The Miser

Throughout history, people’s attitudes toward possessions and money—toward saving and hoarding, as well as toward wastefulness and extravagance—have been both criticized and encouraged in various ways. These attitudes still exist in modern times, within the capitalist money economy. Yet what most distinguishes the present from the past is the sheer proliferation of such discourse to a degree incomparable with earlier eras, and the way other perspectives have faded and lost meaning under the constant overt and covert commands of the dominant ideological order: “You must consume!” “The more you consume, the happier you will be!”

We must also remember that the gradual disappearance of morality and virtue from our lives, and from our world of meaning, is the ever-present backdrop—the very stage setting—of modern times.

Let us continue our discussion on the philosophy and psychology of money with a focus on miserliness. Let us try to dig deeper and bring to light some of the meanings that miserliness carries in our own time.

“Give the good news of a painful punishment to those who hoard gold and silver and do not spend it in the way of Allah! On that Day… it will be said, ‘These are the gold and silver you hoarded; now taste the torment of what you hoarded.’” (Tawbah, 34–35)
“Those who are stingy with what Allah has bestowed upon them from His bounty, thinking it is good for them, are mistaken. No—it is bad for them. That which they were stingy with will be wrapped around their necks on the Day of Resurrection.” (Āl ʿImrān, 180)

Despite such warnings, miserliness and hoarding have, throughout history, been among the guiding and defining behaviors of many people. Among the foremost causes of the world’s unjust state are the craving to accumulate wealth and possessions and the persistent refusal to engage in infāq (charitable giving). In my view, the weakest point of theories—such as Marxism—that attribute injustice solely to sociological class structures and forms of power lies in this reductionism. They fail to see that psychology is not a structure to be consumed by sociology and politics, nor reducible to them, but rather a natural, innate foundation that also shapes them.

I believe most people would agree with me that persisting in such a condemned and harmful behavior has psychological roots. Unfortunately, however, there is far too little analysis devoted to the psychological foundations that underlie sociological phenomena. For example, apart from what Freud has said about the psychology of miserliness, there is scarcely any analysis worth mentioning.

Freud attempts to explain miserliness as the result of a problematic course of psychological development—becoming stuck in the earliest stages of childhood and behaving like a two-year-old who operates his pleasure mechanism by keeping what he has inside, holding it back for himself, rather than sharing it. He attributes miserliness primarily to an obsessive (compulsive) personality structure. Convinced that unconscious desires are more decisive in human behavior than conscious thought, and that impulses outweigh reason, Freud regards miserliness as the outcome of unfulfilled, incomplete drives from childhood being played out in adulthood under a different guise.

Because Freud’s ideas on how early investments in objects of satisfaction during childhood later shift toward money, precious metals, and property are so easily misunderstood by non-specialists, there is no need to go into their details here. This, in outline, is the essence of his view. Such a perspective is not only inadequate in explaining hoarding behavior, but also offers us no useful ground when reflecting on injustices in the world. Many have attempted to provide psychological support for Marx’s sociology or to graft Marxist elements onto psychological theory. In my opinion, all such eclectic efforts have been utterly futile and absurd. I believe that the treatment of the miser—given special attention in Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money—is far more useful. Let us see.

Miserliness is of the same lineage as greed

When the character of money as an ultimate goal exceeds the intensity that would be the natural expression of the economic culture surrounding a person, we can speak of miserliness and greed. Although not identical, these two spring from the same root, and with the rise of the modern monetary economy, they have become much more visible. For such people, the only thing they value is always to retain possession of what they have acquired…

In pre-modern eras, miserliness and greed manifested themselves in the accumulation of goods as an ultimate goal. Since agricultural products were not easily stored, land ownership was particularly important. The amount of land one possessed was seen as a source of prestige, and land itself was ascribed an almost sacred value. Land was the symbol of family unity and lineage; to sell land was considered a crime not only against one’s children but also against one’s ancestors.

In the modern monetary economy, miserliness and greed manifested themselves more in taking money as the ultimate goal. And because money is a universal medium of exchange, the lust for it reduced all other aims to mere means. Simmel puts it this way:

“Money does not content itself with being just another ultimate goal alongside wisdom and art, personal importance and power, beauty and love; to the extent that it assumes this position, it gains the power to reduce other goals to the level of means… The miser loves money as one might love a person we admire greatly simply for their existence and for being in their presence, without the relationship as an individual ever taking the form of concrete pleasure.”

He places the value of money at an unbridgeable distance within his inner world and avoids using it. Thus, money itself—seen as the potential form of being able to do anything, including exercising power and authority—becomes a source of limitless pleasure. The difference between thrift and miserliness lies precisely here: the thrifty person is not concerned with the minor amounts of what he has saved; his concern is with what he will do with that money.

“Miserliness is a form of lust for power that is never transformed into experience or pleasure.”

This connection is plainly visible in those who, having chosen in their youth to rule over humanity rather than serve it, grow miserly in old age as though they intended to take their money with them to the grave. When the pleasures of life and the allure of ideals have been lost, all that remains in the pursuit of power and authority is the use of influence and the possession of money.

When I begin to reflect on money and on hoarding without infāq (charitable giving), I can better understand why Islam—and even the Church, until the emergence of Protestantism—took such a clear and unequivocal stance against interest, usury, and unjust gain. I see that without changing our present mindset—without transforming the human being—we can never overcome the monetary economy.

Of course, it is essential not to lose touch with reality; in this worldly life, we must move forward “with our feet always planted firmly on the ground of reality.” And of course, in today’s capitalist money economy, in this consumer society, money possesses extraordinary value and power. Money is a “universal commodity”—a good whose reach spans all others—and we must act with that awareness. Yet we must never neglect to view reality through the window of our ideals and dreams—through the vision of the world we long for. Human beings are creatures of dreams and ideals, and this aspect of our nature can never be satisfied by what money provides.

Today, we have criticized Marx extensively. Let us also give him his due. We should recognize that one of the most powerful expressions of the idea that every act of accumulation and withholding—which prevents the realization of human potential—alienates us from ourselves, comes from Marx himself:

“The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theater, the ball, or the bar, the less you think, love, produce theories, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you can accumulate, and the greater will be your treasure—your capital—which neither moth nor rust can destroy. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you possess, the greater your alienated life becomes, and the greater the accumulation of your alienated existence.”
(Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844)