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.

Come over and help us. Abandon Christian Socialism for Marxian

Communism.

FOREWORD[C]

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,

showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.

COMMUNISM: THE NATURALISTIC THIS-WORLDLY GOSPEL FOR THE COMING AGE OF

CLASSLESS EQUALITY AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM.

Make the World safe for Industrialism by turning it upside down

with Workers above and Owners below.

My dear Brother and Comrade:

Your letter of June 13th[D] 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.

I.

Religion 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.

Our national declaration of independence contains this famous

justification of political revolutions, and it is equally applicable to

religious ones, for religion and politics are but the ideal and

practical halves of the same social reality:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created

equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain

inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the

pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are

instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent

of the governed: that, whenever any form of government becomes

destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter

or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its

foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such

form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and

happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long

established, should not be changed for light and transient causes;

and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more

disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right

themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing

invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under

absolute despotism, it is their right--and it is their duty--to

throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their

security.

Jesus was nothing if he was not a revolutionist. Anyhow, his alleged

mother is authoritatively represented as believing him to have been

foreordained as one, for this song is put into her mouth:

He hath showed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud

in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the

humble and meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath

sent empty away.

This Christian socialism, like Bolshevik socialism, turns the idle rich

empty away; but, whereas the Christian gives them no chance to get

anything to eat, the Bolshevik allows them to have as much as the poor,

if they will work as hard.

Assuming for the sake of argument, that there may have been an

historical Jesus who taught some of the doctrines, in accordance with

the representations of the gospel, which are attributed to him, I am

nevertheless justified in claiming that he was quite as heretical

touching the faith of orthodox Judaism as I am touching that of orthodox

Christianism.

As to the Jewish faith he said, in effect, of himself what I say of

myself: I have all of the potentialities of my own life within myself. I

and my god are one. He dwells in me and I in him, and we are on the

earth, not in the sky.

As to the Jewish church and state, Jesus taught that they had become

utterly antiquated and that it was the mission of himself and disciples

to establish a new heaven, that is to remodel the church; and a new

earth, that is, to remodel the state; both remodelings being with

reference to the service of humanity by enlightening its darkness and

alleviating its misery here and now, rather than teaching it to look for

light and happiness elsewhere and elsewhen.[E]

As for the faith and church of orthodox Christianism there is no reason

for believing that he would be any more loyal to either than am I. His

loyalty was to the truth and to the proletarian, and they (this faith

and church) are disloyal to both, being ever on the side of tradition

against science, and on the side of the owner against the worker.

Jesus remained in the Jewish church, in spite of his many and great

heresies, until he was put out by death.

My contention is that in view of this example, whether it be, as you

think, of an historical or, as I think, of a dramatic character, there

is no reason why I should voluntarily go out of the Christian church.

Religion in general and Christianity in particular are nothing unless

they are embodiments of morality, and morality does not consist in

professions of belief in a god and his revelations as they are recorded

in a bible and condensed in a creed, but in a desire and effort to

acquire a knowledge of the laws of nature in order that, by conformity

to them, life may be made longer and happier.

When this desire exists and this effort is made with reference to one's

own self, they constitute morality; when with reference to one's own

family and associates, they constitute religion, and when with reference

to all others of contemporary and future generations, they constitute

Christianity.

But in making such distinctions the fact should not be lost sight of

that at bottom there is no difference between morality, religion and

Christianity. They are synonyms for the same virtues, the desire and

effort to know and live the truth as it is revealed in the doings of

nature. There are no other revelations of the truth, nor is there any

other morality, religion or Christianity.

Socialism is for me the one comprehensive term which is a synonym at

once of morality, religion and Christianity. Marxian and Bolshevikian

socialism are two halves of one thing, the theoretical half and the

practical half. Marxism is socialism in theory. Bolshevism is (perhaps

imperfectly as yet) socialism in practice.

As long as gods dominate the sky and capitalists prevail upon the earth,

the world will be safe for commercial imperialism, having a small heaven

for the few rich masters and a large hell for the many poor slaves.

Come over and help us make the world safe for industrial democracy by

banishing the personal, conscious gods from the sky and the lying,

robbing capitalists from the earth.

But in coming there is no need for leaving your church any more than

there is for leaving your state. During the short time which is for me,

before the night cometh in which no man can work, I shall remain in both

as long as the powers that be allow it, and do what little I can to

revolutionize them--revolutionize the church into a school for the

teaching of truth instead of lies, and revolutionize the state into a

hive for the making of commodities for the use of all instead of for the

profit of a few. In doing this I shall be following in the very

footsteps of the human Jesus.

After it was discovered that the ground, by planting and cultivating,

would produce the necessities of life, when a tribe found that it had

too little of it for its growing population, it would go to war with the

weaker among adjacent tribes for the purpose of securing its territory;

but from this on the vanquished were not eaten, and it was morally wrong

to eat them. They were kept alive and put to work at raising harvests

for their conquerors, hence arose the institution of slavery, and hence

its moral rightness even in this country of the free, down to the

beginning of the generation to which I belong.

However, human slavery has never ended, nor will it ever end while the

competitive system for the production of the necessities of life for

profit rather than use continues. Human slavery is, so to speak, the

basic ingredient of this system.

Speaking broadly, there have been three forms of human slavery--the

chattel, feudal and wage slaveries--the third much worse than the first,

and the second intermediary between them.

The chattel slave, as the adjective signifies, was the property of his

master, as much so as were the horse or the mule with which he worked,

and he was cared for in much the same way and for about the same reason.

The feudal slave was as really a chattel as was his predecessor, only he

had to look out for himself to a greater extent; and, more was expected

from him of accomplishment for the opulence and glory of the master,

especially insofar as these depended upon the success of his wars.

The wage slave is, likewise, as really owned by his master as was the

chattel or the feudal slave; but, if the master has no need for his

service, he is altogether down and out, as the feudal slave was not and

still less the chattel, and he has accomplished at least ten times more

for his master than did either of his predecessors.

So far man has produced and distributed the necessities of life by a

competitive system. The existing form of this competition is known as

capitalism. It has supplanted, or at least overshadowed, every other

form and is, so to speak, monarch of all it surveys.

The system as it now stands divides the world into two spheres--a small

one, in which a few live surfeitingly by owning, and a large one, in

which the many live starvingly by working; and, yet, ultimately,

absolutely everything for both depends upon the worker and nothing at

all on the owner.

Yes, the worker is indispensable to the owner, as much so as (to use the

classical illustration) the dog to the flea; but the owner is no more

indispensable to the worker than a flea to a dog. As dogs would be much

better off without fleas, so would workers without owners.

The discovery that the itch is caused by a parasite was of an epoch

making character because it led to the discovery that many, if not most

of the diseases by which mankind and also animal kind are afflicted are

of a parasitical character. This is as true of the social organism as of

the physical. Capitalism is the tape worm of society.

The existence of the master and slave classes inevitably gives rise to

four struggles: (1) the struggle of the slaves with the master for

better conditions, issuing in rebellions; (2) the struggle between

masters for advantages in markets, issuing in wars; (3) the struggle

between the slaves for jobs, issuing in a body and soul destroying

poverty; and (4) the struggle of the slaves with the master for a

reversal of conditions, issuing in revolutions.

All this struggling between the classes and within them tends towards

two results with both classes.

In the case of the master class, these results are the making of the

rich fewer and the remaining few richer.

In the case of the slave class, these results are the making of the

miserable poor more numerous and all less happy.

While capitalism stands, all talk about peace on earth and good will

among men will be so much hypocrisy; for, until it falls, the world will

be divided into the slave and master classes and these four contentions

with these results will continue to fill it with hatred and strife.

II.

The overthrow of capitalism in Russia is the greatest event in the

history of the world and it has converted International Socialism (the

Marxian revolutionary kind) from a theory into a condition.

Theories come and go. Conditions remain and work. From this on

revolutionary socialism will be working, night and day, with might and

main, here and there, everywhen and everywhere, and its three herculean

tasks are: (1) to dethrone the great imperialist, competitive

capitalism; (2) to enthrone the great democrat, co-operative

industrialism; and (3) to make the world safe for an industrial

classless democracy.

In less than three years revolutionary socialism in Russia has

accomplished more of these three tasks for the world, than all the

states and all the churches with all their wars have done in the whole

course of man's career, extending through at least two hundred thousand

years. Indeed they never did anything to these ends. On the contrary,

what progress has been made towards them was made in spite of their

strenuous opposition at every step.

Revolutionary socialism is a world movement towards the deliverance of

the producing slave from the non-producing master who has robbed him of

the fruits of his toil and left him half dead on the wayside--the only

effective movement to this humanitarian end.

Revolutionary socialism is the Good Samaritan of the despoiled and

wounded laborer. The reformatory kinds of socialism are so many priests

and Levites who pass by on the other side.

Of no reformatory socialism is this more true than of the Christian

kind. Christian socialism is absolutely worthless, and its utter

worthlessness is due to the essentially parasitic character of

supernaturalistic or orthodox Christianity.

