Rumors continue to persist that Jesus was a socialist, despite all the evidence to the contrary. For instance, he did not believe in the involuntary redistribution of wealth. He never once commanded government to dig its hands into the wallets of its citizens to give their money to somebody else.
He did, of course, believe in the voluntary redistribution of wealth, where individuals give freely to those in need out of their own resources and motivated by compassion. His commands about feeding the poor and clothing the naked were given to us, not to government.
Also, Jesus’ parables reveal a decidedly capitalistic, free enterprise view of economic transactions. For instance, in the parable of the workers in the vineyard we find Jesus frowning on the concept of collective bargaining and even the minimum wage.
Some will argue that I am making too much of what is just a story designed to illustrate a spiritual truth. Yet the stories of Jesus only work because they are connected to life in the real world. He is using an economic story to make a spiritual point, of course, but the story only works on a spiritual level if it works first on the economic one.
Bottom line: Jesus was a capitalist. The economy in which his stories take place is an economy predicated on the private ownership of the means of production, on the freedom of each worker to make his own wage agreement with his employer, and on the responsibility of each employer to pay his employees what he promised.
Read the details here.