What has economics to do with theology?
Richard Peersoffers a thoughtful review ofTalking to My Girl About the Economy, Yanis Varoufakis, Bodley Head 2022 (2013):
There is competition for the title 'Queen of The Sciences'. Traditionally practical to theology as the summit of noesis and the science which explained the meaning of things and held together the other areas of knowledge, the title was too claimed, in the nineteenth century, for mathematics.
Peradventure, in our own fourth dimension the title could be claimed for economic science? Economic models are applied to our schools, our hospitals, our public services. Economics, we might exist led to believe, can explain the narrative of homo history.
When I taught GCSE Economic science I struggled with recommended reading for my pupils. At that place were text books to cull from, needed to ensure curriculum coverage, just they were, it felt to me, full of isolated pieces of knowledge that it was difficult to locate into context or a larger framework or narrative. For the first half of Yanis Varoufakis'south book Talking to My Daughter Nigh the Economy I thought that it was the book I had been searching for. A sweeping narrative of economic history, explaining markets, capital and labour in a historical context and with elementary not technical language. Information technology is, indeed, the book I needed for my pupils, just it is then much more than than the i I had imagined. The one-time Greek Finance Minister and erstwhile politician shows how, far from being a science in our current agreement of the give-and-take, economics is a philosophy, a linguistic communication for talking about the earth but not identical with it. Equally he writes near the terminate of the book:
We confront a choice: we can go on pretending we are scientists, similar astrologists exercise, or admit that we are more like philosophers, who volition never know the meaning of life for certain, no matter how wisely and rationally they contend.
Varoufakis wrote the book for his teenage daughter in just ix days in 2013 before his brief tenure in government, simply all the key themes of that period are present. He begins with a sweeping history of the creation of currency (which he places earlier than is usually accepted), debt, and what he calls the 'marketplace society' rather than capitalism. His starting point, refreshingly, is the origin of the inequalities of the globe. I had not encounter the idea that Eurasia was the seat of the industrial revolution mainly because of geography and the east-w centrality of the continent, ensuring easy merchandise and transfer of goods in similar weather weather condition.
Varoufakis must be a great teacher. He uses easily understandable examples and colourful cultural references. The book includes Star Trek and The Matrix as major examples of markets grabbing the future. He references Greek myths and Second Earth War prisoner of war camps. Mary Shelley and her Frankenstein gets a star part. Marvellously he ends by quoting our own Anglican, T.Southward.Eliot. There is an element of romp to the book that might exist explained by the nine days of writing or just Varoufakis' motorcycle-riding character. Either way it is deeply attractive. As he himself says, "those who write well about the economic system borrow their best ideas from artists, novelists, scientists."
From a Christian perspective the book is specially interesting. Varoufakis is no fan of the church, and the clergy in particular, who he interprets equally simply giving the necessary status to the forces of the marketplace "Debt, money, faith and state all get hand in hand." It would exist difficult to advise that Christian, and other religious leaders, accept not at times, and sometimes for long periods of time behaved in this style "cultivating an credo which caused the bulk to believe deep in their hearts that only their rulers had the right to dominion". But in that location is much in the book that is much more interesting from a religious, theological betoken of view than this. Varoufakis is concerned with the commodification of life and of man persons, with the re-creation of experiential value. He is clear that bolt will be ultimately unsatisfactory and that some greater mensurate of happiness is needed. At times he reads similar a Rousseau-esque romantic in his view of human nature. Stating his fundamental belief "that humans accept an inexhaustible ability to resist the erosion of their spirit and the cheapening of their labour." He is certainly full of hope, although information technology is hard non to speculate, following his departure from government and the refusal of the Eu to write off Greek debt; if he nevertheless believes that "Every crisis is pregnant with a recovery."
For me the sterility of our politics which is the hegemony of the market and the lack of whatever alternatives is at the centre of what I want from economic science. Varoufakis fails to evangelize on that, which would brand him close to messianic. Only he does suggest alternatives to the mere binary arguments between big-regime and small-scale-regime. He is clear almost the necessity of public debt, and perhaps there is mileage in acknowledging that, and having a sensible discussion about what a manageable level of debt is and owning the fact that taxes, whether from the rich or the rest of the population are not going to be able to pay for everything nosotros want government to provide.
When y'all hear politicians, economists, and commentators talk about public debt as if it is a curse, y'all remind yourself that it is a lot more than than that. It is the ghost in the machinery of markets societies that makes them function …
Varoufakis' hope for the future includes his behavior in the development of robotic automatisation. This, for me, is the least convincing part of the volume. What will and will not be possible for machines is nonetheless non known. Too many of his examples of what might exist possible derive from science-fiction not reality. The suggestion that there be public buying of some proportion of machine-robots every bit they develop feels only plucked from thin air.
For Varoufakis "the economy is besides of import to leave to the economists." To defer to 'experts' is to capitulate political freedom. This is an important read and Varoufakis has much to contribute to the fence. It is a much better book than his self-justifying and self-aggrandising Adults in the Room. He is articulate that economics and politics can never be separated. We need to hear alternative voices in this argue and Varoufakis is a rare vocalization. Over and over again, I was struck by the existential nature of the questions he raises: What is information technology to be man? What is satisfaction? How do we achieve happiness? For me, of form, these are all theological questions. Information technology is non surprising that he ends with Eliot: the end of all our exploring will certainly be to arrive where we started.
Father Richard Peers is Director of Education in the Diocese of Liverpool, and tweets (oftentimes!) at @educationpriest and blogs at Quodcumque
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