Communism and Christianism
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DEDICATION
This booklet is gratefully dedicated to the Proletariat from whom Bishop and Mrs. Brown are sprung, and to whose unrequited labors (not to the good providence of a divinity) they owe their wealth, leisure and opportunities.
PROLEGOMENA1
Religion is the opium of the people. The suppression of religion as the happiness of the people is the revindication of its real happiness. The invitation to abandon illusions regarding its situation is an invitation to abandon a situation which has need of illusions. Criticism of religion is therefore the germ of a criticism of the vale of tears, of which religion is the holy aspect.
– Marx.Not only, indeed, is the struggle against religion intellectually useful, but it cannot conscientiously be avoided, for religion is used against the Socialist movement by the possessing class in every country.
But to abolish religion is not to abolish exploitation, because only one of the enemy's guns will have been silenced. The workers have, above all, to dislodge the capitalist class from power. The religious question, and indeed all else, is secondary to this.
The test of admission to a Socialist Party must be neither more nor less than acceptance of the following seven working principles and the policy of Socialism as a class movement:
1. Society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i. e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labor alone wealth is produced.
2. In society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.
3. This antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master class by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.
4. As in the order of social evolution the working class is the last to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.
5. This emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6. As the machinery of capitalist government, including the armed forces of the nation, conserves the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organize consciously and politically for acquiring the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.2
7. As all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master-class, the party seeking working-class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.
If a man supports the church, or in any respect allows religious ideas to stand in the way of the foregoing seven essential principles of socialism or the activity of a Party, he proves thereby that he does not accept Socialism as fundamentally true and of the first importance, and his place is outside.
No man can be consistently both a Socialist and a Christian. It must be either the socialist or the religious principle that is supreme, for the attempt to couple them equally betrays charlatanism or lack of thought. There is, therefore, no need for a specifically anti-religious test.
So surely does the acceptance of Socialism lead to the exclusion of the supernatural, that the Socialist has little need for such terms as Atheist, Free-thinker, or even Materialist; for the word Socialist, rightly understood, implies one who, on all such questions, takes his stand on positive science, explaining all things by purely natural causation, Socialism being not merely a politico-economic creed, but also an integral part of a consistent world philosophy.
So long as the anarchy of modern competitive society exists, the accompanying obscurity and confusion in social life will continue to shelter superstition. This point is illustrated in the following reference by Marx to the United States:
When we see in the very country of complete political emancipation not only that religion exists, but retains its vigour, there is no need, I hope, for other proofs in order to show that the existence of religion is not incompatible with the full political maturity of the State. But if religion exists it is because of a defective social organization, of which it is necessary to seek the cause in the very essence of the State.
Class domination is the essence of the modern State. It is based on competitive anarchy and parasitism – the evidences of a defective social organization. It still leaves room for religion, because it maintains ignorance and confusion by its structure and contradictions, and because religion is fostered as a handmaiden of class rule.
Nevertheless, the growth of the social forces of production within modern society, and the better knowledge the workers obtain of their true relations to each other and to Nature, loosen the chains of ghost worship and mysticism from their limbs and lessen the power of religion as a political weapon in the hands of the ruling class, while they form, at the same time, the material and intellectual preparation for an intelligently organized society. The matter has been put in a nutshell by Marx in the chapter on "Commodities" in "Capital," volume I.
The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men and to nature.
The life process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.
This, however, demands for society a certain material groundwork or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.
It is, therefore, a profound truth that Socialism is the natural enemy of religion. Through Socialism alone will the relations between men in society, and their relations to Nature, become reasonable, orderly, and completely intelligible, leaving no nook or cranny for superstition. The entry of Socialism is, consequently, the exodus of religion.
