Riba vs. Mercy in The Merchant of Venice

Source: Culture Wars

by E. Michael Jones

The Merchant of Venice was probably written in 1595 or 1596, but there is no definite evidence of date. Yates claims that Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice was written in reaction to Marlowe’s Jew of Malta. By 1590 Marlowe had become a leader in the attack on judaizing cabalistic Puritanism. His response to the occult judaizing imperialist philosophy of John Dee, which provided the intellectual underpinning for Spenser's Faerie Queene, was The Jew of Malta. Marlowe had already expressed his misgivings about British imperialism and magic in Tamburlaine and Dr. Faustus. Now he was expressing misgivings about the group which united those two enterprises, namely the Jews. The Jew of Malta was also an attack on John Dee, because Dee was the man who introduced Cabala into English thought, especially into the thought of occult Puritans like Spenser.

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice attempted to ameliorate the portrait of the Jew which Marlowe painted by showing that the Jew's unpleasant characteristics were the result of his treatment at the hands of Christians. The main character in The Jew of Malta is a merchant by the name of Barabbas. The name is significant. Barabbas is the Zealot terrorist revolutionary which the Jews of his day chose over Jesus, when Pilate offered to set Jesus free.

Barabas is then the Jewish revolutionary, hoping to create heaven on earth through gold and conniving, now practicing subversion in a way appropriate to times when Christians have political power but are threatened by enemies like the Turks. At the beginning of The Jew of Malta, Barabas is shown as surrounded by heaps of gold in his counting house, boasting about the superiority of Judaism to Christianity because of the riches which accrue from it.

Thus trolls our fortune in by land and sea,
And thus we are on every side enriched.
These are the blessings promised to the Jews,
And herein was old Abram's happiness.
What more may heaven do for earthly man
Than thus to pour out plenty in their laps (1)

Barabas would rather be hated for his wealth than "pitied in a Christian poverty" because and this should come as no surprise— "I can see no fruits in all their faith." (2) A Christian may live by his conscience, but "for his conscience lives in beggary." (3) The Jews, on the other hand, "have scrambled up/ More wealth by far than those that brag of faith." (4) The Jew's wealth, in other words, is a proof, at least to him, of the falsity of Christianity.

Shylock prepares to cut his pound of flesh

Shylock, on the other hand, tugs at the spectator's heartstrings and begs for sympathy. Shakespeare lends credence to the Jew-as-victim trope when he has Shylock say:

Hath not a Jew eyes. Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die. And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

The argument sounds plausible enough, but it does not change the fact that at the moment, the tide of history (and reaction) was running with Marlowe and not with apologists for the failed regime of occult Puritanism and its defenders. Shakespeare, Yates tells us, "could live with the Spenserian magic, as Marlowe's plays could not." (5) Audiences who listened to The Merchant of Venice or Midsummer Night’s Dream were charmed by Shakespeare’s ability to infuse new life into a failed vision, but that is more a tribute to Shakespeare’s art than to the viability of Dee's failed political system. "The audiences at the Jew of Malta," on the other hand, "were inclined to become anti-Semitic mobs." (6) The reaction had arrived in England, and Marlowe knew how to exploit it: "Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is seen as belonging to the reaction to the atmosphere of the witch crazes and the attacks on Agrippa. With the assault on occult philosophy in Faustus was associated the anti-Semitism of The Jew of Malta." (7)

The Merchant of Venice begins with a confession. Bassanio is in debt. Like many debtors, his main goal in life is "to get free of all the debts I owe." Bassanio's solution to the problem of debt is more debt. Like the gambler, Bassanio is going to double down:

But if you please
To shoot anther arrow that self way
Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt,
As I will watch the aim, or find both
Or bring your latter hazard back again,
And thankfully rest debtor for the first.

Unfortunately, no one will lend Bassanio any more money. He has no credit, and so he must involve his wealthy friend Antonio in his scheme to get out of debt. Unfortunately, Antonio has no money either. He has neither "money nor commodity/ to raise a present sum” because “all my fortunes are at sea," i.e., tied up in risky trading ventures. Antonio is a good Christian. When Shylock asks him whether he lends or borrows "upon advantage," i.e., charging interest, Antonio’s answer is clear: "I do never use it." Which is to say, I do not practice usury. Because he is a noble Christian, one who lends without seeking a return, but temporarily without money of his own, Antonio agrees to let Bassanio use his name and his credit to raise the money he needs.

Therefore go forth
Try what my credit can in Venice do.
That shall be racked even to the uttermost,
To furnish thee to Belmont, to fair Portia.

This is where both Antonio's and Bassanio's problems begin because borrowing in 16th century Venice means getting involved with the Jews, since only Jews are allowed to lend money at interest. The standard rate of interest for loans in Italy in the Middle Ages was 43 and 1/3 percent (and often times twice that amount). It was an interest rate guaranteed to ruin anyone who borrowed money from the Jew.

The Jew knew this. Usury was covert warfare against the Christian state. Shylock makes this clear when he tells us that he hates Antonio simply because he is a Christian, but even more because as a Christian he refuses to lend out money at interest:

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-worn thrift,
Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe
If I forgive him.

Portia pleading Antonio's case as a learned doctor of the law

Instead of admitting that money lending is a weapon in the arsenal of Jewish cultural warfare, Shylock pretends to be Antonio's friend and claims that the proof of his friendship is his willingness to lend him money. "I would be friends with you," he tells Antonio, "and have your love." Antonio sees through Shylock's hypocrisy when he says:

If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not
As to thy friends, for when did friendship take
A breed for barren metal of his friend?
But lend it rather to thine enemy,
Who if he break, thou mayst with better face
Exact the penalty.

Antonio represents the traditional Christian position here. Usury is a sin. It is "breed of barren metal."

In making this claim, Antonio is referring to Aristotle's statement that money is sterile. Shylock obviously does not believe this. He feels that he can make his ducats copulate faster than Laban's ewes and rams. When Antonio asks Shylock: "is your gold and silver ewes and rams?" Shylock replies, "I cannot tell. I make it breed as fast."

We have here the fundamental conflict between Christian (and Islamic) economics on the one hand and Jewish economics on the other. According to Christian economics, labor is the source of all value and usury is sinful. Money, according to the Christian view taken from Aristotle, is sterile. If you put two gold coins in a drawer and come back a month later, you will still have only two gold coins. If you put two mice (male and female) in a draw, you will have many mice. According to Jewish economics, usury is fruitful and labor is unnecessary. The great poet of the Italian Middle Ages, Dante Alighieri gave the traditional Christian view of both sex and economics when he put both sodomites and usurers in the same circle in hell because the sodomite takes what is fertile, namely sex, and makes it sterile, while the usurer takes what is sterile, namely money, and makes it fertile through compound interest. Both sodomy and usury are contra naturam, against nature, hence the severity of their punishment.

