BOOKS, FAITH, WORLD & MORE

THE ONGOING STRUGGLE AGAINST THE CORPORATE POWERS
A Review of Three Books on Consumerism

Daniel Hertzler

A High Price for Abundant Living, by Henry Rempel. Herald Press, 2003.

The Consumer Trap, by Michael Dawson. University of Illinois Press, 2003.

The Powers That Be, by Walter Wink. Doubleday, 1999.

At first I expected too much from Henry Rempel’s book. I hoped he would have a formula for use in the fight against predatory capitalism. Like the fable of the mice and the cat, I hoped Rempel would "bell" the cat of capitalism. Then I looked again and saw that the subtitle of the book is The Story of Capitalism. So the intention of the book is evidently description more than solution, shining a light rather than attaching a bell.

Having reviewed Rempel’s and Dawson’s works, I was still uneasy. So I spent some time with Wink’s, because he takes the discussion to a greater depth. Yet each book provides useful data for anyone seeking to understand the economic system which confronts us.

Rempel clearly has the background to write his book. He is described as a Senior Scholar at the University of Manitoba and "has led more than 20 missions abroad to evaluate projects of various agencies" (307). It is also pointed out that "During the writing, he met regularly with a small reference group representing faith, business, and development to ensure he interacted with diverse concerns and voices" (10).

Rempel personalizes the issues of capitalism by opening with a reference to a one-dollar mug of coffee which has come to him through the marvels of the market. He raises five questions related to the convenience and relative economy of the coffee concluding with "Does my preference for good coffee harm or help other people, either nearby or in Kenya? . . . To address such questions we need to understand the economic system that governs our lives" (17). Since all of us are impacted by the economic system, we can find ourselves somewhere in the book. But I don’t find a direct answer to this opening question.

Rempel spends some time with Adam Smith whose Wealth of Nations is, for some, a Bible of economic theory. But, as Rempel reports, historians do not all agree on the contribution of Smith. In any case, "we have come to worship abundance" (51).

As a response, he proposes "a set of seven sacred values that overlap with or should impinge on our economic system" (53). To those who pay attention to these the book becomes a source of perspective on how to function in this system. In condensed form, these are the seven: (1) human dignity, (2) community, (3) work as creativity, (4) vocation, (5) Sabbath, (6) fairness, (7) opportunity. We find any number of these values violated by the various economic forces we encounter.

Chapter 4, "Born to Shop" identifies a basic assumption of capitalism—all people are seen as consumers. "Our place within society is now defined by our ability to consume. Someone who loses that ability becomes a nobody, a non-person" (69).

It is not hard to recognize ourselves in this role. The frantic efforts of advertisers to persuade us to buy provide endless documentation. Our mass culture is supported by advertising. Commercial television and, increasingly, public television, newspapers, and most magazines depend heavily on advertising, which depends on consumerism. As the Christmas holidays approach, the whole system becomes nervous about what level of purchasing to expect. How will it compare with the year
before?

"Economists," says Rempel, "recognize the complexity of human motivation, but tend not to question the underlying assumption that all persons have an unlimited capacity to want. After all, it serves economists well" (71). Yet the dependence of the North American economy on wants has brought the world to the place where "If everyone in the world obtained the material standard of living enjoyed by North Americans we would require the resources of three earths to meet the demands" (82).

In response, Rempel concludes that "The task before us is large. But it is not impossible. The human race has demonstrated again and again that where there is a will there is a way" (83). But is there a will? "The place to start," says Rempel, "is to resist, nay reject, the drive by business firms to rename us as consumers. We need to reclaim our full humanity" (109). For myself, I keep in mind a rule of thumb: look for an alternative to anything advertised on television.

In subsequent chapters Rempel works his way through various aspects of the economic system. After capital, he comments on labor, then on natural resources. He discusses the role of government, problems of poverty, the issue of globalization, and the dilemma of militarism. "Some of the largest corporations might well face bankruptcy if suddenly forced to compete in the open market producing non-military goods" (259).

In the final chapter he asks, "Where Do We Go from Here?" This is a heavy question. What can he say that will make a difference? He begins by acknowledging that "The capitalist system is like a massive eighteen-wheel truck barreling through history. It has an excessively powerful motor driven by the sum of all human selfishness. It has no brakes. The steering mechanism is clearly faulty" (261). So what can be done?

We will need a new driver for the truck, he says. Capital is no longer sufficient as driver. "Now the governing factor that limits continued ‘progress’ is our environment—the gifts of nature. As our material standard of living rises, the natural landscape deteriorates, the threat of local wars grows, and species become extinct." He says we will need "a driver that will conserve and sustain the natural landscape rather than merely maximizing the value of output from a particular unit of capital" (269).

Can this be done? He acknowledges that "the road ahead will be difficult, perhaps downright painful. But if we set our minds firmly on the common destination and if we have the will to persist, we can turn our overhauled truck in the right direction and keep it going." What is needed, of course, is some way for people to take charge of their lives and insist on "economic activity as a means to an end" instead of an "end in itself" (274).