Until the reformation, Christianity was dominated by monks--parasites

who lived by begging, lying, and persecuting; and since then by

capitalists--parasites who live by robbing, lying and warring.

Monks and capitalists have this in common, that they are natives of the

realm of parasitism.

We shall never have peace on earth and good will among men until we have

a parasiteless humanity, and we must wait for this until we have a

classless world. Parasitism is a boon companion of classism.

Nor can the earth ever be rid of its parasites until the celestial world

is rid of the class gods which capitalists have made in their own image

and likeness, nor until the terrestrial world is rid of the class states

and codes, churches and gospels which their respective class kings or

presidents and their class priests or preachers have had the gods of

their making impose upon this world, in accordance with their interests

and in the furtherance of their lying, robbing, warring schemes for the

promotion of them.

Neither capitalism nor Christianism is anything except insofar as it is

a system of parasitism and as parasitic systems they have striking

resemblances, nearly as many and close as indistinguishable twins.

Both have gods, churches and priesthoods and these are in each case

nothing but symbols.

However, the god of capitalism, though only a symbol, is nevertheless

real gold, below a real vault, and nearly all the world sincerely

worships it.

But the god of Christianism, though none the less symbolic, but rather

more so, is an unreal imaginary spirit, a magnified man without a body,

above an imaginary vault, and only a very small part of the world

sincerely worships him.

International socialism of the Marxian or Russian type, is for those who

starvingly live by working, the most uplifting thing in the world, and

for those who surfeitingly live by owning, it is the most depressing

thing in the world.

Wise people consider theories without losing too much, if any, sleep on

their account, but they study conditions and lie awake nights over them.

Millions of wise Americans have, in the past, been studying socialism as

a theory but, in the future, they will study it as a condition, in the

only way by which it can rightly and adequately be studied--the way of

reading its official documents, accredited periodicals and books. Of all

such, the most notable is the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.

This Manifesto is the Marxian gospel. I read two pages in it every day

as faithfully as ever I read a chapter in the Jesuine gospel, and with

much greater profit; for, whereas the gospel of Marx is exclusively

concerned with this terrestrial world, about which I know much and for

which I can do a little, the gospel of Jesus is as exclusively concerned

with a celestial world, about which I know nothing and for which I

cannot do the least. Here, as a sample of this gospel, I give half of

yesterday's reading and most of today's:

The immediate aim of the Communists (Socialists) is the same as

that of all the other proletarian parties; formation of the

proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy,

conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based

on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by

this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing

from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going

on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property

relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to

historical change consequent upon the change in historical

conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in

favor of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of

property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But

modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete

expression of the system of producing and appropriating products,

that is based on class antagonism, on the exploitation of the many

by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the

single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing

the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man's

own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all

personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the

property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of

property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to

abolish that; the development of industry has, to a great extent,

already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit.

It creates capital, i. e., that kind of property which exploits

wage-labor, and which cannot increase except upon condition of

getting a new supply of wage-labor for fresh exploitation.

Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of

capital and wage-labor. Let us examine both sides of this

antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a

social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and

only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort,

only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set

in motion.

Capital is therefore not a personal, it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into

the property of all members of society, personal property is not

thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social

character of the property that is changed. It loses its

class-character.

Let us now take wage-labor:

The average price of wage-labor is the minimum wage, i. e., that

quantum of the means of subsistence, which is absolutely requisite

to keep the laborer in bare existence, as his labor merely suffices

to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to

abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labor, an

appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of

human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the

labor of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable

character of this appropriation, under which the laborer lives

merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only insofar as

the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labor is but a means to increase

accumulated labor. In Communist society, accumulated labor is but a

means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in

Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois

society capital is independent and has individuality, while the

living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the

bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so.

The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence,

and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

The version of the Marxian gospel which we have in the Manifesto is

among the first of its versions. It was published about the middle of

the last century. Within the short period which has intervened, it has

changed nearly all of the ideas of a large and rapidly growing part of

every nation about almost everything social; and before the middle of

the present century, it will revolutionize all nations as it has Russia.

Ludendorff, the greatest among the military authorities in Germany, saw

and terribly feared this, and called Europe to arms to prevent it. In

his almost frantic appeal he said:

Bolshevism is advancing now and in a gradual progress from east to

west and is crushing everything between the midland sea and the

Atlantic ocean. It was easy to foresee that the Bolshevist armies

would attack toward the middle of May and defeat the Poles, as they

have now done. The world at large must, therefore, figure with a

Bolshevist advance in Poland toward Berlin and Prague.

Poland's fall will entail the fall of Germany and Czecho-Slovakia.

Their neighbors to the north and south will follow. Fate steps

along with elementary force. Let no one believe it will come to a

stand without enveloping Italy, France and England. Not even the

Seven Seas can stop it.

Under the capitalist system most people are and must continue to be

slaves. If you are a slave (all wage earners, as such, are slaves) the

socialist literature, the greatest of all literatures, will thrill you

with the hope of liberty. Read, note and inwardly digest it. No wage

earner who does this will ever again vote either the Democratic or the

Republican ticket. As a whole this literature is a brilliantly

illuminating and almost resistlessly persuasive explanation of the most

sane, the most salutary and withal the most promising movement towards

the freeing of all toiling men, women and children (nine of every ten)

from their body and soul destroying slavery.

Both Socrates and Jesus are recorded as teaching that the saviour of the

world is truth. Among saving truths (there is no truth without some

saving efficacy) the greatest is the one which was discovered and

formulated concurrently by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and it is in

substance this: all which makes for the good of mankind ultimately

depends wholly upon the laborious constructors and operators of the

machines for the cultivation, production and distribution of the

necessities of life, not at all upon the owners of these machines, who

at best are idlers and at worst schemers, and in any case parasites.

In the beginning was Work. All things were made by it; and without

it was not anything made that was made. In it was life; and the

life was the light of men.

The opening verses of the gospel according to John have been thus

interpreted. The commentator acknowledges that they do not read so now,

but contends for good and sufficient reasons, that, if there ever was

any truth in them, something to this effect must have been their

original reading. Certainly there is no truth in them as they have come

down to us.

This representation to the effect that productive labor is the saviour

of the world, its real god, the divinity in which we live, move and have

our being, is the great truth, the gospel of International Socialism,

the greatest of all movements, the movement which carries the only

rational hope for the freeing of mankind from all its unnecessary

suffering--and the most poignant sufferings, those imposed by the great

trinity of evils: (war, poverty and slavery) are not necessary.

Capitalism and Christianism are alike not only in having gods which are

symbols, but also in having great buildings set apart for the

worshipping of them.

The representatives of the god below the vault worship him in banks

under the leadership of a threefold ministry: presidents, cashiers and

bookkeepers.

The representatives of the god above the vault worship him in churches

under the leadership of a threefold ministry: bishops, priests and

deacons.

Speaking particularly of Christianity and America the trouble is not at

all with our Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam divinities, but wholly with

what they symbolize, capitalism--the god of liars, robbers and

warriors.

What our Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam should alike symbolize are the

classless divinities: (1) law, the king of the physical realm, and (2)

truth, the queen of the moral realm.

Law is what nature does. There is no other law, and this law is the god

of the physical realm. The gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations

of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, and all the rest) are

personifications, or symbols, of this god, or else they are

superstitions.

This representation is proved in practice to be true, on the one hand,

by the fact that no one needs to live with reference to any among those

gods, not even the god, Jesus; and, on the other hand, by the fact that

none who fail to live with reference to this god, law, lives at all.

Every act of nature, that is, every physical and psychical phenomenon

which enters into the constitution of the universe, is a word of the

revelation of this god, and there is no other revelation. All men must

constantly live with reference to it or else immediately die.

Truth is the interpretation of this law in the light of human

experience, reason and investigation with the view of making human life,

that of self and of all who come or can be brought within the range of

one's influence, as long and happy as possible.

Any one who desires and endeavors rightly to learn, interpret and live

this law to these ends is moral. In everything is he wholly good and in

nothing at all bad.

Religion is not anything good, except only as it is a synonym of such

morality, and this is equally true of politics.

War shortens much life and fills more with misery, hence it is utterly

immoral, and this is equally true of poverty and slavery.

In what I say here and in some other places about war being essentially

evil, the wars referred to are those by which the world has been cursed

through all the ages--wars between different groups of owners with

conflicting interests, not the war between owners and workers which is

now on. This war will bless, not curse, the world, because it is for the

emancipation of the slave class, not for the enrichment of one group of

the masters at the expense of another group, at the cost of increased

misery to all the slaves on both sides.

If there is any truth in the representation that real religion and real

politics alike consist in desiring and endeavoring to make terrestrial

life (there is no celestial life of which aught is known) long and

happy, the advocate of war is the worst of heretics against Christianism

and the worst of traitors against Americanism.

War is a necessary characteristic of vegetables and animals, because

they cannot make and operate machines for the supplying of their needs.

Peace is the necessary characteristic of humans, because they can make

and operate machines for the supplying of their needs.

