In the Biblical Book of Matthew, we find described the sort of so-called “primitive” society that the French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard (of Simulation and Simulacra fame) outlined in his 1975 treatise The Mirror of Production. Christ’s is a proposed society that is focused not on the modern categories of production, surplus, and scarcity, but on “taking and returning, giving and receiving” (Baudrillard 83). Such, anyways, is the society specifically espoused by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, and that is juxtaposed against the (comparatively) more “modern” economy of trade, investment, and conquest that marked the larger Roman Empire. These dueling economic models are relevant to Baudrillard’s critique of Marxist (specifically Godelier’s) purported misreadings of pre-modern or “primitive societies.” By situating the Book of Matthew within Baudrillard’s framework, we can consider Christ’s theology as not just some abstract “spirituality” or “magic” that ensures production through supernatural influences (wherein if you just “pray hard enough”, you will “prosper in the land”, as though prayer were a business transaction), but instead as a alternative economic system encoded fundamentally differently from the surplus/production system of the economies of ancient Rome (as well as by extension the modern Western economies that claim part of this Roman and Judeo-Christian heritage). This post will first summarize Baudrillard’s own discussion on the role of “magic” in so-called “primitive” societies in The Mirror of Production, and then apply Baudrillard’s reading of the “primitive” to select sample passages from St. Matthew.
In the mid-section of Mirror of Production entitled “Magic and Labor,” Baudrillard argues that French Marxist critic Maurice Godelier has fundamentally misunderstood the rites of “primitive” societies, incorrectly categorizing these rites as mere “magic” that helps guarantee a successful harvest, wherein “the rituals and magical practices were designed to underhandedly influence these forces” (81). As Baudrillard exclaims sarcastically, “Magic is basically only insurance on the productive forces of nature!” (81) Godelier’s mistake, claims Baudrillard, is that he has wrongly attributed to primitive mankind the modern category of “productive forces” in the first place, a category that has implicitly “separated nature and man” (82). However, for primitive societies, argues Baudrillard, nature and man are not separate, but are inextricably joined together in a reciprocal relationship. According to Baudrillard, Godelier has projected onto primitive societies the modern and Western categories of production, scarcity, and surplus, which are concepts that would be irrelevant, nay incomprehensible, to such pre-industrial societies.
Baudrillard claims that the aim of labor in so-called primitive societies wasn’t production for its own sake, or even production as an end unto itself, as it is in modern economies; says Baudrillard, “the final product is never aimed for” (83). Rather, what is aimed for is equilibrium with the surrounding natural world. As Baudrillard writes, “Primitive man does not chop one tree or trace one furrow without ‘appeasing the spirits’ with a counter-gift or sacrifice. This taking and returning, giving and receiving, is essential” (82-83). Primitive man does not try to convert nature into a means of production, or to gain power over nature, but rather to preserve a balance of resource management between nature and human kind. These primitive rites are not mere “magic” ceremonies, but movements towards symbolically maintaining equilibrium with the natural world from which mankind has quite literally drawn its resources. In these societies, man must always give back to nature some equivalent of what it has taken, which these primitive rites attempt to symbolically accomplish. “Above all,” says Baudrillard, “it [this cycle of reciprocity] must never be interrupted because nothing is ever taken from nature without being returned to it” (82). Nature gives, and Man reciprocates with an offering, thus preserving a harmonious relationship between the two.
In these primitive societies, “Effort is not ‘invested labor power’ recovered many times over in value at the end of a production process. It is in a different form as full of ritual and the exchange-gift lost and given without economic calculation of return and compensation” (82). The goal of these primitive rites is not compensation, but reciprocation; not surplus, but balance; not production, but equilibrium. The rites that Godelier mistakenly labels “magic,” Baudrillard instead identifies as a signifier for an egalitarian (or at least balanced) system of reciprocation and gift-giving, one that is fundamentally different from the very economic categories that Marxism both critiques yet still utilizes (and is utilized by).
As Baudrillard notes, “this exchange excludes any surplus: anything that cannot be exchanged or symbolically shared would break the reciprocity and institute power. Better yet, this exchange excludes all ‘production'” (79). For Baudrillard, the very concepts of “production” and “surplus” upset the balance of power between reciprocating man and nature, leading to inevitable subjugating power relationships, which must always be avoided.
