Sit down for this one, I'm coming out of the closet. Are you ready to hear it? I am a Mormon socialist. Let me tell you the story of how it all happened.
It's no accident that my conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints coincided to my conversion to conservatism. By the ninth grade, my nightly reading consisted of one chapter from an Ayn Rand novel and one chapter from the Book of Mormon. I spent the summer between the ninth and 10th grades faithfully listening to Rush Limbaugh's talk radio show. I had a countdown of the Clinton presidency hanging in my room between a picture of Pat Buchanan and the prophet Moroni.
Statements made by the late president of the LDS Church, Ezra Taft Benson, added greater credence to my growing penchant toward the political right. He said, "The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums."
Enveloping me even further into conservative dogma was a book given to me just before my departure on a mission to Estonia. The giver inscribed in the cover of the book: "I truly feel that Covey states explicitly what Christ said implicitly." The book was "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey, a devout Mormon. It mostly describes office behavior that will generate strong financial returns.
In Estonia, a post-Soviet republic, my black-tagged peers loved to preach how socialism was Satan's plan to bind and ensnare mankind, turning them into brainwashed atheists. The missionaries also proclaimed that socialism made a mockery of God's endorsed plan, the United Order, as it is known to Mormons. (The United Order looks a lot like socialism to the outside observer.)
It was during my two years as a missionary that I launched an exhaustive investigation into my sacred texts. As I did, I started to mistrust the traditional alignment of typical Utah conservatism and Mormon theology. Amongst some of the passages that have been engraved in my memory:
"It is not given that one man should possess that which is above another" (Doctrine and Covenants 49:20).
"Appoint unto this people their portions, every man equal according to his family, according to his circumstances and his wants and needs" (Doctrine and Covenants 51:3).
"That now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality" (2 Corinthians 8:14).
"And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift" (4 Nephi 1:3).
When I returned home from Estonia, I began to look at economics through a different paradigm. How did we, as Mormons, make the leap from an association with communal and participatory economics to the harshly brutal and exploitative system of capitalism—a system which seems diametrically opposed to the exhortations advanced in our sacred texts? Is socialism really Satan's plan?
As I further uncovered resources relating to the subject I realized that major discrepancies existed. Certain improprieties within the actual business practices and financial priorities of our contemporary Mormon culture conflicted with our sacred texts and our leaders' instruction.
With this in mind, I slowly began to shed my right-wing wetsuit, which ostensibly kept me warm and afloat in the cold and suffocating sea of capitalism, and dressed myself in what I believed to be a more Christian and Mormon jumpsuit. I took Covey's book off my shelf and renamed it The Seven Habits of Highly Exploitative People. I got a new haircut and I quit my job.
I discovered the well-hidden Proclamation on the Economy signed by the highest ranking Mormon officials—Brigham Young, his counselors, and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles—in 1875. It said, "One of the great evils with which our own nation is menaced at the present time is the wonderful growth of wealth in the hands of a comparatively few individuals." I found other statements by LDS officials legitimizing my train of thought. "The conditions of sharing demanded by the Lord can only be satisfied by complete equality, a point that is ceaselessly repeated…We cannot be equal, as the Lord commands, and live on different levels of affluence," writes Hugh Nibley.
And so it is. I am a Mormon socialist confused as to why more Mormons don't harbor views similar to mine. The first answer, on the surface, might be that socialism cannot coexist with personal freedoms and liberties, things that Mormons value highly. Others might say that the protection of the poor is no business of the government—rather it falls under the stewardship of the private sector. But, allow me to say that the socialism in which I believe is a transparent democracy based on fundamental political and human rights. I believe that democracy and socialism can live in a symbiotic relationship with one another.
Don't have a heart attack over my Mormon socialism like my elderly neighbor did when I told her about my views. She seemed to think I was Satan or that Sputnik was going to fly out of my chest and steal her brain. Maybe she just thought that I was Stalin. Maybe I should shave the mustache.
Daniel welcomes feedback at dthatcher@chronicle.utah.edu. Send letters to the editor to letters@chronicle.utah.edu.
