Rank communism

When our reading from Acts comes up, as it does every few years, it's time to talk about communism. For when you read through the pericopes from Acts, communism rears its red head. 

Now, there are a lot (and I do mean a lot) of generally conservative Christians who will be opposed to communism in all its forms, which is a big ask, given what is contained within the readings. When it says that the disciples were distributing all the proceeds of all the property that people had as any had need, it's hard for anyone to say that the principle 'from each according to his ability, to each according to its needs' is against God and scripture. It's not. Like it's really not. But if you have a knee-jerk reaction against communism, you'll find that you're rejecting, you know, something that the disciples directly did in scripture. The foundation of the community that the disciples led in the first century was communistic, plain and simple. You may not like the label, but it was exactly that.

So why does communism fail, if it's in scripture, and is part of the first community of believers? Well, it's all about the base assumptions, and we'll move on from there.

You essentially have to start out from realistic principles before you can go any further.  If you don't, then you literally can propose a universe in which chimpanzees will be likely to be observant communists. Which they won't. They'll be far more likely to be good cannibals than good communists. But they won't all work, combine all their resources and so on and so on. It won't come together. If we're going to look at communism, and to discuss why it won't work, the reason for it is that it's based on a lack of understanding in human nature. The idea was that people would work, and work collectively for the good of everyone, and would be content to socialize profits and so on. But any conception of communism sort of falls apart at the first hurdle of human nature. 

In the church, we understand that human beings are by nature sinful and unclean. That is, they cannot be trusted to share and distribute properly without the idea that they might very well steal and keep for themselves. The essential problem with communism isn't that the individual workers would be bad at being communists - in many ways they'd be okay. If you're working in a factory, it doesn't matter to you too much who owns it. But the real rot settles in at the top. 

The criticism of communism from the 20th century and beyond was always that those on the top, the commissars, the politburo, would always have a world that was unequal to the max. All animals, as they say, are equal, but some are more equal than others. The ordinary soviet was expected to be a good hard worker, and expected to give his labor to the society and so on, but those in charge would get awfully comfy. It became very quickly caviar and champagne for the politburo on the top, but nothing but grinding labor and breadlines for those on the bottom, and that didn't change much over the course of the soviet union. Essentially, if you're counting on someone to distribute goods and resources equitably, you're going to have to count on them to be good, well meaning people. Which they probably aren't. 

That's not fair. They probably start out with the absolute best of intentions, but the world has a habit of getting in the way. And what that means is that things start out well enough, but when you give people power and authority over others, there's a good chance that they'll fall apart, as they do. They literally can't be trusted not to take all those goods and services, and funnel them to themselves. 

The only real prescription is to understand from the beginning that even the people who you have in charge to help out with everything won't be doing a very trustworthy job with it. You have to start understand that literally everyone is a flawed human who is essentially up to no good.

Once you figure that out, then everything else makes more sense. If communism is built up off of the idea that a utopia is possible, and that you will one day not have the poor with you, then you'll be disappointed very rapidly, given how the ideals run smack into the reality of humanity. Your utopia runs aground because it doesn't deal with the harsh world of humans as they are.

But the scriptures do. Which is why the Bible, and the disciples, will tell you that it's very unlikely indeed that people will do things out of the goodness of their hearts. People are sinful, and that's why they need the governance that they get. They literally cannot be relied on to do the right thing, which is a fact of life, and the sooner we work that out, the sooner we can get past the communism vs capitalism idea, and get back to the idea from scripture: that you are called upon to do what you have to do with those who are around you. In reality, the Christian faith is less concerned with capitalism vs communism, and more concerned with what you do as an individual person. That is, you have a chance in this world to do the right thing, to be a neighbor to those who are directly around you. At any moment you have been placed in an environment where helpful, important things are right in front of you to do, and you can do them, or not. But you know that it's not up to the politburo or the commissars to take care of all utopia for you, but rather for you to step boldly into the world that you have been placed into. Whether a communist or capitalist society, your neighbor will need you regardless. Don't wait for all things to be made right. If you believe that resources should be distributed, you have resources to distribute. If you believe that the poor should be fed, you have food. If you believe that things should be more equitable, then make things more equitable .If you don't want that to be your problem, then you'll understand how the very very rich feel. But they have the same responsibility that you do, just on a larger scale. To provide for the needs that they see.