From the Jesus Radicals website:
1. What is Anarchism?
Anarchy is a Greek term derived from av, which means without and aoxn, which means ruler. Arche also means beginning and originator which connotes that the rulers see themselves as the originators of peace and justice. One of the best definitions of anarchism was written by Peter Kropotkin for the Encyclopedia Brittanica in 1910.
Anarchism is not so much what might be as what is. Anarchism as Gustav Landauer says is not something new or some speculative vision for some far off society, "but the actualization and reconstitution of something that has always been present," and as Peter Kropotkin wrote, "The anarchist writers consider, moreover, that their conception is not a utopia, constructed on the a priori method, after a few desiderata have been taken as postulates. It is derived, they maintain, from an analysis of tendencies that are at work already [ . . . ]" Anarchism is a mode of organization, rooted in experience that has and does exist side by side with the dominant authoritarian organization. Anarchism is a way of relating to others and organizing those relations on a wider scale for the common good. As such we need not wait for some future "revolution" when an anarchist society will suddenly spring up into being, but we need to look at those efforts which are in fact anarchist already. This does not discount that we have as our goal the complete reconstitution of society: revolution on a broad and wide scale is our goal.
It is as if there is a wide space that is crowded up with the dominant mode of relations and organizing (impersonal, bureaucratic, universal, etc.) that has crowded and strangled the other ways, the ways of love and mercy, of the local and personal, etc. But those strangled and crowded ways continue to exist within this space, although they do not now take up the majority of the space. Anarchists seek to work to expand the strangled and crowded out relations and organizing (the personal, local and loving) in order to break free from the stranglehold, and to crowd out the dominant system (the bureaucratic, impersonal technical, and universal).
On the other hand anarchism is a revolt against the totality of society, which is dominated by various edifices that hold this system together (capitalism, the nation-state, religious institutions, racism and gender bias, wage systems, technology and modern sciences, etc) so that what anarchists are for is a total restructuring of society. Merely replacing laissez fair capitalism with state capitalism only leads to totalitarianism and merely getting rid of the state leads to unhindered corporate rule. There is no chance of this system being "crowded out" through reforms. Sooner or later there does need to be a break with the domination system. To paraphrase the words of Peter Maurin, we are trying to create a society where it is easier to do what is good.
Anarchism is a critique of power as a repressive force. This power over others is not simply that a few elites have gained control over others and are repressing their essentially "good" natures. On the contrary the domination that anarchists critique is that which is spread throughout society existing on numerous levels, including all the dominant institutions (State, church, corporations, Universities, stock markets, etc.) but also in the way that individuals are "disciplined" to become self-policing agents in the manner in which Michel Foucault decribes in all of his works.
1a. Myth that anarchist society is like "heaven"
A lot of Christians confuse anarchist thought on society with Christian ideas of heaven. This is false. An anarchist society is not some state of perfection. In anarchist society there is still work to be done. There will still be interpersonal conflict (though not to the degree in capitalist society) that will need to be mediated, there will still be some crime (though not to the degree in capitalist society), and more. In short anarchism is a way of organizing society that lessens conflict between people because of the principles of mutual aid and direct democracy, but this does not mean that suddenly there will be nothing to do.
back to top
2. What is the "State?"
The term "state" can have two different meanings. The first is that the "state" is simply a political form by which people are organized. This is the sense in which our politicians and theorists want us to believe the state as such is an ancient and traditional thing, from which there is no escape. The second sense is the "State" which came about in Europe between 1450 and 1650. The "state" in this defined and strict meaning is based upon a notion of sovereignty, or as Max Weber puts it "a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory."
Historian Anthony Giddens in his book The Nation-State and Violence updates Weber by defining the "state" as "a political organization whose rule is territorially ordered and which is able to mobilize the means of violence to sustain that rule." This definition is preferable since it does not emphasize legitimacy.
