Lawrence W. Reed - Was Jesus a Socialist?: Why This Question Is Being Asked Again, and Why the Answer Is Almost Always Wrong

Was Jesus a Socialist?

Why This question Is Being Asked Again , and Why the Answer Is Almost Always Wrong

Lawrence W. Reed

Contents

Foreword

Daniel Hannan

Jesus was not a socialist. Neither was he a liberal or a conservative, a Republican or a Democrat, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a jazz aficionado or a jogger. It is always anachronistic to define historical figures with reference to trends or movements that had not yet begun in their time. In the case of Jesus, it is an especially futile exercise.

You may think of Jesus as an inspiring moral teacher, or as a madman who saw visions, or as the incarnation of the Living God. But whatever view you take, one conclusion is hard to avoid. He was not primarily interested in the social or political structures around him. Although he was in our world, he wanted us to think about a different world. He often spoke in parables and metaphors because he was seeking to convey transcendent truths in earthly language.

My kingdom is not of this world, Jesus told Pontius Pilate at his trial. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence. More than once, the Gospels record him trying to drum that point into the heads of his literal-minded disciples.

If that were all that Larry Reeds book were about, the pages that follow would be very few. Was Jesus a socialist? No. Next question.

But, of course, the people who claim Jesus as a socialist dont actually mean that he had a fully worked-out program aimed at nationalizing the means of production, distribution, and exchange. What they mean is that his values were socialist values, that people in socialist parties today can legitimately claim to be drawing on the broad moral principles that Jesus espoused two thousand years ago. Which, in turn, raises a much more complicated and interesting questionnamely, how are we to define socialism?

At this point, its defenders become oddly evasive and vague. Socialism, they tell us, is all about kindness. Its about being unselfish, about wanting to help the less fortunate, about recognizing an obligation to other people.

If that were all that socialism was, then Jesus would indeed be a socialist. So would Larry Reed, so would I, and so, reader, would you. Indeed, in my experience, a telltale characteristic of socialists is the odd belief that they have a monopoly on compassion. It takes a certain complacent laziness to dismiss your opponents as ill-intentioned rather than entertaining the idea that they might have decent reasons for disagreeing with you. Socialism, for at least some people, is a kind of eternal childishness, a determination to see the world as a Harry Potter novel, in which there are good guys and bad guys.

That outlook depends on not considering any of our actual experiences with socialism. As Larry shows in the chapters that follow, socialism gets a special pass when it comes to learning from history. Every socialist experiment ends in dictatorship and labor camps. At which point, its erstwhile cheerleaders suddenly inform us that it was never socialist in the first place, and that real socialism has yet to be tried.

Imagine applying that sophistry to any other ideology. Imagine, for example, arguing that it would be wrong to judge fascism by the 1930s regimes which called themselves fascist, because real fascism had never been tried. It would be a preposterous argument. And yet, somehow, leftists manage to get away with judging socialism as a textbook theory while judging capitalism by its necessarily imperfect real-world examples.

What is the true defining characteristic of socialism? As Larry shows, it is not compassion but coercion. Leftists are chiefly distinguished from rightists by their fondness for state actionwhich is another way of saying, by their readiness to deploy coercive force in what they deem to be the collective interest. The gun is usually held out of sight rather than being plonked on the table. Socialist politicians will often use phrases like We are asking the better-off to make a fair contribution. But behind that language, if you think about it, stands the threat of prison.

Of course, there is a measure of state coercion in every organized society. There are laws that tell us which side of the road to drive on, what our children must learn, and, indeed, what taxes we must pay. The difference between right and left is that, on the right, laws are seen as a regrettable necessity rather than as a first resort.

Which brings us back to Jesus. It is hard to find any argument for coercive force in his teachings. As Larry demonstrates, Jesus was clear that he wanted people to embrace his gospel freely. That doesnt make him a libertarian. It simply reminds us that the capacity for free will is the defining feature of humanity.

Where, then, does that leave Christians today? We should start by acknowledging the border between Gods realm and Caesars. Certainly Christianity stands for moral principles. It stands, above all, for the idea that we should treat others as we should like to be treated. That idea can be interpreted in more than one way: it is no more a liberal or a conservative idea than Jesus was a socialist or a capitalist. But it should infuse our approach to worldly questions.

What it should not mean is that Christians start claiming scriptural authority for political programs. Larry and I share an affection for the philosopher and novelist C. S. Lewis, who pondered the question of how Christians should approach politics very deeply, and to whom I shall leave the final word:

People say, The Church ought to give us a lead. That is true if they mean it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way. By the Church they ought to mean the whole body of practicing Christians. And when they say that the Church should give us a lead, they ought to mean that some Christiansthose who happen to have the right talentsshould be economists and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians, and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to putting Do as you would be done by into action. If that happened, and if we others were really ready to take it, then we should find the Christian solution for our own social problems pretty quickly. But, of course, when they ask for a lead from the Church most people mean they want the clergy to put out a political program. That is silly. The clergy are those particular people within the whole Church who have been specially trained and set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to live forever: and we are asking them to do a quite different job for which they have not been trained.

Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist. After seventeen years as a member of the European Parliament, campaigning for British withdrawal from the EU, he succeeded in abolishing his job in the Brexit referendum on June 23, 2016. He is the author of nine books, including the New York Times bestsellers Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World and The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America. You can read his articles at hannan.co.uk.

Unless otherwise noted, biblical passages that appear in this book are drawn from the New International Version (NIV).

Introduction

Was Jesus a Socialist?

If anyone was ever a socialist, it was Jesus.

Kelley Rose, Democratic Socialists of America