CC BY
50SECULAR ECONOMY AS VIEWED FROM CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE
Tigran Babasyan
Introduction “A man can have only what God gives him.” (John 3:27)
Plunged in the frenzy of our daily hustle, we often forget that, at least today, we are the makers of the national and, perhaps, also global economy. The reverberations of the state-monopolized socio-political paradigm are dying away, and we are gradually stepping into the realm of Ecumenical Revelation which otherwise is called globalization.
In fact, as Manuel Castells has it, the new spatial form of megalopolis has the “contradictory quality of being globally connected and locally disconnected, physically and socially” [1, p. 404]. We are supranational and powerful in many ways, if you will, with our possibilities stretching across borders.
It turns out, until recently we were practically slaves, but not inside the state borders: rather, slaves of our ignorance. And so we did our best to live up to the following pattern set out by St. Paul: “All who wear the yoke of slavery must count their own masters worthy of all respect, so that the name of God and the Christian teaching are not brought into disrepute. If the masters are believers, the slaves must not respect them any less for being their Christian brothers. Quite the contrary; they must be all the better servants because those who receive the benefit of their service are one with them in faith and love.” (1 Timothy 6:1-2). How well it worked, is a different matter. What is undeniable is that now, after the worship of the state as the utmost secular authority has considerably given under, and we are largely left to our own devices, we have the unique opportunity to enjoy our genuine freedom firmly secured by our Lord Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, we possess an invaluable asset of selfidentification through being Christians in our daily routine, at work, and of course in business. “We recommend ourselves by the innocence of our behavior, our grasp of
' Honorary Doctor of the International Academy of Sciences on Nature and Society.
29
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
truth, our patience and kindliness; by gifts of the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by declaring the truth, by the power of God. . ..Poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many; penniless, we own the world.”(2Corinthians6:6-10).
The previous socio-economic patterns of the Christian state provided an evolutionary cycle for the world community to reach the victorious peak of its intellectual struggle. Historically, it has been a thorny and sanguinary, defiant and ambiguous path, full of atrocities, privations and adventures, only to discover that this world really belongs to God. As Apostle Paul compassionately notes: “We brought nothing into the world; for that matter we cannot take anything with us when we leave, but if we have food and covering we may rest content.“(1 Timothy 6:7-9).
To eliminate the apocalyptic foul-up of these days, the individuals and the state must cooperate in a synergic rapport, which is only possible by introducing the ethical tenets of Christianity into all areas of the secular activities of society, including the economy.
If the former ways proved crook, now they have to be revamped, because eventually we all face the challenge of being personally responsible to God for our earthly deeds. “For no one of us lives, and equally no one of us dies, for himself alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. Whether therefore we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” (Romans 14:7-8). In our context, this responsibility implies the responsibility before your business partner. If you need the transaction to be without further ramifications, you first need to take care of the security of your partner. Share with him/her your advantages. Then the disadvantages will get shifted out of the way. This synergic dynamics represents the only prerequisite for the holistic success of the entire economic activity. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye, with never a thought for the great plank in your own?... First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s.” (Matthew 7:3-5). This
should be the exegesis of the ethical behavior in business activities at any level.
It fell out that all the sad experiences of the past the contemporary mankind thrust into the wastebasket of the civilization. This spam is largely labeled “corruption”. Sometimes, however, we empty the wastebasket, to rummage about for some important documents and to go over them to get down to the nitty-gritty of the matter at hand.
30
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
Corruption as an Inevitable Concomitant of Economic Activity
The starting point for these lines is the circumambient reality that the corruption, primarily in the developed countries, is at risk of transforming into a systemic one or, to make things worse, can dominate the existing value system whose surety is said to bear the state.
As we have shown repeatedly, the lie is the groundwork of the secular economy. In organizational terms, even an amateur eye can disclose a glaring discrepancy between the political and economic setup of societal life. Logically, having appropriated the instruments of social control, the State as the herald of societal interests, should and could have resolved economic plight of the citizenry. Why has not the State solved them yet? Because ideologically, the State is structured around the concept of a lie. The powers of the State to organize the economic life of society are limited by and to the social recipients of the public coffer yielded at the expense of the entire society. We know that the State is unable, or rather, unwilling to establish a reliable economic regime/framework to ensure the synergic/interdependent exchange of economic flows (immobility, assets, securities, services, and other components of economic activities of the public creativity). An average statistical man with no appropriate Christian education is kind of a slot-machine that releases sin. With no quality in place, the “self-consolidation” of the sin in that type of man proceeds through quantitative emissions of his sinful activities. It is not for nothing that in this era of global anticorruption campaign, the State shells out huge funds on commenting its corrupt practices, instead of investing them into reforms in the ideological, educational, and administrative sectors. Time has come when the State has to see its reflection in the mirror of its past and present deeds, which we call corruption. Now let us have a look at how it all works. While inhabiting the role of a public mouthpiece, an exponent of general aspirations, the State covertly caters for the needs of the 30 to the maximum of 50% of the population. Being the attending staff of the founding clans of the given state, this portion of the population vicariously enjoys the amenities of public life through their allegiance to those clans. On the other hand, the rest of any society which does not fit in with those 50%, is forced to pay the bulk of the taxes to maintain the clans along with their attending personnel and to generate the means of circulation for the same clans to run the economy for the remaining destitute portion of the society for one purpose only:
31
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
that those destitute should not starve in order to continue paying taxes. Admittedly, a purely secular way of running economy that recurs from generation to generation, one polity to another, and is perpetuated in the following quote from W Seagle: “While the slave performs the labour that is the whole basis of the economy, juristically regarded the slave is only one more form of property”. [ 2, p. 155].
It is precisely in this context that the true image of corruption is disguised. The point is that, being ousted from the civilized framework of societal life, the above destitute stratum of population still continues to pay taxes to the State for Constitutional obligations it (the State) deliberately swerves from fulfilling with regard to them (the destitute). Why deliberately? Because had the State performed its Constitutional obligations, it simply would have not had assets available for the rest of its monetary transactions. The reason for non-fulfillment is obvious: the money receipts from the patronized part of population (30 to 50%) is spent toward their own needs with some margin left for the investments at an interest which is another way of saying “to replenish the state budget”. The spare money for the momentous pecuniary projects the state is so avid of can be drawn from the outlawed part of population, whose mission in the life of the contemporary state is slightly different from that of the slaves in the pagan polity. For the most part they are unemployed, with no fixed sources of earnings from which to make contributions toward the budget. So they are taken in at this very stage, because at this stand of affairs the state, without providing them with jobs, is not eligible to levy taxes from them. Where does the story end? It actually starts al
along the boundary that separates the intrastate portion of the population from the extra-state one. That boundary, understandably, is meant to be the legal status of an individual citizen. If the citizen enjoys the full range of constitutional guarantees, he/ she is inside the system; and if not, then sooner or later he/she will have to knock the door of the “constitutionalism” to be let into the realm of comfortable life. To bring this plan to fruition that citizen will have to pay the admission fee, which in other words is called corruption.
