The Naked Socialist

by Paul B Skousen

  A Christian Is as a Christian Does

  These assorted heretics relied on distortions, perversions and complete destruction of the ideas Jesus originally taught in order to create their religious empires. The closest Jesus ever came to using force was to drive the money changers out of the Temple. However, he was well justified by both Jewish law and tradition to do so— no one dared complain. The lax Jews had allowed their Temple to become a place of mercantilism rather than a common gateway for people of all walks to bring their sacrifices and petitions to God.

  When Jesus began his ministry, his message was consistent and powerful: freedom—freedom to choose, to act, to impart, to align and adhere; freedom to show love and caring compassion for others. The personal salvation of the human soul and a path to a fullness of joy was what Jesus offered. It was voluntary, never forced, and required nothing but a willingness to embrace the basic principles of freedom and personal accountability.

  Jesus taught his followers to have problems in common, not things in common. This doctrine was misunderstood and lost in the centuries after Jesus’ crucifixion. During Western Europe’s mediaeval ages, much of the Mediterranean and European region fell into a darkness of masters and slaves. In the name of religion and Christianity the seven pillars of socialism were propagated to a frenzy through time and throughout the continent.

  Historians of today typically hold Christianity guilty for the atrocities of the medieval period. In truth, it wasn’t the philosophy and teachings of true Christianity that were at fault. The fighting popes, the crusades and inquisitions, the selling of indulgences—all abuses of faith and uses of force—were opposite to Jesus’ message of freedom, charity, compassion, fidelity, hard work, friendly persuasion, and love. True Christianity is completely compatible with all the principles of freedom—it sustains every unalienable right. It might be said that Christianity is the embodiment of every principle required to acquire and perpetuate freedom because freedom and corrupted personal behavior are not in any way compatible.

  Socialism at Work

  The heretics provide a good example of how the control of information can lead normal people into abnormal behavior. The followers simply had to believe what they were doing was right, and the ancient pied pipers could lead their flocks to waste away their lives in the leadership’s service.

  For several centuries the vast whole of the assorted heretics unitedly looked forward to a great “last days” when destruction would cleanse the earth of its polluted man-made societies and replace them with a thousand years of utopian bliss. To achieve this end, most heretics believed they were supposed to help bring about the conflagration and destruction of the current state of affairs. They believed they were duty-bound to take part in the divine cleansing. Many were happy to hurry the process forward with arson, killing, torture, raping, robbing, and ruin. The mass liquidations of millions by subsequent leaders and forces perpetuate these same dark ideas. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Islamic extremists, tribal tyrants, and all the others, justified and justify the genocide of millions of people for these same ends: to purify their great society.

  * * *

  159 Wilhelm, Joseph, Heresy, The Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.

  160 Ibid., Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon.

  161 Acts 6:5; Apocalypse 2:6-15.

  162 Revelations 2:14.

  163 Translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1 edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, 1885.

  164 See Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Catholic Encyclopedia, Nicolaites.

  165 New Advent, Refutation of All Heresies, Book VII, chapter 20.

  166 This group is discussed in more detail in The Socialist Phenomenon, I. Shafarevich 1980.

  167 Catholic Encyclopedia, Manichaeism.

  168 Remy, Arthur F.J. “The Avesta.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907.

  169 The Cambridge History of Iran, volume 2, p. 995-997.

  170 Wherry, Rev. E. M., A Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran and Preliminary Discourse, 1896, pp. 66; http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Iranian_philosophy.

  Chapter 25: Feudalism and Ruler’s Law

  Feudalism was no futile philosophy—it was socialism.

  From the A.D. 700s to the 1400s, socialism was practiced by landholders in Europe. They gave desperate people a level of security and a place to stay in exchange for labor and loyalty. It was not any form of an established system of government, but it became an orderly way to preserve a degree of peace in the land.

  Long before Rome fell in A.D. 476, the local seats of Roman power and landholdings were established with the construction of Roman villas. Originally, these were country dwellings for the nobility, and were scattered all over Europe. When Rome fell and Europe became decentralized, the local churches and villas became the new power centers. Those families who had land, and the means of protecting it, cordoned off their claims and dared anyone to take it away.

  The peasants were left with nowhere to turn except to align with the churches or one of the landholders. And so evolved a crude replacement of Roman rule. The tenants willingly gave their sweat, labor and loyalty in exchange for a place to farm and raise a family.

  The Non-word Everyone Uses: “Feudalism” is used to describe this desperate “land for loyalty” arrangement. The origins and correct use of feudalism is regularly debated because the word didn’t exist back then. Italian Renaissance thinkers apparently invented it in the late A.D. 800s. The French Revolutionaries used it to describe the system they were overthrowing in the late 1700s, and the rest of us equate it with Europe during a difficult and dark time.171

  The Ruler: At the top of this caste was the feudal lord. This was a landowner who presumed superiority for the simple lucky happenstance that he inherited some land from his forefathers. That made him the boss. His rentable land was called a fief. Next in the caste came the lords, the knights, and at the bottom, as usual, the peasants.

