Socialism
In Marxist theory, Socialism is a system of society in which there is no private property, a system in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state. Communism is a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production with a professed aim of establishing a stateless society. In the final stage, the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equally. Goods are owned in common and available to all as needed.
In this theory socialism is a transitional state between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done. Communism itself exists nowhere and is a theory that has never worked. The former Soviet Union was in fact, a Socialist state.
Socialism as it is found in the world today is most often a combination of socialism as defined in Marxist theory with some degree of private ownership of property. Even those who disagree with communism may find themselves agreeing with socialism because it seems to be based on the needs and the good of the people. However, socialism is an insidious force—not because it is a political theory, but because of its psychology.
Influence of Karl Marx
► Main article: Dialectical materialism
Many people believe that socialism or communism began with Karl Marx, who proposed that the study of man could be reduced to purely material considerations and that economic systems were the primary determinant in relationships between men. Marx adapted the dialectic of Hegel in his statement that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,”[1] and his concept that all social order founded on class division has within it the seeds of its own destruction until a classless society emerges. Revolution becomes a tool to this end, if necessary.
However, Karl Marx was simply the focalization of forces at work within the collective unconscious of the planetary body, of the people themselves—forces at work since the descent of light from the upper chakras to the lower chakras, otherwise known biblically as the Fall of man.
The problem of this psychology besets us today; and therefore if we are going to deal with socialism and communism, we must understand the subconscious patterns within us all that make these systems of dependence, instead of independence, in both government and economics appealing to some portion of the being of man—that portion not being the Christ-man or the real man.
Historical origins of socialism
Russian dissident Igor Shafarevich explains that the world’s first socialist states were the world’s first states of any kind. He says that socialism is one of those basic universal forces that have been in operation over the entire span of human history. Shafarevich writes:
Socialism cannot be linked with a specific area, geographical context, or culture. All its features, familiar to us from contemporary experience, are met in various historical, geographical and cultural conditions: in socialist states we observe the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, state control of everyday life, and the subordination of the individual to the power of the bureaucracy.[2]
Shafarevich cites three examples of socialist states from the past: Mesopotamia in the twenty-second and twenty-first centuries B.C., the Old Kingdom of Egypt at approximately the same time, and the Incas. All of these states were characterized by the lack of private property, a large bureaucracy, a centrally directed economy, and a forced labor system which tended to weaken the family structure of the majority of its population.
History shows that the world’s first socialist states were the world’s first states of any kind. They reveal, in the slavery of the entire population and the extreme regimentation of their work, the descent into which people who had once lived in golden ages fell with the sinking of Lemuria and Atlantis.
This also explains, from the historical record of karma, why many people today actually crave that same regimentation. It is so inscribed upon their etheric bodies that they have come to regard it as a comfort much like one would long for the womb. They do not have the inner blueprint of the soul’s liberation into higher spheres as the immediate record to tie into. The power of human habit is very binding, and the human habits of consciousness, which mankind have been through for thousands of years because of their original rejection of their ancient teachers, are more predominant in their consciousness than the etheric blueprint of the ideal golden age.
Socialism and capitalism
Socialism is actually a more primitive economic system than capitalism—contrary to the theories of Marx. It ignores the individual’s self-worth; it ignores the Real Self and the I AM Presence. This is very clear today when one enters underdeveloped nations or one sees people who have not developed an individual Christ consciousness. They are not capable of private ownership or the ownership of the means of production, in many cases.
Therefore, socialism is a stage of evolution that should precede capitalism. However, capitalism cannot exist without the principle of the Christ Self. Capitalism, as the free-enterprise system, as the path of initiation established by Jesus Christ, can only work when it is founded upon the guru-chela relationship that is understood to be the individual’s relationship to the Christ.
If socialism follows capitalism and the free-enterprise system, it is because of the decay and the decadence of that system—precisely because Christ, as the principle of the economy and the understanding of the abundant life, has been removed, compromised, perverted, misqualified. In his theory of economic determinism, Marx is counting on socialism following capitalism because he is counting upon the decay and the degeneration of a capitalist society.
Capitalism works when you have moral fiber and the cosmic honor flame. The fallen ones count on the degeneration spiral and the spiral of death in the West in order for socialism to be victorious. They will sow within any system the seeds of its undoing, the seeds of anti-Christ, the seeds of anti-Mother. They manipulate the flow of supply so as to engender in the people a dissatisfaction with the environment and with the outcropping of karma, therefore pushing the people further and further and further to their ultimate goal, which is socialism.
The spiritual foundations of capitalism
Capitalism cannot survive without the basis of the economy on the individual and the individual’s goal of life, to become the Christ. When it becomes a dog-eat-dog, end-justifying-the-means exploitation of the people, when capitalist enterprises become monopolistic and the state enters into these monopolies, then you have destroyed the fundamental principle of capitalism, which is individuality. You have also destroyed the fundamental principle of Christianity, which Jesus stated, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”[3]
The golden rule is the foundation of a golden-age economy and of the abundant life. However, certain compromises of Christ’s teaching and misunderstandings of his doctrine have prevented the fullness of Christ’s Christianity from being the foundation of our life. And without the fullness of the understanding of his teaching, there is a weak foundation in government, and in the economy. With this mass ignorance it is then easier to destroy the foundations of the system, which is intended to be based upon God and his expression in man.
So we see that capitalism is being destroyed today in the West and in free nations on a parallel line and at the same rate as religion is being destroyed. And there is no hope for the survival of the free-enterprise system until and unless people cease to use the freedom of the free-enterprise system to exploit one another and to rebel against the individual karma of their lives.
Socialism and soul evolution
In a socialist state, you go to work on a collective farm, you go to work in a factory, and you are told what to do from morning to night. You don’t have to think, you’re on the assembly line. And by not having to think, you are not forced to reach for your Christ mind—to reach for that source of creativity which explodes through the light of the Holy Ghost.
Therefore a depression and a death consciousness sets in upon the people because they are no longer in that relationship of interchange with the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They don’t have to dig, they don’t have to go to the source. They don’t have those challenges where they have to worry about their own economic survival, the survival of their family, the building of a house, earning a livelihood, bringing forth children, their education. All of those challenges keep the mind sharp. When all of this is done by the state and all you have to do is feed and clothe yourself, you arrive at that state of decay and decadence at which we are arriving in the West today.
So we have a very serious problem: the human habit pattern of mental laziness. It comes from not having to really summon our forces to contact a higher source of God consciousness in order to conquer time and space. And when we do not understand the conquering of time and space as the goal of the path of initiation, then we no longer have a reason for existence. Gradually the life instinct is replaced by the death instinct.
God is life, God is a creator, and we are created to be co-creators with him. When we cease to create, we cease to have the life force pulsating through us. The will to life is parallel with the will to create, and when you lose the will to create because it is taken from you by the socialist or communist state, you really lose the will to live. And because life is energy, something must happen to that energy, and it becomes perverted, even as the creative force is perverted. It therefore becomes the will to die.
And this is why so many thousands of people have risked their lives trying to escape from communist states. They have uttered those very words, “If I have to live under a communist state, if I have to live under a socialist state, I would rather be dead.” Freedom is the gift to create and to co-create with God.
Creation through the threefold flame
When you have the will to live and the will to create, then you summon the second ray, the Christ consciousness, the illumined mind of God: “I have the will to be. Now I have to figure out how to do it. And I acknowledge that I am not equipped with the full understanding of what it takes to fulfill my will. Therefore I will get it. I will get educated, I will get experience, I will do research, I will find out how to fulfill this will.”
The will is a tremendous impetus that catapults the soul to the highest plane of the Christ consciousness so that it can contact the mind of God, out of whose mind one derives the understanding of the fulfillment of the will. Then when one figures out how to create, one must look for the natural resources, the energy with which to create. Natural resources are the manifestation of the love ray, the Holy Ghost—the action of will-impetus with wisdom.
Without love there is no creativity. Love is the free, random interaction of souls, lifewaves, communities, families, people. It is spontaneous. There is no other form of love but spontaneous love. It cannot be regimented because it is always the gift and the grace of God. It is the descent of the Holy Ghost that is the gift of love—love that is non-possessive and mutually satisfying because it is the fulfillment of the divine plan of all who share in this love.
Socialism and communism are a regimentation of will, a regimentation of knowledge or understanding or science, and a regimentation of love. And the whole system collapses because it puts to death the Trinity and its action within the individual.
In underdeveloped countries you find that people often do not have the will to create, they do not have a drive to get wisdom, they do not have an interaction with the Holy Ghost. In those societies that have not had a basic foundation and a long tradition of the guru-chela relationship—following Krishna or Gautama or Jesus Christ or any of the avatars—you find that there is nothing upon which to build a free-enterprise system. Many of the people of the underdeveloped nations in Asia and Africa today are simply not equipped to have a free-enterprise system or a basic representative form of government.
In these circumstances socialism may be simply the lesser of evils—even though it is not the ultimate answer. But this is a serious dilemma, and when all is said and done, to have harmony in government upon earth is really not possible among a people who have denied their God and denied his incarnation among them.
The free-enterprise system
The nation America was selected by the Great White Brotherhood to be the place where the example of brotherhood would be set forth through the example of individuals fulfilling their Christhood through their own self-initiative. Initiative is initiation.
For the fullest development of that initiative, Saint Germain planned a limited government with the greatest freedom for the individual and the individual states, and the least control by the federal government. He planned a free-enterprise system with the least interference by federal or local government so that the mastery of time and space and the proving of individual self-worth would be on the shoulders of the individual. As long as this plan of Saint Germain was sustained, there was a platform for initiation, a platform to become the Christ.
However, this plan has been altered during the last century. We find a tremendous turning of the tide to reverse what Saint Germain set forth. We no longer find a free-enterprise system as it was intended to be, but instead, more and more government and a maximum of government controls and a minimum of initiative required on the part of the individual.
This has limited the path of initiation. It has limited the opportunity for the individual to become the Christ and to be accepted as a link in the chain of Hierarchy and as a member of the Great White Brotherhood. We find that today it is more difficult to become the Christ than it was five years ago, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, and certainly much more difficult than it was when the first settlers came and had to forge a life out of the wilderness. The more rugged the life, the more challenging the environment, the less anyone does for you, the more you are calculated to become the master of your life.
We find now that the government takes from the people what is required for the intelligent development of the Christ consciousness. Not only does the government deprive the people of their money through taxation, but it deprives them of this money through inflation and by making the money valueless. Thus, when people work a labor and a sacred labor of their hands, they do not have returned to them the wealth that they have contributed to the nation. This produces lethargy, sloth, indifference, no longer a pulling together of a nation. And it completely destroys development of that Christ potential.
The community of the Holy Spirit
► Main article: Community of the Holy Spirit
When we have perfected our Christhood, when we have perfected a sacred labor, we have known the joy of the fruits of our labor, we are ready for the next initiation—the initiation of the Holy Spirit. The action of the Holy Spirit is community.
All of the laws of freedom that applied in the individualization of the Christ flame now apply at the community level. But instead of one individual determining the course of events, being the breadwinner, having a business, and so forth, we may have a hundred or a thousand individuals who have decided that they understand each other as one being, as one body of God, as one community. And they realize that if they combine their sonship, combine their flames, that they will have that much more power to do and fulfill the purposes that they aspire to fulfill.
For the ultimate fulfillment of community, the Ascended Masters have devised an entirely different economic system. This is the pattern of the community of the Holy Spirit, which we see illustrated in the early Christian Church: “And all that believed were together, and had all things common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.”[4] This path of the community of the Holy Spirit has been perverted in this age by the abuses of Communism. Community without the attainment of the Christ has become communalism, or Communism.
The perversion of the Holy Spirit
When you force community upon individuals who do not have first the attainment of the Christ consciousness and the tie to the Great White Brotherhood, you have totalitarian states. You have the forced redistribution of wealth. You force people to do work to which their individual genius is not suited.
This becomes the stripping of the individual of his Christ-identity, of what he has developed of individual genius, before that Christ-identity is complete. It is stripping the nations of their individual identity, their group karma and their group dharma. It is forcing a community of the Holy Spirit, first as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and then forcing the entire world to come into this community of World Communism before the individuals of that world have attained to the Christ consciousness. Skipping the step of initiation, it becomes the total perversion of the Holy Spirit.
The only difference between socialism or communism and a true community of the Holy Spirit is whether or not the Matter bowl is infused with Spirit. Socialism and communism are an attempt to create a Matter society and a Matter golden age without Spirit, whereas only by the path of chelaship and discipleship under the Lord Christ can we truly achieve a community of the Holy Spirit.
The community of the Holy Spirit would be the voluntary surrendering of all that one is because one has attained a sufficient level of individual self-worth that one has the supreme realization that one is God, one has attained the individualization of the Christ Self, and so one is now able to surrender the totality of that consciousness for the wholeness of the community.
This is a legitimate stage of evolution. But it only comes through spirituality. We see today that socialism and communism is the taking by force of what one has earned by one’s genius. It is the redistribution of wealth by means of taxation and by means of the abolition of private property and private ownership of the means of production. It is the taking by force of what the individual has gained by his investment of energy and consciousness in life, instead of it being given by the individual’s freewill love offering upon the altar of God. And so it becomes a regimentation of the Holy Spirit and its energy; it’s the forcing of a maturity of spiritual consciousness which has not yet been developed.
The problem of socialism
The problem with socialism is that it deprives the individual of the opportunity to exercise his own creative genius in shaping his environment, in drawing forth his talents from his causal body.
When more and more goods and services are provided by the state, when the state takes care of everything, you lose the important opportunity of life to balance your karma. When the welfare state takes away all of your pain by providing for all of your needs, then you lose contact with your source because you are not forced to make any demands upon life. Furthermore, under a socialist system, if you have forged out of your causal body great light and great attainment, you are forced to immediately give it away.
Socialism, then, becomes a doctrine of the fallen ones who themselves have abused their own light and the light of God. They have nothing in their hands to show for their existence of thousands of years, so they stomp their feet and shake their fists at Almighty God and demand everything equally with the lightbearers who have earned their way.
See also
For more information
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path of Brotherhood
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Seduction of Socialism and the Responsibility of Freedom (audio and video album)
Sources
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, October 6, 1977.
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, October 9, 1978.
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path of Brotherhood, pp. 101–04.
- ↑ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, trans. Samuel Moore, part 1.
- ↑ Igor Shafarevich, “Socialism in Our Past and Future,” published in Alexander Solzhenitsyn et al., From Under the Rubble (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1975).
- ↑ Matt. 22:37–39; Mark 12:29–31; Luke 10:27.
- ↑ Acts 2:44–45.