By @Draconid_Jo
…What I would like to focus on is FORCE.
Force, also referred to in libertarian circles primarily as Aggression, should be the nail in the coffin of this discussion. In Both Christianity and Anarchy, Force, or Aggression, are off the table. Biblically, whether you’re turning your cheek, not returning evil for evil, or abstaining from casting the first stone, Force is forbidden. AnComs, however, have a difference in opinion. Where as we could probably agree that Government has a monopoly on Force, AnComs support using force. This should be obvious from a basic understanding of Communism, of which they borrow part their name, and becomes clear when discussing exactly how they plan to abolish private property and enforce common ownership.
While AnCap could at worst have a proclivity to neglecting the less fortunate, it does not instruct it. AnCom fails to understand that using Force is against the principals of Anarchy, because once you’ve acquired the monopoly on Force, you are the government.
Anarcho-pacifists reject the use of violence, but accept non-violent revolutionary action against capitalism and the state with the purpose of establishing a peaceful voluntarist society.
An anarcho-pacifist critique of capitalism was provided by Bart de Ligt in his The Conquest of Violence. A report in An Anarchist FAQ describes how "all anarchists would agree with de Ligt on, to use the name of one of his book's chapters, "the absurdity of bourgeois pacifism." For de Ligt, and all anarchists, violence is inherent in the capitalist system and any attempt to make capitalism pacifistic is doomed to failure. This is because, on the one hand, war is often just economic competition carried out by other means. Nations often go to war when they face an economic crisis, what they cannot gain in economic struggle they attempt to get by conflict. On the other hand, "violence is indispensable in modern society... [because] without it the ruling class would be completely unable to maintain its privileged position with regard to the exploited masses in each country. The army is used first and foremost to hold down the workers... when they become discontented." [Bart de Ligt, Op. Cit., p. 62] As long as the state and capitalism exist, violence is inevitable and so, for anarcho-pacifists, the consistent pacifist must be an anarchist just as the consistent anarchist must be a pacifist".
At some point anarcho-pacifism had as its main proponent Christian anarchism. The first large-scale anarcho-pacifist movement was the Tolstoyan peasant movement in Russia. They were a predominantly peasant movement that set up hundreds of voluntary anarchist pacifist communes based on their interpretation of Christianity as requiring absolute pacifism and the rejection of all coercive authority.
Many right-wing libertarians, particularly anarcho-capitalists and minarchists, uphold the Non Aggression Principle (NAP). The NAP holds that somebody cannot use force or otherwise coercive methods against someone or their property, and that if the NAP is broken, then that person may defend themselves. The NAP would, if put in effect in real-life, only benefit the landed and wealthy. For example, under the NAP, having a government demand income tax from a multi-millionaire would count as an act of aggression, but having a wealthy land-lord evict a impoverished, hungry family on to the streets to starve and freeze would be acceptable under the NAP.
Furthermore, right-wing libertarians think that private property is an inherent right that must be enforced. For example, by a right-libertarians logic, a factory-owner giving his workers abhorrent wages, having them work overly long-hours, and providing no acceptable working conditions would be perfectly fine, yet having those same workers attempting to strike or forcefully collectivize the factory-owner's factory would, by the right-wing libertarians view, be an act of theft, and would allow the factory-owner to decide whatever they want to punish the workers for breaking the NAP.
When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?” But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them. ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’ “Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers. Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high. Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
For many decades now religious conservatives in Christendom have proclaimed that God loves the free market (capitalism). They seem not to realize that many of the tenets of Capitalism are aligned with Social Darwinism and Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.” Ironically, it is these very same Christian Conservatives who oppose Social Darwinism, Evolution, and the notion of “survival of the fittest.” That is yet another contradiction in American Christendom.
Christian Conservatives denounce Socialists even though in the two Biblical passages above taken from the Book of Acts it is clear that the Apostles and early Christians created and lived a lifestyle of SOCIALISM. They held everything in common. There was no private property. Funds were pooled together to help the many instead of the one. They were actually living the Socialist motto, “From each according to his means, to each according to his need.” And that’s what Jesus preached as well by the way.
