THE WISDOM OF EUGENE MCCARRAHER - EXPLORING THE ENCHANTMENTS OF MAMMON IN BRITAIN - PART TWO

 Keeping to the promise I made in my March blogpost about Eugene McCarraher and his 2019 masterpiece, The Enchantments of Mammon, here is a summary of the Professor's main points in the first of the seven parts of his monumental work. Part One (pp.19-106) is called: The Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things: Capitalist Enchantment in Europe, 1600-1914.

McCarraher's 2019 masterpiece

• The age of capitalist enchantment began in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. A capitalist vanguard of landowners and merchants blazed a trail of 'improvement' that swept away the ties of common-land holding that had been blessed by the medieval church. Puritan improvers had a Protestant ethic that was perfectly compatible with omens and portents and matters of the Spirit. The metaphysical enchantments of medieval Catholicism were reworked into the imperatives of Protestant dispossession and enclosure of land for profit - in the name of God.
• English Protestants such as Richard Baxter and John Locke developed a systematic theology of the divine right of capitalist property which still embraced the power of the sacred enchantments - although other Protestants such as Gerard Winstanley and the Diggers offered a radical

PLEASE GET YOUR COPY OF THE UNOFFICIAL REPORT INTO WHY NEARLY A QUARTER OF A MILLIION BRITS HAVE DIED IN THE COVID PANDEMIC

Always start a blogpost with an arresting picture - and a good story. Well, the picture is as you can see an image of a group of Unite members who held a three-hour demonstration in Hayle last Wednesday. Most of those pictured are striking concrete-mixer drivers; a couple are senior Unite officials - and then there's me on the end, a Unite community member who's responding to an appeal to come and join the demo.

Greg Martin took the photograph and it was published in Cornwall Live - my thanks to them

The account of the demonstration I will save for later. First, I am indulging in some 'schadenfreude' - joy at the seeing another person's discomfort. 

Today, I am celebrating because a recent PM has left our nation's parliament. 

• That man has resigned his parliamentary seat in a fit of anger. He has made a crazy miscalculation that soon he will return to his rightful place as the nation's leader.   
• That man is a serial liar.
• That man suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, in much the same way as his American