Climate Change and Capitalism
Over the last 50 years, climate change has received increased attention from religious studies scholars and theologians. Centers, institutes, and networks have been established in various religious circles -- including educational institutions such as divinity schools and seminaries -- to promote the study of and response to the climate change crisis. Unfortunately, few have connected the climate crisis to our capitalist economic crisis. Responses to climate disasters like severe flooding, fierce hurricanes, protracted drought, and fires are often devoid of attention to capitalism’s need to fuel its wheels of profit accumulation through an extractive and exploitative economy. Instead of analyzing exploitative capitalist systems of profit and labor, the majority of religious voices speaking out against climate change tend to focus on consumerism, personal decision-making, or care of the human and non-human victims. Such approaches obscure the deep connections between the climate crisis, capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. As the ultra wealthy engage in a space race, the working majority--among them disproportionately large numbers of black and brown women and their communities--bear the brunt of environmental devastation.
This forum seeks to explore the deep connections between our climate crisis and capitalism, with an eye to the role of theology and religion. Panelists will address questions like: Why is capitalism often missing in the conversation about climate change by religious studies scholars theologians? What can religion and theology contribute to addressing our climate and economic crises, and the intricate links connecting these crises? And, what should be done going forward in respect to climate change and capitalism?
This forum is co-sponsored with the Iliff Center for Ecojustice and the Center for Climate Justice & Faith (CCJF) at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary. All three of these institutions bring together concerns around the economy and the climate.
Contributors: Miguel De La Torre, Simangaliso Kumalo, Gabriella Lettini, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Joerg Rieger
The Commodification of Water
Miguel De La Torre
December 16, 2021
Below all is land. What makes land valuable is water. Blessed is the one who maximizes lands profitability by taking ownership of the water which passes through in the form of rivers, streams, or creeks or remains stationary in the form of lakes or wells. For whoever owns the water, profits off those upon the land who depend on water for their very survival. Water, as a commodity, is more precious than oil, able to make or break fortunes, responsible for future wars. But what if it is immoral to own water? What if water is itself a living entity with the ability to nourish all other forms of life – not just humans, but animals, insects, birds, fish, simple-cell organisms, plants, and trees. What if this giver of life has its own life, complete with rights and responsibilities?
The problem with the Abrahamic faiths is that the earth, and all of what it contains – soil, rocks, trees, plants, and water – were created for humans for their sole use, misuse, and even abused. We humans then took this creation and sought to domesticate it for profit. The proclamation of Pope John Paul II still rings in our ears: “Everything in creation is ordered to man and everything is made subject to him.” And yet this predominant Eurocentric worldview remains foreign to many indigenous cultures. Take, for example, the 1890 words of Smohalla of the Wanapum people:
You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother’s bosom? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again. You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men. How dare I cut off my mother’s hair.
Within indigenous traditions of the Americas, every waterway is a living entity, a close relative upon whom all life is depended, not a commodity to be exploited for personal gain. For example, among the Overhill Cherokee, the Little Tennessee River is known as Yunmi Gamahida, (the long Man), someone who can speak and be heard by those who know how to listen. Chalchiuhtlicue (she of the jade skirt) among the Aztecs is the goddess of flowing waters, associated with fertility for she is responsible for bringing forth maze upon what the people depend. For Africans, Ochún is the goddess of rivers, and her sister Yemayá is the goddess of the oceans. China’s Yellow River is a deity called Hebo who, while benevolent, can also be greedy, unpredictable, and destructive. The Ganges River of India signifies the goddess Gaṅgā, the liquid embodiment of female divine energy.
What if the indigenous views concerning flowing waters are closer to sacred reality than the neoliberal secular worldview based on an Enlightenment philosophy which stresses ownership of property, ownership of water, and ownership of people (in the forms of slavery or slave wages). Such ownerships have historically enriched a minority of the world’s population in the name of advancing Christianization. Contrary to global indigenous concepts, which recognizes no part of mother earth can be partitioned and owned, Eurocentric thought instead taught, through its colonization venture, that the raw material and natural resources stolen from the colonized was for the better of humanity. The so-called primitive people who were as children, lacking the mature mental capacity to capitalize on what nature has given them, needed a steady white hand to guide them toward progress. Stealing, enslaving, and exploiting became a blessing from their white God. These poor so-called savages now had an opportunity to become civilized. A link exists between the ownership and abuse of the earth’s resources and the ownership and abuse of the world’s marginalized; or, as Brazilian liberationist theologian Leonardo Boff reminds us, a connection exists between the cry of the oppressed and the cry of the earth.
