On Democratic
Socialism
I consider myself to be a Christian democratic socialist. I
am, of course, fully aware that most American Christians find “socialism” to be
a scare word and not to be at all Christian. I am also fully aware that they
are wrong about that. Democratic socialism is in fact, the only political
structure that at least approximates Jesus’ Realm of God on earth. Yet
democratic socialism is the best available form of social, political, and economic
structure not only for Christians but for everyone. I want here to consider the
history and advantages of democratic socialism both from a secular point of
view and from a Christian one.
What is democratic socialism? The first thing to insist
about it, and something few Americans understand about it, is that it is democratic.
It is not an authoritarian system. It is not imposed from above on
anyone. Rather, it arises and is created democratically by a people who have
come to understand the evils of insufficiently regulated capitalism and who
want their government and their society to work for the benefit of everyone not
just for the benefit of those with enough money to buy politicians and election
results as happens all the time in the US. The people create it, and the people
are free to abolish it any time they have votes to do it through legal
electoral processes.
Yes, it is of course true that systems that called
themselves “socialist” have been authoritarian or even totalitarian regimes
imposed on a country’s people by force. The classic example is Soviet Russia.
Between 1922 and 1991, the Russians were the dominant nation by far in the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.[1]
Though nearly all Americans think of the Soviet Union as communist, which it
was when we understand the term “communist” to mean a country ruled by a
communist party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union never claimed to have
creates a communist nation. It had, rather, in the terms of the country’s
official Marxist-Leninist ideology, created a socialist nation. Late in its
existence that party claimed that the country was “transitioning to communism,”
but it never claimed to have achieved communism.
To understand that that the Soviet Union considered itself
socialist not fully communist, we must understand Marxist political ideology,
the ideology by which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union claimed to rule
and to have the right to rule. It is also the theory out of which democratic
socialism, though it is today not Marxist at all, grew. In Marxist theory, a
workers’ revolution created not a communist state but a socialist one. This
meant that the role of the state was to transition a society from capitalism to
communism. It was the stage of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” It
functioned to end the private ownership of property, especially of the means of
economic production, that characterizes capitalism. As the ownership of such
property changed from private ownership to public ownership, the classes that
had distinguished capitalism, in particular the classes of the capitalists and
the workers, would begin to disappear. They would disappear because they were
created by the class tension between capitalists and workers. In theory, if
there were no capitalists there would be class tension and hence no classes. Again
inn theory, the role of the state was to facilitate that disappearance. In
practice, Marxists regimes generally did much of that work through violence
against supposed enemies of the state, but for Marx, it would happen more or
less of itself once the country’s economy was no longer capitalist.
True communism was the goal of this transitional period. In
a truly communist society, there are no classes. All people are equal because
private property is owned collectively not individually. In addition, because
there are no longer any socioeconomic classes, the state withers away and
disappears. In Marxist theory, states are all about class dominance. In
capitalism, the capitalist class dominates the working class in part through
the state which it creates and controls. In socialism, the working class dominates
the capitalists class through the state which it creates and controls. When
that class distinction disappears, as Marx believed it would do, there is no
need for a state. There is no function for a state, so there is no state.
It is quite obvious to anyone who knows anything about it
that the Soviet Union never came close to being a classless, stateless society.
It was rather a nation ruled dictatorially by a small class of privileged elite
who used Marxist-Leninist ideology to justify their position of privilege and of
control of all aspects of the nation’s life. At different times between the
1960s and 1980s the Communist Party made differing claims about where the
country was on the supposed transition of communism it was overseeing, but it
never claimed actually to have created a communist nation. The nation was
rather, in theory, at some point in the stage of socialism, the stage not of
communism but of transition to communism. That’s why the country’s name was The
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics not The Union of Soviet Communist
Republics.
There is no denying that “socialist” is a dirty word for
most Americans. Americans’ intense dislike of anything called socialist
probably results from the fact that nations like the USSR that called
themselves socialist were in fact, at least at times in their existence, ruled
by unspeakably tyrannical and brutally violent regimes. Those regimes claimed
to be free and democratic while in fact they were oppressive and dictatorial in
the worst possible ways. The Soviet Union named itself socialist, but it was
ruled by an entity that called itself the Communist Party. It became
essentially unavoidable for Americans, taught to despise the Soviet Union
(mostly for good reason), to equate socialism and brutal, dictatorial Soviet
communism.
Yet Americans’ aversion to the concept of socialism has long
been facilitated by the ignorance of most Americans about the history of
socialism not only in the totalitarian Soviet Union but in democratic Western
Europe. The German Social Democratic Party (known as the SPD) is a good place
to start with understanding that history. It was founded in 1875 and adopted
its current name, “Die Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland,” in 1890. At its
founding, it was a Marxist political organization. It worked to bring about a
Marxist workers’ revolution in Germany. It wanted to do essentially what Lenin
and the Bolsheviks did in Russia in November (NS), 1917.[2]
It actually attempted such a coup in the aftermath of World War I but failed
badly. The party functioned as an opposition party under the Weimar Republic.
The Nazis, of course, suppressed it violently, but it did somehow survive.
