The problem with any form of “Christian socialism” is that it misunderstands sphere sovereignty and the purpose of the state. God ordained three governments in the beginning: family, church, and state. Each government has its peculiar functions. It is not hard to find the duties of each sphere laid out in Scripture, e.g., fathers are responsible for raising, providing for, and educating their children; the church’s elders are responsible for the ministry of Word and sacrament; and the state is an avenger of God’s justice and a terror to evil doers.
The socialist wants the state to take care of the poor. I agree the poor (at least the deserving poor, that is, those who are unable to work and thus provide for themselves) should be cared for. Scripture has a great deal to say about that. But to whom are these commands given? The socialist and the biblical Christian both want the poor cared for, and can point to a Scriptural duty to do so. But what the socialist cannot do is show from Scripture that it is the state’s function to provide health and welfare services.
When the state becomes an agent of wealth redistribution, it usually ceases carrying out the functions God actually assigned it (punishing evil doers/criminals) and encroaches on the other spheres. Because statist welfare is inherently bureaucratic and impersonal, it ends up subsidizing and incentivizing all the wrong things. Take socialism to its logical conclusion and suppose the state begins providing a universal basic income (UBI). This would totally crash the economy and send us all into a poverty-ridden tailspin. If you pay people to not work, guess what happens? Too many people will choose not to work. The supply of goods and services will plummet, sending prices through the roof. Suppose you have auto mechanics all over the country working for an average of $50k per year. The state comes along and offers them $48k per year to not work at all. What’s going to happen? There will be no more auto mechanics. The men who used to fix cars will sit home, live off government welfare, and play video games all day. Meanwhile, cars will continue to break down – but now there is no one to fix them. And if you can find someone still working as an auto mechanic, he will probably charge multiples of what he used to charge and it will take far longer to get the work done.
Apply this same logic to every other kind of work. The more the government tries to control the economy, the more it subsidizes laziness, the more it interferes with supply and demand, the worse everything gets. Socialism removes every incentive to work hard, to provide a good quality product at a low/competitive price, to innovate, the invest. And this why socialism – no matter how well-intentioned – always ends in poverty. If you tax productive people to subsidize unproductive people, you will get fewer and fewer productive people, and more and more unproductive people. As Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” It does not matter how much the socialist cares for his neighbor. His plan will still backfire and drag us all down into poverty. This is why socialism always ends up with breadlines, starvation, and war. Socialist nations have to build walls to keep citizens in; free nations have to build walls to keep people out. That tells you all you need to know.
Softer forms of socialism can stem some of this damage, obviously. Maybe only some segments of the economy are tightly controlled or regulated by the state. Maybe the welfare programs stop short of a universal basic income. Socialism is still a prosperity-killing philosophy. Our current affordability crisis is largely a function of the fact that we already have way too much socialism in our system. Going further in a socialist direction will make it worse. Just compare what happened over the last generation to the price of TVs to the price of college education or health care. The state does not regulate the TV market – the TV market is largely a free market. The result is that TVs keep getting better and cheaper. Meanwhile, those parts of the economy with the most state interference – like education and healthcare – keep getting more expensive while quality declines. Historically, there are no exceptions to this rule. Socialism always make life worse. Free market competition always makes life better. Housing is another example. Onerous regulations have made starter homes too expensive to build with too little profit margin. Regulations alone add $100k+ to the average home in California. That’s enough to crush the American dream.
We need to stop redistributing income – whether from taxpayers to corporations (corporate welfare, aka, crony capitalism, is a major drag on the economy), from young to old (Boomers are now voting themselves tax breaks and doubling down on benefits for themselves, at the expense of their children and grandchildren), from men to women (often through family court and welfare), etc. It is simply not the state’s job to pick winners and losers. It is not the state’s job to plan or control the economy. It is not the state’s job to give handouts to able-bodied people who simply don’t want to work.
Socialism, consistently carried out, would require inheritance taxes that make wealth transfer from one generation to the next impossible. Socialism is an egalitarian philosophy – but the only way to make people equal when it comes to inheritance is to zero out any inheritance at all that would otherwise be passed along at death. This makes it impossible to build a legacy across generations. I’ve often said that our goal should be to live in a society where the book of Proverbs can come true – a society where hard work and responsibility generally pay off, while laziness and crime are fitly punished. But socialism is antithetical to the book of Proverbs. And this is certainly seen in the realm of inheritance – socialism makes it impossible for the righteous man to leave an inheritance for his children and grandchildren.
