charity is nothing if forced....
Surely forced distribution of property under certain circumstances in order to benefit the poor is a public good and so, while not charity, is still a legitimate function of government, according to the Catholic concept of government as a guardian of public good.
To dismiss all government role in economy as a displacement of charity is a bit too sweeping.
Well, it would be - considering that “charity” is just another word for “love” . . .But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, Matthew 6:3, NIVSocialists consistently lay traps in the way they define words - and they do redefine words. If you restrict the meaning of “socialism” only to “government ownership of the means of production,” you miss the overarching characteristic of socialism. Which, for me, is the fact that “ownership” is actually credit for whatever positive things associated with the “owner” produced the “owner’s” title to the property in question. That can range from gift or inheritance from the previous owner up through finding (a gold nugget, say) the item where no one else had prior title to it, up through buying the item from its previous owner or producing the item (a ton of wheat, say) on self-owned land, on up to creating the item (Picasso creating a painting or Apple creating the iPad).Ownership, from whatever such source, is credit for positive association with, if not actual creation of, something good. Such association will include but not be limited to thrift in not having sold the item and dissipated the proceeds on wine, women, and song. To advocate “government ownership of the means of production” is to assume, first, that the government deserves it (if only in the sense that it has the power to dispossess the individuals who currently have ownership), and second, that the government can keep “the means of production.” (both of which presume, of course, that “the” government has and maintains legitimacy).
Why would anyone question the ability of the government to keep something it has? Well, because none of us can, actually. Part of that is that we are temporary, and part is because the things we make are also temporary. And not only are the things we make subject to deterioration, they are also subject to another form of depreciation - obsolescence. To say that the government owns “the” means of production is to assume away the possibility of technological progress. “The progress of science and the practical arts,” as the Constitution puts (and promotes) it, tends to obsolete production of items not only in favor of preferred alternative goods but in favor of more efficient and prolific production of the goods which are produced.
So what? So, the theory of “government ownership of the means of production” might in some sense work if production is limited to agriculture, and the means of production is solely "real property” - but not if someone invents fertilizer and tractors and so forth. In any other type of production, progress is possible and progress creates obsolescence in what the government “owns.” Progress simply does not fit the model of a one-time, for-all-time seizure of the means of production. The consequence is that government, with its monopoly of force, can theoretically seize “the means of production” from those whose ownership of them was derived from the discovery or even the creation of those physical things. But the reason the owners created those things was the expectation of owning them, so the socialist’s supposedly one-time seizure seizes not merely the physical, existing thing - it takes away, it destroys, hope.
Without hope or ambition, nothing gets created - the government owns everything that is - but that is all. Nothing new can ever be. Meanwhile, deterioration and changing circumstance degrades the value of the old. The first thing you know, you have Cuba.
If you degrade America to Cuba, what do you gain? What you gain, if you are in charge of doing it, is enormous power. You gain importance. You did all that in the name of charity - but the whole people are as poor as the “poor” were before - and those who were “poor" before, now actually are poor. In Wonderland Alice is told, “you have to run as fast as you can to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere, you have to run even harder.” And thus it is with production and progress. If you aren’t improving, you are going backward. Kill ambition for progress, and you do not merely stay in place - you go backwards.
“Charity” which inflates itself at the expense of those who aspire to make actual provision for the poor is unworthy of the name. Socialism is the enemy of charity and compassion.