critique of loon theories around banking/money creation/the federal reserve

[sihhi]

the Catholic Church's role in facilitating colonialism

It's not dissimilar to the Spanish church's role in Spanish Guinea or Spanish Morocco before and during the second republic

 

[JimW]

Confucius was fine with lending money at interest, no wonder his ideas proved so ephemeral.

 

[TruXta]

Good one Jim.

 

[sihhi]

Pickman's model would know, wasn't Catholicism from the late medieval era on also not opposed to lending at interest on the basis that the money was being deprived from someone for a while and was foregone consumption.

 

[redsquirrel]

Confucius was fine with lending money at interest, no wonder his ideas proved so ephemeral.

Don't be stupid Jim opposition to usury is universal!

 

[JimW]

Don't be stupid Jim opposition to usury is universal!

Well, to be fair, later orthodoxy was against charging excessive interest, or what is commonly described as usury these days (merchants were the lowest of the low too - propriety before profit), but no opposition to interest on loans as Phil would have us believe.

 

[frogwoman]

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.

what's the defining characteristic of the bourgeois class? and the proletarian class?

 

[J Ed]

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?

http://imgur.com/IODVfo8

I think you're right about right-wing nationalist governments often being just as bad, if not worse, on religion than state socialist governments - Malawi is the prime example that comes to mind of a right-wing black African government which treated religious minorities awfully. Then again, tactically they didn't have to worry about providing white minority governments with an excuse to intervene in their country.

As far as Spain and minorities goes, the Catholic church was massively anti-Semitic but there were very few Jews in Spain at the time, the minority of Jews that were there were mostly Ashkenazi immigrants from Northern Europe. There was a small but politically influential (relative to its size) Protestant minority that definitely benefited from the separation of church and state in the Second Republic and were almost entirely spared the violence that was meted out against the Catholic church. So, undoubtedly did women, and that probably did more to annoy Catholic reactionaries than anything else!

My point isn't that secularism is undesirable, just that the means of getting it in both these contexts was very bad tactically and in some cases morally.

That being said, I see absolutely no reason why we shouldn't separate the church and state in this country, get rid of faith schools (we should get rid of private schools while we're at it!) and ensure that churches pay taxes like other kinds of businesses. Although, I personally would want a more American-style secularism, the government shouldn't be enforcing the way in which women should or shouldn't dress. I'm a bit confused as to why parts of the left in this country have abandoned the idea that some form of secularism is desirable, in a few extreme cases I've even heard leftists accuse other leftists of racism because they think that the government shouldn't fund events for religious communities as this would mean that, for example, Eid celebrations would no longer receive government funding. I know that compared to fighting against austerity this stuff is small potatoes, but it's just a really weird position for any leftist to be at in the first place.

 

[phildwyer]

Pickman's model would know, wasn't Catholicism from the late medieval era on also not opposed to lending at interest on the basis that the money was being deprived from someone for a while and was foregone consumption.

No he wouldn't. No it wasn't.

 

[phildwyer]

That being said, I see absolutely no reason why we shouldn't separate the church and state in this country, get rid of faith schools (we should get rid of private schools while we're at it!) and ensure that churches pay taxes like other kinds of businesses. Although, I personally would want a more American-style secularism, the government shouldn't be enforcing the way in which women should or shouldn't dress. I'm a bit confused as to why parts of the left in this country have abandoned the idea that some form of secularism is desirable, in a few extreme cases I've even heard leftists accuse other leftists of racism because they think that the government shouldn't fund events for religious communities as this would mean that, for example, Eid celebrations would no longer receive government funding. I know that compared to fighting against austerity this stuff is small potatoes, but it's just a really weird position for any leftist to be at in the first place.

Yes, the separation of church and state is a basic principle of true religion. It's also an example of the eventual success of the "radical Reformation," in America.

It's also an example of an Islamic culture being more secularist than the West. Religious dress is banned for state employees in Turkey but not in the USA.

