John Dunn

First posted on Tuesday, 29 May 2012 at 22:35


R H Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism - an important little book.


I followed a recommendation that Imran Hosein made in one of his speeches, which was to read R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, first published in 1922. As Hosein pointed out, this little book by Tawney does indeed cover the post-reformation retreat of religion from all things economic. Tawney describes how economics became a morality free zone, a place where usury ceased to be prohibited by religious leaders and common decency and where decision making was founded on economic expediency alone. I’m reminded by this of how Julius Evola described the modern world as the era in which the religious idea became dissociated form any transcendent interest, and thus used to sanctify any temporal achievements such as social work, ‘progress’ or even profits. Materialism appears to have killed off any possible return to a tradition which in a large, universal, unanimous way encompasses every form of life and of light. In short, there appears to be no way back to aguiding unitary spirit. So remote is the possibility that any movement for such a return would be truly revolutionary. It was with this thought in mind that I came across a short piece of writing by Roger Garaudy in Bernard Moitessier’s final book and autobiography, Tamata and the Alliance. I thought others might wish to read it. The Garaudy quote reads...

“The concrete, practical consequences of this unshakable affirmation of transcendence are essentially revolutionary.

Theonly possible revolutions are those which don’t exclude mankind’s transcendent dimension; which don’t exclude the divine; which are founded on this article of faith; that the basic foundation of reality is an act of the creative freedom which is called God.

To be a revolutionary is to be a creator of that reality, to participate in divine life.”

The point Garaudy makes is that whilst the current expansionist cycle of materialist liberal-democracy has yet to run its course, the only revolutionary alternatives to its continuance are those which have religious and transcendent dimensions.

John Dunn.