Missing from Eurochristianity is any interrelation between humans and the sacred and communal nature of water. While Eurochristians stress a personal relationship with their sky-God, the indigenous worldviews look terrestrially for meaning, stressing relationships between humans and the spiritual entities which surround them, including water. While Eurochristians see themselves as stewards of creation, a more indigenous worldview recognizes that because water is its own living entity, no human possesses the right to hoard water, or any other of Mother earth’s resources. This Eurochristian view that nature is to be dominated and subjugated contributes to many of the ecological challenges humanity faces today. Eurochristian eschatological fantasies of being sojourners heading toward some heavenly abode encourage neglect for our present home on terra firma.
Probably the greatest threat to our planet is humanity, Eurochristians specifically. Sadly, the extinction of humans might be the best thing which could happen to earth if we truly care about its healing and survival. The planet will do fine without us. We are not that special. But let us hope it does not come to that. What if we were to hear indigenous voices – voices ignored and ridiculed for too long. What if our spirituality ceases to place humans in the center of God’s plan and instead begin to recognize the importance of all? That humans are not more valuable than the animals, the birds, the fish, the insects, the mountains, the trees, the rivers. What if we learn that whatever we appropriate from our planet, we have a moral obligation to reciprocate? What if every decision in which we engage, we weigh its impact seven generations from now? How do we begin to encompass balance, a yang/ying relationship not just among humans, but among all who depend on the earth and the earth itself? Such an ethical move would mean no person or corporation can own water. Water cannot be enslaved, cannot be sold at a profit, cannot be degraded by making it a dumping site for our waste. The Eurocentric idea that water can be commodified may enrich the few in the short run; but in the long run, it damns us all.
Miguel A. De La Torre, Iliff School of Theology is professor of of social ethics and Latinx Studies at the Iliff School of Theology, known for years of enduring engagement with distinct public audiences outside the academy around important social and ethical issues such as immigration, race, and sexuality.
Climate Change, Christianity, and the Capitalocene
Joerg Rieger
16 December 2021
It is commonly argued that we are living in the geological age of the Anthropocene. This is the age when humanity is considered to be the dominant force that shapes the planet, just as other forces shaped the planet in earlier times, like glacial ice shaping the Pleistocene (between 2.5 million and 11,000 years ago) and warmer conditions shaping the Holocene, during which the human species first emerged.
What the concept of the Anthropocene neglects, however, is that not all human activities have equal impact on the planet. 71 percent of all carbon emissions, for instance, which are the major factor in global warming, are linked to only 100 corporations. Thus, instead of Anthropocene, it has been suggested that we find ourselves in the Capitalocene, the geological age when the interests of big money are shaping the planet.
The Capitalocene, as I am arguing in a forthcoming book (Theology in the Capitalocene: Ecology, Identity, Class, and Solidarity, Fortress Press 2022), shapes and affects everything. While it is the major factor in climate change, it also shapes humanity, the way we relate to each other, the way we think, and even our most deeply held religious beliefs.
Some of this shaping happens by default. The logic of big money sneaks into images of God, when God is envisioned as a heavenly CEO rather than a collaborator with humanity. The logic of big money also infuses personal relationships, so that potential partners for instance are evaluated according to their supposed “market value.” However, some of this shaping is intentional and worth investigating further here.
Climate change is especially telling, as it is one of the major challenges of our time. When the general public acknowledges climate change, responses often focus on the carbon footprint of individuals, which is no accident. Emphasis on individual responsibility is supported by “carbon footprint calculators,” which estimate personal CO2 emissions and are widely available on the internet. The terminology of carbon footprint and the respective calculators can be traced back to the fossil fuel industry, which started to promote them in the early 2000s in order to direct attention away from corporate interests.
In the world of Christianity, the Capitalocene also factors in the often-observed shift to the right. Since the 1930s and 1940s, big money has systematically invested in conservative Christianity. In the process, conservative Christianity itself has become more conservative. The values that people perceive to be “traditional” are frequently not preserving the past but the interests of big money, for instance by shifting attention from corporate interests (and climate change) to so-called family values that often tend to be more restrictive than even the family values of the 1950s.