Let us enjoy some more hermeneutics. While faith is the ability of man to firmly establish the worship of Christ in his life cycle through confessing Him as his Savior, it also allows him to gain control over the world of inanimate things or, to put it in legal terms, the right in rem. Once established between people in their lives, faith becomes the prime reality, while the material world transforms itself
32
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
into information flows which become easily manageable, because they lose their sway over people’s minds. For instance, a whole whopping megalopolis with its conglomeration of skyscrapers, high-risers, elite boroughs, swanky cars, choice stores just like the sprawling dilapidation of underprivileged areas turn to clusters of corporeal dumps with no one to own them: the faith comes to the fore as the only vital and viable linkage between individuals who care for the maintenance of the “divine presence” between them as the only surety of their peaceful lives. It is common knowledge that the history stands for the science that explores the evolution of the original sin. In our daily routine, by opting for the property interest, we prolong the life span of this highly ominous and onerous knowledge. Thus, the genuine faith is the attempt to step behind the history, and in this way to get rid of the information flows/currents it plays against each other. Once behind the limits of history, humanity can control these information currents the history is made up of.
When talking about economy as a secular science of methodically calculated errors and consecutively fallacious predictions, one cannot silently pass by the fundamental issue of taxation. Without technocratic flourish, we shall put the matter plainly. One average pro capita tax is enough for the state to maintain its budget. As we know, only the clan-supported segment of society is eligible for the rights established by the secular Constitutions. The Constitutional obligations in turn are secured at the expense of the social segment which cannot be placed into the clan-run frame of the state. Thus, a weird frame of society surfaces, where outwardly rights and obligations are to be observed by each and every citizen, while implicitly the eligible segment of society enjoys its rights at the expense of the segment totally neglected and outcast in legal terms. Without availing themselves of the rights fictitiously foisted on them by the faulty lay Constitution, this outlawed part of society in broad daylight is literally forced to provide for the replenishment of the budgetary resources for the utilization by the eligible clan/state-patronized part of society. So we would rather designate this outcast societal segment an “alternative/optional” segment. Anyway, this optional segment of society has to pay to the state to be eligible to the intra-state comfort. In this regard, a propos, different types of taxes attest the fact that the state can only resolve the citizen’s problems at their own expense. Moreover, we are inclined to think that the only “creative” work done by the state is to deliberately create hitches in the way of the citizenry to levy taxes from
33
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
them for the solution of the problems the citizenry did not create. Is it not a blatant challenge to whatever ethical norms? If the lay ethical science is able to solve this problem, why it does not do this?
Corruption has had a profound and well-documented impact on security: “The cost of corruption is four-fold: political, economic, social, and environmental. On the political front, corruption constitutes a major obstacle to democracy and the rule of law. ..Economically, corruption leads to the depletion of national wealth...It undermines people’s trust in the political system, in its institutions and its leadership. Environmental degradation is yet another consequence of corrupt systems [3].
Corruption has apparent destabilizing effects for nations and their security. The impact is manifold and includes, for example: “Leakage of WMD technology, trafficking and further proliferation is facilitated by systematic corruption, the presence of organized criminals and terrorists, poor governance, lack of territorial control and state failure, all of which are associated with instability” [4]. Ultimately this situation can progress to a situation of state failure. For some states, even great powers, corruption has reached epidemic scale and appears to be beyond control.
Corruption in the public sector as competing with that of the private one should be viewed as a patent challenge to the existence of any political system with its legal, moral, social domains. It poses a direct threat to the national security.
When defining Corruption one has to take into account the components like societal, cultural and governance norms and values, let alone legal component, which is more than germane to the discussion.
What lawyers can technically assert is in reality wanting and repetitious, because they themselves are bound by the limits of the acting law and do not have any tangible resources to change the situation. Lawyers are good at commenting the drawbacks or even blunders of the existing legislature, but rarely are they willing to pitch in and change things for the better. Why is it that way is a thrust of a different and much more voluminous study. Still the maxim once coined by Jeremy Bentham could be fairly applicable to the entire caste of lawyers of all times and nations. He regarded the jurisprudence as the “art of being methodically ignorant of what everybody knows” [ 2, p. 24]. Admittedly, there is no law requiring lawyers to cultivate such ignorance. In fact, law feigns ignorance, because it has a different mission to fulfill: the punishment. The mainstream scholars are always welcome with the law,
34
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
because through their law-oriented teaching, they keep society away from the concept of freedom – another key component of ethics. As soon as the true understanding of freedom is rife in society, the latter will need the law no more, because the true freedom is the right of self-limitation and does not need to be imposed. This stage of development in human can only be obtained through the faith in Jesus Christ: “For man has in his heart a law written by God. To obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged” (Romans 2:14-16). The following rationale by the apostle Paul will help us understand the matter: “For no human being can be justified in the sight of God for having kept the law: law brings only the consciousness of sin.” (Romans 3:20). Hence, by cultivating only the legal trend in the citizens’ minds the mainstream scholars vicariously sacrifice them to corruption. Why? Because corruption is generated and punished inside society governed by the state, and as long as corruption is not fully eradicated, we can claim that it is also regulated by the state. Hence, the state turns out to father corruption.
“Corruption can be classified as grand, petty and political, depending on the amounts of money lost and the sector where it occurs” [5]. Corruption can also be understood as systemic corruption or regime corruption – that is, the embedded corruption of an entire political and constitutive system. Even the legality of corruption can become a question as, “TI, Transparency International, further differentiates between ‘according to rule’ corruption and ‘against the rule’ corruption. Facilitating payments, where a bribe is paid to receive preferential treatment for something that the bribe receiver is required to do by law, constitute the former. The latter, on the other hand, is a bribe paid to obtain services the bribe receiver is prohibited from providing.” [3]
The vertical corruption represents the power-based political administration and formally is easier to surveil and counteract. By contrast, the horizontal corruption which stands for the entire population, its morals, customs and habits, ancestral traditions, ethno-cultural proclivity, and things like that is practically out of control. You cannot punish a nation because of its conviction that corruption is sort of a gift proving one’s gratitude. A typical QUID PRO QUO1.
