Liberty is conceived of today as ultimate freedom. For many, this means freedom from government. But when the wealthy exploit the poor, it is only the government that can step in to institute regulations to mitigate corrupt business practices. What this modern sense of liberty really means is the liberty to be controlled, whether it be by debt or pornography. E. Michael Jones explains how pornography is used as a tool to keep the public from being fixated on their crippling debt:
The ultimate result of the moral deregulation which took place beginning in the 1970s was massive student loan debt and massive addiction to pornography, which the Cato Institute justified to distract newly enslaved college graduates from the fact that they will never pay off their debts.[1]
This is the form of liberty that has become synonymous with America. Dante Alighieri noted the similarity between usury and sodomy:
Dante, in pity, restores the torn leaves to the soul of his countryman and the Poets move on to the next round, a great PLAIN OF BURNING SAND upon which there descends an eternal slow RAIN OF FIRE. Here, scorched by fire from above and below, are three classes of sinners suffering differing degrees of exposure to the fire. The BLASPHEMERS (The Violent against God) are stretched supine upon the sand, the SODOMITES (The Violent against Nature) run in endless circles, and the USURERS (The Violent against Art, which is the Grandchild of God) huddle on the sands.[2]
Dante included blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers in the same circle of hell because of their unnaturalness. Sex is supposed to result in procreation, but sodomy makes it sterile. “Money is sterile,” Aristotle said, and is supposed to be used as a form of legal tender representing the result of labor, but usury makes sterile money multiply. Blasphemy prohibits the fruits of grace and salvation. Those in this section of hell would be punished by the fires of Sodom and Gomorrah. As John Ciardi wrote, “Blasphemy, sodomy, and usury are all unnatural and sterile actions: thus the unbearing desert is the eternity of these sinners; and thus the rain, which in nature should be fertile and cool, descends as fire.”[3]
These sins of usury and sodomy are considered by secular society to be virtues of liberty, with rent-seeking financiers now being viewed as having accumulated their wealth through hard work. Sex has been improved since having been liberated from stifling outdated Catholic morality, where it could now be made sterile. Capitalism is viewed in a post-Darwinian sense, with winners and losers, and sex separated from procreation. Men have become slaves to their passions by abrogating the moral law. Saint Peter said that “They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved,” (2 Peter 2:19).
Saint John Paul II gave a properly nuanced answer to the question as to whether capitalism is the superior governing form in his encyclical Centesimus Annus:
If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”. But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative.[4]
Abraham Lincoln knew that there was conflict surrounding the definition of liberty:
The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.[5]
However, Americanism prevented him from understanding the true definition of liberty, and he was stuck with the dichotomy which separated the North and South:
With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.[6]
What eluded Lincoln was that both definitions involve usury. The Enlightenment ushered in a redefinition of liberty which overtook the Western world. While there were multiple definitions of liberty in the Bible, the one that has been ignored the most is concerning debt. Debt bondage is a form of slavery, one enforced by the theft of property when one defaults rather than with a whip. As it is written in Proverbs, “the borrower is the slave of the lender.” Regardless of whether Lincoln chose the definition of the Union or the Confederacy, the masses would be slaves either physically or financially.
As Michael Hudson explains:
you go into Congress and there’s a big mural with Moses in the center and Hammurabi on his right. Well, you know what Moses did? He gave the law. Leviticus, right in the center of Mosaic law, canceled the debt. What did Hammurabi do? Debt cancellation as well. You’re not going to see Congress canceling the debts like that.
If you look at the Liberty Bell, it is inscribed with a quotation from Leviticus 25: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land.” Well now we have translation problems again. The word really isn’t liberty: The real word means Clean Slate. It means freeing society from debt, letting everybody have their own basic housing and means of self-support. And by striking coincidence, what does the Statue of Liberty do? She’s holding aloft a flame. And in the Babylonian historical records, when Hammurabi would cancel the debts they would say: “The ruler raised the sacred torch.” So here you have a wonderful parallelism. It’s been written out of history today, it’s not what you’re taught in Bible school, or in ancient studies, or in economic history.[7]
John Locke derived liberty and freedom through ownership of private property. This meant that the more private wealth one accumulated, the freer he was. The obvious conclusion of this formula was to exploit labor to gather more wealth, and usury was the easiest method for doing so.
