Economic Bridge Building Between Islam and the West

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Sergei Bulgakov's 'Philosophy of Economy': a Resource for Economic Bridge-Building between Islam and the WestCharles McDaniel

Online Publication Date: 01 December 2008

To cite this Article McDaniel, Charles(2008)'Sergei Bulgakov's 'Philosophy of Economy': a Resource for Economic Bridge-Buildingbetween Islam and the West',Religion, State and Society,36:4,451 467

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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.

452 Charles McDaniel


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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

Sergei Bulgakovs Philosophy of Economy 453


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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



13/18

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



14/18

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,



15/18

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



16/18

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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Documents

Economic Bridge Building Between Islam and the West