Jesus shows love toward those judged sinners. He encounters and befriends a rich tax collector named Zacchaeus who is judged “a sinner.” The man’s wealth is from working for Caesar and the Roman military.
From the Gospel and other sources, we know Militarism’s tax collectors have existed from ancient times onward. The job originates with Militarism. It is linked with Militarism’s slave system. David Graeber explains it in his book Debt, “slavery… played a key role in the rise of markets everywhere.” “(W)ar, states, and (slave) markets all tend to feed off one another.” Victory in war gains the War Lord plunder, especially human plunder. Captured enemies were capital, a resource to be used – as slaves. The slaves were sold at the market or put to work in the War Lord’s army or on the captured land and taxes were extracted. The truth of War Lords enslaving people by taxing them to pay for their wars is highlighted in the U.S. during its colonial era. In 1764, British royalty, in order to pay off debt from that empire’s Seven Years’ War, increased the taxes paid by U.S. colonists. Across the Atlantic, slave owning War Lords – Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and others, as those of our own time, were not interested in paying taxes but in collecting them. They wanted to become the new War Lords of a new land of plunder. With financial help from France, stateside rulers violently replaced Britain’s rulers as the enslavers of the immigrant, mostly British people, through taxation. The new rulers founded the U.S. Treasury to warehouse the people’s taxes and thus finance their own imperialist scheme. The French received repayment for their war help in 1791. U.S. slave owning War Lords loaned money back to French slave owning War Lords to defeat Haitian slaves seeking freedom. The Constitution the U.S. slave owners eventually devised, legalized collecting taxes from the people (Article 1 Section 2). Taxes, especially income taxes, were implemented and repealed as the War Lords needed to finance additional wars to gain additional plunder. They used tax collectors to do so (e.g. Lincoln’s 1861 Revenue Act to fund the Civil War). Permanent tax collection for permanent war was legalized in 1913 with the passage of the 16th Amendment which levied income taxes on individuals and businesses. It was not surprising when people soon began protesting the tax, for example against J.P. Morgan’s Great War (WWI) and its taxes. The people interwove that action with supportive action for a rising people’s movement, unions. Workers across the world refused to be exploited; not on the battlefield as soldier slaves nor on the factory floor as tax slaves for the financial gain of the War Lord class. The workers were upsetting the tax collection system which consists of the collectors hired, as well as the enforcing military, FBI, and local police who routinely raid, abuse, and violate the people. The violent tax collection system does not routinely raid, abuse, nor violate U.S. capitalist War Lords for taking life and limb from soldiers they coerce onto the battlefield. Nor for taking life and limb from workers they coerce into their weapons making factories. The military forces target common people and especially common people who dissent from the War Lords’ tax collection system.
Dissenters to the War Lord system include Catholic Workers and War Tax Resistance League members who do not contribute to the warmaking organization known as the U.S. Empire and its military. War taxes can be contributed instead toward social needs. We can do so as a life witness declaring our selves conscientious peacemakers and likely remain out of jail. We can also live below the taxable income. Another action is to file tax returns but refuse to pay the percentage of income tax used for the military, generally well above 50%. Or, we can withhold a token amount, for example $50. We can always accompany any act with communication to personnel in the I.R.S., our church, local paper, and posted on social media explaining our reasons. We can deny money to the warmaking cult and instead give our energy and resources to building peacemaking communities.
Prayer: Spirit, guide us celebrating and growing peaceful communities.
Question: What risks am I taking for peace?
October 30, 2022 Gospel Luke 19:1-10 Thirty First Sunday in Ordinary Time