Is Heaven Socialist?

Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters Episode 9

This entry is the ninth instalment of my blog ( and eventual podcast) Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters. While I have not recorded the audio file yet, this entry was written to be aired in podcast format and as such will (at times) read more like the transcript of a podcast than a traditional blog. So without further ado, here’s the ninth episode of Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters.

(Chapter Headings: Introduction)

Hello, my name is Matitya and welcome to Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of matters. Today’s topic. Is Heaven Socialist?

(Chapter Headings: Ronald Reagan)

Those of you have listened to Matitya’s Musings before will probably predict that my answer will be no. That said, it’s actually more complicated than that. In 1983, in his Public Papers, Ronald Reagan said “Communism works only in heaven where they don’t need it and in hell, where they already have it” and I think that was quite well-put on President Reagan’s part.

(Chapter Headings: Was he right?)
I disagree with Reagan inasmuch as I don’t believe Communism works in Heaven either. I say that because Communism, at least since the days of its philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, has always advocated for “the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie”. The bourgeoisie essentially means the rich, so Communism is about violently overthrowing the rich. There is no conceivable way to do that without killing them, so Communism is about killing the rich. Since murder does not cease to be murder when the person that you’re killing is rich, Communism is an inherently murderous doctrine. Heaven is reward for living a righteous life and one of the rules for doing that is “thou shalt not murder”. So no, a murderous doctrine like Communism could never be implemented in Heaven. Both because of how difficult it would be for someone in the murder business to get to Heaven and because people in Heaven cannot be killed (thanks to already being dead.)

(Chapter Headings: Wasn’t Reagan joking?)

I know the Presidential paper I’m quoting is a transcript of a speech Reagan gave and that it specifies that he laughed when he said it. It would follow therefrom that Reagan was joking rather than offering a serious theological take. (Yes, I know there were a lot of religious references in the rest of the speech which were intended seriously but I am referring specifically to this quip.)

(Chapter Headings: Is Heaven Socialist?)

Incidentally, there are Christian Socialists who sincerely posit that Heaven is a Socialist Paradise. I don’t know how common a talking point this is as I have only seen it made on the websites Reddit and Quora and on a single Christian Libertarian website which addressed this point to debunk it. That said, it’s a neat question to think about. There’s still another question we must address to answer it. Are we talking about Heaven as the righteous afterlife (as I have been discussing it) or are we talking about it as the Garden of Eden before the expulsion of Adam and Eve?

(Chapter Headings: Is the afterlife Socialist?)

If we fall back on the Reagan quip, then we’re talking about the afterlife. Is it truly the case that the afterlife of the righteous is Socialist? It depends on how you define Socialism. My fourth Matitya’s Musing was devoted in its entirety to defining Socialism and I essentially conclude that Socialism is government ownership of the means of production. So the first question to ask is “does Heaven have a government?” and the second question to ask is “Does Heaven have a means of production?”

(Chapter Headings: The governance of G-d Part One Judaism)

G-d rules Heaven. Does that count as a government? Maybe, maybe not. Jews and Christians both call G-d a King in prayers. And that’s a practice with precedent. The Hebrew Scriptures say in the Book of Psalms Chapter 93 verse 1

“G-d is King. He is robed in grandeur. G-d is robed, He is girded with strength, the world stands firm, it cannot be shaken.”

On the one hand, this says that G-d is King and Kingship is a form of governance. On the other hand, this description clearly relies heavily on metaphor. The Jewish tradition makes no bones about the fact that G-d does not have a body. The medieval Rabbi Yehudah ibn Alfakhar, in his critiques of the Jewish Rabbi and philosopher Rambam, noted that this belief logically followed from accepting a holistic interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures without need for external sources like those Rambam used for this point. Speaking of which, Rambam argued that when the Torah speaks of G-d being One it refers (amongst other things) to G-d not being the sum of any component parts such that He cannot have a body and all Biblical passages implying G-d to have body must be interpreted allegorically. Both Rambam and ibn Alfakhar have precedent in the Talmud which also posits that G-d doesn’t have a body. And in the text of the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophet Eliyahu ridicules the worshippers of the Phoenician god Baal for believing in a god who was grounded in a physical body with physical functions.

