Was Protestantism a reactionary movement?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
A conservative is someone who supports the status quo (or rather, the current policies, which happen to cause the status quo). If the current policies are the optimal policies, than a conservative's policies would be the optimal policies and anyone else's policies would be regressive. If we used to have the optimal policies, and then regressed, a reactionary who wanted to return to those optimal policies would be progressive.

Optimal policies are those which benefit everyone, not a priviledged class. Conservative policies benefit a priviledged class (the status quo). They are not optimal in any sense.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


They are PART of everyone.

The workers' interests are not the same as the interests of everyone. Ergo, the workers' interests should not be considered.

Wrong. If everyone had to do the same amount of work for equal compensation they would all have the same interests. Only an elitist society has conservative policies, which are not in the interest of everyone.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Actually the RFC was a precurser to the New Deal supply side programs.

Incorrect. A major part of the RFC was loaning money to the states for creating public works projects and unemployment relief. True, they also lent money to banks and agricultural credit organization, but they funded a great deal of demand side policies.

It may have seemed like that to you, but no.

Then explain why people called it "Reagan Revolution". I'd imagine it was fairly new if they refered to it as that.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Actually the RFC was a precurser to the New Deal supply side programs.

Incorrect. A major part of the RFC was loaning money to the states for creating public works projects and unemployment relief. True, they also lent money to banks and agricultural credit organization, but they funded a great deal of demand side policies.

Hoover's programs intended to get individuals to work more and corporations to produce more. Only individuals and corporations that did that recieved aid. That's supply side and basically the same philosophy that Reagan had.

It may have seemed like that to you, but no.

Then explain why people called it "Reagan Revolution". I'd imagine it was fairly new if they refered to it as that.

Nothing more than political nonsense.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Hoover's programs intended to get individuals to work more and corporations to produce more. Only individuals and corporations that did that recieved aid. That's supply side

Um... funding public work programs is DEFINETLY not supply side. That is a demand side program through and through. Its meant to put money into the hands of the worker so they'd buy stuff.

Nothing more than political nonsense.

Since you can't explain it away, you label it nonsense... I see .

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Hoover's programs intended to get individuals to work more and corporations to produce more. Only individuals and corporations that did that recieved aid. That's supply side

Um... funding public work programs is DEFINETLY not supply side. That is a demand side program through and through. Its meant to put money into the hands of the worker so they'd buy stuff.

It can be. True it creates wages for the builders, but if the project lowers costs for business then it's supply side in that way. The point is that Hoover and Reagan had basically the same world view, that's why Hoover failed to bring economic recovery, because he held individuals and corporations resonsible for the Depression.

But whoever said that Reagans policies were just like Hoover's should have said that they were basically just like Coolidge, because Coolidge presided over similar economic circumstance as Reagan.

[molly bloom]

Re: Re: Re: Was Protestantism a reactionary movement?

Originally posted by Tripledoc

How does all of this preclude the influence of Protestantism on the British isles?


So the banking business was hardly an influence in creating the preconditions for capitalism - insofar that the money was not lent to capitalists.

It doesn't, but you included Cromwell as part of the Protestant Reformation which is historically inaccurate, unless you have an elastic version of the English Reformation which no one else has heard of.

Not all loans from Italian (and Flemish and German) banking houses were used as war loans- the Spanish monarchy, by the way, is best known for repudiating its debts in that respect, but the collapse of the Bardi and Peruzzi banking houses in the 1340s followed loans to both Edward III of England and the King of Naples, and was part of a more general economic malaise. In any case the social changes engendered by the Black Death in 1347 also fueled the changes necessary for the growth of capitalism in northern Italy.

Capitalism was alive and well and living in northern Italy of the Renaissance- Venice for instance (the most notable example) could afford its imperial and mercantile adventures in the Aegean, Adriatic, Greece and Cyprus because of the enormous wealth amassed by trade, manufacturing, loans with interest, insurance, credit facilities and taxation. It's notable also too, for the first 'modern' bank in Europe- created in the12th Century.

Venice combined aspects of republican rule, monarchical/aristocratic rule and a mercantile oligarchy. It tolerated the ghetto because despite the prevailing prejudices elsewhere in Catholic Europe, it understood that money lending was important to its survival against states with larger territories and bigger populations.

There was no class based hauteur/froideur which prevented what passed for the Venetian nobility from making money, as they frequently traded from their own homes- not something which one can imagine a Spanish grandee or hidalgo engaging in.

The Venetian merchants understood the value of insurance, of shares, of loans with interest attached- this despite the fact that such loans were explicitly against the teachings of the Catholic Church, having been condemned by a pope in the 13th Century.

http://accfinweb.account.strath.ac.uk/df/a1.html

Moneys accrued from trade were reinvested- in agriculture, industry and manufacturing- and it's worthwhile noting that the collapse of the Bardi and Peruzzi banks paved the way for the splendours of Renaissance Florence during the rule of the Medicis- a time when the coinage of a relatively small city state in northern Italy could become the monetary standard for much of Europe, until it was superseded by Venice's ducat.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Tripledoc


I don't know about that. In fact is has been showed that taxation in the middle ages actually raised food productivity. The farmers had to give one tenth of their produce to the Church who then in turn handed it out to the poor.