Of course, free markets must be moral markets. Only lawful goods and service can be exchanged in a properly constituted market. No sex workers. No buying and selling of body parts or children. No drug dealers/witches marketing their mind-altering substances. But otherwise, buyers and sellers are free to exchange goods and services with one another as they see fit. The state can never outsmart the market.
Further, there should be no state-fixed interest rate and no fiat currency that can be easily inflated. Interest rates should be set by the free market. This prevents those with insider knowledge from gaming the system, e.g., bubbles and crashes. It keeps the stock market from distortions. It keeps the state living within its means. It keeps us honest.
Obviously, socialism requires big government. This is contrary to the intentions of our founding fathers who wanted limited government, with power widely dispersed amongst different branches and levels of government to prevent tyranny. In 1 Samuel 8, Samuel warned people that a tyrannical king would tax them as high as 10% – as much as God’s tithe. Today, a 10% tax rates seems almost absurdly low, precisely because we have become so accustomed to statist tyranny. If we used 1 Samuel 8 as a general equity principle for states today – governments should not tax their people more than God does his – it would dramatically reduce the scope of the state and the control of government exercises in our lives.
Socialism is popular today for the same reasons it always has appeal – it appeals to our basest instincts. It appeals to the anxious who just want to be taken care of and who will foolishly trust in Caesar for security. The state will set up a safety net that catches the irresponsible and makes sure they do not have to pay any consequence for their bad decisions. Socialism does not just socialize/redistribute wealth; it socializes/redistributes the consequences of foolish decision-making. But if you protect fools from the consequence of their bad decisions, you will get more and more fools making more and more bad decisions. Further, socialism appeals to the envious – those who cannot stand the thought of falling behind their neighbor and who demand “equality,” not just of opportunity but of outcomes. The reality is that most people only think about how they can benefit from a socialist system – free housing! free healthcare! free education! free food! The supposed benefits of socialism are touted by clever politicians seeking to bribe voters. But the costs of socialism have to be counted as well. Where will all this “free” stuff come from? “There is no such thing as a free lunch,” as the old saying goes. Someone is paying for every “free” thing the government gives you – and in that sense, the socialist system is predicated on theft, robbing from one group to give to another. But several realities are being ignored here. If most people were told they will pay more into the socialist system than they will receive from it, would they still be in favor of it? Do you want to pay for other people’s healthcare? Other people’s cost of educating their children? And even if you did want to be generous in this way, would you want that generosity to be coerced through the mechanism of the state, rather than freely given? There is nothing virtuous about coerced charity – indeed, that is not charity at all. God loves a cheerful giver, not a dutiful taxpayer into a socialist system. While socialists will use flowery language to describe how the state cares for everyone in a socialist system, if you do not go along with it, you will find out very quickly that the “caring” state will not hesitate to fine you, imprison you, or even kill you. There is nothing generous, caring, or loving about a socialist system. We need to remember: All political power comes out of the barrell of a loaded gun. And the power to tax is the power to destroy.
If the civil magistrate is to reward the good, along with punishing the evil, per Romans 13, in socialism, it does the exact opposite. Think back to who liked group projects in high school: Lazy students love group projects because the diligent will cover from them and do the work for them. They will get the grade without doing the work. Group projects invite the lazy to cheat by skimming off the work of others. But this is exactly what socialism does: It turns the entire economy into a group project. And this is why socialism is always disastrous. It’s like assigning every student the same grade, whether they do the work or not. Also, keep in mind that socialism increases the costs of everything because socialism uses the state’s bureaucracy as a “middle man” between providers and consumers. That bureaucracy has to be paid for – and bureaucrats never come cheap. Once in power, bureaucrats have all kinds of ways of hanging on to that power even if they make a string of terrible decisions. The people will pay for those decisions, but the bureaucrats who made them will not. The bureaucrats will find a scapegoat and move on to the next bad decision. We saw this with Obamacare – one reason Obamacare drove up health insurance costs is the necessity of lining the pockets of the government workers who administer the broken system, and who cannot be held accountable.
