Religion and the rise of capitalism
RH Tawney
J Murray Pub., 1944
261 T234r LIT-ST
"Tawney's is an extensive analysis of Christian economic thought of the Middle Ages. Its basic principle was the subordination of productive activity to the laws of Christian morality. Society, in the thought of the Middle Ages, was a body composed like all living organisms of non homogenous parts, that is, of a hierarchy of functions: The clergy, the military aristocracy and labor formed a unified body in which the component parts of the third term were subservient to the other two (as the trunk and the members are subservient to the head). The producers must satisfy the needs of the nobles and the priests; in exchange, from the former they would receive protection, and from the latter they would receive a share in the divine life and moral rule to which their activity had to be strictly subordinated..."
-Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share vol. 1