ReligiousLeftLaw.com

John Esposito on “Islam and Religious Pluralism”

Gök Jami mosque of Yerevan, Armenia

John Esposito on “Islam and Religious Pluralism”—This is an excellent introductory lecture (click on the title for the video) by one of this country’s foremost scholars on Islam that was filmed for UCTV at the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life at UC Santa Barbara.

Additional Resources (from yours truly):

• Study Guide for Islam
• Islamic Studies bibliography
• Islam & Muslims in the United States: a select bibliography
• Islam & Democracy (an encyclopedia entry)
• Poetry & Islam (a published introductory essay)
• Book Review: Oliver Leaman’s Islamic Aesthetics: An Introduction (2004) (published in Philosophy East and West)

I also have several bibliographies that overlap a bit with some of the above material:

• The Modern and Post-Modern Arab World
• The Bedouin
• Modern Iran
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

                                

A Recovery Plan For the Catholic Church

Gabriel Moran has spent a lifetime laboring on Catholic themes. He was a member of the Christian Brothers until the age of fifty, when he left that religious order to marry. Even after this shift in vocations, Moran remained committed to Catholic concerns in his position as a professor of education at New York University. He has thus brought a wealth of experience and learning to his most recent book, “Missed Opportunities: Rethinking the Catholic Tradition.”

The work begins by frankly acknowledging the crisis the Catholic Church encounters in the early years of the twenty-first century. When we speak of crisis, however, we should always do so with some perspective. The Church is old enough to count as crises the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation, and the French Revolution. Each of these events, while a crisis, was also simultaneously an important turning point: the Church reframed its institutions, modified its organization, and, yes, even adapted its ideals and doctrines, to accommodate shifting realities.

Moran’s book rests on the premise that the Catholic Church is faced with another such turning point, especially in the English-speaking countries and in Western Europe. In the United States, the number of Catholics, at least on paper, seems to be holding steady. But probe very deeply, and you begin to wonder whether those numbers have a Potemkin-quality to them. The number of baptisms are down across the United States, as are confirmations. The number of Catholic marriages has declined precipitously. Amazingly enough, even Catholic burials have fallen. And some of the steepest declines have occurred in so-called “conservative” dioceses and archdioceses, which like to imagine themselves as the vanguard of some “new evangelization.”

Moran would very much like to revitalize the Church. Writing from a generally progressive persuasion, he begins by proposing that the very idea of “tradition” needs re-imagining. In contemporary Catholic thought, the term has grown “stunted” (p. 2), being seen as a mere “piling up of human practices” (p. 3), to which unquestioned loyalty is assumed.

Tradition is a term, Moran contends, that must be redefined and reinvigorated. Tradition has a richness to it, and a diversity that is overlooked not only by its opponents, but even more by its chief defenders. It is an ongoing, centuries-long conversation with the world about the great, perennial moral and political questions. Moran gives the example of the Catholic Church and war. The tradition is far more complex than most people realize. He acknowledges the early Church’s opposition to war and military service; he takes account of the emergence of just-war thinking in the middle ages. But he also appreciates that there is another side to this story. Thus he takes steady note of the pacifist tradition that evolved alongside the concept of the just war. There was Meister Eckhart in the fourteenth century; there was Desiderius Erasmus in the first years of the sixteenth century; in the twentieth century, one encounters Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. St. John XXIII’s prophetic encyclical, Pacem in Terris, fits within this alternative narrative (pp. 136-151).

Moran, in other words, does not “load the dice.” He has not picked a winner in a long, long process of debate, discernment, and disagreement. He makes clear that some of the most important developments on the subject of war and violence were not the result of the formal teachings of popes and bishops, but were, rather, the product of activist Catholics, moved to respond to the horror of armed conflict in their own times and places. And he emphasizes that there is not one right answer to the moral problem of war, but rather a tradition that points in two directions at once. It is up to us to choose.

We might also look at Moran’s treatment of contraception. He wishes to bring to bear on this question his expansive understanding of tradition, and what he takes to be the sensus fidelium, the sound opinion of the Catholic people. The Church’s present institutional position on contraception is said to be grounded on natural law. So Moran begins with the idea of nature. First, he argues that there is no such thing as “natural birth” (p. 47). Human beings have taken many steps over the years to ensure that the process of birth is safer for both mother and child. The use of contraception might be seen as one more development in this continuum.

Along these lines, Moran notes that Pope Pius XII in 1958 authorized the use for the treatment of hormonal disorders the use of medication that had the effect of preventing pregnancy. Moran would like to utilize these arguments to reopen the debate on contraception.

This a compellingly important proposal. If surveys are to be believed, it is the case that a majority, probably a large majority, of Catholic families of child-bearing years use contraceptives for at least a portion of their marriages. It is also true that many other Catholics have left the Church over the question of birth control. The institutional Church, Moran pleads, must recognize what the Church in the pews already knows: that most Catholics have concluded, as a matter of conscience, that contraception and Catholic marriage are compatible.

This observation leads to Moran’s most general, but perhaps also his most important point: the institutional Church must rethink what it means by “teaching.” In recent decades, especially in America and in other Western countries, Catholic teaching has come to be equated with Catholic doctrine. Catholics, it is said, to be Catholics in good standing, must know and observe a number of propositions about their faith, as they relate to belief and to behavior.

