Jesus was no socialist

February 2, 2022. To start, the extreme and almost inevitable form of socialism is communism, which is a profoundly atheistic theory. A socialist who does not recognize this or worse, rejects this idea, is deluding himself or lying to you.

A year ago, Prager University posted a video lesson, asserting that Jesus was not a socialist. Matt Walsh made a similar argument three years ago. Of course, many people did not like this cogent analysis. For example, the linked critique posed socialism as protecting working people from people who earned money "by not working," meaning that they used wealth rather than labor as capital. This goes directly to Marx who believed that there were two ways -- and only two ways -- to create wealth, and those were land and labor. Marx was wrong and those who follow his logic start with a false premise that can lead to the most ridiculous sorts of claims, such as this who don't do physical labor are not working, or that land must be equally distributed among all people, consistent with the Catholic Church's concept of "universal destination," which poses the impossible contradiction of private property and perfectly equal distribution of same. To wit, if you have "too much" private property, e.g., land, some of it must be taken from you, refuting the basic concept of private property and making all property the collective good distributed by a central government. In this day, this means some group like the United Nations. Yeah, right, good luck with that.

The same critic tried to rationalize the parable of the laborers in the vineyard all being paid the same as an example of how everyone who dies in faith, even the late arrivals, will share the same grace, not just the chosen people of Israel. Twisting, "The first will be last and the last will be first," to Mae this argument requires more than faith; it requires a massive leap in faith, while ignoring what just happened: The late-hired workers were moved to the head of the line.

Couple that with the pope'er recent comments (also here) on the role of taxes and tax collectors in wealth re-distribution, and we have the perfect storm of denying the role of personal charity, using socialism as a method to re-distribute wealth, and misunderstanding the "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" teaching.

ROME — Pope Francis encouraged tax collectors on Monday to keep working to redistribute wealth and fund social services that help the poor, saying their efforts are a “guarantee of equality” that helps the common good.

Francis noted that the taxman is often looked at with suspicion and scorn, but he said that, done well, taxation “is a sign of legality and justice.”

“It must favor the redistribution of wealth, looking out for the dignity of the poorest who risk always ending up crushed by the powerful,” he said. “Let us work so that the culture of the common good grows and — this is important — so that the universal destination of goods is taken up seriously.”

The reference to the universal destination of goods is a tenet of Catholic social teaching that holds that the goods of Creation should be destined for humankind as a whole, while allowing for private property. Francis has frequently invoked it to demand a reform of today’s “perverse” global economic system that destroys the planet and exploits the poorest, while the wealthy reap the profits.

Francis has previously praised Italy’s free health care system, most recently while he was recovering from intestinal surgery in July at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, a cornerstone of Rome’s public hospital system.

This from a man who has more wealth than 7.5 billion people, a lavish city of his own, and can’t even distribute to the poor almost all the money he collects for the poor; 90% goes to the Vatican. And has probably never paid a tax in his life. To paraphrase our long ago secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, in responding to the pope's position on birth control: he no playa da game no maka da rules.

Taxes have long been levied to support the government, not the people. What the government does to protect the people and the country is the reason people will willingly protect taxes: Taxes are for the national defense from external enemies and for police and judicial processes that produce the real fairness and social justice that progressives today claim to be a matter of equal outcomes achieved by highly unequal treatment or processes.

As a matter of curiosity, in my research, a few of my projects explored the problems that arises when the government increases or uses taxes to re-distribute wealth. Not only does the government do a very poor job of re-distribution, partially because of the administrative take from the taxes but also because our research showed clearly that these re-distributive taxes lead to a reduction of personal charity. And once the government 'cut' they take in the re-distribution of taxes is considered, the result is a net loss in wealth to be re-distributed by the government involvement.

This also harkens back to the 1987 bishop's letter on the economy, which based its recommendations about the economy on a false premise when they wrote that people who were poor were poor "through no fault of their own," thereby rejecting the very concept of free will and ignoring the idea of poor choices made by people.

Another video I showed in class cited Nelson Mandela, the South African leader, as claiming that, "No one is born poor," using that assertion that -- just as the pope assumes -- that the "rich" are making people poor. The fact of this important matter is that every person is born poor -- and dies poor! No person has any wealth at birth and no person takes wealth past his death. As further fact, the maintenance of that wealth during one's life is an act of stewardship. Ensuring that all wealth needs is equally distributed -- and then consumed until there is no wealth -- is a zero-sum death wish without a strong model for wealth creation. And this model become unworkable if all wealth is appropriated.

The zero-sum concept of wealth that underlies the universal destination concept may have had some value when all wealth was measured in physical things, things like land, jewels, gold and other tangible, desired, marketable goods, but that concept also ignored the fact that none of this 'wealth' could create any more wealth. Yes, you might find more gold, but that is not wealth creation, and it leads to wars in claiming the land where gold can be found. Wealth creation requires human ingenuity, not just labor, and poverty eradication requires wealth creation, not just zero-sum wealth re-distribution. Then again, that is exactly what 200 years of capitalism has done: create wealth and reduce the percent of people living in poverty world-wide.

From February 2021, see also: Losing faith in institutions.

NOTE: Watch Jordan Peterson on Parler.