Re: God and Religion
In a traditional Christian/Catholic view, the Temporal Power & the Spiritual power ought to be distinct. I have never used the term separation, though. In the Catholic Middle-Ages and Renaissance, they definitely were distinct. The Church could raise tax as much as the states could: the tithe. This tithe ensured the Church's independence from the states. Needless to say, the people were much less heavily taxed then than now (both secular tax and tithe combined). And with this tax the Church raised schools, hospitals, charity institutes, observatories, etc. This way, the Church established itself as a true COUNTER-POWER to the secular powers.
The distinction is however not a separation and from a truly Catholic viewpoint the Spiritual power should always get the upper hand since only the spirit and a good morality can regulate the secular conflict of interests. Matter against matter, it's always the law of the strongest. That is what we have had since the advent of capitalism caused by the French Revolution.
The French Revolution did not separate the Church from the State but it brought the local Church under state control. That's a huge lot different. They got rid of a counter-power. That's the first step towards totalitarianism. It's the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 12 1790! easy date to remember, it's my birthday!). The priests had to swear an oath to the new regime. Obviously many rejected it, more particularly in the Vendée. That's why the Republic caused one of the first genocide in history. By 1796, a new Republican regime made priests swear a new oath of "hatred to the monarchy". The religious persecution that ensued was just ruthless and barbaric. In the meantime, the French had invaded Belgium and for Belgian priests, this was something new. More particularly around Antwerp priests were contumacious. Some 500 of them were deported to the Isle of Ré and Rochefort and a few dozens to Guyanese penal camps in Sinnamary or Conamama, the most damnest places on earth. For those who've seen the film Papillon, it gives an idea of what the Guyanese camps were.
Henry VIII of England did exactly what the French Revolutionaries did. He was the temporal head of state but succeeded in getting its grip on the Spiritual power. That is what brought materialism and individualism to England, long before the rest of Europe. Think of the tragedy of the Commons, the advent of the Enclosure, denounced by saint Thomas More.
As for the Russian schismatist, you've got to Watch the beautiful film Tsar if you want to have an idea of the struggle between a Spiritual Metropolitan Philip and the Temporal ruler Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible.
Christianism and Islam are universal. Judaism clearly isn't. The Judeans betrayed the universal divine promise into a tribal/racial mascot. That's the reason for all the horrors of the Old Testament. That is why Jesus came to denounce them.
As for Bush being a theocrat, don't make me laugh, please. I'm getting stomach-ache. Is your source also the BBC like some posters above (Savile's broadcaster, if I may remind you). Bush was only concerned with bringing "democracy" and "human rights" to Iraq. Under the signifier "Christianity" he strictly brought "Human right". Paul Gottfried sumed that up nicely.
The Belgian governments in the colonial period were either Christian Democrats (secularists) or left-wing socialist (atheists). The first Belgian monarch was a Freemason from a lodge close to the Grand Orient which promotes atheism and materialism. He's the one who educated the butcher of the Congo. The main architects of the Congo Free State were Albert Thys, a Freemason and Henry Morton Stanley, a liberal Unionist who approved of the persecution of Catholic in Ireland. Catholics have nothing to do with the colonization of the Congo. They just fought against the Zanzibar slave trade, they fought against all the damage done by alcohol in the Congo and as I said in my post that probably nobody but Maarten read, they emancipated the Hutus from Tutsi tyranny, making them realised that everybody's equal before God.
Colonization was a left-wing undertaking, by liberals and by atheists. The main architect of the French colonial empire was left-winger Jules Ferry. The guy who said that the secular school system was meant to "take God out of the heart of the people" and he's also the guy who claimed that "Superior races have a right towards the inferior races" (!!!). I don't know if you realise what that means. In Britain, the main architect of the Empire is Alfred Milner, he and his boys were predominantly liberal Unionists (see Caroll Quigley's "The Anglo-American Establishment").
It's about time the political Left be held to account for their Colonial past. As long as present-day Leftists don't admit that, they won't be credible.
In a traditional Christian/Catholic view, the Temporal Power & the Spiritual power ought to be distinct. I have never used the term separation, though. In the Catholic Middle-Ages and Renaissance, they definitely were distinct. The Church could raise tax as much as the states could: the tithe. This tithe ensured the Church's independence from the states. Needless to say, the people were much less heavily taxed then than now (both secular tax and tithe combined). And with this tax the Church raised schools, hospitals, charity institutes, observatories, etc. This way, the Church established itself as a true COUNTER-POWER to the secular powers.
The distinction is however not a separation and from a truly Catholic viewpoint the Spiritual power should always get the upper hand since only the spirit and a good morality can regulate the secular conflict of interests. Matter against matter, it's always the law of the strongest. That is what we have had since the advent of capitalism caused by the French Revolution.
The French Revolution did not separate the Church from the State but it brought the local Church under state control. That's a huge lot different. They got rid of a counter-power. That's the first step towards totalitarianism. It's the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 12 1790! easy date to remember, it's my birthday!). The priests had to swear an oath to the new regime. Obviously many rejected it, more particularly in the Vendée. That's why the Republic caused one of the first genocide in history. By 1796, a new Republican regime made priests swear a new oath of "hatred to the monarchy". The religious persecution that ensued was just ruthless and barbaric. In the meantime, the French had invaded Belgium and for Belgian priests, this was something new. More particularly around Antwerp priests were contumacious. Some 500 of them were deported to the Isle of Ré and Rochefort and a few dozens to Guyanese penal camps in Sinnamary or Conamama, the most damnest places on earth. For those who've seen the film Papillon, it gives an idea of what the Guyanese camps were.
Henry VIII of England did exactly what the French Revolutionaries did. He was the temporal head of state but succeeded in getting its grip on the Spiritual power. That is what brought materialism and individualism to England, long before the rest of Europe. Think of the tragedy of the Commons, the advent of the Enclosure, denounced by saint Thomas More.
As for the Russian schismatist, you've got to Watch the beautiful film Tsar if you want to have an idea of the struggle between a Spiritual Metropolitan Philip and the Temporal ruler Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible.
Christianism and Islam are universal. Judaism clearly isn't. The Judeans betrayed the universal divine promise into a tribal/racial mascot. That's the reason for all the horrors of the Old Testament. That is why Jesus came to denounce them.
As for Bush being a theocrat, don't make me laugh, please. I'm getting stomach-ache. Is your source also the BBC like some posters above (Savile's broadcaster, if I may remind you). Bush was only concerned with bringing "democracy" and "human rights" to Iraq. Under the signifier "Christianity" he strictly brought "Human right". Paul Gottfried sumed that up nicely.
The Belgian governments in the colonial period were either Christian Democrats (secularists) or left-wing socialist (atheists). The first Belgian monarch was a Freemason from a lodge close to the Grand Orient which promotes atheism and materialism. He's the one who educated the butcher of the Congo. The main architects of the Congo Free State were Albert Thys, a Freemason and Henry Morton Stanley, a liberal Unionist who approved of the persecution of Catholic in Ireland. Catholics have nothing to do with the colonization of the Congo. They just fought against the Zanzibar slave trade, they fought against all the damage done by alcohol in the Congo and as I said in my post that probably nobody but Maarten read, they emancipated the Hutus from Tutsi tyranny, making them realised that everybody's equal before God.
Colonization was a left-wing undertaking, by liberals and by atheists. The main architect of the French colonial empire was left-winger Jules Ferry. The guy who said that the secular school system was meant to "take God out of the heart of the people" and he's also the guy who claimed that "Superior races have a right towards the inferior races" (!!!). I don't know if you realise what that means. In Britain, the main architect of the Empire is Alfred Milner, he and his boys were predominantly liberal Unionists (see Caroll Quigley's "The Anglo-American Establishment").
It's about time the political Left be held to account for their Colonial past. As long as present-day Leftists don't admit that, they won't be credible.
I'm not really sure whether colonialisation is left-wing. The main driving force behind it was capitalism, hence the slave trade. Capitalism is a right-wing ideology. And so, for me, it is a predominantly right-wing idea. Especially considering the 'left' as we know it know didn't really exist en masse until mid-1800's with Marx's Das Kapital, published 1867.
Just should mention that just because someone is atheist doesn't mean they are left-wing. Atheists exist across the spectrum, which anyway is make of a cross, so it is unfair and wrong to pinpoint something which was really pre-political positions as 'left-wing' or 'right-wing'.
