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Sergei Bulgakov's 'Philosophy of Economy': a Resource for Economic Bridge-Building between Islam and the WestCharles McDaniel
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Sergei Bulgakovs Philosophy of Economy: a Resource for
Economic Bridge-Building between Islam and the West1
CHARLES MCDANIEL
ABSTRACT
Much has been written of the perceived clash between Islamic and western civilisations and of the
need for reconciliation. If western nations truly seek rapprochement with the Islamic world, then
they must be open to the possibility that in some ways their marvellously productive economic
systems have contributed to a loss of community and a decline in social morality, and must
acknowledge Muslim fears of the global economy. A purely material or human rights explanation
for why non-democratic and predominantly Muslim countries should adopt democratic capitalism
will fail. What is needed initially is some foundation upon which to build dialogue. Orthodox social
thought could serve as a lynchpin connecting the communal economic ethic of Islamic societies with
the individualist ethic of democratic capitalism. Russian Orthodox theologian and social theorist
Sergei Bulgakov left a rich repository of economic thought that philosophically bridges a gap
between the rationality of western market economies and the transcendent awareness of Islamic
social structures. Bulgakovs philosophy of economy embraces ideas of human freedom even as it
recognises the need for guidance and the essential nature of economic relationships to the
preservation of community. By engaging Bulgakovs economic ideas, westerners can betterunderstand the apprehensions of intellectuals in traditional cultures concerning globalisation and
the reticence of many Muslims to embrace it.
Introduction
By any material measure the economies of predominantly Orthodox Christian and
Islamic countries have been overwhelmed by the juggernaut of western capitalism.
The reality of globalisation is itself proof of this thesis. Any ideological system or
social phenomenon that rises to the status of global presumes the existence of a
hegemon. In the economic realm that hegemonic force is the intensively individualistic
and distinctly western form of market capitalism that now interconnects much of
the world. Whether Francis Fukuyamas thesis from The End of History and the Last
Man that civilisation has reached the ideological end of history reflects reality ornot, western nations act as if it were true. That conviction and the policies that flow
from it are principal sources of divisions among civilisations that Samuel Huntington
has famously suggested now clash.
This emerging consensus on economic truth has had predictable though
lamentable consequences. One has been a loss of economic imagination and a
Religion, State & Society, Vol. 36, No. 4, December 2008
ISSN 0963-7494 print; ISSN 1465-3974 online/08/040451-17 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09637490802451091
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reductionist approach to economics as a science exclusively concerned with the
functions of material allocation and wealth generation. It is for this reason that theUSA and its allies find themselves boxed into a remarkably unimaginative position
with respect to possible approaches to the Islamic world. Insistence that culturally
complex nation-states must take as their starting-points the evolved status of political
and economic philosophy in the West is simplistic, pretentious, and, most
importantly, unrealistic given the diversity of cultures to which this policy is applied.
In this context, the Bush administration has appropriately characterised the present
approach in Iraq and Afghanistan: there is no Plan B. This is a winner-take-all
struggle for the future of the Middle East that has massive ramifications for global
stability; yet there is little room for play in the joints as the US-led coalition attempts
to guide the Afghan and Iraqi people in the development of political and economic
institutions.
If western nations truly desire reconciliation with the Islamic world, then they must
be open to the possibility that in some ways their marvellously productive economic
systems have contributed to a loss of community and a decline in social morality, as
some have suggested. Three areas of the western (and increasingly global) economy
would seem particularly exposed to such charges: the increasingly impersonal
conceptions of property and ownership; the progressive commodification of labour
that began in the Industrial Revolution and has continued in the Information Age;
and the divorce of charity as a social function from faith traditions and its increasing
dependence on state institutions and the giving of autonomous individuals. This last
point is of particular interest here, as will be seen, because of the preservation of the
connection between charity and religious tradition in Islam via the institution of zakat
and the renewed emphasis on charity in Russia as it seeks to reclaim some of its pre-
revolutionary traditions.
Acknowledgement of the social and moral limitations of the global economy isessential to reconciliation; a purely material or human rights explanation for why non-
democratic and predominantly Muslim countries should adopt democratic capitalism
will fail. This is exactly why there must be some foundation upon which to build
dialogue. Orthodox social thought may well be a lynchpin connecting the communal
economic ethic of Islamic societies with the individualist ethic of democratic
capitalism. While some suggest that the West attributes too much to the economic
realm, many Orthodox and Islamic theologians and social theorists believe that the
West gives too little credit to the influence of economic life, considered holistically.
Economies can be more than collections of wealth-generating, resource-allocating
institutions. They can also serve as instruments to promote social unity and bolster
public morality when given a minimum of guidance. The problem is that the concept
of economic guidance implies planning, which has become anathema in western
discourse.The Russian Orthodox theologian and social theorist Sergei Bulgakov left a rich
repository of economic thought that philosophically bridges an expansive gap between
the rationality of Western market economies and the transcendent awareness of
Islamic social structures. Bulgakovs economic philosophy embraces ideas of human
freedom and the necessity of economic self-reliance even as it recognises the need for
guidance and the essential nature of economic relationships to the preservation of
community. By engaging with Bulgakovs economic ideas, economists in the
developed world can better understand the apprehensions of intellectuals in
traditional cultures concerning globalisation and the reticence of many Muslims to
embrace it.
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Bulgakovs Sophianic Economy
There is at least one attribute of Islamic and Orthodox economic thought that in my
view is undeniably superior to that of the West: the preservation of economic idealism.