Against what should have been his better judgment, Antonio agrees to borrow money from Shylock. The main reason is the peculiar nature of the contract. Instead of agreeing to pay compound interest on 3,000 ducats for three months, Antonio agrees to pay a pound of flesh if he forfeits the loan, or as Shylock puts it:

Let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me.

Antonio is taken off guard by Shylock's strange offer. He is so befuddled by the terms of the loan, or so happy not to have to pay compound interest, that he concludes that "there is much kindness in the Jew." In fact, he thinks that "the Hebrew will turn Christian. He grows kind." This is, of course, an illusion, and Antonio will have to learn the hard way that the Jew cannot be trusted, certainly not when he is lending money.

The Merchant of Venice is about usury; it is about the relationship between usury and justice, between usury and mercy, and between mercy and justice. Justice and mercy are compatible, but mercy is more powerful than justice. In his encyclical Dives in Miseracordia, Pope John Paul II tells us that "Mercy differs from justice, but is not in opposition to it." Both mercy and justice "foreshadow in the context of the Old Covenant the full revelation of God, who is 'love.'" (8)

Shakespeare introduces the conflict between mercy and usury at the very beginning of the play. When Bassanio explains his plight to Antonio, he admits that his:

chief care
Is to come fairly off from the great debts
Wherein my time, something too prodigal
Hath left me gaged. 

In mentioning his debts, Bassanio admits that he has been "something too prodigal." The reference is unmistakable for a Christian audience. Bassanio is referring to the parable of the prodigal son, the seminal Gospel text describing mercy and the relationship between mercy and justice, even though, as Pope John Paul II points out, neither term appears in the text.

According to the dictates of justice:

The prodigal son, having wasted the property he received from his father, deserves - after his return to earn his living by working in his father's house as a hired servant and possibly, little by little, to build up a certain provision of material goods, though perhaps never as much as the amount he had squandered. This would be demanded by the order of justice, especially as the son had not only squandered the part of the inheritance belonging to him but had also hurt and offended his father by his whole conduct.

But this is not what happens. According to the account in Luke (15:21):

While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him tenderly. Then his son said, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son." But the father said to his servants, "Quick! Bring out the best robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the calf we have been fattening, and kill it; we are going to have a celebration, because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life; he was lost and is found. And they began to celebrate."

The father in the parable, who "reveals to us God as Father," exhibits mercy, not because he has to because of some external constraint but because of the inner necessity of love. Since God is love, He must show mercy. No superior power forces him to do this; his action springs from the inner logic of divine love. As Pope John Paul II puts it:

The father of the prodigal son is faithful to his fatherhood, faithful to the love that he had always lavished on his son. This fidelity is expressed in the parable not only by his immediate readiness to welcome him home when he returns after having squandered his inheritance; it is expressed even more fully by that joy, that merrymaking for the squanderer after his return, merrymaking which is so generous that it provokes the opposition and hatred of the elder brother, who had never gone far away from his father and had never abandoned the home. (9)

God’s mercy is triggered by the sinner's conversion:

Conversion is the most concrete expression of the working of love and of the presence of mercy in the human world. The true and proper meaning of mercy does not consist only in looking, however penetratingly and compassionately, at moral, physical or material evil: mercy is manifested in its true and proper aspect when it restores to value, promotes and draws good from all the forms of evil existing in the world and in man. Understood in this way, mercy constitutes the fundamental content of the messianic message of Christ and the constitutive power of His mission. His disciples and followers understood and practiced mercy in the same way. Mercy never ceased to reveal itself, in their hearts and in their actions, as an especially creative proof of the love which does not allow itself to be "conquered by evil," but overcomes "evil with good." The genuine face of mercy has to be ever revealed anew. In spite of many prejudices, mercy seems particularly necessary for our times.

If we believe in God's love, then we have to believe in His mercy:

For mercy is an indispensable dimension of love; it is as it were love's second name and, at the same time, the specific manner in which love is revealed and effected vis-a-vis the reality of the evil that is in the world, affecting and besieging man, insinuating itself even into his heart and capable of causing him to "perish in Gehenna." (10)

Love must be actualized as mercy. If there is no mercy, there is no love. "justice alone is not enough," because it does not give adequate expression to the love that lies at the heart of God's being. Unlike love and mercy, justice "can even lead to the negation and destruction of itself, if that deeper power, which is love, is not allowed to shape human life in its various dimensions."

Man encounters God when he shows mercy because that God, who "is love," cannot reveal Himself otherwise than as mercy. This corresponds not only to the most profound truth of that love which God is, but also to the whole interior truth of man and of the world which is man's temporary homeland.

Mercy in itself, as a perfection of the infinite God, is also infinite. Also infinite therefore and inexhaustible is the Father’s readiness to receive the prodigal children who return to His home. Infinite are the readiness and power of forgiveness which flow continually from the marvelous value of the sacrifice of the Son. No human sin can prevail over this power or even limit it. On the part of man only a lack of good will can limit it, a lack of readiness to be converted and to repent, in other words persistence in obstinacy, opposing grace and truth, especially in the face of the witness of the cross and resurrection of Christ. 

Moral relativism destroys mercy because it renders repentance unnecessary:

The Church, having before her eyes the picture of the generation to which we belong, shares the uneasiness of so many of the people of our time. Moreover, one cannot fail to be worried by the decline of many fundamental values, which constitute an unquestionable good not only for Christian morality but simply for human morality, for moral culture: these values include respect for human life from the moment of conception, respect for marriage in its indissoluble unity, and respect for the stability of the family. Moral permissiveness strikes especially at this most sensitive sphere of life and society. Hand in hand with this go the crisis of truth in human relationships, lack of responsibility for what one says, the purely utilitarian relationship between individual and individual, the loss of a sense of the authentic common good and the ease with which this good is alienated. Finally, there is the "desacralization" that often turns into "dehumanization": the individual and the society for whom nothing is "sacred" suffer moral decay, in spite of appearances.

