Repeatedly, throughout Christian history, the communism practised by the earliest Church had given radicals their inspiration. Marx, when he dismissed questions of morality and justice as epiphenomena, was veiling the true germ of his revolt against capitalism behind jargon. The revulsion that Marx so patently felt at the miseries of artisans evicted on to the streets by their landlords to starve, of children aged before their years by toiling night and day in factories, of labourers worked to death in distant colonies so that the bourgeoisie might have sugar with their tea, made a mockery of his claims to have outgrown moral judgements. As with Marx, so with Corbyn: his interpretation of the world appears fuelled by certainties that have no obvious source in his model of economics. It rises instead from profounder depths. If it offers a liberation from Christianity, then it is one that seems eerily like a recalibration of it.
Friday, September 06, 2019
The ongoing effects of Christianity
Tom Holland, writing in New Statesman:
The Catholic intellectual tradition rejects both communism, and also our form of capitalism which amounts to state supported usury. The early churches alleged practice of communism has to be looked at again. Particularly by Tom Holland who has found that the alleged roots of Islam are without foundation. Most of the examples of effective slavery that Tom Holland lists here are largely the indirect result of fractional reserve usury. And the failure to meet Henry George part way.
ReplyDeleteI don't think we ought to fear a leftist interregnum. In the past leftists were a disaster thanks to their deficit spending. Now with conservatives bleeding red ink, the right is good for nothing, and need time out to take a good long look at themselves.