Even so-called “anti-usury laws” were anything but. Due to the Calvinist and Puritan presence in America, usury was accepted so long as the amount of interest wasn’t considered excessive. However, any amount of interest on a loan is usurious.
Although the Elizabethan era has been lauded as a Golden Age for the country, England was still ruled by a wealthy class of aristocrats, with a huge margin of income inequality being a staple of capitalism to this day. Shakespeare commented on the problem of usury through his plays.
In The Merchant of Venice, Bassanio secures a loan from the Jew Shylock for a total of 3,000 ducats for a three-month term. Bassanio has his friend, the merchant Antonio, be the guarantor of the loan. Shylock expresses his disdain for Antonio to Bassanio. Since Antonio lends without interest, Shylock must lower his rates to compete:
I hate him for he is a Christian,
But more for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
He hates our sacred nation, and he rails,
Even there where merchants most do congregate,
On me, my bargains and my well-won thrift,
Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe,
If I forgive him!
Shylock then boasts to Antonio that he makes his gold and silver “breed as fast” as “ewes and rams.” Shylock sees practicing usury as honorable work, and hates that anyone would dare to force him to lower his profits.
In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has Cinna cry out after he murders Caesar:
Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!
Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets.
But this supposed “liberty” was not to be. Liberty was also proclaimed when the Romans overthrew the Roman monarchy several centuries earlier, with the Roman goddess Libertas representing their supposed freedom. A new civil war quickly arose after the death of Caesar, with Mark Antony pitted against Octavius. The Roman Republic was gone, and the empire which rose was ruled by usurious landholders, with their hoarding of wealth eventually destroying the empire.
Speaking of those who put an end to the Roman Kingdom, Hudson writes:
Liberty for them was the liberty to destroy that of the population at large. Instead of cancelling debts and restoring land tenure to the population, the oligarchy created the Senate that protected the right of creditors to enslave labor and seize public as well as private lands (just as had occurred in Athens before Solon). Instead of restoring a status quo ante of free cultivators — free of debt and tax obligations, as Sumerian amargi and Babylonian misharumand andurarum meant — the Roman oligarchy accused anyone of supporting debtor rights and opposing its land grabs of “seeking kingship.” Such men were murdered, century after century.
Rome was turned into an oligarchy, an autocracy of the senatorial families. Their “liberty” was an early example of Orwellian Doublethink. It was to destroy everybody else’s liberty so they could grab whatever they could, enslave the debtors and create the polarized society that Rome became.[8]
The Romans heralded in
what can be considered the first proto-capitalist society due to the abundance
of usury and slave labor. Debt cancellations have become almost unheard of
since then, with the practice of a Clean Slate remaining in antiquity, without
any major support to revitalize and implement it in this debt-stricken world.
[1] E. Michael Jones. “Pornography and Political Control.” The Unz Review, December 15, 2019. https://www.unz.com/ejones/pornography-and-political-control-the-hexenhammer-debate/.
[2] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. John Ciardi (New York: New American Library, 2003), Canto XIV.
[3] Ibid.
[4] John Paul II, “Centesimus Annus.” Vatican, May 1, 1991. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html.
[5] Abraham Lincoln, The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Book of Quotations, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2005), 4.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Michael Hudson. “The Land Belongs to God.” Michael Hudson, January 25, 2017. https://michael-hudson.com/2017/01/the-land-belongs-to-god/.
[8] Michael Hudson. “The Delphic Oracle as their Davos.” Michael Hudson, April 3, 2019. https://michael-hudson.com/2019/04/the-delphic-oracle-as-their-davos/.
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