- 27 May 2015 08:51
#14561034
I agree with you, though we seem to have different definitions of the word capitalism. I am referring only to a free market system.
quetzalcoatl wrote:I don't think Christianity presumes capitalism, although it is not primarily interested it in overthrowing it (or any other secular order). Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think Jesus was condemning material goods per se, but rather the idolatry of property. Since capitalists quite explicitly idolize property, they exile themselves from the Christian community - perhaps without understanding they do so.
A distinct strand of western philosophy derives all other rights from property, beginning with the ownership of the self. Both capitalism and communism share this basic assumption, but go in different directions with it. Capitalists assume that ownership, whether of self or labor, is transferable based on the free exchange among sovereign individuals. Communists assume that self-ownership cannot be waived or transferred in this fashion, and that enterprise must thus be owned collectively. Christians see human worth not in terms of self-ownership or a sovereign self, but in submission to the will of God.
Annatar's version of Christian communism can't be a legal or state structure, it would seem to me. It would grow organically out of a Christian community following the teachings of Jesus.
I agree with you, though we seem to have different definitions of the word capitalism. I am referring only to a free market system.
Trigger Warning: Conservative White Male.