Amos's River of Justice

Our Season of Creation

  • Two Italian designers made a statement about gay marriage that turned out to be very controversial. However, I believe this is how we should talk to each other.

    Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana said in a recent interview that they oppose gay adoptions. They also oppose gay marriage. They believe ‘the only family is the traditional one’.

    Gabbana said, ”A child needs a mother and a father. I could not imagine my childhood without my mother. I also believe that it is cruel to take a baby away from its mother.”

    I wanted to share this story for two reasons: first because it demonstrates kindness and consideration for mothers; and second because it’s surprising that men are questioning whether gay men should be raising children together. I agree with this point of view.

  • There is an old conversation about art that took place in early twentieth century France. The important question that I derived from that conversation is What does theology have to do with life? In contrast to such questions, I find our current conversation rather depressing. 

    Theology and Art

    French cubist Albert Gleizes ventured into Christian theology to the dismay of his Catholic friends. Gleizes, a convert to the Catholic Church, unwittingly brought up an old debate pitting St. Augustine against Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Gleizes argued that the ascendence of Aristotle and Aquinas in the 12th century had been detrimental to Christian art. In this he was influenced by René Guénon. 1 We will see that it may not have been entirely unwitting on Gleizes’s part. 

    I don’t have a position on this debate but I’m more sympathetic to Gleize’s Catholic friends. I have my doubts about the influence of Rene Guénon, as they did. But how did the Catholic Church get involved in this debate?

    The Worker Priest Movement

    After the Second World War, many in the Catholic Church wanted to change the way the Church was presented to the world. They also desired greater openness and relevance to the conditions of modern life. The ‘worker priest’ movement in France was the most radical expression of this desire. The priests in this movement often engaged in the political struggles of the class led by the Communist Party.

    In art, they were willing to use well-known sometimes controversial artists, and these artists were given considerable freedom, regardless of their religious beliefs. Fathers Marie-Alain Courtier and Pie Raymond Régamey were the two most prominent names associated with this movement. They were both Dominicans. 

    Jacques Maritain

    Jacques Maritain had already worked out a theory of modern art based on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. In his Art et Scolastique, he argued that in the Middle Ages the artist and the theologian worked together. The artist had represented beauty and the theologian had represented truth. However, the Renaissance set the artist free from the theologian. This sent him out on his own to search after beauty in its own right, independent of theological truth. 

    According to Maritain, there is a clear distinction between beauty and truth. Beauty is still a ‘transcendental’ and belongs to the divine order. However, under the utilitarian mindset, the artist longs for beauty as an absolute end in itself. In this way, he has become as superfluous and ridiculous as the theologian or saint.

     Baudelaire

    In the nineteenth century Baudelaire tried to reassert the transcendental nature of his art. In Maritain’s telling, Baudelaire shared common ground with a wide range of artists, especially those interested in religious art. A painted figure should look like a painted figure and not like a real figure. It is deceitful for a painting to give the illusion of nature. 

    This view was shared by many schools of art in Europe and Britain in Baudelaire’s time. It could even have been written by Albert Gleizes, especially before 1920. However, Maritain continued with what was probably a criticism of Gleizes’s and Metzinger’s du ‘Cubisme’. 

    Does Cubism in our day, despite its tremendous deficiencies, represent the still stumbling, screaming childhood of an art once more pure? The barbarous dogmatism of its theorists compels the strongest doubts and an apprehension that the new school may be endeavouring to set itself absolutely free from naturalist imitation only to become immoveably fixed in stultae quaestiones…(as quoted by Brooke p, 246)

    Thomas took ‘Stultae quaestiones’ from Paul’s Epistle to Titus 3:9. They are questions that ‘if raised in any science or discipline, would run contrary to the first conditions implied by that very same discipline.’ 

    The Dominicans would raise the same objection against Gleizes in the late 1940s. They would say he was bothering his head with questions that did not concern him and should be left to professional philosophers and theologians. 

    For Gleizes’s part the mistrust was mutual. In his view, the Dominicans would take the easy road of the urban university, ‘where Aristotle’s philosophy rules supreme’. The ‘real door’ will open on the order of St Benedict, exclusively theological. 

    Gleizes believed that Thomas was of the thirteenth century, the period when the theological view of the world associated with the Benedictines was giving way to a more intellectual and philosophical view of the world, associated with the Dominicans. 

    What Does Theology Have to do With Life?

    How are we to understand the relationship between theology and the physical world? Traditionalists such as Guenon believe the physical world should be organized according to the theology of a past historical era. Guenon, his disciple Albert Gleizes, and their followers, believed the modern age had caused a deviation that can be seen in art and architecture, and that the world must return to that past way of thinking. However, there were disagreements even among the Traditionalists.

    Rene Guenon dated the modern deviation from the beginning of the fourteenth century while Albert Gleizes traced it back a century earlier. According to Peter Brooke this indicates a ‘profound difference in approach’. 

    Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a play of lines and colours that put the eye in movement had given way to a play of lines and colours that evoke the appearances of the natural world. The folds of the garments in the paintings and sculptures which had been organised in such a way as to contribute to the unifying rythm of the whole painted or sculpted area became an imitation of the folds of the garments agitated by the wind or evoking the shape of the body underneath. For Geizes this change was much more fundamental than any change in intellectual ideas. (But) For Guenon, the intellectual idea, the metaphysical structure, was the foundation stone of all the rest. Thus it is sufficient that a correct understanding of his traditional doctrine is conveyed in the symbols and numerical proportions used by the artists. For Gleizes by contrast, it is the ‘cast of mind’ that counts, and this is expressed at a much more fundamental level in the act of the artist than in anything – symbolism, metaphysical argument or whatever – that can be expressed in words. (Brooke p. 254)

    There had previously been a rupture between Gleize and his friends Dom Angelico Surchamp and Robert Pouyaud over the question of the similarities or lack thereof between Gleizes and Guenon. There had also been a post-war disagreement between Gleizes and Père Raymond Régamey. These arguments are quite complex, but a brief mention is necessary in order to have some idea of the schools of thought.

    The Art Journal, Art Sacré

    Régamey and Couturier ran the art journal, Art Sacré. (It had been founded in 1935 as Cahiers de l’ art sacré.) In June 1945, Gleizes submitted an article to the journal, L’arc en ciel,cle de l’art Chretien Medieval.

    Régamey answered politely but declined to publish it. He specifically objected to one of Gleizes’s ideas. He said he agreed with Gleizes’s statement that experience is an intimate participation with the living object, and observation is a distant, subjective appreciation. However, he disagreed that everything produced with the combination proposed by observation is damned.

    In a lecture in Brussels in 1947, Régamey was more critical, and he included Gleizes, Bazaine, and Manessier in his critique.

    A Doctrine of Two Kingdoms

    Subsequently Gleizes wrote what seemed to be a challenge to Régamey’s program. He spoke of a ‘doctrine of two kingdoms–the kingdom of this world and the kingdom that is not of this world.

    Brooke interprets this to mean that Gleizes has abandoned all hope in the establishment of a spiritual authority on earth.

    For Gleizes, the kingdom of this world is the kingdom of space and time. The kingdom that is not of this world is the kingdom of eternity. The ambition of the Christian is supposedly to bring the two into harmony. But Gleizes believes the disharmony between them is total. Harmony can only be achieved with the reestablishment of a religious state of mind.

    Furthermore, Gleizes’s piece in Art Sacré implied that the Church is implicated in the general deviation. The Church’s own idea of itself is wrong according to Gleizes, and it must die to be reborn.

    This comment reminded Brooke of the annoyance of Père Jérôme when Gleizes told him ‘the whole of theology has to be taken up again’.

    Régamey Started to Question Whether Gleizes Was a Christian

    One reason for Régamey’s hostility to Gleizes was his suspicion that Gleizes was not a Christian (Brooke p. 253). He had begun to think the ‘tradition’ which Gleizes hoped to renew was the ‘tradition’ of Rene Guenon.

    Guenon’s tradition was a metaphysical system of thought which was the real foundation behind all the major religions. In this view, the system is transmitted from one generation to the next through a secret process of initiation. The question of Gleizes’s allegiance to Guenon led to a ‘serious rupture’ among Gleizes’s followers.

    Gleizes’s Ideas of Society and Culture Were Typically Right-Wing

    Gleizes appreciated Guenon’s critique of modern civilization in his Crise du monde moderne, and Orient et occident. They both believed society was at the end of a short period of religious chaos and heading for destruction. The task of those who were aware of the situation was to rediscover and reaffirm the principles on which a new religious culture could evolve.

