I can’t find evidence of anti-communism in the Bible?

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Rob2 said:
I have better things to do than to waste my time on a thread on which people are not talking to each other but to themselves .
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This is not new material.

The names change.

Modernism.

Progressivism.

Socialism.

Communism.

Marxism.

The Bible was not written in English!

The Ten Commandments specify that stealing and envy [coveting] are forbidden!
 
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Curious11 said:
What communism is about is common ownership of things like agricultural fields, factories, corporations…
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Corporations ARE a form of common ownership.

Voluntary associations.

Shares traded on the exchanges are personal property.
 
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It is quite astounding how Communism seems to be embraced by many in the West as some form of altruistic society, while they seem to close their eyes to the horrendous large scale slaughter and oppression that seems to go with the implementation and maintenance of the Communist system.

It sometimes seems that the very people in the West who seem to embrace the concept of Communism seem to often be the very people who seem to value unfettered individualism.
 
That’s not common ownership but private property in the hands of the shareholders. Not the same thing at all
 
Curious11 said:
There is personal property. What communism is about is common ownership of things like agricultural fields, factories, corporations… not things like your personal car or your watch or your clothes
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But that is a FARCE. Common ownership is a lie in Communist countries. It’s really govt ownership.

Common ownership of farms, for example, would be similar to how in some public parks people are allowed plant their own veggies plants for their own use. What the communists do in practice is the govt dictates what is to be grown. The people don’t really have a say.

Communism and Socialism are both about one thing only… Power. They are both about taking power away from the middle class and business people and “returning” it to the academic and/or military elite.

The only difference between the two is in socialism the corporations are on the side of the socialists, while in Communism they were not and they were shut down.
 
phil19034 said:
The only difference between the two is in socialism the corporations are on the side of the socialists, while in Communism they were not and they were shut down.
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The Communism/Socialism contrast that people try to make has always been a distinction without a difference. Communists and Socialists want the same thing: A government controlled economy where the wealth (or lack there of) is distributed equally and private property is abolished. The distinction is that someone calling themselves a “Communist” wants to achieve it immediately through violent revolution, while someone calling themselves a “Socialist” wants to achieve it incrementally through the ballot box.
 
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Not accurate, maybe you’re saying social democracy is the same thing as democratic socialism, which is not true.

Marx was a socialist. Marxism is also known as scientific socialism. Communism is a type of socialism
 
Curious11 said:
Communism is a type of socialism
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This, we can agree on.
BTW - both are oppressive. In communism, if you publicly object, the govt arrests you. In socialism, if you publicly object, the socialists ruin your reputation to the point where you get on board, else you will eventually get fired for hate and your life is ruined.

Socialism and communism cannot co-exist with people with different ideas. You must accept their view or they consider you to be evil. (But the problem there is they don’t know what evil is)

It’s like the Bible says: good will be called evil and evil will be called good.
 
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Curious11 said:
There is personal property. What communism is about is common ownership of things like agricultural fields, factories, corporations… not things like your personal car or your watch or your clothes
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So no private “productive property” then? But that was precisely the stuff that I was referring to in the Old Testament, i.e., the distribution of land. Back then land wasn’t just land to live on, it was what you needed to sustain yourself through farming or raising livestock.
Curious11 said:
The church hierarchy is not composed of social classes, communism wouldn’t be against it necessarily.
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You specifically defined communism as a classless society. But the Church has priests, deacons, bishops, religious, consecrated virgins/ widows, and lay Catholics all have different social statuses within Christian society, even though soteriologically we are the same. A class is simply a division based on social or economic status. The Church’s hierarchy definitely fulfills the social part. How would you define a class? Or are you referring to social classes that one is born into? What would you say then about the fact that some of these classes, i.e., any kind of clergy, or that of consecrated widows/virgins, are limited to people of one sex? But your sex is something you are born into.

Could you have communism in a monarchy or aristocracy, which far more what resembles the Jewish and Church hierarchies?
Curious11 said:
Jews and Christians accepted private property because it had always been the norm, there is no evidence they did it for theological reasons rather than practical or political reasons
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The issue, at least in the Old Testament (though to some extent in the New), is that sometimes it is hard to separate the “theological” from the “political”. Some things you can definitely do that with, but others not so much. The distribution and preservation of land (which was productive as opposed to mere personal property) along family lines in the Law was not just a practical issue, but a matter of justice, which is treated rather theologically in the scriptures. Furthermore, “practical wisdom” was a part of the wisdom tradition in the Old Testament (think Proverbs).
 
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The status within the church has no civil implications because only Christians recognize the authority monks have. Social class as defined by difference in wealth would disappear in a communist society. Being the pope would be like being the president of your neighborhood chess club, it’s irrelevant, the social class would be the same, they would each hold equal wealth and have equal access to the fruits of production that arise from the use of commonly-owned productive resources.

Provided such a society does not declare itself atheist, I see zero issue with it being compatible with Christianity, Christians would still go to church, atheists would go on living their lives as usual and other religions would still be respected if it were a secular state.
 
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So then for you, you might have a communistic society as the background, but when you localize, you would have things that are not communist in structure? After all, Church leadership isn’t simply moral/ theological; it’s also administrative (and this currently includes the distribution of the resources to members via charities and whatnot).

I’m also not sure that keeping hierarchies localized would necessarily render the two compatible in practice. After all, when it came to liberation theology (which you can’t really call communist itself, because while influenced by communism/ marxism, but did not advocate for an abolition of private productive property, as far as I know… ), one of the biggest contentions was the anti-hierarchical approach that liberation theologians were taking. Being the leader of a chess club is one thing, but leadership has little to do with chess itself. Yet the hierarchy of the Church is way further reaching and more theologically grounded in principle than the accidental hierarchy of a chess club.
 
Can you clarify further the difference between “spreading the ownership of the means of production between everyone equally” and “common ownership of the means of production”? On the surface they sound very similar to me.
 
The church, in a communist society, would be an organization voluntarily created by individuals who choose to organize around a church with certain set of beliefs based on theology. Just like it is today. Under communism it would be stripped of its productive resources, but as long as it didn’t break the law, it would exist as usual. Its members would have jobs in the secular world and gather to go to church every Sunday and that would be it.
 
One of them says everyone should own the same amount of productive property l, the other says that no one individually owns productive property, it’s owner collectively by society and its fruits distributed equally among the members of society
 
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