Salvation and Godly Rule

Doctrine of the Harmony of Interests

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Doctrine of the Harmony of Interests

Genre: Speech

Track: 30

Dictation Name: RR136Q30

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy orderest all things according to thy sovereign wisdom, and dost make all things work together for good to them that love thee, to them that are the called according to thy purpose. Make us ever mindful of thy wisdom. Make us ever mindful, O Lord, that all things work not to our frustration, but to our joy and our fulfillment in thee. We thank thee, our Father, that thou art God, for thou art He who dost love us, hast given thine only begotten son to die for us that we might live, and having done so much for us, will do yet more and care for us. Our Father, we thank thee, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our scripture lesson is from Genesis 9:12-17. “And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.”

Our subject today is The Doctrine of the Harmony of Interests. This is the central doctrine of the free market economy, and has been very ably expounded by such economists as Ludwig von Mises. It is important for us to understand this doctrine because, first of all, a free market economy is impossible without this doctrine, and second, because this doctrine is impossible without a biblical faith.

Let us turn, first of all, to what von Mises has to say concerning this concept. He speaks of, “The theorem of economy of the rightly understood interests of all members of the market society, and the fact that it rests on, first, the preservation of the social division of labor, the system that multiplies the productivity of human efforts, and second, that in the market society consumers' demand ultimately directs all production activities.” What von Mises is saying in these words which sum up the economic view of the harmony of interest is that in society, all groups need one another, but no one group can in the long run flourish without the others. {?} labor instead of being in conflict, complement one another and need one another. There can be no work if there is no capital to develop and further the opportunity for work. There can be no society without a diversification. If you eliminate this diversification and the harmony of the diverse groups, you reduce society progressively to more and more a primitive level. It is a primitive society when men must do everything for themselves. It is only as people recognize that they are dependent on others and must work harmoniously with others, that diversification enters in and people live in harmony, recognizing that this diversity and this diversification, specialization is what brings about economic progress. The more progress you have, the more specialization, the more diversification you have. When you intervene to destroy that harmony of interests, you progressively reduce society to more and more a primitive level, economically. This is why, in socialist and communist economy, there is a progressive regression every year to a more primitive level. This is inescapable. The alternative to the doctrine of the harmony of interests is the conflict of interests.

Now, von Mises has commented on the idea of an irreconcilable conflict very tellingly, and he said, “Such is the almost universally accepted social philosophy of our age. It was not created by Marx, although it owes its popularity mainly to the writings of Marx and the Marxians. It is today endorsed not only by the Marxians, but no less by most of those parties who emphatically declare their anti-Marxism and pay lip service to free enterprise. It is the official social philosophy of Roman Catholicism [through very people and cyclicals] as well as of Anglo-Catholicism; it is supported by many eminent champions of the various Protestant denominations and of the Orthodox Oriental Church. It is an essential part of the teachings of Italian Fascism and of German Nazism and of all varieties of interventionist doctrines [that is welfare economics]. It was the ideology of the Sozialpolitik of the Hohenzollerns in Germany and of the French royalists aiming at the restoration of the house of Bourbon-Orleans, of the New Deal of President Roosevelt [and all that followed], and of the nationalists of Asia and Latin America. The antagonisms between these parties and factions refer to accidental issues--such as religious dogma, constitutional institutions, foreign policy--and, first of all, to the characteristic features of the social system that is to be substituted for capitalism. But they all agree in the fundamental thesis that the very existence of the capitalist system harms the vital interests of the immense majority of workers, artisans, and small farmers, and they all ask in the name of social justice for the abolition of capitalism.”

Von Mises writes, “Virtually every religious and political group in the world today espouses the theory of the conflict of theory, or the theory of class struggle. It assumes that the various elements of society, consumer and producer, worker and capitalist, farmer and city people, are all in conflict. Therefore, the state is necessary as the arbitrator in the conflict, the socialist state.”

Now, this is an economic theory, but its roots are metaphysical and religious. It is not an accident that the theory of conflict of interest is well nigh universal in the world today. It’s prevalence is due to the fact that in 1869, a book came out written by Charles Darwin on the Origin of Species. The theory of evolution is a biological statement of the conflict of interest theory. This is why the minute it was written, Karl Marx, who was a nobody up to this point, having just a handful of followers, wrote to Engels and Engels wrote back to him, “We’ve made it.” The minute it was seen as biological and therefore, scientifically true, they knew it was inevitable that everyone, including those who nominally opposed communism would pick up the conflict of interest theory.