Engaging climate change and Christianity from the perspective of the Capitalocene, therefore, is crucial if we want to make a difference. This brings us to a fundamental problem that is virtually taboo and, like taboos in general, directs us back to the heart of religion.
Even when the fundamental relation of climate change and CO2 emissions is recognized, dominant conversations about emissions tend to neglect the fact that emissions are the outcome of the extraction of fossil fuel and coal, which is related to capitalism’s foundation in relationships of exploitation. In the COP-21 Paris Agreement, for instance, there is frequent reference to emissions but no reference to extraction.
This neglect of extraction also tends to neglect the fact that the methods and conditions of extraction are determined by the interests of capital rather than by the human communities that are most affected by these activities. In addition, the forces that extract raw materials from the planet are inextricably linked to the forces that exploit human labor, another matter that is sometimes neglected when CO2 emissions are the sole focus of debate. This is one of the reasons why at the Wendland-Cook Program we try to keep matters of ecology and the economy together.
In all of this, religion is not just a sideshow. Christianity, it has been argued convincingly, has contributed to the deterioration of the climate in its own ways. Examples include an exclusive focus on humanity and troubled understandings of its “dominion” (Genesis 1:26) of the earth, as well as an otherworldly focus that does not care about material reality. In addition, Christianity has also supported extractive and exploitative relationships to the earth and its people by supporting the logic of the Capitalocene, if only by further rendering conversations about extraction and exploitation taboo.
Any quest for alternatives needs to consider this history so as not to end up promoting solutions that further perpetuate the problems. Common Christian ideas like “creation care,” for instance, need to be combined with questions such as why creation is not being cared for, who benefits from this lack of care, and how the most significant damage is done, while addressing relationships of extraction and exploitation at the heart of many of these problems. The same is true for widespread calls for the “protection of creation,” the “restoration of creation,” or “environmental stewardship.”
If there is indeed a connection between climate change, Christianity, and the Capitalocene, solutions can only be developed if the three are addressed together. For Christians, this means not only deepening our concerns for climate change but also addressing its causes at deeper levels. To do this, we will need to address the logic of capital that drives extraction and exploitation. At the same time, we also need to forge deeper solidarities with those who are most affected by relationships of extraction and exploitation, as this is where the power to change things often rests.
For people of faith, this means aligning ourselves with the power of working people, which constitute the majority of humanity, as 99 percent of us have to work for a living. It also means aligning ourselves with the power of the earth that continues to produce resources sustainably. And, finally, this means aligning ourselves with the power of the divine that Abrahamic traditions often envision in terms of the creativity of working people (Genesis 2:7-8, with parallels in the Qur’an) and the planet (Genesis 1:20, 24).
Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion, Affiliate Faculty, Turner Family Center for Social Ventures, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, and the Founder and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program.
“Mother Earth,” by Dela and Max Ehrman. The picture is of a street mural in San Francisco depicting a Black Woman wearing a large veil on her head and around her body. She is raising her right hand forward, with an open palm, as if pushing against something, or bocking something, There is a center of light and energy emanating from her heart area. The image is in shades of blue, green, white and black.” I originally identified her as Mary, the mother of Jesus, pushing against white supremacy and police brutality by powerfully extending her right hand forward. The way this image could talk to me about the power of God as a Black mother pushing back against the evil of racism and as nature pushing back against the destructive forces of modernity stayed with me.
“Talkin’ About A Revolution”
By: Gabriella Lettini
December 16, 2021
Once again, we live through this Advent season while mourning the victims of multiple natural disasters and a seemingly never-ending COVID19 pandemic. Once again, the majority of the national and world population faces the daily and heartbreaking challenges imposed by the deepening of economic inequality, climate change, structural racism, and neocolonialism. In this context, we witness the resurgence of white supremacist and fascist groups, legislation aimed at squashing the human rights of women, transgender, and non-binary people, and movements that foster hate and scapegoating towards immigrants and refugees. Science and climate change deniers still thrive.
