Guilt, Responsibility, and Western Prosperity; C. Dykes

Charles Dykes Guilt, Responsibility ()1'\d Western Prosperity ONE of the great differences between ancient paganism and early Chris tianity was in their varying con cepts of responsibility. Responsibil ity has generally been defined as ~~the human sense of answerableness for all acts of thought and conduct."l The pagan, however, located respon sibility primarily in his environ ment-e.g., fate, the stars, the gods, and the like, whereas Christian faith insisted on individual moral responsibility. Orthodox Chris tianity was not then nor is it now ~~concerned with the pointless questions about heredity, environ ment, the stars, or any other like search for a cause." Rather the Christians perceived that Hthe pagan search for causes is a denial of the person and also of responsibil ity."2 Ours is a time when the pagan Mr. Dykes Is a businessman, freelance writer and enthusiastic advocate of the free market.

and Christian concepts of responsi bility are often curiously mixed in the same minds, resulting in a strange new doctrine wherein some men are considered to be the help less victims of environmental de terminism, while others are de clared to have a free will, albeit an evilone. In his analysis of egalitarianism, P. T. Bauer provides an example of this kind of thinking: ~~The poor are often envisaged as a distinct class at the mercy of the environment, with no will of their own, while at the same time they are denied the pri mary human characteristic of respon sibility. The rich are regarded as having a will of their own, but as being villainous. Poverty is seen as a condition caused by external forces, while prosperity, is viewed as the result of conduct, although rep rehensible conduct. The poor are considered passive but virtuous, the rich as active but wicked."3 195 196 THE FREEMAN April Thus in contemporary egalitarian demonology, the ~~rich" and their machinations have become the ~~stars," ~~fate," or other ~~causes"

which afflict the ~~poor." Search for Scapegoats This abiding human passion to transfer responsibility for one's own sin and failure to someone or some thing else can be illustrated by in numerable examples. Some years ago, G. K. Chesterton wrote of his encounter with anti-Christian books in days prior to his conversion. He noted that Christianity ~~was at tacked on all sides and for all con tradictory reasons .... " He con tinues, ~1 was much moved by the eloquent attack on Christianity as a thing of inhuman gloom. . . . They did prove to me in Chapter I. (to my complete satisfaction) that Chris tiani ty was too pessimistic; and then, in Chapter II., they began to prove to me that it was a great deal too optimistic." He was impressed by the argu ment that Christianity was weak, timid and cowardly with regard to fighting, then turned the page and ~~found that I was to hate Chris tianity not for fighting too little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars"

and ~~had deluged the world with blood. . . . The Quakers (we were told) were the only characteristic Christians; and yet the massacres of Cromwell and Alva were charac teristic Christian crimes."4 A few years later Ludwig von Mises was moved to say that ~~Noth ing is more unpopular today than the free market economy, i.e., capi talism. Everything that is consid ered unsatisfactory in present day conditions is charged to capitalism. The atheists make capitalism re sponsible for the survival of Chris tianity. But the papal encyclicals blame capitalism for the spread of irreligion and the sins of our con temporaries, and the Protestant churches and sects are no less vigor ous in their indictment of capitalist greed. Friends of peace consider our wars as an offshoot of capitalist im perialism. But the adamant nation alist warmongers of Germany and Italy indicted capitalism for its ~bourgeois' pacifism .... Sermonizers accuse capitalism of disrupting the family and fostering licentiousness.

But the ~progressives' blame capital ism for the preservation of al legedly outdated rules of sexual restraint."5 Thus Christianity and capitalism have often been the ~~scapegoats" on which the sins and shortcomings of many have been laid. More recently, the wealth of Western nations-a product of Christian capitalism has been attributed to u neo colonialism," the indictment put forward by socialists of all stripes that the nations of the Western 1978 GUILT, RESPONSIBILITY AND WESTERN PROSPERITY 197 world (the Hhaves") derive a large and essential part of their affluence from exploitative investments in the underdeveloped nations (the ~~have-nots"). President Julius Nyerere of Tan zania put it this way: ~~I am saying it is not right that the vast majority of the world's people should be forced into the position of beggars .... In one world, as in one state, when I am rich because you are poor, and I am poor because you are rich, the trans fer of wealth from the rich to the poor is a matter of right; it is not an appropriate matter for charity .... "6 Here we have not only the accusa tion that the rich nations are re sponsible for the poverty of the poor nations, but also the claim that the rich have a moral responsibility to redistribute their ill-gotten gain to the masses of undifferentiated poor.

Accusations of the West Like the critics of Christianity and capitalism, the Third-World apologists really get carried away. According to Dr. Lewis H. Gann, Hthe hated American plotters, like the Elders of Zion in the Nazi polemics of old, can do no right. If they invest overseas, they exploit foreigners. If they do not. invest abroad, they are guilty of boycotting other countries. . . . If capitalists earn profits, they impoverish the masses. If they· do not earn profits, they prove that capitalism must be decadent. If American entrepre neurs try to preserve indigenous customs in the Third World, they promote ~dysfunctional' forms of tribalism. If they disrupt indigenous customs, they are guilty of cultural genocide. The list can be extended indefinitely."7 Dr. Gann concludes: ~(The real or assumed machinations of foreign capitalists supply a uni versal excuse for the political and economic failures of the Third World."8 Accusations that the West in gen eral, and capitalism in particular, has caused the poverty, hunger and backwardness of the Third World, are totally without foundation.

