Socialism in this thread is defined only as a system of people making a self-organized system of making use of resources, with claims on every other person and what he owns. There is no authority, policing, or property system.
I don't mean Soviet communism, Chinese state capitalism, or Swedish social democracy. That's all.
I was inspired to make this thread, because I am reading Alexander Gray's The Socialist Tradition (just started) and because Hugo Chavez invoked Christ as the first socialist a few years ago.
Here's a very vague and general outline of views put forth by two sides:
1. Early Hebrews were socialists.
Hebrews believed themselves to be descended from one God, thus related to each other and each other's direct brother and sister. Therefore, as one single family, they had all the claim on each other's household possessions as fellow family members. Like a child is the ward of his parents or guardians, the less capable members of the extended Jewish family are direct responsibility of other more capable Hebrews, who must use authority and responsibility over their own matters.
Early Hebrews had a natural protection of possessions and a person's claim on them
It is obvious that Thou Shalt Not Steal means that one Hebrew owns such and such and can not be deprived by force of it by another. If we are to think that members of a family can have claim on what they all own, then it can't be stealing, since its yours as well. Yes, Hebrews were an extended family. They were also grown up responsible adults, who had to take care of themselves. It's not about children sharing toys, it's about taking care of one's donkey, one's sheep, or one's cows with care, so that one's sustenance is maintained. It was a serious crime to even covet another man's domestic animal.
Any natural society has basic rules about allowing people to have their means of livelihood, and the Jews were no different.
2. There was an actual socialist community of Jews called the Essenes.
Among the Essenes, all possessions were surrendered to the community, for all their free and unhindered use. Anybody could live under any roof, take what anybody else had, and claim anything for his use at any time. There was no marriage, and a man had the complete non-obstruction in having sex with any woman of any age he wanted at any time. It was the purest socialism ever known.
The Essenes were a cultist revolt against human nature
The Essenes were just four thousand people who were all thin, malnutritioned, and starved, who barely survived on a day to day basis. It is believed that they all perished, and barely made a living out of their poor agricultural output. The Essenes had no social culture beyond bare subsistence; no storytellers, prophets, past-times, or rituals. It is possible that the Essenes started out as just an experiment by a societal elite which later failed horribly. Yes, Essenes are perhaps a proof that socialism can exist. It's perhaps also proof that it is a very very bad idea in any larger and advanced human society, making it completely irrelevant.
3. Christ preached giving up possessions and handing them to the poor
Christ was thus against claiming any wealth as your own and believed only the claim of everybody else in society mattered, not one man's on his own things. Else, it is a sign of greed and materialism and love for worldly things.
Christ's favour for charity was not the same thing as condemning property
Charity is just a simple voluntary act, and not about having a claim on what anybody else owns. There is absolutely nothing in Christ's teachings that suggests the act of owning things and respecting that others own things is wrong. And Christ himself enjoyed drinking, feasting, and relishing and was not some ascetic who hated the idea of joy in life for one's own sake.
Question for posters here:
1) Do you think early Judeo-Christian beliefs hardly have anything at all that can be twisted to support ideas of Marx, Engels, or Proudhon?
2) Do you think there are at least hints of believing property to be secondary to some collective claim, (but with those ideas reflecting nascent notions from less developed societies that were corrected later in history)?
You might find this interesting:
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
Bob murphy talks about it in his blog a lot. The basic synopsis is that you have a right to property/contracts but it is christian to help your fellow man. You're not allowed to attack third parties to help the poor.
Give to Ceaser what belongs to Ceasar. GIve to God what belongs to God.
Ceasar deserves shit. So, no. Not socialism in the political sense. More of the golden rule sense.
Nir Graham, the Professor says there is a concept of "moral hazard" in the Talmud.
I am sure there is, but supposedly old Jewish laws also demand leniency towards debtors.
In the older European and today's Arabic societies, a debtor who does not pay back his debts doesn't get bankruptcy, he gets imprisoned. His act of not paying back was an aggression against another person's property, and a defaulting debtor commits a serious crime, unless the debtor and creditor had earlier made an agreement to negotiate in good faith. The introduction of bankruptcy laws in the western world meant that far more careless people could take loans and get away with not being able to pay back.
Jewish tradition need not be rigidly consistent, but to believe in both moral hazard, and yet also be against charging a high rate of interest and extracting every penny from someone who doesn't fork up dues is a problematic middle ground. If you believe in moral hazard, then you know that the debtor will often be a person most irresponsible with money, unless he pays a greater price for it.
(Though I understand that general Jewish honesty and thrift means that the situation of default is not likely anyway.)
The interesting thing about the history of Jewish reponse to such questions, is that the Rabbis reformed opinions based on their 'economic' analysis, which I think that the professor in the video was describing.
For example, the Rabbi's realised that ritual cancellations of loans that extend over 7 years has adverse consequences and so 'work-arounds' where devised to avoid the perverse incentives.
Jews whilst being able to charge interest to non-jews were prohibited from lending to jews, (to get around this the Rabbi's offered Heter Iska) etc. http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/heter1.html
but I'm not an expert by any means, I may have said wrong things, this is all scraps I have pieced together.
No there was no socialism in any meaningful sense of the word. Monastic and ascetic lifestyles have been a part of every culture, and have always been the exception and not the rule. There are no revolts against "human nature", only an expression of self.
There is little evidence to distinguish the early Hebrews from any of their other semetic counter parts in terms of economy.
Christ preached giving up possessions and handing them to the poor
This is a monolithic view as to what Christ preached. You will get 1000 arguments as to what "he really meant". Historically speaking there have been rich Xtians with property and ones without. Everything can be twisted to everything.
These are ad hoc studies in which no one cares to give an honest analysis of events that transpired 2000-3000 years ago, because they are parrots.