*When The Capitalist World Was Young- William Manchester's View

In Honor Of The 500th Anniversary Of Martin Luther's Refromation Pleas-*When The Capitalist World Was Young- William Manchester's View

BOOK REVIEW

A World That Was Lit Only By Fire, William Manchester, Little, Brown and Co., Boston 1994

The last time that the name of the late well-known journalist and history writer William Manchester was mentioned in this space was in a review of his biography of the self-promoting American Caesar, World War II and Korean War General Douglas MacArthur. Previously Manchester had also done an analysis of the John F. Kennedy assassination so that he is well versed in the meaning of history and the importance of particular historical facts-as opposed to the self-serving and fraudulent press releases.

The central story of Manchester’s effort here, that takes up about one third of the book, also concerns one of those larger than life historical figures from an earlier period in Western history, the career of the Portuguese explorer extraordinaire Ferdinand Magellan. However, if this was solely Manchester’s purpose that might be worthily satisfied by an extended monogram. He has here provided as well, despite his penchant for great heroic figures, a very readable look at the dawn of capitalism as it merged out of the mire of what used to be known in historical studies as the “Dark Ages”.


In the process of that exposition Manchester has done an interesting job of detailing much of the history of those dark ages- a period of history that today’s readers may not be familiar with but which was an important precursor to the development of European capitalism and to the history of the international labor movement that Karl Marx wrote about in the 19th century. Manchester runs quickly through the decline of the Roman Empire, the rise and stabilization of the Christian church in the wake of that decline and its role as the international (at least for Europe) arbiter of the political, economic and social world of the times. With the proviso that Manchester’s effort here is of a piece with his general theory about the role of heroes in history those of us more familiar with the period can begin to understand something of the nature of the changes that were occurring at the time that his protagonist Magellan was accomplishing his feat in the early 16th century (circumnavigating the earth and therefore empirically proving that the earth was a sphere).


The heart of the book for us, however, is the detailed description that Manchester provides for the bulk of the 16th century an extraordinary period that saw the breakthrough of international trade westward as well as eastward, the rise of nation-states as segments of society gain literacy and begin to express themselves in their home languages, the development of cities as centers of commerce creating the conditions for a division of labor that would later form the basis for industrial capitalism, the struggle between the secular and the sacred in determining the course of social life including some very saucy stories about Popes, princes and their ladies(the Borgias in particular), the feuding between various religious factions most notably between the Roman Church and Martin Luther of Germany and Henry VIII of England and the flowering of artistic culture and learning that we can observe remnants of today in any major art museum.

As historical materialists we look at the history of any period to determine its main thrust. Manchester has done a more than adequate job of detailing those events and movements that caused the decline of Europe for approximately one thousand years from the demise of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance and then the upward curve mentioned above. The most important aspect of this book and the one that makes me want to recommend it to today’s readers is its study of the late 15th and early 16th century- a time when dramatic changes were occurring that would begin the long process of accumulating the expertise to create the progressive capitalist system. Without the changes in the manner of religious thinking, ways of producing goods and notions of culture it is possible that Europe, and through it the world might be very different- and not for the better.

As long as we don’t forget in that content the down side of this spurt in human culture- the rise of colonialism that accompanied international exploration, the religious wars that torn apart families and nations and the rise of a middle class cultural ethos that has placed more than its fair share on individual self-fulfillment at the expense of the social and gone some distance to slow the struggle for socialism down. If you need a quick look at the broad picture of what happened to make Europe a central cog in world history from the 15th century on read this little work to whet your appetite. Then go out and get some more specialized books to appease it.

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Our Mother, The Mountain- The Traditional Mountain Music Of Jean Ritchie

For The Late Rosalie Sorrels-Our Mother, The Mountain- The Traditional Mountain Music Of Jean Ritchie

If I Could Be The Rain I Would Be Rosalie Sorrels-The Legendary Folksinger-Songwriter Has Her Last Go Round At 83

By Music Critic Bart Webber

Back the day, back in the emerging folk minute of the 1960s that guys like Sam Lowell, Si Lannon, Josh Breslin, the late Peter Paul Markin and others were deeply immersed in all roads seemed to lead to Harvard Square with the big names, some small too which one time I made the subject of a series, or rather two series entitled respectively Not Bob Dylan and Not Joan Baez about those who for whatever reason did not make the show over the long haul, passing through the Club 47 Mecca and later the Café Nana and Club Blue, the Village down in NYC, North Beach out in San Francisco, and maybe Old Town in Chicago. Those are the places where names like Baez, Dylan, Paxton, Ochs, Collins and a whole crew of younger folksingers, some who made it like Tom Rush and Joni Mitchell and others like Eric Saint Jean and Minnie Murphy who didn’t, like  who all sat at the feet of guys like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger got their first taste of the fresh breeze of the folk minute, that expression courtesy of the late Markin, who was among the first around to sample the breeze.