  The Peasants: At the bottom of the feudal caste system were the vassals or peasants. In exchange for providing service to the lord or king, the peasants were allowed to use the land and benefit from the king’s protection inside the castle. Making a peasant a vassal was quite the formal and ceremonial event. It included a great feast and everyone showed up in their Sunday best. At the conclusion of the dinner, the vassal gave an oath to the lord—to obey and observe their contract of cooperation. This ceremony rendered the contract formally consummated.

  The Feudal Arrangement: These informal contracts gave the lord of the land a body of farmer-warriors whom he could call upon to defend his lands or to pursue other goals. It also gave the farmer a fairly reliable place to settle down and raise his family. He paid for this safety by giving away part or all of his agriculture work, or by taking up the sword, if so commanded.

  The vassals were not all farmers. They performed an assortment of other duties, but usually they could not own anything. Those who were particularly valiant were granted favors or were elevated to a class of nobility—knights, counselors, guards, etc. These promotion ceremonies were mixed with Christian sacraments to give the whole structure a degree of God-sanctioned authority. The religious anointing of kings (the previously mentioned divine right of kings) and sacred oaths of knights were viewed as binding before God and king.

  Fief: The word fief has a long history but was used to mean possessions or duties in a feudal relationship. A person’s fief could be any number of things: land, money, animals, an office, a task such as hunting or fishing. These could be passed down to the next generation but the original property right or authority always remained with the king—and what the king giveth he could also taketh away.

  Castles: Those beautiful buildings romanticiz
ed in legend and lore were the private fortified residences of the lords. They originated in the A.D. 800s, and many were actually the glorified expansions of the Roman villas. They were symbols of a king’s power and influence, and became centers for administration of the lands and fiefs under his control. The more powerful the king, the larger the castle. Finally, by the 1700s, cities and borders were well-established and most of that constructive bragging and building of the elaborate castles finally wound down so that attention and resources could be focused on other more pressing projects. 172

  * * *

  171 See Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, The Age of Faith, 1950.

  172 Kenyon, J., Medieval Fortifications, 1991.

  Chapter 26: Socialism in the Middle Ages

  For parts of western Europe, the Middle Ages were dark and suffering years, highlighted with crazies running amok.

  The first few centuries after the turn of the new millennium (A.D. 1000) saw an astonishing period of fanaticism and backwardness in Europe. People lost their heads—figuratively and literally. Where the existence of the Church was intended to bring civility to life and a deeper soul-searching pursuit of happiness, a few over-zealous fanatics managed to rise to the top of various religious movements. They drew thousands into acts of brazen paganism.

  WHEN: 1100s-1200s

  HERESY: Catharism—violent “Christian” socialists173

  STORY: The Cathars used the socialistic ideas of information control to live with all things in common and complete regulation of every aspect of its followers’ lives. They degraded to the point of forcing people to kill themselves, or be murdered if they disagreed, to fulfill their bizarre doctrine that life was evil.

  In Greek, cathar meant “the pure.” Over the centuries this heresy expanded into at least 40 different sects including numerous non-Cathars sharing the same doctrinal tenets. Its beginning was around A.D. 1000, and it swept across Europe in a matter of decades. A former Cathar bishop in Italy wrote in A.D. 1190, “Are not all townships, cities and castles overrun with these pseudo-prophets?”174

  Evil Gods, Good Gods—Take Your Pick

  The Cathars believed the physical world was the source of all evil, and that it was created by an evil God or perhaps by God’s fallen son, Satan—they weren’t sure. The spiritual world was the essence of good, and was created by a good God. There was to be no mingling between physical and spiritual. They supposed that Jesus, being good, had to be a spiritual being while on earth—although the circumstances of mortality obligated him to make himself appear as a physical man.

  Cathars called themselves “New Adams,” and viewed the Church as a hostile enemy. It was a philosophy that centuries later would give rise to humanism and other movements of self-worship.

  All Material Things Are Evil

  Cathars considered their own bodies to be the creation of the evil God. Their bodies, and all other physical creation, were doomed to destruction. Their essence or matter wasn’t destroyed, they taught, but was recycled into new creations by the evil God. They believed the ultimate goal of mankind was, therefore, to throw off the physical—that is, commit universal species suicide—to free their spirits so they could join the good spiritual God.

  Plato’s teachings about family and society gained practical support in the Cathar’s religious beliefs. They rejected property as a product of the evil God, and they forbade marriage. Sexual relations were okay so long as they didn’t propagate the species. Pregnancy was seen as the means whereby spirits became trapped in material bodies. Pregnant women were considered possessed by demons, and so were their children.