Wars between capitalists are inevitabilities, as much so as the wars

between two hungry dogs, when one has a bone upon which the lives of

both depend. The only difference between capitalists and dogs is, that

dogs do their own fighting, whereas capitalists first rob the laborers

who produce their commodities, and then persuade or compel them to fight

their battles with fellow capitalists in their competitive efforts to

distribute them.

On the one hand it is true that a few capitalists do lose money in wars,

and still fewer their lives, but on the other hand it is equally true

that the majority of them are made richer and that producing and

distributing laborers ultimately bear every cent of the enormous

financial burden, and that for every machine owning master who is killed

or wounded there are a hundred wage earning slaves.

Yet neither the making nor operating of machines constitutes a man a

human. It is co-operation which does this. Nor will co-operation in

itself suffice. Bees and ants co-operate and even capitalists do so, yet

with all their co-operating bees and ants remain animals and so do

capitalists. The co-operation which converts animals into humans is the

one which is purposely inaugurated and sustained with the view of

securing to each one the fruits of his labor while at the same time

increasing them for all--that deliberate co-operation which consists in

conscious living, letting live and helping to live.

It is this co-operation which constitutes the most essential difference

between the animal and the human. Only animalism can exist and flourish

on a competitive basis, yet this is the basis upon which men who falsely

claim to be humans are living.

Until mankind begins the construction of a civilization on a foundation

of co-operation in the production and distribution of the necessities of

life, it should not set up a claim to humanism for itself, because

meantime it cannot sustain such a claim.

It is perfectly natural and absolutely necessary for dogs to have

belligerent contentions for bones, because they cannot peacefully

co-operate in the making of them; and yet men who can do this are more

fierce by far in their competitive struggles for the bones which are

necessities to their lives.

Revolutionary socialists of the Marxian or Bolshevikian type offer the

only solution of the two great questions of the world at this time: (1)

how to save it from its intermittent and lesser hell of suffering by the

bloody wars between rival sets of capitalists, and (2) how to save it

from its perpetual and greater hell of suffering by the bloodless wars

between the machine owning masters and the machine operating slaves,

which wars, if less excruciating, are yet more destructive of both life

and happiness.

1. As to the bloody wars, a league of nations could prevent them only

while the dogs are sleeping off their exhaustion.

Nor could government ownership be depended upon for protection. It would

increase the armies and navies, making it next to impossible that more

than a decade or two should pass before our children must suffer as much

as, or more than, we have by the recent war between the bull dog and the

blood hound.

We are not at all indebted to the victory of the bull dog (England) over

the blood hound (Germany) for what we have in the way of a guarantee

against future wars, but wholly to the presumption of the Newfoundland

dog (Russia) which has quietly walked off with the bone of contention

while the belligerents were scrapping over it.

Notwithstanding all appearances and impressions to the contrary, this

bone never was really Paris or Berlin, but first one and then another

country--the Balkan States, Mexico, Persia, Morocco and Russia.

Of late Russia has been the chief bone of contention. Hence all the

snarling against Russian Bolshevism, one of a large litter of puppies

born to the Newfoundland since the beginning of the war, representatives

of which have already made their way to several countries of Europe, and

the prospects are that they or their offspring will soon be in evidence

everywhere throughout the world.

When all these Bolsheviki are grown-ups, they will make the world safe

for democracy sure enough--not the competitive democracy of the bull

dogs and blood hounds, but the co-operative democracy of the

Newfoundland dog. Then, and not before, will the world be safe against

war.

Since the beginning of the armistice there has been, every now and then,

a widespread fear that it might not be permanent, because of a

successful effort on the part of the bull dog to put over another war on

account of the Russian bone; but for many this fear has now been almost

quieted by the total collapse of the Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich and

Wrangel uprisings from within, which were strongly supported by the

Allies; and by the repulsion of the Polish invasion which had England,

France and the United States behind it.

An astonishing illustration of the truth of the Marxian theory

concerning the materialistic or economic determination of history, is

furnished by the melancholy fact that the representatives of big

business in the allied countries would gladly respond to Gen.

Ludendorff's call to join the junkers, against whom they so recently

fought, in a war against Russia, of which war Germany would be the

battle field. A concerted effort was made to organize such a war, but

the wisdom learned in the school of the world war by the working-men of

all the countries to which the call was made and their consequent

opposition to the effort caused it to fail.

2. But great as the suffering of the world is on account of the bloody

wars of capitalists with each other, it is but a drop in the bucket of

sorrow as compared with its suffering on account of the bloodless wars

between masters and slaves--between the machine owners and operators.

When this bloodless war ceases, as it will with the triumph of

international socialism, the bloody wars will cease and not until then.

Under the capitalist system every institution (state, church, school,

legislature, court, business, yes, even charity) is necessarily a

robbing instrumentality by which a small class of non-producers, fat

masters, rob a large class of producers, lean slaves, and rob them

twice, each time thrice:

1. The master non-producers rob the slave producers of the three great

necessities of physical (body) life--food, clothing and houses.

Even in the United States of America, "the land of plenty," at this time

and at all times, seventy-five out of every one hundred are

insufficiently fed, clothed and housed.

2. The master non-producers rob the slave producers of the necessities

of psychical (soul) life--the liberty to learn the facts of nature, the

liberty to humanly interpret and live them and the liberty to teach

their discoveries and interpretations.

Even in the United States of America, "the home of political and

religious freedom," there is not one who can learn, live and teach the

truth without danger of being put out of a synagogue and into a

penitentiary; and this will continue until imperialistic capitalism and

supernaturalistic Christianism, the father and mother of the whole brood

of robbers, liars, persecutors and warriors, have been dethroned.

The gods of the capitalistic interpretations of politics and the gods of

the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, symbolize the same

reality, parasitic robbery.

Yet within the religious realm the trouble is not with the Jehovahs any

more than within the political realm it is with the Sams, but only with

what they symbolize.

For one I should feel that both the religious and political realms,

which are but halves of the same realm--religion the ideal half, and

politics the practical half--would be poorer without their respective

Jehovahs and Sams, even as the realm of childhood would be without its

Santa Claus.

If symbols are not absolute necessities to the religious and political

realms, nevertheless they always have been, now are and probably ever

shall be ornaments of them; I hope for their continuance, but as

subjectivities, not objectivities.

All the imperialistic interpretations of politics and all the

supernaturalistic interpretations of religion must be overthrown, else

the world will be lost. The omnipotent, omnipresent saviour who can and

will deliver us from them is already in the world. His name is

International Communism, the greatest and holiest name which has ever

been framed and pronounced; and the gospel of this saviour as it is

translated by Thomas Carlyle is written on every wall so that it may be

read by all:

Understand that well, it is the deep commandment, dimmer or

clearer, of our whole being, to be freed. Freedom is the one

purpose, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's struggles,

toilings, and sufferings, on this earth.

Morality is the greatest thing in the world because without it human

life would not be worth the living, or even possible; but, paradoxical

as the assertion may seem, freedom or liberty is greater because without

it morality would be an impossibility.

One can attain to the very highest standard of morality, religion and

sainthood without the least necessity of the slightest reference to what

the gods of the supernaturalistic religions said or did, and this is

quite as true of Jesus as of any other among such gods, but no man can

reach even the lowest standard of morality, and so of course not of

religion or sainthood, without constant reference to the god of truth.

Yet there is a difference between a law and a truth. The law is a doing

or act of nature, and as such it is a fact or revelation. There are no

other facts or revelations.

According to the traditional superstitious conception, a truth is the

revelation of the will of a god, involving a service to be rendered

directly or indirectly to him, and morality consists in a fulfillment of

it.

According to the modern scientific conception, a truth is the

interpretation of a fact involving a service to be rendered to men. On

the scientific theory each man must have what truth he has, either by

his own interpretation or by the adoption for himself of another's

interpretation.

No man can live the moral part of his psychical (soul) life on the truth

of another any more than he can live his physical (body) life on the

meals of another. Every one must have his own truths, even as he must

have his own meals.

Hence the necessity of freedom to morality. Hence, too, the

impossibility of the moral life under restraint, such as is imposed by

orthodox churches in their official dogmas, and such as is imposed by

belligerent states in their espionage laws.

Capitalism is essentially competitive and therefore necessarily

belligerent in character: hence a complete, an ideal moral life is an

utter impossibility under it, but even the little of moral life which

otherwise might be possible is lessened to one-half by official dogmas

and espionage laws; if, then, the governments of churches and nations

have any regard for the morality of their memberships and citizenships

they will at once repeal them, and never enact others.

The democracy which means freedom to learn the laws of the physical

realm of nature and to interpret them into laws for the regulation of

human life (a democracy which will secure to each one the longest and

happiest life which, under the most favorable of conditions, would be

within the range of possibilities for him) must wait until the

competitive system of capitalism for the production and distribution of

the necessities has been universally and completely supplanted by the

co-operative system of socialism.

The conclusion of the whole matter, as it is well put by an able

contributor to the excellent Proletarian, is this:

What is needed is a complete revolution of the economic system.