For Moran, who has spent a lifetime in the education profession, this definition of teaching represents a narrow and misleading way to conceive of what is really a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Teaching embraces many human endeavors. If institutional Church leaders reflected on it, they would realize that there are many ways the Church — understood not as bishops and priests alone but as the entire body of believers — teach. Catholics teach when they tell stories, when they seek or grant forgiveness, when they look after the needs of the vulnerable, when they mourn their dead, welcome the new generation, or when they talk to one another in the marketplace of ideas. Catholic leaders, who have come to see teaching as nothing more than formal declarations of doctrine, must remind themselves that all Catholics teach, and that their lessons might prove valuable. Moran does not wish to overturn hierarchies, but he sees great advantages in a hierarchy that actively listens, watches, and learns, as well as preaches.

Moran has written a timely and important work. It is the fruit of decades of involvement in Catholic matters, and can really be described as a set of recommendations offered not in anger or in frustration, but out of a deep love for the Catholic Church. And for sure, the Catholic Church is an important world-wide institution, a voice of conscience and morality. But its well-being is threatened by a narrow, bunker mentality. Moran would bring Catholics out of the bunkers, and back into the daylight to engage the world with vigor, enthusiasm, and originality. We should pay attention to this work.

Cross-posted from HuffPost: A Recovery Plan For the Catholic Church

“Economic growth stumbles to worst rate in two years ….”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The power of states to intervene in the operations of contemporary globalized capitalism is severely constrained in a world of deregulated capital markets: states no longer have the same degree of power they once held in the period of “national capitalism” (a term that reminds us of the diminished power of Keynesian-inspired states to robustly ‘steer’ the economy, as well as the prescient arguments made by Claus Offe in Contradictions of the Welfare State and Disorganized Capitalism). The current round of globalization is a conspicuous “combination of deregulated capital movements, advances in information/communication/transport technologies, and a shift in ideology away from social democracy [as well as the ‘Liberal’ capitalist ideologies that buttress liberal or corporatist welfare policies] and statism towards neoliberalism and libertarianism.” “One consequence of this new phase,” writes Meghnad Desai, “is that the state no longer controls the economy, but is one player (a major one of course) among many. The state has to adapt and adjust to forces which it cannot control but must respond to.”

In short, nation states cannot control all of the terms and conditions of economic growth, thus when Trump repeatedly blames Obama for the comparatively disappointing rates of such growth during his two terms of office, he evidences failure to appreciate this conspicuous feature of contemporary economic reality. And, in any case, a high rate of economic growth is not a necessary condition for, say, eliminating endemic undernourishment and deprivation or making considerable improvements in standards of living, as countries that have relied on public policy strategies oriented around what A. Sen and J. Drèze termed “support-led [socio-economic] security” (rather than ‘growth-mediated [socio-economic] security’) such as China (in its ‘pre-reform’ period, that is, prior to its turn toward Party-State directed capitalism), Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Jamaica, and the Indian State of Kerala, have made remarkable accomplishments in eliminating poverty and improving the standards of living or quality of life, attaining comparatively impressive heights in more than a few significant socio-economic  indices concerning welfare and well-being (eradication of hunger, literacy, education, health care, etc.). In fact, these socio-economic indices are frequently high or higher than those attained by (sometimes far) “richer” countries (based on standard measures of GNP per head) devoted in the first instance to economic growth.* Thus, for example, the elimination of poverty and child hunger in this country need not depend on higher rates of economic growth if the government makes a wholehearted commitment to public “support-led security.” The conditions of affluence and opulence characteristic of the U.S. generally and the upper classes in particular, provide no guarantee that poor children will not go hungry, that the needs of the homeless will be met, or that absolute and relative poverty will be eliminated.

Which brings us to today’s “business” headline: “Economic growth stumbles to worst rate in two years, underscoring Trump’s challenge.” Of course we’re all too familiar with Trump’s penchant for taking credit for any “good” news while disavowing any association with “bad” news, be it political or economic. But in this case, it would be unfair to blame Trump and his cronies for the fact “total economic output, also known as gross domestic product, increased at just a 0.7% annual rate from January through March as consumer spending posted its worst performance in more than seven years….” At the same time, Trump appears to believe he has—with the Republican party behind him—the power to significantly affect if not control such economic phenomena as are causally linked (both rightly and wrongly) with economic growth as conventionally measured in GDP terms. And his proposed tax reforms (alongside other economic-related policies, like deregulation), such as we can discern them (e.g., ‘one of the biggest tax cuts in American history’), are premised on the axiomatic belief that they will fuel the engine of economic growth at rates not seen for at least several decades. Expert analyses to date from disparate sources leave us bereft of any reason to believe Trump’s economic policies will have significant redistributive effects downward so as to move this country in an egalitarian direction. Indeed, it appears they will only exacerbate existing trends in inequality and enhance the conditions of opulence for the wealthy. The recent history of trickle-down economics, as well as our variation on the theme of “capitalist democracy” generally,** provides ample evidence of economic policies that possess a disturbing capacity to distort and subvert the values, processes, and institutions of a would-be democratic polity, a history lesson of the sort Trump lacks all disposition toward learning.

* Please see the analysis in chapter 10, “Economic Growth and Public Support,” in Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action (Oxford University Press, 1989): 179-203.

