The Age of the Capitalocene and the Theological Critique of Idolatry

On April 10th at Vanderbilt Divinity School the Wendland-Cook Program welcomed Dr. Jung Mo Sung for a lecture titled, “The Age of the Capitalocene and the Theological Critique of Idolatory,” and featured responses by Dr. Joerg Rieger and Dr. Phillis Sheppard. This forum presents an abbreviated version of Dr. Sung’s lectures and the responses by Dr. Rieger and Dr. Sheppard.

Jung Mo Sung is one of the most prominent Latin American Liberation Theologians of the third generation. Born in Korea, raised in Brazil, and active around the globe, his work is deeply engaged in contemporary struggles for liberation, pushing the work of liberation theology forward. Sung’s work addresses the silences of the liberation traditions in the past and engages the intersectionalities of exploitation and oppression of our age. He is the author of many articles and books, published in numerous languages, and the co-author of “Beyond the Spirit of Empire: Theology and Politics in a New Key,” co-authored with Néstor Míguez and Joerg Rieger.

Contributors: Jung Mo Sung, Joerg Rieger, Phillis Sheppard.

Jung Mo Sung

May 15, 2024

Joerg Rieger, together with other authors, proposes that instead of the Anthropocene concept used for the last few decades to understand our age, the Capitalocene concept is more appropriate. In his book Theology in the Capitalocene: Ecology, Indentity, Class, and Solidarity (2022), he writes:

The common descriptor of the current age as the Anthropocene –found across various academic disciplines– signals the problem. A closer look at the relevance of capitalism to our topic suggests a change of terminologies: more appropriate than the term Anthropocene would be the term Capitalocene, given that in the current situation, capital, power, and nature are closely related. In other words, blaming humanity as a whole for climate change and ecological destruction misses the flows of power that determine our age. The same would be true for blaming religion as such or all sciences, natural or social. (p. 26)

I agree with this statement and, from this point, I want to raise a few questions. Replacing the concept of the Anthropocene with that of the Capitalocene is not a big problem, if it doesn't have implications for who and for what human processes have created this crises and how we can overcome them: that is, without the relationship between science and ethics or environmental and social policies.

However, if this Anthropocene concept implies that there is a qualitative difference between the level of the sphere of geology, the biosphere and the activities of rational and intentional beings, that is, human beings, in this triple interaction, then there is necessarily an ethical and social implication.

As the human species, in its interaction with the biosphere and with geological time, is not homogeneous, but is subdivided into hierarchically distinct social groups or classes, the discussion about the Capitalocene makes a lot of sense. Especially when it comes to the different causes and responsibilities for the problems and the responsibilities for possible solutions.

The theme of paths to solutions is important and should be part of the discussion about appropriate concepts. For example, in the transition from the medieval to the modern world, the defenders of the modern world criticized the theocentric and religious vision of the world and proposed a vision centered on the notion of the “human” as a fundamental concept and principle for the analysis of what was wrong in societies and the utopian proposal of the emancipation of the human being, or humanism.

Nowadays, we find critics of the modern world who contrast the notion of anthropocentrism with the theocentric vision of reality, or others who propose a post- modern or post-colonial or de-colonial vision criticizing modern anthropocentrism, without clearly defining what the new principle of criticism and the proposed alternative would be. In other words, the debate on the Anthropocene or Capitalocene only makes sense insofar as we are discussing the causes and possible solutions to the environmental and social crisis.

The notions of the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene are recent. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the world woke up to the ecological problem, the discussion about the causes of the environmental crisis was not centered on the notion of the Anthropocene, but something similar: anthropocentrism.

As Rieger says, "the basic cause of ecological destruction and climate change is not anthropocentrism, as White argued, but the economic system of capitalism that organizes human action. In the so-called Capitalocene, not all of humanity, and not even the majority of humanity, is driving the exploitation of the nonhuman environment and benefiting from it" (p. 29).

From this quote, we can ask: is there a direct relationship between the notion of anthropocentrism and that of the Anthropocene, to the point that we can move on from anthropocentrism directly to the question of the Capitalocene? Or, is the Capitalocene an analytical concept that shows us the causes of this crisis, but not necessarily capable of pointing the way to an alternative civilization? An analytical concept that criticizes the causes of the problem must, at the same time, offer a new horizon for interpreting the paths that can be built. Otherwise, we run the risk of making a metaphysical critique, that is, a critique that denies what exists, but offers no way of overcoming it.

