What’s Wrong With Socialism? – Rabbi Avigdor Miller zatzal
From Toras Avigdor, unabridged:
Q: What’s wrong with the idea of Socialism, of taking away some wealth from the wealthy and giving it to the poor?
A: We are happy to let the rich remain rich. They worked for it or they inherited it, whatever it is, and private property is a holy institution. To take away somebody else’s money, to rob the rich, to give it to the poor—what’s being done, let’s say, by the United States government, by the big welfare organizations of the United States government—all that is a wicked principle. If you earned money, you have a right to bequeath it to your children after you! A family that gained wealth has a right to keep wealth.
Now I don’t care what anybody will say. Private property is a sacred institution. And you poor people who are envious of the rich, get busy! And build up estates of your own. How did they start? They also one day were poor. And this business of taxing the rich people and discouraging them in order to give the poor people the opportunity to loaf in their welfare apartment, get free rent, and free handouts and food from the Department of Agriculture, and free everything else, that’s not the derech haTorah.
Now you’ll say to me, are you trying to undo all the social reforms? And the answer is, I’m trying to undo wickedness. If it’s based on wickedness, yes, we want it undone.
So if the government wants the government can do things but to put burdens on the rich just because you believe in equal distribution of wealth, there’s no such principle al pi Torah.
Now, I don’t want to harp on that too much; people might get up and walk out soon but that’s the truth.
(December 1989)