The belief that economic systems are more than means to wealth-creation that they
may, in fact, be important instruments for the unification of society around commonly
held values is a position that has been defended vigorously by Muslim and Orthodox
economic thinkers alike. This idealism has contributed to the institutional construc-
tion of systems of political economy in predominantly Muslim and Orthodox
countries. Contemporary problems in the Middle East, in particular, therefore require
philosophical engagement with these traditions so that we can better understand the
present impasse.
Research into the economic thought of the Orthodox Christian tradition
immediately encounters an obstacle: the paucity of material available (particularly
in English). One exception to the rule is the work of Bulgakov; however, the initial
challenge in assessing Bulgakovs economic philosophy is that of language. For
western social thinkers who are reluctant even to address the social and moral
consequences of economic action, concepts like the Edenic economy and Sophia in
economic life are beyond the pale. Sophia as Bulgakov conceptualises it is that divine
wisdom which was present before the Fall and which remains the necessary possibility
of human culture. Catherine Evtuhov observes that Bulgakovs enterprise was to
introduce the notion of Sophia into social and economic life in order to transform
the world, to bring it to life, to return it to that perfect harmonious existence in love
and labor (Evtuhov, 2000, p. 10).
One is hard-pressed to identify western thinkers of like mind with Bulgakov. Yet
there is something highly accessible in his economic philosophy a holistic conception
of economic life that can be observed in the writings of notable Catholics andProtestants like John Paul II, G. K. Chesterton and Reinhold Niebuhr, as well as
Muslim social philosophers such as Masadul Alam Choudhury, M. Umer Chapra,
Muhammad Abdul-Rauf and Nabil Saleh. The appeal of Sophia has proven
universality, as Evtuhov observes: Sophia was much broader than Christianity; it
had roots in Gnosticism and Judaism and parallels in Platonism (the World Soul);
indeed, the sense of elusive and beautiful divinity would not be alien to a Muslim or
even a Buddhist (Evtuhov, 2000, p. 12). Neither would the unity at the core of
Bulgakovs economic philosophy seem foreign to many critics of modern capitalism.
One reason that Bulgakovs economic imagery finds little reception in the West is
because of the decline of social constructivism2 as a legitimate approach to
philosophical inquiry. The dominance of positivism in economic science and the
rationalisation of the cosmos, as Weber famously put it, have eliminated artistry and
collective creativity from economic life. We are reduced to describing the is in myriadcomputer models while having no means by which to engage the ought. Bulgakov
states that the heavy pall of mechanism lies on the body of Sophia, and the law of
external causality remains the only connection among things. The world has turned
into a deadened natura naturata, a pure object with no subject (Bulgakov, 2000b,
p. 152). If we truly wish to understand the Muslim economic mind in the attempt to
ameliorate contemporary conflicts, then Bulgakovs economic idealism and that of the
Orthodox Christian tradition generally may serve as a useful bridge. At the very least,
the convergence of ideas among economic thinkers in Protestantism, Catholicism,
Orthodox Christianity and Islam holds the possibility that the social thought of faith
traditions may be an avenue to reconciliation. Christopher Marsh has asked the
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question as to which religious traditions are congruent with liberal democracy, free-
market economics, and civil society, and whether or not obstacles in specific religioustraditions can be overcome. In the specific context of Orthodoxy in Russia, he
concludes that Orthodox Christian attitudes toward work and economic life in general
do not appear to be incompatible with modern market economics,3 but might the
question be put more positively and globally: Are the major faith traditions
sufficiently consonant in their theological economics that they might inform the
present global order in such a way as to contribute to its social, moral, and even
material improvement? Moreover, can these traditions be a source of reconciliation
rather than division?
Bulgakovs sophic economy4 echoes aspects of the Christian personalism of Pope
John Paul II in its affirmation of human dignity by attributing meaning and creativity
to the most prosaic of tasks in our daily life and work (Evtuhov, 2000, p. 12).5
Meaning and creativity are the very attributes that many Muslims believe have been
lost in the West, and they now see that void being spread to traditional cultures via the
global marketplace. Bulgakov offers a definition of the economic process in his essay
The problem of the philosophy of economy that resonates with that of many Muslim
social thinkers:
[The economic process] expresses the striving to transform dead material,
acting in accordance with mechanical activity, into a living body with
organic coherence; in the end, the aim of this process can be defined as a
transformation of the entire cosmic mechanism into a potential or actual
organism, the transcension of necessity through freedom, mechanism
through organism, causality through intentionality that is, as the
humanization of nature. (Bulgakov, 2000e, p. 72 emphasis in original)
For Bulgakov the function of the economic process is the creation and maintenance
of social organicism; it forges the very definition of progress in the victory of the
organizing forces of life over the disintegrating forces and deeds of death (Bulgakov,
2000e, p. 73). The difficulty in assessing Bulgakovs economic philosophy is in
understanding that point of transition when forces of disintegration become forces of
organisation, and then in projecting the appropriate institutional structure necessary
to accomplish the transformation clearly a socially constructivist project.
Divisions occur at all economic levels for Bulgakov; the struggle is in knowing how
to manipulate nature in such a way as to retain connection to Sophia:
Man stands in economic relation to nature, holding a tool in one hand and a
flaming torch of knowledge in the other. He must struggle for his life, that is,
he must engage in economic activity. Science is born in the struggle, it is itsinstrument and outcome. It reflects the world as it appears to [the]
calculating proprietor, and we know with what different eyes the practical
proprietor and the dreamy contemplator, the artist or philosopher, look on
the world. (Bulgakov, 2000c, p. 166)
Economics as science has attained an alienation from worldview that is ultimately
unsustainable for any scientific discipline. The attempt to divorce science from
anthropology is an unnatural act of hubris, for science is thoroughly anthropological
and, insofar as actuality and economy is the essential nerve of human history, science
is also economic, or pragmatic. In order to understand science we must understand
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man (Bulgakov, 2000c, p. 172). In science we are forever faced with the threat of
radical pragmatism, with its skepticism and its tendency to see in utility the single
criterion of truth, [that is] deeply wrong (Bulgakov, 2000c, p. 174 emphasis in
original).