(I should tell you here in parentheses so you will keep it to yourselves that the former three mentioned above never got over that folk minute since they will still tell a tale or two about the times, about how Dave Van Ronk came in all drunk one night at the Café Nana and still blew everybody away, about catching Paxton changing out of his Army uniform when he was stationed down at Fort Dix  right before a performance at the Gaslight, about walking down the street Cambridge with Tom Rush just after he put out No Regrets/Rockport Sunday, and about affairs with certain up and coming female folkies like the previously mentioned Minnie Murphy at the Club Nana when that was the spot of spots. Strictly aficionado stuff if you dare go anywhere within ten miles of the subject with any of them -I will take my chances here because this notice, this passing of legendary Rosalie Sorrels a decade after her dear friend Utah Phillips is important.)

Those urban locales were certainly the high white note spots but there was another important strand that hovered around Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, up around Skidmore and some of the other upstate colleges. That was Caffe Lena’s, run by the late Lena Spenser, a true folk legend and a folkie character in her own right, where some of those names played previously mentioned but also where some upstarts from the West got a chance to play the small crowds who gathered at that famed (and still existing) coffeehouse. Upstarts like the late Bruce “Utah” Phillips (although he could call several places home Utah was key to what he would sing about and rounded out his personality). And out of Idaho one Rosalie Sorrels who just joined her long-time friend Utah in that last go-round at the age of 83.

Yeah, came barreling like seven demons out there in the West, not the West Coast west that is a different proposition. The West I am talking about is where what the novelist Thomas Wolfe called the place where the states were square and you had better be as well if you didn’t want to starve or be found in some empty arroyo un-mourned and unloved. A tough life when the original pioneers drifted westward from Eastern nowhere looking for that pot of gold or at least some fresh air and a new start away from crowded cities and sweet breathe vices. A tough life worthy of song and homage. Tough going too for guys like Joe Hill who tried to organize the working people against the sweated robber barons of his day (they are still with us as we are all now very painfully and maybe more vicious than their in your face forbear). Struggles, fierce down at the bone struggles also worthy of song and homage. Tough too when your people landed in rugged beautiful two-hearted river Idaho, tried to make a go of it in Boise, maybe stopped short in Helena but you get the drift. A different place and a different type of subject matter for your themes than lost loves and longings.  

Rosalie Sorrels could write those songs as well, as well as anybody but she was as interested in the social struggles of her time (one of the links that united her with Utah) and gave no quarter when she turned the screw on a lyric. The last time I saw Rosalie perform in person was back in 2002 when she performed at the majestic Saunders Theater at Harvard University out in Cambridge America at what was billed as her last go-round, her hanging up her shoes from the dusty travel road. (That theater complex contained within the Memorial Hall dedicated to the memory of the gallants from the college who laid down their heads in that great civil war that sundered the country. The Harvards did themselves proud at collectively laying down their heads at seemingly every key battle that I am aware of when I look up at the names and places. A deep pride runs through me at those moments)

Rosalie Sorrels as one would expect on such an occasion was on fire that night except the then recent death of another folk legend, Dave Von Ronk, who was supposed to be on the bill (and who was replaced by David Bromberg who did a great job banging out the blues unto the heavens) cast a pall over the proceedings. I will always remember the crystal clarity and irony of her cover of her classic Old Devil Time that night -yeah, give me one more chance, one more breathe. But I will always think of If I Could Be The Rain and thoughst of washing herself down to the sea whenever I hear her name. RIP Rosalie Sorrels 

CD REVIEW

Mountain Hearth And Home, Jean Ritchie, Rhino Handmade, 2004

The last time that the name of traditional mountain folk singer Jean Ritchie was mentioned in this space was as part of the lineup in Rosalie Sorrel’s last concert at Harvard University that spawned a CD, “The Last Go-Round”. At that concert she, as usual, she performed, accompanied by her sweet dulcimer, the mountain music particularly the music that she learned in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and that she has been associated with going back at least to the early 1960’s. Here, in the CD under review, “Mountain Hearth and Home”, we get a wide range of those traditional mountain songs from those parts that provide something for every palate.

The songs, simple songs of the mountains that befit a simple folk with simple lyrics, chords and instrumentation representing what was at hand, many of which have their genesis back in the hills of Scotland and Ireland, never fail to evoke a primordial response in this listener. The songs speak of the longings created by those isolated spaces; and, occasionally of those almost eternal thoughts of love, love thwarted, love gone wrong or love disappearing without a trace. Or songs of the hard life of the mountains whether it is the hard scrabble to make a life from the rocky farmland that will not give forth without great struggle or of the mines, the coal mines that in an earlier time (and that are making a comeback now) represented a key energy source for a growing industrial society. Many a tale here centers on the trails and tribulations of the weary, worked out mines and miners. Add in some country lullabies, some religiously- oriented songs representing the fundamental Protestant ethic that drove these people and some Saturday dancing and drinking songs and you have a pretty good feel for the range of experience out there in the hills, hollows and ravines of Eastern Kentucky.

