The opposition to the pillaging by the founders of what came to be called capitalism took many forms: from utopian colonies and secret societies of craftsmen to dissenting religious congregations, among other insurgent formations. Many of these rebellious eruptions have modern day equivalents. Intentional communities never disappeared though they cycle from popular ventures to backwoods near oblivion and workers hesitantly emerged from clandestine meetings to openly organize for their rights, though today corporate hostility to unions sees them returning to caution and secrecy.
And ecumenical dissent continues today to rail against capitalists’ disdain for ethical practices interpreted as obstacles to their bottom line. One strand of 19th century socialism spawned by liberal Protestantism was called Christian. But even the conservative Catholic Church, realizing that its flock was being fleeced so brutally by the shepherds of the marketplace, had to respond, or forever be condemned for its silence. It finally adopted a pseudo-critical posture with the “socialist” Pope Leo XIII’s papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, on the “Rights and Duties of Labor and Capital.”
More significantly, later in the century as capitalism reached the Russian Steppe, Leo Tolstoy born into the Russian aristocracy renounced his privileged heritage for a radical Christian pacifism that many interpreted as anarchist. Gandhi and later Martin Luther King drew upon his ethical…