Private ownership of the tools of wealth production stands in the

way of further peaceful social development and private ownership

must be eliminated. The capitalists themselves will not eliminate

it. That is certain. It remains for the working class to do so. In

order to accomplish this task it will be necessary for the workers

to take control of the institution by which the capitalists

maintain their ownership of the tools of production--the political

state. That is the historic mission of the working class. The

mission of the Socialist is to organize and train the workers for

this "conquest of political power."

Among the signs of the times which unmistakably point to the great day

of the happy consummation of the movement towards the proletarian

revolution, and the glorious sky is full of them, is the fact that the

world has recently learned from the great war that man must work out his

own salvation without the least help from the gods of the

supernaturalistic interpretations of religion:

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,

Lift not your hands to It for help--for It

As impotently moves as you or I.

--Omar.

Yes, and a god moves more impotently than a man; for, whereas the god is

driven hither and thither by the laws of matter and force, according to

which they co-exist and co-operate through evolutionary processes to the

making of the universe what it is, and the god cannot help himself by

making it or conditioning himself otherwise, the man, if only he will

learn those laws, may combine, guide and ride them to almost any

predetermined destination, even out of the class hell of competitive

capitalism to the classless heaven of co-operative socialism.

III.

The salvation of the world from its unnecessary sufferings is dependent

upon such an equitable sharing of the labor involved in the making and

operating of the machines of production and distribution, and upon such

an equitable sharing of the products as shall issue in a classless

mankind by doing away, through a revolution, with the class which lives

by owning the means and machines of production and distribution.

It is this advocacy of classless levelism which constitutes the

theoretical core of revolutionary socialism. Those who oppose this

socialism proceed upon the assumption of the permanency of existing

religious and political institutions, the most ruinous of all heresies.

What this heresy is and the fatal policy to which it gives rise has its

classic expression, so far as religion is concerned, in the

exhortation--"earnestly contend for the faith once for all delivered to

the saints"--and, so far as politics is concerned, in the

representation--"the laws of the Medes and Persians which altereth not."

There is no such faith in religion, and cannot be, for as a creed

becomes stereotyped it loses the religious character and degenerates

into superstition.

There are no such laws in politics, and cannot be, for as a law becomes

stereotyped it loses the political character and degenerates into

tyranny.

Religion, which is the ideal half, and politics, which is the practical

half, of the same reality, human socialism, are like all else in the

universe, constantly changing, and necessarily so, because life and

progress are dependent upon change.

Orthodoxy in religion and politics is the blight of the ages, because of

its assumption that the great institutions, the family, state and church

with their customs, laws and doctrines, as they exist for the time

being, constitute the foundation of society, without which it could not

exist; that these institutions are almost if not altogether what they

should be, and that, therefore, the welfare of society, if not indeed

its existence, is dependent upon their continuance with but little if

any change.

But the foundation of society always has been a system for the

production and distribution of the necessities of life, and hence social

institutions, customs, laws and creeds are what they are at any time

because an economic system is what it is.

If we compare an economic system for the production of the primary

necessities of life (foods, clothes and houses) to a king or bishop (we

may well do so, for in all ages such systems have been the power behind

every regal and episcopal throne) we shall see that states, with their

rulers, codes and police, armies and jails; and churches, with their

gods, revelations, heavens and hells, are but so many expediencies for

the protection of the system from change.

What is true in this respect of the state and church is equally so of

the family, the school, the press, the lodge, the club, the library, the

theater, the chautauqua and, in short, every institution.

Why all these age-long safeguards against change? Because, so far, every

economic system has divided society into two classes, a comparatively

small class who own things and a large one who make things, and if the

few honest owners are to hold their own as divinely favored

"grab-it-alls," they must be protected at every point against the many

dishonest makers who are diabolically tempted to be "keep-somes!"

These rounded out children of god have nothing in common with these

caved in imps of the devil, no more than the flea and the dog, or the

tapeworm and the man.

David hastily said: All men are liars. He might leisurely have said this

of every representative of any religious or political orthodoxy, for

they insist that their religion and politics are the permanent elements

in social truth which remain unchanged from generation to generation

through all ages, whereas no religion or politics continues the same

during one decade, nor even a single year.

Orthodox Christians say that Jesus founded their sectarian churches,

though each sect insists that he had to do with only one church, theirs.

I doubt that he lived. In any case, I am certain that if he did live and

founded a church in the first century and were to come to earth again in

this twentieth century, he could not if he would and would not if he

could become a member of it, because of its changes.

Our own country is different by the width of the whole space of the

heavens from what it was before the war, and it is destined to a much

wider change.

So far are churches with their doctrines, and states with their laws

from being changeless, that they are more or less modified by every

development in the economic system to which they owe their existence

and of which they are servants.

In the case of every nation its king, the economic system, has always

been a robber and enslaver of the overwhelming majority of the people,

and the church and state have been the hands by which he accomplished

the robbing and enslaving.

Insofar as they differ, Roman orthodoxy is what it is because of its

starting out as the religious product of the feudal system of economics;

and Protestant orthodoxy is what it is because of its starting out as

the religious product of the capitalistic system of economics.

Protestantism is preferred before Romanism by most of the leading people

in the financial world, because it is the child of capitalism, their

sister, so to speak, whereas its rival is only a cousin.

As to the Roman and Protestant orthodoxies they are on the same footing.

I would not turn my hand over for the difference between them. If

literally interpreted in the light of modern science, both are utterly

antiquated and irrational.

Orthodox Romanists and Protestants have essentially the same bible and

creed. In my opinion, as in that of all Marxian and Darwinian

socialists, every supernaturalistic representation in both must be

regarded as having either a figurative or a superstitious character, for

there is not one among them which can endure a scientific and rational

analysis; yet, this is an age of science and reason.

The difference between Romanism and Protestantism is not at all a

question of relative supernaturalism, nor of rightness and wrongness,

but wholly one of the difference between the systems of economics which

gave them birth.

If you ask, is not this difference at least partly a question of the age

in which they took their rise, I reply, yes; but the age itself depends

upon the system.

However, it is a fact that while an economic system does constitute the

foundation of every religious and political superstructure, yet below

the foundation itself there is always a bed rock upon which it

ultimately rests, and this is a question of machinery by which the

necessities of life are produced and distributed.

The age of feudalism was essentially traditional or theoretical in its

character.

The age of capitalism is essentially scientific or experimental in its

character.

This difference between these ages is due to the fact that during the

earlier age things were made with hand tools, and during the later one

with machine tools.

Machinery in a theoretical or traditional age would be an anachronism.

It must have an experimental or scientific age for its development, and,

paradoxical as it may seem, this the machinery must make for itself.

Every period in human history has had its determining character from the

tools which brought it into being.

Supernaturalism has no place in the observations, investigations or

experimentations which are necessary to the invention, construction and

operation of a great machine and, hence, the machines have banished the

gods from the roof of the earth and the devils from its cellar, leaving

it to us to make of it what we please, a heaven or a hell without

reference to them. In his brilliant work entitled "Social and

Philosophical Studies", translated by Charles H. Kerr, Paul Lafargue

writes:

The labour of the mechanical factory puts the wage-worker in touch

with terrible natural forces unknown to the peasant, but instead of

being mastered by them he controls them. The gigantic mechanism of

iron and steel which fills the factory, which makes him move like

an automaton, which sometimes clutches him, bruises him, mutilates

him, does not engender in him a superstitious terror as the thunder

does in the peasant, but leaves him unmoved, for he knows that the

limbs of the mechanical monster were fashioned and mounted by his

comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion

or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and

productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the

electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send

miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city,

has but to say, like the God of Genesis, "let there be light," and

there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for

him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He would be greatly

surprised if one were to come and tell him that a certain god

might, if he chose, stop the machines and extinguish the lights

when the electricity had been turned on; he would reply that this

anarchistic god would be simply a misplaced gearing or a broken

wire, and that it would be easy for him to seek and find this

disturbing god. The practice of the modern factory teaches

scientific determinism to the wage-worker, without it being

necessary for him to pass through the theoretic study of the

sciences.

Earth must be a hell as long as we allow the capitalist system to

continue on it and to enslave the vast majority of its inhabitants.

Marxian socialism will ring out the old era with its hell of human

slavery and ring in the new era with its heaven of machine slavery.

One point must be grasped and held by all who would understand the

changes which take place within the social realm and it is this: they

are due to the differences in the instrumentalities or machines by which

the necessities of life are produced.

Man has risen above the lower animals which have common ancestors with

his own, because of the superiority of the hand by which he does things

to the hands by which they do things. If a man's body in general and

hand in particular were not a great improvement over the bodies and

hands of the apes, his mind and morality would differ but little from

theirs.

The superiority of the civilization of this age over its predecessors is

a question of instrumentalities by which the efficiency of the hand is

increased.

If all the modern machinery were taken from this generation and replaced

by the implements of the stone age the civilization of the next

generation would begin to sink, and within a century it would reach the

ancient level.

Strong expression is also given to the great truth upon which we are

here dwelling by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in its noteworthy

Manifesto:

Obviously, in order that there may be ideas and human history, two

material things must first be present: human beings, and food and

shelter for them. And the fundamental fact that is so seldom

realized is, that where, by what means, and how much, food and

shelter can be obtained, determines if, where, and how, man shall

live, and the forms his social institutions and ideas shall take.

