Socialism...or something like it

I’ve been thinking about the formula for socialism lately. It goes: “From each according to their ability to each according to their need”. It sounds simple enough. When it’s applied to the world of economics it has proven not to work very well. Human nature and our proclivity towards greed and self-aggrandizement make it a pipe dream. In some cases where it’s been applied the results have been disastrous. Capitalistic reforms have proven to be the best efforts in tempering socialism.

Capitalism takes into account human nature and even encourages greed. By itself capitalism also has its evils, greed being the major one. In a wise society it’s tempered with social welfare reforms. No government in history has pulled off a socio-economic system flawlessly, but the United States and some of the other Western democracies have made a valiant effort. They've done so by seeing the value of individuals.

What struck me recently was the thought that the socialist formula can be applied to other, less tangible, things in life with some success. Plug ‘goodness’ into that formula for example. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” Now, that sounds like a wise equation to me. Each of us has gifts we can offer the world. In some they may be a small thing, but even the smallest things have value in the world of goodness. We all have the need for goodness in our lives. Even the worst of us, in some cases especially the worst of us, need goodness. Just imagine a world where each of us contributed to our fellow man what we have of goodness. That’s a dream too, but a nice one. The difference is, paradoxically, when we give away our goodness we lose nothing. In fact, when we give away our goodness, we find that it actually increases in us. If money did that…we’d all be devout socialists!

Instead, too many of us practice capitalism in our goodness too. We are only concerned with what we can get for ourselves. That usually proves to be disastrous. You see, if we all only work to amass goodness only for ourselves we usually end up losing it. There’s that paradox again! The scriptures say to not lay up treasures for ourselves on earth where moths and rust corrupt, but rather to lay it up for ourselves in heaven. We can only do that by giving away our goodness…

I’m convinced that people who are drawn to socialism are drawn to it because, in their hearts, they plug goodness into the equation instead of money. They mean well but don’t seem to get that that’s not how it works…unless everyone ponies up. They see human nature as basically good. Capitalists too, often see human nature as basically good. We might like to believe that, but what it turns out to be is FAILURE TO READ THE BIG PRINT in history and psychology. That’s a subject for another time.

For now I only want to add that the world I’m describing here is a dream too, because our very nature would have to change to achieve it. The good news is that the essential part of the equation is within our power. Each of us has the power to choose to give away our goodness. Each of us can choose to live the way of get or the way of give. We create the world we live in by the choices we make. Choosing to live the way of give will begin to change the world…because that will change us.