Both Bulgakov and contemporary Islamic social theorists understand that
economics suffers from artificial and unnatural division Bulgakov himself saw the
separation of economics from philosophy as damaging while Muslim economists view
western economics as severed from religious life. For these traditions, the
consequences of such divisions are much the same: economic isolation leads to social
disunity and consequent moral deterioration as traditionless individuals transact
without ultimate purpose in an economy that exists without ultimate meaning.
Bulgakov insisted that no science can do without theory or, indeed, philosophy; yet
that is the bold project of economic science to divorce theory from practice and
science from philosophy in carving out for itself a realm unchallenged by teleological
presuppositions. Positivism is the logical consequence of such illogical divisions.
Another consequence of such unnatural separation is the persistent problem of
materialism. Bulgakov characterises materialism as indestructible, insofar as it
describes the immediate reality of a particular experience or apperception of the world
that seeks theoretical expression in a scientific or philosophical doctrine (Bulgakov,
2000e, p. 39).6 He sees materialism as the common ground of all economic theory;
therefore, in practice, economists are Marxists, even if they hate Marxism (Bulgakov,
2000e, p. 41). Materialism is hardly an unnatural condition; in fact, it has an allure
that is unavoidable.7 Moreover, materialism is key to his view that economy is a
function of death in that its most basic motivation is unfree activity; that is, the
fundamental motivation of economic activity is the fear of death, characteristic of all
living things. However far man goes in his economic progress, he remains a slave,
subject to death, even as he becomes a master (Bulgakov, 2000e, pp. 7374).8
Bulgakov implies that the materialism at the core of western capitalism may be more
insidious than Marxist materialism, an insight similar to that of American Protestant
theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in his book The Children of Light and the Children of
Darkness.
Bulgakov acknowledges the idealism inherent in his economic philosophy.
Economy is sophianic, he states, in its potential but not in its empirical reality
with its mistakes, false starts, and failures; and he concludes that in the historical
evolution of imperfect institutions the economic process rarely visibly reflects the light
of Sophia (Bulgakov, 2000b, p. 147). Yet there is hope, because economic activity,
like all human activity, must necessarily participate to some extent in Sophia since
man is the instrument for bringing Sophia to nature (Bulgakov, 2000b, p. 149).9
However, man, riveted to the particular, remains ignorant of the whole. It is here
where conditions of wealth and poverty impinge and where the economic process andits transcendental principles, are almost completely overshadowed by the general race
for wealth (Bulgakov, 2000d, pp. 245, 247). Economics as science reinforces this
obsession with the material and the particular even in its fundamentals. Bulgakov
describes the very concept of wealth in economics as amorphous and unclear, and he
notes how mercantilists, physiocrats, free traders and socialists all have varying (and
often conflicting) concepts of wealth, each being correct from its own relative and all
too narrow point of view (Bulgakov, 2000d, pp. 248, 249).
Economy has been bifurcated into an unnatural separation of the material from the
spiritual. Bulgakov notes how it is impossible to distinguish so clearly between
material and ideal needs. Even food or clothing, for example, which look like the most
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material of all needs, turn out to have an ideal aspect, for they reflect mans general
spiritual or cultural stage of development (Bulgakov, 2000d, p. 249).10 This was aprincipal insight of the Catholic satirist and social commentator G. K. Chesterton in
his essay Science and the savages:
Even what we call our material desires are spiritual, because they are
human. Science can analyze a pork-chop and say how much of it is
phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyze any mans
wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much is
custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the
beautiful. The mans desire for the pork-chop remains literally as mystical
and ethereal as his desire for heaven. (Chesterton, 1986, p. 117)11
What offers the potential for escape from this moribund view of economic process
for Bulgakov is labour. Labour is central to construction of an economic system
through which organicism is achieved. Bulgakov criticises conceptions of labour
espoused by the classical economists, whom he chides for constructing forms of
political economy whose intentional narrowness leads to a one-sidedness and
vulgarity (Bulgakov, 2000e, pp. 7475) in their conclusions. The true potential of
labour is given in a rather remarkable statement where Bulgakov characterises human
activity as the fulfillment of Gods word; here, the authors holism and organicism
come fully into view as he insists that it is through economic labor . . . that we must
not only produce economic goods but create all of culture (Bulgakov, 2000e, p. 75). 12
Marsh has observed that Bulgakovs characterisation of labour is as a creative
expression, a divine gift (Marsh, 2006, p. 38); it is similar to the description by the
American Catholic neoconservative Michael Novak of labour as mans exercise of his
function as co-creator.Again, the principal problem is the near-exclusive treatment of economics as
science and its exclusion from the realm of philosophy. This dichotomous
relationship has led to the dominance of economic rationalism and its extension
beyond natural boundaries to infect other disciplines with its mechanism and
materialism. Bulgakov calls political economy and its attendant economism a
discipline in need of renewal through philosophical doubt (Bulgakov, 2000e, p. 44).
I am positing here that the problems of communal disintegration and moral
deterioration in western culture are traceable to a common base: the absence of
philosophical doubt that exists at this illusionary end of history in which we are living.
Bulgakovs economic thought also suggests that the reaffirming self-assurance that
was a calculated response to the tragedy of 11 September 2001 may now be a major
obstacle for the USA in its attempts to engage with the world.