 

[frogwoman]

Agree with that, I don't really think religion has much of a place in politics tbh (or vice versa). I do follow Judaism a bit, not very closely, but I don't think what is thought of as "religious values" (even liberals religious values) should really inform politics. I think that some parts of many religions could be seen as having a revolutionary message, but equally it can be interpreted as having a very reactionary message and it is that has taken the form of most theocracies or political groups that claim to be motivated by religion.

I also think it's fucking off putting when religious leaders (even ones on the left) try to put their own political interpretations onto religious beliefs as well, or pervert the religion for racist/nationalist ends. or use the religion to try and send everyone on some sort of dubious liberal guilt trip.

 

[phildwyer]

what's the defining characteristic of the bourgeois class? and the proletarian class?

A bourgeois lives on interest; a proletarian sells his labor for wages.

You will note that, in today's West, most people do both. Therefore they experience the ideological consequences of both, contradictory those these be.

And thus we see that the contradiction between capital and labor has become internalized within the psyche, as opposed to embodied in social classes.

 

[frogwoman]

however, i think there is nothing inherently progressive about militant atheism though, just like there isn't necessarily anything progressive about any other religion. i just don't want politics and religion to mix too much. i think when the right do it is has horrific results and when the left does it it is horrible mawkish and patronising at best.

 

[phildwyer]

Agree with that, I don't really think religion has much of a place in politics tbh (or vice versa). I do follow Judaism a bit, not very closely, but I don't think what is thought of as "religious values" (even liberals religious values) should really inform politics.

I don't mind religious values informing politics. I think the separation of church and state is a fundamental religious value.

 

[frogwoman]

I don't mind religious values informing politics. I think the separation of church and state is a fundamental religious value.

not to everyone. and depending on how you read these texts it's so ambiguous that you can often read any old shit into it if you want, that's how you get some people saying the bible clearly supports gay marriage(!) and others saying it doesn't.

i don't want a theocracy, a jewish theocracy would be fucking horrific.

 

[J Ed]

I think the separation of church and state is a fundamental religious value.

In the US it's definitely a concept which had its origins in religious disagreement, you're really going to have to sell me on the idea that the separation of church and state is a 'fundamental religious value' though..

 

[phildwyer]

Well, to be fair, later orthodoxy was against charging excessive interest, or what is commonly described as usury these days (merchants were the lowest of the low too - propriety before profit), but no opposition to interest on loans as Phil would have us believe.

What are you on about? "No opposition to interest on loans?" When and where was that then?

 

[phildwyer]

In the US it's definitely a concept which had its origins in religious disagreement, you're really going to have to sell me on the idea that the separation of church and state is a 'fundamental religious value' though..

The separation of church and state wasn't (and often still isn't) a secularist idea. It was invented by religious people, as the most fundamental of their religious values.

In the modern era, the first of those people were the Left wing of the English Revolution, many of whom fled or were deported to America, where their descendents achieved the victory their forefathers had been denied.

 

[JimW]

What are you on about? "No opposition to interest on loans?" When and where was that then?

You missed the first post; within the Confucian tradition. Held generally within Chinese society in antiquity AFAIK; you get criticism of excessively high interest but nothing approaching a theology of the evils of interest.

 

[phildwyer]

Don't be stupid Jim opposition to usury is universal!

Until the seventeenth century it is.

If you know different, you can be famous.

 

[phildwyer]

You missed the first post; within the Confucian tradition. Held generally within Chinese society in antiquity AFAIK; you get criticism of excessively high interest but nothing approaching a theology of the evils of interest.

OK, I didn't see that you were being specific.

On what grounds did Confucius justify usury?

 

[JimW]

OK, I didn't see that you were being specific.

On what grounds did Confucius justify usury?

He didn't to the best of my knowledge, but nor did he have any criticism of the charging of interest, which was already prevalent in his times in the pawn shops. Just seen as part of everyday life and not something that needed comment. Will try and see if if he said anything specific I've not seen or forgotten. There were (much, millennium or so) later 'Confucian" critiques of usurious interest but even they took the charging of interest to be right and proper, just not to excess.

 

[SpineyNorman]

A bourgeois lives on interest; a proletarian sells his labor for wages.

You will note that, in today's West, most people do both. Therefore they experience the ideological consequences of both, contradictory those these be.

