Originally posted by Cow Poke
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Many ideals contained within Marxist thinking would chime quite well with the compassionate aspects that are to be found within Christianity.
We should help our fellows. We should have a fairer society where everyone is offered the same opportunities. We should not permit families to live on the streets, and etc.
The idea that capitalism [in its most naked form] should be espoused as the right way to run a society raises serious questions about our humanity towards other individuals.
In a purely capitalist society those who cannot survive by their own endeavours go to the wall and if they die, so be it. The English author Charles Dickens brilliantly summed up such an attitude in his Christmas Carol.
Nor would anyone be able to gainsay the "right" of one individual to exploit others for the benefit/profit of that individual. Such an attitude permits [among other things] sweatshops, dangerous working conditions, child labour, slave wages, and wanton environmental pollution with its impact on human health. Does anyone who calls themselves a Christian endorse such a society?
The fact remains that within America there are "socialist" ideas being implemented. Citizens pay their taxes and some of that money provides such things as public schools, libraries, the police force, and the other emergency services. In other words, the state provides [be that at local state or at federal level].
I do not believe I have read anywhere that the New York Fire Dept insisted on payment up front from those individuals trapped in the two towers in 2001 before the crews were sent into those buildings. Nor that a public library has refused to lend books to those who cannot pay for the loan of that volume. Or that an ambulance crew have refused to assist an individual who has been injured because they did not have their credit card on their person.
However, I am prepared to be corrected.
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