With the expropriation of Church lands, and the collectivization of individual farms into grazing grounds for sheep - many farmers were left destitute.

I thought that the seizure of the common lands by the aristocracy occurred in the 18th century, long after the Reformation.

Those who did not starve to death were forced into crime to survive.

For instance during the reign of Henry the 8th 78.000 people were beheaded.

Who came up with this figure, and was this before or after the establishment of the C of E? Henry VIII did a lot of "cleaning up" in the aftermath of the War of the Roses. Also this pales in comparison to the activities that occurred during the suppression of the Cathars in France in the 13th century and the efforts of the Spanish to rid their country of non-believers in the 14th and 15th centuries

.

During the reign of Elizabeth 400 were hanged per year.

Records show that In Somersetshire during one year 40 persons were executed, 35 were branded with fire, 37 were whipped.
According to the notar howver only one fifth of criminals were ever charged , due to the people's "foolish compassion." Conditions were not different in other counties.

Were these executions all for religious reasons or were there criminal offences intermixed? IIRC many areas of continental europe were still using such quaint practices as the rack, the wheel, the iron maiden, and the press up to the age of Napoleon.

Like Marx said the wealth of the nation is inversely propertional to the wealth of the population.

We all know that's utter garbage now. Undoubtably erroneous preconceptions such as that led to the downfall of Marxism.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Optimal policies are those which benefit everyone, not a priviledged class. Conservative policies benefit a priviledged class (the status quo). They are not optimal in any sense.

Uh, Kidicious, that means you're claiming that it's impossible for the status quo to support everyone, that it always benefits only a privileged class... which means those policies of which you speak, that benefit everyone, are impossible!

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Uh, Kidicious, that means you're claiming that it's impossible for the status quo to support everyone, that it always benefits only a privileged class... which means those policies of which you speak, that benefit everyone, are impossible!

No. Your claim is two fold. One there is some possible optimum policies, and two that that optimal condition includes some conservative polices. I disagree with both claims. And yes, historically there has always been those who are priviledged. Any change in the status quo has simply been a struggle for power.

[Kidlicious]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Was Protestantism a reactionary movement?

Originally posted by molly bloom
In any case the social changes engendered by the Black Death in 1347 also fueled the changes necessary for the growth of capitalism in northern Italy.

Is that the rise of the merchant class?

edit: I read that the lords moved to free their serfs before the Black Death but then tried to reverse this when rents decreased.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
We all know that's utter garbage now. Undoubtably erroneous preconceptions such as that led to the downfall of Marxism.

Not really erroneous. He was simply using the same critisism of mercantilism that Adam Smith used.

edit: Those with power will always find a way to exploit the masses to create wealth. You will notice that the movement to free trade came at a time when there was a large labor supply to be exploited by industrialization. That's what Marx meant, and even Adam Smith stated that free trade would not benefit the worker.

[molly bloom]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Was Protestantism a reactionary movement?

Originally posted by Kidicious


Is that the rise of the merchant class?

edit: I read that the lords moved to free their serfs before the Black Death but then tried to reverse this when rents decreased.

That's certainly a part of the equation, but feudalism certainly broke down in more urbanized (previously heavily populated) northern Italy- however there was already a substantial merchant 'class' in the cities of Tuscany, who were able to exploit Italy's geographic position as a place from which to ship luxury goods and spices through the Alpine passes on to the cities and trade fairs of Central and Northern Europe.


Yes, there were failures of banking houses in Florence- the Accaiuoli, the Bardi, the Peruzzi, and this was associated partly with the actions of Edward III in his wars with France, but when haven't there been banking collapses? It hardly invalidates my position that northern Italy in the Renaissance gave birth not only to the tools of modern capitalism, but also to the practice.


In Venice, and in Florence, the banking houses that came after the early Renaissance banking collapse diversified, and thus the collapse of one branch would not necessitate the collpase of all. The Medici's financial interests (apart from being 'God's bankers'- they not only saw the election of their candidate as Pope, they also provided overdraft facilities) stretched from Mameluke Egypt to London and Antwerp.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Then explain why people called it "Reagan Revolution". I'd imagine it was fairly new if they refered to it as that.

You wouldn't call the overthrowing of corrupt regime of the Shah of Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini "fairly new," even though that was indeed a revolution.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
As I wrote before, when you study histoical phenomena, you must look at their effects. The effects of the Protestant movement was revolutionary, regardless of the fact that they sought to return Christianity to an imagined earlier form. They did not seek to reestablish pre-feudal society, so while their theology may have been reactionary, they took this reactionary ideology and used it for revolutionary ends.

Furthermore, I don't necessarily accept that their ideology was all that reacionary. The key ideological component of Potestanism is the direct connection of worshipper and god, without an intermediary. Even in the days before the Church was institutionalized, the relationship of a Christian to God was mediated through his community. Christians did not have a direct relationship to God.

You need to read John.