In other words, in the opposition between the concepts of anthropocentrism or anthropocene versus the Capitalocene, we should ask ourselves: what indication does the critical concept of the Capitalocene offer for an alternative utopian horizon?

In this sense, I would like to bring up a reflection by Franz Hinkelammert on the problem of anthropocentrism in the late 1980s and early 90s.

Human beings can only think in anthropocentric terms. Anthropocentrism is an ontological condition of thought. However, what appears in the Western tradition as anthropocentrism does not place man at the center of thinking about himself and nature. It replaces man with abstractions, especially the market and capital. It is a marketcentrism or capitalocentrism. It removes the human being from its central place in order to destroy it along with nature. By putting the human being at the center, the market and capital have to lose that place. This is the only way to truly put the human being at the center. But by putting man at the center, it turns out that he can't exist without putting nature at his side". (1991, p. 19.)

In this quote from Hinkelammert, we don't find a relationship of opposition between anthropocentrism versus marketcentrism/capitalocentrism, but rather a dialectical relationship between (a) abstract anthropocentrism, (b) capitalocentrism and (c) concrete anthropocentrism with an articulated relationship with nature.

In this sense, Hinkelammert proposes a new humanism in which human beings, in communities, act in solidarity with other people, especially those who suffer, defending the right to live in dignity of all human beings, recognizing the limits of history and human conditions.

This implies recognizing that it is not possible to organize the economy at regional and global level without mercantile relations, that is, without the market, and without capital relations. However, at the same time, having fundamental human rights and democracy as the fundamental principle of socio-economic-political organization and a new relationship between human beings and nature.

The construction of a new type of social relations and relations between humans, with non-human living beings and non-living nature needs to have a new ultimate criterion for decisions. Capitalism's ultimate criterion is economic efficiency in pursuit of unlimited wealth accumulation. This formal criterion and the free market system have generated a historical process that the Bible calls “idolatry”. That is, a sacred system that demands sacrifices of human lives in the name of the idol, the money-god, Mammon, or the Capital, an abstract entity elevated to the category of the divine.

In this sense, Hinkelammert, and other Liberation Theology thinkers, propose that the great contribution of theology in this era of the Capitalocene or Marketcentrism should be the critique of the idolatry of Free Market and Capital and the struggle to recover the place of human beings and nature in creation.

In this search for a new humanism, we know that human beings are beings of

desire and needs, of selfishness and solidarity, of envy and generosity. In other words, we are deeply contradictory and complex beings. Capitalism was born and grew up driven by its spirit, which Weber called the "spirit of capitalism", and this idolatrous spirit that worships Capital is putting the future of humanity and our planet at risk. For this reason, the debate on the Capitalocene or Marketcentrism or Capitalocentrism is much more than a sociological or social ethics issue, but is or should be one of the fundamental theological themes of our time.

Jung Mo Sung is a Roman Catholic lay theologian trained in theology, ethics, and education. Born in South Korea and has been living in Brazil since 1966, he teaches in the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at Methodist University of São Paulo, Brazil. He works within the paradigm of liberation theology and is considered a "next generation" theologian-practitioner. His research focuses on the relationship between theology and economics, especially the theological aspects of capitalist economics and the economic aspects of Christian theology. He has written many books on theological critique of political economy, including the following titles in English: Desire, Market and Religion (SCM Press, 2007); Beyond the Spirit of Empire (SCM Press, 2009), co-authored with Néstor Miguez and Joerg Rieger; and The Subject, Capitalism and Religion: Horizons of Hope in Complex Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

References

HINKELAMMERT, Franz. Capitalismo sin alternativas? Sobre la sociedad que sostiene que no hay alternativa para ella. Pasos, San José (Costa Rica) n. 37, set-oct/91.

RIEGER, Joerg. Theology in the Capitalocene. Ecology, Identity, Class, and Solidarity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022.

Joerg Rieger

15 May 2024

I greatly appreciate Jung Mo Sung’s engagement of the debate between those who argue that we find ourselves in the geological age of the Anthropocene and those who define our geological age as the Capitalocene. The latter is, of course, my own position, in agreement with sociologist and historian Jason Moore, who coined the term, and many others.

