I believe there’s an interesting case to be made for a type of ancient communism which seems to have persisted through to the Classical era:
Biblical scholars have argued that the mode of production seen in early Hebrew society was a communitarian domestic one that was akin to primitive communism.[26][27]
The early Church Fathers, like their non-Abrahamic predecessors, maintained that human society had declined to its current state from a now lost egalitarian social order.[28] There are those who view that the early Christian Church, such as that one described in the Acts of the Apostles (specifically Acts 2:44–45 and Acts 4:32–45)[29][28][30] was an early form of communism.[31][32][33] The view is that communism was just Christianity in practice and Jesus Christ was himself a communist.[34] This link was highlighted in one of Marx's early writings which stated: "As Christ is the intermediary unto whom man unburdens all his divinity, all his religious bonds, so the state is the mediator unto which he transfers all his Godlessness, all his human liberty".[34] Furthermore, the Marxist ethos that aims for unity reflects the Christian universalist teaching that humankind is one and that there is only one god who does not discriminate among people.[35] Later historians have supported the reading of early church communities as communistic in structure.[36][37][38]
Pre-Marxist communism was also present in the attempts to establish communistic societies such as those made by the ancient Jewish sects the Essenes[39][40][41] and by the Judean desert sect.[clarification needed][42]
If you turned all of the biblical vices into approved activities, and then you manifested those behaviors as a political and cultural belief system, wouldn’t it look a lot like communism?
Communism as practiced? Yes, but I see the same vices manifest in Capitalism as practiced (or whatever label you want to give the ideology “opposed” to communism).
On the flip side, I see many of the values of Christianity in “communism” as written (not marxism per se but the more general ideas of communal-ism which can be shown to long predate marxism (for instance, the reason that the Jerusalem Church collapsed while the Church of Rome thrived was that the Jerusalem Christian community was largely operated “communistically” while the Church of Rome imposed a capitalistic tithing system which helped contribute to their practically ruling the world for a time - one might point to this as yet more proof that “communism is idealism and not achievable in reality”, I wouldn’t disagree but I simply point to it to enrich the conversation which draws threads between “communism” and “Christianity”).
I believe there’s an interesting case to be made for a type of ancient communism which seems to have persisted through to the Classical era:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Marxist_communism#Classical_antiquity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism#Example_societies
If you turned all of the biblical vices into approved activities, and then you manifested those behaviors as a political and cultural belief system, wouldn’t it look a lot like communism?
Communism as practiced? Yes, but I see the same vices manifest in Capitalism as practiced (or whatever label you want to give the ideology “opposed” to communism).
On the flip side, I see many of the values of Christianity in “communism” as written (not marxism per se but the more general ideas of communal-ism which can be shown to long predate marxism (for instance, the reason that the Jerusalem Church collapsed while the Church of Rome thrived was that the Jerusalem Christian community was largely operated “communistically” while the Church of Rome imposed a capitalistic tithing system which helped contribute to their practically ruling the world for a time - one might point to this as yet more proof that “communism is idealism and not achievable in reality”, I wouldn’t disagree but I simply point to it to enrich the conversation which draws threads between “communism” and “Christianity”).