Thomas_More
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” In the Middle East in a pre capitalist society, Christians, Jewish and Muslim lived together in harmony and peace for more than 900 years, and they practiced their own religion without any intolerances, therefore human being lived in a social production for thousands of years and the research made by Marx and Engels are correct in regard to the primitive society.”
——————–Quite so. I think the history now with regard to distinct hominids is three million years. But of course, evolution isn’t a line of distinct compartments like train carriages; it is fluid.
In Sicily under Norman rule, Catholics, Muslims and Greeks co-operated in church building, and churches there are consisting of each faith’s contributions to floors, murals, etc.
Of course, Marx was also admiring of medieval Provence, ever since the Romans considered the Garden of Europe. During the century and a half of independent Occitan rule, Moslems and Jews were protected there, even during the Crusades. So were Cathars. These pacifists were actively protected by the Occitan nobles, with their lives. The same was true of Peter’s Aragon and Alfonso’s Castile, and of Moorish Spain, where a vibrant Sephardic civilization blossomed, and where refugee Cathars found safety.” Primitive communism lasted longer than capitalism and it was replaced by a new mode of production.”
I’ll say it did! Over a MILLION years!
And i’ll also challenge Lizzie’s “power over nature” phrase, which is in line with the CONQUEST mode of thought with which the capitalists are now destroying the very planet. It’s also in line with the bourgeois hierarchical interpretation of evolution, which evolutionary scientists and cross-species ethologists have long since debunked, as did Darwin himself: even though many Marxists still espouse it.
The word knight used to be pronounced “knicket” (Terry Jones), because they would ride along, see the land, and nick it.
Lest we forget.
Likewise, the U.S. has no state church (attached here to the monarchy), yet the U.S. is riddled with Jesus mania.
To all practical purposes the head of the British capitalist state is the PM, whom the duped workers do vote for. So it’s of no consequence, as ALB rightly points out.
The U.S. is a republic, but it has more idolisers of the British royals than Britain has.And before May 1st belonged to the proletariat, it had also belonged to the serfs. It was Robin Hood Day, and marked, through centuries, the oppresseds’ hatred for their oppressors.
Forestholidays.co.uk:
” Robin Hood and Merrie May Day
Nottinghamshire has been described as the “May Day county” by local historian Frank Earp. May Day festivities have long been associated with Robin Hood folklore and the characters of Robin Hood and Maid Marion were crowned, in Tudor celebrations, as the May King and May Queen.”The fact that May Day has joined all the festival days, religious as well as labour, under the universal and bland capitalist term Bank Holiday, indicates what our masters today value.
Did he ever meet Arthur Cravan?
Written to the New Yorker in response to an article about America’s Christian nationalism. Letter not published.
Kelefa Sanneh’s “Under God” poses many interesting questions. I heard once someone exclaim that America’s Christian nationalism came about precisely because the United States does not have an established church. The fundamentalist zeal of so many Americans (which still includes, in the 21st century, the denial of Darwinian descent through modification) has few home-grown followers here in Britain, where we have a state church (serving, like the monarchy, as a badge of state with no actual power).
In the 17th century political struggle in England was expressed using biblical language, and that’s what it was – language. It is safe to say that the people of the time were largely less “religious” than those who identify as religious today. The English puritans, from whose ranks the Mayflower “pilgrims” came, were part of, and a product of, the massive social and economic revolution transforming the British Isles before, during and after the 17th century. English puritanism would continue to evolve. It would grow into 18th century deism, rationalism, and eventually 19th century socialism.
By contrast, those puritans who departed for the new world were thereby removed from the social environment which had created them and out of the revolution they had been a part of. They found themselves in a totally new environment and facing completely different conditions. The religious, for them, was divorced from its English social roots, and the nature of the American frontier reinforced the biblical in their thinking. What in England was to lead to rationalism and political radicalism, in America fossilized as Christian (protestant) fundamentalism.I wasn’t absolving the Catholic Church but simply pointing out its members are not obsessed with the end of the world, unlike those evangelical sects who talk about nothing else.
Clarendon, in his History, ridicules the evangelicals of his day for reading into the Bible events contemporary with their own time, which they still do.
I have seen books on medieval “end of time” beliefs. Of course, today’s evangelicals are the ones for all that now, and, disgustingly, many appear eager for “Armageddon”, since they have no love for life here and now on Earth. This is also true of Eastern Orthodox fanatics; but the Catholic Church today is not Armageddonist and instead more invested in charity work and aid projects.
Of course, unlike in the past, humans now have the capacity for global extermination, taking the rest of all life on Earth with them. They also, if only they would wake up to it, have the means to create a paradise on Earth; and that’s why we are socialists.
Many thanks for your kind words.