Karl Marx proclaimed Socialism and it is probable that he got the idea right from the Gospels themselves!
Make no mistake about it. Some Capitalist Christians are very aware that the Gospels teach Socialism and more or less condemn Capitalism but when they run across passages like Acts 2 and 4 they simply dismiss them away. And they do so out of hand EVEN though Acts 2 and 4 are the only places in the entire Bible that give SPECIFICS about Biblical Economics!
Of course many Capitalist Christians claim that this collectivism/socialism in Acts was “voluntary” but the Bible says nothing about that at all. In fact, from the people having to sell their land or homes it appears that it was NOT voluntary at all but was a requirement for being among the Believers. Acts chapter 5 details how a member of the early church failed to turn over all of his property to the church and as a result “he fell down and died.” After that his wife did the same thing and she too fell down and died! It goes on to say that after that “Great fear” seized the whole church. I guess God let it be known at that point that collectivism was NOT voluntary as Capitalist Christians claim it is today!
If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of global capitalism is to have made choice one of those inalienable human rights, to have ensnared the very notion of democracy within an indiscriminate right-to-excess, to have transposed freedom into economic or consumptive terms. This is an achievement that DeLillo grasped in a remarkable way. As he put it in Underworld:
“Capital burns off the nuance in a culture. Foreign investment, global markets, corporate acquisitions, the flow of information through transnational media, the attenuating influence of money that’s electronic and sex that’s cyberspaced, the convergence of consumer desire – not that people want the same things, necessarily, but that they want the same range of choices.”
Choice itself has thus become the true object of human longing, a longing that has parasitised or colonised human nature itself. And so it seems that Karl Marx was right: the vision of capitalism that I’ve just described – which embraces the entire globe, which can generate more money ex nihilo through the mysteries of financial derivatives and futures speculation, which can bring together polar opposites in apparent economic harmony – is, in the end, theological. Or, to put it another way, capitalism is Mammon.
Mammon (Aramaic: מָמוֹנָא, māmōnā) in the New Testament is commonly thought to mean money, material wealth, or any entity that promises wealth, and is associated with the greedy pursuit of gain. The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke both quote Jesus using the word in a phrase often rendered in English as "You cannot serve both God and Mammon."
In the Middle Ages, it was often personified and sometimes included in the seven princes of Hell. Mammon in Hebrew (ממון) means 'money'. The word was adopted to modern Hebrew to mean wealth.
The metaphor of a camel going through the eye of a needle is common to both Matthew and Luke, it also being used in Luke 18:25. Do not be misled by your pastor—this passage is saying rich men cannot get into heaven. It follows in logic that the nature of the kingdom of God is such that to be able to enter it a rich man must cease to be rich. However, Jesus Christ goes on to say that what is impossible with men is not impossible with God (Matthew 19:25–26; Mark 10:26–27; Luke 18:26–27), implying that the grace of God can save a rich man, for instance by enabling rich people to willingly surrender the riches which should otherwise exclude them from grace. Christians have diluted this so much for the benefit of the rich that there is no effective restriction now on rich men getting to heaven, according to modern clerics of most Christian sects, many of whom are using Christianity as a way to get rich themselves.
…Not everyone has the same abilities. When economics is driven by competition, so that the rule is everyone for themselves and each company for itself, some must succeed and others fail. Though sad and apparently wasteful, we are told the benefit is that the strong, the smart, the shrewd, and the perceptive will rise in the social hierarchy. Capitalist Christians who are often utterly appalled by Darwin’s theory of evolution, suddenly call upon him to explain the way capitalism works for the good of us all. They call it social Darwinism.
In fact, it is often the selfish, the unscrupulous and the dishonest capitalists who succeed best, and this outcome is the result of the basis of the system—competition. The competitive system encourages people of poor character to do well, and because it does encourage them, they may end up as millionaires or billionaires, though many, perhaps most, are no better than criminals.