2a. The Myth of the State as Peacemaker: A False Salvation Story
As mentioned before, state history tells us falsely that peace and justice originate with the state. The modern myth we are taught in our schools about the origins of the modern nation-states are instructive here. The modern state was founded on the myth that the state must save us from the “wars of religion” of the 16th Century. In other words, the state is trying to save all of us from the church. When the Reformation began and the Holy Catholic Church began to splinter, the state tells us that these factions began killing each other over stupid things like baptism, and other doctrines. The Catholic will kill the protestant for not recognizing the transformation of the Eucharist into the actual body of Christ, and the Protestant in turn would kill the Catholic because he would not renounce such doctrine and both Catholic and Protestant would kill us Anabaptists because we refused to fight at all! Well thank our lucky stars the state stepped in and put all these fanatics in their place. This is the story we are told in our state sponsored history books.
An irony of this false story we are told is that it is also religious in that it is also a story of salvation (it is “soteriological” in theological terms). We are saved from something and into something else. Hence it is a story of salvation.
The problem is that this story is a lie. These so called “wars of religion” did not make the state necessary, but as theologian William Cavanaugh has shown, these wars were a symptom of an already emerging state. For example, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, attacked and pillaged Rome with his armies in 1527. A Catholic pillaging Rome! Later when he attacked Lutheran strongholds Cavanaugh says that this was about consolidating imperial power and not about doctrinal loyalties. Indeed virtually all of the wars during this century were about princes attempting to consolidate their power rather than about loyalty to any particular faith or dogma. The emerging state, far from being birthed as a peacemaker spent its early years in bitter war: The state arose not as peacemaker but as war maker, the state arose not as a unifier but a divider and conqueror. Charles Tilly has written an examination of this history entitled “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime” in which he argues that the origins of the state more resemble a racketeering ring than a knight in shining armor saving a far maiden. The story of salvation that we are told is simply false, through and through. The State then moves to create “religion” by making belief a private affair with no relevance to any sort of social body that requires a politic. Religion is itself a creation of the nation-state and a legitimator of it.
Moreover the story we are fed masks that in the name of "the nation-state" Christian will fight and kill Christian, brother fight and kill brother so that violence has been multiplied a thousand times what it ever was. Blasphemy to God has been replaced by treason to the state as the unforgiveable sin.
So the modern nation-state has propagated a story of salvation that rivals that of the church (we should even go further and say it has set itself up as a god). The state therefore in Christian eyes has set itself up as a kind of new church, and like a god it also wants our worship, assent and to mold us into a certain type of people.
2b. The Myth of the State as Peaceful Social Body: A False Story of Salvation #2.
According to popular beliefs, in a state of nature there is competition and rivalry between individuals. This plays out through the idea of scarcity. Two people, in all things equal, will desire what only one person can have (and desire it not for it's own sake, but as Gene Girard has shown, desire it precisely because it is desried by another). From this competitive desire arises all conflict, war and violence. Through the need to protect property and life, people form a social contract to bind together. Thus only the State, which is formed through the social contract, is able to save us from this natural war of individuals. Thomas Hobbes called this social body "Leviathan" or "an artificial man" or "State or Commonwealth." This "New Adam" is our salvation from each other.
This story deliberately overlooks tribal societies built upon mutual aid. In his book Stone-Age Economics Marshall Sahlins, a well-known anthropologist, shows that tribal peoples such as the natives of the Americas, the Aboriginals of Australia, the Bushmen who live in the Kalahari in Africa and may more, were societies organized on the premises of mutual aid. These societies were characterized not by competition between individuals, but by their lack of concern and detachment from possessions, willingness to share, leisure, adaptability to the natural environment (rather than adapting the environment to them), and a kind of democracy of property.
Tribal societies and hunter-gather societies existed for hundreds of thousands of years before what might be viewed as precursors to our own civilization appeared. Overlooking these societies is part of the general trend to dehumanize anything that is not part of Western "history." It also confuses the history of our culture and civilization as the history of all humanity.
This story pits individuals in perpetual conflict with each other, and the only possible mediation is the nation-state which is not able to completely obliterate violence between individuals but is able to lessen it. This is counter to the theology of the church. Christian theology envisions the creation of communities where violence is not merely held in check while the underlying currents are still prevalent. Our theology envisions a world without violence and that is redeemed from it.