Similarly, in the Book of Matthew, the focus and thrust of Jesus Christ’s theology is upon reciprocation, on “this taking and returning, giving and receiving,” of gifting and sharing, which paradigm is consciously presented by Matthew as antithetical to considerations of surplus, scarcity, and production-as-an-end instead of a means. This reciprocal economy is privileged by Matthew right from Jesus’s birth, as when the Three Magi “presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh” (Matthew 2:11 KJV). Here, the Magi’s focus is not on investment or production, but upon gifts and offerings, an “exchange-gift lost and given without economic calculation of return and compensation.” The Sermon on the Mount offers bountiful examples of this reciprocal economy, one wherein “the merciful…shall obtain mercy” (Matt. 3:4-7 KJV), where “with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged” (Matt. 7:1-2 KJV), and “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matt. 7:12 KJV). In this reciprocal arrangement, the focus is on maintaining balance and equality, which necessarily excludes any surplus that “would break the reciprocity and institute power.”
The focus in the Sermon on the Mount is never on production of surplus, but on gifts and “counter-gifts” that maintain an equilibrium of “symbolically shared” power-relations between individuals. The focus on gifts throughout the Sermon on the Mount is indicative of an economy of the “symbolically shared” that “excludes any surplus.” Christ throughout this sermon demands that “if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift” (Matt. 5:23-24 KJV). Here, the gift-giving and offering is specifically not to ensure production (as Godelier purportedly assumes), but rather reciprocity (as Baudrillard argues). Jesus then claims that to “break th[is] reciprocity and institute power” by refusing to practice reciprocity, is to deliver one’s self to the system of subjugating power-relations that is the surplus/scarcity economy. As Christ declares:
“Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing” (Matt. 5:25-26 KJV).
For Christ, to break reciprocity is to instead be subjected to the exchange economy. Jesus seems to be warning that if one wants to institute the power-relations of a surplus/scarcity relationship by resisting reciprocal relationships, then one must be prepared to experience the punishing scarcity end of that commerce power-relation.
Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Christ keeps the focus on gifts, “without economic calculation of return and compensation,” as a mode that “excludes all production.” For example, the Lord’s Prayer specifically pleads, “Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matt. 6:11-12 KJV). The focus here is specifically on escaping the surplus-production economy that subjugates through debts and other power-relations, exchanging this economy instead for one of gifts outside surplus; the bread here is not produced or earned, but given. The gifts are never a result of production, but of providence: “What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent…how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matt. 7:9-11 KJV). This is an economy of “gift-exchange,” not production. As Baudrillard writes, “this exchange excludes all ‘production.'” Necessities for survival are never produced in this paradigm, but given, in an economic relationship that ignores and bypasses the very categories of surplus and scarcity altogether.
These two modes of economy cannot be reconciled, for according to the Sermon on the Mount, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24 KJV). Mammon, according to the OED, signifies “inordinate desire for wealth or possessions” (OED), a characteristic of the surplus-production economy, but excluded from the “primitive” society of gifts and reciprocation presented by Jesus in Matthew and as highlighted by Baudrillard. What’s more, Christ consciously opposes his system against this production-obsession economy, saying of fears of scarcity, “Ask not, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink?…For after all these things do the Gentiles seek” (Matt. 6:31-32). Concerns of scarcity and surplus are characteristics of the surplus economy he opposes. Perhaps this opposition to surplus economies is why Jesus so vehemently drives the money-changers from the Temple; he refuses to allow these two antithetical economic models to commingle.
Christ in Matthew keeps the focus radically upon gifts that exclude all possibility of surplus, as in the passage from the Sermon on the Mount wherein he states:
“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on…Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them…why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin…Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?” (Matt. 6:25-30 KJV)
There is no room for surplus anywhere in this model; no excess is gathered into barns, the extra grass is not stored up but instead burned in ovens. Nor is there room for production: neither birds nor lilies are engaged in any act of producing. Enough is provided for survival, and no more; Jesus’ assumption is that humanity will live within nature, like the birds and the lilies not as separate from nature, nor capable of dominating or exploiting nature. As Baudrillard notes, this very nature/man duality is non-existent in these societies. The very categories of surplus that Baudrillard claims bedevil modern Western industrial economies–Marxist and Capitalist alike– are absent from these so-called “primitive” societies, of which Christ’s is a preeminent example.
