§ I. Socialism of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages

From the most ancient times we meet with certain partially communistic systems and institutions. On the island of Crete we find a certain kind of communism introduced as early as 1300 B.C., which in later times Lycurgus took as his model for the constitution of Sparta. This constitution seems to have been Plato’s ideal when he composed his work entitled “The Republic,” as also, though in a more moderate form, in the work on “Laws;” for in these works he commends community of goods, community of education, and even community of meals. Aristotle,¹ who accurately describes these economic systems, has also clearly demonstrated their untenableness. While the communistic attempts of antiquity suppose a large portion of the population to be in the condition of slavery, there arose in the first Christian community in Jerusalem a higher kind of communism, based upon true charity and equality. Among the early Christians those who chose could retain their possessions; but most of them, of their own accord, sold all they possessed and gave the proceeds to the apostles for the common support of all.² In voluntary poverty the first Christians wished to devote themselves wholly to the service of God and of their neighbor. Such a condition, however, in its very nature, considering men as they generally are, could not be obligatory, universal, permanent—a circumstance which was overlooked by the Apostolics, Albigenses, Anabaptists, and other sects which in the course of centuries fell off from the Church and clung to the principle of the unlawfulness of private property. Apart from these heresies and from some communistic political works of fiction based, as it seems, chiefly on the “Utopia” of Blessed Thomas More,¹ we may say that communism and socialism are essentially the growth of modern times. The reductions of Paraguay, which are frequently set up as models of communism, were not strictly communistic, and were destined only to be institutions of a transitory character.²

¹ Polit. ii. 3.

² Acts v.

¹ On account of his Utopia Bl. Thomas More has often been numbered among socialists, but wrongly so; for, a distinction must be made between his criticism of the social conditions of his time and his descriptions of the Utopian state. The latter were intended merely to serve as a background for bringing the criticisms into brighter relief. At the close of the book he himself points out the absurdity of many Utopian institutions.

² Cf. Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, vol. xxv. p. 455.