With the direction the current
administration has been taking our country and the direction the inevitable
Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, is promising to take it, the age old debate of
communism and socialism vs. capitalism is slowly but surely reclaiming its
place in American political discussion.
Historically,
capitalism has won decisively, but to see that the gap is closing quickly, one
must simply look at the success of Michael Moore’s propaganda films Sicko and Capitalism: A Love Story.
The way liberals as a whole have embraced Moore’s blatant exploitation
of them is reminiscent of the Russian’s religious adoration of Sergei B.
Eisenstein’s equally heavy-handed endorsements of communism The Battleship Potemkin and Alexander Nevsky, or the Cuban’s (and
Russian’s) love for Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba. The fact that those movies are all incredibly
innovative, ingeniously shot and are landmarks in the history of cinema while
Moore’s films are complete rubbish is a tell-tale sign in and of itself. Another telling sign is in regards to the
biggest box office sensation of the year so far, The Hunger Games.
As
blatantly obvious as it is in its portrayal of a futuristic U.S.A. oppressed by
a cruel communist regime resembling Stalinism (which, incidentally, gives the
title its true meaning), many liberal fans have proclaimed the story
anti-capitalist. I honestly wouldn’t be
surprised if they had the same reaction to a movie version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Add to that the fact that President Obama is
the most socialistically minded president in our country’s history (FDR
notwithstanding) and he stands a very good chance of being reelected this
year.
As
blatantly obvious as it is in its portrayal of a futuristic U.S.A. oppressed by
a cruel communist regime resembling Stalinism (which, incidentally, gives the
title its true meaning), many liberal fans have proclaimed the story
anti-capitalist. I honestly wouldn’t be
surprised if they had the same reaction to a movie version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Add to that the fact that President Obama is
the most socialistically minded president in our country’s history (FDR
notwithstanding) and he stands a very good chance of being reelected this
year.
So now
the question must be asked – what brought on this radical leftward swing? Complacency on the part of
conservatives? Sarah Palin and the Tea
Party would say so. A drastic drop in moral
values? Westboro Baptist Church, Windsor
Hills Baptist Church and other evangelical fundamentalists would say so. I would disagree on both counts.
In the
first place, running faster doesn’t help if you don’t know where you’re going,
and the same goes for working harder without knowing what you’re doing. Now I do believe a failure on the part of
conservatives is a big part of the problem, as is the case with every
proletarian revolution. The problem
isn’t a failure to be conservative enough, however, but a failure to understand
what to be conservative about and what not to.
I
honestly feel that a big part of the problem is a failure on both sides of the
issue to completely understand socialism or communism and how they relate to
capitalism. Christians, in general, I
find have a very skewed idea of these philosophies and most cannot talk about
them without resorting to emotional tirades that don’t make logical sense and
usually contradict their other stated beliefs.
For this
reason, I’d like to present a few points for Christians to remember when
considering or discussing socialism and communism. I will first simply list my points and
sub-points to give you an idea of where this is going, then explain in detail
what I mean.
So here are the main things Christians need to know about
socialism and communism but don’t seem to understand:
1. Christianity is a
horrible form of government.
a. Christianity was never
intended to be a basis for government.
b. When Christianity has been
implemented as government in the past, it has always been abusive and
oppressive of its subjects.
2. Communism and socialism are both closer to
Christianity than Capitalism is.
- More accurately, the ideas of communism and socialism and the
principles upon which they are based are closer to Christianity (implementing
them as a government is not).
3. Capitalism is not a form of government and
cannot possibly be used as a government.
- Socialism and communism must of
necessity be enforced and strictly regulated.
Capitalism requires no enforcement or regulations.
4. Socialism relies on capitalism and cannot
exist without it.
- You can’t take from
the rich and give to the poor if nobody’s rich, and nobody gets rich outside of
capital earning ventures, including the chairmen of “communist”
politburos.
Before
moving on, I would also like to explain here the key differences between
communism and socialism. The two are
very similar both in motive and structure, but to simplify a very complicated
matter as best I can, I find communism to be the better defined and more
ambitious of the two. It has often been
said that socialism is a step towards communism, and while many socialists will
disagree with that statement, most (if not all) communists will not. The reason for this is that socialists wish
to distance themselves from communists because they know communism has a very
low success rate (0% to be exact) in governments. Communists, on the other hand, have come to
understand (through successive failures) that their ultimate goal must be
reached through gradual change – first overthrow the capitalist government,
then implement socialism and gradually move towards communism (I’m skipping
Marx’s original first step of replacing feudalism with capitalism because
feudalism is outdated now). As far as
the ambitions of the two are concerned, both seek equality for all men and to
provide a better life for the lower class.
