Ep.72 - Praying the Price: Commodity Fetishism and Christianity (feat. Steve the Kangaroo)

Join Ben and Adam as they try to work out why online shopping feels like a spiritual experience, uncover the story of a Jesuit resistance hero who outsmarted the Gestapo, and endure Adam’s chaotic new soundboard additions.

Spoiler: Yes, your headphones are ethically cursed.

Transcript

PLEASE NOTE: This transcript may not be 100% accurate.

Hello and welcome to Bread and Rosaries, The UK based Christian Left podcast that this week is talking about commodity fetishism. I'm Ben Molyneux-Hetherington, and my weakness for commodity fetishism is ordering things online without considering the process by which they are created. I'm joined today by Adam Spiers, whose weakness for fetishism is mainly furry stuff. Adam, what is your fursona? My what?

Don't act like you don't know what a fursona is. Fursona. Well, that might be my fursona there who's barking at the door. Have you really, like, been on the Internet as long as I know you have and not come across the phrase fursona? I have not.

I mean, it's a furry thing, presumably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

So I know what a furry is, right? But I don't I and I could take a guess at what a fursona is. Yeah. I mean, yeah.

You can put two and two together. It's the, it's the actual, like, I don't know what you call that, like, outfit thing that they wear. So they're like, I'm Is it not the character? Yeah. Yeah.

Like, I'm Steve the kangaroo. That's my fursona. Okay. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna call you that from now on. Yeah.

Steve the kangaroo. So, yeah, what what what's your first sauna then? Well, just what Adam or would you be? That's the I don't know. I mean, clearly clearly something slow and tired.

Mhmm. Well, does it have to be furry? Because, like, I'm thinking I'll probably be like a like a like a manatee or something. I think that's fine. I I'm not prepared to understand the rules of the furry community in any depth.

Yeah. No. Fair enough. I think I hear what you're saying. I think it's much funnier to be a big guy and to be, like, something really sleek and graceful.

Like yeah. A marlin or something. Right? Like a I'd be like a dove or something. A dove.

I don't know if I'd be like something that's like something that's really quiet, keeps to itself, until you piss it off, and then it's like bam, you know, like a I don't know, some kind of carpet shark or something. I was gonna say that I'd be an alter, then I suddenly remembered that had a second meaning. So I decided to, like, yeah, avoid avoid that opening that particular door. Yep. Yep.

But we are today gonna talk a little bit about, some pretty big ideas like commodity fetishism and capitalist subjectivity and the relationship to Christianity. I am sure there are people who kinda know some of these terms already getting annoyed at how I say fetishism because, honestly, it's starting to annoy me already. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it doesn't sound right in my mouth. But those are the topics that we're gonna, gonna cover today. I did wanna, before we kinda cracked on properly, just, acknowledge that it's been another shitty few weeks for trans people.

The Supreme Court, a stupid idea that we stole from America, is, has put a, put a ruling out that a bunch of people have purposely misinterpreted for their own ends. All the Supreme Court said was you can't be sued for, having single sex spaces that exclude trans people, not that you have to. That's all the Supreme Court said is you you can't be sued for breach of the equality act for doing that, which is a shitty ruling that a bunch of people, if they're made shittier, we might talk about it in more length at some point, but, I think we just want to say for now, fuck transphobes, solidarity to to our trans siblings, and, I'm sorry that everything is so shit right now. Yep. Yep.

I echo that. Transphobia is heresy. Absolutely. Shall we move on to some mind grapes? I think that's a good idea.

What else is on my mind grapes? Adam, after the victory in the, inferior cup final of your beloved Newcastle United, I believe he wants to talk about football as the sports washing Saudi fan that you are. I I have been very, very clear about not actively supporting the, Saudi run Newcastle United anymore. I'm going to Saint James' Park this weekend. I don't know if that makes me a bad person.

I mean, first of all, yes. It does. And second of all, why? The rugby's on there. Alright.

Okay. So which is why I don't know if I don't know if it's kind of okay because it's not actually Newcastle United. But then when I thought about it They're gonna be making money out of it. Yeah. They're probably making except it's the rugby league.

So don't anyone's making any money because of the whole deal. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. I I was gonna talk about football.

There's a couple of stories that have popped up over the last week or two to do with football that I found really, really interesting. One of them is that that happened yesterday as as we record this, is actually related to that supreme court ruling. The FA have announced that trans people are not going to be allowed to compete in their competitions anymore. So from professional amateur to professional, if you're a trans person, you're no longer allowed to play football in a football team that is in a league run by the FA, which to be clear is, like, the FA runs most sort of, like, football competitions in the country. So, you know, if you're just an amateur who loves to go and play Sunday League football or something, that's an FA thing.

Right? So so now, trans people are not allowed to do that either. So, yeah, I I think what I find interesting about that is the FA is one of these organisations that exists in a way that just reflects whatever society is doing at the time. It's not dissimilar to to the church in a lot of ways. But I was gonna say also every sporting, ruling body in this country basically is bucking along the waves of, certain slants.

Like That's right. That's right. And so, you know, the society that that it exists in, the logic of that society carries over into whatever, yeah, whatever the the the FA are doing, which also has affected this week a man who tricked his way into Wembley for the Champions League final, and he's apparently potentially facing jail. Now I kind of like this man. I have no idea.

He could be an awful person. I have no idea. But I love what he did here because he took his four year old son, snuck him basically dressed up in a suit, right, and snuck into like, tricked his way into Wembley, but not just into Wembley, but into, like, the corporate suites. So, you know, where they put on, like, a really nice spread. But not just into the corporate suites, into one that you can't even buy.

Right? It's so exclusive that you can't buy. They keep it for, like, celebrities. Like so apparently, he mingled with Naomi Campbell and, Alexander Usyk and, others, because he pretended that he was, like, rich and and potentially famous. And good for him.

Yeah. Frankly. Frankly. Like, you can't if there's something that's so exclusive, so elite that you can't even buy it, that's a whole other level of capitalist hatred for me. And, yeah, go for it.