Several time over the past year or so I have mentioned, as part of my remembrances of my youth and of my political and familial background, that my father was a coal miner and the son of a coal miner in the hills of Hazard, Kentucky (a town mentioned in a couple of the songs here) in the heart of Appalachia. I have also mentioned that he was a child of the Great Depression and of World War II. He often joked that in a choice between digging the coal and taking his chances in war he much preferred the latter. Thus, it was no accident that when war came he volunteered for the Marines and, as fate would have it despite a hard, hard life after the war, he never looked back to the mines or the hills. Still this music flowed in his veins, and, I guess, flows in mine.

My Boy Willie

Traditional

Notes: This song has the exact same tunes as the song "The Butcher Boy" and is of a similar theme.

It was early, early in the spring
my boy Willie went to serve the king
And all that vexed him and grieved his mind
was the leaving of his dear girl behind.

Oh father dear build me a boat
that on the ocean I might float
And hail the ships as they pass by
for to inquire of my sailor boy.

She had not sailed long in the deep
when a fine ship's crew she chanced to meet
And of the captain she inquired to
"Does my boy Willie sail on board with you?"

"What sort of a lad is your Willie fair?
What sort of clothes does your Willie wear?"
"He wears a coat of royal blue,
and you'll surely know him for his heart is true".

"If that's your Willie he is not here.
Your Willie's drowned as you did fear.
'Twas at yonder green island as we passed by,
it was there we lost a fine sailor boy".

Go dig my grave long wide and deep,
put a marble stone at my head and feet.
And in the middle, a turtle dove.
So the whole world knows that I died of love.

"The L & N Don't Stop Here Anymore"

When I was a curly headed baby
My daddy sat me down on his knee
He said, "son, go to school and get your letters,
Don't you be a dusty coal miner, boy, like me."

[Chorus:]
I was born and raised at the mouth of hazard hollow
The coal cars rolled and rumbled past my door
But now they stand in a rusty row all empty
Because the l & n don't stop here anymore

I used to think my daddy was a black man
With script enough to buy the company store
But now he goes to town with empty pockets
And his face is white as a February snow

[Chorus]

I never thought I'd learn to love the coal dust
I never thought I'd pray to hear that whistle roar
Oh, god, I wish the grass would turn to money
And those green backs would fill my pockets once more

[Chorus]

Last night I dreamed I went down to the office
To get my pay like a had done before
But them ol' kudzu vines were coverin' the door
And there were leaves and grass growin' right up through the floor

[Chorus]


Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies

Come all ye fair and tender ladies
Take warning how you court your men
They're like a star on a summer morning
They first appear and then they're gone

They'll tell to you some loving story
And they'll make you think that they love you well
And away they'll go and court some other
And leave you there in grief to dwell

I wish I was on some tall mountain
Where the ivy rocks were black as ink
I'd write a letter to my false true lover
Whose cheeks are like the morning pink

I wish I was a little sparrow
And I had wings to fly so high
I'd fly to the arms of my false true lover
And when he'd ask, I would deny

Oh love is handsome, love is charming
And love is pretty while it's new
But love grows cold as love grows older
And fades away like morning dew

"BLACK IS THE COLOUR"

Black is the colour of my true love's hair
Her lips are like some roses fair
She's the sweetest face and the gentlest hands
I love the ground wheron she stands

I love my love and well she knows
I love the ground whereon she goes
But some times I whish the day will come
That she and I will be as one

Black is the colour of my true love's hair
Her lips are like some roses fair
She's the sweetest face and the gentlest hands
I love the ground wheron she stands

I walk to the Clyde for to mourn and weep
But satisfied I never can sleep
I'll write her a letter, just a few short lines
And suffer death ten thousand times

Black is the colour of my true love's hair
Her lips are like some roses fair
She's the sweetest face and the gentlest hands
I love the ground wheron she stands

Blue Diamond Mines

I remember the ways in the bygone days
when we was all in our prime
When us and John L. we give the old man hell
down in the Blue Diamond Mine

Well the whistle would blow 'for the rooster crow
full two hours before daylight
When a man done his best and earned his good rest
at seven dollars a night

In the mines in the mines
in the Blue Diamond Mines
I worked my life away
In the mines in the mines
In the Blue Diamond Mines
I fall on my knees and pray.

You old black gold you've taken my lung
your dust has darkened my home
And now I am old and you've turned your back
where else can an old miner go


Well it's Algomer Block and Big Leather Woods
now its Blue Diamond too
The bits are all closed get another job
what else can an old miner do?


Now the union is dead and they shake their heads
well mining has had it's day
But they're stripping off my mountain top
and they pay me eight dollars a day


Now you might get a little poke of welfare meal
get a little poke of welfare flour
But I tell you right now your won't qualify
'till you work for a quarter an hour.

