What led you to socialism?
I thought it might be interesting to discuss how the various posters here became socialists, since the ideology is so demonized here in the U.S. For me it was two things.
The first was my disgust for how unfair a system capitalism is. I'll be honest, I'm fairly fortunate my family makes enough money that I can go to college without having to worry about student loans and such, but most people aren't that lucky. Luck is a big part of it, my dad freely admits he got his job parietal based on luck. A lot of people are suffering, and I don't think we can fix that within the framework of capitalism. I don't think its right that children starve while some people dine on steak. For the record,when I say well off, I mean what most would consider "middle-class" or would used to be middle-class here, that group is dying it seems.
My second reason, is the simple fact that capitalism is an unsustainable system. It requires constant growth and expansion on a planet with finite resources. It simply is not sustainable. Also capitalism as a system is prone to crisis. It can't seem to go more than a couple of decades without having at least a minor economic rescission and things seem to be getting worse over time.
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I don't find many other Christian leftists, glad you posted. 
I was brought up a Baptist in a family Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, Unitarians and atheists. We also had Quakers in our lineage. For that reason, we didn't take any of those stances to be ultimate authorities as we respected our individualism. The main emphasis for us was the Golden Rule.
Baptists at that era in my area, weren't political, did not exclude, and did not take themselves that seriously, had just found a difference of opinion on how baptism was to be performed, thinking that it literally meant submersion in water and not sprinkling, as a symbol of a changed heart.
The focus where I attended was on having a childlike faith and a humility that ensured a built-in sense of not judging others, realizing all could be in error, when compared to a 'creator.' That breeds kindness and respect. In other words, walk humbly and realize you don't have all the answers, so live and let live. I guess it would be called a 'liberal' Baptist church.
My family respected all the different methods of living according to the Golden Rule, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Judaism, Zoroastrianism or native American beliefs.
We felt comfortable with socialism as a way to promote equality of all peoples and 'creation' itself, although the family was composed of working women, housewives, businessmen, blue collar men, academics and unionists. Not that gender assigned those roles exclusively, we were a mixed bag there.
Socialism appealed to a sense of a universal spirit of love, inclusive and non-judgmental, spreading to all living things. It just seemed the right way to go, getting to the basics of life, in fact it's natural. We have been deluged with a philosophy that says that nature is all about competition and eating each other. If it was, there wouldn't be many survivors. There are numerous examples of how individuals within species work together and how different species also live in cooperation with each other.
Anyway, socialism is the most logical system for many functions of society. It allows for the greatest accountability and public input in the needs of people. Such things as water, electricity, healthcare and care of those in need is best dealt with by socialism. When society is maintained as inclusive, not divided by wealth, and the basics of life are not disputed because of sense of the sanctity of life (not this travesty the rightwing has promoted), human beings can soar with freedom.
Privatization is selling those needs to those who are not accountable, not inclusive because the capitalist mindset, of necessity, makes division in order to squeeze out a profit. A profit essentially is a function of inequality. Not the spirit of love and inclusiveness, of cooperation and meeting human needs, as I explained in my view before.
Nice talking to you here.
P. S. Note that MLK was not only a Christian, he had found the meaning of love, and sought to understand reality far beyond any confining religious view, and his political stances were decried as being socialist and communist.
That's a VERY good way of putting it. Welcome to the commie forum. Glad you found us.
My Dad was a union local president for a few years at a dairy in the 60s, so I picked up the union solidarity from him. My family had always been working class with some consciousness about that social/political class. Plus I was a HS antiVietnam war advocate, so that exposed me to a lot of Marxist ideas. And I've never been a pacifist in my thinking. I've always believed in self defense, even when I couldn't defend myself which led to a militant attitude.
All of those things came together to lead me to a Russian History course in college where I learned more about Trotsky than just the name. I fell in love with the IDEA of Trotsky. He was brilliant and a true Reinassience man. Intelligent, a GREAT writer, theoretician, propagandist, orator and agitator, yet also a man of action. He was as comfortable speaking to a crowd as marching at the head of a revolution. As comfortable writing as creating and leading the Red Army. After reading about 8 to 10 books by and about Trotsky, I decided I was a Trotskyist and 40 years later futher study hasn't changed my mind.