According to capitalist logic, all sacrifice is implicitly violent because it means there is loss - a loss of self, a loss of dignity, a loss of identity, a loss of life. Destructive sacrifice is always a giving up or a surrender of the lesser to the greater-the present to the future, women to men, men to the state and corporation, all to the greater good which is the Market.
Jesus' sacrifice does not force us to decide between oneself and a neighbor, with a decision for one necessarily entailing a loss of the other. Jesus's sacrifice shows us that God gives again and again, and that there is plenty for all of us. When we literally follow Jesus' call to give everything we have to the poor this is not a loss of property, but a gain; when we give our lives for others we do not loose our lives, we gain life.
This myth of inherent and perpetual competition between individuals runs completely counter to the facts of history and tribal society and there is a head on collision between this lie and Christian teaching which tells us that Jesus has opened up a space of us to give to our neighbors without conflict and fear of scarcity. God's abundance has give us plenty so that we can devote our entire lives to meeting the needs of others.
back to top
3. What is Capitalism?
Capitalism means two things: private property and wage labor. In pre-capitalist societies before the modern state rose, property existed to a certain extent but it was not used for profit making purposes such as gaining capital returns from labor. Feudal lords shared their property (land) with peasants in return for rents. The economy was one of subsistence: small farmers produced all of their own needs – food, clothing, housing, furniture, and tools. This made money irrelevant for the most part and it made taxation extremely difficult. Peasants were able to control labor surplus by partially owning the lands. This is important since at least partial ownership of the means of production meant that the means of production (land, tools, etc.) was not concentrated in the hands of a few persons. They could at least sell their products (wheat, cotton, etc) in the market to meet their needs.
With the coming of capitalism and modern States in Western Europe in the 15-17th centuries, there were two important developments: Peasants were evicted from the land (they would no longer own any means of production) and the newly landless peasants were forcefully incorporated into the wage system. Taxes began to be levied from the lower classes because of the heavy burden of war. Consider just one example, there were only 7 years during the entire 17th Century in which there was no war and it is claimed that over 75% of the revenues collected by the Spanish Empire were being used for war during this century. These wars were to the interest of the ruling classes. The ruling class only limited the taxation to the extent that they wanted to keep people with just enough that they could extract more from them later. There was also the possibility of using taxes from their current domain to conquer other lands, and continue the cycle there. In any case, there was an intentional movement out of a subsistence economy and into a capitalist-based economy of monetary wages and private property.
“Payment in kind” was replaced by “payment with money” in which a farmer could no longer subsist in a personal and local economy but was forced to convert his produce into the money demanded by those in power. This required a market, which was hard to find outside the cities. Hence many peasants lost the small land they had, and became permanent slaves to the ruling classes. People who could subsist in the former economy, by trading their goods for what they needed were now forced to sell their labor to the ruling classes in order to survive. There were now two classes of people who met in the markets: 1) those of the capitalist class who owned the land, equipment, etc, in short all means of production and 2) the peasant transformed into the worker (the working class) who is alienated from the means of production and yet is forced to directly engage in production. This entailed a shift toward urbanization and later to industrialization in those cities. And as can be seen this all supposes a shift from decentralization to centralization as well. The common person was seen as a tool for the extraction of labor to fight wars and uphold the interests of the property owners and the rulers.
Capitalism is therefore an exploitative economy that is based on forcing people to labor in offices and factories they do not own, and paying these workers less than the value of what they produce and provide. This extra or surplus is then given to the owners (capitalist class) simply because they "own" the property. The owners do nothing except make sure they are paid. The owners in other words steal the workers labor value from them.