So but he is now potentially facing jail for this, which is insane. And the charge do you want the charges? Dishonestly obtaining services. That's right. Yep.

Yep. Like, as if dishonestly obtaining services doesn't happen every single day. So people probably know this or maybe not. I don't know. But trespassing is not a criminal offense.

Mhmm. So you can't you can't be prosecuted for trespassing. So, actually think they have I I don't know if they've changed that or they're in the process of changing it, but they Yeah. But but it yeah. You you can only be get so if she's you get asked to leave somewhere, then then that could be a criminal offence.

Or if you've had to break something or, like, get through an obstacle. But he can't actually if he's just swanned into the VIP area and they've let him through, his kind that in itself is not a crime. They therefore had to go and find a kind of slightly awkward crime to charge him with because Mhmm. I'm sure, technically, he has obtained services dishonestly. Right?

Like but, ultimately But That that is not the intention of that law. Right? That was not what the law was put in place to to do. Yeah. I do have to offer somewhat of a criticism for him Okay.

Which is is one, that he was stupid enough to blag about this in the media. And I just think, my dude, once he's gone and got this idea, just crack like, keep doing it. Don't don't let yourself in. It's like the guy who, discovered a some kind of issue with a cash machine and that he could get unlimited cash. This is in Australia, I think.

He get unlimited cash, like, without it without being noticed, without it coming out of his account just for ages. And he did this for a year and went all kinds of holidays and stuff, and then felt guilty and dobbed himself in. No, man. Don't feel guilty. Like, no.

No. No. No. No. Guilt is the mind killer.

But worse than worse than dobbing himself in or blagging about it publicly is he went to the Daily Mail to do it. Oh. Which I'm assuming is because they offered him a base. What you're catching for with. Not having that.

That's terrible. Yeah. Nonetheless. You've got another football related story you wanted to get through as well, didn't you? This and I'm trying to sort of link them with this sort of theme of of how politics sort of interacts with with football.

Right? So, Cody Gakpo Is also going to jail. Is yeah. He's going to football jail Yeah. Because he, when Liverpool won the league, he took off his shirt, which is, a yellow card offence, and he revealed a vest that said, I belong to Jesus, which was mimicking something that, the Brazilian footballer, Kaka, did, about just under twenty years ago, I think.

And he obviously now is you're not allowed to reveal clothing that has any religious or political or apparently personal messages on it, which I just think is an insane rule. But either way, that's what he did. And he he so he got this vest that says, I belong to Jesus. Now apart from the fact that this is an insane rule and you should be allowed to do it, in my humble yet correct opinion Yeah. I think it also shows something of that kind of Christianity that is quite ostentatious and, I mean, you know, essentially a form of evangelical Christianity that's really ostentatious.

It's all about believing the right thing and outwardly showing that you believe the right thing rather than the actual values that are implied by that. So for example, Kaka, big fan of Bolsonaro. Yeah. I was gonna say, also just an exceptionally boring human being. That doesn't surprise me at all.

I don't know very much about him. I mean, he was a wonderful footballer. His his favourite genre of music was is gospel music, and his his favourite book is the Bible, which are just, like, answers to the That is the 15 year old kind of, like, like, church youth group. But it's also the answer you give when you're trying to make every conversation come back to let me talk about Jesus. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like, it it anyone who says the Bible is their favourite book hasn't read it and doesn't know what it actually says and what it actually means. But, yeah, essentially, I I both agree that he should he should have been allowed to do it and also that he shouldn't have done it.

Like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Slightly naughty situation where I'm like, he should not be punished for doing this, but also he is a wanker for doing it.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I also have one more very, very brief Mindgrapes for you that I have not I've sprung this on you. And all it is is to say, I have been playing with the soundboard again.

Oh, fuck. So if you like, you can listen out throughout this episode to see if you could spot any new sounds added to the soundboard. Oh, this is getting I'm sure you'll enjoy it. I might have to risk control back on certain issues at this point because I used to I used to edit, and that's made myself sound smart. And I used to have control of the soundboard, and I would use it extremely judiciously.

And now it's it's a whole different show. You know? Well, do you know it's just that you you just don't like freedom, do you, Ben? That's the that's the problem here. And and perhaps that's because, of this.

The dark, godless society of communism. That's what you want, isn't it? That's what you want. No freedom. Yeah.

Total control, mind grip, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. Anyway, that's me. That's my mind breaks. Well, that was that was quite wonderful.

Would you like to hear what's been on My Mind Grapes? Go on. As as is the case more often than I'd like, Liz Truss has once again been on My Mind Grapes. There was an article in the in the horrible transphobic rag, The New Statesman, entitled, would reform be mad to accept Liz Truss? To which the answer is yes, obviously.

Do we give do do we give Liz Truss air horns? Is that, I think so. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Liz Truss. Lizzie. Our second favourite Lizzie after Lizzie the lizard who Liz Truss murdered. So I'm just gonna move past that.

So, there was a a bit that caught my eye on this article, basically, about how Truss has been kind of, you know, has got friendship with Farage and has been growing closer to reform, and there's questions about whether she might join reform. But this this paragraph grabbed my attention. Truss has reportedly been sharing her wisdom, not on winning elections, but on how reform can take on the, quote, establishment blob, which, she argues to anyone who will listen, sabotaged her time in office. And the whole, like, vibe of that sentence was very, like, dismissive. Like, there's a kind of a, look at this stupid woman and what she's saying.

And I thought there was two really interesting things. One is the way that the phrase the blob has you know, this is quite like an American leftist term to describe, like, the American kind of national security and military establishment, right, to understand the ways in which kind of America finds itself embroiled in in, you know, military activity overseas because of of the group-think of this kind of establishment. So people talk about the blob in that context, and it has unfortunately been grounded a little bit by this kind of populist right. And you can tell that it's gone a long way from its original intention and usefulness as a term when Liz Truss is doing it. But the other thing I grabbed like, the other thing that struck me from it is that, like, she's not wrong.