It is hard to reconcile the bleakness of the daily news with the joyful and festive spirit that Western Christian culture has come to associate with Christmas. Yet, the world that generated the gospel’s stories was also complex, brutal, and in need of hope and transformation as ours. It was a world where injustice and domination were not exceptions but were embedded in the fabric of society and history.
Contemporary Western societies are not only marred by profound inequalities but are intentionally built on them and the exploitation of the masses, in particular Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Western societies are organized to foster the immoral accumulation of wealth by the few that results from the exploitation of natural resources and human labor, rather than focusing on the survival and thriving of communities that honor everyone in them. The COVID19 pandemic, the health care crisis, the realities of the prison industrial complex, and the ongoing episodes of police brutality against black and brown bodies have not merely shown the limitations of the neoliberal capitalist system but clarified its true nature. The system is not flawed but indeed works only for the people that it is supposed to work.
What can Christian theologies and communities do to make a much stronger impact on the struggle against the local Herods and global empires of today? Why do we struggle so much with bringing and actualizing the gospel's liberating message in a way that can truly make a difference to humanity's run into self-destruction and possibly causing the destruction of planet earth as we know it?
These are complex questions, and here I can only sketch some ideas for further reflection and engagement. As a Waldensian theologian, rooted in an anti-imperial message of the gospel, I am led to point out first that Western white Christianity has a very problematic relationship with economic inequalities and the political empires that are both built on and that reinforce them. Early Waldensian Christians, also known as “the Poor,” saw the Christianization of the Roman empire not as something to be celebrated but as the sign that the liberating and counter-cultural message of the gospel was being co-opted and subverted. Rather than a liberating and hopeful collective “good news” to the poor and the marginalized, Western mainstream white Christianity became associated with hegemonic and oppressive powers that sustained the accumulation of resources by the few through the exploitation of natural and human resources. In this context, rather than seeing sin in the systems that create poverty, exploitation, and oppression, Christianity focused either on an individualistic understanding of sin, focusing on sexuality or individual excesses of greed and violence, or on a generalized sense of universal human fallacy. In both cases, the nature of sin as systemic, oppressive, and exploitative power is lost.
Today we can see both the spiritual and cultural effects on these trends in the way the efforts to climate change still too often focus on addressing individual issues within Western consumerism, industrial malpractices, or the failure of some governmental policies, but is not more radically tackling the systems of white supremacy and capitalism that thrive on them. We seem to be addressing the symptoms of the issues without tackling more radically their foundations, the interconnection between white supremacy and capitalism on which the modern world is built.
Unfortunately, Western imperial Christianity has also literally been an effort to whitewash the gospel, reimagining a Palestinian brown or Black man and his community as white. This anti-blackness and centering of whiteness still plague white Western Christianity and their efforts towards climate justice, as it fails to address issues systemically and intersectionally and produces responses centered in white and privileged perspectives and needs.
One of the texts that is important to Christians in the seasons of Advent contains a powerful reminder of the kind of system change the liberating message of the gospel is about. It’s Mary’s song in Luke 1:46-55, also known as the Magnificat, rooted in the prophetic messages of the Hebrew scriptures. Mary sings of a God that has brought down rulers from their throne and has lifted up the humble. She is singing about a God that is a radical no to oppressive powers, to the pillars of white supremacy, and a yes to the plight of the oppressed and marginalized, and to everything that affirms and nurtures ways of relating and living that are alternative to the status quo. Mary's song is a protest song, full of anger and affirmations of hope, more similar to Traci Chapman’s Talkin’ About A Revolution than a bland Christmas carol full of angels and snow. As in Chapman's powerful song, the revolution starts "like a whisper," but it is an embodiment of the kind of people's power that can turn society around. It is not about inclusion within existing systems but about system changes that reshape society from the perspectives of the oppressed and marginalized.
Reclaiming this radical message as the core of Christianity should be the work of Christian theologians today as we seek to tackle climate change and we struggle for survival.
Rev. Dr. Gabriella Lettini is Dean of Faculty and Aurelia Henry Reinhardt Professor of Theological Ethics and Director of Studies in Public Ministry at the Starr King School for the Ministry, Graduate Theological Union (GTU), Berkeley, CA. Arriving at Starr King in August of 2005, she was charged with directing the new Master of Arts in Social Change (MASC). She currently serves on the GTU Core Doctoral Faculty.
