The phenomenology of money

So let us consider what it is the layman (or anyone, of course) has when he has money. It is clearly not gold; those pieces of paper in one's pocket do not in fact represent certain amounts of gold. Nor is it "cash"; some money, called "legal tender" is "cash," in that the coins or notes cannot be refused when offered as payment (as one can refuse a check). But there are checks and credit and debit cards also. Checks, when acceptable, refer to a number in a bank account--that is all, really: a number. That number does not represent a certain amount of gold or dollar bills; there is much, much more money in bank accounts than the number of bills in existence, let alone the amount of gold stored somewhere. And the credit card doesn't even represent a number anywhere in any account.

What then is money? It is something that can be spent: that is, you can hand it over to someone else in exchange either for some object or some action on his part which you want (a product or service). Notice that the money does not specify what kind of object or action it can be spent for; but the money you have does limit the total amount of such things that you can obtain at the moment.

Hence, money limits something. After you give up the money, you've got the object or service, which you can then do with as you like. But what is the money before you give it up? It is, as they say, "purchasing power"; that is, it is the ability to have (this amount of generic) product or service, which you can use as you see fit.

So when you possess money, what you possess, really, is the concrete embodiment of that abstraction called an "ability." And if we look at the ability more closely, we find that, since the object or service you buy is bought so that you can do something with or by means of it, then the ultimate goal of the purchase is some activity of your own. Even if you buy a painting, for instance, you buy it so that you can hang it in your house and look at it when you please (and that's the action that is your goal), or so that you can tell others that you own a genuine Utrillo (and then that becomes the goal), or that you can prevent others from looking at it--or some combination of these or other acts the painting enables you to perform.

So money enables you, basically, to do things you wouldn't otherwise be able to do; it is an ability to act, in the last analysis. And since it doesn't specify which act it enables you to perform (even sins cost money), then it is an ability to do any of a number of acts. And of course, the ability to do different sorts of acts is freedom.

Money, then, is a certain kind of freedom--which is one reason why people find it desirable. Our phenomenological analysis is leading us into some interesting territory. But, as I said, money has an amount attached to this freedom; you are free when you have it to do what you please, but you are free only up to the limit of the number it represents. This is true also of credit cards; there is always a limit of the credit that the card allows you to use. So money is limited freedom.

This explains why people want more and more of it, up to a point. We like being free; and up to a point, we would like to be freer to do what we please. But there comes a point in most people's lives where more money does not really have this meaning: when you have more money than you really know what to do with. When you have all you want to achieve the goals you have in your life, then more money gives you security that you won't have to give them up; but beyond this point, you put it in the bank, and it just keeps accumulating, without your either spending it or intending to spend it for anything.

And that, of course, is the point at which you are rich. You are rich when you have more than enough money to do what you have beforehand set as a goal for your activities. When you spend money as rich, it is often the case that you buy something just because it is there and catches your eye, not because you needed or even wanted it beforehand. And very often you buy it and simply store it away, or use it only once or twice.

But before exploring this further, there is something else about the freedom that money is. There are many freedoms we have that don't involve money. The freedom to walk down the street need not be bought; the freedom to read books from the library; the freedom to look at the beauty of the sunset; the freedom to find someone to love; the freedom to vote.

So money is an amount of a certain kind of freedom. You are free to do what you please only with respect to objects or actions of other people that they are willing to exchange for money. You may like another's Utrillo, and offer to buy it, and he may say, "It's not for sale." Even if you offer him a million dollars, it is not the case that everything has its price. He may not be interested in what a million dollars would allow him to do; but he may want the Utrillo and what it allows him to do with it.

Note that if someone exchanges an object with you for money, what he is doing is performing an action that deprives him of the object, for the sake of the freedom the money represents to him. And if he performs an action for you for the money, then his act does not benefit him; but he does it anyway in exchange for the amount of freedom you offer in exchange. In both cases, he is doing something for your benefit in exchange for the money. And doing something for another's benefit, when this action is "compensated" (as opposed to being done out of pure love) is a service. It is not slavery or love, because it is compensated.

