In the third post in this series – in which I am exploring an update to the ideas of gift presented in the book – I presented this table:

Bouncing off Veblen’s work ‘Conspicuous Consumption‘, I have proposed a 3rd economy beyond ‘gift’ and ‘market’ – the economy of ‘plunder’ – and suggested that this is often the default mode of exchange in the fractured city.

However, lest we rest too comfortably, I’m also concerned that this economy has also been prevalent in many kinds of mission and evangelism.

To quote from Pete Rollins’ great book How (not) to Speak of God:

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Broadly speaking, we can identify two types of apologetic procedures employed by the church: word and wonder. The first of these builds an apologetic case via the use of reason so as to logically convince the other that Christianity is compelling and must be accepted by anyone who wishes to be rational.

The second builds an apologetic case via the use of the miraculous (see posts [ here ] on Spirit in the Emerging Church) in order to demonstrate to the other via the use of the miraculous in order to demonstrate to the other that they ought to believe.

These power discourses of word and wonder attempt to present faith in such a way that rejection, if not impossible, is utterly irrational. (pg 35)

Mission, in this sense of power discourse, is plunder. It is anti-gift. In danger of denying freedom and of destroying relational potential. More generally, combining this with Veblen, we might reflect that:

• where Christianity has been the pursuit of the ‘leisure class’, mission has been guilty of participation in ‘plunder’ and,

• where’s Christianity has been part of the consumer class, the gospel has narrowed to a product to buy into.

Pete affirms what I’ve felt for so long: we need a radical return to the economy of the gift:

The emerging community must endeavour to be a question rather than an answer and an aroma rather than food. It must seek to offer an approach that enables the people of God to become the parable, aroma and salt of God, helping to form a space where God can give of God. (pg 42)

For only God – the true giver – can give the purely selfless gift. Only in this way can the gift go truly ‘out of sight’, and thus out of our hands, and into the realm of Derrida’s ‘ideal gift’.

OK, sorry if the last post was hard work. But sometimes you have to mine deep…

To summarize for those who didn’t make it: Veblen identified the ‘leisure class’ as those who typically don’t lower themselves to proper work, but rather flit around doing ‘trophy’ occupations. He uses the hunter as an example of this, which drew me back to Lewis Hyde’s thoughts on Maori hunting rituals and the nature of gift exchange, and thus to reflect on a 3rd economy of ‘plunder’ to go with gift and the market.

In the hunter analogy:

The gift-hunter (typified by the Maori) kills in the forest, offers cuts to the priest, who offers it back to the forest. A virtuous gift-cycle that binds hunter to priest to forest to hunter.

The plunder-hunter (typified by Veblen’s aristocrat hunters) kills in the forest and hangs the stuffed heads as trophies on the wall. A vicious anti-gift cycle.

In the food analogy:

Gift: people round for dinner. Market: buying from the supermarket. Plunder: theft or exploitation of food resources.

So what the hell is this all about, and why does it matter to us? Well, to quote from the end of the last post:

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“Plunderers are therefore a symbol of those who consider themselves outside of life’s cycles. Outside of the normal economy of work. Outside of the cycles of gift that sustain us. And outside of any ramifications that might have. They, like the celebrities I have mentioned are one modern equivalent, consider themselves immortal.

“And its to the implications of this ‘set apartness’ – you might call it holiness, self-righteousness – of the plunderer that I want to turn to next. Because I think we have been guilty of collusion with this economy more than we might think.”

Firstly, some implications for city life. I’m wondering if the economy of plunder is becoming almost the default for many people in urban areas. Many of the children I’ve taught have been convinced that they won’t need to work. They see celebrities living this glamourous life, a life of leisure, and aspire to that instead, thus disengaging from the proper gift and market cycles involved in everyday work. They want to be ‘players’ – a word Veblen would probably have latched on to if he’d been around now.

Beyond work though, the ‘player’ mentality is more deeply problematic. The plunderer pays no attention to the gift-cycles around them, and is thus blind to the interconnectedness of life. In a city this becomes a major cause of community friction. Thinking back to the post on noise, the plunderer plays their car stereo over-loud as a ‘trophy’ statement, oblivious to the effect the noise may be having on others. Drugs and petty crime are often mainstays in the plunder economy, and yet the plunderer sees little of the wider destructive effects that these things have.

So what might we do to bring about change? Firstly, we need to reflect on our own urban practice, and consider where we might be engaging in ‘plunder’. Secondly, just as the gift economy creates a virtuous circle, so the plunder economy creates its own destructive cycles. It can be very difficult to break these, but acts of generosity are certainly going to be a way in, allowing trust and mutual respect to replace fear and suspicion. There also need to be opportunities for people to begin working within the ‘market’, and those within business need to be proactively re-engaging with communities to inspire them. And finally, we need somehow to debunk this cult of celebrity which I believe is driving so many of these problems. Many of these people do actually work very hard – but the image of themselves that they promote is that they don’t. And somehow this needs to be countered.

I’ll end this series of posts with some final thoughts on implications for the church, which I believe has perhaps been less into gift than plunder than we might like to admit.

In the previous two posts I’ve begun reflecting on Thorstein Veblen’s Conspicious Consumption thesis about ‘the leisure class’ – a group of people he identifies who feel that work is somehow below them:

‘The upper (leisure) classes are by custom exempt from industrial occupations, and are reserved for certain employments to which a certain degree of honour attaches. Chief among the honourable employments in any feudal community is warfare; and priestly service is commonly second to warfare.’

He also adds to warfare and priestly service governance and sport, and goes on to explore how:

‘When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory phase of life [...] the activity of the men more and more takes on the character of exploit. Tangible evidences of prowess – trophies – find a place in men’s habits.’

I’ve suggested that this implies a change in the thinking I set out in the book, and adds a third economy to the pair of market and gift. I’ve decided to call this the ‘plunder economy’, and, like the other two, has its own relational characteristics, which I want to set out here before exploring what the implications are for us in terms of urban spirituality.

I’ve often used the examples of food transaction to think about these different economies. The economy of the gift is characterised by having someone round for dinner. It would be a) offensive to offer to pay for the meal at the end of the night and b) strange if the gift was not reciprocated in some way at some later date. In the gift economy there is a movement of the empty place – and thus a virtuous circle of relational potential built up.

The market economy is analogous to going to a restaurant, or the supermarket. You pay your money, and get your food. The scales are balanced, so there is no ‘empty place’ to move, and thus no relational potential. For better or worse, the market is typically relationally benign. You don’t go hugging the chef after a meal and demanding they must come over to your place some time. The money deals with it.

So as an example of the plunder economy, I’ll suggest another culinary situation: stealing food from a shop, or walking out without paying. In many ways, plunder is thus ‘anti-gift’. There is an empty place again, but it is a place of hurt, a place where relationships are destroyed, not built up. And this empty place is in danger of moving on, as people seek to fill their empty place by plundering themselves. A vicious, not virtuous circle.

On the surface then, it seems we can summarise things this way:

Lewis Hyde has expressed much of the idea of gift using hunting as another analogy. (See my chapter on Gift in The Complex Christ) But we can now expand on this and contrast it with Veblen’s view of the Victorian ‘leisure’ hunter as plunderer. Hyde’s hunters saw their activities as part of a cycle. The forest gives prey to them, they give the food to the priests, the priests offer it back to the forest. Veblen’s hunters are in no way part of such a cycle. They take from the forest, and hang the stuffed heads on the walls as trophies. By thus emptying the forest, but not replacing, they will destroy the eco-cycle. And what they fail to recognise is that this will, by turn of the vicious circle, destroy them.

Plunderers are therefore a symbol of those who consider themselves outside of life’s cycles. Outside of the normal economy of work. Outside of the cycles of gift that sustain us. And outside of any ramifications that might have. They, like the celebrities I have mentioned are one modern equivalent, consider themselves immortal.

And its to the implications of this ‘set apartness’ – you might call it holiness, self-righteousness – of the plunderer that I want to turn to next. Because I think we have been guilty of collusion with this economy more than we might think.

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Essentially, we might now see them as the aristocracy, or celebrities. They are those who do not feel they ought to work. Tara Palmer-Tomkinson is perhaps the best example I can give for a UK readership. I’m sure there are similar figures in other countries. These people are allowed to work, but classically only in ‘governance, sport, priesthood and warfare.’ *

Veblen notes:

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‘When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory phase of life [...] the activity of the men more and more takes on the character of exploit. Tangible evidences of prowess – trophies – find a place in men’s habits.’

What I think he is suggesting, here and elsewhere, is that there is a connection between the rise of individual ownership and war. Trophies – evidences of a warrior’s powerful exploits – are perhaps the first items that attain individual ownership status, as they are potent symbols. We thus enter a vicious circle: the way to display power over another group is to plunder the symbols they hold of their own exploits. And so war and retaliation and the growth of personal wealth as a symbol of power and might increases.

I’ll expand on this in the next post, but basically this suggests to me that, in addition to the economies of gift and the market I mentioned in the book, there is a 3rd economy – the economy of ‘plunder’. And, as with the other economies, the economy of plunder has its own leverage in terms of relationships between parties on the two sides of the exchange.

* And yes, I’d put Tara P-T in the role of priest. Celebrities do carry that function in many ways now.

Firstly, an outline of Veblen’s ideas.

His thesis begins with an examination of what he calls the ‘leisure class’ which ‘is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in feudal Europe or Japan. This leisure class is basically what we might now call the aristocracy, but his labeling is quite deliberate and, I think, rather contemporary. What obviously separates them – and Veblen gets us to think about this in more ancient cultures, rather than just in terms of stately homes etc. – is their employment:

‘The upper (leisure) classes are by custom exempt from industrial occupations, and are reserved for certain employments to which a certain degree of honour attaches. Chief among the honourable employments in any feudal community is warfare; and priestly service is commonly second to warfare.’

Actually, Veblen continues to list four main lines of activity for the leisure class: government, warfare, religious observance and sports. And, as World Cup fever truly grips (perhaps for only 4 more hours as England face Ecuador at 1600) it is interesting to note our continued fascination with the leisure class – we might call them celebrities now I suppose – who play for £120000 a week.

I want to explore the links Veblen identifies between warfare, consumption and leisure in another post. What interests me briefly here is whether Christian leadership is still seen as part of the ‘leisure class’ -  a get out from real work, an escape of some sort.

Perhaps I’ll do no more than present the question; what I would like to add is this fascinating quote from a letter a great friend and critic of Thomas Merton wrote to him. It talks of ‘the monastic’, but made me think on the insularity of some full-time Christian work:

“The point of being a Christian in the city is to try to humanize modern technology and modern society, and you [Merton] are trying to escape this. Let us admit that at the outset I am radically out of sympathy with the monastic project. […] All monasticism rests on a mistaken confusion of creation with this world, and so they suppose that by withdrawing in some symbolic fashion from creation they are leaving the world. But creation is precisely not the world, but its antithesis, and so what they do is essentially the opposite of salvation. They withdraw from creation into the desert taking ‘this world’ with them and then they dwell apart from creation, but in a newly erected kingdom of the prince of this world. You have not withdrawn from this world into heaven, you have withdrawn from creation into hell.”

Rosemary Ruether writing to Merton. In Merton: A Biography, Monica Furlong, p 287

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