by Jack Benning
Socialism is a new word covering an old idea.
As far back as Plato and forward there have been different versions of the same concept that have thrived. The new word socialism, as we know it today, became established in eastern Europe by Karl Marx. It was then incorporated into the name of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia. It was then defined by The Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia when it was an atheistic country denying Christ and eliminating any who stood for Christ Jesus.
The international communists who would rule the world with law that make it illegal to pray to God want to own all that you have and dictate its use by the government, giving your property to whosoever the government decides, at their will, not by your will.
On my book shelf is a volume set of the 1952 Encyclopaedia Britannica. I keep the set around because most modern encyclopedias have changed many facts to fit into the politically correct opinions of the modern day Socialist elite.
In vol 20, page 877 it says
“The words Socialist and Socialism came into use in Great Britain and France soon after 1825, and were first applied to the writings of certain writers who were seeking a complete transformation of the economic and moral basis of society by the substitution of social for individual control and of social for individualistic forces in the organization of life and work.”
“In Great Britain the followers of Owen officially adopted the name Socialists in 1841. The word Socialism was popularized as the antithesis to individualism by P. Leroux and J. Reynaud in their Encyclopedia novella and in their other writings, and had come by 1840 to be freely used on the continent to describe the schools of Saint-Simon, Francois Fourier, Owen and others who attacked the existing system of commercial competition and put forward proposals for a new way of life based on collective control. Later these earlier schools of Socialism were categorized by Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels as “Utopian Socialism,” in contrast with the “Scientific Socialism,” based on the materialistic conception of history, of which they were the pioneers.”
Then if I go to Page 882 it says,
Marx brought the seat of the International (communism) to the United States in 1872. Mark had a theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which the Bolsheviks put into force in the Soviet Union after 1917. The American Socialist part polled nearly 1,000,000 votes in the presidential election of 1912..
On page 887 it says,
“Socialism: principles and outlook. Socialism, reduced to its simplest legal and practical expression, means the complete discarding of the institution of private property by transforming it into public property.”
Now, Christianity allows for private ownership and private reward for work and private punishment and private choice for charity or not to give charity, according to each man’s good conscience and faith towards God through Jesus Christ. Socialism dictates that the governments will have dictatorial control over the crops I grow on my own land. As a Christian I am granted wisdom in my giving of charity, in mercy, and in helping my neighbor, but not being forced by the government as a matter of rule enforced by the bayonet.
To the extent that many socialists shout about helping other people, they are only saying what the Bible says. To the extent those same socialists want to enforce the help by the point of a bayonet (rule of law), that is government dictatorship over free will. Remember a phrase, …by the consent of the governed…! The word Socialist as a label the way I see it used, means to enforce by government army the governmental distribution of wealth. Socialists have for years attempted to use a pure democratic idea of voting, regardless of law and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, to gain their idea of a socialist democracy to replace the republic under God established by the founders of America.
No where in the Scriptures do I read anything that even remotely resembles Socialism.