Saturday, July 11, 2009

A Bit of 'Calvinist' Nonsense - Surely Not Serious?

Peter Thompson writes in Comment is Free, The Guardian, UK HERE:

Calvin, Weber and the vanishing mediator - The question: Why won't Calvin die?

The purposeful order of the world in natural law is the religious equivalent of Adam Smith's doctrine of the invisible hand.”

Comment
Now we have: “Adam Smith's doctrine of the invisible hand”! What doctrine?
Where is it spelled out as a ‘doctrine’?

Should we take Peter Thompson seriously?

He finds a Calvinist explanation among the Chinese Communist Part leaders who ordered the Tiananmen Square massacre, and writes: “The future of British capitalism was made safe by Cromwellism and its defeat of Catholicism …”.

Perhaps there is an affinity between Thompson and the interpretation of a metaphor as a Panglossian explantion of everything resulting from all behaviours (odious as well as sublime) that result in the best of all possible worlds whatever evil has caused them. This is truly extreme neoclassical exculpation of all and any behaviours of states or businesses.

Monopolists, protectionists, slave drivers, polluters, ands their ilk are part of a Calvinist providential plan to create God's heaven on Earth! Is there no end to superstitious credulity?

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