Being that recently I’ve been noticing a lot of socialist rhetoric coming out of the most interesting places, particularly on the issue of Healthcare when supporting the Euthanasia argument…’what are we going to do with all these people burdening the healthcare system?”

I thought I’d talk a little bit about the concepts of capitalism, since so many people seem to be totally and utterly blind to the simple concepts. I have to wonder what country these people went to school in…Russia?

When is Commnism Godly?

Here’s what one person emailed to us that shows how liberals get deceived into embracing communism:

As for capitalism, this is based on the decidedly anti-Christian concepts of selfishness, greed, and a direct and wholehearted rejection of faith.

Selfishness - as the desire of an individual to work only for his own benefit, and Greed - as his further desire to extract as much benefit for himself from any activity. And as for faith - self interest alone is not enough to drive a capitalist society; it is rational self interest that causes men to build great cities and tame matter to their purposes.

It is ironic that Soviet Russia was so often portrayed as the ‘godless commies’ and so on. Their communist philosophy fits much more closely with the Christian ideals of loving ones brother: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’

Capitalism is not ungodly, of course. It is the economic system that results from following God’s commandments not to steal or to lie. If I cannot steal, than the only way I can acquire goods or money is if I produce something that somebody else wants and is willing to trade with me for voluntarily. If I cannot lie, then I cannot defraud my trading partner about the quality or quantity of the goods or services I am offering to trade.

Self-interest is not sinful, of course, which is why God commands us to love others as we love ourselves. It is capitalism’s tendency to make men provide for their neighbors in order to advance their own self-interest that led Adam Smith, considered the father of economics, to remark that capitalism leads men to promote the welfare of society “as if led by and invisible hand”:

…every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.

God’s commandments against stealing and lying - which create capitalism - limit but do not eliminate greed. This is why God gave us the 10th commandment against covetousness. But capitalism does limit greed in two ways:

First, capitalism prevents a greedy person from taking more from somebody else than he can acquire by peaceful, honest, voluntary trade.

Second, capitalism may actually induce a greedy person to give something away, not because he loves or cares about the person he gives to but to acquire a good reputation which will make future trades more likely. We even have a word for this idea in the language of capitalism, it is called “goodwill”.

A greedy person always struggles with Proverbs 11:24, which says “There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.” Capitalism provides incentives to give, but it does not compel giving. That still requires a loving heart.

To overcome greed, one requires a self-interest enlightened by Biblical truth. God tells us that we are made in His image. This means that we are made to love others as well as ourselves. And this in turn means that we cannot be truly happy unless we give some of what God has given us to those less fortunate than ourselves. Even non-Christians understand this because God has written the law on the hearts of all men.

Now lets turn to communism. There are many ways to prove that communism does not work as a national economic system - besides just reading the newspaper - but let’s use the problem of greed that seemed to worry our liberal friend so much.

There is one situation in which the Bible tells us that communism works, it occurs in Acts 4:32-35:

32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.

33 And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.

34 Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,

35 And laid them down at the apostles feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

The key to understanding when communism works is to recognize that those who have the power to distribute goods must love the others for whom they act sacrificially. This is the type of love that Christ commanded Christians to have both within their church families and their natural families. See John 13:34-35; Ephesians 5:24-25.

A second requirement is that property donated to the common store not be taken by force, but rather be donated voluntarily. This requirement appears in Acts 5:1-13, in the story of Ananias and Sapphira.

We are all communists within our families. The father, as the spiritual head, has the authority to distribute property as the family members have need, and the responsibility to teach his family to give of what they have in love for the benefit of other family members. But even within a family, the father does not have an absolute right to expropriate a child, and what right he does have is extinguished completely once the child reaches his majority and undertakes his own support. The duty of loving sacrificially within a family, however, remains in effect for life.

The two requirements for communism to work are never met when communism is implemented as the economic system for a nation. First, communist governments never rely on their citizens to donate property voluntarily - they take it at the point of a gun. Second, they never distribute property according to the needs of their citizens.

Two problems prevent communist governments from distributing property to meet the needs of their citizens. The first is greed. In a communist system, there is no incentive to give anything you have or control away. Just the opposite, the way you acquire control over goods or services is not by inducing others to trade with you voluntarily but by pleasing those in power, so you can acquire more power yourself. Communism actually provides an incentive for people to be greedy - so that they have more power. It is possible to demonstrate that communist economic sytems are based on covetousness by modeling a communist system with game theory and abstract calculus.

The second problem is just as important. Communist governments have no practical way to determine what the needs of their citizens are. The real problem of economics is a problem of distributed information. Each individual knows best what he can produce and what he wants to consume. Under capitalism, this distributed information is captured in the price system, by which people auction their labor and capital and bid on resources, goods, and services. But under communism there is no price system, because there are no markets. As a result, the knowledge that each individual possesses never makes it into the central committee’s five-year plan.

It is interesting to note that once the Soviet Union disintegrated we were able to find out what the distribution of wealth was across their society. To everybody’s surprise, it was no different than under capitalism. The top few percent had most of the wealth. The difference was the size of the pie - the amount of economic production or what we call GDP, gross domestic product.

Because capitalism gives incentives for people to produce and captures the distributed information that each individual possesses, capitalism produces a much larger quantity of goods and services for people to consume. Even though the poor still have a small relative share of the total production, because production is much greater under capitalism the absolute share the poor acquire would make them the equal of the middle classes under commuism.

The fact that the poor receive less under a communist national economic system confirms its sinfulness. Not only does national communism begin with sin - because it begins with stealing and provides no means to ensure that those who wield the power to distribute goods love sacrificially those for whom they act - but also it ends with sin, by oppressing the poor and giving greedy men an incentive to aggrandize arbitrary power to themselves.

To sum up, the difference between capitalism and communism as national economic systems is the size of the pie and how you get a bigger piece of it. In capitalism the pie is much bigger, and you make your piece bigger by producing something that others want to trade for. In communism, the pie is much smaller, and you make your piece bigger by pleasing those who have a bigger piece than you do, whether or not you produce anything that truly benefits anybody else.

One last thing we should say about communism within church families. Neither Paul nor the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) taught or required communism within churches. It seemed to arise spontaneously in Jersusalen as a result of the unique time and circumstances within that church.

In Jerusalem, communism was adopted during a time of great upheaval, change, and persecution. Thousands were coming to the church, and the Gospel was being confirmed with signs and wonders. People were leaving homes and jobs, sometimes coming from foreign lands as with those who joined the church at Pentecost. Nevertheless, it was the church at Jerusalem that always found itself without a surplus, dependent on the churches in which communism was not practiced. The Pilgrims learned the importance of the incentives provided by the free market system when, after their first year in the New World, they threw out the communist model and adopted private property.

Perhaps the reason that liberals stumble at communism is that, because they don’t know Christ, they do not have the Holy Spirit to teach them how to rightly divide scripture. They see a system that arises from the rules God has commanded for families and make the mistake of thinking it can be transplanted to government. They discount man’s sinful nature. After all, if man was sinful, he really would need a Savior! This liberals can never admit.

This is why the only way to defeat liberalism is to be available to the Holy Spirit to bring the lost to Christ. Have you shared your faith this week?