Blessed Are The Poor, Or, Shut Up And Eat Your Pinecone

"The right to private property, acquired or received in a just way, does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind." - The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1403

"You are not making a gift of what is yours to the poor man, but you are giving him back what is his. You have been appropriating things that are meant to be for the common use of everyone. The earth belongs to everyone, not to the rich." - St Ambrose

“When men take to buying and selling the land, saying ’This is mine’, they restrain other fellow creatures from seeking nourishment from mother earth…..so that he that had no land was to work for those, for small wages, that called the land theirs; and thereby some are lifted up into the chair of tyranny and others trod under the footstool of misery, as if the earth were made for a few and not for all.” "Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land; or was it made to preserve all her children? Gerrard Winstanley, Digger Pamphleteer of the English Civil War period.

If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to remove a man's mind, will, and personality, is the power of life and death, and that it makes a man a slave. It is murder. Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first? — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

                                                  

Christianity, at least up until the 16th century, had some very specific rules concerning property. Among early Catholic theologians the holding of private property is considered to be a limited right. The eighth century Council of Aachen declared it to be reprehensible for any Christian to make money by lending at interest while the canon laws of the Middle Ages strictly forbade usury. In fact the Roman Catholic Church still affirms that political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good. Most of this however was swept away by the Reformation and the advent of capitalism.

Not so in the case of Islam, which makes for an interesting comparative study.

Jesus Christ, so we are told, was a revolutionary Palestinian activist who campaigned for human rights, supported free healthcare, threw the bankers out of the temple and befriended prostitutes. And so the Romans killed him. And when killing him wasn't enough to quell the flames of radicalism among early Christians, they co-opted and appropriated him. Instead of revolutionary Jesus we were given gentle Jesus meek and mild. Instead of "I came not to bring peace, but a sword," we were given "blessed are the poor", and "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s". Instead of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" we were given "turn the other cheek". And as if all that wasn't enough, in a final act of humiliation we were given blonde-haired blue-eyed Jesus, the Euro-Christian patron saint of white secular modernity.

A parallel iteration of the same transcendental monotheism can be found in the Islamic custom, with an important point of distinction: Rather than the Prophet Mohammed's message being co-opted by the state, Islam established its own state - the first welfare state. A state which mandated that all men and women, regardless of skin colour, are sons and daughters of Adam and are therefore equal. A state which protected minorities; which took responsibility for the weak, widows, orphans and handicapped. A state which taxed the rich and provided for the poor.

All propaganda aside, it is no accident that in the wake of the Cold War the West focused on 'Islamist extremism' as its new enemy of choice through which to maintain and extend its military and economic hegemony. When Samuel Huntington argues that Islam is unreformed and incompatible with western values, what he really means is that Islam is, at its core, revolutionary. Rather than simply saying blessed are the poor, Islam demands justice for the poor. When Islam forbids usury and mandates alms-giving as a religious duty, it touches a raw nerve for Huntington and his ilk – it shows a manifest disdain for modern capitalist property relations.

It is important here that we understand property in its full legal and philosophical sense. 'Property' does not refer to a thing; rather it is a description of a relationship to a thing. Property is not the house or land or machinery you own. Property is your exclusive title to that house or land or machinery which allows you to profit by charging rent for it. Property is the foundation of the social relation which we call class.

Western liberals seem to get very upset about issues of gender, race and identity, which find themselves at the centre of almost every political debate. An entire discourse of obfuscation (identity politics) has developed around this as they've sought increasingly clever ways to avoid discussing the issue of class.

'The patriarchy' is a case in point. Patriarchy is a class relation - an historical process, so we are told, which has evolved as recently as the last ten thousand years. Anthropological evidence suggests that back when humans were still primitive hunter-gatherers we mostly lived in egalitarian societies. Some of them, such as those found in parts of Mesa-America and Southeast Asia, were evidently 'matriarchal'. So what changed? What drove the transition from sex-segregated tasks to sex-based oppression?

Males have always competed over females, but with the coming of agriculture and permanent settlements came the ability to hoard provisions, which led to the idea of private property. Property was protected through violence and passed down through patrilineage, which demanded the policing of women's sexual behaviour. This culture of male dominance lasted through slavery and feudalism and remains entrenched today under liberalism. Under 18th century English common law for example women had virtually no legal identity, no right to own property, no right to appear in court or to execute contracts. Only after the market transformation brought about by the industrial revolution did women’s rights begin to emerge, and then only in a piecemeal fashion.

Similarly there is an observable nexus between racism and property relations which should not go unexamined. That slavery and land theft have historically been justified by white chauvinism is self-evident, right down the pseudoscientific idea of race itself. As recently as the early 19^th century, phrenology – literally the study of bumps on the head - claimed that measurements of the cranial skull could be used to determine thoughts, emotions and character. This provided a scientific basis for Eurocentric racism, since it allowed for the ranking of races from least to most evolved. “Natural inequality” thus came to legitimise the subjugation of anyone not born of alabaster white complexion.

“I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.” - Winston Churchill to the Palestine Royal Commission, 1937

Racism is also thus revealed as a class relation, its roots almost always found in unsettled property disputes.

Today in the liberal West class antagonisms remain deeply rooted in property relations. Scarcity of resources, once an economic reality, is now an economic myth which must be preserved to insure an increasing rate of profit, and so we regularly destroy food rather than feeding the hungry. Male dominance is institutionalised in everything from children's toys to fashion magazines to trans culture to pornography to so-called sex work. Women's bodies are treated as commodities to be traded in the public square.
 

Meanwhile in the majority world, countries which have embraced socialist politics tend to have less violence against women, more equal pay, and better representation for women and minorities both in public and private spheres. This is instructive. If you want equality between the sexes; if you want to end racism, and other forms of social exclusion, then you first need to dismantle the social relations which reproduce these inequalities. First among these is the idea of private property.

The Soviet Union's first constitution recognised first and foremost the equal rights of women. As well as being the first European country to grant universal suffrage, there were many other benefits which flowed to women. Marital rape was made illegal. Generous maternity leave and free child care services were made available. The right to rest and leisure was enshrined in the constitutional and the retirement age was set at 60 for men and 55 for women. Even today the Russian Federation still has relatively equal representation for women in boardrooms across the private sector. And with its incredible ethnic diversity (over 160 indigenous languages spoken) it remains the high water mark for social and cultural pluralism.

Similarly on coming to power in 1949 the Chinese Communist Party - a Leninist party committed to women's equality - implemented radical changes under what Mao termed New Democracy. Mao’s state feminism included a range of laws prohibiting polygamy, the buying and selling of women, concubinage, arranged marriage and prostitution, and for the first time allowed women to divorce.

So where does religion fit into this?

One anti-communist trope we often hear repeated is that all communists are godless. But while Marx,  Engels and Lenin all made good arguments for atheism, these were more due to the reactionary nature of organised religion rather than religion itself. Both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church establishment were a part of the ruling class which owned vast amounts land and wealth and revered the emperors, whilst in China Christianity was used as an instrument of colonial aggression against the Chinese state. By contrast many revolutionary Muslim reformers were encouraged to work within the Soviet system engaging in holy war against Western imperialism. The Indonesian revolts of 1926 for example were simultaneously communist and Islamic. The same in Syria, Egypt and Iraq in the 1950s. Meanwhile we saw figures like Father Oscar Romero and Camila Torres Restrepo leading the struggle for socialism in Central and South America.

Liberation theology is a radical synthesis of Christian theology and Marxist socio-economic analysis emphasising concern for the poor and the political liberation of oppressed peoples. It arose in parts of Latin America in the 1950s and 60s in the context of underdevelopment and as a response to widespread poverty and injustice going back to the time of colonial conquest. Its suggestion that religious faith should focus on the betterment of the poor and oppressed through involvement in civic affairs harks back to the idea of Jesus as an ascetic revolutionary. Nicaragua is a prime example of the confluence of liberation theology and radical left wing politics. After 43 years of violent repression under the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, Nicaragua's lower classes have gained status, respect and empowerment in a country which remains predominantly Catholic and in which women now hold a 56% majority of ministerial cabinet positions.

The irony will not be lost on anyone familiar with Max Weber's seminal thesis, Die protestantische Ethik und der 'Geist' des Kapitalismus (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.)

“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor — both black and white, here and abroad.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To the average Westerner, acquiring wealth through running a business and owning your own land was the way Europeans and North Americans improved their lot. Latin America by contrast was Catholic, and did not have property rights - the land was never their own, but rather was owned by either the kings or the church. One of achievements of the reformation, it is poorly argued, is that everyone was allowed to have their own bible, which meant everyone learned to read and write, which was incredibly useful for business.

The problem with this analysis is that it omits the fact that Latin America was colonised by Europeans, its wealth plundered for centuries, and even today remains under the heel of U.S. imperialism. By contrast, the Latin American countries which stand out as having developed high levels of literacy, employment, gender equality and life expectancy are the ones which have pursued revolutionary socialist programs. Meanwhile in the capitalist West misery now afflicts a great majority, so burdened with debt that they can scarcely afford housing, let alone healthcare or a decent education.

There is no doubt that Latin Christendom has a bloody legacy. It has after all been the preeminent religion of imperialism for at least the last 500 years, and tends not to allow for honest self-reflection. But directing our rage towards Christianity, Islam or even Judaism misses the point. Contrary to Weber's thesis, the political (liberal), cultural (Christian), and economic (capitalist) ideology of Western society is rooted in a deeply narcissistic individualism which is fundamentally incompatible with the bond of religious brotherhood espoused by both Islam (the Ummah) and Christianity (the body of Christ). Basic to this is the idea of private property.

“21. Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. 24. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:21-24 KJV

Islam, while stopping short of declaring property is theft, recognises that the poor will always have a claim on the property of the rich. I dare say Jesus would have agreed. But then Jesus was neither white, nor liberal, and most certainly not a capitalist.