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Title: Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View
Author: Brown, William Montgomery, 1855-1937
Language: English
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COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
* * * * * *
TO THE PURCHASER:
Lying Supernaturalism is going; robbing Capitalism is falling; saving
Laborism is rising, and leveling Unionism is coming.
This booklet, Communism and Christianism, is a contribution by Bishop
and Mrs. Wm. M. Brown, of Galion, Ohio, towards the furtherance of these
downward, upward and forward movements, the most fortunate events in the
whole history of mankind. We hope that you will read, mark, learn and
inwardly digest its extremely revolutionary, comprehensive and salutary
teachings concerning both religion and politics with the happy result of
becoming an apostle of its illuminating and inspiring interpretation of
the scientific gospel of Marx and Engels to wage slaves, the only gospel
which points the way to redemption from their body and soul destroying
slavery.
You may become a missionary of this gospel in your neighborhood, and as
such do more good than all its orthodox preachers, teachers, editors and
politicians together at no financial cost to yourself by ordering
booklets at our special rates: six copies, $1.00; twenty-five copies,
$3.00, prepaid, and selling them to workers at our retail price, 25
cents for one copy. As we make no profit and do no bookkeeping, cash
should accompany all orders.
To organizations working for bail, defense, liberation or unemployment
funds, Bishop and Mrs. Brown donate twenty-five copies for each
twenty-five ordered with remittance.
The Bradford-Brown Educational Company, Inc. Publishers--Galion, Ohio
Editions and Their Dates.
First Edition, 10,000 copies, October 11th, 1920.
Second Edition, 10,000 copies, revised and enlarged from 184 to 204
pages, February 15th, 1921.
Third Edition, 10,000 copies, March 2nd, 1921.
Fourth Edition, 10,000 copies (2,000 in cloth binding), revised and
enlarged from 204 to 224 pages, April 9, 1921.
[Illustration: Rt. Rev. William Montgomery Brown, D. D.
Fifth Bishop of Arkansas, Resigned; Member House of Bishops Protestant
Episcopal Church; