Socialism's fatal flaw: Misunderstanding human nature
Last week, I began a discussion of how capitalism and socialism differ in producing wealth and poverty in human society. This week, I want to continue that discussion.
Socialism is based on a false and destructive understanding of human nature. As I pointed out last week, the Bible reveals the depravity of man. As Jeremiah 17:9 declares, the “heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” The verse is declaring that man’s heart is wicked and is deceitful in convincing man that “we aren’t so bad!”
To quote Karl Marx, the central tenet of Marxism and socialism is: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Every nation in the world that has tried to implement this dictum has resulted in massive economic dislocation and depressed living standards.
Interestingly, 2026 is not only the 250th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence issued in 1776. It is also the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, the 976-page tome, which is credited with spawning the field of economics. Even at such massive length, The Wealth of Nations provides fascinating and insightful knowledge for the modern reader.
Smith’s genius is apparent from the beginning. His essential and invaluable insight into human nature and human society is stated clearly.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, James Grant noted: “The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition,” as The Wealth of Nations resoundingly asserts, “when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the following of human laws too often incumbers its operations.”
As noted last week, our Founding Fathers recognized the depravity of man and created the federal system of three branches of government, with the executive, legislative and judicial branches competing with one another and acting as checks on one another.
When the American economy has been troubled or is not growing, it is because, at various times in our history, one branch gathered too much power and influence, be it big business in the last half of the 19th century or the federal bureaucracy having too much power at times in the mid and late 20th century.
While I was a Ph.D. student at Oxford University in England (1972-1975), my major advising professor was a brilliant historian and scholar named B.R. White. We became good friends and we both found each other’s political views unfathomable. At one point, near the end of our time together, he related to me that he could not understand that I was such a “traitor to my class,” by which he meant that although I grew up blue-collar and working class, I was what would be called a “Reagan Republican.”
I explained that in America, we did not view social “upward mobility” negatively, but as a positive “Horatio Alger” story of the economic opportunities available in the U.S.
I further explained that my parents, both high school graduates, were extremely pleased with my educational achievements and my subsequent move into the American middle class.
I then told Dr. White that he was one of the most brilliant men I had ever known and that I was perplexed as to why he could continue to espouse his belief in such a simplistic and failed economic system as socialism. His response was, “I just believe it is better for everybody concerned if you eliminate the middlemen in capitalism” (the distributors, etc.) and “get the wealth directly to the people.”
As Daniel Lacalle, a world-renowned Spanish economist and professor of global economics, has pointed out:
Americans are falling into the socialism trap by not realizing that solving big government problems with an even bigger one is dangerous. Many blame capitalism for their affordability problems, when the true cause is statism. Statism is the gradual replacement of civil society, markets, savings, and individual choice by political control, public spending, regulation, taxation, and monetary intervention. The predatory state that … represents the extreme manifestation of statism. It is a system in which the political class extracts wealth and freedom from families and businesses to sustain itself, reward dependent clients, and exert control over society.
Lacalle also observes that “The attraction of socialism is not that it works. It is that it looks virtuous. It is not. It promises security, fairness, dignity. ... But by the time citizens realize that the promise was a trap, the state is already too large, too expensive, too interventionist, and too powerful to reverse easily.” (Ibid.)
While socialism is not the answer, there is a need to enhance the possibility of upward mobility economically and socially in the U.S. America perhaps recorded its maximum social mobility in the years following World War II, when the enormous impact of the G.I. Bill helped millions of Americans to be the first in their families to go to college and buy homes, etc.
For example, Walter Isaacson noted in his book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, “Eighty percent of kids born in 1950 would go on to earn more, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than their parents had. But for kids born in the 1980s, there was less than a fifty percent chance of achieving the same financial success as their parents.”
One of the greatest culprits in inhibiting social and economic mobility has been the statism identified by Lacalle. We need to use government to empower parents to send their children to alternatives to failing public schools. Government can be used to empower people to improve their own lives. The G.I. Bill is perhaps the best example in the 20th century, as the Homestead Act was in the 19th century.
We should dedicate ourselves to making sure all our children can attend schools that actually educate them, teach them their heritage as Americans and demonstrate to them that hard work and effort will be rewarded both economically and socially.
Every American child is too precious a resource to deny him or her the opportunity to develop all their God-given potential. The free enterprise system that is committed to providing the resources for every American who is willing to work for the opportunity “to pursue happiness” as he or she defines it should be our goal.
All Americans will benefit from such a program both financially and psychologically.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