It is, indeed, the very basis of Socialist philosophy that, in the

words of Frederick Engels:

"In every historical epoch the prevailing mode of economic

production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily

following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from

which, alone can be explained, the political and intellectual

history of that epoch."

This materialist concept is the Socialist key to history. It is the

first principle of a science of society, and, being directly

antagonistic to all religious philosophy, it is destined to drive

this "philosophy" and all its superstitions from their last ditch.

Civilization will not die with the death of the capitalist system of

production any more than it did with the feudal system. It improved

under capitalism, because of the improvement in the machinery of

production, and it is destined to continue its progress so long as new

and better machines are made and this will be to the end.

Marxian socialism is a machine optimism. Under this socialism the number

and efficiency of machines would increase more rapidly than they have

under capitalism and feudalism, because its aim will be the production

of commodities for use within the shortest time by the least exertion at

the slightest risk of injury.

Up to the point of over production, that is, of glutting the markets, it

is to the interest of capitalism to encourage improvements in machinery,

but the ability to do this has been reached, as is evident from what we

hear at increasingly frequent intervals about an over production of

commodities.

What machinery we now have renders it possible to produce more

commodities than can be sold without employing all the labor power. But

the idle, starving slave is a danger to the idle, surfeiting master.

Hence, under capitalism there can be no further development of

machinery, at least not on a large scale.

An industrial government would have for its aim to produce enough of

everything for all with the least expenditure of energy and time. Hence,

the greatest benefactors and heroes under socialism would be the

inventors of labor saving, leisure giving machinery.

We hear much about the mental superiority of the representatives of the

master class over those of the slave class, but there is little or no

truth in it.

On the contrary, it can be shown that the invention of a great labor

saving, rapid-producing machine is, upon the whole, the greatest triumph

of the human mind and that nearly all among such machines are invented,

made, operated, kept in order and improved by the laborer.

Masters may be more cunning than slaves, but cunningness is not an

evidence of a high order of intellectual power. Many of the lower

animals are quite the equals, if not indeed the superiors, of

capitalists in this quality, but no animal is the equal of any man, not

to speak of the exceptionally skilled laborer, in the power to produce

efficient machines for the production and distribution of the

necessities of life.

Romanism began its career as a child of the feudal system for the

production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the owners

of the land and the means for its cultivation. The mission to which it

was born was the assistance of its father, feudalism, in robbing and

enslaving the workers who tilled the soil, and never did a servant more

faithfully or efficiently perform a task during a longer period.

Protestantism began its career as a child of the capitalistic system for

the production and distribution of commodities for the profit of the

owners of the means and machines for their manufacturing. The mission to

which it was born was the assistance of its father, capitalism, in

robbing and enslaving the workers, who make and operate the machines,

and never did a servant more faithfully and efficiently perform a task

in a larger or more fruitful field.

Hitherto all systems of economics have had the same soul, competition;

and, because of it, every one among them has been a diabolical trinity

of which lying is the father; robbing is the son, who proceeds from the

father; and murder is the spirit, who proceeds from the father and the

son.

Labor, "the certain man" of every nation, is half dead lying in the

ditch by the wayside, despoiled and wounded, the victim of capitalism,

the greatest liar, robber and murderer of all the ages.

The church is the archangel or prime minister through which this

Beelzebub, capitalism, has done most of his lying, though within the

last hundred years the business has become so great that the office of

coadjutor to this archangel was created, and the press appointed to it.

The state is the archangel or prime minister through which this prince

of devils, capitalism, has done most of his robbing and killing, though

the church has often taken a helpful hand in these departments of the

devil's work, the great work of converting earth into a hell.

Nearly all of the backwardness of the world and more than half of its

unnecessary sufferings have been due to efforts to prevent changes in

religion and politics. Our nation is passing through the darkest period

of its history because of such efforts on the part of the powers which

be in the state, and they are supported by those in the church.

Speaking of the change with which we are here especially concerned, the

one involved in the supplanting of an old economic system by a new,

there have been several revolutions due to such changes, and another is

inevitable and imminent.

When an economic system fails, as the capitalistic one is failing, to

feed, clothe and house the workers of the world who produce all foods,

clothes and houses, the time when it must give place to another is

manifestly near at hand.

Capitalism is failing in this, the only legitimate mission of an

economic system. It has indeed over-supplied the needs of about one in

ten, but in doing this it has shown partiality, for the remaining nine

are left more or less foodless, clotheless and houseless, and this

notwithstanding they have done all the feeding, clothing and housing.

Those favored by the system will not be able to prevent its overthrow by

those who are wronged.

With our materials, factories, railroads and skill, all should have

enough and to spare of every necessity, but so far is this from being

the case that millions are insufficiently fed, clothed, housed and

warmed, and are doomed to a perpetual and exhaustive drudgery which

leaves neither leisure nor energy for the cultivation of their soul

life.

The economical and statistical experts of our government's Department of

Labor represent that the bare necessities of a comfortable and efficient

life for a family of five require an annual income of $1,500, and that

the simple luxuries, which are next to being indispensable, require an

additional $1,000, in all $2,500, per year.

How many American families of five have even the smaller of these sums

at their disposal? The overwhelming majority have less than $1,000. Let

us be honest with the peoples of other nations by ceasing to speak of

our country as "the land of plenty and the home of the free," until

there is a great change for the better.

Wage slavery may be prolonged by a military coercion but it cannot have

a successor in any other form of human slavery. Military coercion

prolonged chattel slavery, and by so doing brought what is known as the

dark ages upon the world. If wage slavery is to be prolonged by military

coercion the world must pass through a second dark age. The league of

nations is fixing for this; but let us hope that this coalition will not

stand and that wage slavery will soon be followed by machine slavery,

the form of slavery which will end human slavery; not until then shall

we have peace on earth and good will among men.

Then they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into

pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither

shall they learn war any more.

Do you not now see with me that the christ of the world is not a

conscious, personal god, but an unconscious, impersonal machine? It is

the machine of man, not a lamb of god, to which we may hopefully look

for the taking away of the sins of the world.

Ignorance is the great misfortune of the world, its devil, and slavery

is his hell. The machine is the redeemer who shall save man from this

devil and hell.

Yes, strange, even blasphemous, as the representation may seem, it is

nevertheless true, the machine is the only name given under heaven

whereby the world can be saved.

Civilization is salvation. The civilization which is salvation depends

on leisure and it on slavery, but so long as leisure is dependent upon

the slavery of man, civilization must be limited to a diminishing few.

Marxian socialism is a movement towards the equalization and

universalization of leisure by doing away with the master and slave

classes, through transference of slavery from man to machine.

If there is any truth in my naturalistic representation about the

dependence of morality upon a system for the production of the

necessities of life, there is none in the supernaturalistic one, which

makes it dependent on any among the gods; and, what is true of the realm

of morality is equally so of the realm of history, and this whether it

be the history of the universe in general or man in particular.

Lavoisier and Mayer showed that no god (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha)

created the universe out of nothing, for the matter and force which

enter into its constitution are eternalities and universalities.

Kant and Laplace showed that the earth and the heavenly bodies were not

created by any god at all, but evolved from gaseous nebulae.

Kepler and Newton showed that these bodies were not governed in their

motions by a god but by the law of gravitation.

Darwin and Wallace showed that the species of animal and vegetable life

were not created by any among the gods, but evolved from a common

protoplasm.

Marx and Engels showed that man's career has not been determined by any

among the gods, but by his systems for producing and distributing the

necessities of life.

These ten men are the greatest teachers the world has had, and this is

the sum of all their great teachings: The universe is self-existing,

self-sustaining and self-governing, having all the potentialities of its

own life within itself, and what is true of it in general is equally so

of all the phenomena which enter into its constitution, including man;

who, though he is the highest among them, is only a phenomenon, on a

level with all the rest, not excepting the lowest. A microbe and a man

are on the same footing, both as to their origin and destiny, and as to

their having within themselves all power which is available for making

the most of their respective lives.

"We are part

Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,

One with the things that prey on us,

And one with what we kill."

Darwinism and Marxism constitute one gospel, the only true,

comprehensive and sufficient gospel which the world has ever had or can

have, and there is no hope for the future of mankind except in it. If it

fails the world is lost, but it shall not and indeed cannot fail, for

its words are so many acts or facts of nature.

There is no fact which is not such an act, and every such fact is a part

of the one only law upon the knowing and doing of which terrestrial life

and its happiness are wholly and solely dependent.

Yes, life, long life, happy life, all there is of such human life, or

divine life, (if there be any), depends entirely upon a knowledge of and

conformity to this law which is the doing of nature, and not at all upon

any law which is the willing of a god, if indeed there is such a law.

Neither the religion nor the politics which enters into the constitution

of Marxian or proletarian socialism is at all concerned about the heaven

above or the hell below the earth, if there are such places: but the

concern of both is wholly to ring out a hell from the earth and to ring

in a heaven upon it.

