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It happened. Again. On Mormon Twitter, someone mentioned socialism, to which somebody responded that socialism was Satan’s plan. (There were a couple other responses I saw that hinted at the same thing, but didn’t explicitly say it. And maybe there were others who said something similar. It’s not like I looked for every response to the tweet.)
To which I reply: that’s not the stupidest assertion based on Mormon theology ever. But it may well be in the top ten.
Now full disclosure here: while I may not believe that capitalism is the economy of heaven, frankly, I’m largely a fan of its implementation here on earth. At the same time, though, I’ll admit to being a huge fan of a number of social safety net policies that certain groups of people have spent the last several decades trying to mischaracterize as socialism. So, y’know, I contain multitudes.
Anyway, that aside, I want to repeat that calling socialism Satan’s plan is, like, crazy stupid. Unless people base it on something gnostically apocryphal, I assume its derivation is from Moses 4:1-3:
And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor. But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me—Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever. Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down[.]
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There are a couple problems here, though. The first is: we have no idea what Satan’s plan was. We know what its result would have been: that no soul would be lost. How was he going to do it? I think we usually jump to vs. 3’s assertion that Satan “sought to destroy the agency of man” as evidence that he was somehow going to become a puppetmaster, forcing us to act in a way that would get us back to God’s presence.
But, as much as that’s a popular assumption, it’s not a necessary one. It’s equally possible that he was planning on lowering the standards of salvation to a point where heaven had a 100% admission rate. It’s even possible (HORROR!) that he didn’t actually have a fully-formed plan; maybe he was bidding for the job first, and, if he got it, he’d figure out what to do with it.
I mean, that leaves the question of what the scriptures mean when they list one of the three things he did wrong as seeking to destroy agency. And I don’t have a compelling answer (though it’s worth noting that the 1828 Webster’s dictionary seems to define “agency” more along the lines of the ability to act on the world than on the ability to choose). FWIW, though, if his plan was to lower standards for admission, rather than dictate how people acted, that would remove our ability to reject God and salvation, because no matter how poorly we acted, we’d still qualify for salvation.
That leads to a second problem with the assertion: even if Satan’s plan was to replace our wills with his, and to eliminate our ability to choose, I’m not clear what that has to do with socialism.
And yes, I’m familiar with ETB’s 1979 talk “A Witness and a Warning.”[fn1] And you know what? He’s not talking about socialism, he’s talking about communism. And he’s talking specifically about Soviet communism. And he’s not talking about Soviet communism as Satan’s plan from Moses: he’s talking about it as Satan’s counterfeit of true religion.
I mean, it’s really hard to say that socialism, communism, or Soviet communism somehow destroyed moral agency. The third, at least, tried to limit individuals’ ability to make certain choices. But even in the heyday of the USSR, there were internal dissenters. The same goes for Communist China and even oppressive North Korea. As far as I know, dissent has existed in every totalitarian state (and every non-totalitarian state). So it’s really, really hard to argue that any political system reflects that-interpretation-of-Satan’s-plan-that-says-he-wanted-to-eliminate-human-agency.
Again, that’s not to say that, as a Mormon, you need to be a devoted socialist. Frankly, there’s a lot about socialism that I’m skeptical of (unless, again, you define socialism as any type of social safety net program, in which case, (a) I’m a raging socialist, and (b) you suck at definitions).
But saying socialism = Satan’s Plan is, frankly, shorthand for I don’t think through things very carefully. If you’re not a fan of socialism, by all means, make substantive arguments against it (though please don’t bother in the comments to this post—that entirely misses the point of the post!). But let’s cut it out already with the stupid truisms.
[fn1] Okay, “familiar” might be a little bit of an overstatement. I mean, I was crazy young when he delivered it. But I did skim it today before drafting this post, so I’m familiar enough with it.