Abstract
With the economic collapse of 2008-2009 and the emergence of the ‘Occupy Movement’, capitalism has come under increasing criticism. Further, with postmodernism gaining popularity and respect with its critiques of modernism (and capitalism) some Christians have found an unlikely ally with which to criticize modernity’s economic progeny and its moral deformation of society. Seeing the deleterious effects of capitalism on human desire in the modern world, Daniel Bell, Jr. argues for a Christian appropriation of certain postmodern ideas from Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault by which the church may cast off the chains of capitalism in order to be bound to the communion-forming power of the triune God.
Chapters one and two survey the state in which modern society and the church are bewitched by the myth of capitalism including respective introductions to the political-economic philosophies of Deleuze and Foucault. Chapters three and four provide a moral evaluation of capitalism wherein Bell denounces it as a force that moulds human desire towards an end not found in God. After unmasking the perilous premises upon which capitalism is based and perpetuated, Bell argues in chapters four and five that the church is an economy that desires communion with God, others and creation. Bell points favourably to medieval monasticism and critiques the irredeemable aspects of Deleuze and Foucault’s respective philosophies. Chapters six, seven and eight see Bell argue for the divine economy as actualised in the church by which humans seek communion with God as its only true end.
This work is commendable for taking a sample of postmodern economic theory and appropriating it into a biblical-theological framework from which the church may see that capitalism is a teleological cul-de-sac from which humanity escapes only by being re-formed by the Word and sacraments. Bell’s emphasis on human desire and the necessity of its proper object being God is why capitalism must be eschewed, for the triune God and communion with him is the true end of humanity. The only weakness is the ultimate superfluity of appropriating these postmodern ideas, for Bell demonstrates that the witness of scripture and a good portion of church tradition are enough to demythologise capitalism as a destructive economy of agonistic avarice.