Nor have the religion and politics which constitute this socialism the

least concern about the service of a celestial divinity (Jesus, Jehovah,

Allah, Buddha or any other) by doing his will; but both are much

concerned with the service of humanity, which consists in rightly

learning, interpreting and using the laws of nature, wholly for the

purpose of making the terrestrial lives of men, women and children as

long and happy as possible, and with absolutely no reference to any

celestial life which may be either above or below the earth.

Religion and politics are the complementary and inseparable halves of

the social sphere, religion being its idealism and politics its

practicalism.

Religious idealism is a social soul of which the church should be the

embodiment.

Political practicalism is a social soul of which the state should be the

embodiment.

Contrary to the representations of orthodox Christianism it is

impossible for any soul to exist without an embodiment.

In truth the body produces the soul, not the soul the body. We must have

the church and state in order that we may have their souls, idealism and

practicalism.

Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside

And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,

Were't not a Shame--were't not a Shame for him

In this clay carcass crippled to abide?

--Omar.

IV.

The church and the state are on the same level as to their origin and

importance. Both are human institutions and each is indispensable to the

other. It is not at all desirable or possible to rid the world of

either, but it is absolutely necessary that both should be

revolutionized, the church by having its bible and creed rewritten or at

least reinterpreted, on the basis of truth as it is revealed by nature,

and the state by having its institutions reorganized on the basis of

service to all instead of only to those of a small class, the owner or

master class.

All the idealistic aims of churches and all the practical undertakings

of states should be directly concerned with the answer to three

questions: (1) the question as to how to reach the goal where

terrestrial life shall in the case of each man, woman and child be as

long and happy as it is within the range of possibilities to make it, by

the fullest of attainable knowledge concerning the laws of nature; (2)

the question as to how to make the most successful endeavor universally

to disseminate such knowledge, and (3) the question as to how

resistlessly to persuade to the living of it.

These are the only concerns and aims of Marxian socialism and they

cannot be promoted or even avowed by Christian socialists.

The great crime of the ages is the robbing of the producer of the basic

necessities of human life by the non-producer.

Capitalism is the robber, and the politics and religion of the old

states and churches are the right and left hands by which he has been

and is doing the robbing.

Marxian socialism is an undertaking which has for its task the overthrow

of the system which makes it possible for those who produce nothing to

live surfeitingly, and renders it necessary for those who produce

everything to live starvingly.

Poverty is a disease caused by the unjust wage system of competitive

capitalism for producing and distributing the necessities of life (food,

clothing and shelter) for the profit of capitalists, the few who live by

owning the materials and machines of production and distribution; and

this blighting malady cannot be cured by charity, but it will spread

until this system is supplanted by the just one of co-operative

industrialism, a system by which these necessities shall be produced

and distributed for the use of laborers, those who live by making and

operating the machines.

Every gift to charity by a rich man is a robbery of a poor man. You will

not see this at once, if ever, and I shall not blame you for the failure

to do so. It was not seen by me until I was much older than you; but I

am now seeing it as clearly as I ever saw the sun on a cloudless

noonday, and this is true of rapidly growing millions who are resolutely

resolved to do away with the prevailing conception of charity, according

to which capitalists may rob laborers of the fruit of their toil, giving

them of it barely enough to keep body and soul together and to raise up

children who are doomed to follow in their footsteps; and then, when the

strength of their victim fails, to make amends for the robberies, by

giving the most highly favored among them beds in hospitals, poor-houses

in which to die prematurely, and nameless graves in potter's fields in

which to await hopefully a resurrection and ascension to an inheritance

of happiness in a sky, which was denied them on the earth.

The time is at hand when everywhere the unemployed and the underpaid

shall begin a resistless march towards the goal of economic levelism

under a banner containing this slogan: We want no charity but the right

to work and the fruits of our labors that we and our helpless dependents

may have every necessity to the fullest life for body and soul.

During more than a whole generation Mrs. Brown and I have not produced a

spoonful of any food, a thread of any garment or a shingle of any house;

and yet we have had foods, garments and houses in abundance with some to

spare, while their producers have had them in scarcity with much to

want.

While the world war was on, an ill wind for the producers blew a

thousand dollars to us and an ill wind for us blew it into the hands of

a committee, ostensibly for investment on behalf of a hospital of which

we approved, but really for the purchase of a bond in the interest of a

war of which we disapproved.

The fathers of the present generation of producers and distributors of

the necessities of life were robbed in order that we might inherit the

property from which our income is derived; the sons and daughters are

being robbed over and over again and again, year after year, in order

that the property may continue to yield this income to us.

We therefore paid nothing of our own for this bond. What we gave for it

was of the spoils which the great robber, capitalism, has bestowed upon

us, its favorite children, from what it has taken from its unfortunate

victims.

The same persons or their children and successors were or shall be

robbed first to create our property, then to pay the income of it, next

to buy the bond, and now they are being robbed to meet the interest on

it and finally they will be robbed to pay its face value. If capitalism

stands, of course the victims of the last of these robberies will

belong, probably, to a remote generation; but this delay is a misfortune

in store for many of all intervening generations.

If the robbery connected with this bond were limited to its original

cost, one thousand dollars, and to its accruing interest, which is

likely in time to aggregate several thousand dollars, it would indeed

be bad enough, yet not nearly as much so as it is under the melancholy

circumstances; for the money paid on account of the bond goes towards

killing or wrecking its producers, if not those who produced this

particular thousand dollars, yet others of their class to whom the world

owes all of its wealth; therefore the thousand dollars which went into

this bond has been devoted to the robbery of those who were robbed of it

and of the most precious of all things: life and limb.

You will ask: how can you and Mrs Brown, in the face of your theory,

according to which all who live by owning are robbers of those who live

by working, consistently receive and expend the income of your

inheritance?

The answer was given to a friend who asked us why we did not follow the

heroic example of a young American who had recently renounced what had

been inherited by him, and this is, in effect, what we said:

As we look at the question, our course is more rational than his,

because the wealth which he renounces may go to some one who is without

his sympathy for the proletariat. We prefer to receive our inheritance

and use it to overthrow the economic system which makes it possible for

us to do nothing and have everything, and for those who do everything to

have nothing.

Capitalists, as such, people who live by the owning of the machines of

production and distribution, instead of by the making and operating of

them, have much to say against the alleged anarchism of socialists and

yet they are necessarily what they accuse anarchism of being, robbers

and murderers. Every cent of profit, interest and rent is so much

robbing, and all wars are so many conflicts between the capitalistic

bandits or robbers in the countries involved, and the peace conferences,

which follow them, are so many attempts of the bandits on the successful

side to have the spoils as large as possible, and to satisfactorily

divide them.

It is Holy Week 1921. The week in which during all the years of many and

long ages benighted people sacrificed their Christs to Shylock gods. If

Jesus lived and was a Christ, unhappily He was neither the first nor the

last, for there were many both before and after Him. Were they who

superstitiously led these victims to their Golgothas greater sinners

against humanity than those who did avariciously during the war drive

large armies of young men to the terrible trenches, a wholesale

sacrifice of the lords of power and wealth and who do now drive the vast

majority of the nations involved in that war to a terrible body and soul

destroying poverty and slavery? No. The modern robbers even more than

the ancient ones are in need of the prayer: Forgive them for they know

not what they do.

Communism and Christianism have, indeed, this in common, that their

object is to promote life, long life, and happy life, both lives in a

large and full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.

Yet, with this sameness in the gospels of Communism and Christianism

there is this difference in the aims of the christs who preached them,

which separate them as widely as the east is from the west, leaving a

great and impassable gulf between them.

Marx, the christ of the Communist gospel, said: I am come that the

world might have terrestrial life for body, mind and soul, and have it

for each in the fullest of possible measures by co-operation with each

other in the discovery of the laws of nature and in making them serve

men, women and children by securing for them food, clothing, shelter,

health and comfort for the body, and leisure for the mind to think and

for the soul to grow.

Jesus, the christ of the Christian gospel, according to orthodoxy, said:

I am come that ye might have celestial life for mind, body and soul and

have it for each in the largest and fullest possible measure by

co-operation in persuading each other in particular and the world in

general to receive a revelation of the will of a conscious, personal

God, made through prophets, preserved in the bible and interpreted by

the church.

With me it is a melancholy but resistless and deepening conviction,

that, if orthodox Christianism should become associated with Marxian

socialism, as Kingsley and you would associate them, we should soon have

a glaring illustration of the truth of two proverbs: a house divided

against itself cannot stand; and no man can serve two masters.

Moreover, I believe that if Christian socialism were to become a door to

Marxian socialism, through which orthodox Christianism could enter and

make itself at home, the revolutionary aims of the slave class would be

thwarted and the world would enter upon a new dark age, as it did when

Constantine was converted to Christianity and Christians became the most

loyal citizens and valiant soldiers of the Empire.

At that time chattel slavery had run its course as wage slavery has

now; and, if it had not been prolonged by a military despotism, as I

fear this may be, the world would have had something of the feudal

slavery, but nothing of the dark age. This age was the baneful fruit of

Christianism. Christianity has held the world back from civilization

instead of advancing it towards civilization.