There are able studies which set forth the truth,9 but the urge to masochism remains strong, espe cially among Western intellectuals and churchmen. P. T. Bauer and B. S. Yamey cite a leaflet put out by a student organi zation in Cambridge, England: ~~AI most all of us in this country belong to the small minority of those who made it to prosperity. But we climbed on the shoulders of the rest-the ones we left behind abandoned to disease, poverty, and unemployment. We took the rubber from Malaya, the tea from India, raw materials from all over the world, and gave almost nothing in return." The truth, according to Bauer and Yamey, is that ~~Western governments and enterprise 198 THE FREEMAN April brought rubber to Malaya and tea to India which were not indigenous to these countries."lO Why the Difference? Given the obvious economic supremacy of the West vis-a-vis the rest of the world, and given the equally valid, if not so obvious, fact that this supremacy has not been achieved at the expense of the rest of the world, why is the West-and especially America-prosperous, while the remaining two-thirds of mankind are part of the world's hungry billions? We cannot give a detailed explanation here, but can indicate, several conditions that were essential in preparing the way for the affluence we now enjoy.

First, one need not be a believer to notice that the poor nations are those where Christianity has had little influence or has not taken strong root. On the other hand, the rich nations, those where agricul tural surpluses are a chronic prob lem, are those where the dominant formative values have been Christian-and in particular, Protestant Christian. Cattle and monkeys thrive in India because they are considered sacred; no Hindu would kill a cow because he is afraid of offending his god, nor are cattle and monkeys usually driven away from crops, even when they are consuming food desperately needed by the starving. Here we see false religion leading directly to bad farming. Second, the Reformation gave to Europe a new understanding of using and enjoying the material world. The older asceticism was es sentially rejected and a new work ethic emerged which provided the dynamic for the economic explosion that was to follow over the next four centuries. Third, the Puritans as sisted mightily in the development of modern science and encouraged men to master their material envi ronment. ll (It is not well known, but of 68 men on the original list of the Royal Society for whom information on their religious orientation is available, 42 were Puritans.)12 They were instrumental in bringing the Scientific Revolution, which pro vided the theoretical and technical foundation for the Industrial Revo lution.t 3 We should, moreover, not forget the influence of Puritanism on education. Universal education is an inheritance directly traceable back to the Reformers, and their heirs, the Puritans. 14 And finally, as Irving Kristol has reminded us, ~~the Founding Fathers intended this nation to be capitalist and regarded it as the only set of economic arrangements consistent with the liberal democracy they had established."15 The above represents, of course, only some of the more important historical antecedents making for 1978 GUILT, RESPONSIBILITY AND. WESTERN PROSPERITY 199 Western prosperity. In relating this back to present conditions in the Third World, are we not justified in believing that if they are ever to appreciably raise their material standard of living, they must first raise their "spiritual, moral, and ed ucational standards. Only by achieving a society com.m.itted to individual responsibility and moral accountability for both persons and institutions will they approach the material well-being of the West.

Is it any surprise that the de veloped nations not only have the most productive economies but that their citizens enjoy the greatest de gree of freedom? As Friedrich von Hayek has stated: ((What strikes one above all is the general achievement . . . of practically all developing countries which have embarked on the road of consistent market econ omy to pull themselves out of the mire of poverty. What also strikes one is the hopelessness of those who have tried the road of socialist methods."16 @ -FOOTNOTESIDavid Fyffe, "Responsibility," in James Hastings, editor: Encyclopedia ofReligion and Ethics, Vol. 10, p. 739. Scribners, 1908-1922. 2R. J. Rushdoony, Revolt Against Maturity, p. 89, Fairfax, Va.: Thoburn Press, 1977. 3IrvingKristol & Peter T. Bauer, Two Es says on Income Distribution and the Open Society, pp. 17, 18. Los Angeles: International Institute"for Economic Research, 1977.

4G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, pp. 84, 85, 87. Garden City: Image Books, 1959. 5Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos, p. 17, Irvington, N.Y.: FEE, reprinted 1972. 6Julius Nyerere, African Affairs, pp. 242-50. April 1976, quoted in P. T. Bauer & B. S. Vamey, Commentary, ((Against the New Economic Order," p. 27. April 1976. 7Lewis H. Gann, Neo-Colonialism, Im perialism, and the 'New Class', p. 10. Menlo Park, Ca.: Institute for Humane Studies, Inc., 1975. 8Ibid., pp. 4, 5. 9See P. T. Bauer, Dissent on Development, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. lOp. T. Bauer & B. S. Yamey, Commentary, "Against the' New Economic Order," p. 27, April 1976. uSee R. Hooykaas, Religion & the Rise of Modern Science, pp. 135-149, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961. Also Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, pp. 92-4, 179-81, New York: W. W. Norton, 1961. 12R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, p. 584ff., New York: The Free Press, 1967.

13Kurt Mendelssohn, The Secret of Western Domination, New York: Praeger, 1976. 14See Hans J. Hillerbrand, The World of the Reformation, p. 212 f., New York: Scribners, 1973. Also Harold J. Grimm, The Reformation Era: 1500-1650J p. 592 f., New York: Macmil lan, 1954. 15Irving Kristol, The Public Interest, "On Corporate Capitalism in America," number 41, Fall 1975, p. 124. 16Quoted on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, 6 January 1976.