After World War II, the German Social Democratic Party kept
its name but changed its tune. It no longer advocated violent revolution.
Rather, it came to function as one of the two major political parties of the
Federal Republic of Germany, that is, of West Germany, during the years of
German division between democratic west and undemocratic east. It continues to
operate in that way today. It is what we could call the more liberal or
progressive of the historically two major German political parties. It does not
call for revolution. I certainly does not call for violence. Rather, it works
to create a Germany in which the interests of the country’s workers are advanced
and protected. It has at times been the country’s ruling party. Willi Brandt,
once the mayor of West Berlin and then Chancellor (the head of the government) of
the Federal Republic of Germany, was a member of the SPD as have been other
Chancellors of the German republic. It advocates policies that are considerably
more progressive than those of the Democratic Party in the United States, but,
in the German context, it is a mainstream, democratic, peaceful organization.
It is indeed a democratic socialist party.
Democratic socialism, or, as we could also call it,
socialist democracy, has made great strides in creating societies and economies
of radical equality in the Scandinavian countries, most particularly in Sweden.
Taxes in Sweden are high, but they finance things Americans can only dream of. Things
like free education at all levels. Free universal health care. Meaningful
retirement benefits. Meaningful parental time off for all workers. They finance
the Swedish military, but Sweden’s military budget absorbs a much smaller
percentage of the country’s national budget than does the US military. Essentially
all of the countries of western Europe have social welfare systems that are far
more extensive than anything we have in this country. Those countries are, in
other words, to some meaningful extent democratic socialist.
Democratic socialism is not something for Americans to fear.
Its origins may have been Marxist, but it isn’t Marxist today. A century and
more ago socialists advocated violent revolution. True democratic socialists do
no such thing today. They work within their country’s legal and political
systems for the benefit of the people rather than for the benefit only of the
people with money the way the American Republican Party and, to a lesser extent
the American Democratic Party, do. That is what we American democratic
socialists, Christian or otherwise, want to do in and for our country.
Is democratic socialism Christian? Can a Christian be a
democratic socialist? Can a true Christian be anything other than a democratic
socialist? The answers are definitely that democratic socialism can be
Christian and that a Christian can be a democratic socialist. I will leave
aside for now the question of whether a true Christian can be anything other
than a democratic socialist. The main thing to understand is that democratic socialism
advocates values and policies that are in fact far more Christian than are the
values and policies of either major American political party and far, far more
Christian than the values and policies of the most vociferous American
self-identified Christians, of Christian Nationalists and MAGA supporters of
Donald Trump. And, of course, we must begin defending that claim by describing
what we mean by “true Christian.”
The tragic truth of far too much of Christian history is
that most Christians have been anything but Christian. Yes, they have said that
they believe in Jesus Christ confessing him to be their personal Lord and Savior.
They’ve mostly done it because the church has told them that they have to do it
to avoid spending eternity in the horrific torments of hell. That claim is, of
course, inane theological nonsense; but it characterizes most of Christian
history, at least in the west.
The truth is that it in only one of the canonical gospels
does Jesus say anything about believing in him, and nearly everyone has
misunderstood what the Greek word translated as “believe” actually means.[3]
The other three synoptic gospels are actually about something else entirely. We
see most clearly what Jesus was actually about in the gospels of Matthew (which
tragically also contains a lot of horrific anti-Jewish error) and Luke. To make
the point, I’ll just focus just a few passages from the Gospels of Matthew and
Luke.
The Gospel of Matthew begins the collection of Jesus sayings
we know as the Sermon on the Mount with nine sayings that begin “Blessed.” See
Matthew 5:1-11. They’re called the Beatitudes. Not one of them is about
believing in Jesus. They are, rather, about how we are to live and how we are
to be in the world. They bless the poor in spirit, the meek, the peacemakers, the
merciful, and others. They notably do not bless those who merely believe in
Jesus. They certainly do not bless those who oppress or use violence against
anyone.
There are beatitudes in Luke too, though they are less well
known than those in Matthew. You’ll find them at Luke 6:20-22. They bless not
the “poor in spirit” as Matthew does but simply you who are poor, you who are
hungry, and you who weep. It’s a much shorter list of beatitudes than Matthew’s,
but notice what it emphasizes. First, is says that blessed are the poor, the
hungry, and those who are weeping without mentioning (or excluding) any reason
for their weeping. It then blesses you “when people hate you, and when they
exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.” Luke 6:22.
Because it appears in the context of the Gospel of Luke not the Gospel of John,
I take the saying “on account of the Son of Man” to mean those who are hated,
excluded, reviled, and defamed precisely because neither Jesus nor God does any
such thing with anyone, precisely because they are the ones God most loves and
works to lift up and relieve of their distress.[4]
Then we come to something quite startling that is not in
Matthew at all. Luke’s Jesus follows his few beatitudes with sayings that begin
“woe.” You’ll find them at Luke 6:24-26. They say “woe to you are rich,” “woe
to you who are full, “woe to you who are laughing,” and “woe to you when people
speak well of you.” We can conclude that Jesus is blessing those the world
harms and condemning those the world honors and who cause others harm. He is,
in other words, turning the world upside down to tell us that God’s ways are
precisely the reverse of most of the ways of the world.
