The Size of Government
Well, this is not really a retraction but a further exploration. In a recent exposition entitled, “The Role of Government” I reiterated a truism of common assumption:
It is settled lore among us that those who have the most prefer a minimal government, whereas those in deep need inescapably hope for an activist government of effective redress.
I am glad to retract that truism. That truism, albeit from a simpler time, reflects the “small government” notion of Thomas Jefferson, a sentiment well articulated by Henry David Thoreau, “The government is best which governs least” (Civil Disobedience, 1849).
That claim has become a favorite mantra for market ideology that wants mightily to resist government regulation, as “the government” was seen or projected as hostile to market forces. And even Bill Clinton, amid his presidency, loudly exclaimed that “The era of big government is over.” Except, of course, President Clinton did not mean that; he continued to thrive on big government. He meant only that he would shrink government welfare support for needy people, while the rest of government continued to prosper and expand.
In fact very few people would actually choose small government.
Even a Republican farmer is glad for government support of prices for his crops. Even “red states” welcome federal aid in times of emergency. And even a small town business person is glad to receive a bailout from the government from the slump caused by the Covid-19 virus. Thus “small government” is a convenient ideological mantra that is not to be taken with any seriousness because, in a variety of ways, almost everyone counts on government support and sustenance.
I was illuminated on this line of thinking by the rich work of Loic Wacquant, a sociologist in Berkeley. In his book, Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Duke University Press, 2009), and in his subsequent article, “Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity,” (Sociological Forum 25/2 [2010] 197-220), Wacquant exposes the ways in which market forces no longer oppose the government, but in fact now occupy the government and bend it to its own purposes. The result is government expansion in obedience to the needs and wants of market interests, that is, in response to those who benefit most from the expansion of such governance.
We now have “big government” in the service of such forces, thus “The Growth of the Neoliberal State.”
“Small government” is a convenient and compelling mantra that functions to conceal the sociopolitical realities of our public situation that is of crisis proportions.
Wacquant nicely identifies the “left hand” of the state as the “feminine side of Leviathan” that is marked by “spendthrift” notions in the form of public education, health, housing, welfare, and labor law that function to “offer protection and succor to those categories shorn of economic and cultural capital” (201). The “right hand,” conversely, the masculine side imposes economic discipline “via budget cuts, fiscal incentives, and economic deregulation.”
There is nothing “small” or “limited” about state of neoliberalism. We may attend particularly to the fierce expansiveness of the state in its incarceration of the poor and the economically vulnerable and disabled. With his gift for phrasing, Wacquant can observe:
The misery of American welfare and the grandeur of American prisonfare at century’s turn are the two sides of the same political coin. The generosity of the latter is in direct proportion to the stinginess of the former, and it expands to the degree that both are driven by moral behaviorism. (203).
What an eye-catcher: “The grandeur of American prisonfare”! Or in another such phrasing, Wacqaunt writes of “rolling back” the social safety net and the “rolling out” of the police-and-prison dragnet that specializes in the “development of short-term contracts, temporary jobs, and underpaid traineeships, and expansion of the latitude of employers in hiring, firing and the use of overtime” (210) (italics added).
If we were to seek an analogue in the Bible for such an expansive state, we would look to the narrative of King Solomon.
(On which see my book, Solomon: Israel’s Ironic Icon of Human Achievement). It is reported that Solomon developed a vigorous tax-collecting system (I Kings 4:7-19), that he and his royal entourage ate lavishly amid a peasant economy (I Kings 4:22-23), that he controlled the forced labor of 30,000 Israelites (I Kings 5:13), that he had access to acres and acres of gold (I Kings 6:20-22, 7:48-50), that he had a sizeable arsenal of horses and chariots (I Kings 9:15-19,10:26-29), and that he easily belonged with the global power elite (see I Kings 10:1-10).
We know, moreover, that Solomon’s regime ended in a disaster (I Kings 12:1-19). It was a regime vigorously opposed by the prophets who voiced the covenantal alternative of Israel’s tradition (see the prophet Ahijah in I Kings 12:29-39). We should not make too much of this analogue of Solomon and the neoliberal state, because Solomon lacked the mechanisms of the contemporary neoliberal enterprise.
Nonetheless the drive of anxious greed and the outcome of disastrous injustice is exactly the same in the two cases. Solomon presided over a such a state that imposed severe and uncompromising discipline on vulnerable peasants.
Wacquant concludes that the new global ruling class relies on the “close articulation of four institutional logics” (213):
Economic deregulation in order to promote “the market.”
Welfare state devolution, retraction, and recomposition along with support for the intensification of commodification. This is expressed in policies of “workfare.”
An expansive, intrusive, and proactive penal apparatus.
The cultural trope of individual responsibility, so that the super-rich can imagine they are self-made and so that the economic victims of greed can be blamed for their condition.
Clearly the size of government is now a non-issue. Indeed the neoliberal state can easily accept the claim that “big is better,” bigger impositions of workfare, bigger prison populations, and bigger ego claims by the “successful.”
