this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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chapotraphouse
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Is it the same tired nonsense about how protestantism is uniquely bad as a religion peddled by everyone else with pretenses of radicalism?
Because at this point I may start going back to church out of sheer exasperation with that ridiculous shit.
It's not uniquely "bad"; I do think it is uniquely exploitable by capitalists
You'd be wrong there too. The difference lies in the material conditions of the states involved, not in whether the dominant culture is typivally associated with a professed belief in sola fide.
Catholicism (at the state level) has a historic legacy of combating the rise of capitalism (in favor of preserving Feudalism) that Protestantism does not have (and in fact has a historic legacy of the opposite).
For elaboration of this claim, check my comment history circa 9 days ago.
The Catholic Church has a historic legacy of being reactionary (Just as many Protestant churches do) and that has led it to opposing any kind of progressive or revolutionary movement, be that liberalism and capitalism (Or indeed just "less terrible feudalism") or socialism. The Catholic Church in doing so has supported capitalism (And fascism), including carrying out economic liberal reform on behalf of regimes like Franco's.
Likewise the first political crisis faced by protestantism were the jacqueries of Luther's time, and Luther was very much on the side of the feudal order in that conflict, as were the national churches of the scandinavian countries during their reckoning with serfdom.
Cool. Seems like you know a lot about this.
My primary point is that capitalism and Protestantism reinforced each other until both became dominant within modern empire (UK --> US).
I concede that Catholicism eventually capitulated but that doesn't much erode the point that it resisted while possible and isn't the most exploitable form of Christianity for capitalism. To be clear, I do not claim that Catholicism is in any way progressive.
And i just think we should re-examine that claim by Max Weber from a materialist/marxist perspective. As Marx pointed out, the relative early development of capitalism in Northern Europe came in part out of the different property relations that existed within these countries, the loss of the commons in the UK is one such example. This was not caused by an abandonment of Catholic doctrine.
Likewise explicit feudal obligations were retained in Scandinavia for almost a century longer than they were in France, supported by the Protestant national churches. Explicit codified serfdom was reintroduced in Denmark under a protestant regime, having been abolished under a catholic (Or at least pre-reformation) one.
I can appreciate that criticism; it is, if nothing else, reductionist.