THE INTERNATIONAL PARTY
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!Arise, ye wretched of the earth,For justice thunders condemnation,A better world's in birth.No more tradition's chains shall bind us,Arise, ye slaves! no more in thrall!The earth shall rise on new foundations,We have been naught, we shall be all.We want no condescending saviors.To rule us from a judgment hall.We workers ask not for their favors,Let us consult for all.To make the thief disgorge his booty,To free the spirit from its cell,We must ourselves decide our duty,We must decide and do it well.The law oppresses us and tricks us,Taxation drains the victim's blood;The rich are free from obligations,The laws the poor delude.Too long we've languished in subjection,Equality has other laws:"No rights," says she, "without their duties.No claims on equals without cause."Toilers from shops and fields united,The party we of all who work;The earth belongs to us, the people,No room here for the shirk.How many on our flesh have fattened!But if the noisome birds of preyShall vanish from the sky some morning,The blessed sunlight still will stay.Hitherto, every form of society has been based on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule, because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. – Marx and Engels.
PART I.
Communism: The Naturalistic This-worldly Gospel for the Coming Age of Classless Equality and Economic Freedom – An Open Letter to a Brother Bishop and a Christian Socialist Comrade
FOREWORD3
The concept of God, as an explanation of the Universe, is becoming entirely untenable in this age of scientific inquiry. The laws of the persistence of force and the indestructibility of matter, and the unending interplay of cause and effect, make the attempt to trace the origin of things to an anthropomorphic God who had no cause, as futile as is the Oriental cosmology which holds that the world rests on an elephant, and, as an afterthought, that the elephant stands on a tortoise.
The inflexible laws of the known universe cannot logically be held to cease where our immediate experience ends, to make way for an unscientific concept of an uncaused and creating being. The Creation idea is unsupported by evidence, and is in conflict with every scientific law.
Socialism is consistent only with that monistic view which regards all phenomena as expressions of the underlying matter-force reality and as parts of the unity of Nature which interact according to inviolable laws.
Socialism is the application of science, the archenemy of religion, to human social relationships; and just as the basic principle of the philosophy of Socialism finds itself in conflict with religion, so does it, as a propagandist movement, find religion acting against it.
COMMUNISM: THE NATURALISTIC THIS-WORLDLY GOSPEL FOR THE COMING AGE OF CLASSLESS EQUALITY AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM
My dear Brother and Comrade:
Your letter of June 13th4 relative to the meeting called for the 27th, in the interest of a more radical socialist movement in our church, came duly to hand, and its invitation to attend, or at least write, was highly appreciated.
My days for attending things are, I fear, past. I did not feel able to go to the Annual Convention of the Socialist Party of Ohio, which met much nearer here on the same date, June 27th, and ended on the 29th with a great picnic – a communion, as real and holy, as was ever celebrated. I cannot even be sure of being with you in the House of Bishops during the meeting of the General Convention in October.
However, I intended you to have a letter and set the 26th aside for the writing of it, but I work slowly now and its hours slipped away while I was making notes until only one was left. It was spent in trying to condense all I wanted to say in the letter into a telegram. What I regard as the best of these efforts was taken to the office at seven p. m. on that day:
Make world safe for democracy by banishing Gods from sky, and capitalists from earth.
Here are four of the many other efforts: (1) Come over and help us. Abandon Christian Socialism for Marxian Communism; (2) Make world safe for democracy by turning it upside down with workers above and owners below; (3) Revolutionize capitalism out of state and orthodoxy out of church; (4) Come over and help us. Abandon reformatory for revolutionary socialism.
What I wanted you to understand is that, in my judgment, there can be no deliverance for the world from the troubles by which it is overwhelmed so long as theism holds the religious field and capitalism the political field.
IReligion and politics are the two halves of the sphere in which humanity lives, moves and has its social being. Religion is the ideal and politics the practical half of this sphere. Both halves naturally exist as the result of the same natural law of necessity: the matter-force law which makes it necessary for a man to feed, clothe and shelter his body in order to preserve it and its life.
Marxian socialism is at once this religion and politics, all there is of both of them which is for the good of the world as a whole.
