This discussion is on the severe damage that
socialism can do, and its effect on human agency and righteousness, and also
how it, being an evil counterfeit of a Zion society, attempts to impede the plan
of God. I will show here that a socialist society impedes the free use of
agency and the plan of God in several ways.
I would first submit that socialism is not conducive to happiness. And happiness is the purpose of our existence. This happiness comes from doing, making, learning, and progressing on our own, which necessarily includes taking responsibility for not only ourselves, but what we can do for others. A government program cannot take on these responsibilities, or our progression suffers.
"President David O. McKay has written:
I would first submit that socialism is not conducive to happiness. And happiness is the purpose of our existence. This happiness comes from doing, making, learning, and progressing on our own, which necessarily includes taking responsibility for not only ourselves, but what we can do for others. A government program cannot take on these responsibilities, or our progression suffers.
"President David O. McKay has written:
Next to the bestowal of life itself, the
right to direct that life is God’s greatest gift to man. . . . Freedom of
choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give. It is
inherent in the spirit of man. It is a divine gift to every normal being. . . .
Everyone has this most precious of all life’s endowments—the gift of free
agency—man’s inherited and inalienable right. [Improvement Era 65
(February 1962): 86]"
Socialism, like all government systems which seek to draw more and more power to the government, necessarily abrogate the ability of man to seek his own course in life and fully experience the consequences, both the good and the bad. In contrast to this, think of the declaration which loyal Americans hold dear that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (the right to direct one's own life in the way one sees fit) is an inalienable right. This makes the government of the United States very different, it not being founded for the benefit of a king or a class, or to serve another nation, but it was dedicated to the people of the nation, based on the conviction that each man would be best served by allowing him to have the maximum freedoms possible while still protecting the inalienable rights of others.
Here is the crux of the reason that governments can limit the agency of those they rule. As explained, agency consists of several elements, which necessarily means that if one or more of them are limited, agency is compromised:
"Moral Agency and the Plan of Salvation
Another reason we need moral agency is
because of the fundamental role it plays in the plan of salvation. As Elder
Hales has taught, “Agency is essential to the plan of salvation. … Without
agency we would be unable to make right choices and progress.”4 Agency is so important to Heavenly
Father’s plan that in the premortal life, Lucifer “sought to destroy the agency
of man” (Moses 4:3). Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the
Quorum of the Twelve wrote about three elements of moral agency as found in
2 Nephi: alternatives among which to choose, knowledge, and freedom to
make choices.5
Alternatives. Lehi taught
that there must be “an opposition in all things.” Without such opposition,
“righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither
holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.” Everything would be “a compound in
one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having
no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery,
neither sense nor insensibility” (2 Nephi 2:11). Thus, opposition and
the alternatives that come with it are essential characteristics of our
existence, for if there were no opposition and no alternatives from which to
choose, there would be no agency, and the “wisdom of God and his eternal
purposes,” as well as His “power,” “mercy,” and “justice,” would be destroyed (2 Nephi 2:12).
Expanding on the concept of opposition, Lehi
explained the consequences of having no law: without law, there would be no
sin, which would mean there would be no righteousness nor happiness. Without
righteousness and happiness, there would be no punishment nor misery.
(See verse 13.) Then Lehi taught us the ultimate
consequence of there being no opposites: “If these things are not there is no
God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have
been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all
things must have vanished away” (2 Nephi 2:13).
In other words, without opposition, there
could be no life! Opposition is essential to the plan of salvation.
Knowledge. Elder Christofferson taught that
“for us to have agency, we must not only have alternatives, but we must also
know what they are.” Otherwise, “the existence of those choices is meaningless
to us.”6 Because of the Fall, wrote Elder
Christofferson, we have “sufficient knowledge and understanding to be enticed
by good and evil—we attain a state of accountability and can recognize the
alternatives before us.”7 If it weren’t for our knowledge of
good and evil, we could not act for ourselves, but only “be acted upon” (2 Nephi 2:26).