Bulgakov notes a debilitating irony in the science of economism, which is itstreatment of the individual in isolation even as it seeks to define the individual through
schemes of categorisation that neglect individuality and replace it with groups and
classes collectivities in which the individual is fully overshadowed by the typical,
thus eliminating freedom and creativity and leaving room only for relentless social
regularity (Bulgakov, 2000d, p. 250). Bulgakov sees through this deterministic science
and portends the arrival of the rational and public choice models of economic
behaviour that dominated the late twentieth century:
Political economys basic principle that the phenomena of economic life are
typical or repetitive forms the general methodological premise of economic
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regularity. Yet this statement obviously excludes not only the individual but
anything that is new or historical: nothing happens in this economic world,as was earlier the case for the sociological one; there are no events save a
sort of economic perpetuum mobile. It is assumed that the entire inventory of
economic causality and reality has already been accounted for and that
beyond that nothing can happen. (Bulgakov, 2000d, p. 254 emphasis in
original)
In short, the science of economics assumes the end of history as its starting-point.
Worse yet, it is not only the state in which nothing happens but the assumption that
nothing can happen that contributes to the absurdity of the model even as it greatly
restricts the application of economic imagination to society.13
For Bulgakov, the answer to the problem is renewed investigation of economics as
philosophy and its detachment from its rigid connection to science. Such a task
requires the rapprochement of teleology and economics a willingness to reengage the
meaning of economic life and connect it to myriad cultural traditions that compose
complex societies. His desire to establish (or perhaps re-establish) a philosophy of
economy is undoubtedly bottom-up in its basic orientation, although its exact
institutional manifestation is difficult to envision. Markets are part of the solution but
only one part of a social fabric in which excessive commodification brought about by
market expansion may stifle organicism. Thus market structures as they have evolved
in modernity are long overdue for a fundamental rethinking of their social and moral
consequences.
The present conflict between the West and Islam presents an opportunity for
engagement that has the possibility for stemming the tide of social and moral
deterioration in developed countries even as it opens possibilities for the material
development and reconnection of Muslim nations with the global community. Theeconomics of Orthodoxy is a potential bridge to span the immense gulf that separates
the two.
The Rise of Islamic Economics
The term Islamic economics has been controversial since its initial entry into the
vernacular of social philosophy in the mid-twentieth century. Islamic purists have
criticised the term for its objectification of one aspect of Islam; they consider this
potentially harmful to Islamic unity and even a concession to western methods of
social science. Islamic modernists have generally rejected the idea of Islamic
economics because it implies a backward and religiously restrictive economic system
that would be marginalised in mainstream economic theory. Despite such reservations
the term has stuck and has come to describe economic theories and practices that areconsistent with Islamic values and conform to sharia law. Robert Hefner observes that
the rise of Islamic economics as a distinct discipline resulted from a two-step process
found in the decline of Muslim socialism in the 1960s followed by a resurgence of
Islamic piety and activism [that] swept across the Muslim world, and it fueled a
growing interest in Islamic alternatives to all manner of political and economic
institutions (Hefner, 2006, p. 17). The scholar Timur Kuran of the University of
Southern California has suggested that, while he did not coin the term itself, the
Muslim journalist and social thinker Mawlana Mawdudi (190379), who was
instrumental in the formation of modern Pakistan, was equally seminal in the
conceptual development of Islamic economics through his writings and speeches.14
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Mawdudi was the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami, an organisation whose mission
was initially to reform Islamic society in such a way as to eliminate corruption andestablish an Islamic system of order that conformed to the dictates of sharia law.
Ironically, Mawdudis initial reaction to the idea of modern Pakistan was negative; he
believed that it only contributed to the potential for abuse found in Muslim
nationalism and added to layers of political institutions that distracted from what
should be the essence of Muslim society adherence to the Quran and living in
accordance with Islamic tradition.15 Mawdudi sought theological grounding for
economic behaviour in ways designed to produce conformity, and he even suggested
that coercive force might be necessary when rules are violated:
For establishing economic justice, Islam does not rely on law alone. Great
importance is attached for this purpose to reforming the inner man through
faith, prayers, education and moral training, to changing his preferences and
ways of thinking and inculcating in him a strong moral sense that keeps him
just. If and when these means fail, Muslim society should be strong enough
to exert pressure to make individuals adhere to the limits. When even this
does not deliver the goods, Islam is for the use of the coercive powers of law
to establish justice by force. (Quoted in Siddiqi, n.d.)
The willingness to contemplate coercion in economic relations has relegated Islamic
economics to the periphery of economic philosophy. Yet Mawdudi was insistent that
Islam could incorporate the products of western technology and some of the basic
techniques of its economic system in building superior economic structures on an
Islamic blueprint.
Contemporary scholars such as Masadul Alam Choudhury, M. Umer Chapra,
Muhammad Abdul-Rauf and Nabil Saleh have studied diverse elements of Islamiceconomic theory with varying assessments as to their practicality for a modern
economy.16 However, a few fundamental ideas and principles have emerged to define
this system. Among them is Choudhurys identification of an endogenous ethical
support structure to Islamic economics. According to Choudhury, the endogeneity of
ethics in Islamic socio-scientific world-systems means the realization of the shuratic
[consultative C.McD.] process in determining possibilities of life and thought
according to Shariah (Choudhury, n.d.). Moreover,
the interactive, integrative and evolutionary nature . . . of the shuratic
process implies that market contracts are continuously made according to
simulating rules, choices and resource allocations premised on Shariah
guided economic and financial instruments. Such processes of discourse and
contracts generate continuous flows of knowledge. The interacting legal,ethical, material and institutional elements mark the nature of inter-systemic
interactions. (Choudhury, n.d.)
