An Idol Unmasked by Peter Selby. Darton, Longman and Todd (London 2014). Pbk. 140 pages. £10.99.
I was thrilled as I started to read this book. Ever since, in 1963, a 'Christian business manager' explained that the aim of industry was not to make goods or provide services but to make profits – I knew something was seriously wrong with our society's attitude to money.
In 1994, a Leicester Diocesan Board for Social Responsibility working party discussed and wrote a report in the wake of the Church Commissioners' crash, which cost the Church of England millions of pounds. We asked ourselves whether the Commissioners' stock market gambling was only wrong because they'd made a mess of it, or was wrong anyway. Our report was called Money – a Trust Betrayed and argued that money – a tool which people can trust to facilitate the exchange of goods and services – has become a commodity to be bought and sold, traded in a game making private profits for a few at the expense of millions of poor people.
Selby's book starts with a polemic against the National Lottery, with which I found myself wholly in agreement. Selby sees how it has increased injustice: '….for a person who sees no way out of their poverty even a very tiny chance of a win is a way of solving their problems' (and the blanket advertising feeds this). 'By contrast, a person who already has sufficient money knows better ways of gaining more.'
The Lottery is a symbol of the whole system, which creates the assumption that life is a gamble. Even 'credit' (from the root meaning 'trust') is a lie. 'The currency of a country is what the people trust, and what they cease to trust will no longer serve as currency.' Very little of the world's currency has real existence; most is created by debt, and financial transactions of virtual money have increased in quantity and speed to shape our whole lives. Selby is by no means the first to say this. The voice of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice (founded in the 1950s – with a very good website www.ccmj.org – is seldom heeded.
Selby's book compares today's money and the 'idols' of the Old Testament prophets. Idols consume resources, control our lives, make us like themselves, and are impotent. Idolised Money is just the same. It establishes itself as a measure of wealth, whereas, as John Ruskin wrote in Unto This Last: 'There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration…' We have the GDP which, far from being a measure of wealth, merely counts how fast money multiplies itself by changing hands.
But for me, Selby spoils the analogy by unquestioningly accepting the prophets' rhetoric which sees Yahweh as different. We make our gods and our gods make us, and Judaism and Christianity are not exceptions. So I got bored with arguments based on biblical texts, including a chapter on New Testament parables, which I found totally unconvincing. He does, however, give credit to the Qur'an for preserving the Biblical injunction against usury: 'Those who devour usury will not stand except as stands one whom the Evil One by his touch hath driven to madness' (Surah 2:275).
Another of Selby's interests is the idea of 'sovereignty'. The 'sovereign' is the person or agency creating and guaranteeing the currency (Caesar's head, the Queen's head, 'a sovereign' coin, and many equivalents). But now sovereignty belongs to the banks, to money itself. A powerful and important point, but I think it's better tackled by organisations such as Positive Money (www.positivemoney.org – where our friend Tim Jackson appears in a video), which campaigns specifically for money creation to be transferred to democratically elected bodies.
Peter Selby gives his readers a lot to think about. Archbishop Justin Welby writes (quoted on the jacket): 'Polemic is always provocative… Disagree – I did – be provoked, but hear his voice.' The issue is more important than this book. What do we really mean by 'wealth'? It is not something that can be counted. What do we mean by 'value'? How do we assess true 'cost'?
Can we change the attitude that economic activity is for private profit? Until it is seen to be for the common good, all attempts to tinker with the system will fail. Maybe Archbishop Justin has got something, with his plans for retreats for financiers at Lambeth Palace.
David Paterson is a SOF Trustee and runs the Oxford SOF group.