Socialism in this thread is defined only as a system of people making a self-organized system of making use of resources, with claims on every other person and what he owns. There is no authority, policing, or property system.
I don’t mean Soviet communism, Chinese state capitalism, or Swedish social democracy. That’s all.
I was inspired to make this thread, because I am reading Alexander Gray’s The Socialist Tradition (just started) and because Hugo Chavez invoked Christ as the first socialist a few years ago.
Here’s a very vague and general outline of views put forth by two sides:
- Early Hebrews were socialists.
Hebrews believed themselves to be descended from one God, thus related to each other and each other’s direct brother and sister. Therefore, as one single family, they had all the claim on each other’s household possessions as fellow family members. Like a child is the ward of his parents or guardians, the less capable members of the extended Jewish family are direct responsibility of other more capable Hebrews, who must use authority and responsibility over their own matters.
Early Hebrews had a natural protection of possessions and a person’s claim on them
It is obvious that Thou Shalt Not Steal means that one Hebrew owns such and such and can not be deprived by force of it by another. If we are to think that members of a family can have claim on what they all own, then it can’t be stealing, since its yours as well. Yes, Hebrews were an extended family. They were also grown up responsible adults, who had to take care of themselves. It’s not about children sharing toys, it’s about taking care of one’s donkey, one’s sheep, or one’s cows with care, so that one’s sustenance is maintained. It was a serious crime to even covet another man’s domestic animal.
Any natural society has basic rules about allowing people to have their means of livelihood, and the Jews were no different.
- There was an actual socialist community of Jews called the Essenes.
Among the Essenes, all possessions were surrendered to the community, for all their free and unhindered use. Anybody could live under any roof, take what anybody else had, and claim anything for his use at any time. There was no marriage, and a man had the complete non-obstruction in having sex with any woman of any age he wanted at any time. It was the purest socialism ever known.
The Essenes were a cultist revolt against human nature
The Essenes were just four thousand people who were all thin, malnutritioned, and starved, who barely survived on a day to day basis. It is believed that they all perished, and barely made a living out of their poor agricultural output. The Essenes had no social culture beyond bare subsistence; no storytellers, prophets, past-times, or rituals. It is possible that the Essenes started out as just an experiment by a societal elite which later failed horribly. Yes, Essenes are perhaps a proof that socialism can exist. It’s perhaps also proof that it is a very very bad idea in any larger and advanced human society, making it completely irrelevant.
- Christ preached giving up possessions and handing them to the poor
Christ was thus against claiming any wealth as your own and believed only the claim of everybody else in society mattered, not one man’s on his own things. Else, it is a sign of greed and materialism and love for worldly things.
Christ’s favour for charity was not the same thing as condemning property
Charity is just a simple voluntary act, and not about having a claim on what anybody else owns. There is absolutely nothing in Christ’s teachings that suggests the act of owning things and respecting that others own things is wrong. And Christ himself enjoyed drinking, feasting, and relishing and was not some ascetic who hated the idea of joy in life for one’s own sake.
Question for posters here:
-
Do you think early Judeo-Christian beliefs hardly have anything at all that can be twisted to support ideas of Marx, Engels, or Proudhon?
-
Do you think there are at least hints of believing property to be secondary to some collective claim, (but with those ideas reflecting nascent notions from less developed societies that were corrected later in history)?
