Our Subversive Task

The matter comes down to practicality. Most people want a way to engage that leads to observable change in the social structures around them. They want to be a part of saving the world. But some social structures are irredeemable. That is, some social structures are founded upon violence that always results in a zero- or negative-sum game. Mark Van Steenwyk, if I understand you right, believes that the state as currently constituted is one of these structures. Do you believe that the state can be restructured, redeemed, and then reformed as a vehicle for redemption? The revolution-jubilee perspective suggests that you do. However, capitalism as an economic structure, starting with the principle of private property, is often lumped in with the state as requiring complete change. That is where I part ways. I understand property as an emergent phenomenon not necessarily flowing out of violent control. Consequently, I place market exchange in the category of redemptive. Not just capable of being redeemed, but in and of itself redemptive, a dispensation of common grace. The state has as its foundation a claim to a monopoly on the use of violence. That is satanic. It cannot be redeemed. The market emerges in the absence of violence, or as a subversive act in the face of the state. That is redemptive. I am not saying that the market will redeem us, and on its own lead to jubilee. But the focus of efforts on market reform including the abolition of property will work counter to the mission of building the kingdom. I have zero hope for total reform or revolution. I don't believe that the state can be redeemed, and I don't have an illusions that we can abolish the state, like many anarcho-capitalists who focus their energies on reforms that decrease and eventually eliminate the influence of the state. Instead, I resonate with David E Fitch and his focus on being a Faithful Presence. I think that is consistent with the broad Anabaptist approach. By being faithful, by operating through solidarity with the marginalized, by abdicating our privileges, and by finding ways to cooperate with the least of these toward flourishing we subvert the violence of the state. I do advocate for reforms that reduce the influence of money on the state. I advocate against taxes, subsidies, tariffs, and other government favors. I have exercised that advocacy from the lowest position of influence to the very highest. That is my vocation. But I do so as a prophetic voice, with the hope of Ezekiel about to eat another meal cooked over dung.