I completely agree that real socialism is an ideal. In fact I was uniquely privileged to experience life in a socialistic community for 5 years back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I loved almost all aspects of the communal life. The circumstance was on Kibbutzim in Israel. The Kibbutz system was formed in the early 1900’s out of necessity when small groups of Jews were returning to what was then referred to as Palestine and were buying land to farm and raise their families. At the time the area was pretty wild and they were forced to group together and share the responsibilities. For example in a group of say 40 adults perhaps 2-3 would stand guard, 3 or 4 assigned to cook, a few had the responsibility of watching and educating the kids and most everybody else would work the land or in the factory. Everything was shared equally and because of the small close knit community peer pressure insured that everybody did their part. By the time I live on Kibbutz, this utopia was just beginning to be in transition as there was no longer the desperate need to band together as there was now an established government and military and those who worked the hardest began to resent those who didn’t contribute as much. Additionally there were those who had spent the time and money to get an education and they were carrying more critical roles in the community and felt they should be compensated accordingly. Over the course of about 20 years from the mid 70’s to the mid 90’s the socialistic Kibbutz system was replaced by one far more resembling capitalism, private homes, cars, etc. In other words the system worked when it was a necessity but when it wasn’t and there was no one forcing that lifestyle it disintegrated because of the freedom of choice and because of those who didn’t work hard and sought to live off the others.
This should not entirely surprise us as the first Messianic Jewish community attempted a purely socialistic society at the church in Jerusalem. It is described initially in utopian terms such as ‘they had everything in common’ and ‘they all contributed to those in need’. But it didn’t take long for the fallout to begin and before even a couple of decades had passed the church in Jerusalem was having to be supported by the churches in the neighboring lands and eventually they had to make the hard and fast rule that “if you don’t work you don’t eat.
This idyllic socialistic style was also tried by the Pilgrims in the Plymouth colony and it literally almost killed them from starvation because of those who again sought to live off the goodness (and work) of others. They also had to implement the practice of everyone having to work for their own food/reward.
So I placed an * at the end of my title because although socialism is very noble and ideal in its description we find that even among hard working Jews of 2000 years ago or committed Christians a few hundred years ago (not to mention countless other countries and communities throughout history) the * eventually comes into play and ruins the day for that ideal. And just what is that * you ask? Human nature. Human nature, left to itself, will in most cases do the least amount of work for the most amount of return and current generations are no exception. That doesn’t mean that everybody will go the lazy route, but enough are going to that it WILL eventually ruin it for everybody else. And although capitalism has its drawbacks with sometimes accurate accusations of greed and selfishness, the bottom line is that if you work you will eat and if you work hard you will eat well and that principal wins the day when it comes to the successful survival of a society.
PS I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that even with capitalism, if enough people who don’t work get comfortable living off the working class’s tax dollars you may eventually tip the scales where those who are working are not able to be taxed enough to support those who don’t. I believe in safety nets, I just believe that they need to be so very uncomfortable that those caught by it are motivated to quickly get out of it.
whosesideareyouonanyway - milton odom 