The Pope

Another recruit for your Pope's Brass Band?http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/03/17/as-tony-benn-showed-christian-socialism-has-always-been-a-force-in-british-politics/

Perhaps they the pope is slowly regressing to the original version? As in The Passing Of Peregrinus by the comedian Lucian of Samosata in the middle of the second century . circa AD 170? From ‘The Cynic Philosophers; From Diogenes to Julian translated by Robert Dobbin, Penguin Classics 2012.Page 150, on the early Christians; “ added to which, their first law giver taught them that they were all brothers, as soon as they commit the collective crime of repudiating the Greek gods, worshiping that crucified sophist himself and living by his commandments. They despise all worldly goods…. [ie Bling and the means of production- interestingly conflated]… and consider them common property…. Even though Lucian seemed to have got about a bit in that corner of the world and seemed to have been well ‘informed’;maybe he had just read and was lifting stuff from the famous Acts 2;45 “to each according to need thing” ? There is an interesting and fairly recent thesis that early Christianity was a sort of fusion of first century anti-authoritarian Greek Cynicisim (a bit like Anarcho-Primitivism) and Judaism. However there is a bit of a gap yet to be crossed admittedly between masturbating in public as a counter cultural political act (Greek Cynics) and Roman Catholicism. According to Engels the Anti Christ was the recently deceased Nero; as in the ‘Maoist’ Revelation of Saint John, written in ‘bad Greek’ in AD 69.  http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/index.htm  Although it wasn’t; Fred was being a Teutonic bourgeois snob it was written in Koine or common ‘pidgin’ Greek.

This is precisely what James Connolly does in chapter 2 of his 1910 pamphlet  Labour, Nationality and Religion:

These people beat Gerrard Winstanley to it by over a thousand years. Mind you, the Pope is being a bit disingenous in suggesting that these passages are just about how to treat the poor rather than that the Earth and its fruits should be commonly owned.

I think the thing about the Whinstanley material is that we can’t know how much pre Whinstanley material there was and has been lost or destroyed by the ruling classes in control of preserving this kind of material or not. I seem to remember that Whinstanley’s stuff was rediscovered quite late by Bernstien was it? Karl had never heard of him but was just aware of the Diggers or Levellers. Whinstanley I think made a credible historical materialist analysis of Norman feudalism counterpoising it to the supposed previous and more ‘favourable’,  ‘Anglo-Saxon’, clan and Mir type system. In manner not dissimilar to Marx, eg;  Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson’s island bathed in light to the European middle ages shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independent man, we find everyone dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, laymen and clergy. Personal dependence here characterises the social relations of production just as much as it does the other spheres of life organised on the basis of that production. But for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in the transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in kind. Here the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, as commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows that what he expends in the service of his lord, is a definite quantity of his own personal labour power. The tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than his blessing. No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations,and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour.  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm  The utilisation of the ‘class analysis’ and ‘proto- Marxist’ material in the New testament material by Whinstanley was probably facilitated by the translation and printing of it into English by Tyndale circa 1525.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale  The bible was [one of?] the first book to be burned by the state. Having studied early Christianity in some depth it was a surprise to me how long this ‘leftist’ ideology persisted as part of the mainstream; it seems to run into late 4thcentury. In the second century Christianity was understood by its ‘pagan’ critics eg Celsum as then an almost exclusively ‘working class’, anti-authoritarian, anti state and communist movement popular with ‘women!’. My thesis is that it was a deadly and infectious fusion of Greek Cynicism [anarcho-primitivism] and Judiac Apocalypticism; two rampant ideologies in that region and period. Working out a historical materialist/economic analysis of Greek cynicism is a problem I think.    Judiac Apocalypticism is perhaps more straightforward. Judiac ideology was basically that an omniscient interfering all powerful god was on their side and all the shit they had to put up with was punishment to correct their ways and paternal tough love etc etc. After 500 years of imperialism and being invaded by every Tom Dick and Harry, banning circumcision and trashing their temples etc etc. They made a ‘historical materialist’ analysis that Satan and his ruling class helpers were in control of the ‘World’ economic system. [Karl said that Capitalism was vampire like after all.] When that was mixed in with the great big dirty, ugly and foul tempered camel like rich thing going through needles etc and blessed are the poor, was passed on to, ‘bacillus’ like, to the ‘gentile’ working class of the roman empire. It took off. I think there maybe a potentially historically ‘sociological and ideological’ parallel between the link between contemporary anti imperialism (from a ‘working class’ perspective and allied with the economically frustrated ‘middle classes etc)  and modern ‘proto-Marxism’.  And the Judiac ideological milieu out of which Christianity appeared to spring.  History repeating itself in different costumes? Modern Christianity is based on the writings of Paul who unlike the original gang of twelve was a proud member of the Roman ruling class; even in execution, decapitation being a privilege of the ruling class, and crucifixion for the workers. Paul didn’t seem to get on very well with the original proletarian gang of twelve and as the ‘Jesus never existed’ people eg Richard Carrier, say there is nothing in Paul’s material about what JC was about. [The die hard anti Christian atheists like Richard Carrier seem to accept that most of the Pauline material as valid contemporary historical documents; that was a shock to me and I think we as Marxists need to get up to speed on this kind of thing.] Paul after his ‘Road to Damascus’ revelation spent most of his time questioning other peoples  ‘Road to Damascus’ moments. There seems to have been many types of Christianity in the second century one of interest amongst many are the Carpocratians eg; “It claims that differences in class and the ownership of property are unnatural, and argues for property and women to be held in common”   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpocrates “Women to be held in common”; whatever your opinion is, is of interest as it was something that the diggers were ‘accused’ off.

Here's how John Locke, writing in 1690, begins Chapter V "Of Property" of his Second Treatise of Civil Government:

In other words, as late as 1690, political philosophers still had to refute the proposition that God gave the Earth to all humanity in common.Also, Article 38 of the 39 Articles of the Church of England (1562) declares:

So, the doctrine of common ownership put forward by the early Christian Fathers was not entirely forgotten but came up again and again and had to be refuted by the defenders of private property.