This integrative institutional structure that theoretically sustains an endogenous social
ethic is considered by many Muslim scholars to be key in differentiating the Islamic
economy from western capitalism with its emphasis on subjective valuation and free
access to markets. As the Muslim economist Muhammad Abdul-Rauf has observed,
the economic system of Islam is just a part of the whole Islamic guidance, and
therefore has to coordinate and cooperate with other parts of this totality (Abdul-
Rauf, 1979, p. 64). Myriad Islamic institutions are thus thought to interoperate in such
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ways as to guide both individuals and institutions in economic decision-making. This
system of coordination is reinforced by what Muhammad Nejatullah Siddiqi refers toas the twin forces of morally-oriented free individual action and state regulation.
According to Siddiqi, Islams strategy in organizing its economic system rests . . . on
three main flanks: clearly specified goals; well defined moral attitudes and behaviour
patterns on the part of economic agents; and specific laws, rules and regulations
enforceable by the state (Siddiqi, n.d.). Islamic economics is thus clearly distinguished
from the economics of Orthodoxy as articulated by Bulgakov because of the formers
emphasis on clearly specified goals attained through specific laws, rules and
regulations. However, there are similarities in their emphases on coordination and
cooperation among institutions to support morally-oriented free individual action.
To provide a theoretical structure to Islamic economics, Choudhury identifies five
principal instruments that guide the construction of an Islamic economy: (1) the
abolition of interest; (2) profit-sharing under economic cooperation between labour
and capital; (3) joint ventures, principally though not wholly through equity
participation; (4) the institution of charity (zakat); and (5) the avoidance of wasteful
use of resources (Choudhury, 1999, p. 83). The endogeneity of its economic ethic,
integration of institutions in support of that ethic, and the five instruments listed above
are highly descriptive of the path taken by Pakistan, Iran and other predominantly
Muslim countries in their attempts to establish Islamic economic systems. These
philosophical principles are codified in various ways and reinforced through Islamic
economic institutions that exist to determine whether business practices are halal
(acceptable) or haram (unacceptable) according to the prescriptions of Islamic law.
Muhammad Abdul Rauf has crafted what he calls the Ten Commandments of
Islamic Economics, the first of which is the obligatory payment of zakat as the central
charitable institution of Islamic society. Industriousness, financial support of family,
keeping of pledges and commitments, avoidance of usury, respect for others propertyand abstention from profiteering or monopolistic practices are elements composing
the decalogue for Islamic economic life (Abdul-Rauf, 1979, pp. 912).
The result of keeping the commandments of Islamic economics as described by Abdul-
Rauf resonates clearly with the thought of Bulgakov: The underlying concept is that the
economic community is like an organic body, in which each cell grows and contributes to
well-being of the other cells (Abdul-Rauf, 1979, p. 12). What philosophically binds
Bulgakovs philosophy of economy with Islamic economics is an integrative vision of
individual and institutional coordination that preserves a central ethic. In both Islamic
and Orthodox Christian social thought, economic life exists for the promotion of social
unity and preservation of a communal ethos, and not simply as a means for the
allocation of resources. Some practitioners of theological economics in the Catholic and
Protestant traditions are quite harmonious with their Orthodox and Islamic counterparts
in this regard, and their contributions offer hope that a narrowing of the philosophicaldivide might be accomplished. However, purely theological or philosophical approaches
are limited in their possibilities. What is needed is a specific institutional focus in which
each of these traditions might concede that modernity has encroached in such ways as to
create disharmony between religious and other cultural traditions and produced
economic outcomes discordant with religious values.
An Institutional Approach to Reconciliation
The economic voices of Islam and Orthodoxy have been marginalised from the
mainstream of economic thought by their normative presuppositions. However, new
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developments, such as the quagmire of Iraq, may be opening possibilities for their
entry to the debate. Institutional experiments hold more promise as newlyreconstructed countries like Iraq and Afghanistan seek to preserve their traditional
cultures while addressing the demands of modernity even as western powers seek to
extricate themselves from untenable positions. It is our present ambition for nation-
building in the developing, particularly Islamic, world that is reacquainting the
Occident with its constructivist past.
Coercion at the core of Islamic economic philosophy is a non-starter as an
alternative structure to global capitalism; yet that fact alone should not eliminate
Islamic economics as a voice capable of illuminating the shortcomings of the present
world order. Just as with Marxism, we are tempted to jettison the baby with the
bathwater because of the impracticality of Islamic economics as an alternative global
capitalism.
In the case of Orthodox Christian economic ideas, the traditional resistance of the
Orthodox Church to involving itself in political matters has restricted development of
a tradition of social philosophy for, as Andreas Buss observes, No inner motivation
led out of the spiritual conditions of the Orthodox Church to a reorganization of
political and economic life. Buss describes Orthodoxy as having no affinity for
particular forms of social organisation but rather as being indifferent towards all
(Buss, 2003, pp. 57, 56). Yet despite these limitations, Islamic and Orthodox Christian
economic values, ideas and principles alike have the ability to inform western
economic thought on specific issues like the loss of community, decline in public
morality, depersonalisation of economic relations, charity as a socially integrative
institution, and similar social and moral concerns.
Three institutional possibilities appear most likely to facilitate reconciliation among
western, Orthodox and Islamic social thinking: charity, labour and property. It is
suggested that it is in these institutions where the West is most exposed to criticism forhaving violated its traditional, particularly religious, values.