Systemic Change to an Equitable, Ecological, Democratic Economy is Possible
By: Cynthia Moe-Lobeda
20 January 2022
Time has run out for many of the climate vulnerable, and it is very short for the rest of us. Therefore, I have become highly practical in my orientation to the exquisite gift of the human intellect, to our use of ideas, theory, and highly complex thinking faculties. Given that humans have been given such capacities, we are now obligated to use them for the sake of catalyzing and cultivating moral agency for the work of climate justice in the short-term and the long-haul. This becomes my criterion for intellectual work. That is my aim here: not just clearer analysis or insight but moral agency.
To that end I will build on five points, all of which derive from a faith claim and theological stance. It is that Jesus and the God to whom he points call human beings into a world-transfiguring, dominance-defying, joy-generating, lament-laden, dangerous, communion-cultivating, magnificent adventure of loving neighbor, where neighbor-love is inherently justice-seeking, Earth-honoring, and self-respecting, and therefore governs not only interpersonal relationships but how we construct social systems.
Economic systems—practices, policies, operationalized values, and power alignments—shape relationships with others/neighbors. (To illustrate: wage norms, tax policies, and corporate practices of toxic dumping and water commodification may enable some to profit excessively by depriving others.) Therefore, economic life is to be guided by neighbor-love above all else. Economic systems that damage or kill some in order to accumulate wealth for others betray the God whom Jesus loved, because they lock people into damaging or killing neighbors. Neighbor-love calls us, therefore, to resist exploitative, extractive economic systems such as advanced capitalism and rebuild more equitable, ecological, and democratic alternatives. I have articulated these points and justified them theologically elsewhere. (See, for example: https://resistingstructuralevil.com/)
Today, given the unprecedented power of corporate-and-finance-driven capitalism, such resistance and rebuilding at the systemic level appears to be impossible. It is not. That is my main point in this essay. At its end, I identify my reasons for this claim.
The five points are these:
An economy that rewards maximizing profit, growth, and consumption regardless of the social and ecological cost, and that socializes people into valuing these three and ignoring the social and ecological costs necessarily establishes neighbor-relations in which some benefit from the sometimes brutal exploitation of others. Those others are “neighbors” who are to be loved with justice-seeking love, not exploited. Advanced global capitalism is such an economy. In the words of Peter Pero: “…if the church is the one universal body of Christ, this body of Christ is divided among active thieves, passive profiteers, and deprived victims.” Jon Sobrino, Jesuit priest in El Salvador, quietly explained to a delegation of U.S. citizens that I led: “In El Salvador poverty means death, and people are not poor through chance; the systems that make you wealthy, make them poor.”
Advanced global capitalism with its fierce aim of maximizing profit, growth, and consumption regardless of the social and ecological cost, and its hegemonic hold on the economic imagination is a major driver of the climate change that is destroying or displacing millions of global neighbors. https://climateandcapitalism.com/2020/02/18/capitalist-roots-environment-crisis/
These two consequences of corporate-and-finance-driven capitalism (climate catastrophe and monumental inequity) mean that living according to its mandates without seeking to change it if we have the capacity for that effort betrays God by betraying God’s call, commandment, and invitation of neighbor-love. Moreover, it betrays the widespread cherished values of compassion and care for others -- including one’s own children. (Here I would add that I wonder what happens to the soul when day after day, year after year, one betrays one’s deepest beliefs and values, and then runs from acknowledging that transgression.)
Efforts to mitigate climate change and adapt to it that do not also aim at climate justice will be morally and materially disastrous; climate vulnerable people may be further damaged and endangered by climate mitigation efforts that do not have a racial justice and economic justice lens. Climate justice requires a “just transition” from extractive exploitative economies to equitable renewable energy economies. (See for example the report at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zEnpC1DkNP_3OmuwgMRHqcs0NLnDY0zj/view.)
As clarified in the 2018 IPCC Special Report, this means “transforming the world economy at a scale and speed that ‘has no documented historic precedent.’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html
These five points render a morally haunting paradox. It has been emblazoned into my consciousness through accepting invitations to lecture or teach on six continents. I have learned that many people in the U.S. are aware that the capitalism in which our lives are enmeshed generates morally reprehensible inequity and environmental destruction, and they hunger to live in ways that build justice and ecological sanity. Yet they feel powerless for the work of challenging and reshaping this economic system. Pervading the public consciousness in the U.S. is a sense that substantive change in economic and financial power structures at the macro level is impossible.
