Turning again to Chauvet and his textual analysis of the Eucharistic Prayer, I will outline how the Eucharist not only offers a possible form of resistance to capitalist exploitation, but is rather an actual witness to, and participation in, the divine economy of grace that restores and redeems the exploitative relationships between production and consumption. And because of this, celebrating the Lord’s Table is the contemporary means by which Jesus overturns the tables of today’s money changers.

We continue to process Geoffrey Holsclaw’s economic-theological essay: Christ and Capital: Money Changers and the Lord’s Table

(for the full theological treatment centering on the symbolic and real role of the Eucharist as a non-capitalist practice, go to the full original)

“Karatani’s main concern regarding capitalism’s dominance through the nation-state is the asymmetrical relationship between money and commodities. Commodities cannot be exchanged in capitalism without the mediation of money. Adam Smith and other economic philosophers of his time thought that commodity exchange was similar to all other exchanges, moving from one commodity to another commodity through the mediation of money. This process is represented as Commodity–Money–Commodity or C–M–C. But for Karatani, it is Karl Marx (a lesson which later Marxists overlook) who shows instead that the initiative of this movement is “seized and controlled by the possessor of money,” such that in a capitalist economy, money is always in search of more money; or rather, investors with money produce commodities in the hopes of receiving more money in return. This process is represented as Money–Commodity–Money, or M–C–M. The possessor of money has the advantage over the possessor of a commodity because those with a commodity need to sell their commodity in order to get money, whereas those with money can buy anything they want at any time. Likewise, those with labor-power commodity need to exchange their work for money in order to purchase the things they need to live, putting them in a lower position than the person who buys their labor. Therefore, while commodity exchange via money is freely entered into by mutual consent, it certainly is not equal, and it quickly leads to distortion and exploitation; the only true fraternity is between those who already have money and between those who do not have money, but never across the divide.

But this is not to say that capitalists hold all the cards. While those holding money carry an asymmetrical advantage over those without money, the return on an investment is not complete without the commodity being sold on the open market. In other words, the value of the commodity is not realized unless it is sold and transformed back into money—that is, more money, or M.

Here lies the problem for the capitalist. If a commodity is not sold on the market, then its value is not realized, and the flow of capital is arrested. This is the problem of overproduction and the need for a consumer society. In this situation, those workers who are exploited during the process of production return to a place of power as consumers in the process of circulation. And if this is the case, then “resistance—the countermovement against the exploitation—must also take place [. . .] in the domain of the circulation process, in which neither capital nor state can ever take control.” This domain consists of the boycott. Rather than a general strike during production, which the state can break in favor of capital, or a revolution against the state, general boycotts of major capitalist products during circulation are “legal and nonviolent, at the same time as being most damaging to capital.”

If a general boycott functions within the circulation process to disrupt exploitation, Karatani also advocates the organization of consumer/worker co-ops that function outside of capitalist production through the use of an alternative means of exchange. Borrowing from Michael Linton, who developed the idea of “Local Exchange Trading Systems,” or LETS, Karatani explains how these LETS would offer an alternative currency for the exchange of goods and services organized according to a sum-zero count, meant to ensure that the C–M–C process does not transform back into the M–C–M process. In this way transactions are always equal, without the possibility of profit or interest occurring in circulation, ensuring that the only debt incurred is that between the actual commodities themselves, either objects or services. This type of exchange, which Karatani names “associationism,” is similar to the “exchange of mutual aid in traditional communities and that of the capitalist commodity economy,” minus the psychological compulsion of traditional communities and the imposition of interest in capitalism. This associationism would consist of shared mutual aid without participating members feeling closed off within a traditional community, and it would be able to facilitate exchanges across time and space without requiring the asymmetrical relationships generated by money.”