Furthermore, colonialisation in UK started under Elizabeth I, living in a God-fearing society. One of the aims of British colonists at least was imposing our religion upon people.
Just should mention that just because someone is atheist doesn't mean they are left-wing. Atheists exist across the spectrum, which anyway is make of a cross, so it is unfair and wrong to pinpoint something which was really pre-political positions as 'left-wing' or 'right-wing'.
Furthermore, colonialisation in UK started under Elizabeth I, living in a God-fearing society. One of the aims of British colonists at least was imposing our religion upon people.
- Apr 2, 2009
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Re: God and Religion
This is anti-historical drivel. The moment Christianity made its pact with the Imperial administration to institute a Christian regime the Church and temporal affairs went hand in hand. Steeped in crime, however, as correctly percieved by Julian (361-63), called the Apostate because he abandoned the faith altogether, it had not lived up to what it preached. While it is true that after the introduction of Christianity as state religion at Rome in the fourth century, the functions of princeps and pontifex, which had been united in the person of the emperor, once more were separated as during the Republic, even so the deal was done. The Church embraced the state. Once Rome became Urbs ecclesiae in fact it initiated open hostility toward Constantinople, the Urbs regiae. The supreme state and church would thus eventually be integrated within the papal 'presidency' of the High Middle Ages and Renaissance, which ended in the fatal catastrophe of Luther's revolt (and the Sack of Rome).
In fact as Galassias wrote to emperor Anastasius about the two powers, that of priests and that of kings, it was to ensure him that kings must submit to the decisions of priests. During the Middle Ages, however, when the holy wish proved too difficult to enforce, a powerful secret weapon was introduced. This was the forged Donation of Constantine of circa 800, by which the religious authorities attempted to establish, once and for all, their superiority over the secular powers. It stated that Emperor Constantine had ceded secular power to Pope Sylvester as a reward for curing him of leprosy. The need for forgery (as later Lorenzo Valla's brilliant Declamatio irrefutably demonstrated) points to the vulnerabilty of the papacy operating in secular matters in a chaotic Italy and Europe. On the other hand, it exemplifies a new papal profile, which has been termed papal-presidentialism. This profile eventually led to the foundation of the Papal States, and led to the bitter investiture struggle which divided Italy in the High Middle ages, the traces of which could be felt down to the Sack of Rome in 1527. Furthermore, the importance of the 'Donation' for both papal profile and policy is made clear by the famous cycle in the Cappella di San Silvestro, illustrating the Donation of Constantine. It was commissioned by Stefono Conti, vicarius Urbis under Innocent IV, cardinal-priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere, in 1246. At the time Frederick II, stupor mundi according to admirers, Antichrist according to the curia, had invaded the Papal States and approached the Aurelian walls in his conflict with Innocent IV. The pope had consequently fled to the protection of the French King, Saint Louis, where, safe and subsidised in Lyon, he convoked a general council to depose Frederick. His deputy in Rome, Conti, took up residence in the fortified Quattro Coronati, which was safer than the vulnerable Lateran.
The frescoes in the chapel date from the period of negotiations between agents of Frederick and the curia, and clearly refer to the positions of the opponents as envisaged by the papal party. The imperial legates were thus confronted by a forceful illustration of the status of the absent pope, where images imprint on the viewer the 'aetion' of papal supremacy.
By a good morality you must mean the Church and papacy in the age of Adelpapstum, the Albigensian Crusade, or the burning of the heretic-philosopher Giordano Bruno?
Substitute for God a divinized humanity and you have the myth that lies behind radical secular politics form the Jacobins forward. Unlike the ancient Greek and Roman humanists like Epicurious and his disciple Lucretius, who rejected the religions of their times and who sought tranquility through withdrawing from this world, the goal of Enlightenment philosphers was to change it. Paradoxically they adopted a Christian framework. The world-transforming hopes of modern humanism with its promise that salvation is open to all, thus derives from Christianity. Where the reformers of the Catholic Enlightenment had tried to extirpate the excesses of popular religion, the nineteenth-century church went with the grain, promoting a 'cleaned-up' form of popular religion where they were in charge. In France this proved widely but not universally successful. The same was true in Spain. The great wave of modem Marian apparitions perfectly illustrates this partial success story. The church controlled the cults surrounding a few selected sites, although even here there were unsatisfactory seers and other problems. But there have been many hundreds of alleged apparitions since the French Revolution, triggered by war or postwar uncertainty, political persecution, economic distress or social and familial dislocation.
The point of this is that the Church turned back to superstition, in the face of modernity. Like the emergence of famous stigmatists, such as the Belgian Louise Lateau and Theresa Neumann of Konnersreuth (Bavaria), these dramatic cases electrified popular sentiment in ways that often proved uncontrollable and difficult to square with recognized cults and devotions. While some Marian sites (Lourdes, Fátima, Medjugorje) have since become big business, which of course have triggered a reversal in terms in the policy. The rectionary Pius IX then lead the Church in a concentrated, though futile, effort against pluralism, democracy and positivism.
Putin and His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow are fixing that.
And your point is? You parroting David Duke again?
In referrence to the 9-11 attacks and the subsequent US bombings of Afganistan and Iraq, the missing element here is the pivotal politcal role of millennialist religion. The attacks activated beliefs widely current in sections of the American population, which the Bush administration was able to mobilze in support of its agenda. This was not simply cynical manipulation, for there seems little doubt that Bush shared these beliefs. The wordview of the Christian right embodies a view of history that is framed in eschatological concepts, according to which American power can be used to rid the world of evil. No doubt the Bush administration committed many avoidable mistakes; but its central folly had been to impliment a faith-based foreign policy and to frame the US's historical role in theological terms.
This was already addressed by another poster.
Echoes said:
This is anti-historical drivel. The moment Christianity made its pact with the Imperial administration to institute a Christian regime the Church and temporal affairs went hand in hand. Steeped in crime, however, as correctly percieved by Julian (361-63), called the Apostate because he abandoned the faith altogether, it had not lived up to what it preached. While it is true that after the introduction of Christianity as state religion at Rome in the fourth century, the functions of princeps and pontifex, which had been united in the person of the emperor, once more were separated as during the Republic, even so the deal was done. The Church embraced the state. Once Rome became Urbs ecclesiae in fact it initiated open hostility toward Constantinople, the Urbs regiae. The supreme state and church would thus eventually be integrated within the papal 'presidency' of the High Middle Ages and Renaissance, which ended in the fatal catastrophe of Luther's revolt (and the Sack of Rome).
In fact as Galassias wrote to emperor Anastasius about the two powers, that of priests and that of kings, it was to ensure him that kings must submit to the decisions of priests. During the Middle Ages, however, when the holy wish proved too difficult to enforce, a powerful secret weapon was introduced. This was the forged Donation of Constantine of circa 800, by which the religious authorities attempted to establish, once and for all, their superiority over the secular powers. It stated that Emperor Constantine had ceded secular power to Pope Sylvester as a reward for curing him of leprosy. The need for forgery (as later Lorenzo Valla's brilliant Declamatio irrefutably demonstrated) points to the vulnerabilty of the papacy operating in secular matters in a chaotic Italy and Europe. On the other hand, it exemplifies a new papal profile, which has been termed papal-presidentialism. This profile eventually led to the foundation of the Papal States, and led to the bitter investiture struggle which divided Italy in the High Middle ages, the traces of which could be felt down to the Sack of Rome in 1527. Furthermore, the importance of the 'Donation' for both papal profile and policy is made clear by the famous cycle in the Cappella di San Silvestro, illustrating the Donation of Constantine. It was commissioned by Stefono Conti, vicarius Urbis under Innocent IV, cardinal-priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere, in 1246. At the time Frederick II, stupor mundi according to admirers, Antichrist according to the curia, had invaded the Papal States and approached the Aurelian walls in his conflict with Innocent IV. The pope had consequently fled to the protection of the French King, Saint Louis, where, safe and subsidised in Lyon, he convoked a general council to depose Frederick. His deputy in Rome, Conti, took up residence in the fortified Quattro Coronati, which was safer than the vulnerable Lateran.
The frescoes in the chapel date from the period of negotiations between agents of Frederick and the curia, and clearly refer to the positions of the opponents as envisaged by the papal party. The imperial legates were thus confronted by a forceful illustration of the status of the absent pope, where images imprint on the viewer the 'aetion' of papal supremacy.
