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Sorry. Ezra Pound, Canto 45, the famous rant about "usury". Which
Pound, a subscriber to the Social Credit theories of Major
C.H. Douglas, believed was the canker at the root of Western culture.

I quoted it because I had been talking about how elements of both the
Left and the Right have long felt that _something is wrong_ in a
system that so consistently alienates people from their work. Pound
was a right-wing anti-Semitic crank and dead wrong in almost all his
political and historical particulars, and yet Canto 45 is a moving
invocation of feelings that people of all sorts have experienced about
the money economy as it has expanded over centuries to encompass more
and more aspects of human relations, and (most critically) to
dislocate whole populations and cast them aside. Of course many of us
have been enriched by aspects of this, but on the other hand there are
the folks whose entire lives have taken place in the interstices of
capitalism's ever-wonderful "adjustments." My point was that many
people, not just left-wingers, have felt this over the years. Even
enthusiasts of capitalism, on occasion, sense that something about in
inexorable whirlwind of money makes "the line grow thick." That "No
picture is made to endure nor to live with, but is made to sell and
sell quickly."


With usura, sin against nature,
is thy bread ever more of stale rags
is thy bread dry as paper,
with no mountain wheat, no strong flour
with usura the line grows thick
with usura is no clear demarcation
and no man can find the site of his dwelling.
Stonecutter is kept from his stone
weaver is kept from his loom
WITH USURA
wool comes not to market
sheep brighth no gain with usura
Usura blunteth the needle in the maid's hand
and stoppeth the spinner's cunning...
It slayeth the young man's courting
it hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
between the young bride and her bridegroom
CONTRA NATURAM
They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet
at behest of usura


The victims of the Scottish enclosures would get it. So would modern
Third Worlders reduced from rural poverty to outright destitution by
the operations of distant markets in agricultural commodities and the
consequent conversion of their local economy into a monocrop export
enterprise. For them, it certainly does slay the young man's
courting, and bring palsy to bed, lying between the young bride and
her bridegroom. The peasants of Chiapas could well be forgiven for
saying, along with Pound: contra naturam.

Another usenet post here ... and this site ... and this ... and this ... And what is Barnes Review anyways?

:pound: :verse:  ¶ 11:59 AM