The Church preaches conversion because:

Conversion to God always consists in discovering His mercy, that is, in discovering that love which is patient and kind as only the Creator and Father can be; the love to which the "God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" is faithful to the uttermost consequences in the history of His covenant with man; even to the cross and to the death and resurrection of the Son. Conversion to God is always the fruit of the rediscovery of this Father, who is rich in mercy. Authentic knowledge of the God of mercy, the God of tender love, is a constant and inexhaustible source of conversion, not only as a momentary interior act but also as a permanent attitude, as a state of mind. Those who come to know God in this way, who "see" Him in this way, can live only in a state of being continually converted to Him. 

There is no conversion in The Merchant of Venice, at least not at the beginning of the play. Instead of repenting, Bassanio the gambler "doubles down"; he wants to borrow more money to get out of debt. In this regard he is not like the Prodigal Son, who admitted his sin. Without repentance there can be no forgiveness. As a result things become complicated. The Christians fall into the hands of the Jews who are their sworn enemies. Shylock vows to "go in hate to feed upon/The prodigal Christian." Here Shylock uses the word "prodigal" in its unredeemed sense. The Jew gets rich because Christians refuse to convert; they refuse to subordinate their desires to the logos of the moral order and so fall into the clutches of the Jews.

Allah will destroy Riba (usury)

We have here in a nutshell the economic history of the Christian West. Unlike Islam, Christianity has never been consistent in applying what it preached on usury to what it practiced. In his monumental tafsir of the Qur'an, Imam Muhammad Asi translates riba as Capitalism and goes on to claim that "riba leads to perpetual war." (11) In this context, riba, not justice, is the antithesis of mercy. According to the Qur'an, those who obey Allah and His Apostle will be "graced with mercy." In fact:

Never should a Muslim entertain the idea that Allah is not willing to show mercy and grace. He should realize that what initially was a sin can become a motivation for him to "pull himself together" and move on to a higher level of morality and ethical conduct. (12)  

Too often, however, both Christians and Muslims can be blinded by the good which they feel borrowed money can obtain and fail to see, as a result, the "mutually supportive relationships between riba - or capitalism - and global instability leading to war. Governments are willing to go to war to defend or expand their usurious gains." (13) The financial establishment and the military establishment of the United States and the European Union work hand in glove to ensure the enslavement of the entire world to riga. It is, therefore:

impossible to combine a commitment to Allah with a usurious financial structure. By its nature, riba and its vast network of exploitation and manipulation ultimately stands for a concentration of wealth; while a commitment to Allah and a financial socialization of this commitment stands for a more equitable distribution of wealth. (14)

The history of Capitalism is a history of the conflict between labor and usury. Labor has been losing and usury has been winning ever since Savonarola got burned at the stake in Florence. The failure of the Church to implement Savonarola's reforms globally led to the Reformation, which was still wreaking havoc on the social order when Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice. Pope Leo X, a Medici and therefore the spawn of usurers, famously dismissed the Reformation as a quarrel among monks. It was more than that. When Henry VIII stole the Church’s property in England, he inaugurated the Capitalist era in history because Capitalism, as both William Cobbett and Karl Marx knew, begins with theft. That theft of labor continues to this day. The main instrument of capitalist theft is usury. Capitalism, according to Heinrich Pesch, the author of Das Lehrbuch der Nationaloekonomie and the Thomas Aquinas of Catholic economics, is "state-sponsored usury."

At the beginning of Act III, the time limit of Antonio's loan has expired before his ships returned. Antonio has defaulted on his loan and Shylock now wants his pound of flesh. Antonio's friends plead with Shylock and offer him twice the money that Antonio borrowed. In fact Portia is willing to give even more. "What sum does he owe the Jew?" Portia asks the court. When Bassanio answers "For me, three thousand ducats," Portia is flabbergasted. "What, no more?" she asks:

Pay him six thousand and deface the bond—
Double six thousand and then treble that,
Before a friend of this description
Shall lose a hair through Bassanio's fault.

But economic arguments do not move Shylock, who is ultimately motivated not by greed but by hatred of Christianity and revenge. Hatred, as Rabbi Meir Soveichik pointed out in First Things, is a Jewish virtue. If so, Shylock is a virtuous Jew because he is willing to forego money, the god of the Jews, in order to obtain revenge on Christianity. The Christians are dumbfounded by the intensity and depth of Shylock's hatred. When Salario wonders what good a pound of flesh is for, Shylock tells him: "To bait fish withal. If it feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge."

The main source of Shylock's anger is economic. Antonio followed the gospel and lent without thought of return, and for this he has earned Shylock's contempt. When the three months expires and Antonio defaults on his loan, Shylock calls the police:

Shylock: Jailer, look to him. Tell not me of mercy.
This is the fool that lent out money gratis

When the Jews rejected Christ, they rejected the Logos made flesh. When they rejected Logos, they rejected the moral order, and now their actions are motivated by mindless hatred.

Shylock: You ask me why I rather choose to have
A weight of carrion flesh than to receive
Three thousand ducats. I'll not answer that,
But say it is my humor - is it answered?
So I can give no reason, nor I will not,
More than a lodged hate and a certain loathing
I bear Antonio that I follow thus
A losing suit against him. Are you answered?

Antonio tells his friends that it is pointless to reason with a Jew who has rejected Logos because in rejecting reason the Jew has lowered himself to the level of the animals:

You may as well use question with the wolf
Why he hath made the ewe bleat wit the lamb. . . .
As seek to soften that - than which is harder? - his Jewish heart.

The Duke ignores Antonio's warning and tries to reason with Shylock when he says, "How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?" The Duke here is echoing the basic prayer of the Christian faith, the Our Father, which asks God to "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," but the Jew refuses to listen and appeals to his obsolete law instead:

Shylock: Why judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong.
The pound of flesh which I demand of his
Is dearly bought. 'Tis mine, and I will have it.
If you deny me, fie upon your law.
There is no force in the decrees of Venice. . . .
I stand here for law.

The law then tries to deal with Shylock. When Portia, masquerading as a learned doctor of the law from Padua tells Shylock that the Jew must be merciful, he counters by asking "on what compulsion, must I?" missing the point completely. When it comes to mercy, there can be no compulsion. Mercy is freely given. That is why it is an attribute of God. Portia then gives one of the most famous speeches in the Shakespearean canon, her speech on mercy:

The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain form heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest.
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes,
Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute of God himself,
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

As Pope John Paul II says in Dives in Miserecordia:

mercy is in a certain sense contrasted with God's justice, and in many cases is shown to be not only more powerful than that justice but also more profound.Even the Old Testament teaches that, although justice is an authentic virtue in man, and in God signifies transcendent perfection nevertheless love is "greater" than justice: greater in the sense that it is primary and fundamental. Love, so to speak, conditions justice and, in the final analysis, justice serves love. The primacy and superiority of love vis-a-vis justice - this is a mark of the whole of revelation - are revealed precisely through mercy. This seemed so obvious to the psalmists and prophets that the very term justice ended up by meaning the salvation accomplished by the Lord and His mercy.