Charity especially emerges as a fertile field of social inquiry. It would also seem to
hold the greatest potential for institutional experimentation because labour and
property relations are so immersed in legal culture. Moreover, both mosque and
church have long histories of involvement in social charity, at times being dominant
vis-a`-vis state institutions in provision of social services. Christian, Muslim and other
religious institutions have at least the possibility to retake this function and thus auger
in a social transformation at the grass-roots level capable of reversing the impacts of
communism, the welfare state and perceived abuses under various Islamic dynasties.
Zakat, or the obligatory payment of alms, is one of the five pillars of Islam and one
of the key differences between Muslim and western approaches to economic life.
Hefner notes that for much of Islamic history zakat has been largely a private
institution and in many countries decentralization has remained the pattern for zakatpayment to this day (Hefner, 2006, p. 20). There are notable exceptions where the
state has become the principal coordinating instrument for zakat payments in
countries like Iran and Egypt. Complementing zakat in the Islamic economic tradition
is the principle of haqq (literally truth), or the right of the poor to receive charity
(Abdul-Rauf, 1979, p. 19). Both zakat and haqq work to prevent the excessive
concentration of wealth in society. They also serve to preclude the possibility of
idolatry with respect to the economic system; there are no perfect human institutions
and the justice attained in each must account for its imperfections. Some
redistribution is called for to compensate for the markets limitations in the allocation
of wealth. As Abdul-Rauf observes, Economic justice, to be truly attained, has to be
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part of a total moral code (Abdul-Rauf, 1979, p. 21). The resonance of this holistic
approach to economics and wealth distribution with Bulgakovs sophianic economy isobvious. Charles Tripp has observed that zakat and riba (the prohibition on the taking
of interest) form the backbone to the moral economy of Islam (Tripp, 2006, pp. 124
33). Even here, however, there is confusion and Tripp notes that countries like
Malaysia have been forced to acknowledge the shortcomings of zakat in terms of
monetary redistribution. Yet despite such frustrations, Tripp sees benefits accruing
even from unsuccessful experiments in Islamic economics:
The imagination of an Islamic society as an outcome of the transformations
brought about by expanding capitalist enterprise has much in common with
similar imaginative exercises elsewhere, making Islamic responses recogniz-
ably part of a general modern concern about sociability, rationality and
ethics in a market society, where all human relations become susceptible to
commodification. (Tripp, 2006, p. 197)
Just as the in the Muslim world, charity is a pillar of many Orthodox Christian
societies. Contemporary Russia is a particularly interesting case with respect to
rethinking the institution of charity in the context of its revolutionary history and its
struggles to modernise the economic order in the period since the Cold War. Charity
as an essential function of the Orthodox Church enjoys a rich history from the time of
John Chrysostom who insisted that failing to give to the poor some of what we
possess is the same as robbing them and depriving them of life . . . for the things we
are withholding belong to them, not us (quoted in Couretas, 2003). Chronicling the
history of Russian charity, Adele Lindenmeyr characterises charity as a ubiquitous
feature of the Russian social landscape before the October revolution (Lindenmeyr,
2007, p. 27). The character of charity in pre-revolutionary Russia was defined by itssocial as much as by its material benefits, and the Russian Orthodox Church was
instrumental in sustaining a symbiotic relationship between rich and poor
(Lindenmeyr, 2007, p. 28).17 The peasant just as the tsar was obligated to give
something to forge a social bond capable of overcoming inevitable inequities in the
distribution of wealth. Charitable organisations proliferated under tsar Alexander II,
in particular during the 1860s when, as Lindenmeyr chronicles,
hundreds of charitable societies were established. They pursued goals as
diverse as providing working mothers with day nurseries to building
Russias first reformatories for juvenile delinquents. The vigorous develop-
ment of charitable associations in this period, accompanied by public
discussion of poverty and poor relief, contributed to the accelerating
development of civil society. (Lindenmeyr, 2007, p. 28)
There are signs that such charitable concerns have re-emerged in the postcommunist
era. Indeed, there appears to be a struggle for the Russian soul between the competing
forces of individualism and communalism. Natalia Dinello has examined attitudes
toward economics among young financial professionals in contemporary Russia and
observes a struggle between the antipodes of homo economicus and homo orthodox
(sic). Russia vacillates today between its historical identity as an anti-Mammon
culture steeped in a religious tradition that enables appropriate Christian
condemnation of money-lending and profiteering as vulgar materialistic pursuits
and a modern Russia that is open to the tradition-busting values and practices of a
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global economy (Dinello, 1998). Dinello implies that homo economicus will be the
ultimate victor in the competition for the Russian soul, and she notes the dollarfetishism that has consumed Russian culture as one piece of evidence for this. The
triumph of homo economicus in Russia will nevertheless require the overcoming of a
Russian religious tradition that sanctions covenant-style relations and rejects a
contract motivated by the anticipation of utilities rather than value convic-
tions.18 Dinello notes the association of covenant with commune in the economic
life of Russia in the forms of the obshchina (peasant commune), the artel (workers
commune), the consumer cooperative and the zemlyachestvo (worker or student
association). Even the progressive Russian banking class desires to preserve some
elements of covenant alongside contract in the countrys financial culture.