Nor is this Sermon the only place in Matthew wherein Christ radically challenges the surplus/scarcity economic system: in the twin miracles of the bread and the loaves, what is remarkable is not simply the demonstration of divine powers, but his elimination of the very category of scarcity, removing the need for surplus-production from the economic equation. Jesus’ lament much later in the Book of John, “Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves” (John 6:26 KJV), is a complaint that his followers were still utilizing a scarcity mindset, not one that “excluded any surplus” or scarcity. Christ is non-negotiable on opposing surplus: when the rich young man asks Jesus how to be perfect, Christ responds, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me” (Matt. 19:21 KJV). Jesus’ non-negotiable terms are to remove one’s self from the system of surplus that allows for “riches” in the first place, and instead enter the more “primitive” system of gifts “without economic calculation of return and compensation”. (For these reasons too, the House of Israel in the Exodus was forbidden from gathering a surplus of Manna save on the Sabbath).
Christ in Matthew keeps this series of giving and taking strictly reciprocal; in his millennial statements, he says to the righteous, “Come ye…For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink…” When asked, “Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?” he responds, “Inasmuch as ye have alone it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. 25:44-46 KJV). The rewarded are not those with surplus, but those who have preserved the “primitive” reciprocal relationship with each other, and thereby with God, for again, according to Baudrillard, there is no sense of separation or duality between man and his surrounding environment.
The most wicked acts in Matthew are acts of surplus gain: e.g. the Parable of the Rich Fool (found in Luke), wherein a wealthy man is divinely punished specifically because he had the foresight to save and hoard his excess production towards retirement. For that matter, Judas’s betrayal of Jesus for “thirty pieces of silver” is an act of commerce in a surplus economy. Christ, by contrast, offers his whole self in an Atonement that preserves the entire system of reciprocity that demands “a counter-gift or sacrifice” for everything taken. Remember that according to Baudrillard, “Primitive man does not chop one tree or trace one furrow without ‘appeasing the spirits’ with a counter-gift or sacrifice.” In order to maintain a balanced relationship with the Earth that man has already upset by instituting power relations, Christ offers himself as the sacrifice. Earth, in turn, reciprocates, as the result of this sacrifice is that Jesus returns to life, declaring, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matt. 28:18 KJV). Throughout the Atonement, the focus from beginning to end is still on an exchange of reciprocity, never surplus production; Jesus Christ gains all power only because he has given all of himself to said power in the first place. This economy of reciprocity remains in full force to the end, overriding the economy of debts based upon surplus, scarcity, and production that are so critiqued by Baudrillard.
It is here worth noting that Joseph Smith, Jr. attempted to institute a United Order based on just such principles in Ohio, Missouri, and Nauvoo; and that Brigham Young attempted to repeat these communities in Utah territory. The argument that we are no longer required to do so simply will not fly; we covenant to keep the Law of Consecration within the most sacred ceremonies of our Temples. This sort of society is endorsed by both Acts 2:44-45 (“And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need”) and 4 Nephi 1:3 (“And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift”), as the only sorts of societies acceptable and blessed by God. It is repeatedly outlined in the Doctrine and Covenants (the topic of Come Follow Me this year), in such startling passages as “It is not meet that one man should possess that which is above another; wherefore the world lieth in sin” (D&C 49:20). One cannot but also wonder if the ever-escalating environmental catastrophes is the result of us moderns taking ruthlessly from the natural world without hardly ever giving back. As Spencer W. Kimball once warned, “I sometimes think the Earth can hardly bear to hold us” (“And it came to pass that Enoch looked upon the earth; and he heard a voice…saying, Wo, wo is me, the mother of mean..When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which is gone forth out of me?” -Moses 7:48). As ever, the Savior was wiser.
Works Cited
Baudrillard, Jean. The Mirror of Production. St. Louis: Telos Press, 1975. Print.
Holy Bible, King James Version. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1978. Print.
“Mammon.” Oxford English Dictionary. 9 October 2013. http://www.oed.com.proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/view/Entry/113169?redirectedFrom=mammon#eid. Web.