Communism and Christianism Part 1

Communism and Christianism.

by William Montgomery Brown.

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.

PROLEGOMENA[A]

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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s movement:

1. Society as at present const.i.tuted is based upon the owners.h.i.+p of the means of living (i. e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master cla.s.s, and the consequent enslavement of the working cla.s.s, by whose labor alone wealth is produced.

2. In society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a cla.s.s 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 emanc.i.p.ation of the working cla.s.s from the domination of the master cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s is the last to achieve its freedom, the emanc.i.p.ation of the working cla.s.s will involve the emanc.i.p.ation of all mankind without distinction of race or s.e.x.

5. This emanc.i.p.ation must be the work of the working cla.s.s itself.

6. As the machinery of capitalist government, including the armed forces of the nation, conserves the monopoly by the capitalist cla.s.s of the wealth taken from the workers, the working cla.s.s 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 emanc.i.p.ation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.[B]

7. As all political parties are but the expression of cla.s.s interests, and as the interest of the working cla.s.s is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master-cla.s.s, the party seeking working-cla.s.s emanc.i.p.ation 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 compet.i.tive society exists, the accompanying obscurity and confusion in social life will continue to shelter superst.i.tion. This point is ill.u.s.trated in the following reference by Marx to the United States:

When we see in the very country of complete political emanc.i.p.ation 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.

Cla.s.s domination is the essence of the modern State. It is based on compet.i.tive 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 cla.s.s 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 wors.h.i.+p and mysticism from their limbs and lessen the power of religion as a political weapon in the hands of the ruling cla.s.s, while they form, at the same time, the material and intellectual preparation for an intelligently organized society. The matter has been put in a nutsh.e.l.l 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 a.s.sociated 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 superst.i.tion. The entry of Socialism is, consequently, the exodus of religion.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] From the Official Manifes...o...b.. the Socialist Party of Great Britain, showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.

[B] This section has been slightly changed to make sure of guarding against the advocacy of armed insurrection. Socialists throughout the world want a peaceful evolution from capitalism into socialism; but whether or not it will be so in the case of any country is, as Lenin prophesies, to be determined by the dealings of its capitalists with its laborers. In reply to an inquiry on this vexed subject by an English author, Lenin said, in effect, that in England, as elsewhere, the tactics of the capitalist cla.s.s will determine the program of the labor cla.s.s.

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 s.h.i.+rk.

How many on our flesh have fattened!

But if the noisome birds of prey Shall vanish from the sky some morning, The blessed sunlight still will stay.

PART I.

Communism: The Naturalistic This-worldly Gospel for the Coming Age of Cla.s.sless Equality and Economic Freedom--An Open Letter to a Brother Bishop and a Christian Socialist Comrade.