1A prototype of bribery could well be traced in archaic cultures where, in order to avoid a potential conflict, e.g. blood feud, the parties made up by paying composition in form of the blood money. Failure to come to terms was to lead to an imminent large-scale conflict not welcome with the kinship. Thus grown into the sanctioned custom, as W. Seagle sets it out, the application of composition or any other remedy was seen mandatory. Non fulfillment thereof could be rated as crime or could lead to ostracism. [2, pp. 24-26/228-230).
35
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
How about we tackle the problem from another perspective? If we come up with a graph labeling the bottom line “Horizontal Corruption” and the side line “Vertical Corruption”, they will assuredly intersect at more than one point along the curve we have thus plotted. Yet whatever the results of this graphical survey, it will provide for statistical figures only, not the solutions. The latter lie at the Zero position of the system of axes, and is totally neglected. As long as it stays ignored, the issue would not be solved. Let us label the Zero a “Faith” or “Christian Doctrine”, and this will put an end to the allegedly inextricable conundrum. As a matter of fact, social ethics issuing from the depths of the Christian mettle should be viewed as the only remedy to this issue. And as far as the study is concerned, why do we not try a survey of sorts. Teaching of the impossibility to serve the two masters, Jesus Christ said; “No servant can be the slave of two masters; for either he will hate the first and love the second, or he will be devoted to the first and think nothing of the second. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew, 6:24). With these words Christ denies the simultaneous adherence to the satanic host and Power of God, Light and darkness, Righteousness and sin. That the Lord dwells on this idol (mammon) is noteworthy. This deity had a tremendous sway over the heathen civilizations of the Near East. It patronized unrighteous enrichment, understandably, at all costs. However, its real peril was that it distracted people’s attention from the true God.
The pagan temple where evil spirit of mammon was once worshipped in broad daylight, in our days seems to have ensconced itself in the very heart of the state. By calling itself Christian, the modern political system of the West in reality is but disguising its unenviable face pitted with poxes from no end of grave diseases. It means that basically nothing has changed since those historical times. What we witness can be interpreted this way: the contemporary Christian state is vicariously enjoying the “amenabilities”, i.e. permissiveness of paganism by failing to nurture its Christian values. Here is a pervasive citation from S.Huntington which cannot be closed with entirely, but which has a very useful mention in Christian terms: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion... but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” [6, p. 51]. If not for values, i.e. Christian faith, how else could this war be waged and won?
36
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
Obviously, a private bribery is largely an economic, a business thing, while public corruption engages a pivotal component of sociopolitical responsibility cause it is based on the institution of social representation which connotes accountability before the society. Failing this accountability, the society is entitled to remedy its moral and economic detriment in a legal way. And not only1.
Hence, as we see it, the corruption should be viewed as a systemic perturbation of such a critical degree that the system desists from functioning on the constitutional level hence incurring undisguised threat to the very existence of the state along with the national security.
Secular Scholars on Economics
The indelible impression from the first acquaintance with the theory of economics is the eclecticism, with which this branch of worldly science is trying to create a halo of competence among its fans - the aggregate of consumers.
Evidently, the capitalist-run economy shall rely on the economic calculation, and especially double-entry bookkeeping method of business accounting. It is dubious, however, whether this method can ensure a proper allocation of the resources towards the satisfaction of human needs; in a completely socialized economy, prices would not exist and central planners would have to resort to in-kind (rather than monetary) economic calculation, being incapable of solving the problem of imputation (i.e. of accurately determining the relative values of capital goods).
Given that the state is the only mastermind behind organized trade barter and capital flow, we would raise a question: how then does the state deal with the value thing? On sound reflection, it becomes apparent that the money stands for the universal tool for gauging all the values, a criterion for those values. The values in turn are the divine qualities in man who keeps recklessly selling them to the state on daily basis. Hence, the money is no less than a ransom in the state’s hands to hush
1 Mostly, at such troubled a point the positive law as the bedrock of market-based society gives under, and the natural custom, as a more viable regulatory means premeditatedly ousted by the positivistic state out of socio-legal circulation, comes to the forefront again with its historically tempered mission: a revolution. Caught at this interplay between law and custom, society sees itself bound to have recourse to this irreproachable, though sanguinary, leverage which always proves a godsend in that it always guarantees the mutual settlement to all parties involved in this public transaction under the title “the state”. “A revolution may be defined as the suspension of the custom of obedience. A new state is always established ille-
gally” [ 2, p. 23). This is exactly the point where the legal assumes its illegal image.
37
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
up the divine presence of Christ in this world. And it is up to each individual to swallow this bait or not. Besides, it is not values that are calculated but rather the absence thereof. Given that a value is a virtue, it does not need to be computed. Meanwhile problems caused by the ousted virtues, are the pretext so much desired by the world to launch its computations, because on them precisely does the world erect its fraudulent and evasive digital realm. Welfare can also be calculated but in direct ratio to the damages it is derived from, which statistically always steal the show. So by ratcheting up a system of scheme-based relationships the state methodically fosters corrupt practices among people.
