My objection to socialism is not that it is too idealistic, too utopian.  The usual attack on socialism is that it ignores the facts of human nature.  In fact, most capitalists don’t view their beliefs as an ideology at all but just a common sense recognition of the facts of human nature.  Human nature is fallen, people are greedy and selfish, always out for their own interest.  Religion can civilize the beast to some extent, but it is better to recognize and accept human reality as it is and build an economic system that takes these facts into account.  In that way, we might be able to build realistic checks on the worst excesses, while resigning ourselves to what is clearly inevitable.

But this attack on socialism hides an ideological agenda which is all the more effective for being encased in "common sense."  As a Christian, I believe that man is inherently reformable, not at all doomed to selfishness, and that he is primarily endowed with "original blessing" and only secondarily with "original sin".  Whereas materialistic socialism shares with capitalism an excessive reliance on material productive processes, Christian socialism breaks with the domination of "work" and "productivity".  Christian socialism celebrates humanity for its own sake and seeks to develop the full human content whether that relates to what we currently refer to as political economy or whether it breaks those bonds.
 

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