Blinded by hatred, Shylock fails to understand the relationship between mercy and justice: "True mercy is, so to speak, the most profound source of justice. Forgiveness is also the fundamental condition for reconciliation, not only in the relationship of God with man, but also in relationships between people." A world from which forgiveness was eliminated would be nothing but a world of cold and unfeeling justice, in the name of which each person would claim his or her own rights vis-a-vis others; the various kinds of selfishness latent in man would transform life and human society into a system of oppression of the weak by the strong, or into an arena of permanent strife between one group and another.

Like Portia Islam believes that Mercy "is an attribute of God himself." In Islam Mercy is a fundamental aspect of God. One of Allah's names is "Ar-Rahman," the All-Merciful. "His eternal mercy provides people the chance to repent and reform themselves every time they make a mistake." (15)

"Tell my servants that I am the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Merciful" (Surat al-Hijr, 49).

Say [from Me]: "O My Servants, you who have transgressed against yourselves, so not despair of Alah's mercy. Truly, He forgives all wrong actions. He is the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Merciful." Turn to your Lord and submit to Him before punishment comes upon you, for then you cannot be helped. Follow the best that has been sent down to you from your Lord before the punishment comes upon you suddenly, when you are not expecting it (Surat azZumar, 53-55).

After citing the reference to God's mercy at the beginning of the Qur'an, Imam Asi goes on to say:

This emphasis on mercy and grace cannot be overstated. Allah's civilization was meant to be one of mercy. This is one of the most important features of Islamic civilization - the expression, administration and preservation of mercy. In Western civilization the expression of mercy is considered to be a weakness; in Islamic civilization the expression of mercy is considered to be strength. (16)

This is not true, at least not true of the Catholic, pre-Reformation, pre-Enlightenment West. As Portia puts it, mercy is "mightiest in the mightiest." It is more powerful than justice because it is "above his sceptered sway." Like the Qur'an, Portia believes that mercy "is an attribute of God himself." But it is true of the Newtownian universe that replaced the Catholic worldview as the dominant explanation of reality. The implementation of that Newtonian worldview has come to be known as Capitalism. It is not part of the world Shakespeare portrays in The Merchant of Venice. That world is divided between Jews who practice usury and Christians who do not. Christianity is morally superior to the religion of the Jews.

After Shylock's daughter became a Christian, she needed instruction to understand the Christian universe. Lorenzo, her husband, provides this instruction by explaining the order of the universe in the night sky:

Sit, Jessica, Look how the floor of heaven
Is think inlaid with patines of bright gold.
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherub ins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. (Act V, scene 1)

Sir Isaac Newton

Lorenzo explains here that Logos is apparent in God's creation. As St. Paul says in his epistle to the Romans, "Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity - however invisible - have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made" (1:20). Taken together, all of the motions of God's providence create harmony. Shylock the Jew rejected the harmony of the universe. He hath no music in him. He is therefore a representative of the Jewish revolutionary spirit:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

The music of the spheres symbolizes the pre-Newtonian universe, in which motion had telos or purpose. That universe has been replaced by the Universe of Capitalism, which was created by Sir Isaac Newton. Newton's universe has become embedded in the English language. Imam Asi recognized the problem when he wrote:

Modern English as we know it today is the product of a historical and cultural process totally alien to Islam. . . . In the process, not only was the Church expelled from the decision-making framework but religious idiom was driven out of mainstream discourse. Not only was the Church separated from the State but so was the language associated with both these institutions. The developmental course of modern English has been shaped by the need to express the values and assumptions of this dominant secular, anti-religious Western discourse, and hence it is particularly ill-suited for the expression of Qur'anic meanings. (17) 

Imam Asi nuances his earlier condemnation of the west by distinguishing between the classical teaching of the Church and the revolution that obscured that teaching, when he writes that "when the Church was humbled into seclusion and alienation, so was the language of the Church and the Christian clergy." He undoes that nuance, however, when he writes that "never in any Western tradition do we encounter a concept of God as the sole and ultimate Authority. When God is without authority, he ceases to be the Allah of the Islamic vocabulary." (18) This assertion is not true, and in making it Imam Asi confuses the Catholic God whose fundamental attribute is mercy with the Newtonian Deist Grand Architect of the Universe, whose fundamental attribute is lack of interest in the world he created. The Newtonian god is not only without mercy; he does not rule the universe he created with divine providence either.

Justice and mercy are compatible, but riba and mercy are not. In portraying Shylock, Shakespeare makes clear that riba, which Imam Asi translates as capitalism, not justice, is the antithesis of mercy. Riba is the antithesis of mercy because it calls God’s providence into question. When the Qur’an refers to God’s mercy, it often refers to divine providence: "O Allah! Extend your blessings to us, as well as your mercy, your abundance, and your provisions." (19)

"Do you not see that Allah has made everything on Earth subservient to you, and the ships running upon the sea, by His command? He holds back the heaven, preventing it from falling to Earth - except by permission. Allah is All-compassionate to humanity, Most Merciful." (Surat al-Hajj, 65)20

He [Noah's son] said: "I will take refuge on a mountain; it will protect me from the flood." He [Noah] said: “There is no protection from Allah’s command today, except for those upon whom he has mercy." (Surah Hud, 43). "Allah keeps a firm hold on the heavens and Earth, preventing them from vanishing. And if they vanished, no one could then keep hold of them. Certainly He is Lenient, Ever-Forgiving." (Surah Fatir, 41)

Divine Providence has no place in a Newtonian universe. God's power has been subjugated to the laws of physics. The Catholic universe, on the other hand, is, in Philip Mirowski's words, "one large free lunch," tempered by the Fall and man's need to work by the sweat of his brow, but a free lunch nonetheless. This is what St. Thomas Aquinas means when he claims that "the conception of the order of things to an end is strictly providence.…. Providence is the conception in the divine intellect of the order of all things to their end; and the divine governance…is the execution of that order." (21) This description of the universe is fraught with profound economic implications, and the implications are stated explicitly in Scripture passages like Matthew 6:25, in which Jesus talks about God providing for the birds of the air. Providence, in other words, is directly deducible from motion, because "If there is order in the world of sense, a providence for the birds of the air, much more so will there be order in the spiritual world and a providence for the immortal souls of men." (22)

There is no free lunch in the Capitalist universe, nor in the universal algorithm which Laplace deduced from that universe, nor in the universe which Newton confected out of Cartesian principles. Capitalism is compatible with these universes in a way in which Genesis is not; hence, Mirowski's claim that the idea "that the universe is a free lunch" is something that “has got to be bad news for an economist." (23)

Thus, the rise of the Cartesian universe had significant economic implications, but those economic implications would only become explicit after the principles of Newton's Principia had been incorporated into the Whig regime after their accession to power following the Glorious Revolution. Once safe havens for the new philosophy had been established in Holland and England, the Cartesian dualism, which claimed that what was true in the realm of faith need not be true in the realm of philosophy and vice versa, became unnecessary, and thinkers like Newton could expound a new "Protestant" cosmology, and thinkers like John Locke could explicate all of its political and economic ramifications.