Thus the state appears to be the mediator of an organized public game called economy. To lend this game an image of competence the state has sanctioned a science called economics. This science, admittedly, is fairly inconsistent and corrupt for the most part: like father like son, as the saying goes. An eye-opener in this regard is provided by a renowned scholar who wrote back at the beginning of the past century: “The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes’ [7, p. 184]. It stands to reason that wealth and incomes within a societal context can be distributed by the state only; hence the state is at fault for the distribution being arbitrary and inequitable. Why so? The answer is foolproof: because if the distribution of wealth and incomes proceeds in the right way, then there will be no room for the state to cultivate slavery, i.e. the generators of those very wealth and incomes. As the same Keynes has it: ’’The authoritarian state systems of to-day seem to solve the problem of unemployment at the expense of efficiency and of freedom. It is certain that the world will not much longer tolerate the unemployment which, apart from brief intervals of excitement, is associated—and, in my opinion, inevitably associated—with present-day capitalistic individualism. But it may be possible by a right analysis of the problem to cure the disease whilst preserving efficiency and freedom.’\7, p. 189]. We will venture to argue that it is not possible to provide whatever analysis to the problem called corruption; moreover, there is no cure for the disease named state-controlled economy, because as soon as you cure that disease, there will be no economy as it is perceived today, i.e. a speculation-based show at an exchange, where goods are assessed as values which they are not, since values belong in man only. Hence a treacherous scheme
38
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
can be discerned behind the so called economic society: the values are extracted from their owners, i.e. individuals and attributed to a vast variety of inanimate things called commodities, while those very individuals are brought down to a status of slaves, for without values they can but create them for someone else who in this context is the state – an aggregate exponent of the ruling elite. Or to put it more plainly, we shall resort to the explanation by Herbert Spencer who wrote about the condition of an average individual in society: “The degree of his slavery varies according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master is a single person or a society. If, without option, he has to labour for the society, and receives from the general stock such portion as the society awards him, he becomes a slave to the society.” [ 8, p. 43].
Now let us turn back to the previous statement by Keynes about “the authoritarian state systems of today”. It is safe to say that these lines by Keynes could not have been more convincing in terms of passing a sentence against the mainstream economic scholasticism of the age of the mature law. The penetrating mind of this scholar has justly fixed the brittle point, where the contemporary economic science has reached and at which the further societal paradigm desists from developing. The only rub with this scientist is that he hedges himself from the patent reality that if the academically fashionable mathematical and statistical analysis and prognostication of these days do not hold water, it may not be possible to mend this approach in any relevant way, because structurally and technically any new paradigm is doomed to be assembled with the same material. To preserve efficiency and freedom, one has to overhaul the entire building project and adjust it to the new expectations of Christian society. To land this, as the sacerdotal wisdom teaches us, one will have to mark out an appropriate project site, which for this context has the implication of Christian ideology to be inculcated also in the economic domain. Without this new building concept the model economists had better allocate in good time new funds towards rubble disposal from their further scholarly brainwaves. It is undeniable that the modern society, whatever its intellectual upsurge, has to abide by the constitution of the Christian Church edited by St. Paul. The quote to follow from his 2 Corinthians is a ready pattern to a revamped secular society: “Provided there is an eager desire to give, God accepts what a man has; he does not
39
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
ask for what he has not. There is no question of relieving others at the cost of hardship to yourselves; it is a question of equality. At the moment your surplus meets their need, but one day your need may be met from their surplus. The aim is equal-ity.”(2 Corinthians 8:12-14). Then St. Paul, in confirmation of his inspired instructions, cites the Old Testament: “The man who got much had no more than enough, and the man who got little did not go short.”(Exodus 16:18). Anyway, equality does not seem to be included in the economic plans of the state: and now we know why.
Furthermore, Keynes demonstrates a really valorous stance as a true scientist by saying that: “We are merely reminding ourselves that human decisions affecting the future, whether personal or political or economic, cannot depend on strict mathematical expectation, since the basis for making such calculations does not exist; and that it is our innate urge to activity which makes the wheels go round, our rational selves choosing between the alternatives as best we are able, calculating where we can, but often falling back for our motive on whim or sentiment or
chance.” [ 7, p. 154-155].
As we approach closer to the modern age of human evolution, it becomes more obvious that knowledge on which the science rests cannot be obtained in an empirical way only: too costly and time-consuming has the human experience been. Even today, when scientific mind has consumed the circumterrestrial space, mankind still craves for the true knowledge, because it cannot be satiated with the lie it has surrounded itself with. The following words by the Lord are the key to a new world the mainstream scholars should discover to themselves, because precisely these words have been behind the staggering scientific impetus ever since the humanity was granted the freedom through the glorification of Christ Jesus on the Golgotha: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I shall give him will never suffer thirst any more. The water that I shall give him will be an inner spring always welling up for eternal life”(John 4:14). This is how the unprecedented growth of modern science has to be understood, where faith is a prerequisite for knowledge and science.
It is common knowledge that science, both theoretical and applied, can be perceived only at the social level, because it is inextricably connected with the marketplace economy which heavily stakes on revenues it gets from society. So it is mandatory that also the organizational and administrative sides of the issue should
40
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
be given due consideration. How to achieve the unmistakable pattern of the just allocation and relocation of the assets? Again faith proves to be the key for the secular economy to use while settling its problems. Let us consult the sobering lines by St. Paul: “We are simply God’s agents in bringing you to the faith. Each of us per-
formed the task which the Lord allotted to him: I planted the seed, and Apollos watered it; but God made it grow. Thus it is not the gardeners with their planting and watering that count, but God, who makes it grow... We are God’s fellow workers; and you are God’s garden.” (1 Corinthians 3:5-9). Evidently, secular economy cannot be managed efficiently unless it is governed by people able to interpret the true knowledge through faith, i.e. familiar with the principles by which the sound social life proceeds. By way of addition Apostle Paul brings one more rationale as to how it is possible to balance the possibilities of the system regardless of the assets it has piled up. Again man as the aggregate of divine qualities comes to the fore: “Or again, you are God’s building. I am like a skilled master-builder who by God’s grace laid the foundation, and someone else is putting up the building. Let each take care how he builds. There can be no other foundation beyond that which is already laid; I mean Jesus Christ himself. If anyone builds on that foundation with gold, silver, and fine stone, or with wood, hay, and straw, the work that each man does will at last be brought to light... Surely you know that you are the God’s temple, where the Spirit of God dwells. Anyone who destroys God’s temple will himself be destroyed by God, because the temple of God is holy; and that temple you are.” (1 Corinthians 3:10-17). Hence, the «garden» and the «temple» should be perceived as the only workable models of society, inclusive of its economic transactions. The following quotation is exceedingly important for those scholars, who are dedicated to eulogizing the ubiquitous destruction on which the secular economy is based upon: “Make no mistake about this: if there is anyone among you who fancies himself wise -wise, I mean, by the standards of this passing age- he must become a fool to gain true wisdom. For the wisdom of this world is folly in God’s sight. Scripture says, ‘He traps the wise in their own cunning’ (Job 5:13), and again, ‘The Lord knows that the arguments of the wise are futile.JPsalm 94:11)...For though everything belongs to you.., yet you belong to Christ, and Christ to God.” (1 Corinthians 3:18-23).