3a. The Image of God: Capitalist Theology of Private Property
Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes give us a theology of private property that is radically altered Christian theology of what is to be "made in the image of God" (imago dei). They talk about the blank slate individual. It is individuals who are the primary factor. Individuals kill each other and take each other's goods. For these enlightenment apologists for modern States, the image of God is lost when we lose our dominion: when we no longer own property. For them, the imago dei (image of God) is restored in this way: God exercises his authority by sheer will, and disobedience should be punished only because of this. So mankind's imago dei is restored when we exercise dominion, when we own property as individuals and excerize our authority and will over other creatures and creation. Redemption then comes in a social contract in which individuals seek to pursue their own dominion (we hold these truths to be self evident...), it comes in the form of Leviathan for Hobbes: the Savior of the individual, who brings about the conditions for the restoration of the will to power comes from the state, it saves us from our destruction of the image of God by taking each other's property. There is no "common good" in this story because it is a story of isolated individuals who pursue their own private and selfish interest.
Christian theology is the exact opposite of this. The image of God does not consist in an unattached tryant God dominating by sheer will. The image of God is in the Trinitarian community of God in which love overflows and is abundant for all.
God created us as a race, a collective people, meant to be in community. There is not really a distinction made between what is this persons and what is that persons. The community is such that there is enough for all because noone considers anything their own. With the sin of Adam, community is destroyed and the individual as an isolated person seeking their own private happiness and ends is created. The distinctions between who owns what (what is your and what is mine) become secured. Individuals then become rivals and kill and oppress each other because they imitate each others' desires (See Rene Girard) for the same objects.
Redemption then consists of Jesus becoming human and therefore redeeming all of humankind (and all of creation since humanity is the pinnacle of it). People are restored to their rightful place as fellow participants in the Divine life of the Triune God. The image of God is restored in that we are now able to be a social body, capable of more than pure private pursuits but devote our entire lives to meeting the needs of others; like The Triune God we have enough and there is always plenty overflowing for others. Rather than isolated individuals bent on their own private and selfish pursuit Christians seek to participate in the Divine by imitating Christ and serving others.
3b. The Myth of Capitalism as Freedom: A False Story of Redemption
here are some sites(thought not all exactly under the same name but same idea):
http://www.jesusradicals.com
http://www.ellul.org/
http://www.psalters.org/
http://www.catholicworker.org/
1. What is Anarchism?
Anarchy is a Greek term derived from av, which means without and aoxn, which means ruler. Arche also means beginning and originator which connotes that the rulers see themselves as the originators of peace and justice. One of the best definitions of anarchism was written by Peter Kropotkin for the Encyclopedia Brittanica in 1910.
Anarchism is not so much what might be as what is. Anarchism as Gustav Landauer says is not something new or some speculative vision for some far off society, "but the actualization and reconstitution of something that has always been present," and as Peter Kropotkin wrote, "The anarchist writers consider, moreover, that their conception is not a utopia, constructed on the a priori method, after a few desiderata have been taken as postulates. It is derived, they maintain, from an analysis of tendencies that are at work already [ . . . ]" Anarchism is a mode of organization, rooted in experience that has and does exist side by side with the dominant authoritarian organization. Anarchism is a way of relating to others and organizing those relations on a wider scale for the common good. As such we need not wait for some future "revolution" when an anarchist society will suddenly spring up into being, but we need to look at those efforts which are in fact anarchist already. This does not discount that we have as our goal the complete reconstitution of society: revolution on a broad and wide scale is our goal.
It is as if there is a wide space that is crowded up with the dominant mode of relations and organizing (impersonal, bureaucratic, universal, etc.) that has crowded and strangled the other ways, the ways of love and mercy, of the local and personal, etc. But those strangled and crowded ways continue to exist within this space, although they do not now take up the majority of the space. Anarchists seek to work to expand the strangled and crowded out relations and organizing (the personal, local and loving) in order to break free from the stranglehold, and to crowd out the dominant system (the bureaucratic, impersonal technical, and universal).
On the other hand anarchism is a revolt against the totality of society, which is dominated by various edifices that hold this system together (capitalism, the nation-state, religious institutions, racism and gender bias, wage systems, technology and modern sciences, etc) so that what anarchists are for is a total restructuring of society. Merely replacing laissez fair capitalism with state capitalism only leads to totalitarianism and merely getting rid of the state leads to unhindered corporate rule. There is no chance of this system being "crowded out" through reforms. Sooner or later there does need to be a break with the domination system. To paraphrase the words of Peter Maurin, we are trying to create a society where it is easier to do what is good.
