ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the teachings and practices of the big religions – focusing on Judaism, Christianity and Islam – regarding the issue of capital profit. Capital profit can take many forms: interest on loans, dividends on shares, real estate rents, profit on merchandise or industrial capital, and entrepreneurial income. Loans carrying fixed interest rates were almost uniformly condemned as “usury” and prohibited by the old religions, including not only Judaism, Christianity and Islam but also Hinduism and Buddhism. The official churches, however, have abandoned their traditional antiusury positions in favour of a general plea for “fairness” and “justice” in economic transactions. The critique of usury as a factor not only of distributional injustice but also of economic instability could gain new relevance against the background.