It is not.
I say this firmly for four reasons.
Economic systems are constructed by human decisions and actions. Anything constructed by humans is subject to human agency; we can change it through other decisions and actions.
God does not call people to paths that we cannot tread, and God surely calls us to transform economic life (not perfectly, but substantively).
Advanced global capitalism will change because Earth as a bio-physical system cannot continue to supply what it requires—unlimited services such as climate regulation, unlimited resources, and markets regulated to give economic players the “freedom” to maximize profit while externalizing the costs. This is not an ideological statement or a political or moral opinion. It is a statement about physical reality. The question is not whether advanced capitalism will change dramatically, but in what direction and to whose benefit and loss. That will be determined by human agency.
A global movement the likes of which has never been seen on Earth—a movement of tremendous diversity yet complementarity—is afoot to build the “new economy.” (It goes by many names and has many versions including the solidarity economy, post-capitalism economy, economic democracy, new economy, democratic ecological socialism, and more.) Its principles are economic democracy, ecological regeneratively, social equity.
Heeding God’s call to love neighbor in this time of climate colonialism and climate catastrophe includes living toward the new economy through collective faithful action to challenge and transform extractive exploitation economic systems of which advanced global capitalism is one.
Dr. Moe-Lobeda is Professor of Theological and Social Ethics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, and is a member of the Core Doctoral Faculty of the Graduate Theological Union. She holds a doctoral degree in Christian Ethics from Union Theological Seminary, affiliated with Columbia University. She is author of Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Economic-Ecological Vocation (Fortress, 2013), Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God (Fortress, 2002), Public Church: For the Life of the World (Fortress, 2004), and numerous articles and chapters. She is co-author of The Bible and Ethics: A New Conversation (Fortress, 2017), Francis and the Foolishness of God (Orbis, 1993), and Say to this Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship (Orbis, 1996).
Towards an environmentally friendly economy
By: Simangaliso R. Kumalo
20 January 2022
An alternative economic order, and by implication and environmental order, that is proposed here is one that is based on two related concepts of African communalism and Ubuntu, which are present in all of black Africa and are fundamental to African socio-ethical thought and organisation. Communalism is one of Africa’s most important values. It is beyond doubt that the community was central to the African worldview. However, what is subject to intense debate among contemporary African philosophers is the nature of the individual-community relationship. Contrary to van den Berg (1999), who argues that African philosophers’ view of this relationship is founded on a “mythologised and romanticised ideal of African societies” which regards the community as all-powerful and leaves no room for the individual as a self-determining and self-asserting entity—the so-called radical communitarianism—we suggest a more limited or moderate communalism that also takes into account the issue of rights and endowments of individual members of a community. This is also the view of most contemporary African philosophers (e.g. Matolino 2009, 2014; Chimakonam 2018) who reject the notion of radical communitarianism. Furthermore, our view does not regard traditional African community as egalitarian. Quite the contrary, we acknowledge that there were class differences and that the communities were gendered, with women enjoying far fewer rights than men. We also note that communitarianism is not unique to African but is also prevalent among indigenous peoples throughout the world.
In a traditional setting, Africans live in community. There they organize various aspects of their lives cooperatively, based on the values of caring and the duties to promote the general welfare (Ikuenobe 2021:421). Whatever happens to an individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. When an African suffers, she does not suffer alone but with the community and when she rejoices, she rejoices not alone but with the community (Mbiti 1989:106). Duties to the community are emphasized. Every member has a duty to promote the well-being of the community. This does not necessarily entail a conflict between rights and duties because the two are mutually supportive. There is a reciprocity of duty in which my duty to protect others also gives them a duty to protect my welfare. Breach of tradition and behavior that is likely to cause social disharmony is detested. Communalism is concerned with the common good and for the good of the whole community.
Communalism does not restrict the individual from exercising her rights and freedoms. It is not antithetical to the individual. Rather, Chimakonam (2018:136) notes that there is a form of mutual independence and a form of mutual inter-dependence. In terms of independence, autonomy and rights of individuals can be affirmed and in terms of interdependence, the identity of the community can be affirmed as well. Communitarianism does not put the community ahead of the individual. Rather, it upholds the independent identity of each. It is not about the community alone, it is about the individuals that form the community and the community that defines the individuals (Chimakonam (2018:137).
