Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 10 years, you must have seen the specter of socialism making its usual cyclical recurrence. You may have likewise seen some articles and stories written by politicians and ministers in some cases advocating the prospective egalitarian benefits of socialism.
We know why this happens. There is no government on Earth that is without huge flaws. Thus, our USA is no different. We have, in our times of anger, of polarized, political infighting and of ignorance, been brought to the brink of a nation in divided decline.
To better understand the rise of socialism and specifically, the party based in contradiction better known as “Democratic Socialism”, it is necessary to clarify the mistakes of an overreaching government and its quasi-religious origins.
Bigger Government Equals “God by Proxy”
Per global statistics, there is a relationship between a nation’s developmental stage and the religious beliefs within the population. More specifically, the less developed a nation is, the more likely they are inclined to harbor some sort of religious faith. The converse relationship is also true. The more advanced a civilization or nation is, the less religious they tend to be. Why?
In less developed countries, there is typically a formula that makes its citizens more amenable to religious worship. This goes to the heart of the desire for worshiping any deity. To clarify, humans gravitate towards looking for answers in God when they are in dire situations.
Countries in the third world often live under oppressed and sometimes very dangerous circumstances with drug cartels and gang violence sometimes in control of fragmented, corrupt pseudo-governments. Such countries also provide ripe fodder for the rise of demagogues and dictators who future dole out all manner of evils to their citizens.
We, all humans, seek some sort of protection or shield when we have desperate needs that come between life and death. To put it plainly, regardless of any testament or witness, the “need for God”, for a disembodied savior, comes from people in our very imperfect world, suffering and in great need of answers.
More importantly, humans need solutions. When times and events become unbearable, we tend to revert to “sheep” mode where we relinquish our egos and instead defer to God or our present-day secular government to “save” us.
In more developed nations, we tend to look towards the government for social justice and regulation as well as matters of universal health and security. We have, in our present and very imperfect society, developed governments as “God by Proxy”.
Communism and its Legacy of Evil
You know the political arguments. One side of the aisle says that “bigger government means less freedom and growth”. The other side says that “bigger government yields greater stability and equity for all”.
The role of government throughout our global history has segued between tribal chieftains, to religious and secular monarchies, to modern day democracies, religious states, blended socialist states, fully socialist states to full blown communism.
The secular and non-secular sins of full-on Marxism (Communism) and core socialism are well-known. During communism’s infestation on global governments during the 20th century alone, millions of its own citizens were not only persecuted for their religious beliefs but an unfathomable number of its citizens were held in prison, executed or forced to starve. This is well documented if we just examine the former Stalinist U.S.S.R and China during the reign of Mao Tse Tung. At a low estimate, both regimes combined resulted in over 30 million of its own citizens dead via torture, executions and forced starvation. If we take this number into perspective, both communist regimes killed more people than the genocide of Hitler’s Holocaust.
Why does pure communism equate with such heinous, evil atrocities as a byproduct? The heart of traditional communism is not freewill towards any ideology religious or otherwise. Communism requires allegiance solely to the secular state. There are no free elections, and the worship of any religion is forbidden. It is a hypocritical idolatry in religious terms. It is the worship of the king and country where the citizens are not free and the king is an unremovable, corrupt tyrant of the most foul.
Karl Marx, one of the authors of “The Communist Manifesto” and an atheist by all manner of definitions once wrote “Religion is the opium of the masses, ironically, socialism is really an unachievable utopia sold to masses of people in desperation. By his own rationale, “Socialism is the propaganda for the masses”.
Communism vs Socialism – What’s the difference?
As with all history, the mistakes of our collective past has to continually be taught to descendant generations to prevent the many political spins that can encase premises such as socialism into more palatable forms for the masses.
Some fundamental differences between traditional communism and socialism have to do with the ownership of personal property, business assets and religious worship. In a nutshell, communism represents the largest form of strictly secular government which owns all property and forbids religious worship. The intention of communism is to foster a utopian-like elimination of social and business hierarchical class to promote a more equitable, controlled & stable society.
Socialism can be considered a dilute form of communism.
Under secular socialist rule, the ownership of personal property is permissible, but business assets are controlled and distributed/allocated to the population by the government. Changes in social and business hierarchical classes are permissible and thus, do exist.