The way they seek to achieve this makes all the difference. Socialism generally implements redistribution
of wealth in one form or another- usually heavy taxes on the wealthy to fund
government programs that will distribute financial aid to the poor. In simple terms (which socialists in
particular seem to hate for some reason) – take from the rich and give to the
poor. This would make things a little
more equal than they were before – narrow the gap between the rich and
poor. Communism, on the other hand,
implements a society where all land, possessions and industry are commonly
shared. In simple terms – take from
everyone and give to everyone. This is
total equality and completely eliminates the gap between the rich and the poor,
which is why I call communism the more ambitious of the two. Moving on.
1. Christianity is a
horrible form of government.
a. In the first place, Christianity was never
intended to be a government either by Christ Himself or His disciples. Christianity in its purest sense is simply a
belief that Jesus is the son of God (the Christ). In an applicable sense it is a lifestyle in
which people try to emulate Christ’s practices and follow His teachings. That being the case, knowledgeable Christians
realize Christianity is not about making laws and enforcing them on a community
of people, for Christ did not come to set up a government or reaffirm the
Judaic laws of the Old Testament. Christ
came to fulfill the law, and by that He meant to take the excessive punishment
that came with such oppressive statutes and thus, by paying the penalty (or
fulfilling the price of justice), be done with it once and for all. Once this was done (with Christ’s
crucifixion), God rent the veil of the temple and thus made His point that the
burden of the cruel and oppressive Old Testament law had been lifted. From that point on, God taught His disciples
to no longer follow the old law, even commanding Peter to break it in Acts
10.
Now that
is not to say that Jesus was an anarchist, as others would have you
believe. Far from it. You see, Jesus lived in a time when Israel
was under Roman rule and most of the Jews at the time were constantly looking
for reasons to rebel against it, but He never advocated such revolution, and
would not even decry paying taxes to Caesar when questioned to that end by the
Pharisees. Indeed, while Jesus
constantly undermined the Torah (without actually breaking it) and cleverly
influenced Jews not to follow the old law, He never did so in respect to Roman
law, and it was only when the Romans attempted to appease the Jews by allowing
them to practice their religious laws that they shared in his murder. Now I’m not suggesting that Jesus advocated
Fascism, which would be ludicrous. I’m
simply pointing out that to set up and run a government based on His actions
would be equally ludicrous, and to set up and run a government based on His
teachings would require you to ignore what he taught (which is an oxymoron),
for He never taught government. What He
did teach was love. When asked what the
greatest commandment was, He replied “love God and love your neighbor”. This leads me to my second sub point under my
first point.
b. When Christianity has been implemented
as government in the past, it has always been abusive and oppressive of its
subjects.
In all
reality, Christianity cannot be enforced any more than love or faith. You can force someone to act like they love
you or believe the way you do, and you can punish them if they don’t, but it
won’t be real love or real faith, and it’s always a very tragic and ugly
situation when someone tries to force those feelings or actions from someone
else.
This is
why whenever a country adopts Christianity as the basis of their government,
persecution and oppression always ensue.
I feel obligated now to list a few examples rather than just leaving
that statement completely unverified, but the instances where Catholics, Anglicans,
Puritans, and Protestants have used torture and various terror tactics to
control countries are too many to list here.
The Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, the Spanish conquest of South and
Central America, the exploitation of many third world peoples by Jesuit
missionaries, and the holocaust are some famous examples, but there are many
more.
Suffice
it to say – Christianity is a lifestyle based on the ideals taught and
demonstrated by Jesus Christ. It’s a
very good lifestyle and I highly recommend it to everyone, but it should never
be enforced upon anyone.
The second thing Christians need to understand about
communism is…
2. Communism and socialism are both closer to
Christianity than Capitalism is.