** See, for example, the following titles:

• Chang, Ha-Joon. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism. Bloomsbury Press, 2011.
• Cohen, Joshua and Joel Rogers. On Democracy: Toward a Transformation of American Society. Penguin Books, 1983.
• Goodin, Robert E., et al. The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Przeworski, Adam. Capitalism and Social Democracy. Cambridge University Press, 1985.
• Quiggin, John. Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. Princeton University Press, 2010.
• Therborn, Göran. The Killing Fields of Inequality. Polity Press, 2013.
• Wolin, Sheldon. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton University Press, 2008.

A Global Political Morality: Human Rights, Democracy, and Constitutionalism

Yesterday I posted to SSRN the introduction to my new book.  Several issues I address in the book are issues that may be of special interest to RLL readers--for example:  the religious v. secular grounds of human rights (chapter 2); the human right to religious/moral freedom (chapter 4); the proper role of the judiciary in resolving constitutional controversies that are also moral controversies, such as the constitutional controversies over capital punishment, same-sex marriage, and abortion (chapters 5-6); and human rights of the socioeconomic sort—such as the human right to adequate healthcare—which are the sort of human rights with which Catholic social teaching has long been concerned (chapter 7).  Here is a link to the introduction.  The abstract:

This SSRN posting consists mainly of the introduction to my new book: A GLOBAL POLITICAL MORALITY: HUMAN RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY, AND CONSTITUTIONALISM (Cambridge University Press 2017). The “global political morality” to which the title refers is what I call “the morality of human rights”. In the book, as I explain more fully in the introduction, I pursue several related inquiries that lie at the interface of human rights theory, political theory, and constitutional theory.

The first two inquiries concern the morality of human rights: 1. What are “human rights”? 2. What reason (or reasons) do we have--if indeed we have any — to take human rights seriously?

The next two inquiries concern the relationship of the morality of human rights to democratic governance: 3. How does the morality of human rights support democratic governance? 4. How does the morality of human rights limit democratic governance? I address the latter question with particular reference to the human right to religious and moral freedom.

The final three inquiries concern the relationship of the morality of human rights to certain constitutionalism-related questions: 5. In the context of the Constitution of the United States, what theory of judicial review takes seriously both the human right to democratic governance and the other human rights that are limits on democratic governance? 6. What are the implications of that theory of judicial review — a theory that comprises a (limited) affirmation of an originalist understanding of constitutional interpretation — for the constitutional controversies over, respectively, capital punishment, race-based affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, and abortion? 7. Should human rights of the socioeconomic sort, such as the human right to adequate healthcare, be constitutionalized — and if so, should they also be judicialized?

The Filibuster and Our Defective Constitution

So the nuclear option (eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments) has been exercised and Judge Gorsuch is now Justice Gorsuch. Most commentators now worry that the filibuster will be entirely abolished. And the betting is that ultimately it will be. See here.

I believe that the abolition of the filibuster would be a small step in the right direction. The structure of our government is already designed to make it difficult for the will of the majority to be enacted. The wealthy, not the people, dominate the Congress, and that was true before Citizens United. See here. Nor is this an accident. Alexander Hamilton argued in The Federalist Papers, No. 73 that making change difficult restrained the “excess of lawmaking” and “kept things in the same state in which they happen to be at any given period.” He argued that “the injury which possibly may be done by defeating a few good laws will be amply compensated by preventing a number of bad ones.” Underlying this sentiment is a fear of popular democratic movements which, if not, checked could sweep in a number of “bad laws.” 

Gerrymandering and the composition of the Senate (giving two small states the same amount of votes as New York and California) already make Congress a body well calculated to withstand the will of the majority in too many circumstances. This, of course, works to the advantage of the Republicans, given that they are generally opposed to governmental action.

The filibuster is just one more tool in the anti-majoritarian tool box. I will not shed a tear when it finally meets its demise.

“African Arguments” series from Zed Books

   

 

 

 

 

 

 Books, and especially very good books, deserve as much publicity as they can garner in our world, so …

Zed Books (London) has a series of publications under the rubric, “African Arguments,” that I enthusiastically recommend to those with even the slightest interest in what has (recently) happened, is happening, and might happen on the African continent. I have several books in the series and plan on getting more (provided my dear wife will indulge me!). They are published in conjunction with the International African Institute, the Royal African Society, and the World Peace Foundation. There is a diverse and stellar group of editors. The webpage for books published to date is here.

What follows below is a taste of the argument from one of the books pictured above.  

“The overarching question in the economic growth literature has been about why Africa has grown relatively slowly.   This question has overshadowed other more important questions, such as how African economies have grown. If the question had been about how African economies are developing, there would have been more to explain and the literature could have given policy makers something useful to work with. Unfortunately, this question was not asked.

We currently have an economic growth literature that explains why bad policies mean that there is no growth in Africa. The trouble with this model is that the current explanation problem is not one of a lack of growth but rather of how to interpret rapid economic growth. With the help of the historical data sets on slaves, colonial settlers, and linguistic mapping, economists have been able to find different variables that can explain why African states have ‘bad’ institutions, have failed and are stuck in zero-growth traps. The difficulty with this analysis is that, despite all their shortcomings and despite all their institutional differences from their European counterparts, African states have experienced periods of economic growth.

The fact that mainstream economics continues to get this wrong is of great importance. This is not just an academic disagreement. International financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) give economic models and economists a central role in the decisions they make. Because of this, economists’ mistakes spill into the policy world. Indeed, the story of how economists explain economic growth in Africa is strongly linked to the history of policy making in Africa, and particularly to the role of external policy advice and policy directives.