The Wheels Of Capitalism In Its Swaddling Clothes- Fernand Braudel’s View-"The Wheels Of Commerce"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Fernand Braudel.

Book Review

The Wheels Of Commerce-Civilization & Capitalism:15th-18th Century, Fernand Braudel, Harper&Row, New York 1979

Karl Marx, the 19th century revolutionary socialist and dissector of the underpinnings of the capitalist mode of production, is most famous for his inflammatory pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, a programmatic outline of, and rationale for, the socialist reconstruction of society beyond the current capitalist market system. Not as well known, and certainly not as widely read, was his equally important Das Capital that, painstaking, gives a historical analysis of the rise of capitalism based on the appropriation of surplus value by private owners. Where Marx worked in broad strokes to lay out his theory relying mainly on (and polemizing against) bourgeois economists the work under review, the second volume of a three volume study of the evolution of capitalism, Fernand Braudel’s Wheels of Commerce, fills in the spaces left by Marx’s work. Although Braundel, of necessity, tips his hat to Marx’s insights his work does not depend on a Marxist historical materialist concept of history, at least consciously, although in its total effect it is certainly comparable with that interpretation of history.

Braudel digs deep into the infrastructure of medieval society to trace the roots of capitalism to the increased widespread commerce that the rise of rudimentary production of surplus goods permitted. He highlights, rightly I think, the important role of fairs, other lesser adjunct forms of commercial endeavor like peddling and shop keeping, and the rise of fortunately located (near rivers, the ocean, along accessible roadways) cities committed full-time to creating a market for surplus goods being produced in the those cities, on the land and, most importantly, in far-off places. Naturally, such activity as the creation of markets kept creating demand for more and varied products making more expansive (and expensive) journeys necessary. The opening of wide-flung trade routes, over land and on the seas, exploited by merchant-adventurers (in the widest sense of that term) thereafter became practical, if still highly risky, for those committed to those activities.

Needless to say in a densely written six hundred page volume the number of examples of commercial endeavors (some presented in more than in one context) that Braudel highlights is beyond anything a short review could do justice to. A quick outline here will have to suffice. The already noted rise of a merchant class ready to do business over great stretches and under trying circumstances; the still controversial basis for the rise of a distinct capitalist ethic that drove the markets(think Max Weber and the Protestant ethic); the importance of double bookkeeping of accounts and the introduction of bills of exchange to facilitate payment; the exploitation of vast colonial areas for minerals and other natural resources such as gold and silver used as physical value in every day market exchanges; the rise and fall of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism based on the gold and silver mines and slave trade; the successive rises of the Dutch and English colonialisms based on that slave trade and control of the sea lanes; the rise of joint-stock companies and other forms of collective capitalist ventures; the introduction of a stock exchange to place value on those enterprises; the increased role of a national state in the emergence of capitalism as defender of private property, as purchaser of goods, and insurer of last resort against hard times; the shifts in class status away from feudal norms and rise in class consciousness in society; and, the applicability of the capitalism to non-European societies such as Japan, and non-Christian cultures such as Islam.

Just to outline some of the topics as I have just done will give one a sense that this is an important work (and act as an impetus to read volume one and three) for those who want to get the feel of what the dawn of capitalism looked like. And for those who want to move beyond capitalism a very good companion to that not widely read Das Capital of Marx.

*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Alone of All Her Sex; A Review-The Cult of the Virgin Mary

Markin comment:

The following is an article from an archival issue of Women and Revolution, Summer 1977, that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of Women and Revolution during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.
************
Alone of All Her Sex; A Review-The Cult of the Virgin Mary-Susan Adrian

Warner, Marina.
Alone Of  All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

Marxists find contemporary religion — in which fear degradation comprise the liturgy through which
believers are rendered stupid and impotent before divinity of their oppressors — an odious thing. We
understand, however, that what sustains religious affiliation in the scientific age is not so much intellectual conviction as social oppression. Thus, while the anti-clerical spirit which animates Voltaire's earnest
wish that "the last king---be strangled with the entrails of the last priest" may be sincere and even justified, such a "war against god" does not transcend petty-bourgeois idealism. Religion will disappear only when the society which creates the need for it is destroyed.

The bourgeois revolutions established the principle of separation of church and state, but, as Marx pointed out, this did not result in freedom from religion. Nor has the decline in the vitality of organized religion eliminated religious sentiment.

While there has never been a state religion in the United States, the coupling of religious bigotry with nativist right-wing movements is well known, and patriotism, piety at d prosperity have been the time-tested trinity of American imperial politics. Thirty to forty million Americans currently consider themselves "born-again" Chris'/ans, not to mention the more traditional sects, mi;, h less the wretched mysticism which serves as a junkyard for New Left derelicts still searching for personal liberation on the cheap.

