The Socialist Band-Aid for Mankind's Terminal, Sinful Condition
5 Dec 2006
Socialist ideas initially emerged in Britain and France—and afterward in Germany and Italy—as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution, which may be defined as radical social and economic changes brought on by the development of manufacturing during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, created an industrial working class. It was the exploitation of this industrial working class that spawned what we know today as socialism.
Socialism began as a movement to do away with private property in order to squelch the crude exploitation of industrial workers—people with nothing to sell but their labor. Socialists believed that by transferring all ownership to the state, the state would put an end to all exploitation by proving itself a benevolent employer of all of its laborers. Embraced almost immediately by the working class, socialism’s rise and longevity in this world are directly attributable to its popularity among workers, who have served as its backbone since the mid-19th century.
In spite of socialism’s grandiose promises, history has repeatedly proven the fallacy of socialist ideology. To begin with, history has consistently proven socialist states to be far more abusive to their citizens than private employers are to their employees. Unlike private business owners, whose greed for profits partially temper any mistreatment of their employees, the socialist state has no such restraint in the mistreatment of its citizens. Seeing itself as all important, and anyone who disagrees as totally expendable, the socialist state has proven Lord Acton’s dictum time and time again: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Furthermore, history has proven socialism to be the death knell to human ambition and ingenuity. What incentive do men have to excel in a society where everyone is equally rewarded? If the industrious and successful end up in the same breadline with the indolent and slothful, why should one man work harder than another for his indiscriminate and unappreciative socialist state? Obviously, he shouldn’t; and history has proven that hardly anyone does. Thus, socialist states are inevitably doomed to financial collapse. They are simply incapable of producing and preserving healthy economies without the incentives of private property, free enterprise and higher wages for skilled labor.
No one can deny the frequent exploitation of workers by employers; after all, the exploiting of one human being by another is as old as the Fall of Man. Whether it occurs in business or elsewhere, it is, I am sad to say, a cruel fact of life in this fallen world. Even our Lord spoke of its inescapable reality (Matthew 18:7). Still, while we cannot deny the existence of this age-old problem, we can rest assured that socialism has been thoroughly discredited as a solution.
Socialism, like all other manmade remedies for the fallen human condition, is proven in the end to be nothing more than a Band-Aid on a terminal illness (sin). It may provide a little external cover for man’s sinful nature, but it is completely powerless to effect any internal transformation. Only Christ can change the human heart and add men to the ranks of those living by the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12). Therefore, it is Christianity, not socialism, or any of the world’s other isms for that matter, that offers the sole solution to the human dilemma
Don Walton
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