More accurately, the ideas of communism and
socialism and the principles upon which they are based are closer to
Christianity (implementing them as a government is not). The idea of communism is simply a community
where all members are equal and work for the good of the community rather than
for personal profit. In this community,
all members would share all of their land and possessions and there would be no
personal ownership of anything. The
principles upon which communism is based are equality, unity, unselfishness,
generosity and “good will towards all” – all wonderful principles which line up
very well with the Christian lifestyle.
The idea
of socialism is a community where the privileged pay tribute to state bureaus
so that they can care for the under-privileged.
Similar to communisms, the main principle upon which socialism is based
is charity (albeit forced charity).
Capitalism,
on the other hand, is all about freedom and independence. “Every man for himself” is a phrase that
jumps to mind when considering capitalism.
So which
of the three seems more like something Christ would endorse? To start with, let’s look at the two
“commandments” Christ gave when asked by a Pharisee. First, love God. Doesn’t apply to any of the three. The fact that Karl Marx, who invented communism,
was an atheist and didn’t approve of any kind of religion is irrelevant because
religion had nothing to with his theory of government. The second commandment was “love your
neighbor”. Communism is all about
neighbors sharing everything they have, so the shoe fits. Socialism is about loving your government and
your government taking care of your neighbor.
Close, but not as close as communism.
Capitalism is all about individual freedom. Point communism.
Now
let’s look at specific situations where Jesus may have endorsed communism,
socialism or capitalism. Again, it’s
hard to make an exhaustive list here, but there are a handful of passages that
have been used to effectively support one side or the other, and I’ll look at
the most relevant of these, starting with the one most often used.
This is
a strong case for socialism since Jesus is clearly advocating redistribution of
wealth – the money from the rich man would go to the poor. This case is stronger because the story is
repeated with only slight variations in Luke and Mark.
Now before I present a capitalist
rebuttal to this, I must first point out that communism doesn’t really have a
horse in this race except for the fact that communists claim socialism as an
essential step towards communism. Since
this is a situation where Jesus was giving advice to a single man in the
presence of many others (who were not included in the admonition), communism
doesn’t really make the cut.
As to the rebuttal, I must allow
myself to delve into my third main point before officially getting to it in order
to point out that the redistribution of wealth Jesus was advocating here must
of necessity be a personal choice completely free of government (or any other)
influence. You see, Jesus gave this
advice in response to a rich man who was asking what good thing he could do to
have eternal life; and he gave it only after first rebuking him for asking the
question and then telling him to follow the ten commandments in a scene
reminiscent of His Matthew 3 sermon on the Mount (those who have ears to hear
let them hear). This really takes the
bite off of the socialist argument and will damage it irreparably for some
(particularly those who already have their mind set on finding a pro-capitalist
message). I will say it’s debatable at
best, but given that I’m looking mainly at the themes and ideas behind the
three contesting institutions, I’m going to make a Tony Realiesque (heads up,
Wikipedia) decision on this one and say the presence of redistribution of
wealth is enough to put this in the socialist column. This brings the current tally to communism 1,
socialism 1, capitalism 0.
This one looks socialist by way of
being anti-capitalist, but you have to understand that capitalism isn’t about
“serving wealth”. It’s about having the
freedom to make your own living and conduct your own business.
In a
capitalist society, no one is forced to buy, trade or sell anything. If you want to grow crops and raise cattle
without selling any of it, you have that option. If you want to trade one of your cows for
some oranges, you can. If you want to
give the oranges away to a complete stranger, you can do that too. And if you want to sell some of your cattle
and invest in General Motors or British Petroleum, that’s your business. As a matter of fact, if you want to sell
every last item you own, give all the profit to some church and live in a big
commune with a bunch of other people who did the same thing, you won’t be the
first. You see, capitalism does not
restrict communism or socialism – it’s the other way around. So serving wealth is not part of
capitalism. If anything, who or what you
serve is always more restricted in communist and socialist communities than in
capitalist ones, and often serving God is completely frowned on to the extent
that the saying in Matthew 6:24 would more appropriately read “You cannot serve
God; mammon provided first come first serve”.
This, however, is not a mandate of either socialism or communism (not
all communists are Stalinists as Jim Jones and other Trotskyists have
proven).