After the destructive campaign of the age of geographic discoveries and industrial revolutions, a new age of knowledge-based economy cropped up that allegedly
41
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
should make a splash on a global scale. And so it did: the quantitative factor, this time around, was so heavily staked upon that only a few splitters from whatever resemblance to quality could be found. The comprehensive and coherent interpretation of the innovation process in economy was first delivered by J. Schumpeter in his “Theory of Economic Development” he wrote in 1911. He formulates the “innovation” as the aggregate changes made towards introduction and application of novel consumer goods, new means of production and transportation, markets and organizational technicalities into the industry, and brings to the fore a new type of the entrepreneur whom he qualifies an “innovator” [9, p. 18].
An attempt to provide the theoretical substantiation of the innovative investment was made by the British scientist John A. Hobson. At the beginning of the 20-th century he introduced a change into the formulation of the production factors in that to the existing formula ”land + capital + work” he added a forth factor, that is, the talent which stands for the creative powers of man, or to put it in other words, - “his entrepreneurial skills”. According to Hobson, the genuine power of an entrepreneur roots in his ability to discover new marketplaces, turn out a novel production, and to find out the new modes of manufacturing. This type of manufacturing he called “the area of advanced industry” [10, p. 20]. To put it in other words, as Hobson tends to view it, the like entrepreneur virtually proves to be the same innovator brought into the spotlight by J. Schumpeter a bit earlier, an image whom Hobson vested with significant social functions. This army of “innovators'' and “skilled entrepreneurs” did not take long to appear, and it really assumed a groundbreaking mission. Only there are two technicalities to the issue at hand:
1. Without the state-granted sanction, these innovators could not have accessed new markets and explore new outlets, i.e. again the state saddled them with contracts they had to purchase first and then to sooth the state with kickbacks from their operations. H. Spencer shares a somewhat rough, yet clear-cut model by which the economy operates: “For nothing can be more certain than that if, to maintain A's profit, B is forbidden to buy of C, or is fined to the extent of the duty if he buys of C, then B is aggressed upon that A. may be " protected." Nay," aggressionists" is a title doubly more applicable to the anti-freetraders than is the euphemistic title "protectionists;" since, that one producer may gain, ten consumers are fleeced.” [8, p. 114];
42
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
2. This “innovative” army proved overly destructive while breaking ground on new economy. An old story, some would say. Yet not exactly, because from sociopolitical perspective this setup should be viewed as something more fateful than one could take at a face value, namely the state has yielded its regulatory leverages to unauthorized rulers, e.g. supranational corporations (again we confront with a feeble representative institution). Incidentally, the devastating aftermath of their activities is amply evidenced in the respective section of a marvelous manual by William Richter & Frances Burke, A Practical Guide to Management Ethics (pp. 52-56) [11]. As we perceive this process, the Schumpeterian «creative destruction» proved nothing less than the destruction of the very foundations of the state: by selling its responsibility in quotes to the competitive contractors, the state abdicated its moral authority. One American scholar puts it more sternly: ”The legislature, in granting rights and concessions to exploiters is in position of a landowner bargaining for the development of his estate” [12, p. 20]. Emotionally less succulent and academically more relevant sounds this interpretation: “Charters of corporations granted by all leading industrial nations, were franchises solemnly granted in each instance by the state – social compacts by which the state abdicated some of its most important functions.” [2, p. 269].
If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary. Moreover, the necessary measures of socialisation can be introduced gradually and without a break in the general traditions of society.” [7, p. 187]. To fulfill this function the state needs to be responsible for each and every citizen in terms of providing for his/her welfare, which has never been the case throughout human history; not because it is physically unable to, but since the first and perhaps the last mission of the state is to ensure that the larger part of society be exploited by the smaller one – the most unequivocal rationale of the income generation. In fact, the only logical function of the state should be ensuring the smooth run of “the general traditions of society”, but in that case the state would be unrecognizably sane and sound which is drastically athwart with its charisma: creation of an auspicious environment for social malady in order for the
43
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
state to appear as a mesmerizing doctor with a kit full of all sorts of prescriptive pills that perform miracles. The greatest of those “miracles” is the fact that instead of living your God-inspired life for yourself you slog through it for “others”, i.e. for the state, for the state is always alien to an individual, because in reality it is predicated on the fictitious tenets which cannot catch on inside a sound community of people that lives its own life based on the laws of revelation and sovereignty granted from above. This approach is shared also by the coryphaeus of the contemporary legal doctrine W. Seagle: “The greatest of all fictions was the concept of the state as an external power, standing above all society and creating law for society” [ 2, p. 67]. In fact, the masterminds behind the statist game are numbered clans who run the economy underpinned by the sweatshop labor of the citizenry. This can only be possible if there is a perfected punitive leverage in place. It is not for nothing that Max Weber links the economy and the state into one indivisible whole: “Even as the market tends towards monopoly the State tends towards a monopoly of the machinery of compulsion” [ 13, p. 29]. Self-evidently, the political monopoly cannot be sustained without the monopoly over the market.
Herbert Spencer has come very close to the real image of the state-run troops on the social front he has portrayed in the following lines: “A comparatively small body of officials, coherent, having common interests, and acting under central authority, has an immense advantage over an incoherent public which has no settled policy, and can be brought to act unitedly only under strong provocation. Hence an organization of officials, once passing certain stage of growth, becomes less and less resistible; as we see in the bureaucracies of the Continent” [ 8, p. 35]. Hence, the bureaucracy is to the citizenry as the “fifth column” working for the state which is alien, irresponsive, and therefore also hostile to society; the state, to wit the ruling clans, shares the potluck with the citizens, but it will never share their grieves and aspirations that are largely due to the subversive acts by the very state.
Speaking of mundane economy we have to admit the simple fact that the staple commodity in economic terms comes to be the man: the state cannot demand the redress from inanimate things. Instead it sacrifices the man, in a variety of ways, to the world of goods in which the state trades the man off for them. Therefore, to harness the individual will, the state resorts to the institute of a contract which it cherishes as the apple of its eye. The legal doctrine seems to be consonant with this
44
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
statement : “The law of contract is not so much a body of rules as the basic mechanism of development in modern law, for it deals with nothing less than the individual as a source of law”[ 2, p. 253].
