From the archives: Rowan Williams on capitalism and idolatry

To mark today’s news that Rowan Williams will be stepping down as Archbishop of Canterbury, here’s a piece he wrote for The Spectator during the financial crash of 2008:

Rowan Williams, Face it: Marx was partly right about capitalism, 24 September 2008

Readers of Anthony Trollope will remember how thoughtless and greedy young men in the Victorian professions can be lured into ruin by accepting ‘accommodation bills’ from their shifty acquaintances. They make themselves liable for the debts of others; and only too late do they discover that they are trapped in a web of financial mechanics that forces them to pay hugely inflated sums for obligations or services they have had nothing to do with. Their own individual credit-worthiness, their own circumstances, even their own personal choices are all irrelevant: the debt has acquired a life of its own, quite independent of any real transaction they are involved in.