The question ‘Why is Africa is growing slowly?’ appeared in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The most influential answer was given in what is known as the Berg report, a World Bank report that firmly placed the blame for the slow growth in Africa with African policy makers. According to the report, African state intervened too much in markets, gave too low a priority to agriculture, and otherwise pursued misguided policies. The economic growth literature … went to considerable lengths to affirm this orthodoxy, and, despite empirical evidence to the contrary, has managed to present a history of African economic growth that finds a correlation between ‘bad’ policy—defined as state intervention in markets—and slow growth. The literature has thereby provided empirical ‘proof’ that the mainstream diagnosis and prescription for poor countries were correct and that there was a relationship between ‘good policy’—as embodied in the liberalization package termed the ‘Washington Consensus’—and positive economic performance.

Yet the economic record tells us rather clearly that the liberalization policies of the 1990s failed in many ways, and that state intervention in the 1960s and 1970s was not always catastrophic. It is important to remember that state intervention does not always equate to states suppressing markets. Sometimes states substitute for nonexistent markets or they nudge economic actors to engage in markets. Therefore liberalizing agricultural marketing simply by closing down a state –run agricultural marketing board does not mean that a free market and fair market that organizes fertilizer, seeds, advances, purchases, transportation, forecasting and information will suddenly appear. It is not safe to assume this will happen. Economic growth did not revive after liberalization policies were implemented. Instead, the economic—and particularly the political—crisis deepened and arguably persisted for two decades.

Instead of engaging in wholesale reconsideration of the diagnosis made in the 1990s, with its emphasis on ‘good’ policies and the market mantra of ‘getting the prices right,’ the economics literature shifted its focus in the 2000s. In the second-generation growth literature, the emphasis of scholarly work changed from investigating relations between policy and growth to linking current development outcome with historical events such as colonialism and the slave trade. Instead of introspection about whether ‘bad’ policy was actually to blame for slow economic growth, some economists determined that advising ‘good’ policy was not enough. The root cause was not enough. The root cause was not ‘bad policy,’ it was ‘bad governance’ and ‘poor institutions.’

The second-generation growth literature focused on policy makers and policy implementation as the sources of the problem with economic growth. The refrain that it was ‘getting the prices right’ that mattered changed: now governance and institutions mattered. This is when the idea that some places were destined to fail at development was born, and this provided the foundation for the question and the answer in The Economist ten years ago. Do African states have a character flaw that makes them incapable of development? ‘Yes,’ said The Economist (and the economists on whom the magazine relied).

But while that analysis coheres well with the consensus in the economics literature, it does not match what is going on in the economies concerned. Some even say that Africa is rising. This book shows that there is nothing surprising or new about that.

This emphasis on finding what was wrong with the history and politics of Africa meant that ‘Africa’ itself was launched as an explanatory category. [….] African states were misdiagnosed and dismissed as being incapable of development based on observations made during the 1980s and early 1990s, a period when most African economies were experiencing the deepest recession of the twentieth century. The characteristics they exhibited during this period were not representative of longer trajectories. It is true that most states have not been perfectly efficient for the past five decades, but it is equally evident that their dealings have not been perfectly disastrous either. Herein lies the crucial error of comparison. The verdict about the quality of these states, or ‘governance,’ was made by comparing actual states in the Africa of the 1980s with idealized perfectly functioning states that do not exist.* While it is true that African states have fallen short of these kinds of expectations, such comparisons have not told us how serious these relative shortcomings have been in terms of economic growth.

[….] The question is not ‘Why has Africa failed?’ but ‘Why did African economies grow and then decline only to grow again?’ It is important to get the history of economic growth in Africa right, but perhaps it is more important to know that the right history fundamentally changes the policy implications for future growth on the African continent. The pessimism about policies and institutions in Africa has been overstated. In most cases, a wholesale change of institutions or governance is not necessary for economic growth.”—From the Introduction to Morten Jerven’s “highly readable and absolutely devastating critique,” Africa: Why economists get it wrong (London: Zed Books, in association with the International African Instituted, Royal African Society, and the World Peace Foundation, 2015): 6-8. **

* The “idealization” cited here by Jerven is symptomatic of a methodological approach that afflicts both neoclassical and heterodox economics (e.g., post-Keynesian economics) in general. As Anwar Shaikh explains in his recent book, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises (2016), the two prevailing “schools” of economics

“end up viewing reality through an ‘imperfectionist’ lens. Neoclassical economics begins from a perfectionist base and introduces imperfections to the underlying theory. Heterodox economics generally accepts the perfectionist vision as adequate to some earlier stage of capitalism but argues that imperfections rule the modern world. In either case, such approaches actually serve to protect and preserve the basic theoretical foundation, which remains the necessary point of departure and primary reference for an ever-accreting list of real-world deviations. After all, how can the basic theory ever be wrong if there is a particular ether for every troublesome result?”

Shaikh elaborates an alternative theoretical structure whose “object of investigation is neither the perfect nor the imperfect but rather the real,” that is, “the actual operation of existing developed capitalist countries.”

** A helpful theoretical backdrop to Jerven’s argument is found in the discussion of “growth-mediated [socio-economic] security” and “support-led [socio-economic] security” in Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action (Oxford University Press, 1989): passim (see the subject index for the precise pages).