Socialism vs Religion
Unlike countries under communist rule, religious worship in socialist countries is permissible although there are some contradictions between default socialist ideologies and religious ideologies.
As mentioned above, communist laws prohibit the ownership of business and private property. Socialism likewise has limits on property ownership.
However, no such prohibitions are stated within any of the Abrahamic religious doctrine. There are many instances within the Bible and the Quran where references to property ownership are explicitly stated as well as laws prohibiting the theft of private property.
There are also irreconcilable differences regarding social classes and hierarchies. Socialism and its precursory Communist manifesto promote a flattening or lessening of distinctions between the economic social classes. And while, on its surface, this may seem consistent with the core religious doctrine, there are some problems here.
Socialism provides economic rewards regardless of one’s contribution. When the government parses out funds to reward those in need, there is a distinction between funds that represent charity for those actually in need vs funds that represent benefits to those simply for being citizens.
All Abrahamic religions promote the act of giving to charities. The socialist inconsistency in this case contradicts spiritual benefits for atonement and one’s deference to higher authority for redemption. In religion, such ideology is not exclusivity but rather the receipt of a redemption for deeds and for a recognition to behave in a virtuous manner.
Democratic Socialism: Communism’s “Wanna-Be”
Finally, we come back to our earlier topic. What exactly is democratic socialism? In the simplest terms, democratic socialism is an embedded socialist state within a democracy. The government is indeed larger with more taxation funding social, medical and economic welfare programs for its citizens.
Secular and non-secular critics of this form of government cite that it cannot be implemented within a large-scale capitalist economy such as the United States of America. The concern is that socialism, in any form, can pose a threat to the USA’s fundamental capitalist mission since socialist programs would not remain static in growth and thus could “tip the needle” toward full transformation of the USA into a fully socialist state.
Other complaints relate to its proposed implementation and the significant, added cost of transforming such a large government and the many problems of its proposed administration. Lastly, other black markets would likely develop as would the declines in global productivity and prosperity. Stagnation is thus thought to be the likely result of any form of democratic socialism within the USA.
Are any forms of communism/socialism reconcilable with religion?
Aside from the economic issues, and the aforementioned ideological issues with religious doctrine, we can also see an existential threat to religious belief in socialist countries due to the aforementioned “larger government/god by proxy” effect.
As stated earlier within this article, declines in religious faith are a default byproduct of the God By Proxy effect. However, it’s important to understand that religion should not solely be driven by citizens or displaced migrants in despair. While religion is intended to help people remain hopeful in times of turmoil, the core principles of the Bible and the Quran are to teach people how to live in all circumstances.
Much of the democratic socialist proponents often point to Scandinavia as their model for a democratic socialist state but they seldom mention any religious declines in the Scandinavian block countries or in socialist countries in Western Europe. Why? Proponents of Democratic Socialism are just that. They do not advocate for living within the tenets of any religion because again, they are simply falling in line with their belief in the God by Proxy effect.
Was Jesus really a Socialist?
One of the most glaring and oft repeated errors cited by many including many ministers is the comparison of Jesus’ teachings and socialist doctrine.
While not all ministers are equally educated, even some highly educated ministers have not fully understood the ramifications of what they proclaim.
In Matthew 22:12-22, there is the noteworthy question from the Pharisees and the answer from Jesus on the matter of paying taxes to Caesar:
Pharisees: Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax[a] to Caesar or not?”
Jesus: “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Another noteworthy interchange on this topic comes in Luke 12:13-14 where we have the following discussion with someone asking Jesus about the rights to receive an inheritance (identified as the “Teacher” in this case). In this excerpt the requestor is described by Jesus as greedy.
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
Jesus was never quoted or characterized as being an advocate for redemptions or receiving rewards for anything other than atonement and faith in God. As such, there is no evidence or support that Jesus would have advocated for receiving money just for being in the world.
Postscript: According to a 2019 Pew Research study, there are correlations between income levels and belief in God. On the surface of this study, it appears that the more educated and economically wealthy one is, the less inclined one is to worship God.
However, one variable or set of variables that remain absent from this study is the effect and promotion of secular living in the higher economic brackets of our current 21st century. As mentioned earlier, in practice, at least in the world of today, increases in religious faith are a function of desperation. However, is this really the way the world should be viewing and, more importantly, living with God?
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