26th November, 2005

Dr BRUCE C. WEARNE

Professor Bob Goudzwaard is a Dutch Christian economist who promotes TATA, a term first used by a group of Christian students gathering in Surabaya in 1999. TATA stands for: ‘There Are Thousand of Alternatives (for peoples and nations who want to act responsibly)’.

Professor Bob Goudzwaard.

Born in 1934 and from Delft in the Netherlands (a city famous for its lovely teapots and crockery), Professor Goudzwaard served from 1967 until 1971 as a representative of the Anti-Revolutionary Party in the Dutch Parliament. He was educated at the Rotterdam School of Economics and served on the staff of the Abraham Kuyper Foundation, a political research centre sponsored by his party.

In 1971 Professor Goudzwaard became professor of economic theory and policy at the Free University of Amsterdam, remained active in politics in support of Protestant and Catholic political unification. Today, that success can be seen in the Government party known as the Christian Democratic Appeal.

Professor Goudzwaard has chaired meetings in Washington and Geneva between the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on the one side, and the World Council of Churches on the other.

Officially retired since 1999 he continues writing and publishing and attending conferences. His English-language publications include A Christian Political Option (1972); Capitalism and Progress (1979); Aid for the Over-Developed West (1975); Idols of our Time (1984); Beyond Poverty and Affluence: Toward an Economy of Care (1991); and, most recently, Globalization and the Kingdom of God (2001).

In this two-part series - which first appeared in the Fiji Daily Post - Professor Goudzwaard gives a glimpse of what TATA means, and the Christian vision that motivates it...

Bob, let me introduce you to our readers by suggesting that you are a ‘critical’ or ‘alternative’ economist.
“Yes, truly so. But my desire is not just to be critical. I am critical and seeking an alternative to the standard economic theories which are simply too narrow to all the economic aspect of reality to be grasp(ed) clearly. Politically I was part of a ‘radical-evangelical’ wing of the political party I was associated with in Holland.”

SHARING THE WEALTH? Professor Goudzwaard argues for a new level of what he calls "economic emancipation" which does away with the idea of possessivness. PICTURE: iStockphoto.com "Church fathers, like Chrysostom, taught that the rich should view their property as a social mortgage, a means of serving their neighbour. We need to develop ways for poor neighbours to make their rightful claim on us and our property. It’s no use building a society on possessiveness. Economic theory must emphasize participation and cooperation as social norms."

Tell us about that.
“I was part of a post-World War II Dutch political movement that emphasized principled co-operation. The work involved three Christian parties co-operating and using a Bible text for its banner: ‘Not by bread alone!’ Economic stewardship involves careful administration of all that is, including all who are entrusted to us. It implies social safety-nets, conservation and the avoidance of waste. Industry - companies and unions - must find co-operative ways to help protect the creation for the future. We need a new restrained sense of urgency. We need to learn how to rein in our material desires, to take steps backwards in order to be truly economic, in order to reduce our wastefulness.”

This seems to touch on the notion of justice?
“Yes, the judicial norm for economic development is addressed to all: both the powerful and the weak, the rich and poor. It is a living norm: 'Let justice roll down like waters as an overflowing stream', said Amos the prophet. He knew how to look after his herds and his sycamore trees in that parched land. Justice has to permeate the whole of society, and somehow those who are rich and those who are poor have to find their responsibilities for each other.”

In this I hear you saying that people should be brought together?
“Yes. Creative ways are needed to do so - it is not good for people to be isolated and alienated from each other. Those who cannot properly meet their God-given responsibilities as families, as workers, as communities, need public space to be set free. Emancipation is the word. In Roman law, it referred to the freeing of a slave, usually a son, who could no longer be sold into slavery by his father. He was then accorded adult standing. Economic emancipation implies this same liberation in our time.”

And emancipation reminds us of our place in history, our need to "grow up"?
“Yes, church fathers, like Chrysostom, taught that the rich should view their property as a social mortgage, a means of serving their neighbour. We need to develop ways for poor neighbours to make their rightful claim on us and our property. It’s no use building a society on possessiveness. Economic theory must emphasize participation and cooperation as social norms.”

Can you enlighten us on your theme of ‘awakening hope - unmasking the idols of our time’ - the subject of your next book?
“The way to contribute to a better world involves unmasking false hopes and opening ourselves to a new obedience to God-given norms like dynamic justice and faithful stewardship. Paul in the New Testament of the Bible (Ephesians 3:18) teaches us about the process of learning God’s will. It is only with all God’s people, with all the saints, that we begin to understand something, not everything yet we are still learning, of the breadth and the length and the height and the depth of the Kingdom of God and of the love of Christ. One person or one culture cannot grasp the full glory of that Kingdom which is still on its way to us. There is no monopoly on wisdom; we need each other to know the deep dimensions of the way God has created us.”

You’re saying there is something special about working together?
“Yes, I am...(Look at how) African choirs contrast with European choirs (for example). Africans sing as a community, while in a European choir individuals sing together and try to produce harmony. The famous orchestras of Europe are known for their conductor - that individual who brings all the other individual musicians together in one symphonic harmony. But who will say that European music is more musical than African? In Africa, music sounds and looks like it has just been born again every day as the breath of a living whole community. The community perspective is legitimate in God’s creation. The self-perspective though is typical of the West. It is in communities that we show the richness of God’s creation. Even if we do some things ‘on our own’, we’ll soon realise we needed others just to be ourselves...”