  Say That Again—Sex Bad, Death Good?

  Cathars didn’t eat anything that came from mating (meaning, no meat of any kind), or participate in anything considered physical or material that was a creation of the evil God. They opposed legal proceedings, giving oaths, owning a weapon, fighting in war, or even contacting non-Cathars unless it was to proselytize.

  They firmly believed that becoming freed from the body was a good thing—and the sooner the better. If one among their numbers was terminally ill, he or she was given a deathbed “consolation.” However, if that “consoled” person suddenly recovered and didn’t die, it was expected that he would still honor the consolation by committing suicide. Suicide was viewed by Cathars as a lawful act—it was also encouraged and commendable. They called it “endura.”

  Few people wanted endura, especially after recovering their health. In those instances, the happily restored person would receive involuntary endura—basically they were murdered.

  According to some researchers, more Cathars in France died from endura than from the pope’s crusade in A.D. 1208, which was specifically dispatched from Rome to eradicate the Cathars.175

  Cathars Hated the Catholic Church

  Cathars viewed the Church as the whore of Babylon and the source of all error. Cathars denied Catholic sacraments such as communions, marriage, and baptism of children (declaring that children were too young to believe). They hated the cross as a symbol of the evil material God. Some sects felt justified in attacking churches—burning, looting, plundering, defiling, and killing.

  War and Crusades

  The pope launched several crusades against the Cathars, once trapping them in castles in the southwest corner of France where many hundreds of their leadership were finally killed, burned, or captured. In Béziers, between 15,000-20,000 men, women, and children were butchered. When the Crusaders asked how to identify their prisoners as Cathars or Catholics, the crusader monk, Armond Amaury, is reputed to have told his troops, “Kill them all, God will know his own.”176

  By A.D. 1220, the Cathars were no longer a threat in Germany and England. Over the next century they were exterminated in France, Belgium, and Spain. By A.D. 1400, remaining believers in Italy were executed, and the Balkan States chased out the remainder a few years later. In A.D. 1416, some 40,000 Cathars left Bosnia for Herzegovina, where they finally disappeared after the Turks conquered those provinces and imposed Islam.

  WHEN: 1200-1400s

  HERESY: Brethren of the Free Spirit

  STORY: The Brethren of the Free Spirit used the socialistic principles of information control, force, and all things in common to spread destruction in the lives of others in preparation for the coming cleansing of the world.

  Joachim of Fiore (A.D. 1135-1202) and Amalric of Bena (died A.D. 1204) were the pioneering brains behind many of the Middle Ages heresies. They shared the belief that the corrupted world was about to end. It had already passed through two of its three epochs—Moses’ law, then Christ’s Law—and in A.D. 1260, according to their calculations, the world would finally enter the third epoch, a new age of freedom.

  This era of perfection was supposed to be wonderful—a time when the words “mine” and “thine” would be unknown, and the renewed church would serve all mankind equally and fairly.

  However, arriving at this blissful state required passage through a terrible period of war and bloodshed when the Antichrist would appear. Joachim taught that the Catholic Church was proof of the prophesied decay, and said the Antichrist would appear and rise up to become its pope. He told followers that if they would revert to apostolic poverty (no property or money), they would become strong enough to defeat the Antichrist. The result would be all of mankind uniting in Christianity.

  Must Destroy at All Costs

  Joachim promised that the destruction of the Church would open the door to a leaderless communal world run by the people. This teaching is said to have influenced—or at least, been a precursor to—Marx’s call to abolish the state and install rule and order through the dictatorship of the proletariat.177

  Meanwhile, Amalric told everyone he was the embodiment of this budding third epoch—the man into whom all revelation was imbued, just as revelation was imbued into Christ.

  Go
Have Fun—There is No Longer Any Sin

  Amalric taught that he and his faithful inner circle were above sin because they were received and accepted of God. And, God being the author of all things good and evil, whatever they did was, therefore, God’s will. This relationship made them surprisingly incapable of sin. To achieve that holy state, they had to surrender all property, their families, even their own will, and go about begging for survival. They called themselves the “The Brethren of the Free Spirit.”

  With no moral restrictions, the Free Spirits believed they owned everything and they could do with it as they pleased. Anyone standing in their way could be killed. Nothing worldly could further exalt or diminish a Free Spirit. Once they achieved their state of “godliness” and understood that God works through everything, Free Spirits believed they could engage in sexual relations with any woman—stranger, sister, mother—and it could not stain him and would only improve her holiness.

  By the early A.D. 1300s, the Free Spirits movement had spread far and wide. Those opposed to the Catholic Church were particularly drawn to it because the Free Spirits taught that this life is their actual resurrection—that there is no other life, and man’s greatest joys are in this life alone. So, get out there and live it up.