Russia confronts radically different models of institutional giving as it addresses
massive inequities in national income resulting from the nations transition to a
market economy. The reintroduction of the Orthodox Church as an institution of
charitable giving in 1989 as part of the reforms of the Gorbachev administration
helped to initiate a national conversation on this aspect of Russias history. Wallace
Daniel notes how miloserdiye (compassion for others) was considered part of Russias
literary history and re-entered the national debate as monasteries and religious leaders
such as Mother Serafima were re-energised through the transformation in Russian
politics (Daniel, 2006, pp. 14047). Daniel sees Mother Serafima as exemplifying the
Russian religious spirit of compassion; and he perceives Russia as attempting to
reconnect to its past traditions specifically in the areas of social compassion and
charity. Compassion and charity were major themes of the Seventh World Russian
Peoples Council, whose chairperson Patriarch Aleksi II led an eclectic group of
politicians, businesspersons, artists, scientists and others. A document produced
entitled The Code of Moral Principles and Rules in Economic Activity states that
economic activity is a socially responsible type of work and it envisages charity as acollective function of business enterprises, private and public institutions and
individuals (quoted in Chaplin, 2005). The Global All-Russian Orthodox Council
has also developed what it calls Ten Commandments for Russian businessmen, the
fifth of which is that government, society and business must join their efforts to take
care of the good life of workers and especially of those who cannot earn their living.
Management is a responsible activity (Church, 2004).
Meanwhile Russias Islamic communities continue the institution of zakat and
demonstrate to non-Russian Muslims the possibilities for social integration through
charitable giving. We may recall that Bulgakov insisted that it is insufficient simply to
reject economic materialism . . . ; it must be overcome, and overcome only by positive
means, having acknowledged its truth and understood its motive but declined its
limitations and perversions (Bulgakov, 2000a, p. 262 emphasis in original). To
overcome by positive means implies institutional constructions with definite ends inview an art form now lost to the West, but one that still resonates with Orthodox
Christian and Muslim economic thinkers.
The decline of charity as largely a religious institution is a product of the long-term
reconstruction of civil society in the USA and other western countries, and it reveals
perhaps the most immediate social consequence of the subjectivist ethic of modern
capitalism. It also emerges as a potential area for the reinvigoration of economic
imagination in addressing social concerns. From one perspective, Americans appear
particularly generous; however, when one examines the history and composition of
charitable giving in the USA, socially deleterious patterns emerge (see for example
Lester, 2005). The evolution of charity in the USA, for example, is seen as a movement
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from its predominant association with American churches during the nineteenth and
early twentieth century until what Robert Handy has labelled the American religiousdepression of the 1930s when churches were financially and later spiritually depressed
and charity came under the near-monopolistic control of government (Handy, 1968).
Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal and the Great Society programmes of the Johnson
administration contributed to a centralisation and depersonalisation of charity that
has had major ramifications for US social relations. It was in this period when private
donations to the poor largely assumed a public face, and disparities in income became
institutionalised as endemic flaws in the capitalist system to be overcome by
government largesse, if at all. The rise of a culture of dependency among the lower
classes of US society can be directly traced to the fortunes of religious institutions in
the early to mid-twentieth century.
The institution of charity emerges as one in which all nations can reacquire a degree
of self-doubt that Bulgakov considered essential to social health. Despite constitu-
tional and other misgivings over the potential influence of publicprivate partnerships,
the inauguration of the faith-based initiatives by the Bush administration offers
evidence that there is at least some concern over the direction of the charitable services
sector of the US economy. While giving remains high in the USA in terms of real
dollars expended, the nature of giving has become depersonalised and even
deinstitutionalised to some extent as Americans increasingly prefer to bypass
charitable organisations. Charity as a social institution traditionally involving
religious groups emerges as an issue in which the West is particularly vulnerable to
criticism by Muslims and Orthodox Christians for having strayed from its
foundations. It also is an area for which the miracle of modern capitalism has limited
answers; the supply-side theories of the 1980s failed to provide the desired results.
Recently the Bush administration warned of a widening gap in US income and its
potential consequences, and the economic hardships of recent months suggest thatcharity may have the possibility of reawakening the West to some sense of economic
imagination in its domestic agenda. That transformation may well have spillover
effects as the USA and its allies encounter competing cultures in the global economy.
Conclusion
Much of the developed worlds material need has been satiated even as philosophical
conflicts have been left unresolved. Those conflicts have been exacerbated by a global
economy that has realised tremendous gains in worldwide standards of living. It has
convinced us that if we can bring in those nations not presently participating in this
material miracle and ramp them up to an equal state of contentment, we can smooth
over any philosophical dissonance between global capitalism and the religious and
other traditions of countries targeted for redevelopment. In essence, the greatundefined concept of winning in Iraq is exactly this to implement institutions
capable of raising material living standards to the point that conflict over competing
teleologies and core values are drowned out by the rising tide of material expansion,
despite value conflicts that forebode problems for long-term sustainability.
For all the perceived material injustices of global capitalism, a fundamental
complaint of Muslim and Orthodox economic thinkers is the absence of teleology in
western economic philosophy. The void creates conditions in which we have no
means of assessing progress because we have no goals beyond economic growth
en masse. As the Orthodox social philosopher Paul Evdokimov has put it,
humanity keeps advancing without knowing where it is going (Evdokimov, 2001,
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p. 81). G. K. Chesterton said much the same thing in describing what he called
economic indirection by noting the almost limitless ability of western economies togenerate more but their difficulties in answering the simple question more of what?
Such lack of direction is today problematic as attempts are made to install democratic
capitalism without benefit of justification beyond the commonly invoked value of
freedom. It is also reflected in growing misery on all sides of the conflicts in Iraq and
Afghanistan as we grope for common ground in reconstructing their social orders.
Some are convinced that Orthodoxy, just like Islam, has no ability to inform
western conceptions of political economy. As Adamantia Pollis observes, A
consequence of Orthodoxys cosmology is that it cannot serve as a meaningful and
relevant guide to contemporary European life nor to its social and political problems.