It also must be said that there is
such a thing as pure avarice and it thrives in a capitalist society while it
would be squelched in a true communist one (which the world has yet to see on a
state level). Let’s face it, any
greedy “bloodsucker” (in the words of Malcolm X) caught in a communist or
purely socialist society would defect ASAP to a capitalist one (unless he could
figure out a way to get into the politburo where he could have both wealth and
power). For this reason, if any points
are to be given out here (and I’m not completely sure any are warranted), they’d
have to go to either socialism or communism.
That said, in a true communist
society, everyone would be working for the good of the community, so there
would be no serving of mammon. In a
socialist society, the government is looking out for the needs of the people
(if they stay true to the purpose of socialism), but there is some reliance on
accumulating wealth since you can’t tax the rich and give to the poor if there
aren’t any rich. Point communism.
This is very simple – the temple is
not the place to do business, and God hates more than anything for power-hungry
people to exploit others in His name.
This is clearly a matter of
location. There’s a place to do
business, there’s a place to worship and there’s a place to relieve one’s
self. Some things are fine to do in
certain places but wrong to do in others.
In this case, if Jesus hated all selling of goods for profit and He
wanted to lay a real beat down on everyone who was doing it, He would have gone
to the market. That wasn’t the
case. He simply didn’t want any of that
done in the temple. No points to anyone
for this.
And that leads us to Matthew25:31-46.
This is a home run for the
socialists. Two points – one for
redistribution of wealth and one because this passage is explicitly talking
about nations.
These are good verses to show
anyone who claims to be Christian but are disapproving of the welfare system or
any kind of foreign aid. Now for the
sake of rationality, I feel I should clarify this statement. A big problem with our country’s two party
system is the extreme polarity of the two parties which is often complicated by
members of each side searching tirelessly for the smallest reasons to be
different from the other. As a general
rule, democrats and republicans have no desire to work together for the better
of the country. They desire instead to
achieve a monopoly over the three branches of our government and thus implement
whatever policies they desire regardless of how anyone else feels about
it. The funny thing is, they’d actually
have a better chance of achieving this goal if they looked for ways to relate
to the other party or at least acted like they were trying to. That wouldn’t be as hard as you think
either.
Take welfare and foreign aid for
example. In the case of welfare,
democrats are all about it ‘bout it. For
this reason, you will nary if ever hear republicans speak favorably about
welfare, and even if they do, it’s only as a preface to a statement on how it
needs to be drastically reformed in order to make it harder for people to take
advantage of it (because too many people are getting money from the government
without even trying to get a jarb). This
makes it easy for the democrats to call the republicans cruel and selfish, but
the truth of the matter is, you will also find it hard to find a republican who
is honestly so heartless as to be against welfare altogether. But on the other hand, liberals don’t want
lazy people who could work a good job to take advantage of the welfare system
any more than republicans. Communists
certainly don’t feel this way, otherwise the symbol for the Soviet Union would
have been a couch and a pillow rather than a hammer and sickle. The famous Kennedy adage “ask not what your
country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” actually lines up
better with communism than capitalism.
The truth of the matter is, both sides see welfare as a way to provide
primarily for single mothers, but both sides also understand that there are
extreme circumstances in which others need it as well.
The last two passages I will take a
serious look at are parables, or metaphorical stories Jesus told. Now most of the Bible is open to
interpretation, but these passages especially due to their allegorical nature –
they were meant to be subject to the listener’s interpretation.
This parable is quite complicated
due to the significant differences of the two stories. There are a couple of questions that must be
answered before making any kind of application here. Is the “lord” in question a businessman as
Matthew’s version seems to indicate or a king as Luke’s version explicitly
states? And was Jesus associating the
lord with Himself and giving some insight about the kingdom of Heaven as
Matthew describes, or is the lord here representative of Herod Archelaus as
Luke’s version is almost certainly suggesting?
I see three ways to address this
problem – combine the two passages using the most specific terms from either to
determine a singular interpretation, determine which of the two is most likely
the accurate one and use the accurate one for interpretation, or assume that
these are two different stories and thus interpret them separately. For the fundamentalist who believes the
entire Bible is the work of one author (God – at least through direct
inspiration), the first method is the only acceptable one, so I’ll explore that
first.
If we’re
going to weave the two stories into one, we’ll have to assume that the “lord”
in Matthew was a king as Luke explicitly stated, and that the story is a
metaphor of the kingdom of Heaven as Matthew explicitly stated. We could then assume that Jesus was using
Herod (who was so cruel to his subjects that they begged Caesar Augustus to
remove him) as a metaphor for Himself.
