Sunday, December 31, 2017

Biblical Economics As Opposed To Neo-Liberal And Lefty Economics And Why Believing That People Are Not Objects Makes All The Difference

It's too bad that we're reliant on theories instead of explicit documentation about how the books of the Bible and their ordering came to be what they are because it would be interesting to know how the people who gave us those books and that ordering thought of what they did.

In his lectures you can hear on Youtube, Walter Brueggemann points out something that I'd never noticed about the story of Joseph, the one with the coat of many colors who was betrayed by his brothers, got brought to Egypt as a slave, who rose though his ability to interpret Pharaoh's dream of the fat and lean cattle to become Pharaoh's food Czar in the famine he told Pharaoh his dream was predicting.  What Brueggemann points out is that far from Joseph being a great exemplar of Jewish morality, he administered the people, especially the Jews who had fled to Egypt during the famine, into slavery.   He points out that it didn't occur to Pharaoh or his food Czar to give food from their surplus to starving people for free, he required first their property and when they were financially ruined, that they become his slaves.

I don't think it can be an accident that after the story of Joseph ends Genesis, the very next book is the story of the Jewish slaves, their misery and their liberation from slavery by God.  And once they are in the wilderness, free from Pharoah's proto-neo-liberal economy, they are given food for nothing by God.  There are many interesting facets to the story, Brueggemann points out that right after they've had the miraculous escape from Pharaoh and his gangster army, finding freedom doesn't have the easy security of slavery* some of them want to go back to slavery.  It's not a simple, linear, Hollywood kind of story, no matter what Cecil B told you - I doubt most of the people who saw the movie ever read the book - but the contrasting parallels between the details of the Joseph narrative and the Exodus narrative that immediately follows it are too striking.  Joseph signing on with Pharaoh, Moses breaking with Pharaoh (his adopted uncle, apparently),  enslavement of the hungry through extortion through food, freeing of people and giving them food for free,  the cagey move of storing up an abundant surplus of food and the economics of selling high in time of need (we do that through stock shares and lending and the such) and telling people to not hoard more than they need for the present except for the Sabbath.  Brueggemann points out the centrality to Sabbath in the Exodus narrative as a contrast to the grinding and unreasonable production quotas of the Pharaonic security state.

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I will repeat that I didn't consider John Paul II to have been a very good Pope and I still don't.   He was a terrible pastor as were the large majority of the Bishops and Cardinals he appointed, being more interested in centralizing power and authority in the Papacy and the Vatican than he was in administering to the needs of the Catholic People.   His narrow, European context of thinking and, I suspect, his relationships with the American government when he was in Poland led him to totally misunderstand the struggle of liberation in Latin America against the equivalent Pharaonic enslavement and his scandalous treatment of The People, especially of those Central American countries in which the Reagan administration and others mounted terror campaigns to prevent anything like democracy, liberation from the most grinding poverty enforced by violence and mass murder which John Paul II and thugs like Bernard Law either tacitly or explicitly went along with supposedly to oppose communist expansion.

The many sins of John Paul II, and there were many, led me and leads me to the conclusion that his canonization as a saint without addressing those sins as part of it is a scandal in itself.

And I didn't particularly like the cult of personality that he seemed to enjoy.  That was disgusting.

That said, even John Paul II, by force of the Biblical narratives and their meaning, wrote some truly radical documents on economics, I would hold that, in the end, they are far MORE radical than Karl Marx's view of economics because even John Paul II puts people and their needs to maintain decent lives over and above all other considerations  The idea of both the humane production of wealth and its distribution, including the provision of services, the concept of both individual and communal rights and dignity AND THEIR CONSCIOUS SERVICE THROUGH ECONOMIC ACTIVITY  puts it entirely above the materialist theories of Marx which, in practice, turned out to be both impractical and which led to horror where that was tried.  Marx's pseudo-scientific materialism guaranteed that individuals would certainly not be the central focus of any Marxist applied economics and that "the masses" would be more a mass of slaves maintained for the benefit of the system - mention of the fact that those in control of the system would inevitably turn into dictators and generate an oligarchy of, eventually, inherited privilege was discretely left out of it on the theoretical level but that's something which lasted even after the pretenses of communism were given up in places like Russia, the other Soviet States and China.   The Communist-created oligarchy is, ironically but not surprisingly, its most enduring legacy.

If the economic theories of Laborem Exercens and other documents issued by the two conservative, even reactionary Popes were made law in the United States, the results would be considered intolerably radical by the free-press, large parts of academia our billionaire oligarchs and their lackeys and those who hope to become rich in the lavish corruption of our eutrophic imperial system**.   And there are many other pastoral letters by other Popes and bishops and councils of Bishops (though not so much the US Catholic Conference of Bishops since JPII) not to mention other clergy and theologians, etc. of other denominations, Jewish, Christian and perhaps as much if not more so, Muslims. 