    Gleizes Knew What He Was Doing

    Gleizes knew he was renewing the old case made by the Augustinians against Aquinas. Over time, his friends and Church allies were shut out. Some of the themes that came up repeatedly in the debates with Père Jérôme and others were Gleizes’s distrust of Thomism, his insistence on a cyclical view of history, his sympathy for Guenon, and a tendency to emphasize the universal reality of Christ rather than the historical individual (p. 223).

  • My criticism of Christianity has nothing to do with the beliefs or the theology. It has to do with its economic effects on communities. Of course these effects didn’t originate with Christianity. They originated with the Greek philosophers who remain influential in Christianity. Recently the Pope has made it clear that the Greeks are staying. I assume this is due to their importance in the Church’s theological structure. Greek philosophy has influenced the way Christians think about God and so it’s possible that their contribution can’t be removed without dire consequences. In any case theology is a touchy business and I’m happy to leave it to the theologians.

    But the Pope has also called for a new theology of the woman. If you were an optimist, you could interpret this as a willingness to reject Greek misogyny. Since Greek misogyny has been the justification for the West’s political and economic organization, rejecting it would be consistent with the Pope’s call for a new economy. My objection is to the premise that the place of women in society can be defined through theology.

    The definition of theology is:

    1 the study of the nature of God and religious belief.
    1.1 religious beliefs and theory when systematically developed. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/theology

    With the Church’s focus on Mary the mother of Jesus the ‘woman’ is being presented as synonymous with women. This is a problem because women are merely human. ‘The woman’ on the other hand is the archetypal mother. The archetypal mother is not the same thing as the personal mother. Economically, the archetypal mother is the rival of the personal mother.

     

  • I have argued that Catholic women should be free to make a plan for community reform without asking for permission. However, I’m not Catholic, so I don’t know if there would be resistance from the Church on this. But instead, the strategy of women’s groups is to demand female ordination.

    The Church Speaks With a Masculine Voice

    The Church speaks with a masculine voice. A masculine voice is a good thing. It’s needed in the world. But it’s not a feminine voice. It never was a feminine voice and it never will be a feminine voice. I don’t know why women in the Church insist on fighting for position in a male hierarchy. It seems to me their happiness might just be a matter of achieving a little distance. And it’s not as if they are not needed elsewhere.

    Women Need Help From Other Women in Matters of Child Custody

    For example, the influence of fatherhood initiatives on family courts in the United States has to be addressed by women. I don’t know if this influence is from the Knights of Columbus or Roland Warren’s National Fatherhood Initiative, but I do know it’s a serious matter. Custody is being awarded to abusers, resulting in the deaths of children. (The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic organization. Warren’s Initiative is not.)

    When I suggested some time ago that people should be organized into smaller political units and that they should own property in common I was trying to answer questions about community cohesiveness and reliable representation. I assumed that real solutions would have to start in communities that solve their own problems. That’s my reasoning on the importance of women’s organizations as well. And for all I know, the Church would not object.

    The Joy of the Gospel

    When I discovered in The Joy of the Gospel  that the Church has developed a whole theology around the discovery and encouragement of new cultural manifestations I knew right away that the Church depends on lay people to create culture. However, I believe the issue of female ordination is a dead end.

    I’d appreciate a discussion from Catholics about what they hope to accomplish by this strategy.

  • I think I’d better explain my position on female ordination. First, I know there are Christian Churches that ordain women. At this time, the most I can say about them is that they seem to represent a fundamental change in thinking. But for the most part, the world’s religions speak with a masculine voice. This might sound strange coming from me since I obviously have sympathy for what Pope Francis is trying to do, but I’ve come to think of churches in general as representing the other gender. At the same time, I realize that nothing is that black and white. I know women who are devoted to their church. Many of them would probably tell me they consider their church to be their own. I assume this is why female ordination makes sense to some women as a strategy. They feel the church belongs to them as much as it does to their pastor. Unfortunately, the problem extends beyond any particular church. For this reason among others, I don’t think female ordination makes sense as a strategy.

    Maybe sometime in the distant future our society will decide to give up the social structure that goes along with a male priesthood, but I doubt it. Our culture is hierarchical. Religion reinforces this hierarchical structure and has done so for thousands of years. However, these assumptions are not confined to religious believers.

