So recently my classes have really been challenging the way I think about things. Perhaps I’ve even developed a shade of Marxist criticalism in my academic analysis.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot is the way that wealth is distributed and the economy is organized within our era of transnational capital. It seems to me so natural to accept so many realities without understanding the consequences implicit within their existence. Exploitative labor conditions that make so much of our city possible. The interaction of socioeconomic class, race, and place which make possible the startling and ubiquitous dichotomy between haves and have-nots in a global city like Los Angeles. I’ve been straight boggled with questions like… Where does wealth come from? Why do cities grow (and so fast!!)? Who bears the burdens or pays the costs? The answers are rarely straightforward, and more to the point I’m not entirely comfortable hearing them.
I was reading some reviews on Amazon.com yesterday for Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution (plug for one of my favorite books), as I was recommending it to a friend. While they are generally overwhelmingly positive, some people mention as a caveat that Shane might be overly comfortable with modern leftist ideologies. I understand that critique (but I don’t agree), but as a truth-seeker I wonder how I cannot to some degree see the world in such a fashion. I’m not really looking for the left or the right, just trying to understand the way things really are. And lately I’ve just been exposed to how much in the modern economy, wealth builds wealth and losers… lose.
Yet… I feel an intangible yet inexorable discomfort with purely socialist logic. And perhaps it’s good that I’m not comfortable. There are tradeoffs, certainly. Purely socialist examinations often miss out on the human element of every situation. And it doesn’t do us any good to substitute for a broken capitalist system a Marxist system which has never worked. There are so many systems in this world that are unjust. But how do we disciple them? Certainly, I don’t have it all figured out. The best I can think is to fix my eyes on loving people. Still. It’s so confusing living in this City of Blinding Lights.