Like like, why was Liz Truss booted out of prime minister? Stopped clock and all that. Yeah. Like, I don't think it was a conspiracy, but I think what there was was, yeah, a a system that couldn't cope with what she was trying to do. You know?

Essentially, what got her her booted out was was the markets, which are presented as these, like, depersonalised things. And we will we'll talk a little bit more about the way in which, power is depersonalised and social relationships are obscured. Oh, hang on. Communist. You rattle off a lot of fancy words, don't you?

Okay. I'm worried about how many of these you've got. Too many. Too many. But yeah.

Like, actually, like, Liz Truss was not democratically removed from office. There was, like now you can argue she wasn't democratically put in place in the office, and I, you know, I think there's some value there as well. We can debate the election system. But, ultimately, Liz Truss fell because the market said that what she was doing wasn't acceptable. Hang on.

Hang on. Hang on. The the the markets, they are democracy, aren't they? Well, sir, certainly not universal democracy. There's a few people that have quite a few votes there.

And, yeah, I just found the whole tone of this really revealing, the whole, like, sneering, like, oh, she would say that, wouldn't she? And it was like you don't have to like this trust or think she's everything but a useless idiot to acknowledge that yeah. Woah. Hang on. We didn't give her an air horn for no reason, Ben.

Come on. But, yeah, to acknowledge that ultimately, yeah, like, she was, like, some sort of establishment power structure did remove her from office rather than any sort of failing of democratic legitimacy. Yeah. But, also, I think and the most important element of this that we need to acknowledge, I think, is the one that I acknowledged to you when you first told me about it Yes. Is that this the only thing I can think of for this whole thing when you talk about The Blob is the sort of, I think it was like a 70s b movie, called The Blob, which is like this horror movie where there's a giant blob that just gradually gets bigger and bigger and starts by, like, killing one or two people and then eventually destroying, just engulfing an entire city in this giant red gelatinous blob.

And that's that's that's clearly the most important element of this. To to paraphrase the famous poem, first, the blob consumed loose trust, and I did nothing because I thought it was quite funny. But the blob is coming for us all. One by one, we shall be consumed. Yep.

And if you're into that, fine. But, you know No. It's a kink shame. And on that note, should we talk about commodity fetishism? Yay.

Which is my favourite Marxist term because you get to say fetishism a lot, but it doesn't mean what you think it means. No. So, I've I've got some notes that I pulled together. But, Adam, would you like to would you like to give us your view on what we mean when we talk about commodity fetishism? Would I like to?

I mean, I can. It's a pretty I think I think a pretty standard Marxist view. Essentially, commodity fetishism is like, Marx uses fetishism as in its sort of more original term, so not about, you know, what we might imagine as like a sexual fetish or something, but as something that is imbued with an apparently kind of mystical quality. Right? And so when you apply this to commodities, I e, things that are produced for exchange and and so on in a market, you you end up with this idea of, like, a process that kind of mystifies the relations, the social relations that we have between ourselves and between commodities, and they they basically makes, it makes relations between people appear as if they are actually relationships between things.

Right? So even people become things to you. Mhmm. How how's that how's that for for a cracker? Yeah.

I that matches kind of what I was, yeah, thinking. It is kind of it it's the point with which Marx really starts Capital. Like, it is the commodity form and quantity fetishism in particular is the starting point for his understanding of of capitalism. And I think it's a very important one. And I think it's maybe one of the easier ideas to grasp in some ways.

You know, this idea that, actually, the relationship you have with the people who produce things you're buying is obscured and becomes the relationship between money and things a lot of the time. Right? So I was kinda thinking about it in terms of, like, if I go and buy an apple from the supermarket, I'm not thinking about who grew this apple, how it was, like, transported to me, the conditions of the worker, even the environmental impact of however it was farmed. Right? The apple that I'm trying to buy for me exists in relationship to the money that I have to buy it with.

I don't consider my relationship to any of the people involved in placing this apple before me. And, actually, if you asked me how that apple got there, I have some idea, but I probably have to look at the packet to find out where it was even grown. Like and I have no idea about any of what you know? At some point, it's probably come on a truck, I'd guess. But I have no real knowledge, and and I don't know anything about the people that grow grow that apple for me.

Which, as we know, is absolutely appalling. Well, apples. You not knowing where apples I I don't know. I shouldn't have to explain the bloody joke to you, Ben. It's bad enough as it is.

Thought you just didn't like apples very much. I don't. I don't. But Obviously, this gets even more complicated in kind of the the modern form of capitalism we had. So, like, I I I mentioned online shopping in the, in the start of this.

And I I recently bought some some headphones on on the Internet, and they got, popped through my postbox. So, actually, in the process of buying those headphones, I didn't have an interaction with a single other human being. Like pig. If it makes you feel better and for the sake of the example, we won't do this, but they were secondhand. Okay.

Well, you're you're only going to a sort of lower layer of, of hair. Yeah. A a a less time in purgatory. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I had no no interaction with a single person during that. But there are probably hundreds, maybe even thousands of people involved in everything that made it from the point that I didn't have headphones to the point where I did have headphones. Right?

Like, there's a whole and that's you know, the people who are mining them raw materials to start with, then the people that are designing stuff, putting stuff together. The components are probably made separately in different factories and then sent somewhere else to be put together. The people who, you know, designed the sales website and the payment portal, the delivery crews, there there'll be, support staff that you could call up or chat to online if there was issues with the order. So many people are involved in that. And yet, it's only as I was trying to come up with examples of how this all works that I even considered how many people were involved in that process.

Actually, when I did it, as far as I was concerned, there were no human beings involved. And to it's almost like those headphones came through my postbox by magic. Mhmm. There was no explanation beyond I press some buttons on my phone, and a few days later, headphones appeared in my house. Yeah.

Though it is completely separated from that. Yeah. And and, actually, when we I mean, we do have to be careful a little bit because the you know, where this word fetishism comes from, there's an element so it's sort of a a word that was used by anthropologists and and that kind of thing that when they were looking at particularly African religions, and they view these people in in sort of fairly Colonialist, I guess? Yeah. Colonialist and and even just sort of dangerous yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Ways that I mean, like, the whole field of anthropology is based in these sort of colonial mindsets. Right. So now when you read a lot of sort of older texts in in in these kinds of areas, you you know, it becomes a lot clearer where a lot of this stuff has come from.

