Greed as a Motor of Modern Society

GREED AS A MOTOR OF MODERN SOCIETY
By Nikolaus Egel

[This arcle is translated from the German on the Internet, http://www.academia.edu .]

Donald Trump already clearly presented his leading polical maxim to us on January 9, 2016 during an elecon campaign speech in Des Moines, Iowa. To thunderous applause of his hearers, he said:
“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I grabbed all the money I could get.
I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.”

That such a Machiavellian-Hobbesian theorem of the current president of the world's
greatest superpower can be formulated quite openly as a polical program is so
astonishing and at the same me so characterisc of our me and society that it
deserves consideraon.

Especially since the Trump-crical journalist Ezra Klein (in contrast to Trump's remarks)
posted this quote on Facebook already on 29th January 2016 with the foresighted
remark that exactly this open greed will be an argument for Trump's elecon victory:
"This is why he's winning." Ezra Klein (as we now know) was undoubtedly right about
that. Donald Trump won the presidenal elecons, possibly because he – where other
policians as well as journalists sll feel compelled to at least maintain certain moral
standards – quite openly describes the driving force of our society: greed, since
anquity condemned as socially endangering and disintegrang, declared by Chrisanity
as one of the seven deadly sins, today a cardinal virtue that makes elecon victory
possible. Free with Kurt Vonnegut: That's how it works.

At least Trump cannot be accused of lying - at the latest since Augusne not a mortal
sin, but a serious sin. Which may be a reason for his elecon victory. It will now be
difficult for policians and the press to deal with this man and the polical
establishment he stands for, and we can be curious to see how the public polical scene
and the newspapers will react to this. The public bustle of policians and journalists will
now have to take a new direcon. We are curious. For a cynic "to whom nothing human
is alien”, these are interesng mes, especially because – as Balthasar Gracian has put it
in his Art of Worldly Wisdom: "More is now required to deal with a single human being
in these mes than with an enre people in previous mes.”

Nevertheless, this quotaon from Donald Trump makes one think and is (if we are not
yet complete cynics) depressing. Aſter all, in the past almost all philosophers and
policians spoke out against greed and condemned it with the strongest words.

Aristotle had already cricized it in his Nicomachean Ethics as Pleonexia, the constant
urge to get more, with powerful words throughout history. Aristotle's cricism of greed,
pleonexia, the desire to have more than you ever need, is based on an understanding of
the polical which our society no longer shares, but whose opposite (and with Trump's
successful words quite obviously) even seems to be the driving force and move behind
all acons.

Aristotle discusses pleonexia in the fiſth book of his Nicomachean Ethics in relaon to
jusce. For Aristotle, jusce is the highest of all virtues, because it is essenal and
necessary for the good and orderly coexistence of the cizens of a city or country. It is
the polical virtue par excellence. Without jusce, no polical coexistence is possible for
Aristotle, since the goal (telos) of man is in the polical organizaon:

"This is why jusce is considered the most important of all virtues, and neither the
evening star nor the morning star is so wonderful. In the proverb it is said 'Every virtue is
contained in righteousness'. And it is considered most of all perfect goodness of
character, because it is the exercise of perfect goodness. But it is perfect, because the
one who possesses it can also use the virtues in relaon to another human being, and
not only for himself. [...] Therefore, the saying of Bias that the exercise of a polical
office shows what kind of person someone is, is correct. For the one who holds a
polical office is already related to the other person and is already in a community. [...]
Jusce in this sense is now not a part of goodness of character, but the whole goodness,
and injusce as opposed to it is not a only part of badness, but the whole badness.”
Greed – let us follow Aristotle – destroys jusce and thus the polical foundaon on
which a society is based, which is why for Aristotle it is not only "a part of badness, but
all badness". For this reason, he condemns in the strictest terms those who strive for
more – the pleonektes, the greedy – because they want more than they deserve (in
relaon to the other cizens), which is why they are unjust and destrucve to society:
"On the one hand, those who violate the law (paranomos) are considered unjust, and on
the other hand those, who want more than they are entled to ( pleonektes), i.e. who
have an atude of inequality. [...] Since now the unjust wants to have more, he will
have to deal with goods, not with all goods, but with those to which outer happiness
(eutychia) and misfortune (atychia) refer, thus with goods which as such are always
goods, but not in every case for every man. People ask for them in prayers and chase
aſter them. However, they should not do this, but rather they should ask that the things
that are goods in themselves are also goods for them, and then choose these.”