Hence, money is a certain amount of freedom to use the services of others for one's own benefit. The supposition is that when you give the other person money for what is for him a service (even if it is the service of providing the product you bought), then you have exchanged for the service, an amount of freedom which now allows him to use the services of others for his own benefit; and since he has agreed on this amount as compensation, he does not consider that he has lost anything by the transaction.

Hence, in itself, money involves the free exchange of activity for others' benefit (the service) for a certain amount of ability to command the (free) services of others for one's own benefit.

That is, you get money basically by serving others for it, and what you get is the ability to use the (freely offered) services of others for your own benefit. It involves a mutuality of service.

All this sounds very much as if it can be Christianized. You are using others when you use money; but you are, first of all, using those who are willing to be used in this way; and you aren't really using them, because you give them in return the amount of ability to use still others' services to put them in a position that is just as good as (if not better than) where they would have been if they had not served you. You use their free services, but leave them better off for it; an while you are at it, you contribute to a community of service and freedom.

Unfortunately, there is a cutworm at the roots of this plant, which stunts its growth and can kill it.

The worm is this: All is rosy if we all have enough to live a minimally human life, and money is exchanged for objects or services that (a) allow us to achieve freely-chosen goals over and above the minimum necessary to stay humanly alive, and (b) suppose that the one serving us is receiving more than simply enough to stay humanly alive, and can use the money to achieve freely chosen goals.

Let me define "necessities" as "objects or services without which a person cannot live a minimally human life." Let me define "values" as "objects or services which enable one to achieve some freely chosen goal, which is not necessary in order to be minimally human."

Given that there are such things as necessities (a certain amount of basic food, water, shelter, heat, etc.), and that not everyone simply has them for the asking, people in general have to get them by serving others to get the money to pay for them (because they are supplied by human beings, and supplying necessities is, after all, a service and deserves compensation).

Suppose a person has nothing but his ability to serve others. He now must serve others or starve. The money of the people he serves is now not something that is simply an ability to use his (freely offered) service, but is in fact power over that service; because it isn't really freely offered. He has to offer it, or die.

Hence, because necessities can be bought and sold (the person who supplies water or medical care will find that the consumer must buy his service or die), then the money becomes power over others; control over others' lives. You have freedom at the expense of others when this occurs.

And it is this power over others' lives that makes the "love of money the root of all evil." Instead of money's being a community of mutually compensated generous activity, it becomes the domination by those who have it (or those who have control of the necessities) over those who have not. It is the seeking of one's own benefit at the expense of others' lives, and it only has the appearance of using freely offered service.

At this point, I think it is possible to see why "it is harder for a rich man to have God as his ruler than for a camel to pass through a needle's eye." It isn't that the rich man's wealth is necessarily impoverishing others; it is the fact that, having great wealth is calculated to create the attitude that others exist to serve one. A very wealthy person may not be able to command the services of some specific person (not everyone has his price); but there is always someone willing to serve him for whatever he wants done; and so it is very hard to avoid the notion that he has a "right" of some sort to be served. Others tend to be looked at as supplying his own needs, and, being wealthy, he is not in the position where he has to serve others in order to get into this state of being able to be served. Others freely serve the rich man, and even when he is in the position of actually forcing others to serve him or starve, it still seems to him as if they are doing it freely--since, not starving himself, he does not see that in fact they are under a threat because of him. Since he is in fact important to others, this tends to cause him to think of himself as "objectively important"--which is the antithesis of the Christian attitude.

The point here, of course, is that money, like everything else human, is not evil in itself, but is "fallen," and needs to be redeemed. Conservatives see it in its basic goodness, and in how it involves freely offered service which is compensated, and they do not see its fallenness (though conservatives are apt to stress the fallenness of the people who use it); and liberals see how it is used to exploit and control other people, and therefore think that money and its power must be under the domination of a higher power (for example, government), or it will burn us all up.

I think the Christian is in a position to see that a certain attitude toward money and what it is--an attitude that recognizes what its nature is and just where that nature is fallen, can redeem money, and bring it into its true liberation of mankind. For each Christian, this will be a personal attitude toward money, which can be spread through explaining what one is doing; and it is to be hoped, the "good news" about money can spread in this way throughout the world and divinize what is now perhaps the least divine of human activities. This is what "making friends with sinful property" can mean.