So that word has a very patronising origin, but it's also an interesting origin when we're thinking about, well, it started really when people were looking at African religions and really just sort of not really understanding them, and sort of using a word to look down on them. So there's there's some interesting stuff there too. Yeah. Yeah. But but it's still useful, I think, for us as long as we're not sort of equating it with some of that stuff, but also some of the kind of, like, sexy stuff, that people people imagine.

Yeah. Absolutely. And we kinda said we'd talk a little bit about another big term, capitalist subjectivity. And this is this is a very, very big idea. I only wanna comment it from from this kind of one angle, but the fact that we don't understand the ways that people contribute to the items that we we purchase shapes our understanding of the world.

The way we perceive reality becomes very disconnected from the web of social relations that make up our reality. If you don't look at your Apple or your headphones and see the massive people that have made that exist for you to purchase, your conception of how the world works is very different to one where you go to the market and the guy who has an orchard is there, and he's selling the apples that he's grown himself. And you chat to the bloke and say, oh, I need some apples or whatever. And that relationship, it's still potentially a capitalist one in a market economy. Like, you know, there were you know?

I'm not saying that's, like, perfect or it's a feudal one or or, you know, whatever else it might be. I'm not trying to, like, say, oh, this is the perfect past or whatever. But that is a very different way of you understand that you, in some sense, rely on that person to provide you with the food, that you are reliant on that person. But in the system we have now where you go to a shop and you buy an apple, what you are reliant on is the money in your pocket or in your wallet or on your phone, in the in the Internet somewhere, not the other people. And how do you do that?

Well, the money, you you bring in because you you've worked for it. It's yours. And so you're reliant on yourself, not other people. And, you know, in some ways, that seems a really obvious point. Like, oh, capitalism makes you feel self reliant when you actually rely on other people.

But it's really important to understand that that is something that develops out of the system itself. It is not just that there's kind of effective propaganda. It is the way the system is designed affects how we view the world in a way that benefits the preservation of capitalism. Yeah. It's the it's the internalisation of market logic is what it is, you know, to the point where our our values, our self worth are all tied up in, like, how much money we have and and how much we can buy and that kind of thing.

And and that way of thinking is yeah. It really drives capitalism. And it's one of the reasons that I would call myself an anti-humanist. I don't know if you'd call yourself an animal or not. I don't know how much of a history this has in kind of anarchist thinking.

Yeah. I don't know. I probably need to think about that a bit more. I mean, I mean, I I understand what you're saying. Mhmm.

So so an anti-humanist., for anyone that doesn't know, is someone like myself who's who basically says, either there was no such thing as human nature or that human nature is incredibly malleable and that what we think of as human nature is not a consistent thing, but is a produced thing that is produced by the material and social conditions in which a person lives. So this is very important because all the time people will will will say, oh, Marx didn't take into account human nature. And I would say I hate that. Yeah. Yeah.

I hate it when they say that. And I would say, actually, he had a critique of human nature quite specifically that it is not natural and unchanging and consistent, but that humans are shaped profoundly by the conditions in which they exist. And that what we call human nature is a product of those conditions as much as is a innate thing. Now I I wouldn't go as far as saying there is nothing innate to being human. I think there is yeah.

There are aspects there, but I think when people say, oh, humans are selfish or humans are this or actually humans can't do this or they they think about things in this way, I think so much of that is a reflection of the material and social conditions of humans rather than any actual unchangeable reality about what it means to be human. Which I think, you know, that's become, certainly on the left, a fairly standard view of it, I think. And I think people often imagine it to be quite a sort of postmodernist view, and there are, you know, there's an element of it in there. But actually, it predates postmodernism as as a movement. You know?

And I think there's a there are various extents to which you can say this is true. You know? You can take it so far or or you could take it further. But I think that there are things that are self evidently true about that. You know, just the fact that different cultures have different like, clearly have different moral standards, moral ideas, and and and, you know, you look at something like usury.

Right? Usury used to be seen in in our, you know, what what was sort of our culture as one of the worst sins you could do. I mean, that's like the the the key through line of the Merchant of Venice. Right? Like Yeah.

Exactly. Shakespeare's time, it was completely unacceptable to be Yeah. A Christian, money vendor. And there are all sorts of complicated issues with that because, you know, for example, what they essentially did was force Jewish people to become moneylenders so they could get around the rules that way and just say, well, these people are evil anyway. Therefore, they can do the evil thing that we need to be done.

And that's you know? So there are problems with that. But the point is at its core, you know, usury was was a a grave sin, and it is now the cornerstone of our economic system. Yeah. And I think that's quite a, you know, important part of this, right, which is that when you get the arguments about Christianity that argue for a kind of god shaped hole or, you know, everyone's looking looking for god.

And it's like, actually, I don't think human beings are consistent enough. Like, I don't think everyone is necessarily looking for god. War. Hang on a minute, Ben. Hang on a sec.

Heresy! Remove this filth! That's not a new one. We had that last time. That's just happened. Yeah.

I don't know. I just think a lot of the there were a lot of kind of arguments, even under kind of liberal or more progressive guises, kind of in favour of Christianity or, like, I don't know, church growth or whatever, that fundamentally come down to refusing to acknowledge the way that the real conditions of life shape people and that that human nature is not consistent, but is profoundly shaped. I think we're gonna pick up in a minute a little bit more on on the way that Christianity interacts with some of this stuff, both in terms of negativity, but also actually what resources might be within Christianity and what things might be done on a Christian basis to to counteract some of this stuff. But before we do that, Heather, would you like a saint of the week? Why not?

Saint of the week. Okay. I have a saint of the week for you. His name is Pierre Chale, I think. Now It's, I I love it when you try and have a go at, people's names.

Yeah. Well Spanish people, French people, I'll it was Spanish last time when I offended. Yeah. French language the style. Languages were not your not your forte.

