The Future of Religion.
As with the state, so it will be with religion. It will not be
“abolished,” God will not be “dethroned,” people will not be “robbed
of their faith,” as all the foolish arguments are worded that are
directed against atheistic Socialists. Such follies Socialists leave
to bourgeois idealists who attempted such measures during the French
Revolution and, of course, failed utterly. Without any forcible
attack or expression of opinions, of whatever nature they may be, the
religious organizations will gradually disappear and the churches
with them.
Religion is the transcendental reflection of the social condition of
every age. In the measure in which human development progresses and
society is transformed, religion is transformed likewise. “Religion,”
says Marx, “is the striving of the people for an imaginary happiness;
it springs from a state of society that ~requires an illusion~,[252]
but disappears when the recognition of true happiness and the
possibility of its realization penetrates the masses.” It is to the
interest of the ruling classes to prevent this recognition, and so
they seek to uphold religion as a means for preserving their rule.
This is clearly expressed in the well-known saying: “Religion must
be preserved for the people.” This business of preserving religion
for the people becomes an important official function in a society
founded on class-rule. A caste is formed that assumes this function
and concentrates all its ingenuity upon maintaining and expanding
the structure, for this means the maintenance and expansion of their
own power and authority. At the lowest stages of civilization, among
primitive social conditions, religion is mere fetichism. With a higher
development religion becomes polytheism, and at a still higher stage,
it becomes monotheism. It is not the gods who have created man,
but man who has created the gods, or God. “In the image of himself
(man) he created him (God)”; not vice-versa. Even now monotheism has
dissolved itself into an all-comprising, all-penetrating pantheism
that is constantly becoming more volatile. Science has reduced the
doctrine of creation of the earth in six days to a myth. Astronomy,
mathematics and physics make heaven a phantom. They make of the
stars in heaven on which angels are enthroned, suns and planets that
preclude angelic existence.
The ruling class, seeing its existence threatened, clings to religion,
the support of all authority, as every ruling class has done.[253] The
bourgeoisie itself does not believe, and by its entire development
and by modern science that sprang from its lap, it has destroyed the
faith in religion and in all authority. Their belief is hypocrisy,
but the Church accepts the support of this false friend, because it
is sorely in need of aid itself. “Religion must be preserved for
the people.”
For the new society no considerations will exist. Uninterrupted human
progress and unadulterated science will be its device. If some one
should have religious needs, he may satisfy them with those who share
his belief. Society will pay no attention to them. Even the priest
must work to live, and as he will improve his mind by work, the
time will come when even he will recognize that ~it is our highest
destiny to be human~.
Ethics and morality exist even without religion. Only fools or
hypocrites would assert the contrary. Ethics and morality are the
expression of conceptions that regulate the actions and mutual
relations of men, while religion comprises the relations of men to
supernatural beings. But, like religion, our moral conceptions, too,
arise from prevailing social conditions.[254] The cannibal considers
it moral to eat human flesh. Greeks and Romans regarded slavery as
a moral institution. Serfdom seemed moral to the feudal lords of
the middle ages, and the modern capitalist deems wage-slavery, the
exploitation of women and the demoralization of children by industrial
labor, a highly moral condition.[255] These four stages of social
evolution present four different conceptions of morality, but in
none of them does the highest moral conception prevail. The highest
moral condition is one in which all human beings will be ~free~ and
~equal~; it is one in which the principle, “do unto others as you
would have others do unto you,” will dominate all human relations.
In the middle ages a man’s pedigree was the decisive factor; at the
present time his social status is determined by his wealth; in the
future every human being will be valued for his own true worth, and
the future lies with Socialism.
[252] Karl Marx--“Critic of the Philosophy of Law by Hegel.”
[253] The following utterance by Aristotle shows the opinion of
the ancients on this subject: “The tyrant (in ancient Greece every
autocrat was called a tyrant) must _appear_ to take religion very
seriously. For if the subjects believe their ruler to be pious and
God-fearing they do not expect unlawful treatment at his hands;
on the other hand they will not readily turn against him for they
believe that he has the support of the gods.” Aristotle--“Politics.”
“The Prince must possess noble human qualities or, at least, _must
seem to possess them_.... _He must especially appear very pious,
extremely religious_.... Though some will penetrate his guise,
they will maintain silence on the subject; for the majesty of the
state protects the Prince and by means of this protection he may
betray the opposite qualities _if his advantage should require it_.
Because he appeared pious whenever his piety _did not interfere with
his interests_, the majority of his subjects will consider him an
honorable man, even when he acts contrary to the maxims of faith and
religion. Therefore the Prince shall carefully cultivate worship and
church affairs.” Macchiavelli in his famous book, “The Prince.”
[254] See K. Kautsky--Ethics and the Materialistic Interpretation
of History. Stuttgart, 1905.
[255] Whenever a bourgeois is in want of arguments to justify what
is injustfiable, it is a thousand to one that he will make his
appeal to “morality.” In the spring of 1894, at a meeting of the
Evangelical Synod, a “liberal” member of the Berlin Court of Justice
even declared it to be “moral” that only taxpayers should have a
vote at church meetings.