For Aristotle, greed – pleonexia – Is the highest form of injusce and thus the worst of
all vices, because it endangers the existence of a polical community. This is especially
true when leading polical officials are greedy and place parcular interests above the
common good. In Aristotle's concepon, the polical community of his me (the polis)
did not consist primarily in economic independence (as our understanding today
suggests) and in maximizing the profits of the individuals/instuons living in a polical
community (also these modern terms), but rather in securing a common and thus good
polical life for the cizens, which the hedonist endangers through his exaggerated
desire to have more than the others.

Even if the Romans generally dealt with moral and polical quesons more loosely than
their Greek predecessors, the (at least public) condemnaon of greed remained a basic
component of the polical discussion at that me. In this sense, Cicero (exemplary as
the best known public figure to us) already addressed the vice of greed in his work On
Dues (De officiis), in parcular in relaon to the officials important for each state.
Especially officials should not be out to enrich themselves personally, because –
following Aristotle – this leads to unjust acons, which endanger the existence of a
community:

"No vice is more repulsive than greed, especially among leading men and those who run
the state. To have the state as a source of income is not only shameful, but also criminal
and nefarious. […] But those who are at the head of the state cannot win the
benevolence of many more easily by any means than by absnence and self-control.”

Also for the Stoa and Epicureanism, as well as for the enre ancient philosophy greed
remained the basic evil par excellence, with the same argumentaon that we already
got to know from Aristotle and Cicero: Because it is unfair, puts personal interests above
the welfare of the community, and thus leads to profoundly apolical and asocial
results, which dissolves an exisng polical system: with all the resulng consequences
that are known in history (all this is not new, one reads only Thucydides, Plutarch and
Sueton for the Greek respecvely Roman anquity or Montaigne, Hobbes and
Grimmelshausen for the beginning of the modern era) and which are now announcing
themselves to us again.

Likewise, greed was of course condemned in Chrisanity, albeit less as polical
misconduct, but rather as a personal sin endangering the salvaon of the soul, which
was mostly characterized as an inordinate striving for earthly possessions and as a lack
of trust in God. Greed (avaria; cupiditas) belongs both to the catalogue of the seven
main vices and to the three temptaons. Following the biblical passage 1 Timothy 6:
"Greed is the root of all evil" greed was described as bad in itself. Moreover, on the
basis of Jacob 5 it was even condemned as a "blatant sin" which was even worse than
the deadly sins because greed promoted the exploitaon of the workers. Jacob says:
“Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on
you. Your wealth has roed, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are
corroded. Their corrosion will tesfy against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have
hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who
mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached
the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You
have faened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered
the innocent one, who was not opposing you.”
In the Middle Ages, the cricism of greed received an even deeper weighng as a
reacon to the bourgeois economy of money and goods that had developed. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the mendicant orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans were
founded (each as a reacon to changing polical and economic circumstances), whose
principles of poverty (paupertas) were completely opposed to greed. Take for example a
text wrien in the middle of the 13th century: in this text Saint Francis himself goes in
search of poverty, which is called the "foundaon of all virtues" ( fundamentum omnium
virtutum). In her speech, poverty complains about the fact that her opponent, avaria,
understood as "an inordinate desire to acquire or retain wealth", masquerades under
the names of "disncon" ( discreo) and "foresight" (providena) – which we will sll
encounter in Hobbes – and corrupts people.