So really I did not do well at school. I got a d in French GCSE, and I actually cheated at one of the exams. So, and I still did not not not really pass it. So That is that is that is hilarious. Yeah.

Yeah. No. So, yeah, no natural facility for language. Pierre, you seem cool. So cool, in fact, that I've declined to do a stupid French accent for this segment, a sacrifice that I hope you appreciate.

No. No. No. No. For for two reasons.

One, because he seems like a cool guy, and I don't wanna, like, disrespect him. And, also Doesn't stop talking about the holocaust, and I don't think I should be in the comedy accent when I talk about the holocaust. Oh, okay. Well, maybe do the comedy accent for any bits that aren't about the holocaust. Yeah.

There's not a lot of that. We'll we'll get there. Great. So This is gonna this is gonna be a lovely one, isn't it? Yeah.

Pierre Chollet was born in 1900 in France. He became a Jesuit, age 22. And in 1931, he became a Catholic priest. In 1934, he was sent off to be a priest in Austria, so he got to witness firsthand the way that Nazis arose there. He kinda starts to begin to develop some recognition as a theologian.

And then in 1939, as the war is kicking off, he publishes a book entitled suffering Austria, which I think is, like, not I have been suffering Austria, but Austria is suffering, in which he denounces antisemitism and Catholic persecution by the Nazis, which gets him on the Gestapo shit list. He ends up briefly being a part of French intelligence. You can make your own jokes there, and get sent to to Hungary. But he ends up back in France in 1940 once he finds out that the French has signed an armistice with the Nazis, and he kinda immediately makes contact with Christians that were involved in the in the French resistance. And he picks a fake name for his resistance work that is Prosper Charlier, which I think is a fantastic name.

And, yeah, really like that. I think he's done a great job. Prosper Charlier. He is active in and the warning, I'm gonna try some more French pronunciation here. Amethyst Christians, which translates Christian friendships.

So this is a group of of Christians that help Jewish people escape from Nazi occupied France. So he's quite active in supporting French Jews to get to Spain and Switzerland. But alongside this, he's also active in the underground press, and he is in charge of the newspaper, Timor not no. Timor Nage, Christian, I'm guessing. Again, I'm so sorry about my pronunciation, but, it's Christian testimony is what it is.

This is an underground Catholic resistance publication. Fun fact, it actually still exists. It is one of the last, resistance era newspapers still being published, so I thought that was quite cool. So he kind of is in charge of it. He writes regularly denouncing the Nazis and antisemitism from, like, a Catholic perspective, particularly, is particularly opposed to dividing the Bible into a Jewish Old Testament and then a new testament, calling it both blasphemy and stupidity, which I just really like.

Because it's it's a heresy. It's very Like, it's hard. Oh, but we need the button. Heresy! Remove this filth!

Yeah. I think we can all agree that the Nazis were filth that need removing. I I think that's, yeah, the first good use of that map, sound. Yeah. I don't know.

There's something about calling it stupidity that I really like because I think we can get into, like I've said this before, but there were some people, like, on social media or whatever, like, making, like, quote, unquote Christian arguments. And people, like, with more progressive voices and wanting to, like, argue against it. And I just think you need to apply shut the fuck up to these people. Like, just call dickheads. Like, the I I just think sometimes the the most valuable thing you can do is maybe make them feel a little bit bad about themselves and embarrass them and maybe in front of other people.

Like As as as someone active on TikTok can confirm. Yeah. Like and so I just really enjoyed that this guy was like, okay. It's blasphemy, but also you're just real dumb. Like, I respect that choice.

It's also something Bonhoeffer did as well. Yeah. Like, he he he did a similar thing about having, like, a critique of of, you know, fascism that and Nazism that was talking about people's stupidity, but not like you know, not in not in a way that sort of necessarily suggests that stupidity is an innate thing. Mhmm. But almost like a learned thing.

Yeah. So so it's it's good. It has, there are Whenever we cross an form as well. Whenever we call someone a dickhead, we are putting ourselves in the tradition of anti Nazi Christianity. So just remember that.

On the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who would Dietrich Bonhoeffer call a dickhead? This is an absolutely big question.

I I I think we might have, gone a little bit off track here. Okay. Let's get back to our to our good friend, Pierre. So he does actually get arrested by the Gestapo in '43, but pretend pretends to just be like a normal parish priest, and they do actually let him go. Legend.

Yeah. Yeah. He's just like, me? Just a parish priest. Don't worry about me.

Everything's fine. En Francais? Me? Don't worry about me, though. I don't know.

Yeah. I'd like to say a Paris Priest. Always really funny to me to pretend that, French people speak to each other in in English, but you can really they're like stereotypically thick French accent. I I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. What's the, is, what's the the, sitcom that's based in France? Oh, yeah. It's great. And I just can never remember the name of it.

And I'm getting all the names have them. It's No. It's, Yeah. Oh, people are gonna be listening to some BBC News. Yeah.

Good. It's and the thing is I watch it, like, when I'm if I sit down and, you know, I've got five minutes and put it on, like, I will watch it. I just can't ever remember what it's called. And what what we'll do is we'll leave a a little pause here for you to jump in in the edit Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. To tell everyone what it was. Now. You've probably already guessed, but it's Allo, Allo.

Thanks, Adam, for the future. Everyone feels a lot better now knowing what it was. So, yeah, he he he gets released to house arrest, and immediately says, yeah, softness, does a runner, and spends the rest of the occupation on the run from the Gestapo, which is really just cool. Like, going from being like, I'm just a normal Paris Priest, and then the moment they put him in house arrest, jumping out a window and pissing off. And then success like, he's got no like, he very briefly served conventional intelligence, but for, like, sub a year, he has no real grounding or he's been a parish priest most of his life.

There was absolutely no reason this man should be able to successfully evade the Nazi intelligence forces, but he does it for the entire rest of the occupation. He he manages to stay on the run, and fair play to him. But carries on contributing to his newspapers, Carries on working with resistance. That's that's something I love. I love it when people go on the run and nobody can find them, but they're still right.