Freedom to make choices. The third
element of moral agency is the freedom or ability to act on the knowledge we
have of the opposites and choose between them (see2 Nephi 2:27).8 Elder Christofferson clarified that
“freedom of choice is the freedom to obey or disobey existing laws—not the
freedom to alter their consequences.”9 Through our obedience or
disobedience, we are “free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the
great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the
captivity and power of the devil” (2 Nephi 2:27). With our God-given
agency, we are “free to act” for ourselves, “to choose the way of everlasting
death or the way of eternal life” (2 Nephi 10:23)."
I believe, through my study, that an oppressive government can limit agency because:
1) It can limit the options of the people it oppresses. For example, while in Babylon, Daniel still had the options to either pray or not pray after the king had forbidden prayer to anyone or anything but himself, but he did not have the freedom to continue to pray and remain outside the lion's den, where under normal circumstances, he would have died. If he were killed, as people often are under oppressive regimes, his options would have been even more severely limited. It is correctly noted that he would still have had choices, and always had the option to choose good or evil, but again, his options were limited, and hence his agency also limited. I believe the distinction between an unrighteous government and a good one which respects agency is at least twofold: that which they encourage/discourage and the methods used to encourage/discourage them. Righteous behavior must be encouraged, while evil is discouraged. Appropriate punishments, not cruel or arbitrary ones, based on correct methods of encouraging repentance must be used, and likewise only righteous incentives, and not immoral ones. You can see that, in contrast, righteous behavior and righteous methods of correction will increase our agency, and not limit it.
Reviewing the following I believe is helpful in understanding: D&C 121 talks about how righteous influence according to the laws of heaven should and must be used. D&C 134 discusses the characteristics of a good government, and so forth.
In addition, 2) oppressive environments inhibit the learning and knowledge of the people they oppress, which limits their agency. Powerful earthly governments invariably tend to use their influence to aggrandize themselves and eliminate opposition. This means, eventually, controlling what information and ideas their subjects are exposed to. Religion, morality, news, and education are all corrupted.
And, 3) by giving up our rights to make our own choices to such a government, we no longer have freedom of choice over those aspects of our lives. Our power to become and progress is stalled, our lives being largely in the hands of others.
Daniel H. Ludlow, in his BYU speech already cited, "Moral Free Agency," was kind enough to give a more elaborate explanation of how earthly efforts try to limit our agency. It should be noted that in his analysis, he identified four elements of agency : "first, we must have the opportunity of choice—that is, the operation of law; second, there must be the possibility of the existence of opposites— good and evil, virtue and vice; these two make possible the third, the freedom of choice—that is, free agency; then finally a knowledge of the law and its consequences." This is only slightly different from Elder Christofferson's three elements.
"Efforts to Limit Human Freedom
But Lucifer is trying to run up as high a score as he can, and he does this by trying to keep us individually from achieving the great divine purposes for which we came here upon this earth, including the exercise of our free agency. He can do it by denying us any one of the four essential qualities of moral free agency. He can do it by denying us the opportunity of choice, and he tries to do this through certain types of governments, dictatorships, through the lack of governments (anarchy), and so on. He tries to do this by destroying, in our minds at least, the idea that there is a necessity of opposition, and therefore he tries to teach us “There is no sin. It mattereth not what a man does; whatsoever a man doeth is not sin. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Thus he destroys the role of opposition in our lives, or at least he attempts to do so. He can also do it by destroying our freedom of choice, and he does this by enticing us to give up our right of free agency to other persons or to other institutions and allow them to make our choices for us, resulting in the evil that Presidents of the Church have talked about in communism and socialism and other orders of this type.