It is in the context of the community that Africans practice Ubuntu. In fact, the very idea of seeing oneself as being part of a community is itself Ubuntu. In its fuller version, Ubuntu is expressed in the Nguni languages of southern Africa as umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, which literally translates to “a person is a person through other people.” This means that one’s humanness is inseparably bound up with other people’s. Ubuntu is a relational concept that expresses the interconnectedness of human beings. One cannot be human outside a human community because human beings can only be human together. One cannot realise one’s true self in isolation from others. In the context of communalism and Ubuntu, a person is not a rugged individual, but a person living within a community. No person is complete in herself. It is only through deeper relationships with other human beings in a community that one can be said to be fully human. Ubuntu is a communalistic, not an individualistic philosophy.
It has been argued that communalism (which emphasizes the community) is to be contrasted with individualism (which emphasizes the individual). This does not mean that individualism is necessarily bad. Quite the opposite, individualism has been quite successful in motivating ordinary people to realize their full potential and inner depths, among its many positives. What we critique is absolute or extreme individualism, the kind of individualism that creates an “each-one-for-himself” type of society. This is the kind of individualism that capitalism gives birth to and nurtures, one that excludes and leaves behind more people than it takes along. It is a sort of individualism that morphs into narcissistic self-absorption and one in which the interests of the few become superior to the welfare of the many. What we have issues with is possessive individualism that is motivated by acquisitiveness. It is this form of individualism that regards human society as consisting of a series of market relations. This is the individualism that reduces and degrades humanity.
The conception of communitarianism in which individuals find their identity within a community and in their interconnectedness with other members of the community is central to an economic system that is an alternative to capitalism’s unrestrained individually driven consumption. It is contrary to capitalism’s acquisitive individualism in which individuals are viewed as such, without any connection to other members of the community. By seeing other community members as connected to the self, and therefore one’s success as everyone’s success, Ubuntu dislodges capitalism’s rampant individualism and hyper competitiveness that seek individual glory. Under an alternative economic system premised on communitarianism and Ubuntu, my success as an individual does not mean anything until everyone in community also succeeds. If one cannot realize one’s true self in isolation from others, it follows that one cannot realize true success in isolation from others.
Ubuntu speaks to cooperation among members of a community for the sake of the common good. The common good is related to the individual good and the welfare of the individual is aligned to the welfare of the whole community. An economic system inspired by communitarianism and Ubuntu emphasizes the values of group solidarity, mutual care, sharing, compassion, respect and human dignity. These are the core values that hold society together. The notion of solidarity is central to the survival of the community. An Ubuntu-inspired economic system is what Kawano (2018:2) calls “solidarity economy.” The solidarity economy is about people collectively finding ways to provide for themselves and their communities. It seeks to replace the dominant capitalist system with one that puts people and the planet at the centre. Solidarity economy is a shift from an economic paradigm that prioritizes profit and blind growth to one that prioritizes living in harmony with each other and with nature. It supports re-distributional policies but works to build a system that does not generate inequality in the first place. The solidarity economy embraces participatory democracy as a way for people to participate in their own collective development (Kawano 2018:3).
Whereas capitalism views individuals not as human beings but as consumers and laborers, an Ubuntu-inspired economic system regards every human being as a bearer of human dignity and human rights, not as a means to an end but as an end in himself. It recognizes a person's status as a human being, entitled to unconditional respect, dignity, value and acceptance from other members of the community in spite of their economic status. Ubuntu demands that every person be treated hospitably in the sense of not violating their humanness, including economic and environmental rights. Thus, if Trafigura cannot dump toxic chemical waste in Amsterdam, it should also not dump it in Ivory Coast because the citizens of that country are also human beings deserving of human dignity and respect. If citizens of the United States cannot live in shacks or go to bed hungry, so should citizens of South Africa. Communitarianism and Ubuntu transcend the narrow confines of the nuclear family through the extended kinship groups to the whole human race. So whatever cannot happen to one race or country should not happen to any member of the human race wherever they may be. The Golden Rule of conduct—do unto others as you would like done unto you—is not unrelated to Ubuntu. For the categorical imperative in a society characterised by communitarianism and Ubuntu, Taylor (2014:338) suggests: “An action is right insofar as it promotes cohesion and reciprocal value amongst people. An action is wrong insofar as it damages relationships and devalues any individual or group.”