They start having it published. It's like, you people know where this guy is. Like, why why are you keeping it from us? Yeah. There's some funny stuff with Lenin doing that as well, isn't there?

Like, like, I know I know you're not necessarily a Lenin fan, but, there's some great stuff there. I need a I need a button for that, I think. But every time he goes into exile, he is, like, writing, like, 40 articles a day from exile. So, yeah, there's less information about him kind of after the war. He does have, some relationship with the French communist party, and he continues to be involved with the newspaper.

During the Algerian War, the newspaper, kinda quite controversially, advocates for negotiating with the, National Liberation Front of Algeria, which in retrospect was absolutely the correct, like, thing to do. Like, this was obviously an anti colonial struggle, and the people of Algeria deserved their independence. But at the time, was incredibly controversial, considered kind of, I don't know, anti French, like, you know, anti patriotic, whatever you wanna call it. And, essentially, he gets booted out the Jesuits as a result of this because the Catholics and and the Jesuits are are taking a a line that we can't negotiate with the, National Liberation Front. He passed his way in 1972.

There is no he doesn't return to being being a a kind of active priest at any point. So we can assume that he carried on holding good beliefs for the rest of his life that carried on you know, if he if How, like, how shitty as an organisation do you need to be to kick out an anti Nazi, like, resistant, like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

For for that as well. For for the, Yeah. Yeah. But obviously at the time, you know, it was considered a a national betrayal to suggest that Algeria should have its own Yeah. Independence.

So, yeah, a really fascinating, guy who, unfortunately, as you say, like, gets booted out of of being a kind of active Catholic priest for for being correct and being an anticolonialist, but someone who, yeah, did extraordinary things, particularly during the resistance and carried on being cool for the rest of his life as far as we can tell. Yeah. Legend. So that's your badly pronounced saint of the week for this week. Saint of the week.

So shall we get back to talking about big ideas? Well, you put it like that. I'm not so sure. I don't think they're actually big I mean, they are big ideas, but it's more of the big big phrases. That's the they're not, instantly understandable.

You know I have a button for that, Ben. Come on, Venus. You rattle off a lot of fancy words, don't you? But, yeah, we've talked about Catholic subjectivity. And I think so much of Christianity in this country is so enmeshed with capitalist subjectivity in ways that a lot of people maybe don't realise, but that the way we conceive of Christianity is so heavily influenced by the way that capitalism has taught us to view the world.

And the reason we're talking about this actually is, come out of the last episode we did where we talked about, atonement theories. And one of the things that I I kind of thought as I was thinking about it was the way that, substitutionary atonement contains a real market logic to it. You know? And the phrase that you hear a lot around substitution atonement, which is the idea that Jesus had to die in order to, pay the price for sins. And it's not pay the price.

Right? Someone had to pay the price for the sins of humanity. And that is a phrase you hear again and again and again when people try and explain substitution atonement. And I just thought that was so fascinating because it assumes that there must be a price to things. There is a market logic at at the centre of that understanding of of the cross in a way that I think is unintentionally revealing about about the impact of capitalist subjectivity on Christianity.

Yeah. I mean, there's clearly a market logic to this atonement theory and and and many atonement theories. And I think there's probably you know, we can we can take this back to Max Weber and the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism where, you know, we we see how capitalism developed alongside and and in almost sort of co-production, if you like, with various forms of Christianity. And I think it's I think it's no accident that probably the biggest, the most popular, the most well known theory of atonement today amongst Christians and non Christians is penal substitutionary atonement. I mean, it's it's it's incredible because it becomes almost a straw man a lot of the time.

You know, I have conversations with people or I see stuff sort of happening conversations happening online where, you know, there are people who are, you know, atheists or agnostics or or or actually of another religion who are rightly criticising penal substitutionary atonement, not always knowing that that's what it is, but thinking that that is a fundamentally, like, as it's a cornerstone of Christian belief, and it's not. Right? Penal substitutionary atonement. There are hints or kernels of it that you can find in the scriptures, but to actually make that the cornerstone of your belief, that's that's not in the bible. Yeah.

That's that's a much more modern thing that is present in in the reformers. Obviously, we know Calvin for it, but it also, you know, it's clearly very present in Luther as well. Mhmm. And and I think, yeah, I think it's no accident really. Oh, I suppose it is an accident in a sense, but it's it's not surprising that this is the most popular one when we have centred our entire society and culture Mhmm.

Around, well, commodity fetishism, really. I mean, it's not an accident in in the sense that they're related in causality. Right? Like Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. This is this is like a you know, the reason this is the most popular one is because it fits most easily into capitalist subjectivity, but also that, you know, the Protestant reformation I mean, look, I I'm I'm very Protestant. Like, I'm pro the Protestant reformation, but it is so heavily tied into the growth of capitalism. Right? Like, the there are material conditions that enable the Protestant reformation, and the emergence of, like, a merchant class is vital Yeah.

To to the Protestant. Without that, there is no Protestant Reformation. Right? So Yeah. You know, actually, they've always been deeply enshrined, the Protestantism and capitalism.

That doesn't mean they can't be disentangled because, as I say, I'm very Protestant, and I'm not a big fan of capitalism. So, you know, I I am a bet in the house that we can disentangle those two things, but they are there's a reason that their roots are entangled. Right? Like, they are related phenomenon. I I think that's true.

And I think it's also true to say that there were reformations and attempts at reformation that happened before what we now know as the Protestant Reformation. Yes. Right? So it's not that there weren't people realising that there were issues and and things that needed to change. You know, there have always been those things.

It's just that this was the one that really got a got a foothold, really. Yeah. I think it's yeah. The ideas of Protestantism were were ran in various forms and separate to capitalism. Right?

But the success of the Protestant reformation is reliant on the emergence of a catalyst merchant class. Right? There there is no way for that reformation to succeed without that. So the ideas themselves are not inherently capitalistic, but the circumstances in which those ideas take hold in a serious way are only made possible by by the development of capitalism and the, related development of a merchant class within that. Yeah.