Basically, people could full well come to terms with each other even if they failed to perform their obligations under the contract: but then the state would have stayed without a business, because on closer look we can discover that the economic turnover patronized by the state is activated by setting individual wills against each other. The myriads of conflicts arising therefrom are the bottom-line of economy. “Indeed, the law of contract has become virtually the civil law itself’ [2, p. 253]. Apparently, patronizing the institute of contract is another cagey contraption of the state to set the societal pulse racing and to sway every throb of free society’s life. Hence, in terms of lay economy a bad contract ends at a court, while good one - at the Inland Revenue.
Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ instructs us: “If someone sues you, come to terms with him promptly while you are both on your way to court; otherwise he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the constable; and you will be put in jail. I tell you, once you are there you will not be let out till you have paid the last farthing.” (Matthew 5:2-26). Why not a generic model of an economic modality?
That any physical malady burgeons up on the spiritual level is an old truth. But that corruption, as a societal disease, could have decimated entire states, few would believe. Greece or Spain are among a few evident samples of what is equally applicable to Ireland when it was on the verge of a similar plight several years back. But if somebody still lets himself be carried away with the hope that Germany or Finland, or any other “business wonder” or “economic miracle” or “regional tiger”, new or old, could pattern the prosperity, -- he is desperately mistaken. I have been recently perusing materials on the state of corruption in different countries: Spain, Russia, Germany, USA. All these countries have one commonplace: their Christian image is dismantled.
Little wonder people perceive corruption to be a criminal, economic, or statistical phenomenon, but not a spiritual one. They see the bud and the flower without getting to the root. Meanwhile “Make no mistake about this: God is not to be fooled; a man reaps what he sows. If he sows seed in the field of his lower nature, he reap
from it a harvest of corruption, but if he sows in the field of the Spirit, the Spirit
45
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
will bring him a harvest of eternal life. So let us never tire of doing good, for if we do not slacken our efforts we shall in due time reap our harvest” (Gal, 6:7-9).
Ways of Reconciliation
“What I mean, my brothers, is this: flesh and blood can never possess the kingdom of God, and the perishable cannot possess immortality.”(1 Corinthians 15:50).
Let us consider a structural model of society: the State, the Business, and the Public. We shall venture to build this model on the biblical allegory on the Prodigal Son. Thus, the nexus between the State as the formal father behind social, and consequently, economic developments, and the Business impersonating the son who, for some reasons, has been left to his own devices for quite some time, stands for the socio-economic dynamics of any society. Now after yet another spell/cycle of his ups and downs he has resorted to his father’s assistance for umpteenth time. This Son, however, represents the part of society which is free to act as it likes. The globalization stands for this character to a dot. So, as we can see, the State is no more in position to attend to the mission incumbent on it, i.e. to rectify the foul-up on the national level. Lately, a weird pattern can be traced in the economic developments globally. The State seems to be more descriptive rather than prescriptive, as far as ethical norms of entrepreneurship are concerned. Conversely, the omnipresent corrupt practices bear out the view that corruption has become a custom prescribed by implication. What is the reason for this? The answer is as old as the following excerpt from the Old Testament: “You shall not accept the bribe, for bribery makes the discerning man blind and the just man give a crooked answer” (Exodus 23:6-8) Patently, corruption automatically means the failure of integrity that has been ousted from the scenario of the social coexistence. A foul /rotten reality - that is the name of the game. This corrupt social pattern is designed to preclude every sign of probity in human relationships. In such a pattern the Business is always a puppet whose strings are firmly reeled round the fingers of the State - a puppeteer. And it is up to the Public only to rectify the situation, that is, to reach the balance of powers. To land this goal the Public has to identify its main, and possibly the only, mission: development and application of the surveillance leverages. But, as E. Ehrlich has it: “The center of gravity of legal development therefore from time immemorial has not lain in the activity of the state, but in society itself, and must be sought
46
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
there at the present time" [ 14, p. 360]. Therefore it has to rely on the right ideology, but primarily inside itself, without striving to get it from the other two ones, i.e. the State and the Business. Formally the Public can and does resort to the main resource - the Fundamental Law, which does not seem to be efficient enough. Yet the Constitution does not expire the possibilities of the Public: it has one more and much more powerful tool - Christian Ethics, which is neither deontology nor Code, nor any other tool devised by the State to keep the Business and the Public under its stern control. Rather, it bases on the invocation and fostering of self-esteem and creativity in a free individual who is perfectly aware of his divine right to live and create on his free will for the benefit of society, which he sees as the unity of as free and creative persons as himself. This should be the ideology behind the successful empowerment of the part of society which has not been smudged by the foul transactions between the State and the Business commonly known as corrupt practices or, simply, corruption. Hence, each of the players has to exert strain to come to terms with each other. The State has to declaratively shift from its punitive to collaborative charisma. Time has come for the Father to sacrifice a choice bull for his Son. The bull here should be understood as Integrity. With the advent of knowledge-based wave of the evolution of society the state finally released that potential, i.e. knowledge-driven economy and scooped enormous revenue. The difference was that both the state as administrative machinery and society as its potential market, profited from this new economic trend. This liberalization of the state’s approach towards society was precisely the sacrifice expected from for such a long time. This trend in the statist behavior could be full well be construed as its proclivity towards total integrity. Alas, corruption is thrust into the public spotlight over and over again. As one of the pundits of the innovation economics, Alstrohm, has it: “The main goal of business is to develop new and innovative goods and services that generate economic growth while delivering benefits to society” [15, p. 11]. Sadly enough, no benefits can be delivered to society, because the quantitative comfort wears out rather quickly and requires to be substituted by a new generation of “smart” gismos which only derogate from man’s spiritual immunity. What Alstrohm states is the stand of a visionary in the negative sense of the word: in fact, there is an economic growth at the expense of the customers; but if the customers have to pay for “someone else’s” economic growth, then who is going to pay for the customers’
47
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
benefits? What economists call “economic growth” we would rather put a foul addiction to the world of commodities, which is another manifestation of the paganism in the Christian world. This yarn has been spun all along from the time immemorial. To put the matter in technical terms, we could once again cite the following quotation which sounds as fresh as it did at the end of the 19-th century: “For nothing can be more certain than that if, to maintain A 's profit, B is forbidden to buy of C or is fined to the extent of the duty if he buys of C, then B is aggressed upon that A may be " protected." Nay," aggressionists" is a title doubly more applicable to the anti-free-traders than is the euphemistic title "protectionists;" since, that one producer may gain, ten consumers are fleeced” [8, p. 114].