By a good morality you must mean the Church and papacy in the age of Adelpapstum, the Albigensian Crusade, or the burning of the heretic-philosopher Giordano Bruno?
Substitute for God a divinized humanity and you have the myth that lies behind radical secular politics form the Jacobins forward. Unlike the ancient Greek and Roman humanists like Epicurious and his disciple Lucretius, who rejected the religions of their times and who sought tranquility through withdrawing from this world, the goal of Enlightenment philosphers was to change it. Paradoxically they adopted a Christian framework. The world-transforming hopes of modern humanism with its promise that salvation is open to all, thus derives from Christianity. Where the reformers of the Catholic Enlightenment had tried to extirpate the excesses of popular religion, the nineteenth-century church went with the grain, promoting a 'cleaned-up' form of popular religion where they were in charge. In France this proved widely but not universally successful. The same was true in Spain. The great wave of modem Marian apparitions perfectly illustrates this partial success story. The church controlled the cults surrounding a few selected sites, although even here there were unsatisfactory seers and other problems. But there have been many hundreds of alleged apparitions since the French Revolution, triggered by war or postwar uncertainty, political persecution, economic distress or social and familial dislocation.
The point of this is that the Church turned back to superstition, in the face of modernity. Like the emergence of famous stigmatists, such as the Belgian Louise Lateau and Theresa Neumann of Konnersreuth (Bavaria), these dramatic cases electrified popular sentiment in ways that often proved uncontrollable and difficult to square with recognized cults and devotions. While some Marian sites (Lourdes, Fátima, Medjugorje) have since become big business, which of course have triggered a reversal in terms in the policy. The rectionary Pius IX then lead the Church in a concentrated, though futile, effort against pluralism, democracy and positivism.
Putin and His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow are fixing that.
And your point is? You parroting David Duke again?
In referrence to the 9-11 attacks and the subsequent US bombings of Afganistan and Iraq, the missing element here is the pivotal politcal role of millennialist religion. The attacks activated beliefs widely current in sections of the American population, which the Bush administration was able to mobilze in support of its agenda. This was not simply cynical manipulation, for there seems little doubt that Bush shared these beliefs. The wordview of the Christian right embodies a view of history that is framed in eschatological concepts, according to which American power can be used to rid the world of evil. No doubt the Bush administration committed many avoidable mistakes; but its central folly had been to impliment a faith-based foreign policy and to frame the US's historical role in theological terms.
This was already addressed by another poster.
Re:
It's essential to understand that this is an error of an analysis. Jean-Claude Michéa is a French communist philosopher (his father Abel is a sport journo for L'Humanité who wrote a lot about cycling) and all of his work is based on the distinction between "socialism" and "Left". His main influence is Christopher Lasch.
Capitalism's ideology is definitely left-wing. It all started during the French Revolution when the supporters of the King seated on the right end of the Parliament and the supporters of the Republic on the left end. Left-wingers were the representative of the rising merchant bourgeois class as opposed to the old aristocratic landowning class. These "New Rich" wished to take the control levers out of the landowning class and their new system was definitely capitalism. Hence their advocacy of enclosure, the ignominious Le Chapelier law, child labour, the slave trade, etc. The Enlightenment were considered left-wingers in their time and they advocated for libertarianism. A branch of the French Enlightenment was "physiocracy" which had a major influence on Adam Smith and the Enlightened Despotism. François Quesnay is the most famous representative of that movement, the first to attempt free grain trade in France.
When the first labour movement were started in the 19th century, none of them considered themselves left-wingers. Even if I'm not a Marxistby any means, I have to acknowledge the fact that neither Marx nor Engels ever considered themselves left-wingers because the left-wingers were liberals. Besides they took a lot of ideas from reactionary monarchists such as Thomas Carlyle or Honoré de Balzac. It's well known that young Marx claimed that the French Revolution destroyed the old regime's harmonies.
With regards to Queen Elizabeth I I just need to refer to my comment on the Anglican Revolution. Her father Henry VIII took control of the local Church, which rids him and his successors of a powerful counter-power (subordination of the spiritual power to the temporal power while the Catholic ideal is the opposite). If the "Virgin Queen" feared God, why did she colonise? If you fear God, you believe that the material wealth in this life is futility, so you don't need to colonise and exploit the natural ressources overseas. As a matter of fact, there were a lot of weird occult beliefs surrounding Queen Liz I, people like John Dee (the coiner of the 007 sign) and Sir Philip Sidney, so they were definitely materialistic. These were the people that Giordano Bruno frequented, which led to his rightful and logical condemnation. He collaborated with the Catholics' main enemies, too bad for him. Should I remind you of the barbarious massacres of the Irish during the Liz's reign (the Nine Year War). Wasn't William Edward Hartpole Lecky right when he referred to "wars of extermination" in which even women and children were killed?
Brullnux said:
It's essential to understand that this is an error of an analysis. Jean-Claude Michéa is a French communist philosopher (his father Abel is a sport journo for L'Humanité who wrote a lot about cycling) and all of his work is based on the distinction between "socialism" and "Left". His main influence is Christopher Lasch.
Capitalism's ideology is definitely left-wing. It all started during the French Revolution when the supporters of the King seated on the right end of the Parliament and the supporters of the Republic on the left end. Left-wingers were the representative of the rising merchant bourgeois class as opposed to the old aristocratic landowning class. These "New Rich" wished to take the control levers out of the landowning class and their new system was definitely capitalism. Hence their advocacy of enclosure, the ignominious Le Chapelier law, child labour, the slave trade, etc. The Enlightenment were considered left-wingers in their time and they advocated for libertarianism. A branch of the French Enlightenment was "physiocracy" which had a major influence on Adam Smith and the Enlightened Despotism. François Quesnay is the most famous representative of that movement, the first to attempt free grain trade in France.
When the first labour movement were started in the 19th century, none of them considered themselves left-wingers. Even if I'm not a Marxistby any means, I have to acknowledge the fact that neither Marx nor Engels ever considered themselves left-wingers because the left-wingers were liberals. Besides they took a lot of ideas from reactionary monarchists such as Thomas Carlyle or Honoré de Balzac. It's well known that young Marx claimed that the French Revolution destroyed the old regime's harmonies.
With regards to Queen Elizabeth I I just need to refer to my comment on the Anglican Revolution. Her father Henry VIII took control of the local Church, which rids him and his successors of a powerful counter-power (subordination of the spiritual power to the temporal power while the Catholic ideal is the opposite). If the "Virgin Queen" feared God, why did she colonise? If you fear God, you believe that the material wealth in this life is futility, so you don't need to colonise and exploit the natural ressources overseas. As a matter of fact, there were a lot of weird occult beliefs surrounding Queen Liz I, people like John Dee (the coiner of the 007 sign) and Sir Philip Sidney, so they were definitely materialistic. These were the people that Giordano Bruno frequented, which led to his rightful and logical condemnation. He collaborated with the Catholics' main enemies, too bad for him. Should I remind you of the barbarious massacres of the Irish during the Liz's reign (the Nine Year War). Wasn't William Edward Hartpole Lecky right when he referred to "wars of extermination" in which even women and children were killed?
I have to admit I've never heard capitalism being described as left-wing. For this one I'm going to go with the countless economists, political analysts through the years that agree with what I said and not change my opinion in the face of a couple of people.
- May 14, 2010
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Re: Re:
I love reading what you write, but I think you are wrong to counterpose Marx with the merchant bourgeois class, in the way you do, and the Enlightenment.
When the merchant bourgeois class overthrew the aristocracy and established for itself a liberal order based on Enlightenment ideas of liberté, égalité, fraternité, Marx saw this as a progressive, revolutionary development. The point Marx made, I think, is that this embodiment of Enlightenment concepts was restricted to the bourgeois class; the great mass of humans did not enjoy this liberty that the newly triumphant bourgeois class had created for itself. The logical outcome of the Enlightenment, Marx said, is to extend liberté, égalité, fraternité to everyone. And the only way to do that is for the great mass of people exploited by the bourgeois class to take power into its own hands and out of the hands of the bourgeois class, just as that class had in its turn.
So while it's true that the bourgeois republicans were Enlightenment-based and left wing and progressive, Marx and Engels were even more so.