The Christianization of Marxian communism, in accordance with the

program of Kingsley and our Church Socialist League, would spell another

military despotism for the prolongation of a second system of slavery,

which has run its course and is in a fair way of being overthrown; but

if the revolutionists fail, as the result of being trampled under the

iron heel, we are at the threshold of a second dark age and shall soon

be passing through all the miseries of it.

My interest in the movement within our church looking towards a

Christian socialism of a more radical and revolutionary type would be

great, if only I could feel as I should so much like, that the Christian

socialism to which you have consecrated the whole prime of your life,

and the Marxian socialism, to which I have consecrated all of the little

that remains of mine, the fag-end, are not utter incompatibilities, so

much so that it is absolutely impossible that they can co-exist and

co-operate to any good purpose.

The irreconcilable incompatibility of Christian socialism and Marxian

socialism is due to the fact that, whereas the Christian is essentially

imperialistic in its character, the Marxian is as essentially

democratic. The reason for this fundamental and ineradicable difference,

and the consequent incompatibleness, is the fact that orthodoxism,

whether Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic, is nothing unless

it is supernaturalistic and traditional; and Marxism is nothing unless

it is naturalistic and scientific, as much so as is Darwinism.

In order that you may see the reason, as I understand it, for this wide,

deep and bridgeless difference, I draw the following contrasts between

the essential beliefs of Marxian socialists and orthodox Christians:

1. Marxian socialism is essentially naturalistic. Orthodox Christianism

is essentially supernaturalistic. The consistent socialist says: I have

all the potentialities of my own life within myself. The consistent

Christian says: My strength is from God.

2. Marxian socialism is essentially classless. Orthodox Christianism is

essentially a class system by which the world is divided into two

classes, saints and sinners. The consistent socialist says: Every man is

my brother. The consistent Christian (like the theist of every

name--Jew, Mohammedan, Buddhist and the rest) says: Every true believer

is my brother, but those who are not are only potential brethren.

3. Marxian socialism is essentially terrestrial. Orthodox Christianism

is essentially celestial. The consistent socialist says: Earth is my

home. The consistent Christian says: Heaven is my home.

4. Marxian socialism is essentially materialistic. Orthodox Christianism

is essentially spiritualistic. The consistent socialist says: The basic

necessities of life, and therefore its first concern, are foods,

raiments, shelters, comfort and leisure. The consistent Christian says:

Take no primary thought for these, but only for faith in and obedience

to God, regarding all else of secondary importance.

5. Marxian socialism is essentially proletarian. Orthodox Christianism

is essentially bourgeois. The consistent socialist says: I am, by reason

of my antecedents, a man, a woman, a child of nature on an essential

level as to my origin and destiny with every other representative of

humanity and indeed animality. The consistent Christian, like the theist

of every name, says: I am (by reason of my faith, baptism or conversion)

a prince or princess, the son or daughter of a king, God.

6. Marxian socialism is essentially democratic. Orthodox Christianism is

essentially imperialistic. The consistent socialist says: I live with

reference to the will of the majority. The consistent Christian says: I

live with reference to the will of a God.

7. Marxian socialism is essentially pacific.[F] Orthodox Christianism is

essentially belligerent. The consistent socialist says: Since you are a

man, I co-operate with you. The consistent Christian says: Since you

are not a believer, I contend with you.

8. Marxian socialism is essentially non-sectarian. The consistent

socialist says: All the world is my home and the desire and effort to

render service to men, women and children is my religion. The consistent

Christian says: Only Christendom is my home and the desire and effort to

serve a God is my religion.

9. Marxian socialism is, as to the source of knowledge and the means of

attaining it, essentially scientific. Orthodox Christianism is

essentially traditional. The consistent socialist says: The salvation of

the world is dependent upon what is learned by natural experience,

observation and investigation about the doings of a matter-force-law,

nature. The consistent Christian says: This salvation depends upon what

is learned by revelation, tradition and inspiration about the willings

of a father-son-spirit, God.

10. Marxian socialism explains the history of mankind on the

naturalistic theory that it has been determined during every period by

the existing system for supplying the materialistic necessities of life.

Orthodox Christianism explains this history on the supernaturalistic

theory that it is determined by the providential directions of a triune

divinity. The consistent socialist says: If you will tell me of the

economic system by which a people have fed, clothed and housed

themselves, I will tell you, at least in general outline, what has been

their history. The consistent Christian says: If you will tell me what

the providences of my God have been towards a people, I will tell you

their history.

11. Marxian socialism has inscribed on one of its banners: Liberty.

Orthodox Christianism has this inscription on its corresponding banner:

Obedience. The consistent socialist says: This Liberty-banner is the

symbol of my freedom as a son of man to be progressively learning,

living and teaching the unfolding revelations of nature--to know and to

live which is to have life, terrestrial life in an ever increasing

measure, all the life there is here and now or elsewhere and elsewhen,

if there is to be a conscious, personal life anywhere or anywhen else.

The consistent Christian says: This Obedience-banner is a symbol of my

slavery as a son of God by which I am bound to receive, live and teach

the faith once for all delivered to the saints in the Old and New

Testaments or else lose the permanent life in the sky which is to follow

this temporary one on the earth.

12. Marxian socialism has inscribed on another of its banners: Justice

to Man. Orthodox Christianism has on its corresponding banner: Love to

God. The consistent socialist says: It is my aim to do unto others as I

would have them do unto me if our circumstances were reversed. The

consistent Christian says: It is my aim to love God with all my heart,

mind and soul.

And if there be any further contrast between this Christianism and

Socialism, it is briefly comprehended in these three statements,--in

themselves sufficient to show how absolutely impossible it is for a

consistent Jesuine Christian to be a consistent Marxian Socialist:

1. Marx seeks to save by doing away with both the master and slave

classes--Jesus by exalting the slave class above the master class.

2. Marx exhorts the slave class to look to itself for

deliverance--Jesus taught it to look to a God for this.

3. Marx promises salvation for this world here and now, a world about

which everybody knows much--Jesus promised it for another world

elsewhere and elsewhen, a world about which nobody knows anything.

The world has never had a gospel which is at all comparable in its

excellency to that of Marxian Socialism. The gospel of Jesuine

Christianism, according to the orthodox interpretation of it, is no

exception; for, granting it to be superior to the Mosaic, Buddhistic,

Mohammedan and other gospels, it is, nevertheless, almost infinitely

inferior to the Marxian gospel. Gospels are for the purpose of saving

the world from its suffering. The Jesuine and Marxian gospels are alike

in having for their object the salvation of the proletarian world.

V.

About three years ago I discovered that I had spent a long, strenuous

and open-handed ministry in preaching lies to the permanent ruin of my

health and the temporary embarrassment of my purse; therefore I had the

unhappy experience of being forced to see that all this part of my life,

its prime, had been mostly, if not wholly wasted and worse. What was to

be done?

My friends told me as plainly as they could, and some succeeded in

making it brutally plain, that in losing my faith in the

supernaturalistic dogmas of traditional Christianism, as they are

literally interpreted in the doctrinal standards of the orthodox

churches, I had lost the pearl of great price.

My soul told me that I had never possessed this jewel, but that, even

with the little time and enfeebled strength that remained to me, I might

yet find it, if only I should cease looking for it in the field of

supernaturalism, under the direction of divine authority, and begin

looking for it in the field of naturalism, under the direction of human

reason.

Happily, where faith went out courage came in, and it increased with my

desperation until (though standing on the shore of death where the deep

and unknown stream lies darkly between the present and future) I could

and I did undertake the supreme task of my life--the breaking of the

chains by which I was bound as a slave to the degrading superstition

that I was, both by an inherited and cultivated disposition, a doomed

man, and by an inherent weakness, a helpless one with no power to

emancipate myself.

Of such enslaving chains I mention three among the strongest, the

severed parts of which, with those of all the rest, now lie scattered

about me: (1) the chain of the fear of God; (2) the chain of the fear of

the devil, and (3) the chain of the fear of man.

Hitherto I had been a child, thinking as a child, understanding as a

child and speaking as a child.

Henceforth I was to be a man, the greatest, conscious, personal being

who has anything to do with this world; and as a man, I put away the

things of a child, especially the most childish of all things, fear, the

fear of God, the fear of devil and the fear of man.

Preachers of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion say that

the fear of God is salvation. It is damnation. No one who has fear of

any conscious, personal master whomsoever or wheresoever, God in heaven,

devil in hell or man on earth, is free or other than a slave. Nor has

any such attained to the full stature of manhood.

There is only one fear which saves and that is the fear of ignorance.

The world's destroyer-god is ignorance. There is no other devil on earth

or in hell below it, and this one lives, moves and has his being in the

fear of knowledge.

The world's saviour-god is knowledge. There is no other Christ on earth

or in any heaven above it, and this one lives, moves and has his being

in the fear of ignorance.

Happily, I listened to my soul and I have found the pearl of great

price, yes, a whole bed of them, so that I am now in position to

substitute in my preaching a truth for every lie I used to preach, and

thus save myself; but woe unto me unless I make the substitution by

ringing out the lie and ringing in the truth.

