Des Wilson

The capitalist system seems to owe its origin to what is called the Great Reformation, that is, the revolt  by Catholics against the centralised power of their church , a revolt which later became known as the Protestant Reformation because there were so many protesting Catholics who caused it. When control of religious worship and laws became a struggle for power and possessions the princes and kings and queens and suchlike saw their chance and  entered in with a will. Religion was a great possible source of wealth and was used as such ; monasteries and abbeys and the like were seized and plundered on the plea that they were wasteful and corrupt, which some of them were .But often the very stones from them were used to build great houses for the newly  enriched. Hospitals or hostels attached to them were , as would be said nowadays " privatised" and in most cases ceased to exist except as sites for money making. New wars were fought with new money ; but wars also meant more taxes, class divisions became more and more acute , in the churches as well as elsewhere.After the awful Black Death which reduced Europe's population by about one third, wealth could be shared among fewer people - an economcic change came over the Continent like the economic change in Ireland when its population was reduced by millions through bad and ambitious government before and during the Great Hunger .Most of our European history then became a series of adventures in a ceaseless round of theft of power and other people's resources .The capitalist system had its origin and growth in  some of the most horrifying episodes in human history .Slavery was one.Wars of foreign conquest another .Wars between cousins for crowns another,  and cold war to preserve the system even against former allies .So who is surprised if our capitalist system is alive today in all its harsh realities? Health care privatised , human welfare reduced to what tax gatherers are willing to pay rather than what people need, three hundred and fifty million pounds for new nuclear submarines  and crude cutbacks for nurses ? Much of recent Europen history was carefuilly designed to move towards such ends and away from the ideals of shared power and prosperity . Centralising is a normal part of all that . Centralise economic control in Brussels or Berlin , centralise law making in Strasbourg , centralise church affairs , finance and speech in Rome or Canterbury , centralise education by inventing singular concepts like Education for Job Creation, Education for Economic Growth . Growth  from the  artificially contrived centre outward and from the top down is the order of our day.It is not necessarily a good order. Simply because it is designed to hurt many to enrich some.