Echoes said:
I love reading what you write, but I think you are wrong to counterpose Marx with the merchant bourgeois class, in the way you do, and the Enlightenment.
When the merchant bourgeois class overthrew the aristocracy and established for itself a liberal order based on Enlightenment ideas of liberté, égalité, fraternité, Marx saw this as a progressive, revolutionary development. The point Marx made, I think, is that this embodiment of Enlightenment concepts was restricted to the bourgeois class; the great mass of humans did not enjoy this liberty that the newly triumphant bourgeois class had created for itself. The logical outcome of the Enlightenment, Marx said, is to extend liberté, égalité, fraternité to everyone. And the only way to do that is for the great mass of people exploited by the bourgeois class to take power into its own hands and out of the hands of the bourgeois class, just as that class had in its turn.
So while it's true that the bourgeois republicans were Enlightenment-based and left wing and progressive, Marx and Engels were even more so.
- Apr 2, 2009
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Utter chicanery in the application of the conservativism of the ancien regime era to the matrix of right-left identities in the post-proletariat struggle against the capitalist elite of today. As if capitalism ossified in the late XVIII century and with it society. Once there were also Guelfs and Ghibellines.
And the colonial enterprises were backed by monarchies.
And the colonial enterprises were backed by monarchies.
- May 14, 2010
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Re:
Well, I mean, in a sense he's right, the bourgeois republicans did sit to the left of the aristocracy. However, you are right, too, in that the aristocracy is gone, thanks to the bourgeoisie, which now sits where the aristocracy once did and with something left of it.
You could, however, see liberalism as still left wing insofar as it finds its basis in reason, in liberty, equality, fraternity, and historically concomitant democracy. If we counterpose it to its own excrescence, which is anti-Enlightenment, authoritarian, and totalitarian, it is definitely left-wing. In the contest between the former and the latter, liberalism has so far proved, ultimately, to be the winner. Whether we can count on that continuing remains to be seen.
I'm not sure quite how Echoes hopes to get from here back to a world that consists of an aristocracy living under the greater power of the one true church. Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal tried, it seems to me, to create that very thing, but I'm quite sure I wouldn't have enjoyed living there, for however short my life would have been.
rhubroma said:
Well, I mean, in a sense he's right, the bourgeois republicans did sit to the left of the aristocracy. However, you are right, too, in that the aristocracy is gone, thanks to the bourgeoisie, which now sits where the aristocracy once did and with something left of it.
You could, however, see liberalism as still left wing insofar as it finds its basis in reason, in liberty, equality, fraternity, and historically concomitant democracy. If we counterpose it to its own excrescence, which is anti-Enlightenment, authoritarian, and totalitarian, it is definitely left-wing. In the contest between the former and the latter, liberalism has so far proved, ultimately, to be the winner. Whether we can count on that continuing remains to be seen.
I'm not sure quite how Echoes hopes to get from here back to a world that consists of an aristocracy living under the greater power of the one true church. Franco in Spain and Salazar in Portugal tried, it seems to me, to create that very thing, but I'm quite sure I wouldn't have enjoyed living there, for however short my life would have been.
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Re: Re:
The left wing, as it has come to be categorized, developed out of the industrial age, not prior to it. In the war and post-war eras it was characterized by anti-fascism, then social progressivism.
Today's age of homo economicus has tended to obscure the political and social aspects of what the XIX and XX century left stood for. Liberalism, by contrast, is the ideology of profit as the supreme right in a global arena, with little loyalty to domestic production and in strong opposition to employee solidarity and the bargaining leverage this presupposes. Am I right so far?
All you need to know about Echoes viewpoint is his opinion on Bruno expressed above. It reminds me of a Europe that truly has reached the age of senilty. Think about this when just three generations ago Catholic Europe was basically a society of illiterate peasants, miners and factory workers which just exited from 20 years of fascism, with the Church at home, a puny and parochial bourgeois. In some places like Italy there was no revolution other than the Risorgimento, made by a courageous few and an able, though politicking, Cavour. They were good, but ignorant workers, poor, uneducated and submissive to the clergy and their masters.
Some of this only aparently became obsolete in the age of "wellbeing," especially after the post-ideological, monopolar world since 89-91. It still resonates though in the basic parameters of the collective's position (posture?) before the ruling class, be it business or political.
Maxiton said:
The left wing, as it has come to be categorized, developed out of the industrial age, not prior to it. In the war and post-war eras it was characterized by anti-fascism, then social progressivism.
Today's age of homo economicus has tended to obscure the political and social aspects of what the XIX and XX century left stood for. Liberalism, by contrast, is the ideology of profit as the supreme right in a global arena, with little loyalty to domestic production and in strong opposition to employee solidarity and the bargaining leverage this presupposes. Am I right so far?
All you need to know about Echoes viewpoint is his opinion on Bruno expressed above. It reminds me of a Europe that truly has reached the age of senilty. Think about this when just three generations ago Catholic Europe was basically a society of illiterate peasants, miners and factory workers which just exited from 20 years of fascism, with the Church at home, a puny and parochial bourgeois. In some places like Italy there was no revolution other than the Risorgimento, made by a courageous few and an able, though politicking, Cavour. They were good, but ignorant workers, poor, uneducated and submissive to the clergy and their masters.
Some of this only aparently became obsolete in the age of "wellbeing," especially after the post-ideological, monopolar world since 89-91. It still resonates though in the basic parameters of the collective's position (posture?) before the ruling class, be it business or political.
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Re: Re:
I'm quite sure I didn't say otherwise.
Not quite. The liberalism you describe is, in my opinion, more properly called neoliberalism. Classical liberalism is about a great deal more than profit; it's about collective and individual development, about both social responsibility and personal freedom; about individual initiative within a community; about the least possible coercion while under rule of law. Profit flows from all this together, and all this together describes liberalism. So profit is almost incidental to classical liberalism, or its natural outcome.
rhubroma said:
I'm quite sure I didn't say otherwise.
Not quite. The liberalism you describe is, in my opinion, more properly called neoliberalism. Classical liberalism is about a great deal more than profit; it's about collective and individual development, about both social responsibility and personal freedom; about individual initiative within a community; about the least possible coercion while under rule of law. Profit flows from all this together, and all this together describes liberalism. So profit is almost incidental to classical liberalism, or its natural outcome.
- May 14, 2010
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Right, but look at it carefully. You think of it as right-thinking because your grandfather articulated it on behalf of the existing order and counterposed it to socialism. But what if instead it was articulated on behalf of 90% of humanity, or 99%? What would it be then?
rhubroma said:
Right, but look at it carefully. You think of it as right-thinking because your grandfather articulated it on behalf of the existing order and counterposed it to socialism. But what if instead it was articulated on behalf of 90% of humanity, or 99%? What would it be then?
- May 14, 2010
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If you articulate the position on behalf of, essentially, the bourgeois class, to the exclusion of the vast majority of people, then it would be as you say, right-thinking. If we extend it to the 99%, I should think it considerably less rightist. Perhaps the elements you are looking for, the lacking bits, are expropriation of the bourgeois class and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Because those are the only elements that would preclude some people from seeing my formulation as true, democratic socialism.
rhubroma said:
If you articulate the position on behalf of, essentially, the bourgeois class, to the exclusion of the vast majority of people, then it would be as you say, right-thinking. If we extend it to the 99%, I should think it considerably less rightist. Perhaps the elements you are looking for, the lacking bits, are expropriation of the bourgeois class and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Because those are the only elements that would preclude some people from seeing my formulation as true, democratic socialism.
- Apr 2, 2009
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Re: Re:
I was responding to the hypothetical terms in which you framed the question and drawing a "logical" conclusion, however sarcastic.
At any rate, in reference to the implications for religion this entails, I have found most who consider themselves among the faithful to be upholders of conventional values.
I was responding to the hypothetical terms in which you framed the question and drawing a "logical" conclusion, however sarcastic.
At any rate, in reference to the implications for religion this entails, I have found most who consider themselves among the faithful to be upholders of conventional values.
