The Ethics of Economics as Chrematistics

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Its conflict with the economic doctrine of Christianity before its split into Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

The art of “making money”

To understand why the world ultimately arrived at the financial capitalism of the last third of the 20th century and the first third of the 21st century, and why “monetary civilization,” after undergoing several cyclical iterations in the form of various models of socioeconomic structure over two and a half millennia, has almost completely returned to its roots—the worship of Mammon in its purest form (without any moral burdens), it is necessary to understand what originally formed the basis and became the economic ethics of chrematistics under the guise of economics.

The fundamental norms of the economic ethics of “monetary civilization,” which today finds itself in the socioeconomic stage of financial capitalism, are defined by the Torah (the Pentateuch). The main tenets can be summarized as follows: material prosperity, wealth—all this comes from God for fulfilling the commandments of the Torah. Wealth is one of the main factors determining a person’s social status in life and constitutes true human happiness. A Jew’s desire to become rich is natural and encouraged by the Torah. Thus, becoming rich is a sign of God’s special favor. Poverty, on the other hand, is a punishment from God.

Thus, the ethical norms of the “monetary civilization” have their roots deep in the economic doctrine of Judaism. Protestantism, which emerged during the Reformation, essentially merely took the foundations of economic Judaism and wrapped them in Christian garb, allowing the development of a “monetary civilization” on European Christian soil in the form of “capitalism.”

The economic foundations of the “monetary civilization” ran counter to the ethics of Christianity during its first millennium, before the split between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Christians hoped to receive God’s blessing through their righteousness, not in the form of wealth, but rather in the forgiveness of sins, salvation, and attainment of an eternal afterlife. Christians always had a choice between good and evil, with hoarding and wealth being on the side of evil and considered a great temptation. Meanwhile, poverty and asceticism were never considered divine punishment but were encouraged, as they were on the side of good.

It was precisely because of the serious discrepancies between the ethics of Judaism and Christianity that the “money civilization” was unable to take root for a long time in Europe, the Caucasus, and the Black Sea region. The activities of moneylenders and money changers were considered “unclean,” expelled from cities, and persecuted in every possible way. Only with the rise of Catholicism, and then Protestantism, were the followers of the Torah able to first establish themselves in Europe and eventually become the true “masters of money” there.

It’s no surprise, incidentally, that despite the relatively young age of the United States of America, just 200 years after its founding, this very state became one of the world’s largest financial and speculative centers, and by the mid-19th century, the center of the global financial system based on the US dollar. After all, the economic ethics of the new state were shaped not only by fugitive European criminals, but also by usurers and speculators of all stripes expelled from Christian Europe. Consequently, the United States became the new center of “monetary civilization,” its metropolis.

After World War II, the United States of America consolidated the entire global periphery through the Bretton Woods Agreements (the dollar is the main global currency) and successfully cast off the shackles of industrial capitalism that had already hindered the “masters of money,” moving material production abroad. Around the mid-1970s, the United States transformed its “monetary civilization” into a new socioeconomic format—financial capitalism—and, through the Federal Reserve (the printing press of the US dollar), began to “make money” out of thin air. In other words, the heirs of the “captives of Babylon” have realized the long-held dream of their ancestors.