    It’s no coincidence that our communities work the way they do. The general organization was carefully constructed and is supported by foundational myths that imply there is something vaguely suspicious or even wicked about the female gender. I think it’s easy to forget in the context of one’s own church that the world is saturated with these assumptions. In church we deal with the fathers or brothers or husbands, of our friends, so it’s easy to assume that any misogynistic attitudes are specific to a few misguided individuals or to one particular religion. However, I’ve found that there are countless men—complete strangers to me—who are more than willing to remind me of the way things are. Who knows, maybe the Church will surprise me and decide to ordain women after all, but I think it would have to completely change its nature to do so. On the other hand, I’ve come to suspect that women already play a big part in the Church. Conservative Catholic men certainly think they do, judging from recent comments.

    The thing that is most important about the female ordination issue in my view is its effect on the conversation. My concern has to do with the presentation of this issue as an ultimatum. There are so many things to talk about that I can’t even figure out what to talk about next, and yet suddenly we have this agenda, which is not even held by all women, and which threatens to turn the conversation into a confrontation.

    Here’s my take on the conversation. At this time we’re talking to a specific person—Pope Francis. We don’t know yet what his vision is and so we’re exploring the possibilities—given reality as we know it. Previously I’ve written confrontational things in this blog about Christianity, but now that we are speaking to an actual person that no longer seems appropriate. For one thing, that style has never been my understanding of a conversation. I’m not saying that we have to accept everything that the Church tells us. Personally I’ve had to come to terms with the story about the ACLU’s law suit, but I’m willing to do so, for now, because there is the hope that the Church can address our political and economic problems, and also because I have questions that I can’t get answered if I ban myself from the conversation.

    However there are other approaches to this conversation that make sense to me. I’m still in the process of working them out and I’m aware that anything I say will need the agreement of a large number of women before they take on any real meaning, but I’ll explain my current direction.

    In my opinion, an effective solution to society’s problems would require women to organize independently of the Church—but hopefully with the support of the Church—to address specific issues in the community. I’m not talking about leaving the Church or even taking the Church less seriously, which I’m sure would be offensive even to supporters of female ordination. I’m talking about developing a plan of action in the real world. What we need to be asking ourselves is whether the Church can help us with our goals once we decide what they are. Then the next question would have to do with how we might go about deciding on our goals.

    In order for women to create a structure that would allow them to agree on goals, they would have to address the fact that they rarely agree with one another. Generally, women’s first loyalties are to their families, religion, children, political party, their immediate social circle, and perhaps their sports team. This is a priceless tendency when it comes to community building, but I think there is one specific kind of loyalty that has the potential to correct the world’s social ills, and that is loyalty to the maternal family. If you agree with me on this, this is a principle that we can build on. On the other hand, female relationships in the wider community, while they have their good points, represent a more shaky foundation for community building since there is more potential for rivalry and disagreement.

    Assuming we’re able to agree on this principle, next we would need to discover the factors that work against strong maternal bonds. Only then, if we find that our attempts to remedy these factors meet resistance from the Church, would we be justified in reconsidering our participation in the conversation.

    I’ll list two of these factors: The tendency of family courts to take children from their mothers in the case of divorce; and the policy of turning single girls who become pregnant into pariahs, causing them to lose social support and often their children. Throughout history these policies have been given teeth by the legal system. It was one of the factors that led to the incarceration of so many young women in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries. However, this phenomenon isn’t unique to the Catholic Church. The Poor Laws that were in effect in England during the reign of Queen Victoria led to the phenomenon of ‘baby farming’.

    For more than a hundred years, single women in England who became pregnant were systematically deprived of the support of their families. This situation was assured by the fact that a girl’s family members would share in her punishment unless they disowned her. Employment opportunities for single mothers were limited, pay was low, and there was no one to care for a new baby while its mother worked except for this diabolical institution of the baby farm. In this system, single mothers paid other people to house and feed their babies, not realizing that the children would be systematically starved while providing the baby farmer with a tidy sum. It’s damning enough that Victoria and her consort, Albert, the real power behind the throne, failed to address this travesty for so long, but the poor laws actually went into effect before Victoria became queen. It’s been argued that the responsible party was the Methodist, John Wesley. If there is any validity behind my theory of the central importance to society of the maternal bond, we would have to conclude that these kinds of policies destroy the very thing they claim to protect—the community.

    That said, we seem to be back where we started, trying to convince our all-powerful leaders to change their policies. Not necessarily. The important thing to begin with would be our ability to interpret policies in terms of the danger they pose to our community, and to be able to agree among ourselves on this interpretation. Any action we take should be done with the purpose of eliminating threats to the good of the community. (There are ways to do this that don’t involve major policy changes, non-violent ways, but we can talk about this later.) Anyway, this implies that we have to be able to define what the good of the community is. I’ve argued here that the maternal bond should take precedence over legalistic or ideological priorities—in other words, over appearances.

