of Trade and Justice

Records show that the giant and ground-breaking office supply company Staples added tens of thousands of jobs during its relationship with Bain Capital, the venture capital concern of which Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is now so famously associated.  He is, justifiably, proud of that result.

Which is entirely beside the point.

By which I mean to say, that it is not beside the point as a measure of either Mr. Romney’s capabilities as a capital manager nor of the Staples enterprise as a business model, but that it is entirely beside the point as a measure of capitalism as it is currently being practiced today.

For this is most certainly true: the addition of tens of thousands of jobs was neither the purpose of nor the measure of Bain Capital’s involvement with Staples.  They did not invest in the company to create jobs – they invested to increase their own wealth.  Period.  Whether Staples had grown and employed more people or not would have made no difference – they would have returned, and probably amply, on their investment, as they did in so many other similar instances.  Dade Behring medical testing returned more than 4 times an $85 million dollar investment but went bankrupt in a decade.  Stage Stores returned $100 million on a $5 million investment, as did American Pad and Paper.  Both went bankrupt, as did many others, but Bain still profited, and mightily at that. 

That is the point.

Capitalism, for all of what it may be in theory or hope, is in its current expression mostly the corrupt and greedy practice of seeking the gain of personal wealth without the burden of adding any value to the larger community.  The stock market is no longer a place to build a retirement nest egg or save for a child’s education, it is a giant casino where loathsome practices like short-selling are no longer cheating, but normative.  Corporations create stock dividends instead of goods and services that elevate our common standard of living, their executives are not properly rewarded for their hard work but blindly paid off with gluttonous compensation packages whether they succeed or fail.  Banks are not vaults of safety, protecting the hard earned savings of laborers or supporters of individuals, families and small businessmen pursuing their dreams, but corporate con men, packing their bad decisions for carefree marketplace swap meets. 

Which is only part of the point, too. 

This is not news.  For all of our idealistic pretension of freedom and opportunity and thrift and the American way, we have always known this about the marketplace.  No, it is not merely the system which is to blame, it is our willingness to unleash the beast in hopes that it will consume our enemies and, by some miraculous and impossible fate, bring in the ship of our own good fortune.  Did not Dr. Luther warn us centuries ago? 

“Among themselves the merchants have a common rule which is their chief maxim and the basis of all their sharp practices, where they say: ‘I may sell my goods as dear as I can.’ They think this is their right. Thus occasion is given for avarice, and every window and door to hell is opened.”   On Trade and Usury (LW 45:246)

In the end, it is not Capitalism that must be fettered, but us, not business that must be regulated, but us, not trade that must be ordered, but me.  Perhaps that is why we resist it so, because we see, however dimly, in the worst practices of modern business our own greed and corruption.  Capitalism is as it is because we are as we are.  We dare not confess its depravity aloud, because if it is wrong there, then it must be wrong in me, too. 

But perhaps, just perhaps, if we could bring ourselves to the hard choice, if we could find the courage to chain that great beast and tame it and bring it under yoke and turn its power to the betterment of all and not just the enrichment of a few, then we might in fact discover the possibility of realizing God’s vision of justice, even in the system of Capitalism itself.  For what the great Reformer spoke in the negative, we might see in the positive:

“Selling ought not to be an act that is entirely within your own power and discretion, without law or limit, as though you were a god and beholden to no one. Because your selling is an act performed toward your neighbor, it should rather be so governed by law and conscience that you do it without harm and injury to him.” Luther, Martin, On Trade and Usury (LW 45:248)

Perhaps never, at least on this side of the Kingdom, will we actually create a world where what is good and right and just permeate our whole life, spiritual and economic and political.  But perhaps, if we were wise enough and humble enough and brave enough, we could come closer.

Which, I think, is actually the point.