Admittedly, having expired the tangible assets on which the positive law is largely built, the state has to struggle to make itself room within the context of the upswing of the intangible/abstract/intellectual potential that is a driving force behind the knowledge economy that ratchets up an unbelievably effective and hyperprofitable output. Why is it that difficult for the state to identify itself under these new conditions? Because now it is more difficult to monopolize the relocation of the assets: they have become as thin as air. Should the state wish to materialize them, it would have to openly declare a man to be the prime commodity. This, however would be equal to a suicide which is totally unnecessary, because the state still has to serve the Public, though after it has undergone a thorough reformation. In this connection we would like to cite the following unfading lines by St. Paul: “For Christ ends the law and brings righteousness for everyone who has faith.”(Romans 10:4). Law has become obsolete for roughly 2000 years now. It took the lay science almost as much time to get aware of this undeniable truth: “The world of law is, after ail, only a brief experiment. Mankind has not lived by law as long as it has lived by custom. It may live by science longer than it has lived by law.”[2, p. 374].
Moreover, we strongly believe that the achievements, whatever dramatic, of the modern science are due to the Christian faith of those who are behind them. The moral life of Christians is sustained by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit that sustain the moral life of Christians are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and the fear of the Lord.
In all aforesaid considerations corruption should be seen as the main stumbling block, because it derives directly from incomplete and ailing faith and under-
48
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
lies all of the ensuing material, visible, and effective phenomena at a societal level. “You shall not steal” – says one of the commandments, which means that the good created by God for everyone should in fact reach everyone in accordance with justice and with the help of charity. Yet, as we know, integrity, along with justice, is the divine quality not to be expected from this irreparably profligate world. “Take up God’s armor; then you will be able to stand your ground when things are at their worst.... Fasten on the belt of truth; for coat of mail put on integrity; let the shoes on your feet be the gospel of peace, to give you firm footing; and, with all these take up the great shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.” (Ephesians 6:10-17).
Meanwhile, the situation is clear-cut as to the framework within which the socio-economic developments proceed. First and foremost, one has to bear in mind the imminent paradox of the evolution of capital: the more it is accumulated, the less it is, or to put in other words, the more money you have, the fewer problems you are able to resolve. Why not admit that the money is made not by or for solving problems, but rather by creating them? So, the more problems you have created over the process of assets generation, the more the number of the problems after you have become aware of the situation. Money is not that bad a thing as long as it serves consumers needs, but it becomes a bane when it starts buying and selling ethical values: then the whole systems may tumble down as the house of cards. How does it happen? The weird pattern by which the money works is based on the assessment. Assessed can be something worthwhile, valuable. Whatever is worthless is normally rejected. If the economy is unethical, i.e. is based on the mercenary, self-interested precepts, which is the very source of the flaw, the values are gradually eroded from the social circulation. The money continues its assessment function. It does not care what to assess. So it starts evaluating the absence of values. With no values in place and assessed the society can develop only the system of vices. And so the vicious circle is activated. Let nobody think this is a sheer philosophy: the global economic downturn of these days is nothing less than a trite effort of evaluating the worthless. The simple truth behind this is that a man without faith, i.e. ethical values cannot maintain the economy. Here is how the words of apostle Paul are adamantly born out: “The love of money is the root of all evil things, and there are some who in reaching for it have wandered from the faith and spiked themselves on many thorny griefs” (1 Timothy,6:10).
49
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
What can be done at the secular level to rectify the situation? One has to engage the organizational leverages towards regulating the adequate deployment (allocation + relocation) of accumulated assets within the societal context. This, again, can be achieved only provided the Christian ethics is in place. It was for good reason that the same Schumpeter wrote about the “Evaporation of the Substance of Property" [ 9, p. 156]. While doing this one has to be mindful of the congenital nexus tightly binding up the economy with the law. Again W. Seagle presents us with yet another of his penetrating observations: “Archaic law dealt with physical and tangible property. Mature law has made ofproperty a law of abstraction and intangible rights” [ 2, p. 270]. This happens because mature law is based on the contract, and the contract draws upon the individual law. The state has run out of its maneuvering resources in the socio-legal game it once happened to beget. The toolkit it has been so eagerly using ever since has recently been emptied of the first ever and the most dependable tool, i.e. man as the prime commodity. The freedom which has been capitalized upon by the state for so long a time has finally been discharged from the statist imprisonment. Freedom cannot be materialized any longer, because it equally belongs both to the state and the citizenry; it is a common property inherited from God, so that if someone wants to draw profit from it at the expense of others, he by so doing entraps himself. “Now the Lord of whom this passage speaks is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And because for us there is no veil over the face, we all reflect as in a mirror the splendor of the Lord; thus we are transfigured into his likeness, from splendor to splendor; such is the influence of the Lord who is Spirit.” (2 Corinthians3:17-18). So the genuine freedom can be enjoyed, provided that society lives by the tenets of justice which in turn can be perceived only as the presence of the living God; in other words unless people learn to honor the divine will of the Almighty in their lives and enshrine his commandments in their interpersonal relationships, they will never be able to find the key to the meaning of their own selves. The answer to the eventual question in this connection is anticipated in the following lines of Apostle Paul: “For there is one God, and also one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus, himself man, who sacrificed himself to win freedom for all mankind.” (1 Timothy 2:5-6). This premise is as inevitable as the recurrent calamitous cycles of the evolution of humankind. Therefore, our Lord is so keen on the ‘corner-stone’,
50
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
i.e. the will of God: “Then what does this text of Scripture mean: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the main corner-stone”? Any man who falls on that stone will be dashed to pieces; and if it falls on a man he will be crushed by it.” (Luke 20: 17-18). The message is still vital because it directly concerns also the builders of society and the state, that is the public administration: for them there is only one way of not rejecting the corner-stone - to serve the freedom ensured by Christ Jesus. To put it more simply, unless the secular ministers acquiesce in the true essence of their ministry, i.e. serving those in need for the sake of Christ Jesus, freedom and justice, on the government level, will be the relics of the paperwork in the wastebasket. Hence, Individual interests in the society dealt with on the legal level, without being controlled by the ethical precepts of Christianity, are ruinous for democratic, i.e. Christian, society on the whole.