[Please note: I am not being paid by Zed Books, I did not receive a (or any) free book(s) from the publisher, and I was not asked to promote the series.]

Chocolate Easter Eggs: Cacao Farming, Commodities & Consumption

Drying cocoa beans in rural Ghana (Photo: Elke de Buh)

“Before you eat that chocolate Easter egg, think about the people who produced it”

By Simran Sethi for the Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2017

Just after Valentine’s Day, prices for cocoa plummeted. Days later, media outlets erupted in a collective hurrah. ‘Your chocolate is getting cheaper,’ headlines proclaimed. ‘Easter will be sweet.’ What wasn’t factored into the celebration is the deep suffering of the subsistence farmers who grow cacao, the seeds of a pod-shaped fruit that, once harvested, become the cocoa traded on the commodities market and destined for the chocolate eggs and bunnies that fill most Easter baskets.

Cacao’s origins trace to the rainforests of the upper Amazon, and the seeds are believed to have been transformed into a drink in Mesoamerica at least as early as 400 BC. Once used as medicine, currency and a stand-in for human blood during rituals, today cacao — cocoa — is dried, fermented and roasted to become the foundation of the $100-billion chocolate industry. The trees grow in a tropical band 20 degrees north and south of the equator, with 70% of production based in West Africa and centered in Ivory Coast.

Despite the success of the chocolate (and confection) industries, 90% of cocoa farmers operate at the margins. A recent study by the French Development Agency and Barry Callebaut (the world’s largest cocoa manufacturer) determined farmers in Ivory Coast earn roughly 91 cents a day. Imagine what it means for those farmers when the price they receive for the fruits of their labor drops — as it has recently — by 33%.

This decline in commodity cocoa prices over the past year is the result of several factors, including predictions that consumers in China and India would develop an insatiable appetite for chocolate. Consumption has increased in these countries but not at forecasted levels. And globally, demand has remained largely unchanged. But farmers haven’t been able to slow production: They had already planted more trees in anticipation of increased demand and that, coupled with good weather in most of Ivory Coast’s cocoa-growing regions, bolstered the harvest and has resulted in a bumper crop and oversupply.

Because there is no global agreement ensuring farmers a base price for cocoa, the farmers are vulnerable to every market shift. However, local governments can and do set parameters for the crop. In 2016, the Ivorian regulator Conseil du Cafe-Cacao set a minimum price of 1,100 Central African francs per kilogram, roughly 81 cents per pound, and also helped farmers contract with exporters to buy the early 2017 crop. But that was last July, when ​the market price of cocoa was significantly higher; many exporters have since defaulted on their commitments. Although officials say they’ve resold the defaulted contracts, last week Ivory Coast’s minimum price guaranteed to farmers was cut by almost 40%. Adding to this challenge are reports that the new crop will be abundant. (It is a perverse fact of economics that high yields contribute to an increased supply that results in lower prices for farmers.) And with new plantings continuing to mature (it takes three to five years for a new tree to produce cocoa), the glut is expected to grow larger in years to come.

If farmers can’t earn a living from cocoa, they will grow other crops or seek out different employment. If the shift is widespread, it may decrease the diversity of cocoa, affect the development of the crop and ultimately make cocoa harder to get and more expensive for chocolate lovers and chocolate makers.

For consumers, the solution is a tasty one: Eat more chocolate. But not just any chocolate. At no other moment in history has information on farmers, cocoa prices and the chocolate industry been so readily available — investigate and choose wisely. To support cocoa farmers, look for chocolate that contains more cocoa. (In the United States, a candy bar has to contain only 10% cocoa to be legally identified as chocolate.) Pay attention to the story on the label. Certifications indicate a range of social, economic and environmental initiatives to sustain cocoa production. Origin designations seek to highlight different flavors found in the regions where cocoa is grown.

If you put your money where your mouth is and buy craft, or specialty, chocolate, you’re underwriting makers who may be trading directly with farmers. Craft chocolate costs more than what’s mass-produced because its makers are committed to raising the profile of quality cocoa, and they pay a premium for the crop. Go ahead, bite into that chocolate Easter bunny. But consider the people whose labor supplied the raw material that makes it taste so good.” The entire article is here.

(Simran Sethi is the author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love and the creator of the chocolate podcast ‘The Slow Melt.’)

Further Reading:

• Barclay, Eliza. “Why The World Might Be Running Out Of Cocoa Farmers,” NPR, July 3, 2015.
• Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. Cocoa and Chocolate, 1765-1914. New York: Routledge, 2000.
• “Cocoa bean,” Wikipedia entry.
• Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin Books, 1986 (1985).
• Off, Carol. Bitter Chocolate: Anatomy of an Industry. New York: The New Press, 2006.
• Ryan, Órla. Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa in West Africa. London: Zed Books, 2011.
• Wessel, Marius and P.M. Foluke Quist-Wessel. “Cocoa production in West Africa, a review and analysis of recent developments,” NJAS – Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, Vols. 74–75, December 2015: 1–7.

[cross-posted, with a different title, at the Agricultural Law blog]

Marx, Marxists, Marxians … and (democratic) socialism

             

I do not think the following is generally true: “Economists who follow Karl Marx in adopting a labor theory of value or in other ways but do not share the political ideology of communism typically call themselves ‘Marxians’ to distinguish their views from the views of political ‘Marxists.’” This remark was but a small if not incidental part of a larger blog post by Michael Dorf (‘Advice to Conscientious Originalists: Rebrand’) and is probably not crucial to its main argument. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to respond both to this and a few related comments by Professor Dorf.

