I am left wondering if; any post, at any time, in any forum, in any country has ever changed anyone's opinion on anything.

Of course not Rob. Forums are where we go to practice defending our opinions.

To return to the topic of the Apostles being communists, I don’t know if anyone bothered to read the link I posted in my first post, however, Rosa Luxembourg makes the following points:

1 The proletariat class from which Christianity arose was different to today’s working class in that they were peasants driven from the land to cities which could not absorb them because the work in the cities was done by slaves. The proletariat therefore did not work, and were beggars.

2. The early Christians’ ideas were that the rich should share their wealth with the poor – they DEMANDED that the products of work (of slaves) should be owned in common - i.e. they were communists. However, this did not challenge the right of the rich to own all the land, tools, slaves etc.

3. Luxembourg claims socialists or communists (which she calls Social Democrats – whole history behind this – can’t go into it here), while having a similar ultimate goal, have a completely different idea of how it is to be achieved:

"We do not want the rich to share with the poor: we do not want either charity or alms; neither being able to prevent the recurrence of inequality between men. It is by no means a sharing out between the rich and the poor which we demand, but the complete suppression of rich and poor". This is possible on the condition that the source of all wealth, the land, in common with all other means of production and instruments of work, shall become the collective property of the working people which will produce for itself, according to the needs of each. The early Christians believed that they could remedy the poverty of the proletariat by means of the riches offered by the possessors. That would be to draw water in a sieve! Christian communism was not only incapable of changing or of improving the economic situation, and it did not last.”

Early Christians were communists, just not in the Marxist sense.

We can see in BOAZ’s hypocritical arguments how Christianity was not only incapable of transforming society, it has also been used by the rich to perpetuate systems that continue to oppress the poor – the very people Christ wanted to help.

It could be argued (as BOAZ has done) that socialism is also incapable of transforming society. As you might guess, I disagree and am quite willing to debate it!

Actually tao, your ideas on socialism ignore one fundamental thing about human nature. That of STATUS. And it is so fundamental, it's evolutionary. All social mammals have a social heirarchy which has status and reproductive rights and attractiveness associated with it.

When talking about people, Marx also makes the mistake that what he thinks is fundamental in what they want, and that is to be productive and enjoy the fruits of their labour. When actually it isn't, at least not with the general population. Attempting to destroy or remove hierarchical social structures and replace them with non-hierarchical ones (ie everyone being "equal" or close to) is a folly as it is doomed to only be replaced with another hierarchical structure based on status. That's what happened in Russia, what happened in China and continues to happen everywhere. Believing that everyone, including the "workers" want anything else is nonsense.

Bugsy,

The one thing you apparently ignore is that humans have a fundamental difference with other social mammals – which is that we have the ability to think consciously about ourselves, and the consequences of our actions – hence we have notions of truth, justice, fairness etc. We can also think consciously about our environment, and modify it – which is the reason we have the technological advances that we do.

If you prefer not to use the brainpower nature has endowed you with, that is your choice. If you wish to remain a monkey in the jungle, be my guest. But don’t expect me, and the rest of humanity, to accept such nonsense.

As for STATUS, well there are all sorts of ways that we can reward and recognise people for genuine useful effort, however there is no need to give them a larger share of the collective product of the labour of all while the rest of humanity starves.

As for your comments about people NOT wanting to be productive and enjoy the fruits of their labour, again, speak for yourself. As far as I’m concerned, there is nothing more rewarding than a job well done. My problem with it is that I don’t enjoy the full fruits of my labour, nor do I have the choice to direct them to others who might benefit from them – my boss owns them and becomes richer because of them – without doing the work I am doing. This process is what Marx called alienation. Humans are alienated from the product of their own labour which is then used against them.

It is not ordinary people who don’t want to be productive, it is the rich who expect to profit from other peoples’ labour while doing little for it themselves.

And there is nothing essentially wrong with humans trying to reduce the amount of effort they use to produce their sustenance – its called technological progress. The more we can free ourselves of manual labour, the better we will be able to realise our full human potential.