That's why I don't want anyone else ruling over me. 
...and to some extent, it's true, but only if you're a white, straight, male with nothing to hold you back. That's when I realized. Here I am, a poor person, surrounded by other poor people, and I'm getting my way while the black guy or the woman or the gay person doesn't. I've seen it with my own eyes. Guys getting ID'd at the store because they're black, handing over a twenty right after the black guy in front of me has his twenty checked, and my twenty goes straight into the cash drawer without it being scrutinized.
When you live in that sort of environment and if you're observant you see the inequality all around you, and then you wonder, why am I different? I'm the poor guy. The kid who shared potatoes with his family and eagerly reached for the last one even when busting from near starch poisoning!
I discovered the Anarchist FAQ back when it was version 2.0 or something, it was still in a relatively new stage. I read What is Property? since it was being quoted extensively, and then Eric Fromm's To Have Or To Be, and that was it. I was an anarchist. I was always an anarchist.
Being poor (I have but my dreams), I was never a materialist, I never had "stuff." I didn't have toys or anything of that nature. It was just me and mother nature, a stick or rocks, seriously, it sounds cliché, but I did make bows and arrows and I made walking sticks, and they're damn good walking sticks. I still have one propping my window up right now next to me!
And what was interesting is that I never wanted toys. The only toy I ever recall getting was a yo-yo. I played with it, became skilled at it, and when it broke, that was it, no more toys for me (I did later discover video games, but I didn't get back into them until my mid-twenties, when I discovered "file sharing," shall we put it).
Yes, that's it ... I do a whole of file sharing.
See, there's something fundamentally wrong with a system where you had nothing, and I had anything I wanted (and still bitched about it).
Like you, I was always an "anarchist" ... just didn't know how to express my ideas. When I young, while thinking the system was wrong, I was still always suspicious of any authority - I didn't care who. I was always a bit of rebel. I was a well-off Jew in a great part of town, but I had some sort of angst. So, while I always agreed with socialism (even while I didn't know the term), and because of propaganda, I always had that libertarian inner me wanting to fuck the system.
Punk rock didn't help either. Just made me worse (or better).
Taught for 8 years in the '60's, and became active in the then new teachers' association's interest in collective bargaining (or as some then insisted on calling it: "professional negotiation" . I joined the staff of the State Association and was a field rep for 20 years before taking on the job of computerizing our efforts in the early 80's.
I believed when I started so many years ago that the purpose of public education was to produce an informed citizenry who would then make political choices for the good of the country. Among other subjects I taught 9th grade Civics - a course I doubt you'll find in many schools today.
It has become apparent to me that those in charge of public education today have an entirely different goal. No longer is it the purpose of public education to produce an enlightened citizenry. Now the phrase I hear most often is something like: schools should "train the future workforce" in order to be "able to compete globally."
Sad to say, I don't think today's citizenry is particularly well-informed. I rather suspect that this condition has been created, and continues to be reinforced, deliberately by those whose interests are best served by an ignorant populace.
Edit to Thank you. 
I was one of those who actually paid attention in religion class. Second, by way of my own families experience -- my Mom used public housing at one point back in the 50's, I've used socialized medicine here in SF, my sister has depended on unemployment. Third, by way of pragmatic thought -- it makes plain ol' SENSE to to keep people fed, housed, healthy, educated, and employed to have a productive/successful country. 
The older I get and the more I see our current system crush our citizenry and country, the MORE socialist I get.
I.e., redistribution after the fact within a capitalist framework is not socialism.
Another point that should be made is that we don't actually have free markets. For starters, corporations are not free market entities - they are products of government. Likewise patent and copyright protection and a whole host of other mechanisms used to accumulate wealth within western-style capitalism. Another example would be anti-union legislation (Taft-Hartley and various other state and federal laws since), which represents government interference in the labor markets. The term "free market" (like "free trade" is really just PR - people respond well to the term, but it's simply not accurate.
The system in the US today relies on the heavy hand of government. It's the proverbial "nanny state," but one operating for the benefit of an elite minority. If one is opposed to government enforced policies that benefit the unfortunate, why wouldn't one also oppose government enforced policies that enrich the well-off?