The Marxist economists I am familiar with, by and large, are at the same time “political Marxists” (and there are economists who are not afraid to learn and cite from Marx who are not avowedly ‘Marxist’ or ‘Marxian,’ like Amartya Sen), and those same (at once economic and political) Marxists do not believe the various “Communist Party-State regimes” of the twentieth-century that were nakedly authoritarian and thus in many respects anti-democratic (hence, for instance, the need to label your regime ‘the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea,’) could lay claim to being “Marxist” (the regimes themselves frequently preferred the epithet, ‘Marxist-Leninist’) in any meaningful sense (yes, it is true, that there were some self-described Marxists who came, for example, to a distressingly belated recognition of the horrors of Stalinism, or acknowledgement of the Chinese famine of 1959-62 during the Great Leap Forward, or the cruelties associated with the Maoist Cultural Revolution), as messianic historical determinism and authoritarian politics cannot accurately or charitably be ascribed to any halfway credible interpretation of Marx’s work in toto. These Marxists are often political in the wider sense in that they identify, say, with the critique of capitalism and the ideals of socialism and communism, or cherish Marx’s writings on alienation and exploitation, or, like Jon Elster, hold views that are “true and important” that “can [be] trace[d] back to Marx,” including “methodology, substantive theories, and, above all, values.” In other words, Marx’s views (and sometimes his political work as well) has a significant and conspicuous effect on their own political views and actions related to same. The distinction between “Marxist” and “Marxian” is rather intended as follows: “a Marxian belief is one that can safely be attributed to Marx himself. A Marxist belief may also be a Marxian one, but not necessarily. A Marxist belief is one held by anyone, academician or political stalwart, who thinks or can persuade other that the belief in question is in accordance with Marx’s intellectual or political legacy.” As Paul Thomas also notes, “We have today a galaxy of different Marxisms, within which the place of Marx’s own thought is ambiguous.”

In short, I do not think the distinction between “Marxian” and “Marxist” is correctly characterized or canalized as arising out of “the need to distance oneself from real-world political communism.” To be sure, and especially in this country, the need to rhetorically distance oneself from being associated with or held retroactively responsible for (?!) “real-world political communism,” finds many of us on the Left (which may have liberal components but is not synonymous with ‘Liberalism’) refusing to speak in public fora of socialism simpliciter, compelled to add—what should be—the redundant adjective “democratic.” And yet around the globe, Marxists and Marxians alike well appreciate, with such luminaries on the Left as G.A. Cohen, Michael Harrington and Eric Hobsbawm that, in the words of the latter, more than “150 years after Marx and Engels’ manifesto [socialism] … is still on the agenda.” As to the probable or possible implications for Michael Dorf’s “admittedly imperfect analogy” (i.e., those different from the reasons he listed for why the analogy is ‘imperfect’), I’ll leave that to our esteemed professor and his devoted readers.

Finally, I think the proposition that “the influence of Marxian economists on the real world is negligible,” is also not true (it may be partially true in the Anglo-American world, but it is eminently arguable outside that rather provincial domain), especially (but not only) if one is able to assess this influence in “indirect” or second-order terms, and thus the willingness of economists and policy makers to be seduced by the appeal of Keynesian and neo-Keynesian ideas and the peculiar form of “New Deal” or “social security” capitalism (the golden years of which were from 1946 to 1973); and their demise suggesting the limits of Keynes’ legacy and the value of a Marxist approach (see, for example, the respective works of Meghnad Desai and Anwar Shaikh), or the singular historical and comparative achievements of social democratic welfare regimes. (None of this is to deny or ignore the impressive economic achievements of capitalism, achievements which Marx himself well understood before they came to full fruition.) Marxist economists and Marxists generally remind us that,

“by subordinating humanity to economics, capitalism undermines and rots away the relations between human being which constitute societies, and creates a moral vacuum, in which nothing counts except what the individual wants, here and now. At the top, men sacrifice entire cities to profitability, as in the film Roger and Me, which shows what happened to the town of Flint when General Motors shut down its works. At the bottom, teenage boys kill others for their sheepskin jackets or fashionable trainers, as happens every day in New York. [….] Socialists are there to remind the world that people and not production come first.”

Indeed, socialists today are here to make imperative the ideal if not idea that people are capable of living lives worthy of (self-realizing in the Marxist sense) human beings: “not just in comfort, but together, and in dignity” (Eric Hobsbawm).

Addendum: absolutely none of this has anything whatsoever to do with “rebranding.”