Perhaps then Caesar is a metaphor for God the Father and this is why Jesus
was going to a “far country” to receive His kingdom? Even if you want to assume that the
similarities between Luke’s version and the story of Herod are completely
incidental, I’m not a fan of this method of interpretation. I’m going to assume that most of you are,
though, and I’ll humor you. If the lord
is a king, then I don’t see this parable as an endorsement of any of our three
contestants. On the contrary, this is an
example of an incredibly cruel and oppressive dictatorship, and one in which
the only benefit the dictator’s subjects can hope to attain is the approval of
their king, with the alternative being execution (Luke 19:27). This would not be the first time Jesus
painted a picture of Himself as a cruel tyrant (Matthew 5:17-48), with the intention
of teaching free will (He’s a tyrant to those who choose Him to be but a savior
and liberator to those who choose thus), and is not entirely unlikely
considering that this was a common theme in most of His parables. However, with this understanding, there’s
just no way to see this as an endorsement of capitalism, socialism or
communism. I guess communism would be
the closest given that countries that try to implement it always end up as
bureaucratic dictatorships and the dictators are often extremely cruel (Stalin,
Mao Tse-tung, and Castro for example).
Since dictatorship is never the goal of communism, however, and we’re
only looking at the ideas behind the systems, we can dismiss that fact for now.
I actually like the second way best
(call me a heretic if you want to), and will use it for my personal
score-card. I think these stories are
too similar to be separate occasions.
They are the same in basic composition and plot, and they are both
presented by Jesus just before the Passover preceding His crucifixion. That said, I’m gonna do what I always do when
Luke disagrees with one of the other gospel authors and assume that he was
wrong (further heresy, I know). He
wasn’t there, after all, and got his information second hand at best and more likely
from other documents (including the gospel of Mark). It’s possible that Luke or Luke’s source of
information for this story made the association between this parable and the
story of Herod on their own and it wasn’t really the way Jesus presented it. Regardless, I’m going to cite the Matthew
passage as accurate, in which case the “lord” is apparently a private property
owner and businessman. This would place
the story in a distinctly capitalist realm, with a private enterprise having
the freedom to make personal profit. It
would also mean that this story is a metaphor for the Kingdom of Heaven and the
lord is symbolic of Jesus or God. That
said, is this really an endorsement of capitalism? Since the owner of all the money is God, we
don’t have a case where earthly men own their own wealth. However, the freedom they have to invest the
lord’s wealth and make a profit with it would only be possible in a capitalist
economy, so yes, this is an endorsement for capitalism. Isn’t it strange how our first endorsement
for capitalism (Matt. 25:14-30) comes right before the biggest endorsement for
socialism (25:31-46)? Coincidence? We’ll explore that question later. But for now, my score card reads: Socialism –
3, Communism – 2, Capitalism – 1.
I’m only going to touch on the
third method of interpretation for this parable briefly since we’ve already
established the outcome from the two main interpretations. If you want to assume that the two passages
are describing two separate stories, then you’d have to give Capitalism a point
for the Matthew version and no points to anyone for the Luke version. Again, I don’t think this is the case, but
it’s not impossible.
And last but not least, we have The Parable of the Workers
in the Vineyard – Matt. 20:1-16
Another case of a private business
owner with unfettered power to run his business without any interference from
the government (or unions, for that matter).
It’s an example of capitalism in action, and the fact that Jesus clearly
designated this as an allegory for the Kingdom of Heaven makes this look like a
glowing victory for the capitalists.
Even so,
I have to say this seems like a weak case for capitalism. This isn’t a case where Jesus is promoting an
economic or political system (or anything else, for that matter). He’s teaching a heavenly lesson using an
earthly example. Nonetheless, I’ll give
the point to capitalism since the reference is there and it’s not shown in a
clearly negative light any way.
By my scorecard, that leaves us
with a final score of Socialism – 3, Communism – 2, and Capitalism -2. Not a blowout, by any means, but capitalism
is clearly the loser here and more-so when you consider that socialism and
communism are on the same team.
As I said earlier, this is not an
exhaustive list of verses that people will try to use to promote one of our
three competing systems, but the others I’ve heard are all pinned to pretty
lame arguments and not worth even the brief amount of time it would take to
rebut them.
