors.  IN particular the questions raised on page 4 are significant as is the conclusion.

Following are a few suggestions for strengthening the article.

1. the authors say: “We, the authors of this essay, are not opposed to market economics in principle. Rather, we are opposed to what Loy calls “the Market,” a type of advocacy for unbridled markets, private property, and devotion to profit that defines so much economics and politics in the industrialized world.”  This is well said.      However, the authors should also note that they understand that “markets” existed long before capitalism and take forms other than capitalist.  If they are not more explicit about this, then critics could (albeit falsely) accuse them of equating markets with capitalism.

2. A specific example of the above is in the second para in part 3. It mistakenly implies that capitalism and "market-based solutions" are equivalent. They are not . Again, markets take forms other than capitalist. 

3. In part 5, the authors could note also that capitalism and colonialism not only are both quasi-religious forces with dangerous impacts, but also that they are deeply inter-twined and have been profoundly interdependent on each other.

4.  The two paragraphs on pg. 2 describing the sections should be revised to a make the words “first,” “second,” “third,” etc. correspond do the number given to each section in the section title. While the current wording is accurate, it also will be a bit confusing.  For example: The section described as “Our first section” has the number “2” given to it in the section heading.

5. The conclusion that scholars of religion should teach anti-capitalism is very important. Therefore, it should be made in a way that is as strong as possible.  I suggest that one part of the conclusion is not clear. It is this: “…and in the diverse economies available to them in many aspects of their lives.”  This phrase should be restated to be clearer about its meaning.

 

Congratulations on excellent work!

Author Response

We appreciate both the affirmation and the careful advice from this reviewer. Many thanks!

• This is a helpful clarification. We edited the paragraph in question to better distinguish markets, capitalism, and “The Market”
• We don’t believe that the paragraph mentioned implies equivalence between capitalism and market-based solutions. We did not make a change.
• We’ve made small edits to ensure this point is not missed, and to emphasize the quote from Ghosh that capitalism and colonialism are are “two interconnected but equally important rifts.”
• Change made, we appreciate the suggestion.
• A helpful suggestion. We strengthened that sentence.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is a good contribution to the issue. I believe the authors manage to make a contribution emphasizing the tradition that Loy opened with his article. His article did start a discussion that’s still relevant for 30 years.

However, the idea that economics is a religion is something that’s actually been discussed among certain economists. The most famous work in this sense is Robert Nelson’s Economics as Religion. Nelson published it in 2001, and it shows influence of years working as an economist in the United States government. In there, he understands that economics inherited the niche that once belonged to theology. Many founders of economics were children and grandchildren of pastors. I encourage incorporating Nelson’s argument (at least from his book’s introduction) to your argument because, you mentioned you aren’t economists, but Nelson is. I appreciate you cite economists such as Daly, but I still think that a proper perspective, from an actual economist, would improve your argument. Just a warning that Nelson isn’t exactly an anticapitalist, but still his work would help to understand how the Market becomes a religion.

From my reading of your summary of Loy’s argument, he is writing from the perspective of a philosopher of religion, therefore he isn’t trying to understand why economics is a religion, only that it simply is. But I believe that misses a way to understand why this discourse can be so enticing to some people. As Nelson argued, economists inherited the desire of building a paradise in Earth, blessed by God, from post-millenialist theologians, through both Market and planning. That allows them to compete for solutions to the problems – in their way that I agree it’s flawed, by focusing on the impersonality of the Market as a means of equality that forgoes racism and others -isms – listed in section 5, with anticapitalist approaches.

By focusing on the Market alone, Loy doesn’t pay the fact that economics hasn’t always been a free-market science. The authors put emphasis on how quantification is part of the capitalocentric worldview, but the effort to quantify all variables possible started with socialist economists. Jan Tinbergen, Ragnar Frisch, Oskar Lange, are some of the names that appear in the history of economic thought and they were all socialists that imagined quantification and use of mathematical techniques could create a planned society that could surpass the capitalist market society. This is something a history of economic thought textbook can show (e.g. Niehans, 1990). This is why I take issue with what the authors write in the beginning of page 5, when you include “statism” in the anticapitalist scholarship; given the research in the history of economic thought, I cannot equate “statism” with anticapitalism, because building capitalism is also a process that requires a State project; in fact, I’d be even wary of including the other terms because many times in the 20th century, socialism became just state capitalism. The State is historically one of the greatest producers of capital in the world, and one of the biggest polluters. If the authors don’t wish to change without making big changes, I’d like to suggest to recognize that it’s a more complex process, instead of the black-and-white framing that the article’s wording might imply.

So, the idea that the Market is a religion is there, in which the University of Chicago is its Vatican. Milton Friedman even said that people should have more faith in the market. The issue is that it isn’t a monolith. There are many factions vying for power. The very reason why economics swerved to free market in the 1980s was because the previous economic religion, social welfare Keynesianism, supported by the Bretton Woods system, had experienced many crises, and, before that, the free-market religion had collapsed because of the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. If you’re interested, Roger Backhouse has written two articles that complement each other on the changes in economic ideology (Backhouse, 2005, 2010).

The paths of resistance, suggested by Gibson-Graham, are a great exploration of practical ways to oppose capitalism without descending into asceticism that might alienate others. Some people will still defend a capitalocentric worldview, for many reasons; how to engage with them is also part of the anticapitalist strategy. I feel one thing that the authors could emphasize is how the family itself is an institution that can be outside capitalocentrism and how capitalism wants to destroy it – we have a unit that does not work according to profit maximization. And yet, firms’ profit maximization strategy tends to destroy families because parents do not have time for their children, because they're too busy working. I mention this because a good part of the pro-capitalist rhetoric tends to associate anticapitalism with the “destruction of the family” and yet cannot understand that capitalism itself is destroying families.

In conclusion, I understand the authors might not be aware of what economists write because of simple reasons, such as not sharing the same classes or seminars. But still, the overall proposal is to be interdisciplinary, and recognizing contributions, even superficial, from economists that study the issue of economics as religion would be beneficial.

References

 

Backhouse, R. E. (2005). The rise of free market economics: Economists and the role of the state since 1970. History of political economy, 37(Suppl_1), 355-392. Backhouse, R. E. (2010). Economics. In: Roger Backhouse, Philippe Fontaine (Eds.). The history of social sciences since 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nelson, R. (2001). Economics as religion. University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press. Niehans, J. (1990). A history of economic theory. Baltimore: John Hopkins.

 

 

 

Author Response

We sincerely appreciate the reviewer’s careful attention to our essay, and the helpful resources that demonstrate the complexity of economics as a discipline and the importance of nuance in referencing that discipline. Thank you.

We have made some small changes to clarify places where the author rightly points out that our meaning could be confused or confusing.

However, we have not added references to the texts offered. This is not meant as a dismissal of them —Kevin has read Robert Nelson closely for another project and learned a great deal, and we both respect economics and economic history.  However, we hope that the scope of the present essay —engaging Loy, our own field, and anticapitalism— is clearly laid out, and worry that it would weaken or dilute the essay to move into even more interdisciplinary territory.

 Again, we highly value conversation with economists, and would be honored to see a published response from any economist or interdisciplinary scholar who can add to the discussion of (a) whether teaching and scholarship in religion and the environment should be anticapitalist and (b) how it can be effective.