> Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, "Why was not this ointment sold for three-hundred pence, and given to the poor?" The he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.
Certainly an element of victorian proto-socialism, chartism maybe too, included a healthy reach back into primitive christianity. It collided pretty heavily with the established anglican and catholic churches which were of course the legitemate inheritors of most of the land of the roman empire, post-fall. Carry that into the new world, they acquired lands and goods and importance, if not from romans.
The point of the socialism-communism arc is that why we want equitable distribution of goods and labour isn't the problem. The problem is how to achieve it. Owenite communities in the americas failed. It's hard to bootstrap.
They failed because they were heresies--elevating the material above the spiritual & dragging the Gospel down into the muck of economics & policy.
> Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
No, I think its more likely they failed because of the practicalities of moving an entire welsh speaking village to bolivia, to build a new jerusalem. I don't personally ascribe social failure to heresy per se. After all, many heresies existed in New England, but it persisted, and did remarkably well. There was no shortage of bad behaviour in the puritan communities around Boston, they just managed their economics and social fabric better.
- John 12:4