The petro-idols of Capitalianity
When you can't impose sanctions to protect democracy b/c oil is your god
As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m fascinated by the way in which capitalism is viewed, especially by those on the right, as God. This has been explored in nuanced and erudite ways in books like The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism became the Religion of Modernity and The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream.
I think the situation is, in many ways, much simpler. The understanding of “God” that always made the most sense to me was something along the lines of “that which we take to be ultimately important” or Anselm’s “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” (My former professor Jerry Soneson at UNI kindly responded to a request to refresh my memory — the idea I’m thinking of is from theologian Gordon Kauffman, which Dr. Soneson paraphrased as: “God is that, the devotion to which, brings genuine human fulfillment”).
The helpful thing about this definition is that you can figure out a person’s God not by what they say it is, but by what they do.
For example – recently I caught the tail end of a story on NPR (I think this one) about child care. Basically - US child care is broken, and there has to be more money pumped into the system, because young families whose wages have been stagnant since 1972 simply can’t continue to bear all by themselves a cost that properly belongs to the community as a whole. In addition, “high-quality care and education for small children requires low child-staff ratios, specialized training and experience, and clean, healthy facilities. Being human-capital intensive, it is inherently expensive.”
Although the written transcript I’ve found doesn’t catch this, the audio version ended when the host asked “But what would be the economic impact of fully funding child care?”
And bam – there’s the God: the “economy.” What is ultimately important is not what’s good for children: high quality child care. What is ultimately important is “the economy.” In this case, capitalism. That’s the god to which we’re willing to sacrifice our children.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past few days due to another example: we’ve heard a lot about the sanctions being levied on Russia: But the most important ones – those against oil exports and SWIFT – are not (yet) being levied. Because, of course, the world is dependent on Russian oil. This is a problem for a million reasons, as Bill McKibben lays out nicely .
Of course, the biggest reason it’s a problem is that our actions show our true God to be, well, oil. It’s the thing that our actions show gives us more fulfillment than supporting democracy, or protecting human rights, or, well, pretty much anything.
It’s interesting to me how transparent the Trump-supporting right is about this. One acquaintance just supportively posted a picture of an SUV with the Geico-like slogan painted on the back: “You could save 30% or more by switching back to Trump.”
I couldn’t help but reply, “No, thanks. I’m not selling my commitment to democracy that cheaply.”*
According to the views of this acquaintance, the important thing, in the midst of many threats to democracy, is to keep oil prices low. That’s what it looks like when petro-capitalism is, in fact, your God.
There is so much work to be done by the mainline Christian denominations that share or haven’t contested the worship of the idols of petro-capitalism.
* That said, I have the privilege and have made the choice of living within walking distance of pretty much everything I need, so that gas prices have little direct impact on my life. Inflation is a problem that needs to be addressed for those with lower incomes - and stopping subsidies to highways and the auto industry in favor of less oil dependent transport is critical.
**I was going to use this note to share how awesome I think it is that the author’s name is “charbonnier,” which means “someone who sells or makes charcoal” - which is of course a renewable fuel. But I also have to share a laugh at myself because it was only in Googling the title to check it that I discovered the book is available in English. I got it on interlibrary loan in French because of a reference in Bruno Latour’s After Lockdown. Academic French is a bit of a slog for me at this distance from my French fluency, so I’ll be tracking down the English version now. Sheesh, you’d think I might have thought to check for an English version earlier . . .