Anarchism is a critique of power as a repressive force. This power over others is not simply that a few elites have gained control over others and are repressing their essentially "good" natures. On the contrary the domination that anarchists critique is that which is spread throughout society existing on numerous levels, including all the dominant institutions (State, church, corporations, Universities, stock markets, etc.) but also in the way that individuals are "disciplined" to become self-policing agents in the manner in which Michel Foucault decribes in all of his works.
1a. Myth that anarchist society is like "heaven"
A lot of Christians confuse anarchist thought on society with Christian ideas of heaven. This is false. An anarchist society is not some state of perfection. In anarchist society there is still work to be done. There will still be interpersonal conflict (though not to the degree in capitalist society) that will need to be mediated, there will still be some crime (though not to the degree in capitalist society), and more. In short anarchism is a way of organizing society that lessens conflict between people because of the principles of mutual aid and direct democracy, but this does not mean that suddenly there will be nothing to do.
back to top
2. What is the "State?"
The term "state" can have two different meanings. The first is that the "state" is simply a political form by which people are organized. This is the sense in which our politicians and theorists want us to believe the state as such is an ancient and traditional thing, from which there is no escape. The second sense is the "State" which came about in Europe between 1450 and 1650. The "state" in this defined and strict meaning is based upon a notion of sovereignty, or as Max Weber puts it "a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory."
Historian Anthony Giddens in his book The Nation-State and Violence updates Weber by defining the "state" as "a political organization whose rule is territorially ordered and which is able to mobilize the means of violence to sustain that rule." This definition is preferable since it does not emphasize legitimacy.
2a. The Myth of the State as Peacemaker: A False Salvation Story
As mentioned before, state history tells us falsely that peace and justice originate with the state. The modern myth we are taught in our schools about the origins of the modern nation-states are instructive here. The modern state was founded on the myth that the state must save us from the “wars of religion” of the 16th Century. In other words, the state is trying to save all of us from the church. When the Reformation began and the Holy Catholic Church began to splinter, the state tells us that these factions began killing each other over stupid things like baptism, and other doctrines. The Catholic will kill the protestant for not recognizing the transformation of the Eucharist into the actual body of Christ, and the Protestant in turn would kill the Catholic because he would not renounce such doctrine and both Catholic and Protestant would kill us Anabaptists because we refused to fight at all! Well thank our lucky stars the state stepped in and put all these fanatics in their place. This is the story we are told in our state sponsored history books.
An irony of this false story we are told is that it is also religious in that it is also a story of salvation (it is “soteriological” in theological terms). We are saved from something and into something else. Hence it is a story of salvation.
The problem is that this story is a lie. These so called “wars of religion” did not make the state necessary, but as theologian William Cavanaugh has shown, these wars were a symptom of an already emerging state. For example, Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, attacked and pillaged Rome with his armies in 1527. A Catholic pillaging Rome! Later when he attacked Lutheran strongholds Cavanaugh says that this was about consolidating imperial power and not about doctrinal loyalties. Indeed virtually all of the wars during this century were about princes attempting to consolidate their power rather than about loyalty to any particular faith or dogma. The emerging state, far from being birthed as a peacemaker spent its early years in bitter war: The state arose not as peacemaker but as war maker, the state arose not as a unifier but a divider and conqueror. Charles Tilly has written an examination of this history entitled “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime” in which he argues that the origins of the state more resemble a racketeering ring than a knight in shining armor saving a far maiden. The story of salvation that we are told is simply false, through and through. The State then moves to create “religion” by making belief a private affair with no relevance to any sort of social body that requires a politic. Religion is itself a creation of the nation-state and a legitimator of it.
Moreover the story we are fed masks that in the name of "the nation-state" Christian will fight and kill Christian, brother fight and kill brother so that violence has been multiplied a thousand times what it ever was. Blasphemy to God has been replaced by treason to the state as the unforgiveable sin.