Given that Jewish tradition teaches that G-d doesn’t have a body, a reference to the robes of G-d would have to be metaphorical. This is supported by the fact that the passage says “robed in grandeur” when an abstract concept like grandeur cannot possibly be a literal article of clothing.

The question then follows, given the rest of the passage is metaphorical, is calling G-d a king metaphorical? To some extent, yes. A King ascends to the throne upon his father’s death, rules his subjects, wages war with enemy kingdoms, negotiates treaties with foreign kings, and sires children so that one can succeed him upon his death. Aside from ruling his subjects, it’s very difficult to ascribe any of those attributes to G-d.

Since G-d is eternal, there was never anyone for Him to succeed. Since G-d exists without end and His rule has no end, there cannot be princes and succession here. Since there are no other gods, the idea of waging war against or signing treaties with other rulers does not here apply. Even ruling His subjects is a metaphor considering that G-d’s laws include not only the commands He gives to people but the Laws of Nature and Physics which define how the Universe itself works. Laws whose infraction is impossible rather than laws in need of being enforced. So, the phrase “G-d is king” is a metaphor. It’s a useful and necessary metaphor but it isn’t meant literally. So in that sense, G-d ruling Heaven really shouldn’t count as a government.

(The Governance of G-d Part Two Christianity)

I know some of you will think “that’s all well and good for Jews but Christians believe in the existence of a flesh and blood incarnation of G-d. So in Christianity, wouldn’t it be the case that one could apply human concepts like kingship literally?” That’s a good question but it’s worth pointing out that even Christian tradition posits that G-d is immaterial. I know it gets more complicated when you look at the Christian concept of the Trinity but even if you take that into account, Trinitarian Christians still believe that G-d the Father is immaterial. And they still believe the Holy Ghost is immaterial. The sole complication there is the Son whom they (generally) believe to be both material and immaterial at the same time. If you find that concept confusing, I recommend asking a Christian.

And yes, I know there are exceptions to this amongst Christians. For instance, Mormons believe that G-d has a tangible physical body. Even so this belief is more the exception than the rule and as such I think my comments about kingship as metaphor still apply.

(Chapter Headings: Mark Twain)

That said, people who look at the Judeo-Christian tradition from outside of it sometimes find that G-d as portrayed in the Judeo-Chrisitan tradition is a government authority. For instance, the novleist Mark Twain was raised as a Christian but rebelled against this upbringing and became a religious skeptic. (Though not an atheist.) As I understand it, Twain viewed G-d as portrayed by the Judeo-Christian tradition as a celestial dictator. That having been said, in Twain’s novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (which is quite a good book by the way), Twain’s narrator Hank Morgan says

“Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible.”

So, assuming the author to agree with the character, Twain views G-d ruling Heaven as a form of government even though he doesn’t believe it to be a system of government that is replicable in the mortal world. To the extent that this affects the question of if we should consider Heaven Socialist it tells us that maybe Heaven is a Socialist Paradise but that doesn’t mean that Earth can be. At that point, one can legitimately say Socialism “works only in heaven where they don’t need it and in hell, where they already have it”.

(Chapter Headings: Does Heaven have a means of production?)

