Emmanuel Macron, former investment banker and capitalist par excellence, nowĀ declaresĀ that he is joining the āstruggleā against the malign consequences of globalisation. 180 of Americaās leading CEOsĀ call forĀ āan economy that serves all Americansā rather than just shareholders. The World Economic ForumĀ believes āWe must move on from Neoliberalism.ā From Justin Trudeauās plan to āreimagine economic systemsā to Boris Johnson and Joe Bidenās shared āBuild Back Betterā slogan, the talk is of a new, fairer settlement: a fresh start.
Isnāt it boring? No wonder people prefer to watch bogus videos about voter fraud, or join their local Black Trans Lives Matter protest, when the alternative is this kind of technocratic tedium. Yes, we need 143-page think-tank reports and ingenious policy wonkery and ācross-government data architectureā and all that. But eventually you want something which inspires, something which treats socio-economic questions with the beauty, drama, tragedy and pathos they deserve. You want something like the historian RH Tawneyās 1926 cult classicĀ Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.
We hear a lot at the moment about the prospect of a more communitarian society, which acknowledges that we have responsibilities as well as rights. In Tawneyās book this is not just a theory, but a vision. For the medieval mind, he writes,
The property of the feudal lord, the labour of the peasant or the craftsman, even the ferocity of the warrior, were not dismissed as hostile or indifferent to the life of the spirit. Touched by the spear of Ithuriel, they were to be sublimated into service, vocation, and chivalry, and the ritual which surrounded them was designed to emphasise that they had undergone a rededication at the hands of religion. BaptisedĀ by the Church, privilege and power became office and duty.
I too had to Google it: Ithuriel is an angel inĀ Paradise LostĀ whose spear instantly uncovers the reality behind a disguise ā āfor no falsehood can endure / Touch of celestial temperā. For Tawney, the medieval order revealed the truth of social relations. The rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, are shown to be part of one human society, in which we owe each other justice and love.
Maybe this makes him sound like one of those sentimentalists who imagine the Middle Ages as an era of cheerful peasants, dignified craft guilds, virtuous monks and splendid cathedrals. Not so.Ā Religion and the Rise of Capitalism describes the feudal system as āexploitation in its most naked and shameless formā. Guilds, Tawney writes, were monopolistic schemes, often corrupt, and the vast majority of workers werenāt members in any case. Catholics who want to praise the glories of Christendom will have to reckon with the fact that the pinnacle of financial immorality was the Vatican. As for the cathedrals, Tawney quotes St Bernard of Clairvaux, perhaps the greatest spiritual master of the time: āThe Church is resplendent in her walls, beggarly in her poor. She clothes her stones in gold, and leaves her sons naked.ā
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