So the modern nation-state has propagated a story of salvation that rivals that of the church (we should even go further and say it has set itself up as a god). The state therefore in Christian eyes has set itself up as a kind of new church, and like a god it also wants our worship, assent and to mold us into a certain type of people.
2b. The Myth of the State as Peaceful Social Body: A False Story of Salvation #2.
According to popular beliefs, in a state of nature there is competition and rivalry between individuals. This plays out through the idea of scarcity. Two people, in all things equal, will desire what only one person can have (and desire it not for it's own sake, but as Gene Girard has shown, desire it precisely because it is desried by another). From this competitive desire arises all conflict, war and violence. Through the need to protect property and life, people form a social contract to bind together. Thus only the State, which is formed through the social contract, is able to save us from this natural war of individuals. Thomas Hobbes called this social body "Leviathan" or "an artificial man" or "State or Commonwealth." This "New Adam" is our salvation from each other.
This story deliberately overlooks tribal societies built upon mutual aid. In his book Stone-Age Economics Marshall Sahlins, a well-known anthropologist, shows that tribal peoples such as the natives of the Americas, the Aboriginals of Australia, the Bushmen who live in the Kalahari in Africa and may more, were societies organized on the premises of mutual aid. These societies were characterized not by competition between individuals, but by their lack of concern and detachment from possessions, willingness to share, leisure, adaptability to the natural environment (rather than adapting the environment to them), and a kind of democracy of property.
Tribal societies and hunter-gather societies existed for hundreds of thousands of years before what might be viewed as precursors to our own civilization appeared. Overlooking these societies is part of the general trend to dehumanize anything that is not part of Western "history." It also confuses the history of our culture and civilization as the history of all humanity.
This story pits individuals in perpetual conflict with each other, and the only possible mediation is the nation-state which is not able to completely obliterate violence between individuals but is able to lessen it. This is counter to the theology of the church. Christian theology envisions the creation of communities where violence is not merely held in check while the underlying currents are still prevalent. Our theology envisions a world without violence and that is redeemed from it.
According to capitalist logic, all sacrifice is implicitly violent because it means there is loss - a loss of self, a loss of dignity, a loss of identity, a loss of life. Destructive sacrifice is always a giving up or a surrender of the lesser to the greater-the present to the future, women to men, men to the state and corporation, all to the greater good which is the Market.
Jesus' sacrifice does not force us to decide between oneself and a neighbor, with a decision for one necessarily entailing a loss of the other. Jesus's sacrifice shows us that God gives again and again, and that there is plenty for all of us. When we literally follow Jesus' call to give everything we have to the poor this is not a loss of property, but a gain; when we give our lives for others we do not loose our lives, we gain life.
This myth of inherent and perpetual competition between individuals runs completely counter to the facts of history and tribal society and there is a head on collision between this lie and Christian teaching which tells us that Jesus has opened up a space of us to give to our neighbors without conflict and fear of scarcity. God's abundance has give us plenty so that we can devote our entire lives to meeting the needs of others.
back to top
3. What is Capitalism?
Capitalism means two things: private property and wage labor. In pre-capitalist societies before the modern state rose, property existed to a certain extent but it was not used for profit making purposes such as gaining capital returns from labor. Feudal lords shared their property (land) with peasants in return for rents. The economy was one of subsistence: small farmers produced all of their own needs – food, clothing, housing, furniture, and tools. This made money irrelevant for the most part and it made taxation extremely difficult. Peasants were able to control labor surplus by partially owning the lands. This is important since at least partial ownership of the means of production meant that the means of production (land, tools, etc.) was not concentrated in the hands of a few persons. They could at least sell their products (wheat, cotton, etc) in the market to meet their needs.
