Socialism: Contra Human Nature

Speaking of Ze'ev Jabotinsky's opposition to socialism and Labor Zionism, someone said,

Jabotinsky was not antisocialist, nor in the true sense anticommunist. He, like most of his contemporaries, was antibolshevik, and since the bolsheviks had taken over the communist party, he and his contemporaries were considered anticommunist. He objected to the political oppression, not the economic restructuring.

So, he sounds like George Orwell, whose Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four criticized not the economic systems of communism and socialism, but only the authoritarian aspects of those specific regimes which had attempted to practically implement socialism and communism. Thus, Orwell himself could be a social-democrat despite what he had written in those books.

Personally, however, I'd say communism and socialism inexorably rely on authoritarianism for two reasons:

1. The rich will almost never willingly submit to the system, but only the poor will. Therefore, the rich will have to be coerced.
2. Communism and socialism remove all incentive to work, and so coercion will be required, much as with slavery, in which the slaves have no incentive to produce except insofar as their working will save themselves from corporal punishment.

Barring any heretofore unwitnessed fundamental changes in human nature, socialism and communism simply cannot exist without authoritarianism. Therefore, speaking of such systems, William Bradford wrote in his Journal,

If it [viz. the socialistic economic system forced upon the Pilgrims in their contract] did not cut relations God established among men, it did at least diminish and take mutual respect that should be preserved among them. Seeing all men have corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.

(Because of this, the Plymouth colony initially did very poorly, as no one had any incentive to do any work and produce anything to pay their employer. Bradford and the Plymouth colony therefore proceeded to unilaterally violate their contract, figuring that the colony would do better economically under a capitalistic system, and that they'd be able to pay back their employer sooner under a capitalistic system than under the stipulated socialistic one. As it turned out, they were correct, and so their employer did not mind that technically, they violated their contract, as, after all, they paid him back sooner than they would have under the terms he had stipulated.)

The "other course fitter for them" which "God in His wisdom saw ... fitter for them" of which Bradford speaks, is illustrated by John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity":

GOD ALMIGHTY in His most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission. ... that every man might have need of others, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection.

In other words: seeing that man is corrupt and unlikely to properly deal with proper charity towards his fellow, God saw fit to create different men with different abilities, in order to compel men to form social relationships. This follows the Althusian theory of federalism (found in Johannes Althusius's Politica), in which man is a symbiotic (i.e. social) creature, whose entire nature and essence is bound up with federalism (Latin for "covenantalism"), i.e. contractual (covenantal) relationships. The Liberty Fund edition of Politica describes Althusius's theory as this:

Drawing deeply from Aristotle and biblical teaching, Politica presents a unique vision of the commonwealth as a harmonious ordering of natural associations. According to Althusius, the purpose of the state is to protect and encourage social life. The family is the most natural of human associations, and all other unions derive from it. Power and authority properly grow from more local to more general associations. Of particular interest to the modern reader is Althusius’s theory of federalism. It does not refer merely to a division of powers between central and state governments, but to an ascending scale of authority in which higher institutions rely on the consent of local and voluntary associations.

Cf. McCoy and Baker's Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenantal Tradition, for a similar (but far more detailed) analysis of Althusius's theory.

So according to the Reformed Christian (Puritan) understanding, God created man's nature so as to fundamentally comport with capitalism. As for Judaism, I'll just say that a sevara is m'd'oraita (the Talmud's way of saying that clear and irrefutable logic is as authoritative as if it were a Torah commandment), and that nature and history are also a revelation of G-d's (as Rav Kook held). So, as far as I am concerned, Bradford's and Winthrop's words are Torah.