>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