Re: Re:
Actually it’s mainly from reactionary Catholic circles that came movement towards the protection of the workers. People like René de la Tour du Pin, Adam Muller or Father Wilhelm von Ketteler. All the social-corporatist movement that sought to revived (and adapt to modern times) the craftmen’s Guilds that the French Revolution and the Enlightenment had scrapped. The outcome of it could be felt in the early 19th century. The restoration of the Sunday Rest is due to social Catholics, so is the restoration of intermediate bodies (in the form of trade unions instead of guilds), the annual leave, the abolition of child labour, etc. For Christ’s sake, it’s obvious that Child Labour was theorized AND implemented by the Enlightenment. When Turgot was asked how a factory worker could feed his children, he responded that the children needed to feed themselves. That also means that obviously, it’s the Enlightenment that caused illiteracy. How can a child get to school if he’s got to work! The Jesuit ensured free education for all until the 18th century. Illiteracy was declining centuries after centuries. But along the Enlightened philosophers and their Jansenist allies and they gained the suppression of the Jesuit order by the 1770’s, leaving as many children uneducated. That’s how they were sent to factories instead of schools.
The lies continue of course.
By the way, Maxiton, since you liked De Sica’s “Ladri di biciclette”, I guess you must also have appreciated Visconti’s Gattopardo. Il Gattopardo, based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi Lampedusa shows very well how the Risorgimento was led by the bourgeois New Rich parvenus, allied with coward risticrats who disavowed their mission in order to keep their privileges, so they hung up to the new class. The common people represented by Serge Reggiani’s character in the film were the only one to side with the kings.
As a Belgian, I’m very proud of Count Xavier de Mérode who launched the army of volunteers – the Papal Zouaves – to defend the Papal States. A lot of them came from Belgium but even more from the Netherlands (!), even some Protestants volunteered but they weren’t accepted, which is a shame (with the years I’m getting more and more tolerant with my Protestant brothers, or some of them, Maarten, are you still here?
). Pope Pius IX was the only one to seek for a revival of the guilds, based on the work of Ketteler. That is why liberals/nationalists such as Cavour and Garibaldi wanted him out. 1870 or when Italy turned in a definitive way into the capitalist era. It’s ironic that the poster who constantly ridicules me for being a nationalist, defends Cavour and Garibaldi. It’s ironic that the poster who cries over Pantani’s dead because he supposedly had been reported by the Camorra (or whatever happened…) defends the Red Skirts against the Pope (the Red Skirts were allied with the Camorra).
By the way I of course no longer have any hope in mankind in any way. I’m not going to change the world myself. I’m not an activist and I don’t even vote. But what is sure is that I don’t seek to bring back the old aristocracy to power, because that aristocracy has failed and is responsible – by their cowardice – for the harm that atheists/capitalists have done. I’m in favour of the restoration and adaptation of the workingmen’s guilds!
In this respect I think that Salazar’s regime is one of the most interesting of all 20th century regimes. One that deserves careful studies (for all the Portuguese who are reading me). Franco was just a manipulator and a demagogist. In Spain I would have been a fan of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, not of Franco.
It’s absolutely right but I thnk you misunderstood me again. I didn’t claim that Marx shouldn’t be classified left but that he and Engels never classified themselves left. It’s not the same. I do agree that Marx and Engels eventually espoused the progressive teleology and therefore became useful idiots to capitalism. What Marxism did to the working class, at least in my country, was to transform some decent liturgical celebration into massive carousal in which beer is overflowing, which means in which workers are over-consuming and getting diverted from true rebellion against the exploiting capitalists. Marx and Engels were bourgeois themselves. Their role in my opinion was that of shepherds bringing back lone sheep into the herd.Maxiton said:
Actually it’s mainly from reactionary Catholic circles that came movement towards the protection of the workers. People like René de la Tour du Pin, Adam Muller or Father Wilhelm von Ketteler. All the social-corporatist movement that sought to revived (and adapt to modern times) the craftmen’s Guilds that the French Revolution and the Enlightenment had scrapped. The outcome of it could be felt in the early 19th century. The restoration of the Sunday Rest is due to social Catholics, so is the restoration of intermediate bodies (in the form of trade unions instead of guilds), the annual leave, the abolition of child labour, etc. For Christ’s sake, it’s obvious that Child Labour was theorized AND implemented by the Enlightenment. When Turgot was asked how a factory worker could feed his children, he responded that the children needed to feed themselves. That also means that obviously, it’s the Enlightenment that caused illiteracy. How can a child get to school if he’s got to work! The Jesuit ensured free education for all until the 18th century. Illiteracy was declining centuries after centuries. But along the Enlightened philosophers and their Jansenist allies and they gained the suppression of the Jesuit order by the 1770’s, leaving as many children uneducated. That’s how they were sent to factories instead of schools.
The lies continue of course.
By the way, Maxiton, since you liked De Sica’s “Ladri di biciclette”, I guess you must also have appreciated Visconti’s Gattopardo. Il Gattopardo, based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi Lampedusa shows very well how the Risorgimento was led by the bourgeois New Rich parvenus, allied with coward risticrats who disavowed their mission in order to keep their privileges, so they hung up to the new class. The common people represented by Serge Reggiani’s character in the film were the only one to side with the kings.
As a Belgian, I’m very proud of Count Xavier de Mérode who launched the army of volunteers – the Papal Zouaves – to defend the Papal States. A lot of them came from Belgium but even more from the Netherlands (!), even some Protestants volunteered but they weren’t accepted, which is a shame (with the years I’m getting more and more tolerant with my Protestant brothers, or some of them, Maarten, are you still here?
). Pope Pius IX was the only one to seek for a revival of the guilds, based on the work of Ketteler. That is why liberals/nationalists such as Cavour and Garibaldi wanted him out. 1870 or when Italy turned in a definitive way into the capitalist era. It’s ironic that the poster who constantly ridicules me for being a nationalist, defends Cavour and Garibaldi. It’s ironic that the poster who cries over Pantani’s dead because he supposedly had been reported by the Camorra (or whatever happened…) defends the Red Skirts against the Pope (the Red Skirts were allied with the Camorra). By the way I of course no longer have any hope in mankind in any way. I’m not going to change the world myself. I’m not an activist and I don’t even vote. But what is sure is that I don’t seek to bring back the old aristocracy to power, because that aristocracy has failed and is responsible – by their cowardice – for the harm that atheists/capitalists have done. I’m in favour of the restoration and adaptation of the workingmen’s guilds!
In this respect I think that Salazar’s regime is one of the most interesting of all 20th century regimes. One that deserves careful studies (for all the Portuguese who are reading me
). Franco was just a manipulator and a demagogist. In Spain I would have been a fan of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, not of Franco.
- Apr 2, 2009
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My Gott! The Jesuit order was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773 at the behest of the monarchies! Tomasi de Lampedusa's novel was polemical against the results of unification, because it didn't resolve the southern question, which remained hopelessly backwards as a result of a still feudal setup imposed on it by the powers of the bourbon monarchy and the clergy! It is essential to understand this to avoid being lead astray by the error of analysis the above poster made. Although if you want a broader picture of how subaltern classes were abused by the powerful (i.e the priests and the nobles), read Manzoni's The Betrothed. At any rate, the piteous status of the superstitious and ignorant southerners at the time as a result, can be plainly understood by just looking up The Vow by Francesco Paolo Michetti. The truth speaks for itself (other than decent liturgical celebration)! So what alternative did Cavour and Garibaldi have? The south never had a merchant class, never had exposure, nor guilds. The papal belt kept them cut off from the rest of the Continent and hence progress. Besides even Lincoln was pressed into making a similar deal.
That's what politicking means you know. So it is exactly as I have previously stated and not just in regards to the southern question, but the whole of Catholic Europe through the post-war era. It is tedious to have to repeat myself, but unavoidable at this moment: "All you need to know about Echoes viewpoint is his opinion on Bruno expressed above. It reminds me of a Europe that truly has reached the age of senilty. Think about this when just three generations ago Catholic Europe was basically a society of illiterate peasants, miners and factory workers which just exited from 20 years of fascism, with the Church at home, a puny and parochial bourgeois. In some places like Italy there was no revolution other than the Risorgimento, made by a courageous few and an able, though politicking, Cavour. They were good, but ignorant workers, poor, uneducated and submissive to the clergy and their masters."