Why Nicholas Kristof Needs to Read William Stringfellow

If you've read this article by Nicholas Kristof and found yourself at one and the same time both sympathetic and hostile to his analysis, my hunch is its because what his analysis lacks is a properly theological understanding of how the principalities and powers work on good people, never mind the so called deplorables. A good dose of William Stringfellow would help Kristof get clearer at what I think he wants to say. For example, here's this nugget:

"However many evil men hold places in the American establishment, they are far, far outnumbered, by my tally, by those bereft of conscience, so pathetically have they been dehumanized by the principalities and powers for which they are acolytes. And if the moral problem on such supposedly exalted levels of society is not so much wicked men as morally retarded men, then think of the cruel and somber daily existence of the multitudes of automatons of lower status and lesser privilege. They do not even have an illusion of power, the condiments of office, important reputation, or real wealth to insulate or console themselves from the
imperious and obdurate totalitarian claims of the principalities against human life in society. For these folk, ridiculed on all sides (though most pointedly by the erstwhile champions) as "the silent majority," the American institutional and ideological ethos incubates a profound apathy toward human life as such." (William Stringfellow Ethics for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land)

If one understands how this dehumanization works on all of us, stupefying and bewitching us with fear and making us clamor for scraps of power or give in to apathy while others drown in its wake, then having empathy for poor whites who voted for Trump is not at odds with a passionate commitment to social justice which may mean standing very firmly against the racist dehumanization so rampant today. Moral evil is not nearly so problematic as what he calls demoralizing idolatry to death and fear of death. The latter is how good people stand idly by while others suffer, or even think that another's suffering is somehow the solution to their own.

For Stringfellow the resistance to all of this stupefaction is spiritual renewal, exorcism of false spirits and false choices, and resurrection ethics. Condemning racism is not nearly so difficult nor important as meeting it with disciplined prayer, fearless speech, and acts of counter-cultural love.

And, after all, good listening and pastoral care is in itself a form of prophetic witness to the power of love to triumph over fear, truth to stand fast in the face of falsehood. And that's got nothing to do with being nice!

 

(I posted this  over on my Facebook page and since I've often championed Stringfellow as an unofficial patron saint for Religious Left Law I thought I'd repost it here. As I read his article on how to listen to those who supported Trump, I called to mind my own work as a pastor, in which I have had occasion not only to listen to Trump supporters, but to be in their homes, hear their stories, mourn their losses, do their funerals,  and provide them with the  sacraments. When one has done this, dismissal as deplorable is not an option. Can the pastor be a prophet in such a setting?  My calling takes the risk of affirming this as a genuine possibility even as it does so in fear and trembling)

Trump has No Right to Know and the Politics of Diversion

The President asserts that Trump Tower was wiretapped at President Obama’s direction, and the House Intelligence Committee springs into action. The press supports this because it makes for a good story however it comes out; the Democrats support it because the serial liar has gone over the top; and the Republicans support it for many reasons including loyalty, diverting attention, and for some recognizing that this time the man has gone too far.

Clearly, the claim that Obama ordered a wiretap or other surveillance is believed by no serious person. But investigating whether there has been surveillance of Trump Tower plays into the hands of the targets. If there was surveillance, it was supported by a judicial order with a substantial showing. The targets benefit from knowing whether or not there was surveillance. The question should not have been asked or answered.

The same is true of the question what officials were unmasked by Susan Rice and what the basis was for her securing approval through established procedures to find out.  Here again the targets have no right to know. And how do we know this happened at all, if it did: because Trump-friendly personnel situated in the White House leaked confidential information. 

I would not make too much of the latter. After all, government officials have selectively leaked confidential information for decades. But it is hard to resist making the point when Trump and his lackeys keep claiming that the “real story” is that someone is leaking confidential information.

The Moral & Political Economy of Poverty, Hunger, and Famine

“In his famous treatise on politics, diplomacy, and political economy called Arthaśāstra (roughly translated as ‘instructions  on material prosperity,’ in contemporary terms, perhaps best translated as ‘political economy’), Kautilya, the ancient Indian political theorist and economist … included among his famine relief policies the possibility of raiding the provisions of the rich. In fact, he wrote with some eloquence on ‘the policy of thinning the rich by exacting excess revenue [karśanam], or causing them to vomit their accumulated wealth [vamanam].’”—Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action (Oxford University Press, 1989): 4.

The Moral & Political Economy of Poverty, Hunger, and Famine: Suggested Reading

• Anrée, Peter, et al. Globalization and Food Sovereignty: Global and Local Change in the New Politics of Food. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.
• Aoki, Keith. Seed Wars: Controversies and Cases on Plant Genetic Resources and Intellectual Property. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2008.
• Bardhan, Pranab. Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation: Essays in the Political and Institutional Economics of Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
• Bardhan, Pranab. Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic Rise of China and India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.
• Bardhan, Pranab, Samuel Bowles and Michael Wallerstein, eds. Globalization and Egalitarian Distribution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press/New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006.
• Barry, Christian and Thomas W. Pogge, eds. Global Institutions and Responsibilities: Achieving Social Justice. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.
• Bennett, Jon (with Susan George). The Hunger Machine. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1987.
• Bernstein, Henry. Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change. West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 2010.
• Bernstein, Henry, et al., eds. The Food Question: Profits versus People. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990.
• Brighouse, Harry and Ingrid Robeyns, eds. Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
• Burbach, Roger and Patricia Flynn. Agribusiness in the Americas: The Political Economy of Corporate Agriculture. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980.
• Chang, Ha-Joon. Reclaiming Development: An Alternative Economic Policy Manual. London: Zed Books, 2004.
• Chang, Ha-Joon. Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
• Charles, Daniel. Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food. New York; Basic Books, 2002.
• Chatterjee, Deen K., ed. The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Clapp, Jennifer. Hunger in the Balance: The New Politics of International Food Aid. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012.
• Clapp, Jennifer and Doris Fuchs, eds. Corporate Power in Global Agrifood Governance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.
• Conway, Gordon. One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012.
• Cotula, Lorenzo. The Great African Land Grab? Agricultural Investments and the Global Food System. London: Zed Books (in association with the International African Institute, the Royal African Society and the World Peace Foundation), 2013.
• Crocker, David A. Ethics of Global Development: Agency, Capability, and Deliberative Democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Cullity, Garrett. The Moral Demands of Affluence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  
• Dasgupta, Partha. An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
• De Greiff, Pablo and Ciaran Cronin, eds. Global Justice and Transnational Politics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
• Devereux, Stephen, ed. The New Famines: Why Famines Persist in an Era of Globalization. New York: Routledge, 2007.
• Drèze, Jean and Amartya Sen. Hunger and Public Action. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1989.
• Drèze, Jean and Amartya Sen. An Uncertain Gory: India and Its Contradictions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.
  