The American left, where I wasted the larger part of my adulthood, is even more pathetically corrupted by a snobbish, elite materialism that pretends to be better than the vulgar materialism of the billionaire oligarchs while being largely its servant and, through its devotion to foreign dictators, communist and post-communist and the Marxist system that produces them, its dupe.

The total and complete failure of the left that either is in the hands of or led by or can accommodate  materialist ideologues for a half-century is proof in the laboratory of real life that a left that is materialistic will be no alternative, at all.   They won't even prevent the worst that can happen under our system, they will weaken the chances of the least bad in favor of the very worst.  The presidential election of 2017 which pitted the most investigated, most vetted example of our politics, probably the most competent and proven candidate against Trump who was known to be totally corrupt, totally incompetent and totally compromised and that American left did its best to defeat the least bad candidate we have had since 1976. 

The  hoax of the would be "Constitutionalists" widely accepted on the left that the sensible requirement of disestablishment by the government in its official acts and practices means that the left must be secular (for that you can read "atheist')  has defeated us over and over again.  The last real progress made by traditional American liberalism, the Civil Rights struggle, was empowered largely through the Churches, when it deviated from that in the late 60s, under the influence of more academically fashionable and anti-religious figures, it started to fail.  The same has been true of every other part of the left.  That's even true of the LGBT rights movement.  It was through the deep involvement of churches in my state which led it to be the first state in the country to secure marriage equality through the ballot, the most reliable means of securing rights, far more reliable than depending on courts for that.

I don't think there is any evidence that a non-religious left can ever succeed and the cases where anti-religious, alleged lefts have succeeded in gaining power, well, those results are, when not enforced through violence, temporary,  mixed in the best cases and horrific in the worst of them.  The "leftist" governments they produce are horror shows, not any liberalism a moral person would ever want to support and which no sane person would choose as their government.  The snobbery of the college credentialed "left" for which atheism is part of the admissions requirement is enough to ensure they will never be elected except where there is a big enough college or some other anomalous population.

It doesn't work, it hasn't worked, pretending it is going to suddenly - though without a miracle which atheists aren't allowed to invoke - start happening is luancy.   A left that isn't hostile to religion would at least not alienate people who are religious, which is, by and large, most people, it would have the means of asserting the rightness of equality, equal rights and the binding moral obligation to provide those. It wouldn't mistake The People for "the masses" as a natural resource to manage instead of the possessors of rights, the image of God, though not necessarily the voice of God.  A left that never gave that up in favor of pseudo-scientific scientistic materialism would have held power and persuaded far more people of its preferability.  We can be fairly confident of that because of the result of the past half-century of their domination of the official American left.

*  The claims of Thomas Huxley that emancipation only meant that slaves could now be killed or allowed to die because they weren't valuable as property is an assertion of the same thing.   As the billionaire oligarchs, our present day Pharaohs, can replace more and more workers with robotic machines, they have less of an interest in maintaining what they and their thugs in the Congress, Executive and Judiciary consider human dross, surplus people.

**  I doubt even the Pharaonic system of Egypt would have allowed in or kept a Donald Trump in place as long as "American democracy" has.   To pretend it hasn't all gone to hell or that that capacity is built into it through the Constitution is to collaborate in supporting its.  I'm not going to lie about a Constitution and Bill of Rights that produced and maintains a Donald Trump or a Mike Pence or a Paul Ryan or a Mitch McConnell or a Supreme Court that can contain the likes of Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.   Their presence at the very head of the government is all the evidence anyone needs that the Constitution should be replaced because it can lead to where we are now.

24 comments:

  1. "the cases where anti-religious, alleged lefts have succeeded in gaining power, well, those results are, when not enforced through violence, temporary, mixed in the best cases and horrific in the worst of them. The "leftist" governments they produce are horror shows"

    You're so right, Sparky. Sweden is a complete totalitarian hell hole.

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    1. At what time do you propose that Sweden was under the control of the anti-religious, alleged left? I looked up the religion of the most recent prime ministers and found that the only one I could establish was not on record as being a member of a religious denomination said he wasn't convinced that only material forces created the universe. And he'd had his children baptized in the Church of Sweden.

      Of course you know nothing about Sweden except for the assertions in the popular imagination of Americans and, maybe, Brits. Though I'm sure you'll pull your short visit when you spent so much time in Stockholm online with the Eschatots and trolling me.

      Go ahead, Simps, back up your assertion with fact. Maybe you'll be able to do that one time in your life.

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  2. So you're saying the Socialist Government of Sweden is religiously based? I'm sure that the residents of that fine country will be interested to learn that.

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    1. Until 2000 the Church of Sweden was the official religion of, the majority of the residents of Sweden are members of the Church of Sweden or some other religion.

      Do you think Socialists could have won an election in Sweden if they were officially anti-religious? I doubt it. I doubt they could in Britain, another state imagined to be atheist.