Marxian socialism is a revolutionary movement towards doing away with the existing competitive system for producing and distributing the basic necessities of life (foods, clothes and houses) for the profit of a few parasites, and substituting a system for making and distributing them for the use of all workers.
So far some competing, lying, robbing, enslaving system for the production and distribution of these necessities has been the basis of every religion and politics – of none more than the Christian and American, and they with the rest have been tried in the balance of experience and found utterly wanting. Indeed, they are making a hell, not a heaven, of the earth in general and of our country in particular.
Christianism as a religion has collapsed. It promised to secure to the world peace and good will, but it has never had more of strife and hate. The tremendous English-German (or if you prefer German-English) war was a conflict at arms between the most outstanding among Christian nations and it was solemnly alleged to have been fought for the high purpose of ending such conflicts; but in reality it scattered the hot coals of war throughout the world, several of which were fanned into blazing by its so-called peace conference and others are ominously smouldering.
Americanism as a politics has collapsed. It promised a classless government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people, but has instead given a government of a class, by a class, for a class. This class, comprising not more than one out of every ten of the population, is the capitalist class, which owns the means and machines for the production of the necessities of life and for their distribution, a class which, as such, though bearing no necessary relationship to either one of the branches of this business, yet realizes enormous profits from both, profits which are wholly at the expense of the large class, at least nine out of every ten, which does all the work connected with the making of the machines and the operating of them.
This government was to make the country safe for democracy by securing to it the privilege of free speech and free assemblage, the existence of an independent press and the right of appeal for the redress of grievances; but our fathers did not have any too much of these liberties, we have had less and, if the competitive system for the production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the small owning class is to continue, our children are to have none.
Indeed, this is already true of the overwhelming majority, the working class. Its representatives have little if any real part in the government. They are completely subjected to the rule of the owning class. There never has been a body, mind and soul destroying slavery which equaled theirs, either as to the number of men, women and children involved in it, or as to the degrees of misery to which it doomed its victims.
Nor is the end yet. The world war certainly has taken American slavery out of the frying pan into the fire rather than into the water.
American slaves appeal to their government as Jewish slaves appealed to one of their kings for relief and receive the same answer, not in words but in deeds which speak louder:
Thy father made our yoke grievous; now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee. And he said unto them, Depart yet for three days, then come again to me. And the people departed. So all the people came the third day as the king had appointed and the king answered them roughly, saying: My father made your yoke heavy, and I will add to your yoke: My father also chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. So when all Israel saw that the king harkened not unto them, the people answered the king, saying, What portion have we in David?
As to details history does not exactly repeat itself and, therefore, I do not believe that the other planets of the universe, of which no doubt there are many billions, are inhabited by human beings of the same type as those of the earth, nor that its men, women and children are to have their bodies reconstructed and resurrected, after they have been disintegrated by death. Such beings on other planets and such reconstructions on this planet would in every case involve a detailed repetition of infinitely numerous processes of evolution which had extended through an eternal past.
Yet in every part of the universe and throughout all eternity, like causes ever have produced and ever shall produce like effect. If, therefore, the course of the Judean masters towards their slaves led to a successful revolt of ten out of twelve tribes, there is every reason for believing that the parallel course which the American masters are pursuing against their slaves will sooner or later issue in a revolution – a revolution which shall do away with both masters and slaves, leaving us with a classless America and a government concerned with the making of provisions for enabling all the people who are able and willing to work to supply themselves in abundance with the necessities of life and with the most desirable among the luxuries, rather than a government which provides that they who produce nothing shall have the cream and top milk of every necessity and the whole bottle of every luxury, leaving of the necessities only the blue milk for the producers of them and of the luxuries, not even the dregs.
Under this government those who can but will not work will be allowed to starve themselves into a better mind and out of their laziness. The young and the old, the sick and crippled will have their rightful maintenance from the state and out of the best of everything.