The matter at issue has one more dimension in the traditional economic science: the so-called extralegality. As the talented scientist Andrzej Rapaczynski points it out: “ The notion that simply instituting an appropriate legal regime will
establish a set of property rights that can undergird a modern economic system is
deeply implausible, because most property rights can only be marginally enforced by the legal system. The core of the institution of the ownership is a matter of unquestioned and largely unconscious social and economical practices that must be rooted in non-legal developments.” [ 16, p. 88].
The same view is shared by another famous economist Hernando de Soto: “Once governments understand that the poor have already taken control of vast quantities of real estate and productive economic units, it will become clear that many of the problems they confront are the result of the written law not being in harmony with the way their country actually works. It stands to reason that if the written law is in conflict with the laws citizens live by, discontent, corruption, poverty, and violence are sure to follow... massive extralegality is not a new phe-
nomenon. It is what always happens when governments fail to make the law coincide with the way people live and work.” { 17, p. 92].
To summarize our deliberations on this score, we shall take leave to adduce the following statement by St. Paul which surely is going to be edifying for all the three parties of the socio-economic triangle: the State, the Business, and the Public.
51
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
“For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but justice, peace, and joy, inspired by the Holy Spirit. Let us then pursue the things that make for peace and build up the common life. Do not ruin the work of God for the sake of food.” (Romans 14:17-20).
Conclusions
The logical inferences from the above considerations are as follows:
1. Corruption thrives in societies where state is incapable of handling its genuine tasks (mostly representative institutions endorsed by the Fundamental Law).
2. That law is the midwife of commerce is an old truth. And when the commerce starts buying the moral image of the state as the guarantor of social peace and justice, then corruption comes to the fore. However, this should be viewed as something more fateful than one could take at a face value, namely the state has yielded its regulatory leverages to unauthorized rulers, e.g. supranational corporations (again we confront with a feeble representative institution). Incidentally, how devastating the aftermath of their activities is, is amply evidenced in the respective section of a marvelous manual by William Richter & Frances Burke, A Practical Guide to Management Ethics [ 11, pp. 52-56].
3. In other words, the state has lost its authority—that is the name of the game.
4. In this respect a scintillating observation is made by an eminent political scientist S. P. Huntington: “While states remain the primary actors in world affairs, they are also suffering losses in sovereignty, functions and power. International institutions now assert the right to judge and to constrain what states do in their own territory. In some cases, most notably in Europe, international institutions have assumed important functions previously performed by states, and powerful international bureaucracies have been created which operate directly on individual citizens. Globally there has been a trend for state governments to lose power also through devolution to sub-state, regional, provincial, and local political entities. In many states, including those in the developed world, regional movements exist promoting substantial autonomy or secession. State governments have in considerable measure lost the ability to control the flow of money in and out of their country and are having increas-
52
«21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
T.Babasyan
ing difficulty controlling the flows of ideas, technology, goods, and people. State borders, in short, have become increasingly permeable.” [ 6, p. 35].
Now the only feasible way of getting over the impasse is the restoration of the value system, because the systemic crisis can mean but that of the values without which all of the formal institutions become emasculated.
5. Having enhanced life standards of Asian civilizations, and created new ones in Americas, Christianity has not only fulfilled its historical mission, but also the spiritual charisma, for it, like never before, brought together man and God. Following the commandments and acts of Christ and Apostles, Christendom constitutes the most active, educated, and prolific part of any socio-economic and cultural environment.
6. The ongoing crisis of the Christian civilization can be explained by the following reasons:
a. Global demographic growth and the quantitative problematic related thereto.
b. Western nations have not fully considered and applied vast resources of the Christian doctrine, having confined themselves solely to the mercenary realm.
c. The Asian civilizations, which owing to the favorable impact of Christianity have put on unprecedented spurt in their development, having ensured their material well-being, now are starting to alienate themselves from the true faith which pattern is so irreparably intrinsic in paganism.
7. Caught in this set-up, Christianity faces the urgency to regain its strength lavished on fostering the rest of civilizations. This can be achieved through fairly tangible and realistic measures:
a. Enhanced teaching of Christian ethical norms (so called integrity, social accounting, transparency, anti-corruption, etc.) at community/public educational institutions.
b. Accentuate the involvement of public administration into the scope of the above educational/deontological activities.
c. Overt Christianization of Western legal systems, judiciary, with possible elimination/transformation of the correctional branch.
d. Reconsideration/re-construction of functional activities of the contemporary Christian states/statist systems, which will enable to settle a two-fold issue at a
53
T.Babasyan
<21st CENTURY», № 1 (17), 2015
time: a) to ensure the proper education and civil functionality with generations to come, and b) to consolidate Christendom in the face of the new phase of pagan onslaught.
March, 2015
References and Literature
1. Castells M, The Rise of the Network Society, Malden, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996
2. Seagle W,The History of Law, NY, 1946
3. Transparency International, Frequently asked questions about corruption, accessed 12 May 2011, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/faq/corruption_faq.
4. Campaign Against Arms Trade, Corruption and Bribery: National Security Impacts, accessed 8 May 20/5,http://www.controlbae.org.uk/background/national_security.php;
5. Porell Victoria, Misuse of Power, Northeastern University Political Review, November 10, 2011.
6. Huntington S. P, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 2003
7. Keynes JM,The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, 1936
8. Spencer Herbert,The Man versus the State, The Caxton Printers, LTD., Caldwell, Idaho, 1960
9. Schumpeter J, An Effect as the Creative Activity of Innovation, 1908
10. Khotyasheva O.M, The Innovation Management, Moscow, 2005
11. Richter, William & Burke, Frances, A Practical Guide to Management Ethics, 2007
12. R. G. Hawtrey, Economic Aspects of Sovereignty, 1930
13. Weber, M, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1921
14. Ehrlich Eugen, Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law, 1936.
15. Ahlstrom D., Innovation and Growth: How Business Contributes to Society, Academy of Management Perspectives;Vol. 24 Issue 3, August 2010
16. Andrzej Rapaczynski, The Roles of the State and the Market in Establishing Property Rights, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring 1996)
17. De Soto Hernando, The Mystery of Capital, 2000
18. Muller Stephanie Claudia, La corrupsion generalizada de Espsana se airea por las tierras ale-manas, Despertares, 19 September, 2012
19. The New English Bible, Oxford University Press, 1970.
20. Schumpeter J, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 1942
54
