Is Socialism Really the Same as Neighborliness?

By Daniel J. Pilla

Thursday, August 08, 2024

 

Last week, on a “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call, Minnesota governor Tim Walz stated that “one person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.” This comment betrays either: 1) Walz’s profound ignorance of socialism, or 2) yet another in the long train of leftist lies designed to mislead the public into believing that socialism is somehow a benign economic system focused merely on equality. In either case, this comment is reprehensible. Socialism and neighborliness are wholly mutually exclusive propositions.

 

Socialism is a forced economic system under which the government usurps total control of a nation’s means of production, distribution, and exchange (i.e., buying and selling). That is to say, all of the essential elements of economic activity are owned by the government and controlled by unelected bureaucrats. There is no free market in the production of goods or services, and no free choice by consumers as to what they will buy or not, or at what prices. Individuals are told by government agents where to work, how to work, and what they will be paid to work. In every real way, socialism imparts government-enforced slavery on the working class in that all freedom of choice is removed from one’s economic activities.

 

Neighborliness is the antithesis of socialism. Neighborliness involves the voluntary cooperation of individuals freely helping one another without an expectation of economic benefit, solely for the purposes of making the world a better place (or at least one’s small corner of the world). The best example of this is the teaching of Jesus in Luke 10:25-37. There we are told the story of a man who happens upon another who was robbed, beaten, and left for dead. The former treated the injured man’s wounds, brought him to an inn, took care of him, and paid the innkeeper from his own pocket.

 

This was done out of the goodness of the man’s heart, without expectation of return, and certainly without any government intervention, force, or coercion of any kind. Voluntary action is the essential definition of neighborliness. By contrast, socialism is force.

 

The allure of socialism (at least to young people) seems to be its claim of equity among all people. And there is some truth to that. Under socialism, all people (save the top 2 or 3 percent of the elite ruling class) are equally poor, oppressed, and destitute. And they are equally determined to flee to freedom (chiefly, to the U.S.) to the extent possible.

 

The unbroken story of socialism is the misery and ruin it visits on a nation’s history, economy, and people. There’s not a single example in history where socialism made the lives of the masses better. The reasons for that are simple. Socialism can only exist through force and oppression; and socialist economies cannot and do not produce wealth.

 

That Minnesota’s governor embraces and promotes this idea is truly sad.