Was early Christian socialist?

"And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need" (Acts 2:44-45). This is the verse that often capture the mind of people to conclude that the early church actually was socialist. In his book All things in common: The Economic Practice of the Early Christians, Roman Montero conclude that Early Christian was "Small communism".  Is that a fair remark?

Before we answer this question, there are several things we need to clarify before-hand. First, if we say that the early church was a socialist actually we already committ a fallacy for the ideology of socialists are originated far more ahead in the modern world, around 19 century forward. So, at best, we can only can say, early church was socialist alike not in a real sense but has share similar qualities of communism or socialism or like what Montero said (small communism). But having say that, were the early church really identical to socialism in its very nature?

Second, it is also important to know that socialism is different from communism. Although both are antithetical to capitalism and try to eliminate the distinction between "labor" and "capital" (Here, Marx use the term Bourgeoisie and Proletariat), they both are different system. To make it simple, socialism is an intermediary state between capitalism at the right and communism at the left. Today, there was actually no country that based their ideology in strict communism. Communism as what Marx proposed remained an utopia for the strictest sense and extremes form of socialism very hard to be implemented in real life. Even Philosopher like Zizek as one of the great proponent of communist, a "superstar communist" of our time through his writing and lectures, films, and interviews with so many other communist thinkers, still yet, no countries adopt communism yet.

Apparently, there are actually several version of socialism like Stalinism, Maoism and Leninism. Both shared similar and different nuance at the same time. But generally, socialism is an ideology whereby democratic rules control the means of production whereby the workers work together for good, and they shared equally in that good. Country like North Korea, China and Russia are all socialist countries and not communist. The wages of the worker under socialism is not under private company or those who hold private properties but as a whole coming from the larger society as a whole. Those who work better and more are gaining and receiving more. Socialist will still create inequality but not like what capitalisms might bring. Mike Tudoreanu in his article, People over Profit: What is socialism wrote: 

"Socialism does promote equality of wealth, but it does this by getting rid of profit, interest and rent as opposed to by equalizing wages. Most of the inequality in capitalism does not come from different wage levels, but from the fact that a few people own companies, banks or vast tracts of land, while most people don’t. In socialism, inequality of wages may remain, but that will be the only inequality. Everyone will have a job and work for a wage and some wages will be higher than others, but the highest paid person will only get five or 10 times as much as the lowest paid – not hundreds or even thousands of times more. In addition, the income that currently goes into the pockets of the 1 percent would be distributed equally, so the lowest wages would be much higher than they are today."

Based on a clash notion of socialism above, was early Christian socialist? Under the pertinent examination of the text we can say that early Christian church was not socialist. There are several argument we can make. First, the early church did not sell all possessions. From the literal text, we can see there is no word "all". We cannot assume that the early church did not own private property. Moreover, even if we assume that they sold everything Acts 4:34b-35 against that, as it says that "From time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them...". The act of selling was not permanent but periodic. Hence, there is no reason to assume they abolish private ownership in socialist sense. 

Second, communal spirit of the early church was voluntary. The communal spirit of the early church was voluntary and self-giving and not base coercion of church leaders. In socialism, the idea of coercion is needed as Ambrose Pinto said, "without certain amount of coercion, private property will simply not disappear." Marx himself promote a revolution for that case to be happened. The action recorded in Act 2 was a consequence of a community that has been experienced the foundational experience of Spirit after Pentecost. This event recorded seems to imply implicitly that without the indwelling of the spirit, the act of giving to the poor was impossible to be taken place, especially in Romans culture and context. Egoism quite popular in Romans among poets courtiers and the political leaders were mostly self-centric and also authoritarianist. 

Third, the act of selling and distributing was based on theistic framework. Socialism is closely related to atheism and humanism as it foundational worldview whereas early Christian was moved by the Holy Spirit (after Pentecost) and hence echoes the selfless love of the Cross of Christ. Centisimus Annus wrote, “the class struggle in the Marxist sense and militarism have the same root, namely, atheism and contempt for the human person, which place the principle of force above that of reason and law.” In history, when Lenin try to establish his Leninism in Rusia, he proposed the scientific atheism as foundational worldview in communist party.   

Based on these three arguments we can conclude that the early church was not socialist but rather they are Christians. Christian is a Community of Character as Stanley Hauerwas argued. Christian is a "storied people" whereby their life and ethics should expressed the narrative of  hope. He said, "every social ethics involves a narrative, whether it is concerned with the formulation of basic principles of social organization and/or concrete policy alternatives." And we know, the act of giving in the early Church expressed the self-giving love of Christ Jesus. According to Hauerwas, Christians should cultivate character in order to be contrast narrative of this world. This message really align to the voice of the Gospel that Christian need to be the agent of transformation, not by "taking" but "giving" not "exploiting" but "loving." In this egoistic and self-centered world of our time, it is vital to re-read again the book of Acts and see how the early church play out their story, a story of salvation that they have experienced and embraced in Spirit. The word from Herman Kutter need to be pondered,

 “When you Christians say "Christ alone," tell me, how do you show it? If Christ and Christ alone is important, why do you find it so difficult to start practicing his gospel, which overthrows Mammon! Do you still want to take refuge in the excuse that it is meant "only in an inner sense"? Doesn't the inner side have to find expression in the outer side? Haven't the Early Christians shown the fruit of the Spirit in their community of goods?”