Nothing sacred about capitalism

One Thursday morning in December seven people showed up for their jobs in Richmond just as they always did. They took off their coats, maybe got a cup of coffee, spoke to co-workers and set about doing whatever it was they had been hired to do.

Then it happened. Each of them looked up to see his or her supervisor. I imagine the supervisors had that look we all know, the look that said, “Something is terribly wrong.” I’ve seen it in the eyes of my doctor when he said, “We’ve got a problem.” I’ve seen it in the eyes of my children: “Mom, I have something to tell you.” My body went on red alert. My stomach turned over. My palms got sweaty. It is funny about fear; I can feel it in every cell.

The message the supervisors had been sent to deliver was that the budget shortfall of about $1 million was going to be addressed by getting rid of eight people. (One was absent that day.) The seven were to pack up their personal things, turn in their keys and leave. If there was too much to gather quickly, they could come back on Saturday and get it. Saturday — when the people who still had jobs were not around. Boxes would be provided.

Getting fired is usually traumatic. Rarely do people regard it as being liberated, even if it is a job they don’t like. It has the odor of rejection about it even when you know it is not your fault.

In the United States any sense of neighborhood has pretty much disappeared. Families are often scattered. The workplace is the new neighborhood, where the baby showers take place and money is gathered for funeral flowers. These are the people you tell about your weekend. So job loss is more than just income loss, as bad as that is. It is the loss of the people you tell about having your brakes relined. 

For the eight people on that fateful day in Richmond, there was an added difficulty. They were being fired by Union Theological Seminary and the Presbyterian School of Christian Education. In what other workplace do people gather regularly for worship and hear that they are not just co-workers but brothers and sisters in Christ? In what other setting are people regularly reminded that they are supposed to love and sacrifice for each other, even unto death? At lots of workplaces people are told by management that they are a community, but few are tempted to buy it. They are not a “family” but an exchange of labor for a paycheck. Families and communities don’t fire people. At seminaries the lines are blurry.

I have talked to some of the people involved. All of them are people of good will, but when the ax fell, Union chose to handle the situation pretty much as any large corporation would. I was told that severance was better than at many businesses; precise information is not available.

The people laid off will have to find jobs. The people left behind will have to deal with survivors’ guilt and morale problems. All of them will be haunted by an additional problem. Do the wisdom and conventions of the world trump the wisdom proclaimed by our religious traditions? The decisions made at Union were straight out of the business school playbook. It was clearly the safest route to take. If you veer from the conventional and you fail, you have no cover. If you toe the line of what is customary, you are covered no matter how wrong you are. We are herd animals, and we know this.

Union had to negotiate the territory between the business office and the chapel. The business office won.

The difficulty with our current system of free-market capitalism is that it asks that we act selfishly, and that violates religious traditions that declare we are all brothers and sisters.

There is nothing sacred about free-market capitalism; it is not the law of God or natural law. It is simply the most recent way we humans have organized our economic life. We can and will develop systems that do not demand obedience to a Darwinian system rooted in self interest. In the meantime, we have to cope with the damage being done financially, psychologically and spiritually. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, it is now our task to bind up the nation’s economic wounds and care for those who have born the battle and to achieve and cherish economic justice and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. 

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a chaplain at Mary Baldwin College.