Pius IX contrived papal infallability and got general Oudinot (because it was politically expedient to Napoleon III) to squash the free Roman Republic in 1849, which was founded upon in primus universal suffrage (men and women), freedom of worship and was the first state to abolish the death penalty. By contrast the reestablished papa-re effected an all-out persecution campaign against his adversaries. All liberals were sent into exile (in this he even anticipated Mussolini!). The currency was devalued by 35%. Properties were restored to the nobility. Education was placed exclusively back into the hands of the clergy. Despotism was reorganized, taxes increased, mortgage and rent payments increased tenfold. The widespread misery and suffering for all but the clerical orders and nobility visibly grew in every angle and order of the state. The Ghetto was once again closed and public executions by bludgeoning were renewed at Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro and Piazza del Popolo for Christ's sake! Monsignor de Mérode was a slimmy, little real estate speculator, whose lust for profit was only surpassed by his zeal to irrevocably mutilate Rome's urban fabric. I am reminded of this every time I walk through the Esquiline quarter, which I always try to avoid, from Termini station to the center along the incomparably ugly Via Nazionale. This development boom entailed the annihilation of Villa Montalto-Peretti. Well we've got de Mérode to thank for that! Pecunia non olet!!
It's ironic that the poster who cites Pius IX as a renewer of the guilds and de Mérode as a champion of papal authoritarianism, does so as a measure of their moral good will toward the underclass. Whereas anyone with half a brain is well aware that the ecclessiastical elite has always worked with the southern princes and Mafia bosses. Why just as recently as 2012 in the town of Castellammare di Stabia, south of Naples, the yearly procession celebrating its patron saint, San Castello, took to stopping under the balcony of the local crime boss, Renato Raffone!
Furthermore, as working-class family life was breaking down in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Enlightenment ideas stressing education and the importance of childhood began to change attitudes to child labor, initially in the Netherlands then elsewhere. Meanwhile the capitalists ideologically sanctified child labor as educationally sound and beneficial to the working classes. But when the Dutch government introduced the Miner's Act of 1813 and then began avocating compulsory education, Roman Catholic priests began expressing their concern. In the 1840's fearing nonreligious state education, both antirevolutionaries (which means the aristocrats 😐) and Catholic clergy opposed compulsory education on the grounds that it would infringe upon the authority of fathers...other than "free Jesuit education." Besides their only concern was the propaganda fide! In any case, they made tons more as a non-profit organization in terms of social contol. If we don't recognize this fact, we might just as well think that Marx and Engels gave Belgian workers too much beer. And that the mass roundabout regathered the flock as inhebriated consumers, which rendered the sheep useful idiots in the transhumance of capitalist explotation and profit. But this is merely repulsive.
That's what politicking means you know.
So it is exactly as I have previously stated and not just in regards to the southern question, but the whole of Catholic Europe through the post-war era. It is tedious to have to repeat myself, but unavoidable at this moment: "All you need to know about Echoes viewpoint is his opinion on Bruno expressed above. It reminds me of a Europe that truly has reached the age of senilty. Think about this when just three generations ago Catholic Europe was basically a society of illiterate peasants, miners and factory workers which just exited from 20 years of fascism, with the Church at home, a puny and parochial bourgeois. In some places like Italy there was no revolution other than the Risorgimento, made by a courageous few and an able, though politicking, Cavour. They were good, but ignorant workers, poor, uneducated and submissive to the clergy and their masters." Pius IX contrived papal infallability and got general Oudinot (because it was politically expedient to Napoleon III) to squash the free Roman Republic in 1849, which was founded upon in primus universal suffrage (men and women), freedom of worship and was the first state to abolish the death penalty. By contrast the reestablished papa-re effected an all-out persecution campaign against his adversaries. All liberals were sent into exile (in this he even anticipated Mussolini!). The currency was devalued by 35%. Properties were restored to the nobility. Education was placed exclusively back into the hands of the clergy. Despotism was reorganized, taxes increased, mortgage and rent payments increased tenfold. The widespread misery and suffering for all but the clerical orders and nobility visibly grew in every angle and order of the state. The Ghetto was once again closed and public executions by bludgeoning were renewed at Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro and Piazza del Popolo for Christ's sake! Monsignor de Mérode was a slimmy, little real estate speculator, whose lust for profit was only surpassed by his zeal to irrevocably mutilate Rome's urban fabric. I am reminded of this every time I walk through the Esquiline quarter, which I always try to avoid, from Termini station to the center along the incomparably ugly Via Nazionale. This development boom entailed the annihilation of Villa Montalto-Peretti. Well we've got de Mérode to thank for that! Pecunia non olet!!
It's ironic that the poster who cites Pius IX as a renewer of the guilds and de Mérode as a champion of papal authoritarianism, does so as a measure of their moral good will toward the underclass. Whereas anyone with half a brain is well aware that the ecclessiastical elite has always worked with the southern princes and Mafia bosses. Why just as recently as 2012 in the town of Castellammare di Stabia, south of Naples, the yearly procession celebrating its patron saint, San Castello, took to stopping under the balcony of the local crime boss, Renato Raffone!
Furthermore, as working-class family life was breaking down in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Enlightenment ideas stressing education and the importance of childhood began to change attitudes to child labor, initially in the Netherlands then elsewhere. Meanwhile the capitalists ideologically sanctified child labor as educationally sound and beneficial to the working classes. But when the Dutch government introduced the Miner's Act of 1813 and then began avocating compulsory education, Roman Catholic priests began expressing their concern. In the 1840's fearing nonreligious state education, both antirevolutionaries (which means the aristocrats 😐) and Catholic clergy opposed compulsory education on the grounds that it would infringe upon the authority of fathers...other than "free Jesuit education." Besides their only concern was the propaganda fide! In any case, they made tons more as a non-profit organization in terms of social contol. If we don't recognize this fact, we might just as well think that Marx and Engels gave Belgian workers too much beer. And that the mass roundabout regathered the flock as inhebriated consumers, which rendered the sheep useful idiots in the transhumance of capitalist explotation and profit. But this is merely repulsive.
Re: God and Religion
Good grief!! Everybody knows that the Jesuit Order had between suppressed by Enlightened Despot across Europe before those same Enlightened despots and Enlightened ministers urged the (weak) Pope to universally suppress it. Many colleges closed after that.
We all know that 1773 is in the era of Enlightened Despotism. In "Enlightened Despotism" you have the word "ENLIGHTENED". The Enlightenment of course first stroke under the monarchies in order to implement their liberal/capitalist theories.
This is particularly true in France. In 1774, Turgot took advantage of King Louis XVI's inexperience to liberalise the price of grain. That was a huge revolution. Turgot was a man of the Enlightenment. He had contributed to Diderot's Encyclopedia. Voltaire was over the moon when he heard the news that Turgot was in power. Until then, the King was always seen as the "Feeding Father" of the people, he always perceived to make sure that the people had enough to eat, that the price of bread was affordable to anyone, therefore the state fixed it. There were famines only in times of war and epidemics. With Turgot in power, the market would determine the price of bread. Very soon, the family fathers no longer could afford to feed their family ...
... That is how Enlightenment's Turgot came up with the brilliant idea to send children to factory to work, I repeat to WORK! in order for them to pay for the food that their father no long could afford. Jeeez, the Enlightenment stressed education and the importance of childhood... What the hell is that crap! Both Voltaire & Rousseau were of the opinion that "simple-minded" peasants ought never to get instruction!
"The light should come down gradually. The light of the lower people will always be confused. Those who are busy earning their bread cannot be busy enlightening their minds."
Voltaire exposed in all his arrogance (from his "Correspondances").
During the French Revolution a school system was planned in which children of age 5 to 12 were meant to be taught to ... work in the industry. The boys were meant to work the land (because those Jacobines remember that the 80% of the population was peasant), to cut stones in order to build roads, girls were sent to the textile industry. They were apprentices at age 5 to 12. They were of course also meant to be endoctrinated about the positive aspects of the Revolution, etc. After all that they sure merely had time to learn to read and write correctly. That was the Michel Lepeletier project. Robespierre clapped the hands when he learned about that project. That is the true spirit of the French Revolution.
It's the Church that stressed education. There had been free primary schools since the Middle Ages, the Council of Trent and the advent of the Jesuit Order in the 16th century started free secundary school. An edict by Louis XIV in 1695 made it compulsory of each parish in France to have its own school. We are 118 years before the Dutch parliamentary monarchy (system based on census voting and usury!)