Operating under the principle of each-one-for-himself, capitalism knows no cooperation but insensitive competition. An economic system with Ubuntu as its bedrock, on the other hand, knows no competition but cooperation. The selfishness and greed inherent in capitalism is replaced with cooperation for the promotion of the common good. Ubuntu’s communalism calls for a redistribution of wealth to those in need and for the construction of a society that is based on a decent material sufficiency for everyone on the planet (Smith 2014b). It rejects possessive individualism and the hoarding of resources that is prevalent under capitalism. Ubuntu implies that one can only increase one’s fortune by sharing with other members of society. Through cooperation, it seeks to ensure that no one is left behind. This is beautifully summed up by Etieyibo (2017:319) who writes: “I carry you along or save you as well. I do not leave you behind and you do not leave me behind.” By relating the individual good to the common good, the alternative economic order aims to dislodge hyper-competitiveness that is a hallmark of capitalism. That way it also obliterates the senseless thirst for growth and profit maximization that is embedded in capitalism. Where there is competition, it is for the better of the entire community. Exploitation of any member of a community contravenes the foundations of cooperation and communalism.
An Ubuntu-inspired economy embraces what Trainer (2011) calls the “simpler way.” This is characterized by modesty, producing and consuming less. Those from the rich Western world who are over-consuming accept far more materially simple lifestyles. The simpler way economy recognizes that most of the basic human needs can be met in quite simple and low-impact ways, while maintaining a high quality of life. Adopting the simpler way does not mean hardship or deprivation but focusing only on what is sufficient to live well, rather than constantly seeking increased consumption and more wealth. The simpler way recognizes that the level of poverty and deprivation in the developing world is not due to lack of resources, but is because of a system that unevenly distributes resources to those who can pay for them, rather than to those who really need them. It argues that the affluence enjoyed in the rich Western countries is built on a patently unjust global economic system that enables the rich countries to take far more than their fair share of the world’s resources, at the expense of the poor countries whose citizens cannot even live a minimally decent existence (Alexander 2012a). What is needed for the simpler way economy is a radical change in cultural attitudes toward consumption.
While capitalism ignores and forgets those who have fallen on the wrong side of capital, because of its communitarianism, an economic system built around communitarianism and Ubuntu seeks them out and pulls them along so that they too can live a life with dignity. A community build on Ubuntu is a caring and sharing community. Caring and sharing arise from our common humanity. Ubuntu moves humanity from parasitism to contribution, from competition to collaboration and solidarity (Etieyibo 2017:320). All members of the community, both at the local and global community level, are allowed to participate fully in the goods and opportunities of the political community. While capitalism blames its victims for their economic marginalisation, communalism and Ubuntu regards them as victims of an unjust exploitative economic order and urges a levelling act so that no one may lag behind. Like Cain, when confronted by God about the whereabouts of his brother Abel (Genesis 4:9), capitalism’s possessive individualism asks: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). But communitarianism and Ubuntu says, like Jesus in the story of the Good Samaritan, my neighbour is anyone who has been bruised and left on the roadside by an unjust economic and ecological order. Ubuntu urges the historical polluters to set aside real climate finance for adaptation of the poor countries that are already being negatively impacted by climate change.
As has been noted above, capitalism is only concerned about the present. Understood within its broader African worldview where humanity consists of the living, the living-dead and the future generations, Ubuntu acknowledges the rights of future generations to live in a clean environment and to be able to be sustained by the very same ecological resources that are sustaining the present generations. Ubuntu regards future generations as shareholders who must also benefit from the same resources of the earth as us. Thus, an alternative economic system rejects wasteful consumerism as unsustainable and as leaving future generations with a massive ecological debt that they will not be able to repay.
Professor R Simangaliso Kumalo is an Associate Professor of Religion and Governance at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Pietermaritzburg. He is the Director of the Institute for Religion, Governance and the Environment in Southern Africa. He is also the Co-founding Editor of the Critical Investigation on Humanitarian AID in Africa (CIHA). He is also the immediate past-President of the Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa (2016-2018).