With the coming of capitalism and modern States in Western Europe in the 15-17th centuries, there were two important developments: Peasants were evicted from the land (they would no longer own any means of production) and the newly landless peasants were forcefully incorporated into the wage system. Taxes began to be levied from the lower classes because of the heavy burden of war. Consider just one example, there were only 7 years during the entire 17th Century in which there was no war and it is claimed that over 75% of the revenues collected by the Spanish Empire were being used for war during this century. These wars were to the interest of the ruling classes. The ruling class only limited the taxation to the extent that they wanted to keep people with just enough that they could extract more from them later. There was also the possibility of using taxes from their current domain to conquer other lands, and continue the cycle there. In any case, there was an intentional movement out of a subsistence economy and into a capitalist-based economy of monetary wages and private property.
“Payment in kind” was replaced by “payment with money” in which a farmer could no longer subsist in a personal and local economy but was forced to convert his produce into the money demanded by those in power. This required a market, which was hard to find outside the cities. Hence many peasants lost the small land they had, and became permanent slaves to the ruling classes. People who could subsist in the former economy, by trading their goods for what they needed were now forced to sell their labor to the ruling classes in order to survive. There were now two classes of people who met in the markets: 1) those of the capitalist class who owned the land, equipment, etc, in short all means of production and 2) the peasant transformed into the worker (the working class) who is alienated from the means of production and yet is forced to directly engage in production. This entailed a shift toward urbanization and later to industrialization in those cities. And as can be seen this all supposes a shift from decentralization to centralization as well. The common person was seen as a tool for the extraction of labor to fight wars and uphold the interests of the property owners and the rulers.
Capitalism is therefore an exploitative economy that is based on forcing people to labor in offices and factories they do not own, and paying these workers less than the value of what they produce and provide. This extra or surplus is then given to the owners (capitalist class) simply because they "own" the property. The owners do nothing except make sure they are paid. The owners in other words steal the workers labor value from them.
3a. The Image of God: Capitalist Theology of Private Property
Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes give us a theology of private property that is radically altered Christian theology of what is to be "made in the image of God" (imago dei). They talk about the blank slate individual. It is individuals who are the primary factor. Individuals kill each other and take each other's goods. For these enlightenment apologists for modern States, the image of God is lost when we lose our dominion: when we no longer own property. For them, the imago dei (image of God) is restored in this way: God exercises his authority by sheer will, and disobedience should be punished only because of this. So mankind's imago dei is restored when we exercise dominion, when we own property as individuals and excerize our authority and will over other creatures and creation. Redemption then comes in a social contract in which individuals seek to pursue their own dominion (we hold these truths to be self evident...), it comes in the form of Leviathan for Hobbes: the Savior of the individual, who brings about the conditions for the restoration of the will to power comes from the state, it saves us from our destruction of the image of God by taking each other's property. There is no "common good" in this story because it is a story of isolated individuals who pursue their own private and selfish interest.
Christian theology is the exact opposite of this. The image of God does not consist in an unattached tryant God dominating by sheer will. The image of God is in the Trinitarian community of God in which love overflows and is abundant for all.
God created us as a race, a collective people, meant to be in community. There is not really a distinction made between what is this persons and what is that persons. The community is such that there is enough for all because noone considers anything their own. With the sin of Adam, community is destroyed and the individual as an isolated person seeking their own private happiness and ends is created. The distinctions between who owns what (what is your and what is mine) become secured. Individuals then become rivals and kill and oppress each other because they imitate each others' desires (See Rene Girard) for the same objects.
Redemption then consists of Jesus becoming human and therefore redeeming all of humankind (and all of creation since humanity is the pinnacle of it). People are restored to their rightful place as fellow participants in the Divine life of the Triune God. The image of God is restored in that we are now able to be a social body, capable of more than pure private pursuits but devote our entire lives to meeting the needs of others; like The Triune God we have enough and there is always plenty overflowing for others. Rather than isolated individuals bent on their own private and selfish pursuit Christians seek to participate in the Divine by imitating Christ and serving others.
3b. The Myth of Capitalism as Freedom: A False Story of Redemption
here are some sites(thought not all exactly under the same name but same idea):
http://www.jesusradicals.com
http://www.ellul.org/
http://www.psalters.org/
http://www.catholicworker.org/
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