I think the other way in which, you know, we've touched on before and even did last week a little bit, that you see capitalist subjectivity, is that I think the way church leaders and people interested in church growth talk about people, They don't use these words, but they see them as customers. The the the ideas that are there are essentially about expanding your customer base, I. E. Getting more people to come into church, and maintaining your existing customer base, I. E.

Keeping people in church once they've got there. And, you know, there are I think evangelicalism, to a great extent, is kind of embraced that. Ideas of marketing and that sort of thing are quite %. Are quite %. But I think even more progressive churches that look at the embracing of marketing ideas within evangelicalism and go, ugh, that's horrible.

I hate that, still cannot help, think of this in terms of customers. Right? Because that is the market logic is so fundamental to how we have been trained to see the world under capitalism. Where is the line with that as well, though? Right?

Because because I I really think that there are things that, you know, the kinds of churches that I personally like to frequent, like is perhaps a strong word there. Yeah. Yeah. But, Will tolerate frequenting. Yeah.

I I I think you're right about them, but I also think that there are things that they and we can learn from some of these approaches that these more kind of evangelical churches and charismatic churches and so on take. Right? Like, one of the my criticisms that I have fairly consistently of sort of more progressive Christian organisations, movements, and churches is that nobody bloody knows they exist. Yeah. You know?

And if nobody knows you exist, you ain't getting anyone through the door. And there are good reasons we want people through the door. Right? No. We don't wanna view people as customers, but we do want people to be able to engage if they choose to.

But you can't make an informed choice if you don't have the information. Right? So there's so for me, there's a a a weird line somewhere where something goes from seeing People as people. Seeing the the the yeah. The we're also seeing the the value in making something appealing, making something interesting, making making people aware of that thing.

Yeah. You know, there's that that's one thing, but then there's the whole thing that you can fall into, which is that you turn everyone into customers. Yeah. And I think, you know, when it's about customers, I think that's such a clear example of commodity fetishism. Right?

Is that a customer is not a person. They are a commodity that you are trying to gain. Right? Yeah. Exactly.

And that that is the fundamental example of commodity fetishism. Right? I don't have a relationship that is a social relationship with a customer. I have a commodity relationship with a customer. And you build up things.

Oh, you know, business talk about, oh, how do these friendly people, relationship with customers, all the rest all the rest of it. When you get down to it, that is purely about how do we maintain this commodity's value to us. How do we keep them in in our possession? These are not really social relations. They are commodity relationships.

And so I guess there's an element of, yeah, can we learn things from marketing, from, yeah, evangelical forms of Christianity without then treating people as commodities, but instead treating people as as social human beings. And and I I think maybe the answer is that you always have to you know, we're we're sat here talking about this stuff, and I don't want to give the impression that Adam and I have in any way, like, completely rejected catalyst subjectivity from our from ourselves. Right? Like, we are some yourself, Ben. We are both subjects under capitalism, and, therefore, we inevitably, as much as we try and push against the nasty catalyst in our own brains, we have some level of capitalist subjectivity always.

And I think even if you manage to get rid of that completely, I could be someone who is totally, completely aware of the social relations of everything I do. But if I need an apple, I still have to go to the supermarket and buy an apple because my actions are still fundamentally conditioned by the material reality of the world in which I live in, which is one where even if I can see the social relations theoretically, I do not have access to them in reality, and it my behaviour is bounded by the reality we exist in. So whilst we live under capitalism, you cannot simply say, well, I have got rid of this, and now I live in, you know, pure social relationships with everyone. That isn't accessible to us. So I think there's this thing of, like, acknowledging this exists, acknowledging it is impossible for us to escape it entirely, but still it being important to push back against it where we can.

I think there's a much more you know? Unless you go out to the woods in a plot of land and live self sustainably, you are going to have to engage with catalyst world. And so, actually, how do we deal with that is is a a question of Communism. Yeah. Sure.

But before the revolution, we've got we've got to live somehow. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I just love how much you're using apples in this episode.

That does seem to be your your unit of Yeah. Of Yeah. Don't know why. I I tell you, it might be just because I bought some apples the other day, and it seems like a, I don't know, a fairly basic example for whatever reason. But, yeah, as with apples on the brain, might eat an apple after this.

So I was gonna just get us to think a little bit about resources that might exist within Christianity or ways of being Christian that might help us push against capitalist subjectivity, push against the fetishisation of social relationships. And I I I went I went I I'm gonna do some bible. We've talked about, Imago Dei before. So the idea that the image of of God, is in Genesis. You know, let us make humankind in our image.

And that's really important. You know, it's it's a really helpful theological resource. But I think something that gets missed in there is that it is not let us make human beings in our image. It is not individual humans that are made in God's image. It is humankind that is made in God's image.

And and theologically, it is only in relationship with others that we are able to reflect the image of God. We cannot do that as self sustaining individuals. That is theologically untrue. And one of the reasons for that is that God is is trinity. So and we you know, maybe we'll do the trinity at some point.

We'll get deep and dirty with some of my hardcore theology. But, you know, God is three persons, father, son, and the woo, holy ghost. And, Heresy! Remove this filth! This is where I actually need a blasphemy button. Oh, that's blasphemy for the woo.

It's blasphemy I feel like you're mocking the holy spirit there, Ben. I just like the phrase holy ghost. But, yeah, like that It is more fun. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Christianity conjectures a god that is fundamentally relational. Right? Like, in its in God's very being, there is a relationality there. And I think that idea was slightly abstract and slightly whatever, but I think the key point is to link that to the Imago Dei and say, actually, it makes sense that humankind as a whole is able to affect the image of god because we all exist in relationship to one another.

And it also makes sense, therefore, an individual human does not have the image of god. And that sounds controversial to say human beings do not have the Imago Dei, but I think that is actually correct that it is only as a group, as a as a species, as a as a collective that that the image of god is in humanity. So, yeah, if you wanna hit a heresy button at some point, you feel free, but, that's my that's my hot swivel time. Heresy! Remove this filth! Sorry.

I had to you did invite me to do it, so I so I did. So go on, Alok. Give us some liberation theology. Alright. We'll talk about resources.

