So does the Bible advocate Capitalism or Socialism? This is a huge question for many people and one that I believe we stumble over. Socialism is a system in which the community is supposed to take care of the needs of everyone in it. Whereas Capitalism is a system in which each person is supposed to take care of themselves. Given that focus, I would say that God would prefer Socialism. When He asked Cain where Able was, Cain asked if he was his brother's keeper. God sidestepped the question somewhat but still made it clear that, "Yes, we are our brother's keepers." But even so, I when I read my Bible it talks about each person working and gaining personal benefit from their own labour. It never condems the rich just because they are rich nor does it attempt to share resources equally between all people. In the Law in Levitcus it openly acknowledges that people may become poor and does not provide any social system to make them rich again. So why, if God loves us all and wants us to take care of each other, does the Bible appear to be mostly Capitalistic.
I think there are many reasons.
1) Because of our selfishness:
To start with, God is against both laziness and greed. But he is also realistic. He made us after all and he knows what we are like. He knew that we were going to be selfish and therefore would tend to fall into either laziness or greed. But a Socialistic system would colapse under laziness, so it cannot be sustained. Therefore, because of the hardness of men's hearts I believe God gave us a more capitalistic system and then encouraged us to be generous to each other.
2) To teach us:
God takes each of us through a different journey. Some are poor and need to learn to trust in Him to provide. Others are rich and need to learn that they still need God and that they need to help their fellow man. Many of us go through phases in life where we get to learn both lessons.
3) Inspite of the Bible supporting a more capitalistic view, it has several key socialistic laws to control the greed of man.
- the poor where allowed to glean in the fields of the rich and take food for free
- poor people could not be charged interest on loans
- food could not be sold at a profit so that everyone would be able to afford to eat
- merchants were not suppossed to create scarcity in order to drive up prices.
- all debts had to be forgiven in the year of jubilee
These were major socialistic constraints put in place to protect the poor from the greed of an uncontrolled capitalistic system. So I believe that God DID NOT give us a totally free market guidline for living. He gave us a workable form of Capitalism with a sprinkling of Socialistic common sense.
In the USA (arguably the most Capitalistic nation that has ever been) there are still socialistic overtones.
- unions
- minimum wage
- medicare
- medicade
- foodstamps (now called SNAP - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)
- Anti-trust laws (prohibiting monolopies)
People are on both sides as to whether these programs and others go too far or don't go far enough. That is a question open for fair debate. However, the question of whether or not there should be Socialistic controls on a Capitalistic society for me at least is clear. Biblically we are given the model that we DO NEED laws to control the greed of man. The Bible is in favour of a hybrid solution, tipped, perhaps heavily, to the Capitalistic side.