There’s another problem with talking about Heaven having government ownership of the means of production. Does the afterlife even have a means of production at all? Maybe but I’m not sure it would be something recognisably similar to what we call the means of production in discussions of Capitalism versus Socialism. In a Capitalist system, people start factories, companies, businesses et cetera and hire people to work for them and own the product of their employees’ labour because they paid for it but (at least theoretically speaking) anyone can start a business and then own it. That’s individual ownership of the means of production. Theoretically speaking, Socialism is about the workers always owning the product of their own labour. (Even this is a flawed moral approach given that if you agreed to work for another person in exchange for that person’s money then you essentially agreed to sell your employer the eventual product of your labour and this is an entirely legitimate transaction.) Likewise, theoretically speaking, workers can own all the product of their labours without government involvement. This is an oversimplification but that’s called Libertarian Socialism. Despite not involving government, it’s regarded as a form of Socialism because it’s premised on the workers owning the means of production. Of course, the problem with that is that you can’t really put the workers in charge of the businesses by whom they’re employed unless you get the government to take control of said businesses and force the new arrangement. At which point, you’ve got government ownership of the means of production.

You probably noticed by now that that when we talk about the means of production, we’re talking about things like employment and trade and money. Do those exist in Heaven? Maybe but if they do then it would have to be for a different purpose than that for which they exist in the material world.

(Chapter Headings: “You say money is the root of all evil but what, I ask you, is the root of all money?”)

Why does money exist. Well, on a historical level, it’s because a neutral medium of exchange was necessary to resolve the inefficiencies of a system of barter. I won’t be able to sell you three camels for a goat if you don’t have any use for three camels so I would have to sell three camels to another person who wants three camels and has something for me that I can trade you for a goat. That’s not an easy thing to do. If we use gold or silver or dollars as a currency instead then I can just sell my camels for the money needed to buy a goat and you could just as easily spend the money I pay you for a goat on buying something else that you want. Beyond that, the purpose of money is the same as it always was. To buy food so that you don’t starve to death. There’s a reason it’s nicknamed dough. (Yes, I know I’m oversimplifying things.)

The thing is, once you’ve made it to Heaven, you’re already dead. At that point, I’m not sure why you would need money. I also doubt you would need barter as I very much doubt that Heaven has physical limitations like scarcity.

All that makes it very difficult to model any political or economic system in this world after anything about the afterlife and pretty much renders any and all efforts to do so a Utopian pipe dream. There’s a reason why the libertarian political commentator Ben Shapiro has said, during his debate with the Leftist online personality Destiny “if I had a replicator machine from Star Trek, would I give everybody an enormous amount of stuff? Sure, I would. [But] every resource is [finite]. If every resource is limited, then you have to prioritise what are the outcomes that you seek in terms of the means with which you are seeking them.”

Shapiro is right.

(Chapter Headings: The Garden of Eden)

All that having been said, we can also talk about Paradise as the Garden, east of Eden, from which Adam and Eve were exiled. So, instead of asking “is Paradise Socialistic in the afterlife?” we can ask “Was Paradise Socialist before the expulsion?”

Yes and no. On the one hand, Adam and Eve having their every need provided for them by G-d while they simply had to name the living creatures according to their reason fits very nicely with the idea of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” That slogan was popularised by Marx. The thing is, theoretically speaking, Capitalism also requires that people work to the extent of their ability and get rewarded for it according to their need. It doesn’t work out quite that way in practice but the same could be said about Socialism.

(Chapter Headings: Governor or Landlord.)

I wouldn’t really describe any of the Garden of Eden as Adam’s private property or as Eve’s private property. I wouldn’t describe them as having a joint ownership of it either. If anyone owned any of the Garden of Eden, it would be G-d. And even there, it would be much more accurate to say that He owned all of it rather than simply some of it. If we view G-d as a government analogue, then the state of affairs in the Garden of Eden genuinely was one of government ownership. Otherwise known as Socialism. That having been established, the political situation in the Garden of Eden in the earliest chapters of Genesis is rather similar to that envisioned by the anarcho-capitalist economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his book “Democracy: The god that failed.”