Capitalism is a fight requiring for success suspension of Christ’s morality, natural human morality. It proclaims, “if any man is not well off, he should get greedy and make money”. For Christian Socialists, indeed for any Christian, this is the worship of Mammon, the God of Greed, the opposite of brotherhood, the opposite of Love, the opposite of Christianity. Thomas Carlyle said “we have forgotten God”. It is true, for, if we had remembered Him, we should never have forgotten that men are brothers. F D Maurice said:
“Competition is put forth as the law of the universe. This is a lie. The time is come to declare it is a lie by word and deed.”
Christian communists consider that the teachings of Jesus Christ compel Christians to support communism as God’s preferred social and economic system. Christian communism is the same as Christian socialism, but those particularly who have studied Marx see the first Christians as responding to the social imbalances of the Hellenistic Roman world by attempting to live a communal life by returning to the primitive communism of early men, which has conditioned our social instincts. They do not agree with secular Marxists that religion is inevitably wrong, but they do not necessarily reject Marx’s dictum that religion is the opium of the people, in that Christianity has been misused as a psycho-social drug to take people’s minds from the troubles that Christ sought to end through His egalitarianism.
So, many of the historical, political-economic and social aspects of Marxist communism are acceptable as compatible with the practical aims of Christ’s moral teaching. Christ valued love, justice, kindness, mercy, and the character to be able to serve other people. Our capitalist society values diametrically opposite qualities in people—greed, selfishness and ruthlessness. Christ’s answer was communal living—communism.
How is a communist society actually achieved by Christian communists? The answer is in just the same way as Marx envisaged. Violent revolution is not a sine qua non of communism. Non violence is always preferred, but the communist recognizes that no class holding on to power is likely to yield it easily, and certainly will not bow to a democratic verdict of the people unless they can see no way to resist. In other words, the revolutionaries do not will a violent transition, but the counter-revolutionaries will normally use violence to stop the revolution:
“For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish, yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.”
Christian communists commit themselves to nonviolence, but that includes passive resistance which can be very effective. When it is not being, however, it is idle to pretend that active resistance does not become necessary so long as justice is to be done. Isaiah thought so.
The expropriators have to be expropriated for they will not yield of their own will. So, the businesses that they own and run at a profit have to be nationalized or turned into co-operative societies. Christians who support capitalism call this theft, even though they know or ought to know that Christ accused the profiteers in the temple whose tables he violently overturned of being gangs of thieves. (Mark 11:15-18) They were the capitalists of their time, legitimately using the temple and its cult to make money out of the pilgrims and those seeking atonement by sacrifice. So God declared economic exploitation institutionalized theft just as capitalists exploit workers by forcing them to accept in pay less than they have produced.
Capitalism creates an imbalance of power between classes and resource distribution. This imbalance creates communities who are vulnerable to exploitation by the Abortion Industrial Complex.
For that reason, we look to solutions outside of the capitalist system to generate a better life for all people, especially those who are economically underprivileged.
The Abortion Industrial Complex is the overlapping interests of government and industry that use fear, isolation, and violence to intensify the economic & societal inequalities that pressure people to abort when facing crisis pregnancies. Abortion is a powerful and coercive tool used by capitalists to benefit their own bottom line. Those who benefit from abortion rely on economic inequalities and various systems of discrimination to generate profit and influence.
Our current economic system pits pregnant people against their children. It reinforces the idea that people cannot survive under capitalism, while proposing no real solution to ensure all lives are protected. We as a society use abortion as a catch-all solution. Abortion does not disappear societal problems; it disappears human beings.
Poverty:
The Guttmacher Institute, a research institute that has worked closely with abortion providers for decades, reports that 73% of pregnant people cited poverty or financial hardship as the reason for choosing abortion. It’s also been reported by Gallup that economically underprivileged people are significantly less likely to identify as pro-choice than those who make an annual income of $75,000 or more.
…Governments and institutions benefit by following the “cheaper option”. When considering federal or state funding for abortion, politicians have argued that it’s more expedient to push abortion than to spend more time and resources on economic reform that would help economically underprivileged people. Pro-choice activists have also tried encouraging people to support abortion because “the state pays more to help these families [who have not chosen abortion]”; in other words, abortion is framed as the better option, not out of concern for health or safety, but because of the benefits to capitalism.
—Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (Source)
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
@CoryDory
