The Bible vs Socialism: Matitya’s Many Musings on a Myriad of Matters

This entry is the second 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 second 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 G-d a commie?If my saying that made you think “Obviously not” then congratulations, you have a functioning brain.

(Chapter Headings: The sins of Communism)

Communist parties invariably persecuted religious followers to enforce state-sanctioned atheism when they were in power and even the philosophers of Communism like Karl Mark and Friedrich Engels were quite anti-religious with Marx infamously denouncing religion as “the opiate of the masses” and equating the Exodus from Egypt with the expulsion of the lepers. Not to mention that the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie goes against the sixth of the Ten Commandments, “Thou Shalt Not Murder”.

(Chapter Headings: Does G-d command Socialism?)

Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll ask a less ridiculous question. “Is G-d a Socialist?” The short answer is “no”. The longer answer is that Socialism, like any manmade political ideology is fundamentally flawed because humans are fundamentally flawed, as it is written in Genesis Chapter 8 Verse 21 “ the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” To assign a specific political ideology to G-d is at best silly and at worst sacrilegious. It’s what the political theorist Hans Morgenthau rightly called “the blasphemous conviction that G-d is always on one’s side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by G-d also.”

(Chapter Headings: Judaism vs Christianity)

Morgenthau was Jewish and as such did not believe that G-d made himself manifest in the form of a mortal man. And this is the point where it becomes necessary for me to comment on a religion of which I am not a follower: Christianity. The Christian Scriptures in the Gospel according to John Chapter One Verse One posit that “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with G-d and the Word was G-d” and in Verse Fourteen the Gospel according to John proclaims “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”. This is generally interpreted as meaning that G-d took human form and lived the life of a human being by the name of Jesus. It’s called the doctrine of Incarnation.

(Chapter Headings: Was Jesus a Socialist? What does Lawrence Reed have to say?)

Judaism rejects the doctrine of Incarnation as in the Jewish religion, the idea of G-d taking human form is blasphemous and heretical. Incarnation is still one of the core tenets of traditional Christianity. That is why it can make sense for a Christian to ask “was G-d a Socialist?” Because Jesus lived as a Jew under Roman occupation in the First Century C.E. and had his fair share of sentiments about politics which can sometimes lead to him being labelled a Socialist. If Jesus were a Socialist, then Christians would have to regard G-d as a Socialist. And that’s not an uncommon claim amongst Christian Socialists. Indeed, enough people on the Left have made this argument, that the libertarian political commentator Lawrence Reed, who is himself a religious Christian, felt compelled to address and debunk it.

Reed wrote an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner and the Foundation for Economic Education titled “No, Jesus wasn’t a Socialist” making the case that Jesus banished the money-changers from the Temple of Jerusalem because he considered it inappropriate behaviour in the Temple but not from the marketplace because he didn’t oppose the practise as such. Reed also argues that Jesus would not have supported Socialism because he would not have supported robbing Peter to pay Paul. Since then he filmed a Prager University video titled “Was Jesus a Socialist?” making the same argument and inspired by the video’s success he wrote a book called “Rendering unto Caesar: Was Jesus a Socialist?” While I have only read excerpts from the book rather than the full text, it seems to make the same argument that Lawrence Reed made before.

(Chapter Headings: What does the Hebrew Bible say about Socialism?)

Reed knows more about Christianity than I do, on account of his actually being a Christian, so I’m willing to defer to him on this issue. Reed says Jesus was not a Socialist and I have no reason to dispute this assertion. The question remains, to what extent the “Biblical Socialism” argument holds legitimacy for Jews. So what does the Torah say about Socialism?

(Chapter Headings: Does Socialism break the Ten Commandments?)

In a 2018 speech at Liberty University, the Jewish libertarian political commentator Ben Shapiro argued that Socialism or rather Collectivism breaks every single one of the Ten Commandments that G-d carved into the Tablets of the Covenant at Mount Sinai. Shapiro has elsewhere made a less extreme version of this argument. He has said “Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments. It turns government into G-d, it legalises thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren’t about prosperity but about petty spite.” Shapiro is hardly the only person to argue that Socialism contravenes the Ten Commandments, most notably “Thou Shalt Not Steal”. The Christian writer Robert Knight, in a 2019 piece in The Washington Examiner, posited

“Socialism is grand theft. It uses the state to take earnings from productive people and redistribute it to create dependency and thus political power for those handing it out. Slavery is 100 percent taxation — when someone else controls the fruits of one’s labor. Socialist countries first control and then seize private property. Marx summed up “The Communist Manifesto” in one sentence: “Abolition of private property.””