The Enlightenment changed attitude to child labour (with a 'u' in good BrE), my a*rse! Child Labour in Belgium was not scrapped until 1889 in Belgium for 9-year-old kids and until 1914 for 14-year-old kids. By that time, the Church social doctrine had developed. It's the Church's social doctrine that abolished it, in Belgium. The clergy had surrendered to the Capitalists (which means to the Enlightenment!) but not such reactionary social-corporatist Catholics such as René de la Tour du Pin or Albert de Mun who had been working on some form of revival of the workingmen's guilds that the Enlightenment suppressed too! It had been long to repair the damage done, actually it's not yet repaired. The suppression of the workingmen's guilds is most certainly the most disgusting law of the whole French Revolution. The guilds were labour organizations which gathered together workers of the same sector of activity in order to defend their own interests, those guildsmen enjoy all the benefits of what is currently known as the welfare state (there were retirement funds, social insurances in case of an illness, a working accident, etc.; the working class Under the feudal regime was NOT exploited like in the 19th century; besides they had numerous days off, guaranteed by the Church!)
March 2 & 17 1791, the d'Allarde Decree suppressed all kinds of Guilds and "compagnonnage" in France. The decree was backed by the Le Chapelier Law which prohibited any kind of working coalition, which means de facto any trade unions or strikes. This is an unspeakably violent law! And there are no still Tools in France to believe that the French Revolution was carried out BY the people and FOR the people. As a matter of fact it was carried out BY the bourgeois AGAINST the people, period. The most villainous aspect of the d'Allarde decree is that it includes the confiscation of all the goods of these guilds, which means that all the money that workers had hoarded up for centuries were instantl being stolen by the bourgeois secularist state. After 1795, the French invaded Belgium and exported those infamous laws to my country and the repression that ensued was merciless. Many workers organised clandestine guilds but they soon were to be arrested by these atheists ... The workers were now unprotected, alone against the market and this for a whole century. The situation in Belgian factories in the late 19th century was undescribable. Workers already had their bodies ... decaying alive! It's an abomination.
It's Pope Pius IX's credit to have sought to revive those guilds. Even though it did not work, it should be an inspiration to all of us who care for the labouring class. Pius VII was the one to scrap it in the Papal States but that was because he was at Buonaparte's mercy. Buonaparte was also an atheistic Voltairian bourgeois whose code reinforced the discrimination of the workers against their employers. Beside giving the power of money creation to private bankers...
Mérode as a prelate was a generous man who built the Campo pretoriano at his own expense. The dark side of Mérode was his past in Algeria where befriended some of the secularist French colonialists.
2012 is in an era when the Vatican had turned atheistic, 47 years after the Vatican II Council. Atheists paying tribute to Raffone is none of my business.
Good grief!! Everybody knows that the Jesuit Order had between suppressed by Enlightened Despot across Europe before those same Enlightened despots and Enlightened ministers urged the (weak) Pope to universally suppress it. Many colleges closed after that.
We all know that 1773 is in the era of Enlightened Despotism. In "Enlightened Despotism" you have the word "ENLIGHTENED". The Enlightenment of course first stroke under the monarchies in order to implement their liberal/capitalist theories.
This is particularly true in France. In 1774, Turgot took advantage of King Louis XVI's inexperience to liberalise the price of grain. That was a huge revolution. Turgot was a man of the Enlightenment. He had contributed to Diderot's Encyclopedia. Voltaire was over the moon when he heard the news that Turgot was in power. Until then, the King was always seen as the "Feeding Father" of the people, he always perceived to make sure that the people had enough to eat, that the price of bread was affordable to anyone, therefore the state fixed it. There were famines only in times of war and epidemics. With Turgot in power, the market would determine the price of bread. Very soon, the family fathers no longer could afford to feed their family ...
... That is how Enlightenment's Turgot came up with the brilliant idea to send children to factory to work, I repeat to WORK! in order for them to pay for the food that their father no long could afford. Jeeez, the Enlightenment stressed education and the importance of childhood...
What the hell is that crap! Both Voltaire & Rousseau were of the opinion that "simple-minded" peasants ought never to get instruction! "The light should come down gradually. The light of the lower people will always be confused. Those who are busy earning their bread cannot be busy enlightening their minds."
Voltaire exposed in all his arrogance (from his "Correspondances").
During the French Revolution a school system was planned in which children of age 5 to 12 were meant to be taught to ... work in the industry. The boys were meant to work the land (because those Jacobines remember that the 80% of the population was peasant), to cut stones in order to build roads, girls were sent to the textile industry. They were apprentices at age 5 to 12. They were of course also meant to be endoctrinated about the positive aspects of the Revolution, etc. After all that they sure merely had time to learn to read and write correctly. That was the Michel Lepeletier project. Robespierre clapped the hands when he learned about that project. That is the true spirit of the French Revolution.
It's the Church that stressed education. There had been free primary schools since the Middle Ages, the Council of Trent and the advent of the Jesuit Order in the 16th century started free secundary school. An edict by Louis XIV in 1695 made it compulsory of each parish in France to have its own school. We are 118 years before the Dutch parliamentary monarchy (system based on census voting and usury!)
The Enlightenment changed attitude to child labour (with a 'u' in good BrE), my a*rse! Child Labour in Belgium was not scrapped until 1889 in Belgium for 9-year-old kids and until 1914 for 14-year-old kids. By that time, the Church social doctrine had developed. It's the Church's social doctrine that abolished it, in Belgium. The clergy had surrendered to the Capitalists (which means to the Enlightenment!) but not such reactionary social-corporatist Catholics such as René de la Tour du Pin or Albert de Mun who had been working on some form of revival of the workingmen's guilds that the Enlightenment suppressed too! It had been long to repair the damage done, actually it's not yet repaired. The suppression of the workingmen's guilds is most certainly the most disgusting law of the whole French Revolution. The guilds were labour organizations which gathered together workers of the same sector of activity in order to defend their own interests, those guildsmen enjoy all the benefits of what is currently known as the welfare state (there were retirement funds, social insurances in case of an illness, a working accident, etc.; the working class Under the feudal regime was NOT exploited like in the 19th century; besides they had numerous days off, guaranteed by the Church!)
March 2 & 17 1791, the d'Allarde Decree suppressed all kinds of Guilds and "compagnonnage" in France. The decree was backed by the Le Chapelier Law which prohibited any kind of working coalition, which means de facto any trade unions or strikes. This is an unspeakably violent law! And there are no still Tools in France to believe that the French Revolution was carried out BY the people and FOR the people. As a matter of fact it was carried out BY the bourgeois AGAINST the people, period. The most villainous aspect of the d'Allarde decree is that it includes the confiscation of all the goods of these guilds, which means that all the money that workers had hoarded up for centuries were instantl being stolen by the bourgeois secularist state. After 1795, the French invaded Belgium and exported those infamous laws to my country and the repression that ensued was merciless. Many workers organised clandestine guilds but they soon were to be arrested by these atheists ... The workers were now unprotected, alone against the market and this for a whole century. The situation in Belgian factories in the late 19th century was undescribable. Workers already had their bodies ... decaying alive! It's an abomination.
It's Pope Pius IX's credit to have sought to revive those guilds. Even though it did not work, it should be an inspiration to all of us who care for the labouring class. Pius VII was the one to scrap it in the Papal States but that was because he was at Buonaparte's mercy. Buonaparte was also an atheistic Voltairian bourgeois whose code reinforced the discrimination of the workers against their employers. Beside giving the power of money creation to private bankers...
Mérode as a prelate was a generous man who built the Campo pretoriano at his own expense. The dark side of Mérode was his past in Algeria where befriended some of the secularist French colonialists.
2012 is in an era when the Vatican had turned atheistic, 47 years after the Vatican II Council. Atheists paying tribute to Raffone is none of my business.
- Apr 2, 2009
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- 17,510
Re: God and Religion
A tragedy, no doubt, but at the same time a comedy--a perfect perfidious comedy.
When I said the Enlightenment philosophies began to change the mindset in the Netherlands first, I was of course thinking of the groundwork laid by Baruch Spinoza, whose anti-obscurantist positions naturally got his invaluable work put on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum). Spinoza wrote: "The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free." By contrast if you were to have talked to a Jesuit missionary back from Goa at about this time, you'd have been told about the "miraculous" state in which Francesco Saverio's corpse had been blessedly preserved. The church of il Gesù in Rome to this day houses the forearm of the saint in a gilded reliquary!