• Drèze, Jean, Amartya Sen and Athar Hussain, eds. The Political Economy of Hunger. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995.
• Farmer, Paul. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.
• Farmer, Paul, Jim Yong Kim, Arthur Kleinman, and Matthew Basilico, eds. Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013.
• Frankel, Francine R. India’s Green Revolution: Economic Gains and Political Costs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.
• Frankel, Francine R. India’s Political Economy: 1947-2004. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2^nd, 2005.
• Godoy, Angelina Snodgrass. Of Medicines and Markets: Intellectual Property and Human Rights in the Free Trade Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013.
• Goodin, Robert E. Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
• Gosseries, Axel, Alain Marciano, and Alain Strowel, eds. Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
• Griffin, Keith. The Political Economy of Agrarian Change: An Essay on the Green Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974, 2nd ed., 1979.
  
• Houtart, Franҫois. Agrofuels: Big Profits, Ruined Lives and Agricultural Destruction. London: Pluto Press, 2010.
• Kloppenburg, Jack Ralph. First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2^nd ed., 2004.
• Kugelman, Michael and Susan L. Levenstein, eds. The Global Farms Race: Land Grabs, Agricultural Investment, and the Scramble for Food Security. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2013.
• Magdoff, Fred, John Bellamy Foster, and Frederick H. Buttel, eds. Hungry for Profit: The Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.
• Magdoff, Fred and Brian Tokar, eds. Agriculture and Food in Crisis: Conflict, Resistance, and Renewal. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010.
• Mayerfield, Jamie. Suffering and Moral Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.]
• Meyers, Diana Tietjens, ed. Poverty, Agency, and Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Mgbeoji, Ikechi. Global Biopiracy: Patents, Plants, and Indigenous Knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.
• Miller, Richard W. Globalizing Justice: The Ethics of Poverty and Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin Books, 1985.
• Mooney, Pat R. Seeds of the Earth: A Private or Public Resource? Ottawa, Ontario: Inter Pares, 1979.
• Murdoch, William W. The Poverty of Nations: The Political Economy of Hunger and Population. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.
• Nazarea, Virginia D., Robert E. Rhoades, and Jenna Andrews-Swann, eds. Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope: Place and Agency in the Conservation of Biodiversity. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2013.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Paige, Jeffrey M. Agrarian Revolution. New York: The Free Press, 1975.
• Paige, Jeffrey M. Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
• Patel, Raj. Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2008.
• Pearse, Andrew. Seeds of Plenty, Seeds of Want. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
• Perkins, John H. Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Pogge, Thomas W., ed. Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owe’s What to the Very Poor. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Roseberry, William, Lowell Gudmundson, and Mario Samper Kutschbach, eds. Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
• Ryan, Órla. Chocolate Nations: Living and Dying for Cocoa in West Africa. London: Zed Books, 2011.
• Santilli, Juliana. Agrobiodiversity and the Law: Regulating Genetic Resources, Food Security, and Cultural Diversity. New York: Earthscan, 2012.
• Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, ed. Another Production is Possible: Beyond the Capitalist Canon. London: Verso, 2007.
• Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, ed. Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon. London: Verso, 2007.
• Schefer, Krista Nadakavukaren, ed. Poverty and the International Legal Economic System: Duties to the World’s Poor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Sen, Amartya. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
• Shaikh, Anwar, ed. Globalization and the Myths of Free Trade: History, Theory, and Empirical Evidence. New York: Routledge, 2007.
• Therborn, Göran. The Killing Fields of Inequality. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013.
• Unger, Peter. Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Venkatapuram, Sridhar. Health Justice: An Argument from the Capabilities Approach. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2000.
• Warman, Arturo. Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
• Warren, D. Michael, L. Jan Slikkerveer, and David Brokensha, eds. The Cultural Dimension of Development: Indigenous Knowledge Systems. London: Intermediate Technology Group, 1995.
• Watts, Michael J. Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Norther Nigeria. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2013 ed. (1^st, 1983).
• Winders, Bill. The Politics of Food Supply: U.S. Agricultural Policy in the World Economy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
• Winders, Bill. Grains. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017.
• Wolff, Jonathan and Avner de-Shalit. Disadvantage. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

I have two bibliographies with titles directly relevant to this subject: (1) on the ethics, economics and politics of global distributive justice, and (2) the sullied science & political economy of hyper-industrial agriculture (or: ‘toward agroecology & food justice’). And I have a handful of bibliographies indirectly related but no less relevant to this material, only several of which I cite here: contemporary democratic theory; health: law, ethics, and social justice; and Marx & Marxism.