It is one of the curious aspects of the history of the Church of England that those who wanted to be a Fellow at an Oxbridge college in the 19th century also had to be celibate. This peculiar requirement meant that many of the early political economists were also Curates, Parsons and Archbishops. In the early nineteenth century there appeared, among others, T. R. Malthus (whose population theory Marx referred to as a “slur on the human race”), Richard Jones (praised by Marx in his Theories of Surplus Value for his insights into the questions of rent and surplus value), Richard Whately (an early opponent of the labour theory of value) ending at the beginning of the 20th century with the Bishop of Ely (a noted anti-Socialist). Capitalism, it appears, is blessed by God and his servant’s on Earth.
Marx had great fun in lampooning the political economists of the Church of England. In Capital he wrote:
Although Malthus was a parson of the English State Church, he had taken the monastic vow of celibacy — one of the conditions of holding a Fellowship in Protestant Cambridge University: “Socios collegiorum maritos esse non permittimus, sed statim postquam quis uxorem duxerit socius collegii desinat esse.” (“Reports of Cambridge University Commission,” p. 172.) This circumstance favourably distinguishes Malthus from the other Protestant parsons, who have shuffled off the command enjoining celibacy of the priesthood and have taken, “Be fruitful and multiply,” as their special Biblical mission in such a degree that they generally contribute to the increase of population to a really unbecoming extent, whilst they preach at the same time to the labourers the “principle of population.” It is characteristic that the economic fall of man, the Adam’s apple, the urgent appetite, “the checks which tend to blunt the shafts of Cupid,” as Parson Townsend waggishly puts it, that this delicate question was and is monopolised by the Reverends of Protestant Theology, or rather of the Protestant Church (Capital Vol. 1 Chap. 25 The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation note 6 Marxist.org).
With the rise of the professional economist and after 1877 celibacy no longer a requirement for Oxbridge Fellowships the link between theologians and political economy in the 20th century was broken. This does not stop the odd eccentric cleric sermonising on the joy of capitalism and the moral soundness of the capitalists as they go about their business exploiting the working class.
So, step forward the Reverend Peter Mullen member of The Freedom Association and spiritual adviser to the City of London with its bankers, insurance brokers and liverymen. Reverend Mullen, Rector of St Michaels in Cornhill and Chaplin to the stock exchange is unlike the wishy-washy Guardian readers at St Pauls Cathedral and the Tom Hollander character in the BBC2 Situation Comedy “Rev”, a person so
wracked by self- doubt and guilt he comes across as a closet atheist. Not so the Reverend Mullen. He is a High-Church, incense burning devotee of the free-market. Market fundamentalism is his religion. If God is perfect then so is the market. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is the hand of the Almighty. With a bible in one hand and a copy of a primer in Austrian economics in the other, Mullen sings out from his pulpit the glory of the profit system. He is all for capitalism and acts as its spiritual spokesperson.
In his recent Daily Mail Sermon, Charity is the remedy for our economic woes, (December 19th 2011), the Reverend Mullen argues that bankers are moral, generous and charitable. Don’t they just weep at the sight of the poor Tiny Tim’s of this world and periodically stop work in the City casinos and gambling dens to contemplate the sins of avarice, selfishness and lust for money?
The Reverend Mullen notes that:
“We are living through what Karl Marx gleefully described as a “crises of capitalism”
He then remarks that “…there is a lot of hog-wash talked about capitalism” particularly by “the protesters outside St Pauls Cathedral” and “the left wing clergy” living-off the largesse of the City of London within its Portland stone walls. For he goes on to reject that we live under “the yoke of capitalism” at all.
So what is Reverend Mullen’s contribution to 21st century political economy? Not a lot. He writes that instead of living under capitalism: “We live in something approaching a Socialist state”. And his reason for believing in this nonsense is that:
…50% of GDP goes to the State while in communist China it is only 17% and at the height of totalitarian Russia the Soviets were only spending 10% more than British capitalism today
And
…whatever economic and social system is currently being operated in our country, it is not by any shadow of meaning “capitalist. In fact for the Reverend Mullen there is too little capitalism and concludes his sermon with the plea that the rich should be released from paying taxes and that we should pray to God to let them become richer and richer. Only the charitable acts of the rich can “offer a remedy to our economic woes” Amen to that, say the rich. Unfortunately, the Reverend Mullen’s grasp of what constitutes capitalism and Socialism is as ignorant and stupid as the anti-capitalist protesters and their “happy-clappy” supporter residing inside St Pauls Cathedral he so despises.
Facts do not play any role in Mullen’s theological economics. Socialism is not about how much is spent on the State in terms of GDP any more than it has to do with levels of taxation the rich are forced to pay. The capitalist State has to be paid for and it has to come from the capitalist class out of its profits whether employers like it or not. And Soviet Russia was no more “communist” then China is today, both countries retained and retain the exploitive wages system.
Capitalism is in fact generalised commodity production and exchange for profit. Under capitalism the ability of the working class to work, their mental and physical energy, is bought and sold on the labour market by employers in exchange for wages and salaries. Under capitalism labour power is a commodity.
The capitalist class do not work but they own the means of production and distribution to the exclusion of the rest of society. They live off the unearned income of rent, interest and profit. Social parasites, we would say. Profit is made in the production of commodities but only realised in circulation which includes the wealth in money form pouring into and out of the City of London.
We suspect Reverend Mullen believes in miracles and every day miracles occur all over the City of London. Money seems to makes more money than when initially invested as though by divine intervention. Surely, to parody William Cowper: “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the City. And rides out the economic storm”. In the real world there are no miracles, there is no God and social wealth is not created in the City. As Marx showed in Capital, it is the working class who are the wealth creators, producing more social wealth than they receives in wages and salaries. And that social wealth is made in production not in the Square Mile.
The working class does not need charity but instead needs to establish Socialism. Workers do not need hand-outs by the rich but instead to consciously and politically organise themselves for the establishment of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society. There is the potential, supressed by capitalism, of meeting all of society’s needs. Capitalism is, in fact, a “fetter on production”. Instead of charity it should be “from each according to ability to each according to need”. Charity is degrading to give and servile to take. In a society where production takes place just to meet human need there will be no need for charity. Socialism is the remedy to the economic problems facing the working class not charity.
Apparently the Reverend Mullen is a sought after speaker. Well, we have tried to seek him out with an invitation to debate the proposition that “Socialism is the remedy to the problems facing the working class not charity from the rich”. We have space in our diary for him to debate against us; that is, if he is not too busy being wined and dine by the worshipful livery companies in their Feudal halls of plunder dotted, in their privileged splendour, all over the City’s Square Mile.