The Company of Jesus had engendered hostility toward itself ever since the Jesuit college reared Jean Chàtel's failed assassination attempt of Henry IV of France, who was eventually murdered by the novice Francois Ravaillac in 1610. Henry IV, who is best remembered for his phrase Paris vaut bien une messe ("Paris is well worth a mass"), was an ex-Huguenot converted to Catholicism, but who nonetheless retained an ample religious outlook. Not per chance consequently in 1598 did Henry issue the Edict of Nantes, one of the first examples of religious tolerance that gave Protestants freedom of cult in his kingdom. For this reason he became the target of Jesuit scorn and its eventual Mafioso strike tactics.
Of course Ignatius of Loyola (Ignacio de Loyola), the founder of the order, epitomized the militant zeal by which Catholic nobles across the Continent would wage war against Protestants, and this was the very reason behind Henry's humane and sensed promulgation of religious tolerance. This Spanish knight from the Basque nobility led a fierce band of warrior-priest-nobleman almost as strict and austere as Loyola himself, who were never more implacable than when fighting for their beliefs. They fought religious wars not only in Germany, but above all in France, where Protestants were known as Huguenots. In 1572 the French queen invited all the Huguenot nobles to a wedding court and, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, she had them all massacred. Unsurprisingly the infamous episode is treated in monumental fresco on the walls of the Vatican Sala Regia. If I wished, I could write many more paragraphs about the wars between Catholics and Protestants. But I won't.
What's important to recognize is that the Jesuits within decades of their order's institution, had already acquired a horrible reputation for themselves. Chatel's conviction demonstrates this. After the incursion of the Jesuit college at Clermont, the French authorities were provided good cause to curb the order's unwelcome political intrusions and excessive pedagogical activism. The Company of Jesus's reputation further deteriorated by the sensational case of Marie-Catherine Cadière and her Jesuit confessor, Jean-Baptiste Girard, at Aix-en-Provence in 1731. Father Girard had abused her sexually, got her pregnant and performed sorcery on her, for which he was merely transferred. It sounds familiar, I know. The Englishman, Jeremy Jingle, metaphorically analyzed the affair in a satirical light in his libellus, Spiritual Fornication.
The infamy with which the Jesuits were looked upon was further enhanced by their presumed proximity to occult practices, sorcery and alchemy, as well as the subtle casuistry and logical premises with which they sought to deceive and defraud their pupils. Manzoni captured that in a dramatic light, for which he was derided by French Jesuits as ce déplorable Manzon. It's not by chance, furthermore, that Alexander Dumas will endow Aramis with the Machiavellian audacity that got him nominated Superior General of the Jesuit Order. Every step forward must be used to climb to greater power. However, the most insistent criticism against the order had always been of practicing bad morals. Pascal's polemic with the Jansenists in the 'Provincial Letters' makes this unequivocal. The order became an outrage. Despite Clement XIII putting Rousseau's Encyclopédie on the Index , Jesuit interference in public affairs in France, Spain, Portugal and Naples, left Pope Clement XIV with no choice but to supress the Company. A rumor circulated that this pope was then poisoned by some of its former members.
The idea of the king as pater patria, who takes care of and provides for his children, would actually be uplifting, were it not set against the absolute power and court excesses which the French king obtained through the cunning of his eminence, Cardinal Richelieu, in the wake of the Thirty Years War. Richelieu's successor and guardian of the young Roi Soleil, Louis XIV, Cardinal Mazarin, allowed for the king to be viewed as brighter than Apollo whose warmth and light all life depended. The vast sums, however, that were required to sustain such a monarchy, like the pharaoh, led French finance ministers to become expert swindlers. Where the money came from didn't concern them. The peasants worked till they dropped and the citizens were forced to pay huge taxes. Louis XIV's incompetent and myopic successors wanted nothing to do with the writings of the French intelligentsia, with whom even Catherine of Russia held a regular epistolary exchange. Decadence always precedes the end. Things could not continue like that. Yet things did continue like that. The revolution was thus a foregone conclusion.
A tragedy, no doubt, but at the same time a comedy--a perfect perfidious comedy.
When I said the Enlightenment philosophies began to change the mindset in the Netherlands first, I was of course thinking of the groundwork laid by Baruch Spinoza, whose anti-obscurantist positions naturally got his invaluable work put on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum). Spinoza wrote: "The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free." By contrast if you were to have talked to a Jesuit missionary back from Goa at about this time, you'd have been told about the "miraculous" state in which Francesco Saverio's corpse had been blessedly preserved. The church of il Gesù in Rome to this day houses the forearm of the saint in a gilded reliquary!
The Company of Jesus had engendered hostility toward itself ever since the Jesuit college reared Jean Chàtel's failed assassination attempt of Henry IV of France, who was eventually murdered by the novice Francois Ravaillac in 1610. Henry IV, who is best remembered for his phrase Paris vaut bien une messe ("Paris is well worth a mass"), was an ex-Huguenot converted to Catholicism, but who nonetheless retained an ample religious outlook. Not per chance consequently in 1598 did Henry issue the Edict of Nantes, one of the first examples of religious tolerance that gave Protestants freedom of cult in his kingdom. For this reason he became the target of Jesuit scorn and its eventual Mafioso strike tactics.
Of course Ignatius of Loyola (Ignacio de Loyola), the founder of the order, epitomized the militant zeal by which Catholic nobles across the Continent would wage war against Protestants, and this was the very reason behind Henry's humane and sensed promulgation of religious tolerance. This Spanish knight from the Basque nobility led a fierce band of warrior-priest-nobleman almost as strict and austere as Loyola himself, who were never more implacable than when fighting for their beliefs. They fought religious wars not only in Germany, but above all in France, where Protestants were known as Huguenots. In 1572 the French queen invited all the Huguenot nobles to a wedding court and, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, she had them all massacred. Unsurprisingly the infamous episode is treated in monumental fresco on the walls of the Vatican Sala Regia. If I wished, I could write many more paragraphs about the wars between Catholics and Protestants. But I won't.
What's important to recognize is that the Jesuits within decades of their order's institution, had already acquired a horrible reputation for themselves. Chatel's conviction demonstrates this. After the incursion of the Jesuit college at Clermont, the French authorities were provided good cause to curb the order's unwelcome political intrusions and excessive pedagogical activism. The Company of Jesus's reputation further deteriorated by the sensational case of Marie-Catherine Cadière and her Jesuit confessor, Jean-Baptiste Girard, at Aix-en-Provence in 1731. Father Girard had abused her sexually, got her pregnant and performed sorcery on her, for which he was merely transferred. It sounds familiar, I know. The Englishman, Jeremy Jingle, metaphorically analyzed the affair in a satirical light in his libellus, Spiritual Fornication.
The infamy with which the Jesuits were looked upon was further enhanced by their presumed proximity to occult practices, sorcery and alchemy, as well as the subtle casuistry and logical premises with which they sought to deceive and defraud their pupils. Manzoni captured that in a dramatic light, for which he was derided by French Jesuits as ce déplorable Manzon. It's not by chance, furthermore, that Alexander Dumas will endow Aramis with the Machiavellian audacity that got him nominated Superior General of the Jesuit Order. Every step forward must be used to climb to greater power. However, the most insistent criticism against the order had always been of practicing bad morals. Pascal's polemic with the Jansenists in the 'Provincial Letters' makes this unequivocal. The order became an outrage. Despite Clement XIII putting Rousseau's Encyclopédie on the Index , Jesuit interference in public affairs in France, Spain, Portugal and Naples, left Pope Clement XIV with no choice but to supress the Company. A rumor circulated that this pope was then poisoned by some of its former members.
The idea of the king as pater patria, who takes care of and provides for his children, would actually be uplifting, were it not set against the absolute power and court excesses which the French king obtained through the cunning of his eminence, Cardinal Richelieu, in the wake of the Thirty Years War. Richelieu's successor and guardian of the young Roi Soleil, Louis XIV, Cardinal Mazarin, allowed for the king to be viewed as brighter than Apollo whose warmth and light all life depended. The vast sums, however, that were required to sustain such a monarchy, like the pharaoh, led French finance ministers to become expert swindlers. Where the money came from didn't concern them. The peasants worked till they dropped and the citizens were forced to pay huge taxes. Louis XIV's incompetent and myopic successors wanted nothing to do with the writings of the French intelligentsia, with whom even Catherine of Russia held a regular epistolary exchange. Decadence always precedes the end. Things could not continue like that. Yet things did continue like that. The revolution was thus a foregone conclusion.
- Dec 7, 2010
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