pacifist clergymen, and making his appeal not to Jesus, but to the
blood-thirsty tribal diety of the ancient Hebrews:

I suppose they think they know more than God Almighty, who
commanded the sun to stand still while Joshua won the battle
for the Lord; more than the God who made Samson strong so he
could slay thousands of his nation's enemies in a righteous
cause.

Right you are, Billy! And if the capitalist system continues to
develop unchecked, we shall some day see it dawn upon the masters of
the world how wasteful it is to permit the superannuated workers to
perish by slow starvation. So much more sensible to make use of them!
So we shall have a Bible defense of cannibalism; we shall hear our
evangelists quoting Leviticus: "#They shall eat the flesh of their own
sons and daughters.#" Or perhaps some of our leisure-class ladies
might make the discovery that the flesh of working-class babies is
relished by pomeranians and poodles. If so, the Billy Sundays of the
twenty-first century may discover the text: "#Happy shall be he that
taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.#"

#Moth and Rust#

It is especially interesting to notice what happens when the Bible
texts work against the interests of the Slavers and their clerical
retainers. Then they are null and void--and no matter how precise and
explicit and unmistakable they may be! Take for example the Sabbath
injunction: "Six days shalt thou labor and do all that thou hast to
do." Karl Marx records of the pious England of his time that

Occasionally in rural districts a day-labourer is condemned
to imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath by working in
his front garden. The same labourer is punished for breach
of contract if he remains away from his metal, paper or
glass works on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious
whim. The orthodox Parliament will hear nothing of
Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in the process of expanding
capital.

Or consider the attitude of the Church in the matter of usury.
Throughout ancient Hebrew history the money-lender was an outcast;
both the law and the prophets denounced him without mercy, and it was
made perfectly clear that what was meant was, not the taking of high
interest, but the taking of any interest whatsoever. The early church
fathers were explicit, and the Catholic Church for a thousand years
consigned money-lenders unhesitatingly to hell.