It speaks only to those for whom spiritualism remains the essence of life (Pollis, 1993,
p. 354). Yet with respect to conceptions of labour, property and charity the global
economic system has been exposed for its inability to maintain spiritual vigour and,
thus, social unity and public morality. While it may true that Orthodoxy emphasises
the spiritual essence of life, Archbishop Anastatios has recognised the value of
universality in its promotion of spirit in a time when globalisation threatens the
transformation of nations and peoples into an indistinguishable, homogenized mass,
convenient for the economic objectives of an anonymous oligarchy (Anastasios, 2003,
p. 199). Perhaps such exposure of the limitations of an increasingly global society
comes at an opportune time in history. We may address two problems in one: the need
to achieve significant improvement in standards of living in the developing world; and
the need to find greater meaning for the material achievements of those countries
which have already arrived. The desperate need for dialogue between Islamic and
western nations suggests a window of opportunity in which all sides may address their
shortcomings even as they engage in frank discussions of the bold challenges ahead.
Foundational to such dialogue will be mutual understanding of the respectivephilosophies of economy of all parties involved. In this context, it may be that
Orthodox and Muslim social theorists and policymakers have a significant head start
on their counterparts in the West.
Notes
1 I acknowledge the problems associated with use of the phrase Islam and the West. These
categories admittedly delineate civilisations that do not exist as distinct entities; Muslims
are present in great numbers throughout the West just as many non-Muslims are present in
countries in which Islam is the dominant faith tradition. However, widespread acceptance of
this term and difficulties in developing a succinct yet more accurate replacement for it cause
me to adopt this term, however reluctantly.2 Social constructivism is a term frequently used by Friedrich Hayek for the common
philosophy that underlay collectivist systems and the progressive programmes of
democratic societies (such as Roosevelts New Deal) that were based on the rational and
planned development of social institutions.
3 Marsh continues with recognition that a sizeable segment of the Russian population
seems somewhat confused over the nature of market principles and the inequalities that
inevitably develop and that are indeed necessary to spur on economic growth (see Marsh,
2006, pp. 36, 37).
4 Evtuhov uses the adjective sophic rather than sophianic.
5 Evtuhov shows how Bulgakovs sophianic economy emphasises process rather than ends, in
particular with regard to labour, where its ethic prescribed joyful labor in Sophia as an
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antidote to the grim eking out of existence that was so prevalent in life and accepted as
necessary by Marxism and other economic doctrines (Evtuhov, 2000, pp. 1314).6 For Bulgakov the obvious flaws of economic materialism are irrelevant to its persistence; its
past failures do not invalidate the mood that created it . . . . It cannot be simply denied or
rejected like any other scientific theory. It must be understood and interpreted, not only in
its obvious mistakes and weaknesses, but also in that profound content which shimmers
through it. It must be, not denied, but overcome from within, explained in its limitations as a
philosophical abstract principle, in which one side of the truth is sold as the whole truth
(Bulgakov, 2000e, p. 39 emphasis in original).
7 As Bulgakov says, Not to experience this enchantment [of materialism] at all, not to feel its
hypnosis . . . , means to have some defect of historical self-consciousness, to be internally
alien to contemporary reality (Bulgakov, 2000e, p. 40).
8 This statement is remarkably similar to that of the Austrian Friedrich Hayek who stated: At
this juncture we are . . . not only the creatures but the captives of progress; even if we wished
to, we could not sit back and enjoy at leisure what we have achieved (Hayek, 1960, p. 52).
9 Bulgakov states that despite a world alienated from Sophia in its current condition thechaotic elements are linked in a universal whole, illuminated by life that shines within it; and
man, though as an individual he is torn from his sophianic unity, retains his sophianic roots
and becomes the instrument for bringing Sophia to nature (Bulgakov, 2000b, p. 149).
10 Bulgakov continues that from this standpoint everything should be included in the science
of economy. But only the philosophy of economy can take a position of this kind; it would
be inappropriate and unproductive for the science of economy, which is obligated to address
specialized problems (Bulgakov, 2000d, p. 249).
11 Chesterton characterises the attempt to erect sciences of history, sociology and folklore as
not merely hopeless, but crazy (Chesterton, 1986, p. 117).
12 Bulgakov sees labour as integral to his concept of the world as household. In fact, he states
that this concept is the very object of labour and, further, that only he lives fully who is
capable of labor and actually engages in labor (Bulgakov, 2000e).
13 Bulgakov states that political economy studies man only in his oppression, catches him in
the state of necessary self-defense, instead of approaching him from the perspective of his
free creative relation to life (Bulgakov, 2000d, p. 256).
14 Kuran notes: We do not know who introduced the concept into Indo-Islamic discourse,
but this much is clear: it gained currency through Mawdudis sermons, speeches, and
publications (Kuran, 1997).
15 Mawdudi became thoroughly disenchanted with Muslim politics in India and was
determined not to see those abuses repeated in any new conception of Muslim social order.
It is a pity that Muslims see their objectives in purely political terms and are hence,
oblivious to the role of religion in this world (Mawdudi, 1968, p. 3, quoted in Moten, 2003,
p. 393).
16 For examples of books and essays exploring Islamic economic thought, see Choudhury
(1983), Chapra (1991), Wilson (1998) and Saleh (1986). These and many other works on
Islamic economic philosophy can be found at the Bibliography on Islamic Economics
website at http://www.islamic-world.net/economic/bibliography.html (last accessed 8
August 2008).
17 Lindenmeyr quotes an Englishwoman who visited Russia in 1905 to observe the countrys
system of poor relief as saying that no people are so lavish in their charity as the Russians
and no people give alms with the same reckless generosity.
18 Dinello here cites Portes and Sensenbrenner (1993, p. 1325).
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