Today, this is basic to every party. The Republicans believe it, the Democrats believe it, the American party, Hans Schmidt{?} their platform has in it the conflict of interest idea. There are socialists, some are radical socialists and some are very conservative socialists. All the churches affirm it, virtually, and it is because the ideas of Darwin have infiltrated into every circle. According to Darwin and his theory of evolution, all species are struggling, one against the other, to survive. It’s the survival of the fittest. This is the conflict of interest. It means that every species is fighting, waging war against every other species to survive, so that the whole of the order is permeated from the amoeba on up through man, with a conflict of interest. If Marx had never been born, Darwin’s theory would have created Marxism. It would have created Nazism. It would have created the New Deal and every other kind of socialist philosophy.

We had this in the ancient world, of course, in paganism, and there is was based on dialecticism, that the world was made up of two mutually exclusive warring elements; mind versus matter, ideas versus {?} reality, and so on, various forms of the dialect, and of course, in Hegel and Marx, you also had revived the ancient pagan dialecticism. So, from two sides, the biological and philosophical, the whole modern world has been saturated with the idea that there is inescapable conflict written into the nature of things; metaphysically, biologically, socially, politically, in every way. It is impossible to go through the public schools today, or to sit in churches without absorbing the idea of the conflict of interests. It saturates even those who oppose conflicts. A good deal of the John Birch philosophy and their idea of the inciters and so on, is based on the idea of the conflict of interests, that it’s an inescapable thing.

For the Bible, however, reality is very different. God is not a created being, the rest of reality is created beings. There is no necessary conflict between God and creation. The conflict which has come about in the world of created beings is moral, not metaphysical. It is a moral rebellion against God. All things were created good by God, and conflict therefore is unnatural. It is a violation of man’s being. It is a deformation of man. It is a torturing of self. Conflict is man’s moral choice. It is a moral choice which tears him apart and frustrates him, and deems him to defeat. This is why every group who believes in the conflict of interests as basic to reality as the key to politics or economics, or what have you, is doomed to defeat. It is waging war against reality, against the way God created heaven and earth.

Conflict, however, is man’s moral choice, but it is a suicidal choice. As Proverbs 8:36 says, “Ye that sinneth against me wrongs his own soul. All they that hate me love death.”

Now, the doctrine of the conflict of interests is all around us. It has saturated our everyday life. Every time we turn around, we have this idea of the conflict of interests, because our thinking has become dialectical and evolutionary, and therefore, we assume that everything is at war with everything else. To give you a very simple illustration of how we see it, there’s so much talk about the war between the sexes. In fact, there is a very bad movie out with that title, derived from {?}. Now, the basic idea of the war between the sexes is Manichean, and Manichaeism, an ancient form of paganism, dialecticism, dualism, held that reality, being divided into two hostile warring elements, male and female, represented different sides of this conflict. Now, through the centuries, there have been different interpretations of which is which. There have been times, as for example, among Mohammidans when, where very commonly, men are held to be the principle of good and women to be the principle of evil, and in a great deal of Muslim thinking, women are actually held to be the source of all evil and corruption in the world. This kind of thinking has very often infiltrated Western thought.

On the other hand, the feminists of the last century reversed the idea of the conflict and they said Men are the nasty creatures, and women are the principle of virtue, and holiness, and truth, and everything that’s good. This is why a good many of the feminists of the last century have said, “If God is good, God has to be a she.”

Now, of course, this idea of the conflict of interests is ridicules. It assumes that husband and wife are inescapably in conflict, male and female are inescapably in conflict, whereas in terms of God’s created purpose, they are in harmony, and if they are out of harmony, they are both waging war, not only against one another but against themselves. They are being suicidal when they are not in harmony, and for the believer, he is {?} on {?}. He has found his place in the universal harmony of interests, in peace with God, and therefore, he has a growing peace with himself and he establishes peace because he created a new order under God.

Now, to give you another idea of how this conflict of interests idea has infected us. Take prayer. So often, people when they pray, act as though now, here’s God up here and I want this and He doesn’t want me to have it, and I just got to nag Him and worry it out of Him, and that’s wrong, because the more we grow in grace, the more we are in harmony with God, and the minute we are saved, it means that the basic aspect of our being is in harmony with God. So we approach God in prayer with faith in that harmony, and we pray in terms of a belief in that harmony. Now, because we’re not perfectly sanctified, sometimes we’re not fully aware of what furthers that harmony, but we should pray always in terms of that harmony of interests, that God wants what is best for us, and we should pray in terms of that assurance, the harmony between ourselves and God, in Jesus Christ.