(Chapter Headings: The Hoppean Argument)

Professor Hoppe argued in favour of abolishing the government in its entirety because he believed that doing so was necessary to defend the rights of self-ownership, property, trade and commerce. One of Professor Hoppe’s concerns was how you could manage immigration in an anarcho-capitalist society. The Hoppean solution is that unowned lands can be claimed by anyone who can then establish them as his estate whereas owned lands can and should have a system based on the authority of the landowner. In a Hoppean society, a landlord can choose to allow however many people from outside his lands to dwell on his estate and he can impose any condition he wants for entry. Should any resident on the landlord’s estate break said conditions then the landlord can have said resident “forcibly removed” therefrom. The same way as he would remove a trespasser.

If you regard the Garden of Eden as a piece of land with G-d as its landlord and Adam and Eve living upon it with G-d’s consent and naming the animals as the service G-d charged to them as their rent. And even the commandment not to eat of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil would perfectly fit the Hoppean paradigm. After all, Hoppe posited that the landlord could impose any condition he wishes. (Yes, in Hoppe’s view that includes if the condition is completely arbitrary which is part of why Hoppe is so controversial. Since in his view that condition can be based on prejudice.)

The fact that Adam and Eve were banished for eating the Forbidden Fruit fits well with Hoppe’s argument that people who break the condition will be forcibly removed.

(Chapter Headings: I am not a Hoppean)

I already litigated the question of it if were fair to view G-d as analogous to the government and responded in the negative. I’m not going to revisit that here. Instead, I will say that viewing G-d as a landowner with the Garden of Eden as his estate doesn’t really make sense either. Firstly, like viewing His rule as a form of government, this requires a lot more anthropomorphism than I believe can be justified. Secondly, the world to which Adam and Eve are banished is no less owned by G-d than the one from which they’re banished. Thirdly, the Hoppean framework is meant as an Anarcho-Capitalist approach to immigration and Adam and Eve don’t seem to have migrated to the Garden of Eden. Fourthly, G-d was their parental figure and as such it makes more sense to compare the Heavenly Father to a Father than to either a government or a landlord (though some level of metaphor is necessary there too.)

(Chapter Headings: Ben Shapiro at home is a Communist)

The Family metaphor is the one which most enables the description of the Garden of Eden as Socialist. In 2022, the Canadian psychologist and right-wing political commentator Dr. Jordan Peterson interviewed Amala Epkunobi from Prager University for an episode of his podcast titled “ From the Left to Sanity”. About half an hour into the podcast, Dr. Peterson commented that “Ben Shapiro at home is a Communist” based on what Shapiro himself had told Peterson. His reasoning behind this was that in a unit like a family, it makes sense to pursue the ideal of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, to strive for equal outcomes for everyone, to have a strong central authority et cetera. And all of that is (at least nominally) what radical Socialist regimes want such that the question becomes why we can’t run the State the same way as we can run a family.

Peterson provides an answer based on his analysis of masculine archetypes and feminine archetypes but I would say that the obvious answer is that the State is not a family and can never be a family. There are far too many people involved, few to none of whom are related to one another or even know each other all that well. Not to mention there are quite a lot of adults rather than simply children. I think the American Conservative political commentator Jonah Goldberg got it exactly right when he said, in his 2008 book Liberal Fascism “The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good”.

(Chapter Headings: The family metaphor)

That having been established, two humans lived in the Garden of Eden. Sure, since then Adam and Eve started a family but the bigger that family gets the more difficult it is to use the “father” metaphor to describe G-d’s relationship with humanity which is why it becomes necessary to use other metaphors like king. (Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a place for the father metaphor as well.) So even if we accept that, in the time of Adam and Eve, all humans lived under Socialism and it worked out, we can’t generalise from that to humanity since the time of Adam and Eve. Ultimately, it’s not a good argument in favour of Socialism.

(Conclusion)

So is Heaven (and/or the Garden of Eden) Socialist? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. It’s definitely a nice thought experiment to run. That having been said, even if Paradise truly is Socialist (which, to be clear, is a contentious claim), it doesn’t follow that Earth should be for the simple reason that Earth is not Paradise. It simply can’t be.

My name is Matitya and this has been an episode of Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters.