by Adi Schlebusch
During the nineteenth century, Marxism, as the logical outflow of Liberalism, purposefully strove to eradicate the God-ordained covenantal social structures of the family, the church and the nation. One of the most important means of achieving this end was by means of the central economic principle of communism, the abolition of private property.[i] Although Classical Liberalism certainly never had this end in mind, it was still its propaganda for egalitarianism which formed the heart and soul of communism.
For Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, economic inequalities can be directly traced back to the existence of private property rights and especially the fact that property can be inherited by progeny. From the standpoint of Socialism the state must then expropriate property and redistribute it in order to create economic equality. This position is of course rooted in Marxism’s anti-Christian and anti-Covenantal thought. The Bible, after all, clearly teaches the principle of private property in the commandments “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house.” Furthermore, the Bible expressly teaches—in places like Proverbs 13:22 and 19:14— that the inheritance of property is central to God’s covenantal blessings bestowed intergenerationally upon covenantally faithful families.
Over and against this biblical principle, Communism aims at seizing the means of production—including all property and infrastructure—taking it out of the hands of private property owners and centrally managing it on behalf of the whole collective.[ii] This doomed economic strategy is not in line with the Bible or the set and inescapable economic laws of creation as designed by God. Whereas the farmer or the entrepreneur will walk the extra mile to improve his business, socialism kills this incentive since it reduces the entire population to wage slaves which means that any profit that would be made by extra hard work, simply gets taken and “redistributed” to those who did not exhibit the same drive or work ethic. Marxism therefore punishes hard work and incentivizes laziness. In this, it does the exact opposite of what God expects from the government. Romans 13:3-4 teaches us, after all, that governments ought to punish godlessness and reward obedience to God’s law.
Christians have in the past advocated a number of different economic theories (including various forms of capitalism, distributism, and physiocracy), but at the heart of every Christian-Biblical economic theory lies the notion of private property rights, as derived from the ten commandments. Abolishing property taxes and expanding private property is, in my view, the key to not only economic, but political liberty for clans and nations. Right-wing libertarians such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe has rightly noted:
"[When] all land is privately owned, including all streets, rivers, airports, harbors etc … there exists no such thing as freedom of immigration. Rather, there exists the freedom of many independent private property owners to admit or exclude others from their own property in accordance with their own unrestricted or restricted property titles. Admission to some territories might be easy, while to others it might be nearly impossible … There will be as much immigration or non-immigration, inclusivity or exclusivity, desegregation or segregation, non-discrimination or discrimination based on racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, cultural or whatever other grounds as individual owners or associations of individual owners allow."
Furthermore, in addition to private property rights, the Bible also emphasizes in II Thessalonians 3:10 that those who will not work, shall not eat. This amplifies the Christian view of the value of labor in not only securing economic progress and expanding and cultivating our property, but in glorifying God. We work in obedience to God as men created in the image of God. Therefore, whether our job is to clean streets, mow lawns, or work as actuarial scientists, we must do our job well, not only for the sake of our income, but because, as the Bible teaches us in Proverbs 22:29: “A man who excels in his work, he will stand before kings.”
The author is a senior researcher at the Pactum Institute.
[i] Engels, F. 1847 (2012). Grundsätze des Kommunismus. Loschberg: Jazzybee, p. 12.
[ii] Marx, K. 1867 (2012). Das Kapital (Buch I), Washington DC: Regnery, p. 336.