Leibniz and Huygens were smart enough to realize that in the Cartesian material universe which Newton ostensibly espoused, there was no possibility of action at a distance. And that meant that there could be no such thing as gravity. White tells us that Leibniz was suspicious of Newton's entire concept of gravity, referring to it mockingly as "the rebirth in England of a theology that is more than papist and a philosophy entirely scholastic since Mr. Newton and his partisans have revived the occult qualities of the school with the idea of attraction." (24)

Well, Newton was certainly no papist. Where then did the idea of gravity come from? Leibniz got it right when he claimed that Newton smuggled "gravity" into his system. But he got the source wrong. Leibniz knew there was something "occult" about Newton's idea of gravity, but he thought the source of Newton's cosmology was scholasticism, when in reality the source was alchemy. Newton was undeniably a mathematician of genius, but when it came to his cosmological principles, Newton was first and foremost an alchemist.

In other words, Newton wasn't a closet scholastic; Newton was an alchemist. Beginning in 1669, Newton devoted the next ten years of his life all but exclusively to alchemical research, including experiments involving equipment in his Cambridge apartment. Newton told his official biographer Conduit that he had spent his own money to purchase Theatrum Chemicum, the six volume compilation of alchemical treatises published by Lazarus Zetzner in 1602, as well as a alchemical apparatus that included "several furnaces in his own chambers for chemical experiments." (25)

Using the inverse square law as his cover, Newton proposed a radically new universe which was congruent not with the Catholic/Aristotelian view but rather an expression of alchemical principles, the experience of lived English Capitalism and Whig political aspiration, all rolled up in one deliberately obscured package. Central to Newton's vision was a new definition of force, according to which: "a body was treated as the passive subject of external forces impressed upon it instead of the active vehicle of force impinging on others." (26) After 20 years of pondering the matter, Newton concluded that any idea of force "internal to bodies" was incompatible with the principle of inertia. Since he chose to make inertia the fundamental principle of his universe, any idea that motion was caused by substance, ontology, entelechy or telos had to be banned.

Once entelechy was banned, the only other source of motion had to be force.

The verdict is all but universal: the demise of entelechy, which is to say, substance endowed with purpose, led to the rise of force as the central element in the Whig universe which Newton brought into being with the publication of the Principia. Oliver claims that "Newton prioritizes force rather than motion…. Newton's Principia focuses primarily on force as that which changes a state of motion or rest." (27) Westfall claims that "Newton couched his refutation of relative motion in terms of causal consideration which made force central" (28) and goes on to say:

Force is the causal principle of motion and rest. And it is either an external one that generates or destroys or otherwise changes impressed motion in some body; or it is an internal principle by which existing motion or rest is conserved in a body, and by which any being endeavors to continue in its state and opposes resistance. . . . Here was a view of matter intimately related to alchemical views - a passive mass animated by an active principle. (29)

Newton derived his idea of "force" from his principle of inertia, the most fundamental principle of the universe. Newton’s concept of inertia destroyed the classical universe which came about from the fusion of Aristotle with Genesis. Once inertia, which specified that "Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed” became the fundamental principle of the universe, the universe could no longer be relied upon as having been created to bring about man's perfection through God's providence. Butterfield described inertia as "the great factor which in the 17th century helped to drive the spirits out of the world and opened the way to a universe that ran like a piece of clockwork." (30) This change would have significant economic consequences.

Instead of seeing motion as resulting from a telos that is integral to nature, Newton saw all motion as the result of "competing and conflictual forces." (31) The fundamental lesson to be derived from the Newtonian universe is that all motion results from "competitive conflict," or as Oliver puts it:

Newton's vis insita [i.e., gravity] and vis inertia . . . describe motion as the outcome of competitive conflict rather than the outcome of a participative creation between a mover (which is more properly described as the cause of a motion and a body's inner passive principle of change. (32)

Once Newton established inertia as the fundamental principle of the universe, strife would become central to all subsequent expressions of the English ideology based on Newtonian physics. According to Adam Smith’s reading of Newton, greed or self love is an instinct which is analogous to inertia in that each body in space seeks its own good without regard to any other body. Greed, which would lead to chaos, is held in check by competition, and the result is Smith's version of perfect motion, otherwise known as the "invisible hand" which assures that private vice is transformed magically (or alchemically, we might say) into public good.

Adam Smith

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is another example of the English Ideology, derived from Newton, which also claims that strife - or as Darwin would say, competition for scarce resources leading to natural selection - is the fundamental principle of the universe. Darwin, like Newton, "frames no hypotheses." He looks at nature and discovers that "strife" is its fundamental law.

Oliver claims that "Newton's. . . like Aquinas’s understanding of motion. . . was accompanied by a very particular theological vision." The same is a fortiori true of the economic systems which naturally flowed from these two very different universes. In the classical system, "all motion requires a mover." (33) In his book Providence, Garrigou-Lagrange goes on to unpack the meaning of motion by referring all motion to some telos or end. In the Christian universe - the one based on Aristotle but refined by the Scriptures - motion inspired by telos also implies providence. Animals move - they eat; they flee danger, and they reproduce - to preserve themselves and the species in existence. God, who is ultimately the source of all motion, "first of all sees to it that every creature receives whatever is necessary for the attainment of its end." (34) It would not make sense for a God who is all-good to create creatures who have basic desires which cannot be fulfilled, something which would be the equivalent of God creating a world full of cows but no grass, but it is perfectly consistent for an employer who ascribes to the Whig universe confected by Newton and refined by Darwin to say to his employees that he can only pay them a subsistence wage and base his claim on an appeal to a universe whose most fundamental principle is strife or “competitive conflict."