Do you want more proof of that truth? Consider something else
that is in the Sermon on the Mount and that follows the Beatitudes and woes in
Luke. In Matthew we read: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love
your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:43-44. Luke’s Jesus puts the same
idea this way: “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, and do good to
those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
Luke 6:27-28. Talk about turning the ways of the world upside down! Doing that
was what Jesus was about more than he was about anything else.
Then, of course, there is the famous scene at Matthew 25:31-46
and the famous saying that comes from it. In this scene, Jesus first tells some
people that they had seen him hungry, thirsty, as a stranger, naked, and imprisoned,
and they had taken care of him. These people don’t know what he’s talking
about, so he says to them: “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the
least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Matthew 25:40.
Then Jesus says to others that they had also seen him in various forms of
distress and had done nothing to help him. Like the others, these people don’t
know what he’s talking about. So he says to them: “Truly I tell you, just as
you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”
Matthew 5:45. The text tells us that God blesses the first group of people but punishes the second.[5]
Once again we learn here not what to believe but how to live. Live by caring
for “the least of these,” for those most in need not by kowtowing to those
least in need the way so many American politicians do today.
Jesus’ beatitudes, woes, and words about caring for “the
least of these” are nearly perfect descriptions of the world democratic
socialism seeks to create.[6]
That world is one in which all people have equal rights, dignity, and legal and
social protection. No exceptions. Period. It is a world of peace in which the
powers, such as they are, use the world’s resources for the good of the people
not for the good only of the wealthy like those currently in power in the
United States do. Use them for the ways of peace and never, ever for the ways
of war. It is a world in which “enemies” are approached not in a spirit of
hatred and destruction but in a spirit of reconciliation and nonviolent
conflict resolution. Because the world will always be the world and not heaven,
some people in a democratic socialist country will insist on the country
maintaining armed forces though others of us will disagree and will work to
make doing so unnecessary. Still, the commitment of a democratic socialist
government is to nonviolence, with violence being at best an absolute last
resort and, ideally, being no resort at all.
So. Is democratic socialism Christian? Yes it is, though it
is not only Christian and imposes no religious belief on anyone. Can a
Christian be a democratic socialist? Yes, absolutely. The ideals of democratic
socialism are essentially the ideals of Christianity properly understood. I
consider myself to be a Christian democratic socialist. Many of my progressive
Christian friends and colleagues do too. Marxism was and is atheistic. Many
democratic socialists may be atheists, but many others of us are people of
faith. We will happily work together with people of faiths other than ours and
with people of no spiritual faith to bring about the world of peace and justice
of which we and all democratic socialists dream.
Now to that question I said above I was putting aside. Can a
true Christian be anything other than a democratic socialist? I suppose I have
to answer that question yes, a true Christian can be something else. Most true
Christians do not consider themselves to be democratic socialists, though we
can hope that that will change in the future. A true Christian can pursue peace
through Buddhism, which is a way of being more than a religious faith and tends
to be apolitical. In my country, many true Christians, myself included, usually
vote Democratic. We do that not because the Democrats get everything right. Far
from it. They do, however, get a lot more right and a lot less wrong than the
Republicans do, and our country just isn’t prepared to elect many politicians like
Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani who declare themselves to be democratic
socialists. Still, democratic socialism comes much closer to advocating the
values of Jesus’ Realm of God than does any other human political ideology. That’s
why I and a great many other Christians today consider ourselves to be
Christian democratic socialists. We hope and pray that democratic socialism is
the wave of the future. May it be so.
[1]
The Bolshevik coup took place in 1917. The USSR was created only in 1922.
[2]
At the time of the Bolshevik coup d’etat, Russia used the Julian calendar not
the more modern and accurate Gregorian calendar. Thus, the coup took place in
October on the Russian calendar but in November on the western calendar. After
the Bolsheviks took control, they switched the country to the Gregorian
calendar. Thus, the Soviets celebrated “The Great October Revolution,” as they
called that coup, on November 7.
[3]
It means something more like trust or give your heart to than it does accept as
true certain asserted but unprovable facts about Jesus, the latter being what
nearly everyone takes it to mean.
[4]
“The Son of Man” is one of Jesus’ common ways or referring to himself.
[5]
Your humble author does not believe that God punishes anyone, but the author of
the Gospel of Matthew, unlike essentially any other New Testament author, did.
I do not think that Jesus believed any such thing. If he ever said some of the
things Matthew has him say about God punishing people, surely he used that
image only as a metaphor not as a literal truth.
[6]
This parallelism between the gospels and democratic socialism is not a
coincidence. Democratic socialism is no longer Marxist in any meaningful sense.
As a matter of its history, however, it did arise from a Marxist movement. Marx’s
“communism,” as I discussed it above, is in a real sense the Realm of God with
the . religious and spiritual elements removed from it. See, for example Acts 4:32.
Democratic socialism doesn’t insist on religious and spiritual elements being
part of the solution to the world’s problems either, though it doesn’t exclude
those of us who believe that they must be.
