>Wasn't the view of wealth in the christian scriptures incompatible >with
>the view of worldly wealth in northern pre-Christian/pagan >cultures?

Well this depends on your particular interpretation of christian scriptures,
which may be one of several interpretations.  If the essense of the teaching
of Jesus of Nazareth is "Love your God with all your strength . . ." and
"Love your neighbor as yourself", I would not say that such a teaching is at
all incompatible with the production of wealth.  Such production should not
be carried out by means of exploitation, or with a view toward creating
greater disparity, and reinforcing power relationships that make human
brotherhood more difficult.


>The Christian worldview, with its eschatological focus, and radical
> >levelling, was inimical to that hierarchy,  . . .

Not necessarily.  Christianity can be used to justify all sorts of
hierarchies.  The eschatological element can be used to argue:  "It is your
lot to suffer in this world and be rewarded in the next.  Accept your
allotted place, hope and pray."  There is nothing inherent in eschatology
itself which demands levelling.  That's a matter of interpretation and
dogma.  My own view is that the teachings of Jesus---not exactly the same
thing as "Christianity" as it has come to be called--- are consonant with
the genuine human brotherhood, sharing of the land and of the fruits of
production.  Catholicism is not very consonant with such a view (unless one
is a liberation theologian).


>[inimical] also to the view that to create something which lasted _on
>earth_ (e.g. a flourishing country with peaceful trade relations with >its
>neighbors) was a worthy endeavor.

ON the contrary, the principles of Christian cooperativism do encourage the
creation of something of value--goods and services created by economic
enterprises which are run by officers elected democratically by the workers
themselves.

Research demonstrates that the more power, control, and ownership rights the
workers have in industries, the more productive they are.  Worker owned,
worker managed cooperatives (and employee stock ownership companies) have
higher profit rates AND better wages than hierarchical business.   One of
the most successful of these is the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in
Spain, with Billions in assets, and over 20,000 employees.  They create
goods to be traded locally and to to be traded abroad.  And they base
themselves on what they consider to be Jesus' egalitarian outlook.

The notion that hierarchy and a "pagan" outlook are necessary to ensure
needful attention to economic production does not appear philosophically or
empirically valid to me. Pound seemed to think that Catholicism, Paganism,
neo-platonism (which is pretty other-worldly in its own way) were all more
or less attractive elements of an overarching
socio-religio-politico-economic philosophy which STRESSED hierarchy.  Don't
you think that even he began to see that he was wrong, toward the conclusion
of his life?

(PS  I will take a look at the translation later).

Regards,

Wei.




________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com