Both Heinrich Pesch, the German Jesuit economist, and Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, the French Dominican theologian, share a view of motion which necessitates divine providence because their view of motion implies a telos or goal. As Pesch puts it:

If an infinitely wise God is the creator of the world and the author of human nature, then He must have endowed His work with a purpose in conformity with His wisdom. And he must also have established for his creatures with their various rankings a law suited to their nature, by which they are equipped with a rule for their existence an activity in accord with their natural purposes. . . . It would in fact be impossible for an all-wise God to operate without a plan and to submit the created world to total anarchy. That plan is not merely known by God, but it is also willed by the highest Law giver insofar as a law, a lex astern, existed eternally in God; and it emerged in the temporal world just as the world itself arose in time. In irrational creatures this law emerges as the principle and norm of their movement and activity, as a natural law or instinct. In rational man, in accordance with his nature, it emerges as the natural light of reason by which he recognizes what we must do and ought not to do, as the Divine moral law which is destined to lead us to the goal intended by God in the way intended by Him. (35)

This lex astern has certain economic implications, which Pesch brings out when he writes that:

We are always and everywhere bound by the destiny which God has established for the world. This destiny, however, requires that the earth with its treasures and energies will serve all, so as to provide us with nourishment, clothing, and shelter and to ensure our sustenance until God calls us to Him in our eternal home. (36)

Adam Smith's view of providence is distinctly Newtonian, which is to say formed by the English capitalist milieu from which it arose. According to the world-view which Smith derived from Newton, the ultimate outcome of the economy is achieved not by human reason collaborating with divine Providence, but rather by conflicting forces resulting in circular motion. Like Newton, Smith must invoke occult forces to explain motion in his economic system, as when he tells us that:

The wealthy . . . are guided by an invisible hand to almost make the same kind of distribution of the necessities of life as would occur if the earth were divided up into equal parts among all of its inhabitants. Without being aware of it, they further the interests of society and make possible the increase in population. Even though Providence divided the earth among a few owners, it does not allow those whom it seems to have overlooked to go away empty; it did not forget them. The latter get their share of all that the earth produces. In those things which have to do with true happiness in human life, they are in no way worse off than those who seem to lord it over them. In bodily well-being almost all classes of people are equally well off; and the beggar who sits against a fence and suns himself has the security for which kings engage in combat. (37)

Rev. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

In Smith's universe, the wealthy play the role that God plays in the traditional universe. In the classical universe proposed by Aristotle and refined by meditation on Genesis and the Gospels, motion implies providence, because as St. Thomas puts it, "the conception of the order of things to an end is strictly providence. . . . Providence is the conception in the divine intellect of the order of all things to their end; and the divine governance . . . is the execution of that order." (38)

In Smith's Newtonian Unitarian economy, Providence is no longer God's job; it has been delegated to the rich, who now administer wealth in an all-wise manner that rivals what God has done (badly, some might say) in the past. Providence is now a conception (or project) of the rich. An all-good God could not create creatures with appetites which could not be fulfilled by the motions they inspire. This would be tantamount to saying that an all-good God would create cows in a universe without adequate grass, which is precisely how capitalism describes the universe. In the Malthusian universe, God created a world full of cows who were increasing geometrically and were, therefore, constantly outstripping the food supply, which increased only arithmetically.

By now, it should be obvious that all of this talk about physics has economic implications because the physics which is the underpinning of the English Ideology (or later biology) was confected with an economic goal (or an economic background) in mind in the first place.

When it comes to rational creatures, the divine economy provided by providence is no less absolute, but it is administered in a different way. Man achieves his end by following reason; God does his part by meting out justice and mercy. The justice of God means that we will be given what we need to achieve our end; the mercy of God means we will be give a second chance if we fail. Taken together,

Providence and justice combine in this present life to give us whatever is necessary to reach our true destiny: that is, to enable us to live an upright life, to know God in a supernatural way, to live and to serve Him, and so obtain eternal life. (39)

Divine Providence is a logical corollary of finality, because as St. Thomas puts it, "all things that exist in whatever manner are necessarily directed by God toward some end." (40) This is demanded by the principle of finality, which states that every agent acts for some end and the supreme agent for the supreme end known to Him, to which He subordinates all else. That end, as we saw when speaking of the love of God, is the manifestation of His goodness, His infinite perfection, and His various attributes.

In the universe confected by Newton, God has been separated from His creation by the fact that there has been no Incarnation. God now rules over the universe much as William of Orange ruled over England, as an alien who has been put on the throne not because of some natural motion, i.e., by right of inheritance, which is how James II ascended to that position, but by force, or, as the Aristotelians would say, by "violent motion." The God of the Newtonian Universe, like the Dutch usurper William of Orange who came to the throne during the Glorious Revolution which put the Whig oligarchs in power, rules the universe by his arbitrary will. He has no obligations to the beings he created; they are pretty much on their own, left to resolve any differences which might arise over the allocation of scarce resources by recourse to strife, "competitive conflict," or the economic system which came to embody those English virtues, namely, Capitalism.

The idea of finality is totally incompatible with the English ideology or the universe Newton confected out of it. In fact the Newtonian concept of inertia (or strife, especially as refined by Darwin) is radically incoherent because:

If there were no finality in nature, if no natural agent acted for some end, there would be no reason why the eye should see and not hear or taste, no reason why the wings of the bird should be for flying and not for walking or swimming, no reason for the intellect to know rather than desire. Everything then would be for no purpose, and be unintelligible. (41)

Conversely, a universe which was indifferent to man's desires (or actively thwarted them through strife) would call God's goodness into question, which is precisely what Newton does when he denies the Incarnation. Garrigou-Lagrange asks a number of rhetorical questions which bring out the absurdity of the English position: "Is man’s natural desire, then, to remain a deception and without finality when the natural desire of inferior beings is not in vain?" (42) The idea of finality as expressed in providence finds expression in Scripture passages like Matthew 6:25, which claims that if God's causality reaches down to the most insignificant creatures, i.e., birds like sparrows, it will certainly apply to man, who is the pinnacle of creation:

It is constantly asserted in the Old and New Testaments that the plan of Providence has been fixed immediately by God Himself, down to the last detail. His practical knowledge would be imperfect, were it not as far reaching as his causality, and without that causality nothing comes into existence. (43) . . . If there is order in the world of sense, a Providence for the birds of the air, much more so will there be order in the spiritual world and a Providence for the immortal souls of men. (44) 

