https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-Z-xyvkue4[[Small transcription of a talk by the Spanish philosopher Antonio Escohotado]]
While ancient Athens was a commercial society that reached amazing levels of wealth, ancient Rome based its economy on the robbery of its conquests and slavery, which meant that when there were no more conquests, its economy began to dilute .
After the decline and economic collapse of ancient Rome, the love of poverty aka communism appears on the periphery of the empire. It originates from the Jewish sect of the
Essenes, whose interpretation of the Seventh Commandment is that who practices commerce steals from his fellow men. The Edomites become
Ebionites, the lexical root of which means "poor man." Driven by two very eloquent cousins: John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth. They preached that private property was theft and commerce was its manifestation. Here communism is born. It is said that God is the opposite of money, "A rich man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, just as a camel cannot go through the eye of a needle."
This new philosophy, along with the collapse of ancient Rome, provide an injection of enthusiasm of a spiritual kind. The love of the afterlife and contempt for the material of this life. The final judgment is the basic act where God will punish the rich and reward the poor, who will be satisfied seeing how those are punished to eternal torment.
Wealth causes nausea and poverty respect.
The only source of money from the Christianization of the Roman Empire is pious tourism.
This poverty generates enormous numbers of people left over from the cities and the countryside, who come together in hordes called bagaudas, the inevitable fate of half the population.
The patristic, six men, the most educated in that world, rationalize communism. They explain that in every sale there will always be a loser. Commerce creates a morbid social mobility. It implies that the smart ones prevail over the less smart ones. This implies some kind of meritocracy, when the Sermon on the Mount indicates that "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs will be the kingdom of heaven."
The Middle Ages can be divided into two periods: Dark Ages or High Middle Ages, from the 5th to the 12th century; and another, the Late Middle Ages. In the High Middle Ages, the evangelical ideas of the patristics are fulfilled, there were 6 centuries of militant communism. The commercial society has completely disappeared. In 2003, a Harvard professor, Mr. McCormick, a medievalist, digitized all medieval documents from the 6th to the 13th century and scanned the word "negotiator" (businessman), discovering that in five centuries it appeared only 119 times. ; while the word "slave" appeared 700 million times, the word "lord" appeared 600 million times. How is it possible that something lexically vanished? Well, because its foundation had been diluted. Each one of the areas where there is a population is obliged to self-sufficiency, from the patristic point of view, it is fair and good: the abbeys, convents and lay communities called "curtes" (coortes).
How does Europe get out of a situation in which there were 60 annual famines and the most widespread disease was leprosy? In the 13th century there were still 300 leper colonies in England, imagine how many there might be in the 8th century. How does Europe get out of that misery? By selling their own pretty young people to the Byzantines and the Arabs, who alone have buying power. There is an evolution from slave to captive. The only commercial enterprise that exists is the hunting and capture of the captive, which does not distinguish between nobles, commoners or slaves. The first capitalization that is achieved is with that slave trade.
In that period, whose main figure is Carlo Magno and his son Ludovico Pío (Louis the Pious). The laws consider that the property is collective. Therefore, the property is non-transferable. Charlemagne was illiterate. In his time, the donation of goods to the church and the conquest are the only worthy ways of acquiring wealth. Real money is so scarce that it is displayed like paintings (there were many fakes). There is so much misery at that time of living with the sale of their sons and daughters to the Byzantines, that the slave cannot be supported, who works in exchange for a roof, food and clothing. Now there is no possibility of giving him any of that. The slave becomes a servant, a new rite arises: pay homage. People do not exist by the fact of being born, for this it is necessary for them to kneel down and tell another "I am your man forever", if the other accepts it, they tell him to get up and give him a kiss on the mouth.
In this dark age, where even in the upper classes, the slave hunters provoke havoc, two opening keys appear:
- The bill of exchange. Quick way to scroll any type of property. Probably discovery of the Jews. Now the property could be transferred.
- Scientific accounting or double entry. Invented by a monk:
Luca Pacioli.
Certain men arise who refuse to be serfs, who form caravans that must be armored and, aided by soldiers who prefer this to participating in private wars. They create the first terrestrial relations between several zones. They are considered by Carlo Magno and his son Ludovico Pío, disastrous people, because they are negotiators. The capitulants of Charlemagne and his successors read that profit is prohibited. They have stations, stops on their roads, which are the "Burgos". The population entities had been reduced to nothing, from this "nothing" the populations re-emerged, the "Burgos". The essence of the Burgos is that just by residing one year and one day, it eliminates the bond of dependency indicated with the tribute of "being someone else's man."
The armored caravans have managed to clear up the backwardness a bit and the "Burgos" or commercial companies have begun to emerge. In this way, monetary circulation is restored. When someone works, they can be paid with money. This provokes such enthusiasm that the lethargy in the sciences and techniques of more than a thousand years since ancient Athens, turns into activity. Starting with the mill, invention of this time. The entire field of human action is multiplied.
The fundamental moment of change coincides with the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. Opposites, except on one point: Christianity has to stop being poor. If we read the Jesuits, the Salamanca school, Calvin or Luther, the first thing we see is that the faithful are told: "You are obliged to be a competent professional, you are obliged to earn a good living, you are obliged to be rich, you are bound to prosper." In this way, Christianity has renounced being communist. If Luther and Calvin are from the 16th and 17th century, and the Empire has been Christianized in the 4th century, it has taken more than 1,000 years.