Within the last three years I have learned that, as I have not been,

since the beginning of my Christian ministry, more than a generation

ago, a producer, I have nothing of my own to give to charity, and what

is true of me is true of Mrs. Brown.

No one is a producer who does not grow things on the farm, make things

in a shop, discover things in a laboratory or render some necessary or

helpful service to those who do such things. I have done nothing of the

kind. If I had been preaching truths I might have rendered such

service, but I preached lies.

Every possession rightfully belongs to the productive worker and nothing

to the unproductive idler. This is one of the two greatest and most

salutary among all the truths known to mankind. Recently I made

acknowledgment of it on the pledges to a good cause, that of the Red

Cross, by writing on their upper left hand corners: "The gift of Unknown

Laborers through Bishop and Mrs. Brown, whose possessions are the fruits

of their enforced toil and sacrifices."

By this acknowledgment I rang out a great lie--the lie which makes the

salvation of the world depend upon the capitalists with their servants,

the preachers on the right and the politicians on the left hand.

Salvation or, what is the same reality, civilization, always has been

and always will be dependent upon the producer. It will never be

attained until the laboring class has done away with the capitalist

class. The ideal civilization (which is the salvation of the world from

its unnecessary sufferings, especially the overwhelming ones due to the

great trinity of evils, war, poverty and slavery) is in the very nature

of things an impossibility on the basis of class sectarianism, such as

we have even in our Anglo-American Christianity, the best interpretation

of traditional religion, and in our American democracy, the best

interpretation of traditional politics.

Among the pathetic things about war, there is this, the laboring class

makes by far the greater sacrifices, not only of life and limb, but also

of money.

Quite contrary to the general impression, capitalists, as such, pay no

part of the enormous and ruinous pecuniary cost of war. When Mr.

Rockefeller pays out three million dollars in war taxes he is disposing

of what rightfully belongs to laborers, because they, not he, earned it.

Capitalists, as such, neither earn nor pay anything, in time of either

war or peace.

So much for one of the two great truths. The other, which is the greater

because it includes its companion, is this: Man has within himself all

the potentialities of his own life. This is true of the universe as a

whole, and, therefore, necessarily so of all that therein is.

The sum of both truths is that the salvation of the world is wholly

dependent upon productive laborers and that they must look individually

only to the exertion of their own mental and physical powers and

collectively to co-operation with each other for the accomplishment of

their mission.

Through the whole of my past ministry in the field I rang out these

great truths and rang a great lie in by representing that the salvation

of the world depends upon a potentiality which is in the sky and not in

man, that heaven is above the earth and hell below it, not on it.

When I commenced my present ministry in the study,

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,

Some letter of that After-life to spell;

And by and by my Soul return'd to me,

And answer'd 'I Myself am Heaven and Hell!'

Omar, the poetic astronomer, might have added a stanza which would have

closed. "I myself am God." This is, in effect, what Jesus did say: "I

and my Father are one." This is as true of you and me and of every man,

woman and child as it was of Jesus.

And Jesus represented that God, both as Father and Son, dwells in the

hearts of believers. But every relevant fact which has been

scientifically established as such (and there is a whole mountain of

such facts) points to the conclusion that Christians are no more divine

than other people, and that, as to his essential nature, no man would be

less divine than he is if Jesus had never been born.

Gods in the skies (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) are all right as

subjective symbols of human potentialities and attributes and of natural

laws, even as the Stars and Stripes on a pole, Uncle Sam in the capitol

and Santa Claus in a sleigh are all right as such symbols; but such gods

are all wrong, if regarded as objective realities existing independently

of those who created them as divinities and placed them in celestial

habitations.

What is true of the gods is equally so of all the supernaturalistic

dogmas of the several traditional interpretations of religion. Insofar

as they are not pure superstitions they are symbols of imaginary events

which people think should or must have occurred in the past or should or

must occur in the future; not statements of historical events which have

occurred or are to occur.

So far I have not found it necessary to renounce the Christian God or

any of the things which go with him and I have no idea of doing this,

any more than I have of renouncing the American Uncle Sam and the things

which go with him, but I place the Brother Jesus of the Christian

religion and the Uncle Sam of the American politics on the same footing

with each other and with others of their kind as subjective realities. I

could be a Jew and an Englishman as conscientiously as a Christian and

an American. Many of the early Christians were also Pagans, worshippers

of other Gods than Jesus.

Nor is this all or even much more than half of my religious and

political levelism.

On the one hand as a religionist I can be any and everything but an

orthodox sectarian. This orthodoxy is a libel against humanity. The

world owes to it a great part of all its unnecessary troubles--those

which are brought about by the triune devil of persecution, ignorance

and superstition.

On the other hand as a politician I can be any and everything but a

nationalistic sectarian. This nationalism is a libel against humanity.

The world owes to it a great part of all its unnecessary troubles--those

which are brought upon it by the triune devil of war, poverty and

slavery.

Hoping that you will abandon Jesuine socialism for Marxian communism and

join me in an effort to banish the fictitious, superstitious gods from

the skies and the lying, robbing capitalists from the earth, I am with

every good wish,

Very cordially yours,

WM. M. BROWN.

Brownella Cottage,

Galion, Ohio.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] This letter was written in July, 1919, and sent to the press in

September, 1920. In the interim several of its representations and

arguments were made more complete: therefore, some among the additions

bear the marks of dates belonging to later months.

[E] According to the showing of the science of biblical criticism there

is more than one Jesus of whom we have an account in the New Testament:

(1) a naturalistic, this-worldly, pacific, human Jesus, and (2) a

supernaturalistic, other-worldly, belligerent, divine Jesus, the Jesus

of orthodox Christians.

[F] This shall be true of Marxian socialism when it is triumphant, but

it will not be so while it is persecuted. Socialist Russia has asked for

peace after every war which the capitalist nations (England, France,

Italy and America) have waged against her, not because she could no

longer defend herself, but for the reason that her socialism, being

co-operative in its character, necessarily imposes humaneness; yet they

could not grant it, because their capitalism, being competitive in its

character, as necessarily imposes inhumaneness. The hand of the

capitalist world is aggressively against socialist Russia, and must be,

because the life of capitalism depends upon her death: and her hand is

defensively against all the capitalist nations. Capitalism and socialism

cannot occupy the earth together. Either the one or the other must have

all of it. Mankind in general is illustrating the truth of the proverb

which has been illustrated by so many families in particular--a house

divided against itself cannot stand.

THE GRAND MARCH

By Helen Keller

The hour has struck for the Grand March! Onward, Comrades, all together!

Fall in line! Start the New Year with a cheer! Let us join the world's

procession marching toward a glad tomorrow. Strong of hope and brave in

heart the West shall meet the East! March with us, brothers every one!

March with us to all things new! Climb with us the hills of God to a

wider, holier life. Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to meet the

Dawn!

Leave behind you doubts and fears! What need have we for "ifs" and

"buts"? Away with parties, schools and leagues! Get together, keep in

step, shoulder to shoulder, hearts throbbing as one! Face the future,

out-daring all you have dared! March on, O Comrades, strong and free,

out of darkness, out of silence, out of hate and custom's deadening

sway! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to the wind-blown Dawn!

With us shall go the New Day, shining behind the dark. With us shall go

Power, Knowledge, Justice, Truth. The time is full! A new world awaits

us. Its fruits, its joys, its opportunities are ours for the taking!

Fear not the hardships of the road--the storm, the parching heat or

winter's cold, hunger or thirst or ambushed foe! There are bright lights

ahead of us, leave the shadows behind! In the East a new star is risen!

With pain and anguish the Old Order has given birth to the New, and

behold, in the East a man-child is born! Onward, Comrades, all together!

Onward to the camp-fires of Russia! Onward to the coming Dawn!

Through the night of our despair rings the keen call of the New Day. All

the powers of darkness could not still that shout of joy in far-away

Moscow! Meteor-like through the heavens flashed the golden words of

light, "Soviet Republic of Russia". Words sun-like piercing the dark,

joyous radiant love-words banishing hate, bidding the teeming world of

men to wake and live! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to the

bright, redeeming Dawn!

With peace and brotherhood make sweet the bitter way of men! Today, and

all the days to come, repeat the Word of Him who said, "Thou shall not

kill". Send on psalming winds the angel-chorus, "Peace on earth,

good-will to men". Onward march, and keep on marching until His Will on

earth is done! Onward, Comrades, all together, onward to the life-giving

fountain of Dawn!

All along the road beside us throng the peoples sad and broken, weeping

women, children hungry, homeless like little birds cast out of their

nest. With their hearts aflame, untamed, glorying in martyrdom they hail

us passing quickly, "Halt not, O Comrades, yonder glimmers the star of

our hope, the red-centered dawn in the East! Halt not, lest you perish

ere you reach the Land of Promise". Onward, Comrades, all together,

onward to the sun-red Dawn!

[Illustration: KARL MARX]

[Illustration: CHARLES DARWIN]

COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM

ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW