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Comment by CyrsBel | Hacker News Reader

Jesus was a socialist? Was that before or after he used supernatural powers to increase the quantity of food instantly? Easy to be a "socialist" in such cases, but let's not pretend that there's any serious economic theorizing being done when people say this about Jesus. It's usually just a convenience for people looking to grift or instigate. lmao.

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If everyone gave away their money and followed him it would be a suicide cult. Even in a world where there’s a guy who can conjure food and heal the sick how long before the whole world fell apart? Shit needs to get done constantly for the world to support this many humans.

I mean, this is a little disingenuous. If you posit that there exists a supernatural mechanism for providing food and health, why would you admit that it exists for a small subset of the population, but not a larger (or whole) population?

People call Jesus a socialist because of the numerous times he commanded people to distribute their wealth to the poor and needy, help the sick, forgive debts and treat immigrants with respect and dignity.

No one is literally claiming that Jesus was espousing some kind of proto-Marxist economic theory so much as pointing out that in the context of modern (specifically American) political discourse, Jesus would be considered a socialist.

Then again, so would Ronald Reagan and Adam Smith. At this point the Overton window of what constitutes "socialism" has drifted so far that anyone to the left of Ayn Rand might as well be a tankie.

As a side note, tankie doesn't mean socialist, tankie is a slur against authoritarians that was invented by socialists to call people out for abandoning socialist principles in favor of authoritarian control.

Yeah, I think people outside of the socialist sphere whose understanding of ideology is limited to a one-dimensional spectrum see it as a slur by moderate socialists against more extreme socialists but that's not how it is seen by those using it.

I liken the concept of tankie to that of jumping the shark by Fonzie on Happy Days. I wonder if there's some kind of portmanteau going on there in the etmology? Maybe a (now-discontinued SAT test style) analogy will help show how I think this might have occurred, or a least provide a potentially helpful backronymic mnemonic device? I think I have made my relations clear conceptually, and I think the analogy works and the wordplay seems like it could be intentional, but I can't say what was going through the mind of whoever first used the word tankie to refer to socialists who essentially backslide into fascism after some kind of failed revolution, if I understand the proper usage as understood by modern leftists correctly.

Tankie (authoritarianism with little red flags (after precipitating incident)) is to Tank Man (precipitating incident) in relation to China (socialist status quo (before precipitating incident)), is as Fonzie is to jumping the shark in relation to Happy Days.

The precipitating incident for "tankie" isn't "Tank Man" (or even the Tiananmen Square incident in China in 1989 more generally), but the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by the invasion by the USSR the same year.

That is helpful context, much appreciated!

Do you know when tankie was first used in this authoritarian socialist sense, or is that what you're saying?

> Do you know when tankie was first used in this authoritarian socialist sense, or is that what you're saying?

My understanding is that it was first used in the immediate aftermath of 1956 in internal criticism within the British Communist Party, and gained wider international currency after the Prague Sprint in 1968.

Do you have a source? I don't doubt you, I just am looking for good slang sources since I lost my last good one. That is, I used to have a slang dictionary, but I gave it as a gift to someone as a child and have regretted it ever since, as the recipient doesn't seem to have it anymore, and I haven't ever been able to find a decent one before or since, though I haven't really looked very hard. My old one had a lot of old slang common among WWII and other military members and veterans that I've never seen before, for instance.

In history, America has been one of the most generous nations, if not the most generous, as far as charitable contributions go. I think people say "Jesus was a socialist" because they consider it an easy way to win more points in a debate or to ask for more social benefit spending. You can be a capitalist and still distribute wealth to the poor and needy, help the sick, forgive debts, be nice to immigrants, etc. There are entire products that are built to facilitate those things and enterprising individuals are able to donate from their surplus for those things too.

None of those things have anything to do with who owns the means of production or taking things from people who produced them, though. Jesus advocated for voluntary selflessness, not charity by compulsion. And certainly he didn't advocate for there to be a hall monitor on someone's personal life and income in order for that hall monitor to be the arbiter of whether or not it's all according to Jesus' "socialist" tendencies.

In modern American political discourse, if Jesus showed up he'd be expected to do miraculous things like multiplying resources. So...I don't see how meaningful it is for someone to say Jesus would be a socialist as if it is any kind of informed or useful commentary on the state of American discourse.

> At this point the Overton window of what constitutes "socialism" has drifted so far that anyone to the left of Ayn Rand might as well be a tankie.

This. Thank you.

Marx was perhaps so influential because he riffed on ideas from the Bible and dressed them up as intellectual.

To add, not just Jesus, but the entire Bible.

The Year of Jubilee alone, from the Pentateuch, basically eliminates capitalism as we know it (if enacted at a full societal scale.)

I don't think the Year of Jubilee would eliminate capitalism. It just adds a reset into the assumptions so that nobody is ever screwed. Instead, there's a reset available for people every so often. I also think the Bible says a lot about wisdom and how to earn a profit, not just in financial terms but in time management too. Proverbs has many examples.

So I would say that on the Bible, we'd still have free markets but with more guard rails so that nobody falls through the cracks if they're at least trying.

I do think we should bring back the Year of Jubilee though. Ironically, 2025 is a Year of Jubilee. I'm a big fan and I'm sure there are viable modern interpretations for it.

Capitalism isn't really just about free markets, though. Lots of economic systems have markets.

Capitalism is more about ownership of the means of production and the relationship of labor to capital.

I mean, he did actually die on a cross and fast in the wilderness. Don't think the "multiplying food" thing was a huge escape hatch in the bible.

Because that is part of what he came to do at that time. He intentionally chose to die on a cross and fast in the wilderness. If he wanted an escape hatch from that fate, he would've not come or he would've summoned a bunch of angels to defend him.

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