The sanctimonious tone of the last presidential campaign and the fact that victory went to holier-than-anybody Jimmy Carter, who claims to consult his "faith-healing" sister in, important decisions, suggest not so much a serious religious revival as a despairing passivity Vyhich hangs over the American working class. An indication of the relationship between political defeat and religious conversion is the growth of the Black Muslim sect, Which gained from the despair and cynicism among black people following the political failures and physical destruction of the black move¬ment in the sixties.

Not surprisingly it is women who are often the most fervent devotees of religion. Isolated from social production and social struggle within the suffocating confines of the family women have generally been the
most susceptible to and the most reliable instruments of the "gendarmes in cassocks."

Myth of the Virgin Mother of God

Marina Warner's book, Alone of All Her Sex, attempts to explore the religious myth which has been most explicitly directed toward molding and deforming women's consciousness—the myth of the virgin mother of god. The rituals and intricacies of Catholic theology are more prevalent and familiar in Europe and Latin countries than in the U.S., but this particular image is not at all unrelated to more general stereotypes or models of the "ideal woman."

And what a powerful myth it has been! Dante and Botticelli were inspired by it; the spires and towers of Notre Dame and Chartres were ostensibly raised to celebrate it; even Elizabeth I—never one to let religious scruples interfere with the affairs of state—allowed herself to be draped in the imagery of the "Virgin Queen."

The myth of the virgin birth of the god/redeemer is, of course, not unique to Christianity, but has its roots in ancient lore. William  Butler Yeats'spoem/'Ledaandthe Swan" (1923), revives the mythical encounter between the god Zeus and the mortal Leda:

"A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemmnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?"

In describing the growth of the cult of the virgin mother in Western Europe, Warner attempts to explore
what she poses as a paradox: "that in the verycelebration of the perfect human woman, both
humanity and women were subtly denigrated." Some 300 pages later she asserts her concluding hypothesis:

"The Virgin Mary is not the innate archetype of female nature, the dream incarnate; she is the instrument of a
dynamic argument from the Catholic Church about the structure of society, presented as a God-given code. The argument changes, according to contingencies —

"The Catholic Church might succeed, with its natural resilience and craft, in accommodating her to the new
circumstances of sexual equality, but it is more likely that the Virgin will recede into legend...the Virgin's legend will endure in its splendour and lyricism, but it will be emptied of moral significance, and thus lose its present real powers to heal and to harm."


However, it is not the myth which harms but the reality that it mystifies, and it is not the refurbishing of the myth which will "heal" women's oppression. Marx and Engels quoted approvingly the motto-on the journal of the French republican Loustalot:

"The great appear great in our eyes Only because we are kneeling.Let us rise!"

However, they added: "But to rise it is not enough to do so in thought and to leave hanging over one's real sensuously perceptible head the real sensuously perceptible yoke that cannot be stabilized away with ideas."

Foundations of Christianity

Christianity began as the ideology of the poor Jewish masses under the Roman Empire. As economic relations did not provide opportunities for the mul¬tiplication of wealth through the development of the productive forces, the possessing classes of Rome could sustain their wealth only by the continual and ever-expanding plundering of conquered areas. The ex¬treme cheapness of slave labor procured in such a fashion was the only thing that made large-scale enterprises (mainly agriculture and some mining) reasonably profitable relative to those of the small peasants. The wealth accumulated through plunder was devoted almost exclusively to consumption, to the pursuit of enjoyment.

The fundamental cause for the decline of the Roman Empire was the contradiction inherent in the growing
luxuriousness of the possessing classes, the incessant growth of surplus value on the one hand and the static
character of the mode of production on the other; and  it is in this contradiction that one must also seek the
roots of primitive Christianity. Abram Leon writes:

"...while it is obvious that the majority of Jews played a commercial role in the Roman Empire, we must not think that all the Jews were rich traders or entrepreneurs. On the contrary, the majority was certainly made up of small people, some of them making their living directly or indirectly from trade: peddlers, stevedores, petty artisans, etc. It is this mass of small people which was first hit by the decline of  the Roman Empire and suffered most from Roman extortion. Concentrated in great masses in the cities, they were capable of greater resistance than ppeasant people dispersed in the country. They were also more conscious of their interests— It was among the poor layers of the great cities of the Diaspora that Christianity spread.  Just as the Jewish insurrectionse followed by insurrections of the non-Jewish popular masses, so did the Jewish communist religion rapidly find its extension among these pagan masses." —A. Leon, The Jewish Question

As an ideology of protest on the part of the dis¬possessed and powerless, Christianity embodied a trenchant anti-plutocratic spirit. In the Gospel of Luke, for example, one finds:

"Blessed are ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled —

But woe unto you that are rich! Woe unto you, ye that are

full now! for ye shall hunger."

The Epistle of James is similarly explicit:

"Come now,ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that

are coming upon you Your gold and your silver are

rusted; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you,

and shall eat your flesh as fire "

The "communism"of primitive Christianity was not based—could not have been based—on communalizing the productive capacities of society but on communalizing consumption; "communism^ by plundering the rich," in the words of Karl Kautsky. But as Christianity spread, its leaders took pains to blunt its anti-plutocratic thrust.

