[Buddha-l] Poll on Buddho-capitalism

[Blumenthal, James]

On Monday 14 May 2007 09:52, Blumenthal, James wrote:

>> While I don't think it is
>> impossible to be an ethical Buddhist in a capitalist society, I think a
>> serious examination of the implications of capitalism would find it
>> objectionable to most analyzing from a  Buddhist perspective.

Richard Hayes writes:
>I am pretty familiar with the major and minor Buddhist precepts and have spent 
>a fair amount of my life reflecting on how best to observe them. (I have also 
>spent a fair amount of my life failing to observe them, but that is not for 
>want of understanding them.) With that preamble, I have to say I cannot see 
>how capitalism conflicts with any Buddhist principles.



> If one thinks of the sort of 
>capitalism described by Max Weber's classic work on the Protestant ethic and 
>the spirit of capitalism, 

I am thinking about the kind of capitalism I observe around me in American everyday where people are flooded with images attempting to generate in them attachemt to objects so that they will buy them.  Consumerism is the defining characteristic of capitalism as it is practiced in America.  It tells us to consume and it tells us to accumulate wealth and do not consider the fact that when I have more, somebody else will have less.  In an ideal world it could be ethical and free of attachment, but that is not the way capitalism is practiced today or has ever existed anywhere in the real world.  In the real world it breeds desire, attachment, greed, miserliness, etc.  Often it is taken to such an unethical extreme that we engage in wars and killing  to support our profit-making agendas for weapons producers, oil-sellers, chemical manufacturers, etc.


>I think every observation he made about 
>Protestantism and capitalism would also apply to Buddhism and capitalism. To 
>be specific, Buddhism, like Weberian Protestantism, promotes a kind of 
>secular asceticism, whereby people who have money are discouraged from 
>spending the money in conspicuous and frivolous ways. Instead, they are 
>encouraged to be generously charitable and to invest rather than spend. 
>Second, Buddhists, like Weberian Protestants, are encouraged to make money 
>honestly through fair trade practices and integrity. What the Protestant (and 
>Buddhist) ethic results in is that commercial enterprises run by people who 
>are disciplined and have integrity tend to prosper, and the entrepreneurs 
>make money. Not being encouraged to spend it lavishly on comforts and 
>luxuries, they live modestly and accumulate a surplus of resources that they 
>then give to charities and invest in other enterprises. 

Sounds nice.  Where does it exist?

>There is nothing 
>about this system that strikes me as in any way objectionable; indeed, it all 
>seems very much in keeping with the advice given in texts aimed at lay 
>disciples. For this reason, I think that the practice of disciplined and 
>ethical capitalism could be an integral part of a lay Buddhist's practice. 


Sure, I said that I thought it was possible to live ethically in a capitalist society, just very rare.

Jim Blumenthal


James Blumenthal, Associate Professor
Oregon State University
Dept. of Philosophy
102-A Hovland Hall
Corvallis, OR 97331
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/private/buddha-l/attachments/20070514/125cea91/attachment.html