The issue of “big government” or “small government” is thus rendered among us as a phony issue.
The deep and abidingly urgent issue is not the size of government but the role of government. So we are back to Psalm 72, and the plight of the poor, the needy, and the oppressed who suffer at the hands of violent systemic injustice imposed by the neoliberal state. Neoliberal ideology intends that government should serve the aims and ends of individualized wealth at the expense of the vulnerable labor market. (It is for that reason that Starbucks and Amazon go to great lengths to resist the formation of labor unions.)
The counter to this predation is not really “left hand” or “feminization,” though these may be useful images. The real issue is restorative justice:
Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue, so that you may live and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you (Deuteronomy 16:20).
The violation of this mandate of the Torah is shared in the predation of Solomon and in the predation by the neoliberal state. Thus to reiterate:
Give the king our justice, O God,
and righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor…
For he delivers the needy when they call,
the poor and those who have no helper.
He has pity on the weak and needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life;
and precious is their blood in his sight (Psalm 72:1-4, 12-14).
As I thought about the size of government in relation to the role of government, I remembered the anticipatory oracle of Isaiah to which we Christians appeal at Christmas. The prophet anticipates the coming of the “good king” (messiah) who will undertake the proper role of government. The birth announcement (or perhaps the coronation liturgy) of the new king gives the king elaborate royal titles (See my little book, Names for the Messiah):
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).
The new government will have many roles: counselor, military might, peace. And then this:
His authority shall grow continually
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this (Isaiah 9:7).
The NRSV translates, “his authority will grow.” The more familiar KJV has it:
The increase of his government shall know no end.
Talk about “big government”! The prophet anticipates that the rule of the new coming Davidic king will be expansive, whether in authority or in territory. If the oracle initially pertained to King Hezekiah, then the prospect is the recovery of northern territory from the Assyrians. Beyond territorial recovery, however, the prophet anticipates the growing governance of justice and righteousness, that is, the expansiveness of neighborly solidarity and community wellbeing.
The growth and increase of God’s governance of justice and righteousness surely constitute the substance of the initial announcement of Jesus, “The Kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). “At hand” is the rule of justice and righteousness. “At hand” is the governance that is embodied in the restorative ministry of Jesus:
The blind received their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them (Luke 7:22).
This is the burden of the new governance that Isaiah anticipated. This is the governance that is entrusted peculiarly to the church.
It is this governance for which the church advocates in the public domain. It follows that the church is all for “big government” of a certain kind. It follows that the church must join issue with the oppressive expansiveness of the neoliberal state:
To join issue with economic deregulation by serious regulation of predatory economic forces;
To join issue with workfare state requirements by insisting that the state is a tool of the community for the assurance of wellbeing for all of its members;
To join issue with an “expansive, intrusive, proactive penal apparatus” by advocacy for serious insistence upon rehabilitation that aims at the ending of incarceration of the defenseless. Not without reason did the eruption of the gospel have prisons in purview:
He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners (Isaiah 61:1; see Luke 4:18-19).
To join issue with the trope of individual responsibility by an insistence upon community solidarity through the maintenance of stable viable public institutions.
A prophetic insistence on the justice and righteousness of God exposes the phoniness and illusion of government of the powerful, for the wealthy, by the well-connected.
The covenantal-prophetic tradition always and everywhere joins issue with the seductions that feed the neoliberal state. Our textual tradition is loaded with sharp critiques of those seductions and with emancipated alternatives to those seductions.
In the gospel narratives, “Solomon” is on the lips of Jesus only twice. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus observes of the birds and flowers that “not even Solomon” had as much splendor and glory (Matthew 6:29, Luke 12:127). And in Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31, Jesus declares of his movement that “something greater than Solomon is here.” In both instances, Jesus dismisses the importance or impressiveness of Solomon:
Not even Solomon…
Something greater than Solomon…
The predatory wealth of Solomon is contrasted with the wonder of the new governance that is without anxiety. The new governance concerns a radical reordering of priorities, away from greed, wealth, power, and leverage.
In the Christian tradition, Christmas is the rebirth of the new governance. It is no wonder that the angels sang of new governance; it is no wonder that shepherds were amazed at the new governance. It is no wonder that the wisest of men knelt before the new governance. And then there is a direct line to Good Friday, because Pharaoh-Caesar-Herod will not and cannot ever easily settle amid the new governance (see Matthew 2:16-18). Christmas stirs and heats up the long-running dispute between regimes of anxious greed and the new governance.
The church is an active player in that ongoing dispute. The church does not believe “there are good people on both sides.” More than that, the church believes that the will and purpose of the God of justice and righteousness, mercy, compassion, and steadfast love will prevail. It will prevail in the face of the mighty predatory power of a different “big government.” Imagine: the church as an active party to that deep contention! There is no doubt about the matter in the great liturgical cadences of the church:
Unto us a child is born,
who bears the titles of justice and righteousness,
whose authority and governance will grow and increase…
soon and soon!
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann is surely one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is the author of over one hundred books and numerous scholarly articles. He continues to be a highly sought-after speaker.
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