      You do realize, don't you, that you didn't support what you asserted in that first comment don't you? Actually, that's a question, I'll fix that. You didn't support your assertion after I pointed out what you would have to do to support it and you're so stupid you don't understand that.

      Oh, maybe you don't realize how boring it is to talk about your lunch and the worn out hits of the fading past at Duncan's because you're just not too smart.

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  3. Oh bite me, Sparkles. According to your (il)logic, all existing leftist governments are by definition atheist materialist.

    And BTW, speaking of Eschaton....Don't forget how we violate the privacy of our cats.

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    1. It's a good thing you never attempted to be a logician, Stups, because I've never said anything that is anywhere near implying such a thing.

      The most politically successful socialist in the history of North America was the Baptist minister, Tommy Douglas. Among other things he said was:

      We agree with the statement contained in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, written by Pope Leo XIII, that "anything which dominates the life of the community should be owned by the community." That is the basis upon which we believe there should be government ownership of monopolistic enterprises.

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  4. Remind me again: Tommy Douglas is currently toiling in what extant Leftist government?

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    1. So you've never heard of Tommy Douglas, not surprised. Ask a Canadian, one who isn't as stupid as you are.

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  5. So you’re saying he’s still alive? That’s gonna come as a shock to Kiefer Sutherland.

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    1. Here is what I said: "The most politically successful socialist in the history of North America was the Baptist minister, Tommy Douglas."

      I know you don't know how time works, Simple one, but note that word "was" it's what we call the "PAST tense" that would be as opposed to the present tense. That would mean that he lived in the past, not the present day.

      You are mentally defective. Who at Duncan's filled you in? Amazing they can't educate you on how time works and what tense means. Dense, that. you've got down pat.

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  6. And I asked what goverment Tommy Douglas was currently, repeat currently, toiling in.

    So either the point I was making by that question totally sailed over your empty noggin or you were simply and cowardly dodging the question.

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    1. Oh, dear. My answer to that assumed that you'd never heard of Tommy Douglas before, something which I assume was true because your answer was so clueless.

      There is no question that Tommy Douglas, Baptist minister was the most successful socialist in the history of North America in that he instituted universal healthcare, first in his province, then in all of Canada. The entire list of atheist socialists in the United States, together, have not been able to do anything like that. It took people like Nancy Pelosi to force the Congress and the president to adopt something that is a pale imitation of what Douglas achieved more than a half century before.

      If you want to talk about dodging, dopey, it's your primary tactic of dealing with what other people say.

      I know you don't get much of a mental workout at Duncans' Dungcan and the lack of challenge really shows when you are confronted with your stupidity.

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  7. You couldn't be more pathetically dishonest if you tried.

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    1. You couldn't be more like a pseudo-lefty Trump because you are exactly like a pseudo-lefty Trump. And no one at Duncan's notices because people like you are all his lazy, slacker style of blogging left him with.

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    2. As I never fail to enjoy pointing out, the only person here with something in common with Trump -- given that you both deny the centrality of the Jews and anti-Semitism to the Holocaust -- is little old you.

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    3. You are so stupid you didn't understand it when I said that the Holocaust, by definition, was all about the murder of at least 6 million Jews by the Nazis and the myriad times I called it an act of anti-Semitism, I've said so in answer to your making that assertion before, in things you've responded at. That would be "at" and not "to" because you are incapable of responding to things if they involve thought and more nuance than you'll find on the tattered, tawdry Eschaton comment threads.

      Of course you, like Trump will never let any refuted lie you've told go un-retold. You're like a nasty dementia patient who tells the same malicious story over and over again because your mind always did operate like a malignant Mellotron. You made a career out of it if that critique of your criticism is accurate, your blog commentary is just a continuation of that.

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  8. I have to note that at no time does the "critic" address anything of substance in the post.

    Not a surprise, really. The reference to Sweden (invoked as a talisman, not as a reality) was simply a red herring.

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    1. The only thing I'd disagree with is that I don't think he's capable of wielding a herring, more a red Paedocypris progenetica.

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  9. I don't think the word "refuted" means what you think it does.

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    1. You don't think. You bump against your prejudices, being too lazy to even rearrange them. It's similar to how Duncan writes his blog posts.

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  10. "I have to note that at no time does the "critic" address anything of substance in the post."

    There WAS no substance to the post. That's the kind of the point of the exchange.

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  11. It's always gratifying when your opponent proves your point, isn't it, RMJ.

    Simps, I don't write for simpletons.

    Far as I'm concerned, the only reasons I've even put up your first comment was a) because it showed how dumb blog atheists are, b) to see how creatively I could mock you. I like to keep in practice, though as they observed when G. K. Chesterton mopped the floor with Clarence Darrow, you don't present much of a challenge. Oh, well, Freki and the others chickened out, you're not smart enough to do that.

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  12. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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