Members need to revise their old “medieval bad, Renaissance good” prejudice.
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The book titled: How the Gods were made, clearly indicated that every religion came from a particular economic system, Primitive Christians came out of the Roman Classical slavery and the primitive christian were anti slavery, Catholicism is the negation of the primitive christian and it was the religion of Feudalism, and Protestantism was the religion of Capitalism, as well Islamism was the religion of Middle East asiatic mode of production and the Arabs world. Religion can be analyzed without a particular economic system.
We have published the book in English and it is based on the Materialist Conception of History, and a translation into the Spanish was also made and it has been published at the WSM website
Byzantine Orthodoxy was not the religion of a feudal, but of a chattel-slavery society.
As for protestantism, it is variable. Calvinists tended to be bourgeois, but Lutheranism appealed more to the German feudal princes opposing centralisation by the Catholic Emperor.
Protestantism was also chosen by the feudal magnates of parts of Hungary, such as the Nadasdys and Bathorys.
We must be careful to be aware of variables, otherwise we become like the Leninists, pushing everything into neat compartments when they really don’t fit.
The Counter Reformation Catholic Church was just as suited to capitalism as Calvinist protestantism was, and in Germany the Catholic emperor was the progressive option and Lutheranism served the reactionary feudalists.
In France the Gallican Catholic Church represented by Richelieu was the arbiter of progressive royal centralism, opposed by the reactionary feudal aristocracy.
Those are particularities, they are not generalities, every religion is tied to an economic system, the critique of religion is the critique of the economic system and viceversa
I’m not denying that, but i’m challenging the view that the Catholicism of the early modern period stood for feudalism and that protestantism of all schools stood for capitalism. I have shown that this was not the case.
Capitalism began in the Mediterranean, specifically Italy, where both bourgeoisie and nobles were Catholics. In Germany Luther became the representative of the feudal lords. Most of Europe entered capitalism as Catholic and remained so, as members of a reformed Catholic Church. Central European nobles fighting centralising monarchies embraced protestantism.
Karl Marx wrote in Capital than when the Protestant church expropriated the Catholic Church and original accumulation of capital took place and he called the original accumulation of capital of the original sin of capitalism
But this was specifically England, and was prior to the Counter-Reformation – which transformed the Catholic Church into an apt vehicle for mercantile capitalism.
I think your point would be better made in returning to an age when Catholicism did in fact represent feudalism, causing the rift between the Pope and the rest of the universal Church in 1054 (which held sway in non-feudal lands still under the old chattel slave system of Imperial Rome).
The western Church changed with western European society from that time onward; the eastern Church stayed still, like Byzantium itself.
The popes granted dispensations allowing the Lombards exemption from the usury laws and the Church was often in a position of championing – like in Liege – the rights of towns against nobles, as the towns increased in importance.
Obviously, England has a unique history here, which cannot be transposed abroad.
I think the primitive christians on its origin was a progressive movement different to others religion, it was the religion of the plebeians, the slaves and the poor of Rome similar to our modern working class movement, looking for salvation on heaven instead of freedom on the earth, and catholicism is the negation of the negation of the primitive christians. Men created religion but religion did not create man
“…it was the religion of the plebeians, the slaves and the poor of Rome similar to our modern working class movement…”
The other hypothesis is that Roman Christianity was the religion of the elite hence non-followers were called pagans..the rural peasant.
If it was solely the religion of the plebs, how did it acquire the political power to outlaw the traditional religions?
The expansion of Christianity was imposed upon the population. All the various rival Christian sects repressed.
Of the Jewish Christians such as the Ebionites, very little is known.
Karl Marx indicated that from the core of one economic system emerged a new economic system and a new dominant class. From classical slavery emerged European Feudalism. That historical process was also explained by Frederick Engels in two pamphlets, as well, the utopian socialists were christians, the communes and cooperatives were created by the Utopian christians, and the first hospitals and auspices were created by the Rosicrucians and the Essenes
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