It is so odd that many young people today are embracing socialism, given that everything they actually like is the product of the free market. Do you really think a state-run coffee shop will be better than Starbucks (or whatever your favorite coffee shop is)? Do you really think state-run grocery stores can do better than Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods? Young people love to order off Amazon and get food delivered by Door Dash – but socialism destroys these businesses and the spirit that created them. The free market gave us the iPhone and Advil. Socialist nations rarely invent or produce anything comparable. How can anyone who has been to the DMV think that what we really need is more state control of our lives? Even heavily regulated industries like airlines are better now than they would be if the entire airline industry was taken over by the state. Whatever you think of the US Post Office, isn’t it good that we at least have the option to send packages by UPS or FedEx right now? A socialist system eliminates choice because choice means competition and competition means inequality. Socialism is just statism – it is the idolatry of the state. It’s motto is “In Caesar we trust.” But making Caesar into a god always ends in despair. Our young people need to be better educated in basic history and economics – but since most of them were educated in a socialist system, it’s not surprising that they are told the truth about socialism’s flaws.
Sometimes those who advocate for a “Christian socialism” point to Jesus as the trump card. Jesus fed the hungry for free. He healed the sick without charging a deductible. Wasn’t Jesus a socialist? This form of argumentation is, frankly, too dumb for words. It’s like saying, “Jesus did not get vaccinated so we should not get vaccinated. Jesus did not drive a car so we shouldn’t either.” Yes, it is true Jesus fed hungry people and healed sick people. But he did not feed or heal everyone. And you know what else he did not do? Collect taxes. Or raise taxes. Or redistribute wealth. Caesar is not Jesus – and shouldn’t try to be. Rather than trying to be Jesus, Caesar should seek to obey Jesus. Jesus commanded Caesar to be an agent of his justice in punishing criminals, but he did not authorize Caesar to run an entire economy, steal from one group to give to another, or usurp functions he assigned to other spheres. Jesus was not a socialist. Caesar shouldn’t be either.
Socialist policies always have unintended consequences, all of them bad. For example, the “War on Poverty” that started with LBJ’s reforms in the 1960s actually created far more poverty. And a big reason for that is that we started to subsidize illegitimacy/fatherlessness, especially amongst inner city blacks. The result was the destruction of the back family, a catastrophic rise in black fatherlessness, and a disastrous increase in black criminality. The consequences of socialism are already all around us – and every single one of those consequences is bad. We do not need to experiment with socialism; we have already seen the havoc it can wreak.
For people to fulfill their God given potential, they have to take responsibility for themselves. People need to take ownership of their lives. They need to exercise agency. They need to have skin in the game. A state that takes on the burden of cradle-to-grave security for its people infantilizes them. People need to experience the burdens and privileges of ownership and accountability. They need to know they will live with the consequences of their actions, and that not all lifestyles are equally valid or fruitful. Even the pagan Aristotle understood that property held in common is never cared for the same way people care for what belongs to them personally. Everyone takes better care of their own car than a rental car. But when the entire economy is a “rental,” everything gets neglected because nothing is attached to personal responsibility. When the state own everything, everything goes to hell.
Socialists will sometimes counter that a free market system is somehow uniquely premised on greed (exactly how this is so is never explained, but it usually has something to do with “profit motive”). The reality is that a free market system is ethical as a system, even if the people participating in that system are not ethical. The state’s role in a free market economy is to ensure just weights and measures, which is typically accomplished through very modest regulation that keeps the playing field level. But here’s the key: Whatever motivates a particular individual in a free market system, whether greed or altruism, the only way to succeed in a free market is to serve others. You have produce a good/service people want to purchase at a price they are willing to pay, or you will fail. Whereas socialism unavoidably encourages vice, the free market requires a kind of virtue to succeed.
The bottom line: Only irresponsible, lazy losers advocate for socialism. It is the economic system of the envious. It appeals to anxious women (who put their trust for security in Caesar) and effeminate men (who are willing to let Caesar become protector and provider). It has been tried many times in history and never once worked. It has never once improved a people’s quality of life. By contrast, a free market system that rewards hard work and skill, that stresses personal responsibility and agency, that requires competition to produce the best goods/services at the best prices, has consistently improved people’s quality of life. Socialism has dragged masses into poverty; the free market has lifted millions out of poverty. There’s no question which system is more biblical, more just, more productive, more human, more prosperous.
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