Abstract
Daniel M. Bell Jr.,
The Economy of Desire: Christianity and Capitalism in a Postmodern World
, Baker Academic: Grand Rapids, 2012; 224 pp.: 9780801035739, $19.99 (pbk)
The Economy of Desire represents an attempt to bring modernity criticism to bear upon the theological ethics of capitalism. It both critiques modern capitalism and offers a provisional alternative to its economic arrangement. The critique comes by way of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, who claim that capitalism represents not merely a mode of our collective existence but is so totalizing that we are nearly incapable of thinking or acting outside its omnipresent reach. In other words, capitalism sets the terms on which we live our lives together in society and this feat is achieved primarily by the ‘disciplining’ of human desire. Capitalism controls everything, determining what is and is not possible alongside what is and is not desirable. Our lives have become thoroughly subject to economic considerations.
Bell’s constructive work follows not long after the lengthy rehearsal of Deleuze and Foucault’s critique of the capitalist state. Along more theological lines he claims, ‘The capitalist economy of desire is a manifestation of sin because it both corrupts desire and obstructs community’ (p. 88). Only by recovering and reordering desire towards goods of the kingdom is a contrasting form of economic life possible. Christian theology inverts the idolatrous priorities of modern capitalism and illustrates time and again where genuine freedom, love, satisfaction and peace are to be found. The charitable economy of salvation summarized by the gospel offers moral guidance for the Church’s wider economic life. The Church is a people satisfied in Christ by definition. Drawing its attention to the ways in which capitalism has deceptively misdirected or disordered its desires is perhaps the book’s greatest merit.
Proposals for an ‘alternate economy’ arriving towards book’s end, however, are less compelling. At no point does Bell overview the basic shape, fixtures or forces of capitalism, so when the first alternative to the capitalist order is proposed, medieval monasticism, readers may well raise an eyebrow. A somewhat idealistic tone carries much of the argument in final chapters, where theological principles, such as the wholly charitable exchanges between persons of the Trinity, are used as moral criteria for guiding human exchanges. Whether the Church is indeed capable of transforming its desire to bear witness to a better way of economic life is for the reader to decide. If the Church must live in the world to bear witness to it, in which ways must it participate in the given order and which ways must it dislodge itself from the frenzy? On those specifics the book is largely silent.
Nevertheless, this book is of great use to scholars or church leaders with interests in theology and economics. Bell’s treatment is clear, reasonable and often highly imaginative. I would even go so far as to say that you should want to read The Economy of Desire straightaway, were it not for the book’s central claim!