This is the same argument that secular libertarians tend to make against Socialism. The claim that government ownership of the means of production is a form of theft (an argument that Objectivists and Anarcho-Capitalists take to the extreme by positing that all taxation is a form of theft.)

(Chapter Headings: What are the merits to Ben Shapiro’s argument?)

It seems to me that the strongest argument for the view that Socialism is against the Judeo-Christian morality (and specifically the Jewish morality) is the syllogism that

1. The Ten Commandments forbid theft
2. Socialism is theft
3. Therefore the Ten Commandments forbid Socialism

This argument is valid given that its conclusion follows from its premises but for it to be sound it isn’t enough that the reasoning be valid, the premises must also be true. The first premise is true. It is written in the Torah in the Book of Exodus Chapter 20 Verse 15 “Thou shalt not steal” and this is explicitly included as one of The Ten Commandments. Likewise, it is written in the Torah in the Book of Deuteronomy Chapter 5 Verse 19 “neither shalt thou steal” and this prohibition is explicitly included as one of the Ten Commandments. It’s the second premise that raises the question “Is Socialism theft?”

(Chapter Headings: Defining Socialism)

As Doctor Jordan Peterson often says in response to questions about religion “well, what do you mean by that?” To avoid this Matitya’s Musing becoming strictly a semantic discussion, I’m going to say “government ownership”. Socialism is government ownership. I know that Libertarian Socialism exists and that Libertarian Socialists would object that Socialism can be implemented without government intervention. To them I would say “I understand your point but right now I’m using Socialism to mean State Socialism specifically.”

(Chapter Headings: Steel-manning the argument for Socialism)

The argument that Socialism is theft boils down to the following syllogism

1. The Government can enforce the law only when it is willing, ready and able to use violence against transgressors
2. The only way government ownership can be established is through using the mechanism of the law to seize the property of the citizenry
3. To use the threat of violence to get people to give up their property is theft
4. Therefore government ownership is theft

The Socialist rebuttal to this argument is that, aside from fundamentally exclusive personal possessions like toothbrushes, property is something which fundamentally belongs to the community, not to any individual. According to this line of thinking, for an individual to take from what is held in common and claim it as his exclusive possession is an act of theft. A sentiment well-expressed in the 17th Century poem

“The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who takes things that are yours and mine.”

This sort of reasoning is how people like Karl Marx were able to argue that private property itself is a form of theft.

(Chapter Headings: Is property theft?)

What does the Judeo-Christian tradition say about this? It is written in the Torah in the Book of Exodus Chapter 23 Verse 3 “thou shalt not countenance a poor man in his cause” shortly followed by Exodus Chapter 23 Verse 6 saying “thou shalt not wrest the judgement of thy poor in his cause”. It’s also written in the Torah in the Book of Leviticus Chapter 19 Verse 15 “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgement: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.” That would suggest that if a rich person were to go to court to complain about a poor person having stolen from him (and if the accusation were true) then the act of stealing would be no less of a crime than if another rich man were the perpetrator or if a poor man were the victim. Could this Biblical law work without the privatisation of property? Probably not. And this something of which the Christian Socialist writer Edward Bellamy was well-aware. In his Utopian novel Looking Backward, set in the distant future known as the year 2000, a Pastor in a sermon boasts that thanks to the government becoming “the sole corporation, the sole employer” poverty has been eliminated and as a result Biblical law, especially though not exclusively the Ten Commandments, has become redundant. That pastor sounds like he was terrible at his job. (Yes, I know he’s a fictional character.)

(Chapter Headings: Abraham and Ephron)

It’s also worth noting that it is written in the Torah in the Book of Genesis Chapter 23 that when Abraham asked Ephron the Hittite to sell him the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron so that he could bury his wife Sarah there, Ephron offered to give it to Abraham instead. But Abraham insisted on paying Ephron full price for it and then buried Sarah there. There is some debate as to Abraham’s motivation but one of the many opinions within the Jewish tradition is that he needed to acquire this piece of land for money and “in the audience of the people of the land” so that the Hittites could not later dispute Hebrew claims of ownership. This might be less about private property than about the legitimacy of the Hebrews’ claim to Canaan. It is still worth noting that there are Midrashim in the Talmud and later commentaries of the Rabbis positing that Abraham sent his sheep into the wilderness to keep them from grazing on other people’s pastures but his nephew Lot refused to do so and as a result Abraham’s shepherds feuded with Lot’s resulting in Abraham and Lot deciding to resolve their conflict by going their separate ways. The Rabbis view this as praise of Abraham. The fact that Abraham is praised for this by Jewish tradition suggest that there is some level of recognition of private property under Jewish Law.

