William Cavanaugh’s second chapter of Being Consumed, on attachment and detachment, was — with the exception of a page or two — simply outstanding. His critique of consumerism contained some standard elements (but still driven home effectively), as well as some unique insights. For an example of the former, he points out how much contemporary marketing is what General Motors calls “the organized creation of dissatisfaction” (p. 46). For an example of the latter, he shows how consumerism is a knock-off of Christianity, supplying a false notion of transcending the material world along with a false affirmation of the goodness of the material world (pp. 48-49).
As a devotional exercise in Christian moral formation for the individual believer, this chapter contains a lot of first-rate wisdom. The believer who wants to reflect scripturally on his or her consumption cannot afford to simply go shopping on cruise control. In addition, Cavanaugh centers this spiritual sanctification in the context of the Church, as we learn the true meaning of consumption through how we eat and drink in the Lord’s Supper. With physical food, what I eat turns into me. At the Lord’s Table, what I eat turns me into Christ (pp. 54-55). In other words, the communicant is not just a consumer, but is also a partaker, and is partaking of totus Christus. As this kind of consumption disciplines us, we learn how to participate in the life of the world in a way which brings life to the world. We were not given the world around us in order to suck it dry.
The spiritual depth exhibited in this chapter really is profound. Unfortunately, it is also linked to a few large-scale economic proposals that simply invite confusion and economic disaster.
When you buy Fair Trade coffee, what are you actually doing? This is almost always a different thing than what you think you are doing. You just bought yourself a six dollar latte at Justice Java and are walking down the road feeling good about yourself. Answer me these questions if you can, and answer them before the coffee gets cold. Was that shop audited by a reputable Fair Trade coffee organization to make sure they were actually doing anything different? Or did they just write Fair Trade coffee up on their blackboard with colored chalk? And if it was audited, did the auditors understand certain basic economic principles, and did they apply them in the course of the audit? For example, how many marginal coffee growers are in the business because the high prices globally attracted them in the first place? What does that mean, both for them and for us? What, if anything, does the Fair Trade organization do about the oppressive practices of the home country of the coffee grower? Are the coffee growers forced by government-granted monopolies to use regional millers who rip them off? Are they forced to buy fertilizers from government controlled suppliers? Do the police set up roadblocks around the country and require bribes to allow the product through? Does any of that have anything to do with Fair Trade? Does the Fair Trade organization require small farmers to give up their status as small businesses and form co-operatives instead? And how much does the Fair Trade accreditor charge for the service of accrediting? Qui bono?
If you give someone who needs it a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, that will not go unforgotten in the judgment. And Cavanaugh is exactly right to tie our behavior in such things to the Lord’s Supper. But the Lord’s Supper will also nourish us to the point where we will realize that good intentions are not enough. When you give a cup of cold water you pretty much know the variables. When you are engaging in a behavior with millions of others that affects the economies of numerous nations in Africa and Central America, with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, you have no idea of the variables, and no idea of what effect you are having. No biggie for lots of folks though, because it is a feel good thing anyway. T.S. Eliot nailed it. “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm – but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
The feel good moment is clearly the issue for many because if you point out the obvious inconsistencies in all this, it simply does not matter. Let me make up an example by taking inspiration from a point Cavanaugh made in this chapter about disparate wages (p. 40). Suppose a coffee grower makes mere pennies for a pound of coffee. Compare that to what we pay for those same beans in our upscale caffeine joints. It is the easiest thing in the world to point to the simple disparity and assume injustice, without ever having to demonstrate that an injustice occurred. Enter a Fair Trade coffee guy, and let us say that he doubles the amount that the grower gets for his coffee — six cents instead of three cents, say. I am illustrating the point here, and making the numbers up. Now in the discussion of global prices, a point I have made repeatedly is that we need to compare the amount the Third World worker is getting to that which he was getting before the nefarious corporation showed up. Compared to what? That point must not be a very good one, because no one ever answers it. So then, since we must not be allowed to look at the previous conditions before making accusations of exploitation, that means that all the Fair Trade people stand obviously condemned. Six cents? Compare that to what the beans cost here, and no fair comparing the growers situation to his previous situation. If we start down that road, common sense might break out.
Incidentally, when the local price went to six cents, a bunch of other guys in that region said something like, “Hey, that’s the business to be in these days!” So they all pile into the coffee bean bubble, their businesses eventually fail, their lives are ruined forever. And that all happens before we turn our North American street corner, our cup of Justice Java still warm.