  • If certain people have their way there will be war with Russia. Americans have no business contemplating such a thing. For that matter, there was no excuse for the Cold War. It was concocted from the recommendations of George Kennan. This is disturbing, considering that is not what he said. This concoction was done by a hysterical press and the ‘thinkers’ of RAND Corporation. Of course, neocons at RAND, and their purportedly enormous brains, are not working for Americans. They work their magic at the behest of the Air Force. Sadly, they were able to use the words of George Kennan to achieve their aims. The neocons erased George Kennan.

    Kennan tried but never succeeded in living down his famous ‘X Article’ in which he said ominous things about the Soviet Union. When he talked about containment, he thought he was recommending the political containment of a political threat, not some ‘doctrine’ of perpetual military containment. More importantly, he thought containment should apply to the Americans as well.

    Neocons erased George Kennan
    Neocon Pretensions

    The neocons’ idealistic and pretentious lack of genuine foreign policy

    Kennan expressed concern about the ascendance in the United States of an ‘idealistic and pretentious lack of genuine foreign policy’ that focused on the American Dream. He thought the U.S. must put its own house in order first.

    He argued that the Soviets were part of an historical tradition of the Third Rome, which although it is a rival religion, is still Byzantine. Strangely, he could already see similar totalitarian tendencies at work in the United States. The Americans had taken up a form of existence that does not recognize limits, a result of unconditional acceptance of the logic of the marketplace. This had led to the loss of a sense of what should not be done.

    America’s monster: the indestructible myth

    So instead of a political containment lasting for 10-15 years the doctrine was transformed into an ‘indestructible myth’:

    “There emerged one of those great forbidding apparitions to the credence in which mass opinion is so easily swayed: a monster devoid of all humanity and of all rational motive, at once the embodiment and the caricature of evil, devoid of internal conflicts and problems of its own, intent only on bringing senseless destruction to the lives and hopes of others.”

    The symptoms of our decay go beyond politics. They include ‘overpopulation, urbanization, hyper-intensity of communication, and destruction of the environment’. However, for Kennan the nuclear arms race was the clearest indication of spiritual decline. It was a ‘spiritual and philosophical derangement of the last order’, a madness, a death wish, a lack of faith, ‘wrong in the good old-fashioned meaning of the word’.  Stefan Rossbach, GNOSTIC WARS: The Cold War in the Context of a History of Western Spirituality.

  • The birth control debate has focused on single women. However married couples depend on birth control more consistently than single people. I’d like to invite the legislators to include married women in the discussion.

    There is a disconnect in our understanding of sexual relations in marriage. We laugh about old television shows that depict married couples sleeping in twin beds because we think we know better. The implications of twin beds are lost to us because the control of fertility no longer depends on the control of sex.

    Many people are not aware that married couples once slept in separate bedrooms. They also may not be aware that there used to be biological and seasonal prohibitions on marital sex. Apparently, ancient people understood the importance of population control. Or was it that they still saw women as people?

    A decrease in marital sex is not what our legislators have in mind when they limit access to birth control. Their goal is a higher birthrate. These men may pose as defenders of tradition, but there is nothing traditional about what they are doing.

  • Neoclassical ideology is capitalist mind control. It was created to support the aims of dominant capital.  Capitalist mind control is a smokescreen for the abuses of capitalist economics.

    Dominant Capital and Tax Money Financed Neoclassical Economics

    This development was financed by two sources, dominant capital and tax money. It is shored up by countless apologists and repairmen and implemented by state organs. And finally, the media sells it to the public.

    Most outsiders have trouble understanding it. This is because it’s deliberately made to look difficult. This is only one of the reasons the public doesn’t discuss it.  There is also the problem of treating the economy like a natural phenomenon subject to scientific study. It’s either above our heads, or it’s an inevitable phenomenon unaffected by humans, and therefore discussion is not necessary.  Laws of nature can be discovered but they can’t be changed. Capitalist mind control is one of its greatest powers.

    Denial of the Problem

    The most troubling thing about the current crisis of capitalism is the large number of people who deny that a problem exists. One example is Catholics who object to Pope Francis’s condemnation of the economy. We should question who they represent. This kind of objection is standard practice for those whose job it is to head off criticism about the economy.

