Can we all agree to ignore Delbert? Ta.
critique of loon theories around banking/money creation/the federal reserve
- Thread starter SpineyNorman
- Start date
Can we all agree to ignore Delbert? Ta.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
isn't that the same thing?
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
The point made was billions of people alienated by 'secularism', then scrubbed to 'militant secularism'. All from the French Revolution onwards. It makes no sense at all. Were religious left-wing movements like the German Peasant's War or the Far Left in the English Civil War successful? No. They weren't they failed, they collapsed. The claim is maybe that the 1848 Revolution in Germany would have been successful if it had a religious thrust. But which one Protestant or Catholic?
It's only the rise of secularism and freedom for athiests that allows the interreligious disputes to die down. Some religionists claim that peace between competing Christian religious branches is due to the calmness and serenity provided by prayer etc, instead of common alliance against the 'freethinking' secularist rise.
On militant anti-clericalism during the 2nd Spanish Republic, there's none of any meaningful size until the coup and the civil war started by that side. The priests were killed as supporters of the fascists - families and children unharmed.
There was no state atheism in the Second Republic 1931-1936 - simply that state schools would no longer accept Catholic priests as teachers that would propagate against the Republic (the Catholic Church stung by having to pay tax) - that's it - it's basic secularism not atheism.
No. Proles and bourgs are social classes, capital and labor are abstract concepts.
They coincide in some historical eras, but not in others. Not in ours, for example.
you are talking shit though. A consistent stream of bollocks. Started with "the era of wage-slavery has now passed" and now we're at "the theocratic elite in Iran is in not related to the bourgeoisis in any way shape or form" and at every stage inbetween you've not let up. It's a bullshit frenzy. Just words, empty words. Usury ffs.
Yes. It took a couple of centuries, but they were--their aims were achieved. I doubt anyone will ever say that about the materialist revolutions of the twentieth century.
If you want an example, the Mexican Revolution is a good one.
The world would be a very different place had it succeeded, which it very nearly did.
Of course you know why it failed.
Which aims? The overthrow of the norman yoke? The abolition of private property? When did that happen? Was it before or after we passed through the era of wage slavery?
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
The Far Left in the Civil War as grouped by Manning - the Levellers etc did not succeed in securing the abolition of private property and carrying out production in a socialised form. Nor did the peasants institute their vision of a commonly held agricultural land. It didn't happen. Their aims were not achieved even though they were very religious indeed.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Mexican revolution Not Materialist! Russian Revolution 1917- Materialist! German Revolution 1918- : Materialist! Hungarian Revolution 1919: Materialist! Iranian Revolution 1979 Not Materialist!
Er... Long live the not materialist ones - Crush Materialism!
Er... Long live the not materialist ones - Crush Materialism!
The Levellers didn't want to abolish private property, you probably mean the Diggers.
The Levellers wanted universal male suffrage, separation of church and state, religious toleration, abolition of monarchy... aims which have been achieved throughout the world, though not in England.
and furthermore, not only did they fail but, we still (nominally) live under the constitutional settlement of 1688 established by the victors of that conflict, a mere 325 years later. That looks like a pretty comprehensive defeat to me, but I think we should drop it and let the avalanche on pseud mountain continue, see what else pops up.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
Yeah, those were separate points, when I was talking about state atheism I was referring more to countries like the USSR, Mozambique or Albania but certainly not the Spanish Second Republic. *I'm* absolutely in favour of most of the measures taken towards the separation of the church and state in the Spanish Second Republic, but they weren't limited to secular education and the elimination of tax privileges. Church properties were expropriated by the government, in many areas religious processions were banned and there were measures as unnecessarily provocative as the taxation of the ringing of church bells. Compounded with popular violent anti-clericalism this did alienate a lot of moderate Catholics. If you're interested, Mary Vincent's Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic is really good on this - it focuses on Salamanca but these anti-clerical measures certainly were not limited to Salamanca.
Staggering towards the exit now... weaving between the tables...
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
The Levellers etc ie also including the True Levellers led by Winstanley ie the Diggers, the Shakers, the Ranters, the millenarian Baptist extremists, the Quakers - all of them, their aims were not met - not achieved in the place they were fighting for it.
Haha nice Wikigrab.
The Levellers did not in any sense "include" the True Levellers, or Diggers, as anyone with the slightest knowledge of the period would know.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
If you stop posting until you've left the pub you'll make a better exit.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Anyone else persistently ringing out massive bells - say for communism, without license - would be imprisoned or otherwise repressed - as before and after that short period. There's no "right" to ring church bells without considering the community. Expropriation of property is was a result of unpaid taxation. Moderate Catholics chose to swing with the coup - their choice - they won in 1939, they have no grounds to complain of punitive anti-clericalism in the era before. Thanks for the name though.
Yes, because bell-ringing is such a vital part of Communist tradition, the jails would be overflowing.
Thomas Cromwell invented that one I believe?