The fall of man brought about a moral conflict with God. Man came to believe, tempted by Satan, that the only way he could find blessing was to wage war against God. “Yea, hath God said?” The only way you’re going to get something is to fight God. This is the temptation of Satan. It was the philosophy of the conflict of interest. Satan propounded it. Satan believed in it, so that whenever we find the doctrine of a conflict of interest, it is {?}. It was first propounded by Satan.

Now, when God brought about judgment on the world before the flood, when He made His covenantal peace with Noah, He reaffirmed the harmony of interests. He told Noah that He sent the rainbow in the clouds to be seen by man as a reminder of the covenant of peace. “I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you, and every living creature of all flesh.” Now, this is the key to this passage. It’s the key to this {?}. God says, I have established the rainbow as a reminder of the peace that exists between me, and all living creatures from the smallest insect to man. I am not metaphysically at war. You may morally rebel against me, but I caused my rain to fall upon the just and the unjust. I have created a world in which all men can live potentially in harmony with one another and with me, if they choose to. The conflict of interests therefore, is not my doing. It is not my will for the world, so that every time you see that rainbow, you are reminded that the facts about reality is not that it is a dog eat dog world with everyone at everyone’s throat, nor every creature from the amoeba to man, struggling against the other, “If I don’t kill you, I won’t survive.” No, it’s a harmony of interests, and we will not have any kind of decent society until we get back to a belief that God has established a harmony of interests. You will have no real conservationism, for example, unless you have the Sierra Club and other conservationist groups claim to be in favor of conservation. In their insane way, they are. But they basically believe in a conflict of interests. So, if they’re for say, preserving certain species of animals, they are for preserving them at the price of man. That assumes a conflict of interest.

For example, right now, Pepperdine University has a problem in its new Malibu campus, where students, when they leave have to cross, as soon as it opens, which I believe is any day now, or has opened, they have to cross the Pacific Coast Highway to get into the opposite lane of traffic to come back to Los Angeles, or Santa Monica, or wherever they’re headed for. Now, how can you go across that traffic on a freeway? It’s next to impossible. You need stoplight there, but the conservationists say, “If you have a stoplight there, why, the cars being backed up will create fumes, and this will destroy the natural habitat of certain animals.” Well, of course, you’re going to have a bigger back-up, but there is no stoplight for them to get through. Now, the only way that Pepperdine can eliminate this problem is to have an ecological study which will cost $30,000-$50,000 to prove that they need a traffic light there, and meanwhile, one or two students may get killed. Every time someone thus far has been going across that Pacific Coast Highway traffic, it’s been a near-accident type of thing.

Now, what’s the presupposition there? Man is expendable but some sparrows that may be located near that intersection are not. The presupposition is a conflict of interest, and this is why these conservationists are properly called “ecofreaks.” They believe in a conflict of interest, and they’ve chosen animals and birds against man. This is nonsense, but whenever you affirm the conflict of interest, you’re actually saying, “Somebody’s going to be killed and I’m going to decide who’s going to be killed by opting for one or the other.” This is exactly what people are doing. It isn’t conservationism. It’s planned genocide of some sort or another. You’re going to eliminate somebody, and this is how your thinking will always be if you begin with a conflict of interest, and you cannot have any belief in a harmony of interests. It is rootless{?} unless you begin with a faith in scripture. Unless you take seriously whenever you see a rainbow what it means, that God has said there is a harmony between himself and every living creature, that he sends his rain upon the just and the unjust, and if there is any problem, it’s because man has willfully, suicidally, chosen a conflict of interest, but it’s a conflict of interest that’s taught in Sunday School today. Pick up Sunday School literature.

We saw last week that people have a false moral antithesis between the capitalists and the worker, or between this group and that group, and Sunday School literature today is saturated with that conflict of interest idea. A false antithesis, not the true antithesis.