But Lucifer is trying to run up as high a score as he can, and he does this by trying to keep us individually from achieving the great divine purposes for which we came here upon this earth, including the exercise of our free agency. He can do it by denying us any one of the four essential qualities of moral free agency. He can do it by denying us the opportunity of choice, and he tries to do this through certain types of governments, dictatorships, through the lack of governments (anarchy), and so on. He tries to do this by destroying, in our minds at least, the idea that there is a necessity of opposition, and therefore he tries to teach us “There is no sin. It mattereth not what a man does; whatsoever a man doeth is not sin. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Thus he destroys the role of opposition in our lives, or at least he attempts to do so. He can also do it by destroying our freedom of choice, and he does this by enticing us to give up our right of free agency to other persons or to other institutions and allow them to make our choices for us, resulting in the evil that Presidents of the Church have talked about in communism and socialism and other orders of this type.
He also does it by trying to encourage us not
to come to a knowledge of our Heavenly Father by not listening to the prophets,
by not studying the scriptures, and therefore by not knowing the consequences
of our choices: “The scriptures are irrelevant today. They were written a long
time ago. Don’t pay any attention to them,” he says. “There are no such things
as prophets upon the earth; they ceased at the time of Christ.” Or he says that
the heavens are sealed; there is no revelation today. He even says that God is
dead! Thus in one way or another he tries to entice us to become like him and
to become subject to the misery and unhappiness that he now participates in. To
achieve his devilish aims, Lucifer can and does work through many means:
business combines, governments on all levels, military forces, educational
institutions, secret combinations of all kinds, and even families, teachers,
and churches. Wherever and whenever you find a person or an institution that
seeks to destroy the free agency of man, there you will find the influence of
Lucifer. President Henry D. Moyle talked on this subject in these words: All we
have to do is . . . examine any movement that may be brought into our midst . .
. and if it . . . attempt[s] to deprive us in the slightest respect of our free
agency, we should avoid it as we would avoid immorality or anything else that
is vicious. . . . Free agency is as necessary for our eternal salvation as is
our virtue. And . . . as we guard our virtue with our lives, so should we guard
our free agency. [Conference Report, October 1947, p. 46] President Marion G. Romney,
when he was a member of the Council of the Twelve, gave this advice: One of the
fundamental doctrines of revealed truth is that . . . God endowed men with free
agency (Moses 7:32). The preservation of this free agency is more important
than the preservation of life itself. . . . Everything which militates against
man’s enjoyment of this endowment persuades not to believe in Christ, for He is
the author of free agency. Now the world today is in the throes of a great
social and political revolution. In almost every department of society laws and
practices are being daily proposed and adopted which greatly alter the course
of our lives. Indeed, some of them are literally shaking the foundations of our
political and social institutions. If you would know truth from error in this
bitterly contested arena, apply Mormon’s test to these innovations [as recorded
in Moroni 7:16–18]. Do they facilitate or restrict the exercise of man’s divine
endowment of free agency? Tested by this standard, most of them will fall
quickly into their proper category as between good and evil. [Speeches of the
Year (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 30 May 1957), pp. 10, 11]"
I think we are now in a situation similar to a
certain Book of Mormon event, as described by Elder Hales:
"As we face increased pressure to bow to
secular standards, forfeit our religious liberties, and compromise our agency,
consider what the Book of Mormon teaches about our
responsibilities. In the book of Alma we read of Amlici, “a very cunning” and
“wicked man” who sought to be king over the people and “deprive them of their
rights and privileges,” which “was alarming to the people of the church.”15 They were taught by King Mosiah to
raise their voices for what they felt was right.16 Therefore they “assembled
themselves together throughout all the land, every man according to his
mind, whether it were for or against Amlici, in separate bodies,
having much dispute … one with another.”17
In these discussions, members of the Church
and others had the opportunity to come together, experience the spirit of
unity, and be influenced by the Holy Ghost. “And it came to pass that the voice
of the people came against Amlici, that he was not made king.”18"
(https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/preserving-agency-protecting-religious-freedom?lang=eng#20-12565_000_51hales)
Whether or not we as a people have such a happy ending to our wave of negative social influences, we have yet to see. What we can be sure of is that we must know what side we must be on, and fight for it with all our heart and soul.
Whether or not we as a people have such a happy ending to our wave of negative social influences, we have yet to see. What we can be sure of is that we must know what side we must be on, and fight for it with all our heart and soul.