And thus we see that the contradiction between capital and labor has become internalized within the psyche, as opposed to embodied in social classes.

Showing your ignorance again Phil - the bourgeoisie live on profit. This may take the form of interest, it may not. Ultimately they all live on the surplus extracted from wage labour - but interest comes from a mere financial transaction - not all capitalists make their money in that way, the industrial bourgeoisie certainly don't.

 

[phildwyer]

He didn't to the best of my knowledge, but nor did he have any criticism of the charging of interest, which was already prevalent in his times in the pawn shops. Just seen as part of everyday life and not something that needed comment. Will try and see if if he said anything specific I've not seen or forgotten. There were (much, millennium or so) later 'Confucian" critiques of usurious interest but even they took the charging of interest to be right and proper, just not to excess.

"Right and proper?" Are you sure? I can believe that it was ignored, but I'd be surprised if it was justified.

Hang on, a cursory Google shows an anti-usury law in the Han dynasty, second century BC. What's all that about then? I can't believe it fails to condemn the practice in general, though it may accept it as inevitable, as other legal codes accept prostitution or drug use, and thus suggest limiting rather than prohibiting it.

But I suspect that basically the truth is that the ancient Chinese despised usury just like everyone else.

 

[phildwyer]

Showing your ignorance again Phil - the bourgeoisie live on profit. This may take the form of interest, it may not. Ultimately they all live on the surplus extracted from wage labour - but interest comes from a mere financial transaction - not all capitalists make their money in that way, the industrial bourgeoisie certainly don't.

How do they make it then? Working double time at weekends?

The truth is that they make it entirely from financial transactions: buying labor, raw materials, machinery etc. on the one hand, selling and marketing finished products on the others. These are financial transactions. The material transactions are performed by proletarians or slaves.

 

[SpineyNorman]

How do they make it then? Working double time at weekends?

I never said they earned it, but that doesn't make it interest. For someone who claims to have read Marx you don't understand him very well.

They employ wage labour productively. They start with some money (m), buy means of production and wage labour as commodities (c) then (if they're doing it right) sell the produce for more money than they started with (M1). M-C-M1. It's not interest - it's profit.

You get that, for Marx, capitalism was a mode of production, not just a mode of exchange - only your posts on here suggest that you don't understand that at all.

The capitalist doesn't pay the worker his wages until after the work is done, so how can it possibly be interest? You loon.

If someone just lends someone else some money, then gets more paid back than they started with (interest) then they're not (directly) engaged in production. This is usury.

If someone employs wage labour to work on means of production for a profit this is not usury. The two things are not the same.

Even most idiots can understand this distinction. You must be a fairly extreme brand of idiot.

 

[DotCommunist]

I think this is the point where we all start trying to escort the other man from the thread in some kind of mutual 'you've had enough mate' tussle or else.

 

[JimW]

"Right and proper?" Are you sure? I can believe that it was ignored, but I'd be surprised if it was justified.

It's Mencius who talks more about propriety 义 versus profit 利, and he has several dialogues with a king where he admonishes him for being interested in profit (it's in a very broad sense, things that benefit him/his polity here rather than monetary profit, though it was later taken as a locus classicus for discussions on profit in the narrower sense), but he also says that a good king is able to profit from his people without them finding it burdensome, i.e. seen as something the ideal ruler can do, if he does it right.

 

[phildwyer]

If someone just lends someone else some money, then gets more paid back than they started with (interest) then they're not (directly) engaged in production. This is usury.

No capitalist qua capitalist is directly engaged in production. So by your own definition, they're all usurers.

And so you are hoist by your own petard.

 

[phildwyer]

It's Mencius who talks more about propriety 义 versus profit 利, and he has several dialogues with a king where he admonishes him for being interested in profit (it's in a very broad sense, things that benefit him/his polity here rather than monetary profit, though it was later taken as a locus classicus for discussions on profit in the narrower sense), but he also says that a good king is able to profit from his people without them finding it burdensome, i.e. seen as something the ideal ruler can do, if he does it right.

And doing it right involves lending them money at interest? Seriously?

I think you also missed my edit about the Han dynasty second-century BC anti-usury law. ?Que pasa?