This is why, too, today the idea of free enterprise and the free economy is faltering and failing. In the past week, I had a letter from Gary North, and he described the experience he and Sharon had at one very prominent college, where one of the other speakers was one of the best known conservative thinkers in the country, and the message was shocking, it was such a thorough sell-out, but it was no surprise. Some of us have seen this years before. Why? Because the man’s thinking has, as an underpinning, not a biblical faith, but a thoroughly modern evolutionary perspective. As a result, his belief in the free market was rootless, and as he faces pressure progressively on campuses, what happens is the basic faith, the operating premise of an evolutionary struggle of a conflict of interest comes out, and he winds up before long agreeing with his most radical critics and saying, “Well, you don’t understand what I really mean, and what I really said. There’s no difference between us.”

Not only is there a conflict of interests basic to the modern mentality, but it is a conflict of interest which enters into the family life with the assumption that not only is there a war between the sexes, but there is a war between the generations. So what {?}? They grow up with the idea that, at a certain point, there’s all-out war against their parents or they’re not going to be able to develop properly. They have to assert themselves. Warfare is the name of the game. This is why scripture is emphatic. This is the way of death. It is destructive of any group that adopts it. {?} St. Paul tells us in Romans 8:21-22 that the sovereign God is working towards the glorious liberty of all creation, that the very creatures around us, the dirt beneath our feet, all look forward to the deliverance of the sons of God, to their freedom in Christ, their recognition of a basic harmony of interests and the development of a society and a new creation in this world in terms of the harmony of interests, and its fulfillment in the world to come, when all things find their total harmony of interests in Christ.

Man who believes in the word of God, who believes that God created all things very good, and that God with Noah reestablished his covenant of peace with every living creature, will not be {?} for a socialist believing in the necessity of conflict, but will be one who lives in terms of the glorious liberties as the sons of God, recognizing that God has created him to live in harmony with the world around him, with his husband, with his wife, her husband, their children, with one another. The more people are established again in the Lord, the more their harmony will flourish.

Thus, the doctrine of the harmony of interest is limited to the marketplace, will perish because it is rootless. The doctrine must be grounded again in its source, in the sovereign, predestinating God, in order for it to flourish and for a free society to prosper. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy hast created all things and established in all things a glorious harmony, we thank thee that, in Jesus Christ, thou hast reestablished us in that harmony. Teach us, therefore, to work, and to labor, and to flourish in that faith, knowing, our God, that thou art at peace with us, and thou hast summoned us to come in faith and in confidence, knowing that it is not thy purpose to frustrate us or to mock us. Enable us, O Lord, to grow in terms of thy purpose, that we may establish that harmony in our lives, in our work, in our homes, upon the face of this earth. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] {?} conflict of interest {?} information {?}

[Rushdoony] Very perceptive question. The question was, is the dispensational point of view a belief in the conflict of interest, the idea of various dispensations and eras in the history of the world. Yes, there is a great deal of the conflict of interest idea there. First of all, in their gap theory, the dispensationalists assert that there were countless ages before the creation of Adam, in which one creation after another will {?} out because the various creatures were in total conflict with man. Now, with this on somewhat Manichean premise, it tends to regard that which is spiritual as holy, and that which is material as evil; whereas, in terms of scripture, Satan is totally spiritual and yet evil. Holiness is not limited to the spiritual. It is properly an attribute under God of both the material and the spiritual, but both in rebellion against God becomes sinful. Now, that kind of thinking undergirds a great deal of dispensationalism. Some of the basic thinkers of the dispensational school are semi-Manichean, so naturally they’re going to see various dispensations which become progressively more and more spiritual, because history is moving towards a spiritual goal, supposedly, and this is why they eliminate certain portions of scripture as belonging to a past era, and the progress of history, you see, is toward a spiritual goal rather than godly goal. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The doctrine of election is an assertion that God is totally in control, and therefore, everything words to a glorious purpose. Now, I think you mean rather the doctrine of reprobation, or reprobate. Is that what you mean?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Double election. Election to redemption and election to reprobation. Now, the doctrine of reprobation does not assert a conflict of interest. What it does say is that there is a moral refusal by some, by the eternal predestination {?} to accept God’s order. The doctrine of a conflict of interest says it is metaphysical rather than moral, that it is basic to being rather than a moral decision. Now, even in terms of the fact that some are eternally reprobate and this is what they want, this is basic to their moral nature, it still serves a purpose in that, because of this confrontation, the basic issues are refined and we see progressively where the truth lies.