The universe that Father Garrigou-Lagrange just described is not compatible with the one confected by Newton according to alchemical principles and then developed along economic lines by Smith and biological lines by Darwin. Newton believed in intelligent design; Darwin did not, but both believed that strife was the fundamental principle of the universe. As Garrigou-Lagrange points out, a universe in which chance is the norm, which another word for the Dar- winian universe based on random mutation, is a universe based on self-contradiction. Chance cannot be the norm:

Shall it be said that, amid a large number of useless organisms, a fortunate chance has formed a select few capable of receiving life, with the result that these have been preserved while the useless ones have disappeared? Such is the evolutionist theory of survival of the fittest. But this would be tantamount to saying that chance is the first cause of the harmony prevailing in the universe and all its parts, and that, surely, is impossible.. . . To say, therefore, that chance is the first cause of order in the world . . . implies as a consequence the destruction of the essential and the natural, the destruction of all nature and of all natural law. (45)

The conclusion which Garrigou-Lagrange draws at the end of the preceding paragraph brings us to the mendacity which lies at the heart of the English ideology. All of the proponents of British empiricism claim with Newton that they frame no hypotheses, while at the same time smuggling covert occult principles into their systems. They subvert the notion of essence; they promote the destruction of substance; and then at the last moment, rather than accept the consequences of what they have wrought, introduce some mathematical deus ex machine or scientific "law" which saves the universe from the chaos which is the natural consequence of their subversion, and reintroduces an order which is totally confected (or framed) and which turns out to be nothing more than a projection of the English economic status quo, which began with theft, onto the universe. The common denominator of the various projections of the English ideology which Newton, Smith, Malthus, and Darwin share is Capitalism, the economic version of strife, which is the fundamental principle of the universe.

The Newtonian universe had not yet come into existence when Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice. The alternatives are much clearer: one is either a Christian or a Jew. Jews believe in riba; Christians believe in mercy. This sets up the final conflict in the play when Portia, the representative of Christian mercy, confronts Shylock, the defender of Jewish riba:

"Therefore, Jew," Portia continues:
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to
render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea,
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

Shylock is again unmoved and again insists on following the obsolete law:

My deeds upon my head! I crave the law.
The Penalty, and forfeit of my bond.

After her appeal to mercy has been rejected, Portia must give the Jew what he wants: "The Jew shall have all justice." In fact, Portia tells Shylock, "You shall have justice more than you desire." That means that if Shylock takes one drop of blood in addition to his pound of flesh he will be sentenced to death and forfeit his own fortune to the state.

If thou cutst mor
Or lest than a just pound
Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate.

Shylock is dumbfounded by the sudden reversal of his fortunes. "Why doth the Jew pause?" Portia asks, and Shylock has no answer to her question because the Jewish preference for hatred has been exposed as intellectually inferior to Christianity's espousal of mercy. It is now time for Muslims and Christians to unite in confronting Shylock and tell him and his modern day representatives, in the words of Imam Asi, that "it is impossible to combine a commitment to Allah with a usurious financial structure." (46)

Notes

1 Marlowe, p. 255.
2 Marlowe, p. 256.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Yates, p. 133.
6 Ibid.
7 Yates, p. 77.
8 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/ encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in- misericordia_en.html
9 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/ encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in- misericordia_en.html
10 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/ encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in- misericordia_en.html
11 Asi, Vol. 1, p. 48.
12 Asi, Vol. 1, p. 57.
13 Asi, Vol. 1, p. 57
14 Asi, Vol. 1, p. 58.
15 Yahya, p. 40
16 Muhammad H. al-Asi, The Ascendant Qur’an (Toronto: The Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, 2008), Vol. I, pp. 4-5.
17 Asi, Vol. I, p. xliv.
18 Asi, Vol. I, p. xlvi.
19 Asi, Vol. V, p. 193.
20 http://fs.fmanager.net/files/flashpages/index. php?bookid=15008
21 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 27.
22 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 29.
23 Mirowski, p. 98.
24 White, p. 303. Cf. Gottfried von Leibniz, Die Philosophischen Schriften Vol. 3, pp. 328-9.
25 Westfall, p. 196.
26 Westfall, p. 146.
27 Oliver, p. 188
28 Westfall, p.302.
29 Ibid.
30 Oliver, p. 185.
31 Oliver, p. 165.
32 Oliver, p. 186.
33 Reginald Garrrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Providence (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1937), p. 5.
34 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 292.
35 Heinrich Pesch, Lehrbuch der National Oekonomie, Vol. I, Bk. 1, p. 138.
36 Pesch, op cit.,p .139.
37 Pesch, p. 58.
38 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 27.
39 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 292
40 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 159.
41 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 46.
42 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 45.
43 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 159.
44 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 168.
45 Garrigou-Lagrange, p. 22.
46 Asi, Vol. I, p. 58.
________

Prevailing Hero
________

Source: Real Currencies

Capitalism Is Jewish Usury 

by Anthony Migchels

June 5, 2014

(Left: William III of Orange, who made the migration of Jewish Capitalism from Amsterdam to Britain possible.)

Capitalism is Usury. Its defining belief is ‘return on investment’. This is an extension of the ‘time value’ of money, which is the central tenet of modern economics. Capitalism is unthinkable without banking and banking is institutionalized Usury. 

Usury is Plutocracy. Compound interest makes it unavoidable that the very richest own everything in generations.

And this is indeed what happened: Capitalism is one huge global monopoly. All the major banks own each other and most Transnationals plus a huge chunk of land. This juggernaut was built with the plunder of Usury.

We have all seen that Rothschild was worth 50 billion in 1850. At 5% per year, this fortune would now be a trillion, at 8% per year Rothschild would now be worth hundreds of trillions.

This is why it has been said that ‘compound interest is the strongest force in the Universe’.

This is Usurious Usurpation.

The Rise of Capitalism

Modern Capitalism was first clearly visible in the Dutch Republic, where Italian Banking, expelled Iberian Jews, the Reformation, naval power and the acquisition of huge trade fortunes came together in the Amsterdam Empire, which would outshine its much bigger Spanish, British and even French competitors until the mid seventeenth century.

Everything that defines modern Capitalism was either invented or came to fruition in Amsterdam. The first Stock Exchange, Multinationals (the East Indies Company, which would rule over Indonesia with unrestrained Corporatocracy for centuries), and most importantly, a Central Bank, the ‘Amsterdamsche Wisselbank’. And of course a huge pile of money, that would be the envy of Europe even long after its ‘glory’ had subsided.

Amsterdam also saw the first bubble: the Tulip mania, 1637. This typical banker device, blowing bubbles with easy credit and then popping them by calling in loans, would haunt Western economies for centuries to come.