Here one could sll add infinitely many examples of the me, from Thomas of Aquinas
to Dante Alighieri, who leaves the desirous in the Divine comedy with their backs up in
the dust, because they are not allowed to look at God, to Bernardine of Siena, whose
sermons Poggio Bracciolini in Florence had used as an occasion to write in 1428 with his
Dialogue On Greed (De avaria) probably the most important trease of the
Renaissance on this subject. The point is clear: since anquity greed has been
condemned unl the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance because – following these
authors – It has been dangerous for society and disintegrang for each individual.
This view of man, his goals and human coexistence in general changed for the first me
systemacally and philosophically with Thomas Hobbes, whom we can see as the
theorist of a modern society, in whose wake (though probably without knowing it)
Donald Trump sll stands with his public affirmaon of greed – with the difference, of
course, that Hobbes' books were burned in Oxford while Donald Trump was applauded
for it. Machiavelli had already hinted at a new view of the human being, the polical as
a sector in its own – In which greed plays a fundamental and acon-movang role –
and its goals in his Principe and Discorsi, but Thomas Hobbes for the first me in his
Leviathan theorecally founded and analyzed the concept of a society in which we sll
live: A property market society in which atomized and completely dissociated individuals
meet, who are only held together by overcoming their respecve self-interest – which
Hobbes no longer quesons, but (due to and in extension of his experiences during the
English Civil War) is assumed to be given factually in the nature of man – by a strong
sovereign, the only power "that can frighten them all", in order to realize a single
polical goal: The desire for peace, which (according to Hobbes) can only be realized
through the limitaon of the greed of each individual, which is presumed in human
beings, by a strong sovereign.

In order to make clear this fundamentally new view of man and the emergence of
society at Hobbes, I will only allow myself to contrast Hobbes with Rousseau: At the
beginning of the second chapter of the Social Contract, Rousseau writes: "The oldest
and only natural social enty is the family [...]". Hobbes writes in De cive [On the
cizen], summarizing, as it were, the core of his enre anthropology: "We now want to
go back to the state of nature and assume that humans, like mushrooms, would
suddenly have grown out of the earth and grown up, without being obliged to each
other.” For Hobbes there is no polical goal to be realized among mankind, no
acceptance of man as a polical being who makes his life a fulfiled and happy life only
in living together with others. For Hobbes – who here subconsciously or consciously
describes his (and also our) me in the form of the "state of nature" – there is no happy
life anymore. There is only the limitaon of greed with all available means – mind you:
against human beings and their egoisc parcular interests, which are assumed to be
eternal, their striving for the will to have more and more.

This is the first me in history that Hobbes has clearly formulated and worked out the
drive of his and our me: According to Hobbes, what drives people, what only leads
them to create "that great Leviathan through art, called community or state," is
precisely that passion that has been condemned since anquity as pleonexia, as avaria,
as greed. Man submits to an overpowering state in order to be safe from his own greed
and the greed of others and not to have to be afraid anymore: The state as
administrator of our fear, the undisturbed enrichment as its basis. But behind this is also
the feeling that society is already so fluid or fragile that the behaviour of overly greedy
people forces all others to take part in the race for power over others. This
consideraon is both terrible and overwhelming: it is that arficial "let's make man"
which Hobbes was the first to think systemacally and clearly – with great concern and
deep aversion – and which he formulated as an aempt to overcome the terrible
condions of his me; and which is now the driving force and basis of our society: "My
whole life I've been greedy, greedy, greedy. I've grabbed all the money I could get. I'm
so greedy." With greed elecons are won today, this is the way polics is made today
quite openly.

Accordingly, John Locke and Adam Smith were to turn this brutal diagnosis, which
Hobbes sll formulated with concern and deep aversion, into a posive one only a lile
later and make it socially acceptable in public: Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Senments
(1759) describes how those who pursue only their own advantage are led by an
"invisible hand", so that they "without intending it, indeed without knowing it promote
the interest of society". And in his work The Wealth of Naons he formulates the
assumpon – destrucve for all of us in his succession and not only reckless, but
inhuman – that self-interest is the "cause and source" of public prosperity.

Here we have arrived – oppressively – in our me. In a present in which greed is not
only publicly declared a virtue with which the world is governed and with which
elecons are won, but also in which all other vices condemned for centuries seem to
have become virtues.

For the seven deadly sins are well known: lust, gluony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and
pride. These sins – sll condemned in the latest Catechism of the Catholic Church –
seem to be the very qualies with which the world is currently governed and to which a
large part of the people – subconsciously or quite consciously, thus confirming Hobbes'
diagnosis – have subordinated themselves. These sins have become the motor of
modern society: "All my life I was greedy, greedy, greedy. I grabbed all the money I
could get. But now I want to be greedy for the United States. I want to collect all that
money. I will be greedy for the United States."

To close this arcle not with Donald Trump and his promise to his constuents, but with
a much older warning: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s
clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them."
This is a warning that will also have been wrien in the two Bibles on which Donald
Trump laid his hand during his inauguraon.