Now, before I state my third main
point, I must reiterate that the little competition we just had was basically
about the ideals of socialism, communism and capitalism. You see, when you try to implement any of
these as a government, the picture changes dramatically. To start with…
3. Capitalism is not a form of government and
cannot possibly be used as a government.
- Socialism and
communism must of necessity be enforced and strictly regulated. Not so with Capitalism.
This is the point that changes
everything, because, as we’ve already discussed, Jesus often taught his
disciples and other listeners to practice those principles upon which socialism
and communism are based. He taught the
wealthy to share their riches with the poor and he taught people to work
together and live in harmony. He did
not, however, advocate these things as laws to be enforced on anyone. On the contrary, He constantly admonished
people to not judge each other.
“Practice good morals in your own life, but don’t judge others by them”
would be a good summary of his teachings.
This is where both liberals and
conservatives come across as hypocrites to me, for liberals are generally
repulsed by the idea of imposing morals on others while conservatives seem
intensely aroused by the idea.
Understand that by “imposing morals” I’m not talking about laws that
protect the people – that’s the purpose of government anyway. I’m talking about laws that go beyond
protecting the people to the point where they restrict people to a particular
moral code. For example, a law
restricting someone from driving a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol
is keeping streets safe for everyone else.
A law prohibiting alcohol altogether, on the other hand, can be nothing
more than an enforcement of a moral code (usually based on the Biblical quote
“wine is a mocker”). The same argument
is often made by liberals for things like prostitution and marijuana use –
while there should be regulations on them, making them altogether illegal is a
moral restriction that is not protecting the people.
In the case of socialism and
communism, the principles upon which they are based (charity, brotherly love,
unselfishness, etc.) are moral values that, when enforced, become restrictions
and I would argue the values are then eliminated altogether – forced charity is
not charity and forced love is not love.
For some reason, liberals and
conservatives switch roles when it comes to enforcing these values – liberals
suddenly demand that these values be the moral responsibility of the government
and conservatives suddenly find such a notion oppressive.
All that said, if we take a step
back from the politics of the situation and try to look at it from a Christian
perspective, we must understand that Jesus advocated free will, and while he
would teach good morals, he would never teach people to judge others by those
morals. With this new development, I
think a quick re-comparison of our three systems is in order.
This time, I’m going to ask three
questions about the systems and compare them based on the answers.
Question 1: Are the subjects of the country required to participate?
Communism – Completely. A system in which everyone shares all of
their resources isn’t really a system in which everyone shares all of their
resources if everyone doesn’t share all of their resources. (On a side note, this is why countries that
profess to be communist are never truly communist.)
Socialism – Only the wealthy. If you don’t have any resources to share,
that’s cool, you can have some of the rich guy’s. If you do have resources, you’re damn well
gonna share (as you should, according to Jesus).
Capitalism – Not at all. If you wanna work hard and make a lot of
money, you can, but no one’s forcing you.
If you want to live in the wilderness without any of the luxuries of a
comfortable lifestyle, then you have no need of capital and that’s your
prerogative.
Question 2: What if
you don’t want to participate?
Communism
– Imprisonment or death. If you don’t
want to participate in the withdrawing of resources from the central store,
then you’ll starve to death, because if you get food from anywhere else and
don’t put it in the central store you’re breaking the law (by practicing
private capitalism) and will be imprisoned.
This is the idea of true communism, which I’ve reiterated enough times
never truly exists on a state level.
Socialism
– If you’re wealthy and don’t want to participate, your wealth will be
forfeited to the government, in which case you won’t need to participate any
more anyway because the government will just give you stuff from the wealthy
guys who are participating.
Capitalism
– Nothing. Participation is not
required.
Question 3: How can the system be abused?
Communism – People don’t
work hard because there’s no incentive to do so, save for patriotism and
avoiding government punishment for not participating. There’s no reward for working harder.
In a
purely communist community with no one guarding the resources and monitoring
how much people put in or take out, someone could take way more than they need,
smuggle it out of the community (which would be easy if no one was strictly
monitoring imports and exports) and make an easy profit in a capitalist
community. Basically, the capitalist
community would grow richer and stronger while the communist community would
grow poorer and weaker. So you see, a
communist community is just as susceptible to greedy, selfish people as a
capitalist one. Even worse, in the
communist community, unless the government is strictly enforcing who and where
everyone works, the guy who takes all the resources could do so without
contributing anything at all.