Now, let me illustrate historically. Before World War 1, the United States was so far gone into the acceptance of socialism, it was just a question of time before this country would become a thoroughly Marxist type communist society. Now, that’s hard for us to believe because we tend to think that anything that was sixty and seventy years ago was very good. Naturally, we assume the past is better. That’s a vice of ours today, but the reality is the thinking in the schools, in the newspapers and all was very heavily dominated by a leftist orientation. The major editors across the country were far more to the left before World War 1 than they have been since. Now that may come as a surprise, but when you go back and see the number of out and out Marxists that, from the 1850’s to about 1914 on were major editors in major centers of this country historically. Some of you may remember the name of Arthur Brisbane. Brisbane was very, very far to the left before World War 1. In fact, his publisher, Hearst, was a socialist in those days. Now, what World War 1 did was to produce Bolshevism. When it first came out, for years I had it and now I’ve lost it in the process of moving, I think I’ve inadvertently thrown it our, was a San Francisco Examiner when the Bolsheviks took power, it was in the headlines, with the headline welcoming it. In those days, it was hard to get people opposed to it. It was only when the Bolsheviks started executing right and left that they began to shock the western world into waking up. So what’s happened by the fact of that reprobate element coming forth? Epistemologically self-consciousness. In other words, people began to awake to What is it that I really should believe? And what these people say, a conflict of interest? No, you began to have some rethinking of these basic issues.

Rombauer and von Mises had nobody listening to them before. They began to have a few people listen to them, and you began to have presuppositionalist Christian philosophy, of which school I’m a member, which we didn’t have before. So, it was like smelling salts. That’s been the work of the reprobates, to awaken people to the truth. So God has made it work together for good, as He makes all things work together for good. Romans 8:28 is perhaps the greatest single statement of the harmony of interests that you can think of. Any other questions? We have time for, yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I didn’t get that.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s a geographical question, but I think it’s well located and that isn’t the problem because it’s accessible. Students can go to a school. That’s fine, that’s no problem. When Stanford was established, it was much further out from the Bay area. It was called The Farm, because that was farming country. As a matter of fact, today, more and more schools are growing out of an urban area so that they can have a harmony and an ability to create an intellectual atmosphere that isn’t saturated with the impact of a city which will do more educating sometimes than the school can do. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now, Puritanism wasn’t perfect. There were aspects of it which I wouldn’t agree with but I think it was a very great philosophy, and it definitely did believe, on the whole, in the harmony of interest. It wasn’t altogether consistent and you can find Puritan thinkers who didn’t but it’s certainly far superior to anything we have today. What you have in the churches today, I’d say the churches really are much further down the road than schools are. They have so far departed from the truth, and it’s a greater offense from them who should be propagating it, that their advocacy of the doctrine of conflict interest really makes that of other areas of life look pale by comparison. Yes? You had a question.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It goes deeper than that. Gary Allen’s book, for example, None Dare Call it Conspiracy, assumed throughout a conflict of interest, as do most of his writings. This is why the L.A. Free Press, which is a new leftist periodical gave it a very fine review. In fact, they’re very happy with a great deal of their findings in the Birch Society of late, and The Realist, which is edited by Paul Krassner, and is one of the most far-out, new leftist, pornographic type publications in this country, one of the most radical, has come of very emphatically in favor of some of the things the Birch Society is putting out, and it quotes American Opinion increasingly. Why? Because it has found there the same philosophy it advocates; a conflict of interest. Now, this is very dangerous in that it is radically destructive of conservatism. In fact, once you have adopted it, you’re no longer a conservative. You’re a radical, and most conservatives today are no longer conservatives, although they don’t know it. They’ve bought the conflict of interest idea.

We are really running overtime, so we’ll have to terminate questions because we do have a couple of announcements. First of all, remember next Sunday the 24th, when the luncheon planned by the Chalcedon Guild, right after our morning worship, will be held at the home of Flo and Wed Hamilton at 2169 Mandeville Canyon. It’s not far away. It’s easy to get to, so you’re all invited and please plan to come. Next Sunday the 24th. Then, there are announcement sheets in the back for the Institute for Applied Christianity, which begins with a series of meetings, this Thursday night, and I shall be conducting the first seminar, and also for the economics seminar with Dr. Hans Sennholz at Knott’s Berry Farm, on October 14th, Saturday, and this will be held from 2-9 p.m., and will be a dinner meeting. Let us bow our heads now for the benediction.

And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape