The moral effect of our Abyssinian campaign was immense among all the
civilised and half-civilised peoples who heard of it. We ourselves had
expected the most salutary results from it, as we foresaw that the
brilliant proof of our power which we had given to the world would make our
adversaries more cautious and induce them to be more compliant to our just
wishes. But the effect far exceeded our most sanguine expectations. The
former opponents of economic justice were not merely silenced, but actually
converted--a fact which seemed to astonish us Freelanders ourselves rather
than our friends abroad. We could not clearly understand why people, who
for decades had regarded our efforts as foolish or objectionable, should,
simply because our young men had shown themselves to be excellent soldiers,
suddenly conclude that it would be possible and beneficial to enable every
worker to retain the full produce of his industry. The connection between
the latter and the execution done by our rifles and cannons was not clear
to us who lived under the dominion of reason and justice; but outside of
Freeland, wherever physical force was still the ultimate ground of right,
everybody--even those who in principle endorsed our ideas--held it to be a
matter of course that the crushing blows under whose tremendous force the
Negus of Abyssinia fell, were an unanswerable _argumentum ad hominem_ for
the superiority of our institutions as a whole. In particular, the sudden
victorious appearance of our fleet operated abroad as a decisive proof that
economic justice is no mere dream-Utopia, but a very real actuality; in
short, our military successes proved to be the triumph of our social
institutions. A strong feverish excitement took possession of all minds;
and men everywhere now wished practically to adopt what until then had been
seriously regarded by a comparatively small number as an ideal to be
attained in the future, by many had been treated with disfavour, and by
most had been altogether ignored.
And it was seen--which certainly did _not_ surprise us--that the impatience
and the revolutionary fever were the intenser the less the subjects of them
had previously studied our principles. The most advanced liberal-minded
nations, whose foremost statesmen had already been in sympathy with us, and
had made well-meant, but disconnected, attempts to lead their
working-classes into industrial freedom, applied themselves with
comparative deliberateness to the task of effecting the great economic and
social revolution with as little disturbance of the existing interests as
possible. England, France, and Italy, which before the outbreak of the
Abyssinian war were already prepared to introduce our institutions into
their East African possessions, now resolved to co-operate with us in the
conversion of their existing institutions into others analogous to ours--a
course which they could take without involving themselves in any very
revolutionary steps. Several other European Powers, as well as the whole of
America and Australia, immediately followed their example. This gave rise
to some stormy outbursts of popular feeling in the States in question; but
beyond the breaking of a few windows no harm was done. There were more
serious disturbances in the 'conservative' States of Europe and in some
parts of Asia; there occurred violent uprisings and serious attacks upon
unpopular ministers, who in vain asserted that they no longer had any
objection to make to economic equity. Here and there the struggle led to
bloodshed and confiscations. The working-classes mistrusted the wealthy
classes, but were themselves not agreed upon the course that should be
taken; and the parties assumed a more and more threatening attitude towards
each other. But the condition of affairs was worst where the governments
had formerly acted in avowed opposition to the people, the wealthy had
oppressed the masses, and the latter had been designedly kept in ignorance
and poverty. In such countries there was no intelligent popular class
possessing influence enough to control the outbursts of furious and
unreasoning hatred; cruelty and horrors of all kinds were perpetrated, the
former oppressors slaughtered wholesale, and there would have been no means
of staying the senseless and aimless bloodshed if, fortunately for these
countries, our influence and authority had not ultimately quieted the
raging masses and turned the agitation into proper channels. After one of
the parties, which in those countries were fruitlessly tearing each other
to pieces, had conceived the idea of calling in our intervention, the
example was generally followed. Wherever anarchy prevailed in the east of
Europe, in Asia, in several African States, requests were sent that we
would furnish commissioners, to whom should be granted unlimited authority.
We naturally complied most gladly with these requests; and the Freeland
commissioners were everywhere the objects of that implicit confidence which
was necessary for the restoration of quiet.
In the meantime those States also which were more advanced in opinion had
asked for confidential agents from Freeland to assist, both with counsel
and material aid, the governments in prosecuting the intended reforms. We
say advisedly with counsel and _material aid_ for the people of Freeland,
as soon as it was known that assistance had been asked for, granted to
their delegates, whether acting as consultative members of a foreign
government or as commissioners furnished with unlimited power, disposal
over the material resources of Freeland for the benefit of the countries
that had sent for them; the sums advanced being treated not as gifts, but
as loans. The central government of Eden Vale formally reserved the right
to give the final decision in the case of each loan; but as it was an
understood principle that necessary help was to be afforded, and as only
those who were on the spot could know what help was necessary, a
discretionary right of disposal of the available capital really lay in the
hands of the commissioners and confidential agents.
That we were able, in the course of a few months, to meet a demand from
abroad for nearly two milliard pounds sterling is explained by the fact
that our Freeland Insurance Department had at its disposal in an available
form about one-fifth of its reserve of more than ten milliards sterling.
The other four-fifths were invested--that is, it was lent to associations
and to the commonwealth for various purposes; the one-fifth had been
retained in the coffers of the bank as disposable stock for emergencies,
and now could be used to meet the sudden demand for capital. This reserve,
of course, was not kept in the form of gold or silver: had it been, it
would not have been available when an accidental demand arose. It is not
gold or silver, but quite other things that are required in a time of need:
the precious metals can serve merely as suitable means of procuring the
things that are really required. In order that such things may be acquired
they must exist somewhere in a sufficient quantity, and that they exist in
sufficient quantity to meet a sudden and exceptionally large demand cannot
be taken for granted. He who suddenly wants goods worth milliards of pounds
will not be able to buy them anywhere, because they are nowhere stored up
to that amount; if he would be protected from the danger of not being able
to get such a demand met, he must lay up, not the money for purchase, but
the goods themselves which he expects to need. Take, for example, the case
of the Russians who had burnt and destroyed the granaries of their
landowners, the warehouses of their merchants, the machines in their
factories: what good would have done them had the milliards of roubles
which they needed to make good--and to add to--what had been destroyed been
sent to them in the form of money for them to spend? There were no surplus
supplies which they could have bought: had they taken our money into the
markets the only effect would have been to raise all prices, and to have
made all the neighbouring nations share their distress. And in the same way
all the other nations, which we wished to assist in their endeavour to rise
as quickly as possible out of their misery into a state of wealth similar
to our own, needed not increased currency but increased food, raw material,
and implements. And our reserve was laid up in the form of such things.
About half of it always consisted of grain, the other half of various kinds
of raw material, particularly materials for weaving, and metals. When our
commissioner in Russia asked at different times for sums amounting
altogether to 285,000,000£, he did not receive from us a farthing in money,
but 3,040 cargoes of wheat, wool, iron, copper, timber, &c.: the result was
that the wasted country did not suffer at all from want, but a few months
later--certainly less in consequence of the loans themselves than of the
fact that the loans were employed in the Freeland spirit--it enjoyed a
prosperity which a short time before no one would have dreamt to be
possible. In the same way we made our resources useful to other nations,
and we resolved that should our existing means not suffice to meet the
demands, we would make up what was still needed from the produce of the
coming year.
We by no means intended to continue this _rôle_ of economic and social
providence to our brother peoples longer than was absolutely necessary. We
did not shrink from either the burden or the responsibility; but we
considered that in all respects it would be for the best if the process of
social reconstruction, in which all mankind was now engaged, were to be
carried out with the united powers of all, according to a well-considered
common plan. We therefore determined at once to invite all the nations of
the earth to a conference at Eden Vale, in which it might be decided what
ought next to be done. It was not our intention that this congress should
pass binding resolutions: it should remain, we thought, free to every
nation to draw what conclusions it pleased from the discussions at the
congress; but it seemed to us that in any case it would be of advantage to
know what the majority thought of the movement now going on.
This suggestion met with no serious objection anywhere. Among the less
advanced nations of Asia there was a strong feeling that, instead of
spending the time in useless talk, it would be better simply to put into
execution whatever we Freelanders advised. The constituent assemblies of
several--and those not the least--nations said that they on their part
would abide by what we said, whatever the congress might decide upon. But
it was necessary only to point out that we could not advise them until we
had heard them, and that a congress seemed to be the best means of making
their wants known, to induce them to send delegates. We could not prevent
many of the delegates from receiving instruction to vote with us
Freelanders in all divisions whatever--an instruction which proved to be
quite unnecessary, as the congress did not divide at all, except upon
questions of form, upon other questions confining itself to discussion and
leaving everyone to draw his own conclusions from the debates.
On the other hand, in the most advanced countries a small minority had
organised an opposition, not, it is true, against the general principles of
economic justice, but against many of the details involved in carrying out
that principle. This opposition had nowhere been able to elect a delegate
who should bear its mandate to the World's Congress; but it everywhere
found strong advocates among the Freeland confidential agents and
commissioners, who, while perfectly in harmony with the public opinion of
Freeland, endeavoured, as far as possible, to secure a representation of
every considerable party tendency, in order that those who clung to the
obsolete old economic order should have no right to complain that they
could not make themselves heard. Sixty-eight nations were invited to take
part in the congress; it was left to the nations themselves to decide how
many delegates they should send, provided they did not send more than ten
each. The sixty-eight countries elected 425 delegates, thus making with the
twelve heads of departments of the Freeland government a total number of
437 members of the congress.
On the 3rd of March, in the twenty-sixth year after the founding of
Freeland, the congress met in the large hall of the Eden Vale National
Palace. On the right sat those who questioned the possibility of carrying
out the proposed reform universally, in the centre the adherents of
Freeland, on the left the Radicals to whom the most violent measures seemed
best. The presidency was given to the head of the Freeland government,
which position had been uninterruptedly occupied by Dr. Strahl since the
founding of the commonwealth.
We give the following _résumé_ of the six days' discussion from the
official minutes:
FIRST DAY
The PRESIDENT, in the name of the Freeland people, welcomed the delegates
of the nations who had responded to the Freeland invitation.
CHARLES MONTAIGNE (_Centre_), in the name of his colleagues, thanked the
Freeland people for the magnanimous and extraordinary assistance which they
had afforded to the other nations of the earth in their struggles after
economic freedom. Not content with showing to the rest of the world the way
to economic freedom and justice, Freeland had also made enormous material
sacrifices. For his part, he did not know which was the more astonishing,
the inexhaustibleness of the resources which Freeland had at its disposal
or the disinterested magnanimity exhibited in the employment of those
resources.
JAMES CLARK (_Freeland_): In the interest of sober truth, as well as with a
view of furthering as much as possible the great work we all have at heart,
I must explain that though the Freeland people are always happy to make
disinterested sacrifices for the good of their brother peoples, and that in
all they do in this way their object is rather to develop and to promote
the best interests of mankind than to obtain any advantage for themselves,
yet, as a matter of fact, the milliards lent to foreign countries cost
Freeland no material sacrifice, but bring it considerable material profit.
[Sensation.] Under the _régime_ of economic justice and freedom the
solidarity of all economic interests is so universal and without exception,
that in Freeland business becomes as profitable as it is possible to
conceive of its being while you, with our assistance, are growing rich most
rapidly. This would be true if we gave you the milliards instead of lending
them. You look at each other and at me with an inquiring astonishment? You
hold it to be impossible to become rich by lending gratuitously or by
absolutely giving away a part of one's property? Yet nothing is simpler.
The subject is a very important one, and will come up for discussion again
in the course of our sittings; at present I will only briefly point out
that we have been prevented by the misery of the rest of the world from
making the right use of the advantages of international division of labour.
We have been obliged to manufacture for ourselves goods which we might have
obtained better from you; and we have therefore had to produce a smaller
quantity of those things which we could have produced most profitably. It
is plain that we should be far richer if we could give our attention
chiefly to the production of grain for ourselves and for you, and derive
from you the supplies we need to meet our demand for manufactured articles.
For here the soil yields for an equal amount of labour and capital ten
times as much as among you, while few manufactures here yield a larger
return for labour and capital than they do abroad. But, on account of the
system of exploitation which has prevailed and is not yet got rid of among
you--the cheap wages consequent upon which have cramped your use of
labour-saving machinery--we have been, and still are, compelled to meet
most of our demand for manufactured articles by our own production, since
you are scarcely able to produce for yourselves, to say nothing of
producing for us, a great number of goods which in the nature of things you
ought to be able to produce most profitably both for yourselves and for us,
and in exchange for which you would receive our foodstuffs and raw
material. We calculate that the removal of this hindrance to the complete
international division of labour must increase the productiveness of our
labour so much that the resulting gain would be cheaply bought by a
permanent sacrifice of many milliards. You need not wonder, then, at
finding us always so eager in encouraging you to make the freest and
fullest claims upon our resources. You will never dip so deeply into our
pockets that we--in our own interest as well as in yours--will not wish to
see you dip still deeper. Every farthing spent in hastening the development
of your wealth is made good to us ten and twentyfold.
FRANCIS FAR (_Right_): If it is so much to the interest of Freeland to
enrich us that Freeland is profited even by making us a gift of its
capital, why has it not given us its capital sooner? Who would have
hindered it from handing its milliards over to us? Why did it delay so
long, and why does it now make its assistance conditional on our accepting
its economic institutions?
JAMES CLARK: Because so long as you remained in servitude every farthing
given to you for such a purpose would have been simply thrown away.
Formerly we could do nothing more than support the victims of your social
system and mitigate the misery and wretchedness you inflicted upon
yourselves. As a matter of fact, there have long been large sums of
Freeland capital--bearing interest, it is true--invested in Europe and
America. What has been the result? This money has contributed to increase
the amount of surplus capital among you: it could not increase the quantity
of capital actually employed in production among you, for nothing could
have done that but an increased consumption by the people outside of
Freeland--and this was not compatible with what were then your economic
principles. Therefore we have been able to help you only since you
yourselves have held out the hand: our capital will benefit you only
because you have at length decided to enjoy the fruits of it yourselves.
[General assent.]
The PRESIDENT: In order to preserve a certain amount of order in our
discussions, I propose that we at once agree upon a list of the questions
to be considered. It may not always be possible to adhere strictly to the
order in the list; but it is advisable that each speaker should endeavour
as much as possible to confine himself to the subject under discussion. In
order to expedite matters, the Freeland government has prepared a kind of
agenda, which you can accept, or amend, or reject. The matters for
discussion mentioned in this agenda, I may remark, were not introduced on
our initiative, but were mentioned by the leaders of the different parties
abroad as needing more detailed explanation: we, on our part, contented
ourselves with arranging these questions. We propose, therefore, that the
following be the order in which the subjects be discussed:
1. How can the fact be explained that never in the course of history,
before the founding of Freeland, has there been a successful attempt to
establish a commonwealth upon the principles of economic justice and
freedom?
2. Is not the success of the Freeland institutions to be attributed merely
to the accidental, and therefore probably transient, co-operation of
specially favourable circumstances; or do those institutions rest upon
conditions universally present and inherent in human nature?
3. Are not want and misery necessary conditions of existence; and would not
over-population inevitably ensue were misery for a time to disappear from
the earth?
4. Is it possible to introduce the institutions of economic justice
everywhere without prejudice to inherited rights and vested interests; and,
if possible, what are the best means of doing this?
5. Are economic justice and freedom the ultimate outcome of human
evolution; and what will probably be the condition of mankind under such a
_régime_?
Has anyone a remark to make upon our proposal? No one has. Therefore I
place point 1 upon the order of the day, and call upon delegate Erasmus
Kraft to speak.
ERASMUS KRAFT (_Right_): Wherever thinking men dwell upon this earth, we
are preparing to exchange the state of servitude and misery in which from
time immemorial our race has been sunk, for a happier order of things. The
brilliant example which we have before our eyes here in Freeland seems to
be a pledge that our attempt will--nay, must--succeed. But the more evident
this certainty becomes, the more urgent, the more imperative, becomes the
question why that which is now to be accomplished has not long since been
done, why the genius of humanity slept so long before it roused itself to
the task of completing this richly beneficent work. And the simpler--the
more completely in harmony with human nature and with the most primitive
requirements of sound reason--appears to be the complex of those
institutions upon which the work of emancipation depends, so much the more
enigmatical is it that earlier centuries and millenniums, when there was no
lack of enlightened and noble minds, never seriously attempted to
accomplish such a work. We see that it suffices to guarantee to everyone
the full enjoyment of what he produces, in order to supply everyone with
more than enough; and yet through untold millenniums men have patiently
endured boundless misery with all its consequences of sorrow and crime as
if they were inevitable conditions of existence. Why was this? Are we
shrewder, wiser, juster than all our ancestors; or, in spite of all the
apparently infallible evidence in favour of the success of our work, are we
not perhaps under a delusion? It is true that the greatest and most
important part of the history of mankind is veiled in the obscurity of
primitive antiquity; yet history is so old that it is scarcely to be
assumed that the endeavour after the material well-being of all--an
endeavour prompted by the most ardent desires of every creature--should now
make its appearance for the first time. It must be that such an endeavour
has been put forth, not _once_ merely but repeatedly, even though no
tradition has given us any trustworthy account of it. But where are its
results? Or did its results once exist though we know nothing of them? Is
the story of the Golden Age something more than a pious fable; and are we
upon the point of conjuring up another Golden Age? And then arises the
query, how long will this Golden Age last; will it not again be followed by
an age of bronze and an age of iron, perhaps in a more wretched, more
humble form than that exhibited by the age from which we are preparing to
part? Is that fatalistic resignation, with which the ages known to us
endured misery and servitude, a human instinct evolved during an earlier
and bitter experience--an instinct which teaches mankind to endure
patiently the inevitable rather than strive after a brief epoch of
happiness and progress at the risk of a deeper fall? In obedience to the
hint from the chair, I will at present refrain from inquiring what might be
the cause of such a relapse into redoubled misery, as this will be the
theme of the third point in the list of subjects for discussion; but I
think that before we proceed to an exposition of all the conceivable
consequences of the success of our endeavours it would be advisable first
to find out _whether_ those endeavours will really and in their full extent
succeed; and in order to find this out, it will again be advisable to ask
why such endeavours have never succeeded before--nay, perhaps, why they
have never before been made.
CHRISTIAN CASTOR (_Centre_): The previous speaker is in error when he
asserts that history tells us of no serious attempt to realise the
principle of economic justice. One of the grandest attempts of this kind is
Christianity. Everyone who knows the Gospels must know that Christ and His
apostles condemned the exploitation of man by man. The words of Scripture,
'Woe to him who waxes fat upon the sweat of his brother,' contain _in nuce_
the whole codex of Freeland law and all that we are now striving to
realise. That the official Christianity afterwards allowed its work of
emancipation to drop is true; but individual Fathers of the Church have
again and again, in reliance upon the sacred text, endeavoured to realise
the original purposes of Christ. And that during the Middle Ages, as well
as in modern times, vigorous attempts to realise the Christian ideal--that
is, the ideal of Christ, not that of the Church--have never been wanting is
also well known. This is what I wished to point out. The elucidation of the
question why all these attempts were wrecked I leave to other and better
furnished minds.
VLADIMIR OSSIP (_Left_): Far be it from me to hold the noble Founder of
Christianity responsible for what was afterwards made out of His teaching;
but our friend from the United States goes, in my opinion, too far when he
represents Christ and His successors as _our_ predecessors. We proclaim
prosperity and freedom--Christ preached self-denial and humility; we desire
the wealth, He the poverty, of all; we busy ourselves with the things of
this world--He had the next world before His eyes; we are--to speak
briefly--revolutionaries, though pacific ones--He is the founder of a
religion. Let us leave religion alone; I do not think it will be of any use
for us to call in question the _meum_ and _tuum_ as to Christianity.
LIONEL ACOSTA (_Centre_): I differ entirely in this case from the previous
speaker, and agree with our colleague from North America. The teaching of
Christ, though not explicit as to means and ends, is the purest and noblest
proclamation of social freedom that has yet been heard, and it is this
proclamation of social emancipation, and not any religious novelty, that
forms the substance of the 'Good News.' It was a master-stroke of the
policy of enslavement to represent Christ as a founder of a religion
instead of a social reformer: the latter doctrine had quickly won the
hearts of the oppressed masses because it promised them release from their
sufferings, but the former doctrine was used to lull to sleep their
awakening energy.
Christ did not concern Himself with religion--not a line in the Gospels
shows the slightest trace of His having interfered with one of the ancient
religious precepts of His country. The most orthodox Jew can unhesitatingly
place the Gospels in the hands of his children, certain that they will find
nothing therein to wound their religious sentiment. [A Voice: Then why was
Christ crucified?] I am asked why Christ was crucified if He had done
nothing contrary to the Mosaic law. Do men commit murder from religious
motives _merely_? Christ was hurried to death because He was a _social_,
not because He was a religious, innovator; and it was not the pious but the
powerful among the Jews who demanded His death. Scarcely a word is needed
to set this matter right in the minds of all those who study without
prejudice the momentous events of that saddest, but at the same time most
glorious, of the days of Israel, upon which the noblest of her sons
voluntarily sought and found a martyr's death. In the first place, it is a
well-attested historical fact that in Judaea at that time death for
religious heresy was as little known as in Europe during the last century.
In the second place, the mode of execution--the cross, which was quite
foreign to the Jews--shows that Christ was executed according to Roman, not
Jewish, law. But the Romans, the most tolerant in religious matters of all
peoples, would never have put a man to death for religious innovation; they
would not have allowed the execution to take place, much less have
themselves pronounced sentence and carried out that sentence in their own
method. The cross was among them the punishment for _riotous slaves_ or
their _instigators_. I do not say this for the purpose of shifting the
responsibility for Christ's death from Judaea--it is the sad privilege of
that people to have been the executioner of its noblest sons; and as only
the Athenians killed Socrates, so none but the Jews killed Christ; the
Romans were only the instruments of Jewish hatred--the hatred, that is, of
those wealthy men among the Jews of the time who denounced the 'perverter
of the people' to the Governor because they trembled for their possessions.
Indeed, it is quite credible that the Governor did not show himself willing
to accede to the wishes of the eager denouncers, for he, the Roman, who had
grown up in unshaken faith in the firmly established rights of property,
did not understand the significance and bearing of the social teaching of
Christ. The Gospels leave us little room to doubt--and it would be
difficult to understand how it could be otherwise--that he held Christ to
be a harmless enthusiast, who might have been let off with a little
scourging. Generations had to pass away before the _Roman_ world could
learn what the teaching of Christ really was; and then it fell upon His
followers with a fury without a parallel--crucified them, threw them to the
beasts; in short, did everything that Rome was accustomed to do to the foes
of its system of law and property, but never to the followers of foreign
religions. It was different with the _Jewish_ aristocracy: these at once
understood the meaning and the bearing of the Christian propaganda, for
they had long since learnt the germ of these social demands in the
Pentateuch and in the teaching of the earlier prophets. The year of Jubilee
which required a fresh division of the land after every forty-nine years,
the regulation that all slaves should be emancipated in the seventh
year--what were these but the precursors of the universal equality demanded
by Christ? Whether all these ideas, which are to be found in the Sacred
Scriptures of ancient Judaea, were ever realised in practice is more than
doubtful. But they were currently known to every Jew; and when Christ
attempted to give them a practical form--when, in vigorous and rousing
addresses, He denounced woe to the rich man who fattened upon his brother's
sweat--then the powerful in Jerusalem at once recognised that their
interests were threatened by a danger which was not clearly seen by
non-Jewish property-owners until much later. There is not the slightest
doubt that they made no secret of the true grounds of their anxiety to the
Roman Governor, for Christ was executed, not as a sectary, but as an
inciter to revolt.
But, of course, it could not be told to the people that the death of Christ
was demanded because He wished to put into practice the principle of
equality laid down in the sacred books and so often insisted on by the
prophets. The people had to be satisfied with the fable of the religious
heresy of the Nazarene, which fable, however--except in the case of the
unjudging crowd that collected together at the crucifixion--for a long time
found no credence. Everywhere in Israel did the first Christian communities
pass for good Jews; they were called _Judaei_ by all the Roman authors by
whom they were mentioned. What they really were, in what respects alone
they differed from the other communities of Jews, is sufficiently revealed
in the Acts of the Apostles, notwithstanding the very natural caution of
the writer, and the subsequent equally intelligible corruptions of the
text. They were Socialists, to some extent Communists; absolute economic
equality, community of goods, was practised among them. Later, when the
Christian Church sacrificed its social principle to peace with the State,
and transformed itself from a cruelly persecuted martyr to equality into an
instrument of authority and--perhaps because of this apostasy--of a doubly
zealous persecuting authority, then first did she put forth as her own
teaching the malicious calumny of her former maligners, and took upon
herself the _rôle_ of a new religion; and since then she has, in fact, been
the propounder of a new religion. And that she has succeeded, for more than
1,500 years, in connecting her new _rôle_ with the name of Christ, is
mainly the fault of the Jews, who, through the sanguinary persecutions
which have been carried on against them in the name of the meek Sufferer of
Golgotha, have allowed themselves to be betrayed into a blind and foolish
hatred towards this their greatest and noblest son.
But it remains none the less true that Christ suffered death for the idea
of social justice and for this alone--nay, that before His time this idea
was not unknown to Judaism. And it is equally true that notwithstanding all
subsequent obscuration and corruption of this world-redeeming idea, the
propaganda of economic emancipation has never since been completely
suppressed. It was in vain that the Church forbad the laity to read those
books which were alleged to contain no teaching but that of the Church:
again and again did the European peoples, languishing in the deepest
degradation, derive from those forbidden Scriptures courage and inspiration
to attempt their emancipation.
DARJA-SING (_Centre_): I should like to add to what I have just heard that
another people, six centuries before Christ, also conceived the ideas of
freedom and justice--I mean the Indian people. The essence of Buddhism is
the doctrine of the equality of all men and of the sinfulness of oppression
and exploitation. Nay, I venture to assert that the already mentioned ideas
of social freedom to be found in the Pentateuch, and held by the prophets,
and consequently those also held by Christ, are to be referred back to
Indian suggestion. At first sight this appears to be an anachronism, for
Buddha lived six centuries before Christ, while the Jewish legends carry
back the composition of the Pentateuch to the fourteenth century before
Christ. But recent investigations have almost certainly established that
these alleged books of Moses were composed in the sixth century B.C. at the
earliest--at any rate, after the return of the Israelites from the
so-called Babylonish captivity. Now, just at the time when the _élite_ of
the then existing Jews were carried to Babylon, Buddha sent his apostles
through the whole of Asia; and it may safely be assumed that those who
'wept by the waters of Babylon' were specially susceptible to the teaching
of such apostles.
When, therefore, certain eminent German thinkers assert that Christianity
is a drop of foreign blood in the Arian peoples, they are certainly correct
in so far as Christianity actually came to them as Semitism, as having
sprung from Judaism; nevertheless the Arian world can lay claim to the
fundamental conception of Christianity as its own, since it is most highly
probable that the Semitic peoples received the first germ of it from the
Arians. I say this not for the purpose of depreciating the service
performed by the great Semitic martyr to freedom. I cannot, alas! deny that
we Arians were not able to accomplish anything of our own strength with the
divine idea that sprang from our bosom. While it is probable that the
horrors of the Indian system of caste, that most shameful blossom that ever
sprang from the blood-and-tear-bedewed soil of bondage, made India the
scene of the first intellectual reaction against this scourge of mankind,
it is certain, on the other hand, that that very system of caste so
severely strained the energy of our Indian people as to make it impossible
for them to give practical effect to the reaction. Buddhism was
extinguished in India, and outside of India it was soon entirely robbed of
its social characteristic. Those transcendental speculations to which even
in the West it was _attempted_ to limit Christianity have in Eastern Asia
been in reality the only effects of Buddhism. Indeed, the idea of freedom
took different forms in the minds of the founders--taking one form in the
Indian Avatar which, notwithstanding all his sublimity, bore the mark of
his nationality; and taking another form in the Messiah of Judah who saw
the light of the world in the midst of a people fired with a never-subdued
yearning for freedom. Buddha could conceive of freedom only in the form of
that hopeless self-renunciation which was falsely introduced into the
Christian idea of freedom by those who did not wish to have their own
enjoyments interfered with by the claims of others.
In fact, I am convinced that even our more vigorous kinsmen who had
migrated to the West could not have given practical effect to the
conception of freedom and equality if we--the Indian world--had transmitted
to them that conception just as we had conceived it. For even those who
migrated westward carried in their blood to Europe, and retained for a
thousand years, the sentiment of caste. The idea that all men are equal,
really equal here upon earth, would have remained as much beyond the grasp
of the German noble and the German serf as it has remained beyond the grasp
of the Indian Pariah or Sudra and the Brahman or Kshatriya. This conception
had first to be condensed and permanently fixed by the genius of the
strongly democratic little Semitic race on the banks of the Jordan, and
then to be subjected to a severe--and, for a time, adverse--analytical
criticism by the independent and logical spirit of research of Rome and
Greece, before it could be transplanted and bear fruit in purely Arian
races. It is very evident that the converted German kings adopted
Christianity because they held it to be a convenient instrument of power.
It was for the time being immaterial to them what the new doctrine had to
say to the serfs; for the serf who looked up to the 'offspring of the
gods,' his master, with awful reverence, seemed to be for ever harmless,
and the only persons against whom it was necessary for the masters to arm
were their fellow lords, the great and the noble, who differed from the
kings in nothing but in the amount of their power. The right to rule came,
according to the Arian view, from God: very well, but the right of the
least of the nobles sprang, like that of the king, from the gods. Now, the
kings found in Christ the _one_ supreme Lord who had conferred power upon
them, and upon them alone. They alone now possessed a divine source of
authority; and therefore history shows us everywhere that it was the kings
who introduced Christianity against the--often determined--opposition of
the great, and never that the great were converted without, or against the
will of, the kings. The masses of the people, the serfs, where were these
ever asked? They have to do and believe what their masters think well; and
without exception they do it, making no resistance whatever--allowing
themselves to be driven to baptism in flocks like sheep, and believing, as
they are commanded to do, that all power comes from _one_ God, who bestows
it upon _one_ lord. For the Arian serf is a mere chattel without a will,
and will not think for himself until he is educated to do so. This work of
education has been a long time in progress; but, as the previous speaker
rightly said, the idea of freedom has never slept.
ERICH HOLM (_Right_): I do not think that any valid objection can be made
to the statement that the general idea of economic justice is thousands of
years old and has never been completely lost sight of. But it is a question
whether this general idea of equality of rights and of freedom has much in
common with that which _we_ are now about to put into practice, or whether
in many respects it does not differ from that ancient idea. And, further,
it is a question whether that idea, which we have heard is already
twenty-five centuries old, has ever been or can be realised.
With reference to the first question, I must admit that Christ, in contrast
to Buddha, entertained not a transcendental and metaphysical, but a very
material and literal idea of equality. It is true that He pronounced the
poor in spirit blessed; but the rich, who according to Him would find it
harder to get into heaven than it is for a rope of camel's hair to go
through a needle's eye, were not the rich in spirit, but the rich in
earthly riches. It is also true that he said, 'My kingdom is not of this
world' and 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's'; yet everyone
who reads these passages in connection with their context must see that He
is simply waiving all interference whatever with political affairs--that in
wishing to gain the victory for social justice he is influenced not by
political, but by transcendental aims for the sake of eternal blessedness.
Whether Rome or Israel rules is immaterial to Him, if only justice be
exercised; yet only pious narrow-mindedness can deny that He wished to see
justice exercised here below, and not merely in the next world. But is that
which Christ understands by justice really identical with what we mean by
it? It is true that the 'Love thy neighbour as thyself,' which He preached
in common with other Jewish teachers, would be a senseless phrase if it did
not imply economic equality of rights. The man who exploits man loves man
as he does his domestic animal, but not as himself: to require true
'Christian neighbourly love' in an exploiting society would be simply
absurd, and what would come of it we have in times past sufficiently
experienced. Indeed, the apostle removes all doubt from this point, for he
expressly condemns the getting rich upon another's sweat.
So far, then, we are completely at one with Christ. But He just as
emphatically condemns wealth and praises poverty, whilst we would make
wealth the common possession of all, and therefore would place all our
fellow-men in a condition in which--to speak with Christ--it would be
harder to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a rope to go through a
needle's eye. Here is a contradiction which it seems to me can scarcely be
reconciled. We hold misery, Christ held wealth, to be the source of vice,
of sin: our equality is that of wealth, His that of poverty. This is my
first point.
In the second place, Christ did _not_ succeed, modest as His aims were. Is
not, then, an appeal to this noblest of all minds calculated to discourage
rather than to encourage us in the pursuit of our aims?
EMILIO LERMA (_Freeland_): The previous speaker has brought the poverty
which Christ praised and required into a false relation with
the--alleged--miscarriage of His work of emancipation. Christ's work
miscarried not in spite of, but _because_ of, the fact that He attempted to
base equality upon poverty. The equality of poverty cannot be established,
for it would be synonymous with the stagnation of civilisation. However, it
is not only possible, but necessary, to bring about the equality of wealth,
as soon as the necessary conditions exist, because this is synonymous with
the progress of civilisation. You will say that certainly this is so
according to our view; but according to the view of Christ wealth is an
evil. Very true. But when we examine the matter without prejudice, it is
impossible not to see _that Christ rejected wealth only because it had its
source in exploitation_. There is nothing in the life of Christ to suggest
that He was such a gloomy ascetic as He must have been if He had held
wealth, as such, to be sinful: numberless passages in the Gospels afford
unequivocal evidence of the contrary. Christ's daily needs were very
simple, but He was always ready to enjoy whatever His adherents offered
him, and never saw any harm in getting as much pleasure from living as was
consistent with justice. This view of His was not affected even by the
hatred with which the rich of Jerusalem persecuted Him, and the
often-quoted condemnation of the rich has in it something contrary to the
spirit of the Gospels, if we tear it away from its connection with the
words, 'Woe unto him who waxeth fat upon the sweat of his brother.' In
condemning wealth, Christ condemned merely its source; the kingdom of
heaven was closed to wealth because, and only because, wealth could not be
acquired except by exploiting the sweat of men. There can be no doubt that
Christ, like ourselves, would have become reconciled to wealth if then, as
in our days, wealth were possible without exploitation--nay, really
possible only without it. We shall have further occasion to discuss why
this was impossible in Christ's day and for many centuries afterwards; at
present it is enough to know that it _was_ impossible, that the only choice
lay between poverty and wealth with exploitation.
Christ rendered the immortal service of having recognised this alternative
more clearly than anyone before Him, and of having attacked exploitation
with soul-stirring fervour. It was inevitable that He should be crucified
for what He did, for in the antagonism between justice and the claims of
civilisation the first always succumbs. It was inevitable that He should
die, because He unrolled the banner of true human love, freedom, and
equality--in short, of all the noblest sentiments of the human
heart--nearly two thousand years too soon; too soon, that is, for Him, not
for us: for dull-witted humanity needed those two thousand years in order
fully to understand what its martyr meant. For humanity Christ died not a
day too soon. There is, then, no contradiction between the Christian ideas
and what we are striving for; the difference between the two lies simply
herein: that the first announcement of the idea of equality was made in an
age when the material conditions necessary for the practical realisation of
this divine idea did not yet exist, whilst our endeavours signify the
'Incarnation of the Word,' the fruit of the seed then cast into the mind of
mankind. It cannot, therefore, be said that the Christian work of
emancipation has really 'miscarried': there merely lie two thousand years
between the beginning and the completion of the work undertaken by Christ.
On account of the lateness of the hour the President here closed the
sitting, the debate standing adjourned until the next day.