The process which the church was undergoing was not primarily one resulting from the greed and individual ambition of its officials; it was not simply a tool for deceiving and fleecing the masses. Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine at the same time that the empire's decadence, based on parasitism and brigandage, led to reforms by Diocletian and Constantine which attempted to set it on the foundations of a natural economy. As the religion of the class of great landed proprietors at the inception of feudal economy in Europe, Christianity's original anti-plutocratic fire was now reserved for merchants and usurers.

Secularization and Celibacy

Warner cites an interesting link between the growing wealth of the Church and its sanctification of celibacy. (The scriptures themselves fail to even mention the "immaculate conception" and raise a number of doubts concerning Mary's virginity.) Under Roman law a woman was allowed to inherit and dispose of her own wealth independently after a certain age. It was common among Roman families to raise the sons in the old religion and the daughters in the new; moreover, it often happened in the period of Roman decadence that families had died out in the male line. Thus, a vocation of celibacy (i.e., no heirs) for Christian virgins and childless widows was remarkably profitable for the church. It was thus as a part of the growing secular power of the church, according to Warner, that the cult of thei virgin first achieved prominence.


Augustine, who lived in the 5th century, drew an explicit and literal connection between sexual inter course and original sin, Christ was born of a virgin because that was the only way he could avoid the contamination of original sin. The perception o virginity as an inherently holy state and the identification of spiritual purity with sexual abstinence continue to dominate church doctrine to this day.

The image of the mother of god—all but ignored for the first four centuries of Christianity—was not the humble, submissive girl of the annunciation but the triumphant queen of heaven, an image which also served to symbolize the church's competitive edge over other temporal rulers throughout Europe and the Byzantine Empire. This image of Mary as the queen ofl heaven remained essentially unaltered, except perhaps; for the increasing opulence of her raiment, for man) centuries, lending the authority of divine sanction to the concept of monarchy.

Some of the economic tribute deemed fitting for . queen—and the separation between the temporal and the divine was conveniently blurred—can be seen in the extraordinary wave of adulation which was the( ostensible motivation for the raising of 80 cathedrals ir France within one century alone.

French feudal law in the 12th and 13th centuries permitted a woman to hold rank and property in her own right; and in a society where acquisition of land was a constant and pressing necessity, heiresses sometimes wielded enormous power—Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1122-1204) is the most celebrated. But the consolidation of France and other territories as nation-states conflicted with the centrifugal tendencies of feudal inheritance patterns. Eventually women lost many of their former economic rights.


Part of the battle for the national consolidation of France was fought as a holy war by the Pope and the northern French lords to subjugate southern France, the breeding ground of the popular Cathar heresy. This heresy, an ascetic form of Manichaeism, allowed women to enter the clergy and held that casual sex and sodomy were less reprehensible than marriage, which populated the foul universe. Southern France was also the terrain of the Provencal poetry of the troubadours, which exalted adulterous love. From different vantage points, therefore, both heretics and troubadours were anathema to the church and the northern Capetian dynasty. The battles waged, against the south at the beginning of the 13th century destroyed half a million people.

It was the generation of Eleanor of Aquitaine's granddaughter Blanche of Castille, which, encouraged by both church and state, began to focus its ardor on Mary as virgin. This "new" Mary assumed much of the character and function of the original figure in Provencal poetry but without celebrating hedonism and permissiveness. She was still acknowledged a powerful queen but only, it was emphasized, by grace of her son, not in her own right. She was portrayed as the incarnation of loveliness and divine ardor, but above all as the incarnation of chastity.

As Warner points out, the special status accorded the virgin mother of god has as its reverse side an equally special loathing for ordinary, non-virginal women, who are viewed, like Eve, as "occasions of sin," temptresses who distract men from god and lead them into everlasting perdition.

To Pluck the Living Flower

Warner's book is an often unfocused welter of historical and sociological research, nostalgia and self-analysis. She is frank in her ambivalence:

"I could not enter a church without pain at all the safety and beauty of the salvation I had forsaken. I remember visiting Notre Dame in Paris and standing in the nave, tears starting in my eyes, furious at that old love's enduring power to move me."

Not having satisfactorily settled even her own personal accounts with religious obscurantism, Warner explains the church's hold over believers entirely in psychological/ideological terms.

One must indeed acknowledge the church's "gen¬ius.^, for getting a grip on its followers' psyches," in the words of a Village Voice review. In fact, in countries where the Catholic Church has been a dominant cultural and political influence, It has so maimed and distorted the psyches of masses of people that even •politically motivated demonstrators have been driven to orgies of twisted anti-clericalism. For instance, when in 1909, the Spanish government attempted to call up military reservists for defense of its Moroccan colonies, the population responded with a general strike and  a five-day frenzied protest which included streets with the corpses of nuns dug up from1


At the same time, the church has psychological manipulation.and coercion—physical and social. When anarchist  and peasants in the first six months of the Spanish Civil War burned 160 churches to the ground, they were not rebelling merely against psychological oppression but against a powerful state institution, fanatically devoted to the preservation of the monarchy and to reaction.

In the end, Warner rejects the female eunuch of the Catholic Church, albeit with a bizarre, feminist ambivalence:

"Although Mary cannot be a model for the New Woman, a goddess is better than no goddess at all, for the sombre-suited masculine world of the Protestant religion is altogether much like a gentlemen's club to which the ladies are only admitted on special days."

And so the question of religious mythology remains in the end a dismal choice between pernicious fantasy and a bleak and sterile reality.

Marxists insist that these are not the only alternatives. Marxist criticism of religion demystifies religious fantasy and demonstrates that man has created his gods and goddesses and not the other way around—not in order that the toiling masses be deprived of whatever small comfort these fantasies may provide in a harsh world but in order that these poor illusions may be replaced by a far richer and more rewarding reality. Marx put it most eloquently:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart-of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless
conditions. It is the opium of the people The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of tears.

"Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the -living flower."

—K. Marx, Contribution to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Lawn

*A Carter Family Tribute- Ralph Stanley Is In The House

Click On Title To Link To YouTube's Film Clip Of Ralph Stanley Doing "Clinch Mountain Backstep".

CD Review

A Distant Land To Roam: Songs Of The Carter Family, Ralph Stanley, Sony, 2006

The body of this review has been used elsewhere in this space to comment on some The Carter Family CDs.

This information is from a review of a PBS documentary and serves my purpose here by bringing out the main points that are central to the place of The Carter Family in American musical history. The last paragraph will detail the outstanding tracks on this CD.

“I have reviewed the various CDs put out by the Carter Family, that is work of the original grouping of A.P., Sara and Maybelle from the 1920’s , elsewhere in this space. Many of the thoughts expressed there apply here, as well. The recent, now somewhat eclipsed, interest in the mountain music of the 1920’s and 30’s highlighted in such films as “The Song Catcher” and George Clooney’s “Brother, Where Art Thou”, of necessity, had to create a renewed interest in the Carter Family. Why? Not taking the influence of that family’s musical shaping of mountain music is like neglecting the influence of Bob Dylan on the folk music revival of the 1960’s. I suppose it can be done but a big hole is left in the landscape.

What this PBS production has done, and done well, is put the music of the Carters in perspective as it relates to their time, their religious sentiments and their roots in the seemingly simple mountain lifestyle. Is there any simpler harmony than the virtually universally known Cater song (or better, variation) “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”? Nevertheless, these gentle mountain folk were as driven to success, especially A.P, as any urbanite of the time. Moreover, they seem, and here again A.P. is the example, to have had as many interpersonal problems (in short, marital difficulties) as us city folk.

I have mentioned elsewhere, and it bears repeating here, that the fundamentalist religious sentiment expressed throughout their work does not have that same razor-edged feel that we find with today’s evangelicals. This is a very personal kind of religious expression that drives many of the songs. These evangelical people took their beating during the Scopes Trial era and turned inward. Fair enough. That they also produced some very simple and interesting music to while away their time is a product of that withdrawal. Listen.”.

Ralph Stanley has here fulfilled a promise to do a Carter Family tribute, music that he listened to early on and that has influenced his own career as an outstanding advocate and performer of mountain music for the past half century or so. He does very nice covers of “Poor Orphan Child”, “Waves On The Sea” and the title song “Distant Land To Roam”. You can hear the mountains echo with this music now.


Ralph Stanley
Rocky Island lyrics

Way up on the Mountain, throw a little cane
See my candy darlin' pretty little Liza Jane
Going to Rocky Island hoh honey hoh
Seein' my candy darlin', you know I love her so

Wish I had a big fat horse gonna feed him `mone
Pretty little girl to stay at home feen him when I'm gone
Going to Rocky Island hoh honey hoh
Seein' my candy darlin', you know I love her so

Dark clouds risin' sure sign of rain
Put your new grey bonnet on sweet little Liza Jane
Going to Rocky Island hoh honey hoh
Seein' my candy darlin', you know I love her so

***What Made Capitalism Tick?

BOOK REVIEW

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber, Unwin Paperbacks, London, 1985

In my youth I used to believe that Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was the very last word in understanding, sociologically, the driving force behind capitalism in its prime. His premise, at least his expressed narrowly- defined one, that out of the mishmash of feudalism a ‘new’ man and a ‘new’ woman were being created who could subordinate their temporal desires enough to begin the tedious process of primitive capitalist accumulation that got the whole mode started, hit home hard to my young mind. Of course, that was not my conscious take on it at the time, although parts of it certainly were. What interested me the most was that Weber was using some examples that were close to home, the Massachusetts Bay Colony experiment, and, being from Boston and steeped in Puritan history, that is why I was glad to get a copy of the work.

