CAPITALISM: IS IT
REALLY GOD ORDAINED?

The Religious Right claims, and their secular allies in the corporate world similarly believe, that capitalism is God's ordained economic system for this world - almost as if Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus were Biblical figures on a par with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Nehemiah, and so forth; and that the system they devised - i.e., capitalism - finds its origins in the Bible and should be adhered to with as much ardor and ebullience as one would adhere to the injunctions of Holy Writ. That’s certainly the message that Fox News is purveying to the world.

Left to right: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus

But that's utter nonsense! No where in the Bible can one find even the smallest suggestion that the "Dismal Science" of Adam Smith, or the dreary and gloomy economic system that Malthus and Ricardo contrived are biblically based.

This evil and pernicious world of Oliver Twist that Smith, Ricardo and Malthus conceived is entirely a man-made system; it has NOTHING to do with God or the Bible! NOTHING!

The evil and pernicious world of Fagin and Oliver Twist

The repugnant and even vulgar thought - central to the system of capitalism - that the world should be divided into a management class of "haves" (i.e., the rich) and a laboring class of "have nots" (i.e., the poor) simply does not exist in the Bible.

Workers in the dining hall of a 19th Century factory presided over by a capitalist: the words on the banners overlooking the dining hall read"God is Just" and "God is Good."

The very real fact of the matter is, the severe and cold "Calvinistic" economic system of Ricardo, Smith and Malthus - based as it is on the Darwinian maxim of "survival of the fittest" in which the most productive are supposed to rise to the top of the economic pecking order and the least productive are supposed to fall to the bottom - is utterly repudiated by the Scripture. [Please see our article, "Making Men Cogs in a Machine."]

How you say? - through the device of the "Jubilee," a God-ordained mechanism aimed at preventing the untoward accumulation of wealth - central to the system of capitalism - in Old Testament Israeli society. You never heard of this? - well, I'm not surprised! It's not something that the elites of this world or their "toadies" in the Religious Right would find it convenient to talk about too much.

THE YEAR OF JUBILEE

In the Old Testament (in the Book of Leviticus) the land of Israel was to be divided EQUALLY in perpetual allotments to its citizenry. Each family was to receive a roughly equal share of the land. Now the Bible envisioned that in the course of time, some would not do as well as others and, as a result, would have to sell their land and their houses. But every fifty years, the Bible established a "Year of Jubilee" in which everything had to be restored to its original owner:

"And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee (i.e., a time of rejoicing") unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession ... (in other words, everyman in Israel would have his former possessions returned to him).

"A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.

"In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession.

"IN THE YEAR OF THE JUBILEE THE FIELD SHALL RETURN UNTO HIM OF WHOM IT WAS BOUGHT, EVEN TO HIM TO WHOM THE POSSESSION OF THE LAND OF THE LAND DID BELONG [originally]." (Lev. 25:10-11, 13, 24)

Hardly a system of things that would be approved today by Bank of America and Wells Fargo, and by the "Captains of Industry." How long do you suppose modern capitalism would survive under this kind of system? Not very long I should imagine. And be clear here, this is the only "system of economics" (so to speak) that the Bible ever actually set up - and it's certainly not a capitalist system or a system that would be very much approved by the Rockefellers, the Fords, and the DuPonts of this world. Where is there here any chance for the massive accumulation of wealth by the few at the expense of the many upon which the system of capitalism is so entirely dependent? It doesn't exist! THE PURPOSE OF THESE REGULATIONS WAS TO PREVENT THE ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH BY THE FEW AT THE EXPENSE OF THE MANY - even on a legitimate basis!! That was the spirit behind these regulations and ordinances! - and that is precisely what the SUV Christians of today would no doubt call "Marxist!" Pretty hard to justify the accumulation of wealth that makes possible the gated communities of Yuppie Land-Christians under that system of things, isn't it?

Where is there here the opportunity for the conquest of Africa by the European colonial powers if at the end of fifty years, the British, the Belgians, the French, and the Spanish would have been forced to give back to the original inhabitants of the land the possessions they had stolen, or even legitimately bought - after all, the Bible admitted to no difference here! The land had to be returned! Where is the possibility that Exxon, Shell, BP, etc. could have raped the Iranians, the Iraqis, the Arabians, the Nigerians, etc. of their wealth under such a system. This is definitely not a system the World Bank or the WTO would very much approve of! Certainly not Ford, or GM! Certainly not General Electric or Microsoft! SO MUCH FOR THE THOUGHT THAT THE CAPITALISM PRACTICED BY TODAY'S SECULAR ELITES AND APPROVED OF BY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IS SANCTIONED BY THE BIBLE!

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