Up to 2500 guilders (estates could be bought for that kind of money) were paid for a single Viceroy Tulip bulb at the peak . “A Satire of Tulip Mania’ depicts speculators as brainless monkeys.

The Dutch Republic resulted from a Calvinist rebellion against Catholic Spain. Calvin is considered by many to have been Jewish. He openly defended Usury. This was in an era that the Medieval era of Usury prohibition was in terminal decline.

Calvinist thought was also infected by the typically Jewish notion that wealth is a sign of God’s favor.

Notwithstanding Usury prohibition, Jewish Usury had been a huge issue throughout the Middle Ages and it does not require a great leap of the imagination to see that Capitalism is in fact the modern equivalent of what was once known as Jewish Usury.

Jewish fortunes and their methods played a large part in Amsterdam. Their ships would also dominate the growing slave trade on America. They had come from Spain, after being expelled in 1492. Holland was known at the time for its ‘tolerance’.

Amsterdam was the first great star of high finance. Opulence acquired through trade became Capital, looking for returns. And here we see that Capitalism is about finance, not production or consumption. Finance rules over producers, workers, consumers, farmers, craftsmen and industrialists alike.

They lend to those they control or want to control and withhold credit to those for whom they have no purpose. Usury gives them their take of any venture. By keeping money scarce, they keep labor cheap. This is how money rules.

Moving on to Britain

Amsterdam peaked in 1648, when the peace of Westphalia ended both the 80 year war for independence with Spain and the 30 year war in Germany. But after the peak comes the decline and already in the fifties problems began to mount when Cromwell landed a blow on Dutch naval supremacy with the Acts of Navigation.

The Jews had been expelled from Britain in 1290. This was a few decades after the Magna Carta, which clearly points at Jewish Usury as a huge problem at the time.

Cromwell, who was a calvinist Puritan, negotiated extensively with Amsterdam Jews about resettlement. He probably was a tool of Jewish/Amsterdam finance to begin with.

Resettlement came with the promise of making London a better Amsterdam. And while British merchants (and many others too) were against the readmittance of the Jews, Cromwell went ahead anyway. The Puritans were optimistic and naive and thought they could ‘redeem’ the Jews. But while Jewish Capital indeed pushed Britain’s Empire to unprecedented heights, there was no redemption: by the end of the 19th century the British Aristocracy had been entirely Judaized.

While Cromwell, as a tool of Amsterdam Imperialism, ultimately failed, the Jews did not relent and they had a second shot at London with the Glorious Revolution, when William III of Orange, Stadtholder of Holland, became William III of Britain and the Dutch Republic and England were united in a personal union.

He repaid his financial backers by chartering the Bank of England in 1694 and this was the official entry of Capitalism in Britain. It came with the end of sovereign money and the ascent of Gold: until then the British economy had been financed with Talley Sticks, simple pieces of wood issued by the King. British partners in the Bank paid for their shares with them, but the first thing the Bank did was take them out of circulation. The Bank of England is only the eighth bank in history and is the second oldest to survive today.

The United States

The real history of the United States is not about the War of Independence and the Constitution. It’s about banking.

The United States did not revolt over ‘taxes without representation’. According to Benjamin Franklin the real reason for the War of Independence was that Whitehall forced scarce money through Britain’s Gold Standard on the Colonies, who had thrived with their own Colonial Scrip. A depression was the inevitable result.

Only a few years after nominal independence, Hamilton’s first Bank of the United States brought Capitalism to the United States. It was closed in 1800, but in 1816, in the aftermath of the war with Britain, a second Bank of the United States (a privately owned corporation) was opened with a 20 year charter.

The heroic President Andrew Jackson did not renew this charter and miraculously survived an attempt on his life. His last words, ‘I killed the Bank’ still ring triumphantly through the ages. Unfortunately, he failed to replace it with a decent monetary system and the country was plunged in a depression because of a tanking money supply.

This left the Whigs, Abraham Lincoln prominently among them, plenty of scope to campaign for a new ‘National’ Bank, which came in the aftermath of the Civil War.

In 1913 the Federal Reserve Bank was founded. This privately owned corporation is owned by primarily Jewish ‘member banks’. The presidents of the Federal Reserve are always Jewish and by far most of its board members are too. It’s no secret Wall Street is run by the Jews and is now the global standard bearer of Jewish Usury with derivatives being the scam du jour.

Of course there are Americans in Wall Street too, just as there are Englishmen in the City or Germans in Deutsche Bank, but whereas these nationalities compete amongst each other, the Jews are strong in all nations and this gives them supremacy.

Equally true is that the Jewish many gain nothing from the banking prowess of their ‘elites’. They may have some privileges, but on the other hand they’re also easily duped into nasty affairs or sacrificed like the pawns we all are.

 But considering the above history of Capitalism and Jewish Usury, it is very hard to avoid the conclusion that they are the same thing.

Conclusion

YHVH emphatically orders the Jews several times to conquer the world with Usury in Deuteronomy, for instance: “15:6 For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.”

Pivotal documents from the medieval era squarely point at Jewish Usury. We have already mentioned the Magna Carta, but there is also for instance the Quran: ‘That they (the Jews) took usury, though they were forbidden; and that they devoured men’s substance wrongfully;- we have prepared for those among them who reject faith a grievous punishment.’ (sura 4.161)

Capitalism and its ‘return on investment’ is clearly the successor of medieval Jewish Usury. It arose during the destruction of medieval Usury prohibition. Its typical devices, Usury, Banking, the Stock Exchange, asset bubbles, Transnationals, all were already present in Amsterdam. It was this force that migrated to Britain and the US. It was in these three financial Empires that Captitalism showed its unrestrained imperialist designs.

Already the poor lose up to 50% of their income to Usury, mostly passed on by producers in prices. The middle classes are somewhat better off, but they are being decapitated everywhere. Usury only benefits the richest 10%, while most of the money ends up with the ‘fabulously’ wealthy.

The enslavement is total: most people work the first two and half days of the week to pay off the bank. Even if they have no debts.

And we face not only enslavement, but extinction. Mass immigration, combined with the demographic catastrophy caused by the trinity of feminism, the not-so-gay lobby, and sexual ‘liberation’, is now threatening to actually destroy the white race. Whites are expected to be a minority all over the West in 2050/2060 and irrelevant by the end of the century.

Capitalism is the core of the Jewish Question. All their other depravities, including Zionism and (Cultural) Marxism were built and financed from the Capitalist power base.

The Jewish Question can only be reasonably resolved by reforming money and ending its rule through Usury.
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Two Steps From Hell - Eria