(Chapter Headings: Is it okay if the government does it?)

A possible rebuttal to this is that Abraham was neither the government nor an agent of the government and as such did not have legitimacy but the Government, as the political expression of the community, would have legitimacy to claim ownership of so-called private property such that it would not be theft. You would have to disregard the Biblical morality to make that argument. My proof for that is the story of Naboth.

(Chapter Headings: The story of Naboth is a great argument against Socialism)

It is written in the First Book of Kings that, after King Solomon died, Israel split into two kingdoms, the Kingdom of Judah in the South and the Kingdom of Israel in the North. One of the Kings of Israel in the North was a man named Ahab, son of Omri. Ahab saw a beautiful vineyard owned by a man named Naboth. Ahab asked to purchase Naboth’s vineyard so that he could turn it into his vegetable garden. Naboth refused despite Ahab’s generous offers on the grounds that it would be a sin for him to sell his ancestral land to someone from another tribe. Ahab went home sulking. Ahab’s wife Jezebel asked him why he was so upset, and Ahab told her what happened, so she suggested that he use his powers as King of Israel to take what he wanted. So Ahab, at Jezebel’s urging, hired two false witnesses against Naboth to accuse him of both blasphemy and sedition. Ahab used their testimony to justify having Naboth executed and, since under Biblical law an Israelite traitor’s property reverts to the King upon the traitor’s death, Ahab claimed Naboth’s vineyard as his own and made it into his vegetable garden. Then G-d sent his prophet Eliyahu to Ahab to harangue him for what he had done and warned him that G-d would destroy him and his entire house as punishment for his sins. Eliyahu castigated Ahab not only for murder but also for theft. After all, Eliyahu told Ahab “you have killed and also taken possession”.

(Chapter Headings: Evil begets Evil)

In his book Jewish Literacy, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin notes that the story of Naboth shows how one sin can lead to another. Ahab coveted Naboth’s field, which is against the tenth of the Ten Commandments which forbids coveting what belongs to your neighbour, and this led him to setting up false witnesses against Naboth, which is against the ninth of the Ten Commandments “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” as well as to killing Naboth, which is against the sixth commandment “Thou Shalt Not Murder” and to seizing Naboth’s land for himself which is against the eighth commandment “Thou Shalt Not Steal”

As King, Ahab was the Head of State and leader of the Government and as such had as much right to seize Naboth’s land as any government has to seize the land of its citizenry. His seizure of Naboth’s land was still theft and as such an infraction of the Ten Commandments. This leads me to say

1. Government ownership is impossible without the seizure of land
2. Based on the story of Naboth, it seems that the Hebrew Scriptures recognise government seizure of land as a form of theft
3. The Ten Commandments forbid theft
4. Therefore the Ten Commandments forbid Socialism

(Chapter Heading: Is opposition to Socialism support of Capitalism?)

The question this syllogism raises is “If the Bible opposes Socialism, does it support Capitalism?” I’ll leave people like Lawrence Reed to litigate that about the Christian Bible but I will address the question vis-à-vis the Hebrew Scriptures. The short answer is no. Per Biblical Law, the Israelites redistributed much of their property to one another every fiftieth year, known as the Year of Jubilee. Old Testament Judaism doesn’t even really recognise the concept of self-ownership (even the Exodus consists of G-d freeing the Israelites so that the Israelites can serve Him rather than the Israelites becoming their own masters.) In fact, Naboth’s reasoning for refusing to sell Ahab his vineyard is itself because of it being a sin for him to relinquish the land bequeathed to him by his ancestors to someone from another tribe. So it’s not what libertarian purists like Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard or Robert Nozick or their ilk would recognise as private property or self-ownership or capitalism. (Honestly, that could have been the topic for a Matitya’s Musing all on its own though I don’t have one planned on that subject.)

(Chapter Headings: Conclusion)

So to answer our original question “does G-d, as portrayed in the Judeo-Christian tradition, support Socialism?” (I was being tongue in cheek with how I phrased it before). The answer is “no”. That doesn’t necessarily mean support of Capitalism but The Bible does not advocate in favour of Socialism and if anything advocates against it.

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