    The phenomenon of murky, inexplicable economic manipulation is explained by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler in The Global Political Economy of Israel, published in 2002 . 2

    What the Ruling class must hide

    The book deals mainly with Israel, but the critique of economic theory isn’t specific to Israel. The United States has a similar economic story. 3

    Between 1865 and 1920, in order for the U.S. to become the world’s leading industrial capitalist nation, dominant capitalists had to find a way to overcome two major factors: the demands of the working class; and competition among existing firms. They accomplished this through monopoly in manufacturing, and this produced a system of corporate capitalism.

    The process was driven by a ruling class with designs on power. Control of the financial system was the basic mechanism and the merger movement was the result. The process was managed by financial experts who commanded either capital itself or the avenues for gathering it.

    The Bankers’ Master Plan

    During the first years of the 20th century, ‘higher financial circles’ decided that the banking system should be the headquarters of an investment system based on cooperation among large firms. According to Thorstein Veblen, the essentials of the system were as follows: ‘The banking community took over the strategic regulation of the key industries, and…also the control of the industrial system at large.’ Key industries were controlled by the investment bankers who made up a sort of General Staff of financial strategy and who commanded the country’s credit resources.

    Their relation with insurance companies is one example.

    “In the years 1885 and 1905, the annual income of life insurance companies in the United States was $525 million and 2.9 billion, respectively. These funds were derived from premiums paid by holders of the insurance policies, and needed to be invested promptly so as to yield in income for the companies to pay for the deaths of their insured persons. Five firms owned two-thirds of the assets of all life insurance companies: Metropolitan, Prudential, Mutual, Equitable, and New York Life. The last three owned fully one-half the assets of all life insurance companies.

    In 1870 less than three percent of these assets were stocks and bonds; by 1900, that figure had risen to nearly 38 percent. Five years later, securities held by New York Life constituted 74 percent of its total assets; of Equitable 57 percent; and of Mutual, 54 percent. Which securities did the insurance companies buy? Primarily, those sold (i.e., underwritten) by six dominant New York investment banks, led by J.P. Morgan and Company. Such securities were issued by industrial corporations and others which had close relations with the dominant investment banks. According to Douglass North, ‘It was clearly a one-sided arrangement in which the great bulk of the advantages accrued to the investment banker rather than to the insurance company.’

    “Crucial to this entire arrangement was the requirement that the insurance companies control their own back yard. This was accomplished by deep company involvement in political and governmental affairs. ‘The three big insurance companies occupied key positions in financing the [New York State] Republican machine (and to some extent the Democratic one also) and guaranteed not only friendly legislators but cooperative [state] insurance departments as well.’ Between 1895 and 1905, a New York Life lobbyist was paid at least $1,312,197.18 to guard against passage of hostile legislation. The New York State Department of Insurance functioned as a subdivision of the industry…”

    The New York Department of Insurance Ruled Their Industry Like US Steel

    The New York Department of Insurance was a creature of the dominant capital machine. Its ‘regulations’ enabled the large companies to evade regulations when necessary, and to insure continuous dominance by the large companies. The Big Three insurance companies ruled their industry very much like US Steel, a Morgan firm.

    Neoclassical Ideology: the Organic Super-Government of Mankind

    Historians refer to the late 19th and early 20th centuries are frequently referred to as the age of Big Business. But according to W.E.B. Du Bois, this is misleading. It wasn’t so much about the size of the firms as it was about an ‘organic super-government of mankind in matters of work and wages. This super-government was directed with science and skill for the private profit of individuals.’

    “When Woodrow Wilson first ran for president in 1912, he declared that ‘the masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.’ At the center of this process lay control of the principal political parties and the political machines, organized under the direction of party bosses. ‘Living to a great extent on the corporations, bossism burst into full bloom in the States where big capitalist interests were concentrated, where [railroad] companies were most numerous, such as New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania…’”

    The bosses didn’t run everything however. Often company officials sat in on important party committees and pulled the strings for them, equipped and kept up political organization for their own use, and ran them as they pleased.

    The Sherman Anti-Trust Act Was Ignored by Dominant Capital

    When the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was finally passed in 1890, an amendment was offered to assure it would not be applied against the unions. Senator Sherman led a successful fight against the amendment arguing it was not necessary. Within 5 years it was indeed used against the unions. The entire Anti-Trust Act was soon judged to be a charade because so much of it was ignored whenever it suited dominant capital.

  • If we limit the conversation to what we can realistically do, our choices are limited. But if we’re talking theory, anything is possible. Since I’m in charge of my own theoretical world, I’ll offer some solutions. I’ll start with solutions to environmental problems. Any changes in politics and economics will be limited to what is necessary to the particular environmental goal. Finally, everything will be done with an eye to social effects.

    It’s been said we have 50 years to do something about the oceans. Every continent contributes to the problem of pollution, much of it from industrial farming, so ideally every country would have to participate. I propose dividing industrial farms, which also contribute to global warming, into smaller, sustainable operations. Start with the farms that drain into major river systems. This would decrease the amount of chemical fertilizers flowing into the ocean and begin to address the problem of dead zones.

    It would also create the potential for using these sustainable farms as the nucleus of a different kind of community. Such communities would have to develop over time as the underlying political theory is discovered, but they should be conceived as centers of a vibrant life—not oppressive sloughs of despair that the youth can’t wait to escape. They would have to offer opportunity; they would have to inspire and challenge all members.

    In the United States, we could consider creating another governing center in the middle of the country, specifically to serve this new type of grassroots community organization. This is not as a replacement for Washington—it could interact with Washington D.C. For example, it could facilitate the development of candidates for national office, as well as local delegates.

    The critics might say that if one country breaks up commercial farms it would cease to be competitive with other countries. Or if everyone does, we couldn’t feed the world. First, we don’t feed the world now. Second, this isn’t necessarily true. However, the first objection is important as an example of something that might work, but that can’t be tried because of outside pressure. The same thing happened in pre-war France. In a time of political and military turmoil, the French suddenly discovered that their birth rate was much lower than Germany and Great Britain. Then a series of European furniture exhibitions made them realize they were falling behind their neighbors in the decorative arts by limiting themselves to traditional French designs and methods.

    I think this illustrates that we have to develop criteria for healthy versus unhealthy competition. For example, it may have been healthy for the furniture makers to be challenged, while the manipulation of the birth rate for ideological, political, economic, or military reasons is unethical, undemocratic, and hazardous to the environment.

    What if we put limits on unhealthy competition? I’m not talking isolationism. I’m talking about the kind of limits that make it possible to solve domestic problems like dead zones in the ocean. Because of its social and environmental implications, we could start by eliminating the pro-natalist nonsense, followed by trade agreements—at least the worst aspects of them. The medieval guilds limited competition among their own members and it was effective until some hotshot broke the rules and ruined it for everyone else. This is the same idea only on a global scale.

    If you are screaming ‘Nooo!’ then maybe you don’t understand the seriousness of the world’s problems, or maybe you sense that your own privilege is being threatened. On the contrary, what we’re doing now is stupid and it threatens all of us. We are on a precipice and those responsible for it—ideologues who tell other people what to do and who have no intention of doing it themselves—look down their noses and demand to be told where all these needy people came from. In this way they prove they are unfit to wield authority of any kind, and yet there they remain.

    Iran has drained its lakes through climate change, dams, drought, and inefficient irrigation. ((Iran in Race to Save Largest Lake From Drying Up, Ali Akbar Dareini, Feb 20, 2014. The National World. Avaliable: http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/iran-in-a-race-to-save-largest-lake-from-drying-up)) In parts of India, half the population is homeless. Half of India’s population defecates on the ground. Worse, even the feces that ends up in the sewage system is untreated. India is awash in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Babies are born with these germs and they often can’t be cured. Further, the crowded conditions make it more likely they’ll pass on their infections. It should be no surprise that some of those germs are coming here. ((Harris Gardiner, Superbugs Kill India’s Babies and Pose Overseas threat, Dec. 3, 2014, New York Times. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/world/asia/superbugs-kill-indias-babies-and-pose-an-overseas-threat.html?src=me&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Most%20Emailed&pgtype=article&_r=0)) And of course, there is evidence of America’s contribution to the problem, both from oil spills and farming, in the Gulf of Mexico.

    Women should be able to control their own fertility. In fact, the relationship between mother and child should be understood as the essential human relationship, and therefore as the basis of all other relationships. This would guard against artificiality and indifference in a community’s social relations.

    I’m aware that my solutions are radical but in my opinion, they don’t have much competition at this time. First, we have the Democrats who can’t seem to come to terms with the demise of Marxism. It’s not clear what they’re doing in this election cycle—maybe pretending to be different from the Republicans for the sake of appearances. As for the Republicans, they are becoming famous for serving shady interest rather than the interests of their own people. Incredibly, they don’t even try to hide it any more. But it’s probably remarkable that either party can still come up with a coherent platform at all. Both are operating on old ideas that were never established on firm ground in the first place so it shouldn’t be surprising that they function more like political religions than rational approaches to the world’s problems.