We are in agreement that the term Capitalocene describes a problem that the term Anthropocene not only misses but, I would add, ignores and ultimately covers up: The growing ecological crisis we are facing is not produced by the fact that eight million people inhabit this planet. To wit, 71 percent of the CO2 emissions that drive global warming are produced by the economic interests of just 100 corporations. Over 50 percent of the increasing pollution by microplastics of our environment is produced by just 56 corporations. And the list goes on.

Sung raises the question, however, whether the term Capitalocene can point us to an alternative civilization. He is right that using the term can run the risk of rejecting what exists without offering ways of overcoming it. As a result, Sung suggest to reclaim the older notion of anthropocentrism in such a way that humanity takes center stage, displacing the rule of capitalism, but in a modified way because now nature is to be conceived of as being humanity’s side. The, he argues, result would be a renewed humanism. The inspiration for this argument goes back to the late Franz Hinkelammert, a Latin American economist and theologian whose work deserves to be studied more in the United States.

If Sung’s argument is that we need to gain a new and deeper appreciation for humanity and human agency, in conjunction with non-human nature, I would agree. But that is where his argument could be expanded because he does not engage the fundamental human and non-human agency of which the Capitalocene has made us painfully aware: human and non-human labor and work and its exploitation. If at the heart of the Capitalocene, as I am arguing, is the exploitation of labor (both productive and reproductive, human and other-than-human) and the extraction of human and other-than-human resources, any constructive alternative will have to take labor into account. Additionally, the exclusion of labor, which is increasingly a problem not just in the Global South but also in the Global North, is part of it.

At the core of my argument in Theology in the Capitalocene is the observation that work and labor are part of the “ultimate concern” that ties us all together in solidarity, humans, other-than-humans, as well as the divine. Theologian Paul Tillich was right that that an ultimate concern which is a matter of “being and not-being” is at the heart of theology, religion, and ultimately life, although he somewhat misdiagnosed the ultimate concern as questions of anxiety, meaningless, and despair. The simple truth is that nothing at all would exist without human, other-than-human, and divine work and labor, both productive and reproductive. To be sure, this includes casual and informal work and labor, which is increasingly the reality for those for whom capitalism has no active role (other than to put downward pressure on all other labor).

Over the years I have found that talking about work and labor with such emphasis tends to make many people—and theologians in particular—uncomfortable, and so we might broaden the conversation by talking about terms like creativity, agency, engagement, etc. The point is that nothing exists without this, and least of all the Capitalocene. This observation points to the kinds of alternatives that need to be explored. By contrast, talking about human dignity, human rights, and democracy—as Sung does in his piece and elsewhere in his work—is important, but I am concerned that it does not get us far enough beyond the “abstract anthropocentrism” he is rightly worried about.

So what might real alternatives to the Capitalocene look like? If that which is exploited, extracted, and even excluded in the Capitalocene gets reclaimed, a new geological age might be dawning. Take the example of “democracy,” mentioned above: in a new geological age that truly values work, labor, agency, and creativity, democracy can no longer be restricted to politics and the voting booth; democracy now also has to find its way into the economy and work (recall that 99 percent of humanity have to work for a living, formally or informally). This is why at the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice we are talking about economic democracy in addition to political democracy—as well as religious democracy. Or take the example of “dignity” proposed by Sung: if the role creativity as matter of life-and-death is acknowledged, dignity could be understood as humans, other-than-humans, and the divine being able to make contributions to life that are appropriately recognized and honored.

How might the new age be named? Let’s have that conversation along the way of addressing the shortcomings of the Capitalocene. The term “Anthropocene” is too limited because of its history and inherent lack of power and class analysis. The same applies to other terms, like Donna Haraway’s notion of the “Chthulucene,” which is more aspirational than analytical of current and future flows of power. Something along the lines of “Cooperatocene” might move us closer to describing real alternatives, as long as it is understood that we are talking about cooperatives of productive and reproductive labor and creativity, which directly address, resist, and actively overcome the exploitative, extractive, and exclusive practices of the Capitalocene. The Capitalocene’s flow of exploitative and extractive power is not ignored but reversed here, and it begins with the proverbial “least of these,” who might also be described as the ultimate “essential workers” without which there would be nothing at all. This foregrounds the varieties of reproductive labor that is most exploited in the Capitalocene, including the gestational labor of women and other mammals, the reproductive work of enslaved people and minorities, and the innumerable contributions of non-human-nature at the microscopic and macroscopic levels.

Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion, Affiliate Faculty, Turner Family Center for Social Ventures, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, and the Founder and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program.