As you can see, government
regulation and monitoring of labor, housing, distribution of food and other
amenities must be extremely strict. This
is why state bureaus must be established to oversee and supervise each function
of the government, in which case you no longer have communism, but instead a
bureaucracy in which the heads of the bureaus determine who benefits the most
and least. Of course it is necessary to
have one head bureau to oversee all the other bureaus, i.e. the politburo in
the Soviet Union, the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party in
China, the Council of State in Cuba,
etc. (again, none of these countries claim(ed) to be communist, but rather
are/were working towards communism). If
the chairman or head of this top bureau has no restraint (as is the case with
the three listed examples), then your country is no more than a
dictatorship.
Under
such dictatorships, large scale crimes against humanity have often occurred
under the pretext of quelling anti-communist/socialist movements for the
greater good. Examples of this are
Stalin’s genocide by way of starving five to eight million Russians who had
been deported to Ukraine as punishment for their anti-communism, Mao Tse-tung’s
similar starving of twenty to sixty million Chinese during his “Great Leap
Forward” campaign (along with murdering countless political opponents), and
Fidel Castro’s execution of thousands of his political opponents with or
without trial (which pales in comparison to the former two examples for the
simple reason that in land mass and population, Cuba pales in comparison to
China and the former Soviet Union).
Socialism – As with
communism, strict regulations are necessary to oversee the redistribution of
resources and heavy taxing of the upper class and big businesses. The system also often gives way to the bureau
system with the top dog having dictatorial powers and crimes like the ones
listed for countries trying to achieve communism occur. Let’s face it, the three dictatorships I
listed under communism aren’t really communist no matter how much they’re
trying and they know they’re not – they’re actually socialist. Adding to those, some countries in the past
have combined socialism with nationalism to produce a system called national
socialism – ever heard of it?
Capitalism – Greedy men can
build empires of wealth at the expense of the poor and buy out the allegiances
of other immoral men in positions of political and judicial power. Monopolies can choke out small businesses and
tycoons can basically reign supreme over entire regions, determining who gets
good jobs and good living arrangements and who doesn’t (of course anyone is
free to leave these regions whenever they want if they don’t like it, but that
doesn’t make everything all right).
People who are most in need of a job can be left without one as they are
passed over by others with far less needs but far better qualifications. On the other hand, people who are in great
need of a job and have great qualifications can be passed over by others with
less needs and less qualifications but better social connections (of course
this one happens just as frequently if not more so under socialism and
communism). Basically, all manner of
cruel and immoral actions can occur in a capitalist society, but as we’ve seen,
they can occur under socialism and communism as well. The big difference is that within socialism
and communism, they are far more likely to come from the government and on a
much wider scale.
4. Socialism relies on capitalism and cannot
exist without it.
- You can’t take from the rich and give to the poor if
nobody’s rich, and nobody gets rich outside of capital earning ventures,
including the chairmen of “communist” politburos.
All
government programs are funded by one of three methods – taxpayer’s money,
revenue generated by government owned and operated enterprises (which is
another form of capitalism – bureaucratic capitalism, if you will), or money
borrowed from other countries (generally “communist” China these days) or
independent corporations (like the Federal Reserve – and yes this is yet
another function of capitalism).
As you
can see, all three of these forms of revenue rely on capitalism. Let’s face it, you can’t tax people who don’t
have money, and you can’t make money with government owned enterprises if
nobody has money to spend on them.
Capitalism,
on the other hand, doesn’t require socialism or communism (obviously). It requires no form of government or economic
regulations at all. In a community where
capital is used (which is every country in the world), capitalism happens
naturally unless it is suppressed.
As for
communism, it does not need either capitalism or socialism either. In fact, the perfect scenario for communists
would be a world without money at all – only the resources necessary for a comfortable
and fulfilled life (which is also “capital” by the old definition), owned and
shared collectively by the whole community (or whole world, for
Trotskyists).
In conclusion…
If
there’s one thing I think American Christians need to understand outside of the
socialism/communism/capitalism discussion, it’s that there is no Christian
party in American politics and rightly so.
