Very good points about the Medieval heresies and the various forms of millenarianism that were around for centuries.

Absolute equality of the means of production and the goods produced is an impossible ideal. However, the ideas of protection for the poor, assisting them in survival and helping them to help themselves are very much a part of Christian teaching. A certain amount of redistribution of wealth is necessary in a civil society, but there are points beyond which this must not go, because it then interferes with the industry and creativity of capital and private enterprise. There are always trade-offs, plus capitalism is far superior to socialism for increasing wealth and living standards for all.

There are insights about this I did not fully understand until I had left the seminary and then went on to an M.B.A. program to study finance.

And again, virtue cannot be coerced. It has to be freely cultivated and encouraged. Socialism and Marxism eventually cannot work because individual initiative is not rewarded. Therefore, nothing gets done.

The monastic communities were supposed to serve as an example, an ideal, to the laity of the practice of egalitarianism that is freely chosen (that’s why VOWS of poverty, chastity, and obedience are taken by the initiates in monastic and religious orders).

The reason why there is a long tradition of Catholic social teaching was not just to combat Marxism. It was also to emphasize that the other extreme, a society that is totally selfish and social Darwinian, breeds excesses that are destructive.

Some people call me pedantic, but they won’t define their terms and precisely why. /g

You guys keep me on my toes.

By “willingly” I mean you have your own reasons. For example, you have decided to become a better, more charitable person; or you’ve felt sorry for someone who has less than you; or you’ve identified a communal need and decided that contributing will help everyone, including yourself. What counts is that nobody’s put a gun to your head.

Socialists typically put a gun to your head.

Professional complainer?

:o)

No, but I will accept a plea of clydesdalenesia.

there were locations and things that at times resembles socialism, but they were not that at all. they just had plenty for a while.

once you do some math, you can figure out the math situation where you can have enough for some and not for all.

all the ways we solve problems today, like voting, they didnt have. life was more like the western town where each family tilled their own.

in fact viking law followed natural law. as your stake was the amount of property you could walk around in a day.

life before our inventions didnt have enough food. look at africa, then remove all food shipments and farms, and thats what we were pretty much like.

we were also cannibals. probably why we are so smart. an arms race within the species, as we hunted each other. predator pray tends not to increase past some balance.

there were no noble savages… life was as hobbes said, brutal and short.

however, if you look at how we develop, our intelligences could go up faster as long as societies didnt change the percieved landscape. once they did that, we would develop for a world that matched the rules of what pressure they change and hold, not the world we walk around in.

no socialist group has ever lasted other than fake modern socialism.

socialism is really the state trying to take over the communal function of knit groups… to make charity statist.

however, no one that actually pushes it sees it that way.

sorry got to go, real late. .

Of course. Because being exposed to “racism” means that one should believe things like the US Govt invented HIV to kill blacks and all the rest.

It’s all about empowerment!

It’s not clear when this socialism was revised to be more sustainable.

I strongly favor peaceful, voluntary socialism — but more strongly oppose involuntary redistribution. Taxes are not collected peacefully.
(The credible threat of violent force is not peaceful — imagine the IRS without the power to garnish wages or jail you or do anything other than hurt your reputation.)

Churches which want the gov’t to do charity in solving a problem, are asking for non-peaceful solutions to that problem. They should, instead, be solving the problem peacefully, and voluntarily.

Too bad there is no corporate organization that rewards managers only for hiring more people, with the “middle line” of headcount maximization being the goal — using revenue in excess of current costs to increase headcount (and costs, thus reducing “profit”).

This idea is sort of “Jobism” — not sure if this is formal. “Living wage” folk don’t like it because they think most jobs aren’t so hot. I don’t like their silly socialist ideas.