God's Economic Justice I

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the Land of Slavery. . . . You shall not steal. . . . You shall not covet your neighbor's wife.  You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.  Deut. 5:5-21 (with ommissions)

Initially let me define what I mean by socialism. The classic definition of socialism is where the government owns the means of production. But ownership consists of, at least, two primary bundles of rights. The right to control what happens to one's property, and the right to the economic benefits generated by one's property. If the government seizes these bundles of rights, through, for example, intrusive regulation, high taxes or "crony capitalism", there is, to the degree of the seizure, socialism. Mere nominal title to the assets is unimportant if the government controls how the property is used, managed or disposed of, and controls how much, if anything, the nominal owner of the property is to receive of the profits generated by the property.

Our Lord is often pictured by the religious Left as a proto-socialist revolutionary figure who would support "spreading the wealth" by coercive government action.  And there is, of course, no doubt that He often talked of giving to the poor as a matter of private charity.  But is God in favor of socialism, of spreading the wealth by government coercion?  This post is the first of a series that will explore this question each focusing on a different passage of Scripture.

Not one, but two, of the Ten Commandments address the issue of private property.  The commandment against stealing, of course, makes no sense in the absence of private property.  It is essentially a command that private property rights should be respected.  Similarly, the Tenth Commandment, against coveting something that belongs to one's neighbor, is meaningless without private property.  But it goes further than the Eighth Commandment against stealing by saying that we should not even desire what belongs to another.

There are practical reasons for seeking not to be jealous of what one's neighbor has.  First, the desire, which cannot be satisfied except by theft, might lead one to break the Eighth Commandment.  But second, and I think more importantly, desiring what one cannot lawfully have leads to unhappiness and distracts from more productive activities.  Rather than thinking about how you might like having something belonging to another, it is better to direct one's energy into creating something for yourself.

In these days of Occupy Wall Street, "spreading the wealth" and the collapse of the social welfare states of Europe, we would do well to avoid class warfare which is, at base, founded on a breach of the Tenth Commandment.