Strangely, in recently re-reading the work I found that I was drawn by those same examples. Additionally, I was drawn by the huge set of footnotes at the end that I did not remember going through in my youth but offer some very interesting insights into how Weber put his argument together and the sources that he had available at the time and that he used. The re-reading poses this question, though. How does the work itself hold up?

Of course today my class struggle perspective derived from a Marxist world view notes that Weber is clearly a political opponent. Not so much for his argument, which actually has a certain merit, but for his tenacious desire to use a quasi-Marxism materialist approach to sociology without drawing those requisite class struggle conclusions. I might add that the class struggle was fully raging in Germany at the time of the publication of this work as the Social Democratic Party was becoming the voice of the German working class. Weber, thus, really needed to keep his blinders on. Moreover, as a work of scholarship, which I will grant it certainly is, it is an early effort in the very long struggle to divorce sociological observations from any practical use. A militant today in order to benefit from reading this work has to do the equivalent of suspending disbelieve in the plot of a novel to realize that it is important to know what made capitalism tick in the old days and why we have to move on. Here, nevertheless is my very condensed take on the work today.

In some place in 16th and 17th century Europe, the scope of Weber’s study, individuals and small communities were breaking from the established churches, Roman Catholic and mainstream Protestant and creating, in some cases 'hit or miss', a culture that we today describe as secular but in the nature of those times had a religious connotation. That breakout, not without opposition and oppression by the constituted authorities, formed the nucleus of an ethic that made accumulation of wealth through hard work and thrift the norm-in short that private accumulation mentioned above. This, dear reader, was a historically progressive series of actions. In the year 2007 those traits have long since failed to be progressive. What is necessary, as Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and even someone like Che Guevara recognized is in the interest of social solidarity we need to create ‘the new socialist man and woman’ out of the muck and mire of capitalism. Hell, we need our own version of the Protestant ethic-and if current worldwide economic conditions are any judge- we need it pronto. Read this one at your leisure.What Made Capitalism Tick?

*HANDS OFF THE AMISH!

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Amish tradition and information on their ways.

COMMENTARY

THE MEEK MAY NOT INHERIT THE EARTH-BUT THEY SHOULD BE LEFT ALONE

Sometimes a political writer is forced by circumstances to comment on events that would normally go under the radar. As a counterexample, as I write this blog news has just come over the radio that the North Koreans have exploded a nuclear devise. That is a normal event to comment on for a hardline political man. However, as the headline above indicates I feel compelled to make a comment on the tragedy that occurred in Pennsylvania Dutch Country last week when an individual went berserk and killed or wounded several Amish girls while they were attending school. Most times I would note the tragedy, make a mental note about the continued irrationality of some human behavior and further note for the 1000th time that it is a dangerous world out there. However some of the commentary concerning the unusual reaction of forgivemess and acceptance by the Amish themselves to the tragedy in their midst bears comment.

In the Sunday Boston Globe of October 8, 2006 one Jeff Jacoby a self-styled ‘libertarian’ conservative and op-ed page regular in that paper indignantly commented on this pious reaction by the Amish. Yes, he gave the obligatory, although in this case left-handed compliment, about the good grace with which that community took its tragedy. But what got Mr. Jacoby steaming and fuming was reportedly the action of one of the Amish elders who while consoling a community youth tried to emphasize the traditional Amish doctrine that one should not have hate in one’s heart toward those who do evil. This is merely the early Christian example, honored more in the breach than the observance, of turning the other cheek. Mr. Jacoby ended his tirade by stating that he would not want to live in a world where such forgiveness was the norm.

One should note that this is the same writer who is apparently one of three or four people outside of the immediate Bush entourage who still supports the bloody American invasion of Iraq. And Mr. Jacoby is also a columnist who has seemingly made a profession of calling for the suppression of every Moslem that the United States can get its hands on. I could go on but enough of Mr. Jacoby's qualifications as an exemplar of moral realism to the gentle Amish. It is indeed a wicked and dangerous world.

Strangely, Mr. Jacoby and I probably are closer in our understanding of the modern world than we are to the Amish. The mental world that separates an Amish elder from us can be measured in centuries. Nevertheless, anyone including myself, who has spend time in Amish country admiring their simple life, their excellent handicrafts and healthful food, and their simple well-tended homes and farms knows that whatever their odd relationship to the modern world they should be left alone. There are all kinds of unsung acts of bravery in the world. There are all kinds of unsung courageous acts in the world. In an age when tragedy is daily thrown in our faces with the evening meal the quiet dignity of the Amish in their sorrow has much to comment it.

As an advocate of socialism this writer knows that the Amish way is neither good for the mass of humanity nor the way forward. Nevertheless, I would hope that under a socialist regime the Amish community would be left in peace and that we would let the natural attrition and benefits of socialist society lure the young into the modern world. But until that time I am ready to cross swords with anyone in defense of their lifestyle and their simple belief in the goodness of humankind. HANDS OFF.