Right? And there are some obvious ones. You know, Gutierrez's Theology of Liberation. I can never say his name, but, like, Franz Hinkelammert's Ideological Weapons of Death are both things that help us to think about the sort of idolatry of of markets and that kind of thing.
 
But I think there's also something to be said about, you know, liberation theology places a lot of emphasis on community practice. Right? And that's a a really, really important way Mhmm. Of trying to disentangle the idea of people as commodities, people as things to actually personalise people again rather than objectify them Mhmm. And commodify them.
 
Basically, what I'm saying is get your ass back to church, Ben. And, but, you know, that's easier said than done. Right? And it's not just church. It's it's taking part in your your community.
 
It's finding ways to to become a part of your community, to share things in your communities. Have you got sea goals where you are? Yeah. We're not that far from the sea, and it'll be good because it's hot. Right.
 
Right. Yeah. I I almost opened the windows, before this, but I I thought I could get away with get away keeping them closed, but there's a lot of tweeting outside as well. So, yeah, this is a very animal heavy episode, I think, dogs and birds. So, yeah, I think that community practice is is really important.
 
So, yes, church, but not just church. Joining your local, Food Not Bombs group or, joining a union or, you know, doing stuff with people in your community. And that doesn't just have to be political or religious work. Like, it's important to do that, but but, actually, like, being a present in your community, you relate to people on that social level. Well, like like, one thing that's quite you you can find in a lot of places now is, like, community run parks, for example.
 
Mhmm. You know? So, like, I lived near a park for a while that was community run park, and they would have communal litter picks and, you know, activities that you did together, you know, all kinds of things. And, you know, there's a sense in which that's political because, you know, it's economic or whatever. But it all it was was people in their communities organising to come and look after their park.
 
Mhmm. And that's and that's really what what politics is. So, you know, you can do that kind of thing as well. Go and do a litter pick. Go and, join the on and help organise the sort of community day.
 
Go and create a little I think they had it was like, they created, like, a a a walk in this park that had loads of, like, little fairy houses and stuff everywhere, which is really nice. You know? This is all really good stuff. And the and the final thing is is making sure that you're listening to, like, decolonial and ecological kind of voices as well. I think when we when we're thinking about we're getting back to this idea of what fetishism means, Actually, there's an element of it where we need to go back and look at the wisdom of indigenous peoples, indigenous communities, and try to understand them as best we can on their own terms rather than applying a label to them because there's wisdom there that actually usurps this idea of of fetishism that has become out of, you know, people hundreds of years ago looking at these people and misunderstanding what they were doing and saying.
 
Yeah. And I think I finally wanted to just think a little bit about about food and particularly in in Always up for that? Yeah. Yeah. And not just apples, but food of any type.
 
And, actually, the sharing of food with no strings attached in a communal setting is quite a fundamental idea in Christianity. And it's actually that's what communion is. Right? Like, we're gonna give you food, and, like, at the moment, it's Not even we're gonna give you it. Like, we are going to share it.
 
Yes. Whatever you you have to share, you bring. If you don't have anything, you don't bring anything, but you still share. Yeah. And you've got the story of of the feeding of large crowds that appear multiple times in the gospels.
 
You know, the early church sharing meals together. Right? This idea of, like, the communal sharing of food is so central. And I think that we can lose that in something that looks a bit more like dinner parties. You know?
 
Oh, I know some people from church ought to fight them over, and we'll get this reciprocal relationship, and they'll invite me back to dinner. You know? And that's that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's not the same thing as as open communal sharing of food.
 
And I I And I can pay and I can pay meal. You know? It's what Yeah. I hate that phrase. Man.
 
I can pay. Yeah. But you hate everything. Like, you've always got a reason to Agape meal is what Anglicans call communion when they want to pretend like only they can do the magic hands communion shit. I'm sorry.
 
I'm sorry. Agape meals are, like, the term is not something that grew out of Anglicanism. No. But that's the only context I hear it in is Right. Okay.
 
Okay. So because you share an Agape in your very specific white British context. Not even white British, white English context. Yeah. Yeah.
 
The only way you've heard this word before is in Anglican churches. That's what it means to you. Therefore, that's what must be true. You make me sick. It's called subjectivity, Adam.
 
We've been talking about it for, like, quite a while now. But, yeah, I I yeah. Whatever you wanna call it, like, actually, I think we need to recover some some of that, like, and and find ways of sharing food communally, openly, no strings attached, in a way that helps us uncover the social relationships that exist between all of us. I think that's probably about all we have time for today. Yeah.
 
I think, I think I think I'm in agreement with you. The the only thing I would have have to add to that Uh-huh. Is that, we should, also consider this. Freedom loving peoples all over the world stand alert to the menace of communism. Is this all from the same place, by the way?
 
That's two films that it's from. What other films? I I can't remember what they're called, but one is, a film from, I think, about 1950 that I think is literally just called communism. Uh-huh. And then the other ones are similar sort of propaganda.
 
Like, they're both, like, American, like, CIA or or whatever, like propaganda films. And now you're extending their propaganda here. Wonderful. I think it's very important that we are playing our part Yeah. Yeah.
 
To make sure that the fight against communism. Yeah. That communism doesn't get a foothold in America Yeah. Because, you know, that's the most important place and thing. Yeah.
 
Absolutely. Thank you very much for listening, everyone. We hope you've enjoyed it. Adam, where in the world can people find you? You can find me most places at commie, x I a n.
 
Brilliant. You can find all our contact details on the website at breadandrosaries.com. Please do get in contact with us. We love to hear from people. And, yeah, any thoughts, feedback, suggestions, comments, questions, always very welcome.
 
All those contact details on the website, breadandrosaries.com. On there is also a link to the Patreon. If you would like us to keep going, chuck us some pennies if you have them. If you don't, then, rate and review is apparently a very good way of doing stuff. And if not, we will see you next week.
 
Thank you very much for listening. See you later, Adam. See you later. Bye bye. Bye.
 
Communism. You had to end it with that. Absolutely.