Capitalism and Religion. A lethal Combination

Richard Mellor

There have been many debates over time about the Soviet Union and what sort of system it was. The vast majority, including myself at some point in time, believed it was communism, or certainly the inevitable result of the effort to build a communist society. A noble goal but a utopian one. After all, human nature is inherently selfish and greedy isn't it? At least, this is what we were taught.

However, many decades on, I cringe when I hear the former Soviet Union referred to as communism or a communist society though the Russian Revolution should be celebrated as a huge step forward for workers as capitalism was overthrown there. How and why it degenerated and eventually collapsed is another matter.   Here in the US, Venezuela, Cuba and basically any country that tries to free itself from the clutches of international capital is called communist.  But I suggest if you want to know about scientific socialism or communism, read the source. Read Marx and Engels and start with the Communist Manifesto. Disagree with it if you will, but at least know what Marx said (he wrote mostly about capitalism) actually said.

The massive propaganda against any criticism of capitalism along with the horrors of the Soviet (in name only as Soviet means council) Union has done a great job undermining socialist and communist ideas in the US.  Those individuals or groups that use the term as proof of their rrrrevolutionary credentials do not grasp that language matters and it makes introducing the subject to workers seeking some way forward more difficult; it can be an obstacle and, after all, it is the ideas that are the most important not what we call them.

Imagine that in the 1950's children in the US suffered drills at school where they would get under their desks to protect themselves from a nuclear blast launched by the commies of course. People built shelters in the back yards. We experienced nothing like this in the UK despite ant-communist views there.

I mention this as Wolff refers to the Soviet Union as communist bloc, a minor detail but necessary for me to clarify. 

He gives a good explanation of the role of religion here and,with Europe for example, how Catholicism was the religion of, not only the Holy Roman Empire but of the European feudal aristocracy. With the rise of the capitalist class, mercantile capitalists in the main, revisions were necessary. Capitalists can't have a religion that looks down on commerce and money lending and that restricted commercial activity through its laws and customs. 

Martin Luther, Protestantism and the reformation ushered in the revised Christianity best suited to market activity and capitalism where workers were free, not tied to the land and feudal lords any more. Luther was no friend of the peasantry. It was the beginning of the end for the feudal system, an economic system in which production was overwhelmingly for use, for immediate consumption as opposed to production for the market, and today a world market.