Bob, then Christian economics is more than just a matter of churches co-operating. You say that people, whoever they are, should co-operate to show their talents, their God-given riches for all to see?
“Yes. As the Book of Revelation states: all the nations will bring their specific treasures into the Kingdom and its new capital city, the New Jerusalem. For me, these treasures should not primarily be seen as material, but as spiritual - the distinct gifts of each culture. Every culture has its own dignity. Professor Onvlee, the cultural anthropologist at the Free University, reminds us that such a statement is only true if you are also willing to admit that every culture has its own lack of dignity. That’s the Bible again - 'All alike have sinned and show a diminished sense of the divine splendour'. It is in this double awareness that we can begin to communicate with each other, whoever we are, because it creates an openness to listen, to engage in a search for correction of our faults.”

That sounds like globalization to me. What are your views on this?
“Globalization is the highest expression of the will to modernize, modernization going world-wide. It goes on and on in the same modern way we expect. But modernity itself clearly expresses Western culture and shows the limits and preoccupations of us in the West. Modernity assumes that human rational insight provides the best possible structures for our human needs, for our welfare, for our security. Modernity says the exploitation of nature is OK because it allows this self-first-perspective to base itself in reality. Constructing things rationally, following your own designs as if the world is just empty and waiting for your efforts, is the main billboard of modern Western culture. “

But we all know that things are not as secure as we would like them to be. Why are things, all things apparently, so wobbly?
“Self-realisation has becomes the goal of life, a dynamic, a program which proves very difficult to stop without bringing everything crashing down. And even without attempts to slow the process shocks occur. Compare the globe today with the situation within a space ship. After ‘lift off’ life inside is stabilized and the environment from which it has been launched is viewed as lagging behind. This is the ‘other world’, the world which is not so developed. From within the accelerating spaceship, those in control of the machine try to reach back and drag the so-called ‘less developed world’ - often not underdeveloped at all, but developed in different ways with different outlooks and styles - they try to drag it into the rocket’s flight path. Wobbles occur because the so-called ‘less developed’ world is still seen to be lagging behind even though they are being dragged along by the dynamic process. In this way, old cultures are seen from the viewpoint of modern Western culture as less developed, because developed has become the final yardstick.”

But some wobbles are developing within the space ship, within Western society – are they not?
"Yes. Consider how elderly persons are usually seen in the West. They are the so-called ‘in-active’ people, less in worth because they are less productive, and do not contribute anything to the GDP. Is this happening in Fiji? Then maybe Fjiians should reflect upon how elderly people are seen and treated. Maybe in Fiji you should ask whether there is a chance to keep things better because your cities are not as sprawling as say Sydney or Rotterdam or Berlin or New York and you maintain respect in positive ways. But that’s for you to say."

Big cities in Europe and North America also have had to take account of the environment. The disastrous floods in New Orleans surely tell us something?
“What comes out clearly in the aftermath of hurricanes like Katrina is the fact that they not only grew in intensity because of the gradual warming of the water. There was also the elimination of protective natural and constructed barriers at the shore-line, just to cut expenses and promote the life-styles. As a result created reality was not cared for properly and enormous ‘boomerang effects’ can result.”

What you say reminds me of the Club of Rome’s ‘Limits to Growth’ study of the 1970s and the Biblical understanding of ‘stewardship’.
“The Biblical view of stewardship is no ‘ídeal'. It is an obligatory path for all to be able to survive. We need to develop a perspective in which ‘Limits to Growth’ burns on our consciousness like the sign written on the walls in Belshazzar’s banquet hall (in the Book of Daniel) telling the King what time it was: ‘You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.’ These days nature is no longer seen as a life-giving mother, but primarily seen as something that constrains us, and, in reaction, we feel impelled to dominate it. Families and communities are often treated as hindrances for real progress. This simply illustrates that Western culture promotes a lack of dignity and stewardship. We can see that this is basic to the current dominant style of globalization.

Are you saying that economic growth has become an idol?
“Yes. Especially when governments and business and churches and schools demand that growth be the goal to be achieved whatever the costs. As a Christian I worry about extreme goal-orientation dominating our lives, as if our self-set goals produce ‘meaning’ for our lives. Meaning does not originate from self-chosen goals, but from walking on God-given ways, like the way of love, peace, justice and stewardship.”

This is very important. Can you explain this further?
“We Christians should remember that our first name, the first label given to us by others, was not ‘Christian’ at all. In the book of Acts I am told that the first label applied to followers of Jesus was ‘people of the Way’. This is important. It might help us get out of a fix.”

How so?
“Well, all too easily we assume that self-generated growth is the way ahead. But if we see ourselves as ‘the people of the way’ we see themselves as sent on our way - in our Western liberal culture we are told that we need to send ourselves, to keep on extending ourselves further and further, pushing the limits of our comfort zones. Such growth is idolatrous. ‘People of the Way’, on the other hand, implies a relativity of all self-set targets, and that includes the targets of growth and development. It is God who has sent us on His way.”

This is an edited version of an interview first published by the Fiji Daily Post, Suva, October 27, 28, 30, 2005 and is published here with permission. Readers who would like to discuss the issues raised in this interview with Professor Goudzwaard are inivted to email him at bob.goudzwaard@ext.vu.nl .

Part two of the interview will be published shortly.