Capitalism is synonymous with free enterprise and free markets while socialism is associated with planned economies and state control. As noted in Part I, the out-workings of these concepts revolve around the definition of freedom to which both claim allegiance. However, socialism cannot be separated from its parent and patron—humanism. Humanism requires socialism as socialism is the chain-mail glove into which the hand of humanism fits and uses to enforce its vision of societal order.

The humanist definition of freedom presumes to loose man from the bondage of mores, norms, tradition, and distant voices of the past. However, the humanists’ definition of freedom, which co-joins the maximization of individual autonomy with the humanist-created primacy of the greatest good for the greatest number, is a false freedom. A society organized around the tenets of humanism cannot remain free as it will be pushed to one end or the other of the anarchy-totalitarian continuum of government. In reality, such humanistic concepts of freedom coerce the individual through the requirement of a general commonality of thought and action which is forced downward from the state to the individual. However, the […] Continue Reading…

That capitalism has once again been resurrected as the bad boy that creates a broken society and robs the poor should be no surprise to any student of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its nemesis is socialism. The opposing concepts have found different homes in the two dominant worldviews in Western civilization—Christianity and humanism. Both capitalism and socialism claim the badge of freedom, but their definitions of freedom are substantially different. Generally, socialism speaks of a “freedom from…” while capitalism espouses a “freedom to…” Does this simple distinction really make a difference in our lives? Yes. Whichever worldview prevails will dominate and organize society and determine how we, our children, and our grandchildren will live our lives. This battle lies at the heart of the culture wars and currently revolves around cries for income equality.

The genesis of the conflict between capitalism and socialism arose from the large-scale industrialization in the Western world near the beginning of the nineteenth century. J. M. Roberts in his definitive The New History of the World stated that the magnitude of societal change produced by industrialization was the “most […] Continue Reading…