  • A recent article about the Pope’s address to the European parliament poses questions that I think many of us have been asking ourselves. For example, secularists might be asking why it is important for them to move toward dialogue with the Church.

    “The Pontiff wasn’t the most obvious person to deliver hard truths to elected politicians about the rising threats to the democracies they serve, or, as head of the Catholic Church, to convey a blast against global corporations that undermine the democratic process by co-opting institutions, as he resonantly expressed it, to ‘the service of unseen empires.’ Yet standing at the lectern at the center of the plenary chamber, peering through wire-rimmed reading glasses at his script, he did these things and more. The leader of a religion that has created its share of fractures made an eloquent plea for the European Union to rediscover its founding principles of “bridging divisions and fostering peace and fellowship.’” 4

    This attempt is important because questions can’t be answered until they are asked. Some might wonder what is required of them as a participant in this dialogue. I think I’ve answered some of these questions for myself, although there’s much I don’t know about the church, so any errors are unintentional. We each need to find an answer by paying attention to what the Pope is saying.

    Why is the Church Defending Democracy?

    First, the church’s defense of democracy is not a new innovation. The supporting theology has been developed over the last century. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church was published fairly recently but it was preceded by documents dealing with similar issues. The first was Rerum Novarum, the Papal Encyclical of Leo XIII on Capital and Labor, published in 1891.5.

    What Level of Commitment is Required From Us?

    Next you might be wondering about the level of religious commitment required for participation in this dialogue. The Evangelii Gaudium clarifies the part the church is willing to play in the conversation and it also deals with what it requires of other participants. If you are concerned about what is required of you, you would have to read it for yourself, but for what it’s worth I have a few thoughts.

    It’s possible that the requirements are different for the dominant class than for bloggers like me. With the doctrine of solidarity, the Pope addresses society’s leaders. Solidarity urges justice for the working classes in the service of social peace. It’s true that in the past it’s also been a defense against socialist solutions, but in past times of turmoil the political left, which is part of the dominant class, has participated in solidarity. So, from the Church’s point of view this is not a cynical maneuver:

    “The precepts of the sabbatical and jubilee years constitute a kind of social doctrine in miniature[28]. They show how the principles of justice and social solidarity are inspired by the gratuitousness of the salvific event wrought by God, and that they do not have a merely corrective value for practices dominated by selfish interests and objectives, but must rather become, as a prophecy of the future, the normative points of reference to which every generation in Israel must conform if it wishes to be faithful to its God.”((Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium)).

    Being Realistic About Working Class Alternatives

    There are fewer alternatives available to the working class today, and immediate dangers threaten our ability to agree on them.  So in the short-term I think it’s important to at least understand what is being offered by the other participants in the conversation. This brings me to another set of questions unique to women.

    Being Realistic About the Place of Women in Dialogue with the Church

    In view of the importance to women of the reproductive rights issue, I think it’s necessary to offer a rationale for those who are otherwise inclined to consider the church’s proposals as a way forward. (I don’t think it’s likely that the church will change its position on abortion, but more on that later.) The rationale for female participation begins with the Pope’s statement that women should have a greater voice in the church. Critics have said the place of women in the church will not change all that much, but I don’t think this opening should be taken lightly. From what I can tell, the church continues to build on the statements of previous encyclicals. According to Catholic writer and historian Hilaire Belloc, change happens slowly with actual practice following a change in attitude.

    “First comes in every great revolution of European affairs, a spiritual change; next, bred by this, a change in social philosophy and therefore in political arrangement; lastly, the economic change which political rearrangement has rendered possible.”((Belloc, Hilaire. The Crisis of Civilization. New York: Fordham University Press, 1937))

    The Church is Honoring Its Social Responsibilities

    Claims to religious and political authority are always predicated on the ability to fulfill social responsibilities. The church is honoring its responsibilities at this time, while our politicians are doing their best to prove themselves illegitimate.

    I’ve based many of my previous articles on the assumption that the system is not working. I’ve even considered the possibility that it’s unworkable. There’s one way to prove me wrong and that is to make it work. If politicians can’t immediately solve the problems, they can at least begin to move in that direction.

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