The deliverance of the world from commercial imperialism and the making of it safe for industrial democracy would prevent most of its unnecessary suffering and this great salvation is above all else dependent upon a knowledge of the truth. "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" – free from all the avoidable ills of life, among them the diabolical trinity of evils, war, poverty and slavery.
The happiness of the world will be promoted in extent and degree in proportion as the knowledge of the truth is disseminated by a twofold revelation: (1) the truth as it is revealed by history according to the Marxian interpretation thereof, a revelation of the truth which is saving the world from the robbing impositions of the capitalistic interpretation of politics, and (2) the truth as it is revealed by nature, according to the Darwinian interpretation thereof, a revelation which is saving the world from the robbing impositions of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion.
Man has always had as a basis for his thought, belief and action, a system for the production and distribution of the necessities of life. This is the discovery of Karl Marx which is known as the scientific or materialistic interpretation of history.
According to the scientific interpretation of history which is taught by naturalistic socialism, man is what he is, and his institutions are what they are, because he has fed, clothed and housed himself as he has.
According to the traditional interpretation of history, which is taught by supernaturalistic Christianism, man is what he is because of his thinking, believing and acting with reference to a revelation of a god, as it has been interpreted by his inspired representatives, the great prophets and statesmen, like Isaiah and Luther, Moses and Washington.
Perhaps the best proof of the correctness of the scientific or naturalistic explanation of the career of man and of the incorrectness of the traditional or supernaturalistic one is afforded by the history of morals, the soul of both religion and politics, without which neither could have any existence.
Before the discovery of the art of agriculture, man was dependent for his food upon fruits and nuts, game and fish. When these sources of sustenance failed, the tribes living in the same neighborhood fought with each other in order that the victorious might eat the vanquished.
During this period cannibalism was morally right, and it probably extended through at least two hundred thousand years, even into the Old Testament times. So righteous and holy was it that, in the course of time, the victims were recognized as saviour gods and the drinking of their blood and eating of their flesh constituted a Lord's Supper in which the god was eaten.
Cannibalism is the basis of our sacrament of the holy communion of bread and wine. As a connecting link between these extremes there was the form of communion which consisted in the eating of animal sacrifices.
By a sacrament with such an origin, you and I render our highest act of worship, though yours is still directed towards one among the supernaturalistic divinities and mine is now directed towards humanity. You say of a divinity: Thou, Lord, hast made me after thine own image and my heart cannot be at rest until I find rest in thee. I say of humanity: Thou, Lord, hast made me after thine own image and my heart cannot be at rest until it find rest in thee.
Within the social realm humanity is my new divinity, and your divinity (my old one) is a symbol of it, or else, so I think, he is at best a fiction and at worst a superstition.
You will be surprised, and I do not expect you to understand me, when I tell you that by translating the services and hymns from the language of my old literalism into that of my new symbolism, I am getting as much good out of them as ever and indeed more. I love the services, especially that great one, the Holy Communion, and the hymns, especially those great ones, Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah; Lead, Kindly Light; Abide With Me; and Jesus, Lover of My Soul.
My experience has convinced me that the sentimental and poetical elements in religion, to which I attach as much importance as ever, are as readily excited and securely sustained by fixing thought and sympathy upon the martyred human savior, the working class, as upon a crucified divine saviour, who after all, as the suffering son of God, is but a symbol of the suffering sons and daughters of man, the workers, from whom all good things come.
If grace at dinner means anything, it is addressed to a god who is the symbol of the many workers who did the innumerable things necessary to the producing and serving of it, without whom there would be nothing of all the good things on the table.
In the representation about my pleasure in the services of the church and their value to me, and in many representations scattered throughout this letter, I have in mind the question of an unanswered letter of yours, bearing date, February 25th, 1919, the one in which you ask, in effect, by what right a man can remain in an institution after he has, as I have, abandoned its chief doctrines and aims as they are authoritatively interpreted.
The right of revolution is the one by which I justify my course, and surely no consistent Protestant Christian or American citizen will doubt the solidity of this ground; for Protestantism and Americanism had their origin in revolutions.