Growing up in an Independent Fundamental Baptist church, the terms
“Republican” and “Christian” were almost interchangeable to me as a child, and
I was shocked when I grew up to meet some Christians who professed to be
democrats. As it turns out, my skewed
opinions were simply a reflection of how disconnected my independent Baptist
community was from the rest of the world.
The truth is, the percentage of professed Christians in the U.S.
(estimated between 60 and 80 percent of the total population) who vote
republican is almost even with the percentage of those that vote democrat. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center
(pewresearch.org), 45% of Protestants and 53% of Catholics voted for democrats
in 2008 as opposed to 44% and 37% respectively who voted for republicans. Republican popularity has increased across
the board since 2008 and the current numbers reflect a slight lead for
Republicans in both categories, but certainly nothing substantial.
That
said, I think more Christians in American than ever before understand that they
must decide for themselves what party lines up most with what they believe, not
let the party determine what they believe.
And with that in mind, I would urge you all to try to approach each
issue without bias and, when possible, without passion.
If some of you balk at the latter
part of that statement, then you are the ones I intend it for the most. For some reason, many Americans treat passion
like Frank’s red hot sauce – they put it on everything. They perceive passion to be a virtue on par
with compassion, wisdom or love; but the truth is, passion is more like
faith. To quote Albert Einstein – “Faith
must be based on fact. Faith in fiction
is a damnable false hope”. Passion can
be applied to anything, but should be reserved for the things in life that
matter most, and one of those things is life itself. To put it as concisely as I can, there should
be a precious few things in your life that you are willing to give it up for.
When it comes to political issues,
and particularly to the ones I’ve put under scrutiny with this article,
conservatives and liberals both seem to take extremely prejudiced approaches
and they let their prejudice direct their policies and courses of action. Conservatives understand that socialism
restricts freedom and usually leads to oppressive dictatorships, so they view
liberals with socialist ideas (like President Obama) as evil. This is simply not true and to continue to
believe so is a travesty and will be harmful to our country in the long run. Socialism and socialists are not evil. Yes, horrendous crimes have happened under
the rule of socialist dictators, but crimes against humanity have also occurred
in democratic republics like the U.S.A. as well, i.e. the trail of tears,
slavery, the conquest of Hawaii and the Mormon extermination order in
Missouri. Incidentally, although no one
would ever suggest that the U.S. is a socialist country, in all of these cases
except for slavery you had government agencies enforcing oppressive rules
passed down from the President and Congress (or governor in Missouri) with the
goal of making the country better so they were essentially socialist
crimes.
So, you see, just as capitalism is
necessary in every socialist country, socialism occurs on some level in every
country in the world including the U.S.
I can’t stand the tactics Michael Moore employs while making his
documentaries – stating facts from one side without showing facts from the
other side is propaganda – but the omission of important facts does not make
the facts given false, and all of Moore’s films do include some truths, just as
did Joseph Goebbels’s Triumph of the Will. One fact from Sicko that American conservatives would be wise to remember when
discussing socialism is that we have many socialized institutions in our
country i.e. public schools, the postal service, police and fire departments,
the military, etc. These institutions
are all necessary and our country is stronger, safer and an all-around better
place to live because of them.
Liberals, on the other hand, must
realize the point I’ve made over and over during this article – that capitalism
is a necessary component of socialism and is not evil. Yes, selfishness and greed can thrive in a
country with a free market capitalist economy, but they can and do in socialist
ones as well. However, only when people
have the freedom to do what they want with their own money and property do true
charity and graciousness occur.
So if you want to promote
socialism, do so without hateful rants against capitalism. Instead, promote equality and the well-being
of all. If, on the other hand, you want
to promote capitalism – don’t. There’s
no point. Capitalism doesn’t need
promotion, it happens without anyone’s help.
So promote instead freedom (not just a free market but also a free
country) and with it equality.
Remember also, it’s not impossible
for all of the good elements that the three systems are based on to co-exist in
society. Free people certainly can be
charitable and unselfish. There is also
such a thing as a mixed economy in which people are free to buy and sell but
with certain minor restrictions.
So, finally, I leave you with a
choice. One verse – two translations. Apply them as you will – or not.
I Corinthians 13:3
King James Version - And though I bestow all my goods to feed the
poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it
profiteth me nothing.
American Standardized Version - And if I bestow all my goods to
feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it
profiteth me nothing.