It is an obvious but difficult goal, because each of us is inclined to make our own compromises with the system. But as Rempel asserts, "The beginning of a shift in power back to communities of people will be dialogue, first among people within each community and then among communities. This dialogue must draw on the many values and beliefs that shape our actions." Rempel notes hopefully that "Historically churches have served to model alternatives that are both possible and socially desirable" (275). But who will go first and attach a bell to the cat of capitalism?

If we think we need additional motivation, we may find it in Michael Dawson’s The Consumer Trap. Dawson perceives the marketing activities of big business as "class struggle from above." He reports that "Big businesses in the United States now spend well above a trillion dollars a year on marketing . . . around $4000 a year for each man, woman and child in the country" (1). This is a financial burden laid upon consumers.

In addition, "our increasingly market-saturated life space makes us dumber, lazier, fatter, more selfish, less skillful, more adolescent, less politically potent, more wasteful, and less happy than we could and should be" (2). As the book develops, Dawson traces the history of big business production and marketing. In the final two chapters, he focuses the issues quite sharply.

He describes how marketing works, how "corporation marketers pay little heed to what a fair-minded observer would describe as the best interests of their targets" (134). They simply want to market whatever products they have to sell: soup, soap, cola, or painkillers. "Compared with corporate marketers we commoners are naive and intellectually diffuse about the architecture of our off-the-job lives. . . . We just want to live well" (136).

So the marketers target us with messages of products purported to enhance our lives. We are vulnerable.

Yet, says Dawson, we do have choices. We are not required to submit to every message. With this in mind, Dawson develops a rationale for resisting these appeals. He acknowledges that "big business has created many real benefits for ordinary product users. Especially in the area of abundance and amusement. . . . Who would dare complain about the overall impact of the compact disc player? . . . but they have imposed many, and often very dear, costs as well" (146).

Following this he lists 14 deleterious effects of the corporate marketing program beginning with (1) clutter, (2) junk, (3) danger, (4) puff and fluff. On the issue of danger he cites a report that "between 1950 and 1989 there were more than 1.7 million people killed in automobile collisions in the United States." He adds that this exceeds all U.S. war casualties in American history and these accidents "are directly attributable to a socio-economic system that puts private profits and maximum commodity saturation above all other considerations" (147).

Ninth on the list is "time and energy drain." Here Dawson observes that "the sheer number of hours Americans spend watching television advertisements that they would rather not see, opening and discarding junk mail; answering telemarketing calls; deleting spam; sitting in traffic, calming, restraining and negotiating with marketing addled children . . . is a major deduction from the limited energy supplies all people have to spend during their earthly days" (151). Is it not so?

Like Rempel, Dawson is hopeful that something can be done. He observes that "big business marketers’ domination of popular psychological and bodily habits is a mile wide but only an inch deep" and that "there is already a simmering if still incoherent cauldron of popular resentment of the costs imposed by the Consumer Trap" (169-170). He looks toward organizational resistance to the machinations of the marketing system. One might observe that the use of similar marketing techniques in the promotion of presidential candidates must surely add to consumer weariness with the system.

Both books end with an appeal for us to take charge of our lives. Rempel says, "Large corporations that are dependent on powerless employees and compliant customers are vulnerable to unified communities of people who want a better future for their children, a future in which they can freely express their creativity and build communities that cherish human dignity and fairness" (281).

Dawson, who does not give evidence of the same level of theological underpinnings as Rempel, nevertheless has a similar concern. His solution is democracy applied to economics. "The people might enjoy, not just a wide range of micro choices—which deodorant, toothpaste, car or magazine to buy—but also an unprecedented degree of control over macro choices, including the option of putting people before profits" (174).

It occurs to me that both of these books are "foreground" statements, dealing with an economic problem which confronts us directly. As we ponder these issues, we may profit from the perspective of Walter Wink in The Powers That Be who sees our economic system—like all systems—as an expression of the Powers. "These Powers surround us on every side. They are necessary. They are useful. . . . But the Powers are also the source of unmitigated evils" (1). All of the chicanery which Rempel and Dawson have described is readily accounted for by Wink’s discussion of the Powers.

In this book and in others he has written on the Powers, Wink is particularly concerned about violence. But violence and economics are sometimes related, as Rempel has observed in his comment on military industrialism.

Wink emphasizes particularly the spiritual nature of the struggle with the Powers. His last full chapter is entitled "Prayer and the Powers," in which he states, "The act of praying is itself one of the indispensable means by which we engage the Powers. It is , [no space before comma] in fact, that engagement at its most fundamental level where their secret spell over us is broken and we are re-established in a bit more of the freedom that is our birthright and potential" (181).

Wink must be right, but the final words suggest, as Rempel and Dawson have implied, that a clean-cut victory in this struggle is not to be expected. The worship of abundance is a perpetual temptation.

Now I am familiar with prayer for the sick and prayer for the government, but prayer for victory in the fight against the Powers sounds like a new theme for requests in the congregational prayer meeting.

Considering the seductive nature of the economic Powers against us, we would do well to pray first for the purification of our own desires. The Powers will continue to pursue us in an effort to get us to join them in the worship of abundance. But Wink calls upon us to intercede for ourselves and our whole culture. "History," he writes, "belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being" (185). So in the end, I suppose, we are still at the beginning.

—Daniel Hertzler, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, a longtime editor and writer, contributes a monthly column to the Daily Courier (Connellsville, Pa.).