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
I haven't claimed the Levellers included all the other groups - originally I posted Levellers etc
as in others of their kind on one side. No doubt, this will be challenged, whilst the point that religious movements aren't at all better at securing working-class or revolutionary aims won't be investigated.
as in others of their kind on one side. No doubt, this will be challenged, whilst the point that religious movements aren't at all better at securing working-class or revolutionary aims won't be investigated.
Yeah but you said "the far-left" in the civil war period, no fair minded person with the slightest knowledge of the peroid would characterise the Levellers as being on the far-left, the far-left implies the diggers and ranters and so forth. You've only backtracked on that afterwards, although either way you're still wrong. The Levellers were comprehensively defeated, and their political project destroyed terminally, alongside the smaller communist groups by the time William of Orange landed in the country. The powers that beat them still nominally rule us, and the system they set up is historically enduring.
The gains made since, in the mere 325 years since, such as universal suffrage, were introduced not as means by which to challenge class power and thus turn the world upside down, as the Levellers intended, but to incorporate a rising working-class into bourgeois liberal democracy before it could threaten the ruling class. The gradual way this was done, over a period of centuries, by Tories and Whigs, with the two 19th century reform acts, is one of the reasons why the British state founded by the 1688 settlement has managed to survive so successfully for so long - they actually managed to hold up the development of universal suffrage for hundreds of years so that it could safely be incorporated into the state without threatening the consitutional system in the way Levellers (or their more radical counterparts) had intended. At no point could these reforms be considered a victory for the Levellers, any more than David Cameron announcing fixed term parliaments to keep his coalition government in power is a victory for the Chartists.
OK, forget the Levellers. It's true that religious communism has never been practically successful on any large scale, though revolutionary religious liberalism has. But then neither has materialist communism.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
You ignorant twat.
Do you honestly believe tc came up with it? It's at least as auld as the roman empire, so you're more than a millennium out.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
What happened in Mozambique?
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
Post-colonial Mozambique's policy on religion is actually really interesting. I very recently did an essay on social engineering in Mozambique so this is fresh in the mind
The founder of Mozambican nationalism Eduardo Mondlane, like a lot of Mozambican nationalists, was educated in a Protestant religious school - pretty much the only decent institution for higher education for blacks in colonial Mozambique. During the early stages of the colonial war, in the areas controlled by Frelimo there was a high degree of toleration for and even support of Protestant groups, but due to the Catholic Church's role in facilitating colonialism Frelimo was hostile to Catholicism. Mozambican Muslims were generally supportive of Frelimo because they were treated so badly by Portuguese colonialism. Their attitude towards indigenous beliefs during both the colonial and post-colonial period was a little more complicated because indigenous beliefs were so tied to the indigenous leaders (regulos) that the Portuguese gave some autonomy to and Frelimo sought to undermine - this article can explain it a lot better than I can.
During the late colonial war, Frelimo began to adopt more orthodox Marxist-Leninist position on religion and moved away from collaborating with non-Catholic religious groups. The 1975 Mozambican constitution promised religious freedom, but as part of a programme of social engineering the party began turning on all religious groups, including those who had mostly been friendly to Frelimo during the liberation struggle. Protestant missionaries were banned as foreign agents, Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to concentration camps, Muslim soldiers were forced to eat pork and on returning from hajj pilgrims were imprisoned. As part of the process of villagisation, a similar process to what went on in Tanzania, Frelimo forbade indigenous religious practice (although how that was interpreted by rural Mozambicans is complicated).
Rightly or wrongly, as in the Spanish Second Republic, all these anti-religious measures pushed a lot of the Mozambican population towards a brutal right-wing opposition which pretty much defined itself in opposition to Frelimo's policies on religion.
If you're interested I recommend Christian Geffray, La Cause des armes au Mozambique: Anthropologie d'une guerre civile, Eric Morier-Genound, 'Of God and Caesar: The Relation Between Christian Churches and the State in Post-Colonial Mozambique, 1974-1981', Alex Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
OK thank you for that they're not policies I know very well put the article on mediafire and I can read it otherwise I have zero access. My feeling was that like a whole host of Third World states - you mentioned the ujamaa villages in Tanzania - FRELIMO wanted to control any hostile movement.
Surely it's been religious and nationalist movements that have inflicted the worse chauvinistic practices on their various minorities, not specifically Soviet bloc ones. I know that Zaire went back and forth between phases of repression and liberalisation over "indigenous" religious expression because it was terrified of populist secession movements, Pakistan was terrible to its minorities - Christian and Muslim offshoot minorities for decades - loyalty oaths over Korans, raiding churches etc.
I don't know Mozambique well enough to comment, but surely in the case of somewhere like Spain's Second Republic - the power of the church leadership had to be curtailed, if only to secure religious rights for other minorities for example the Separdic Jews, wasn't the Spanish Catholic church very anti-semitic at the time?
Basically we have to try and apply principles of democracy and equality to faith as much as to any other part of life. Religion certainly can't have special pleading to be exempt from taxation, from state education, from equality for minorities, from sexual freedom, from trade union rights, from licensing of its activities, from planning permission etc.
Obviously it's not the place you start in any approach, but the end point is a solid secularism, no?
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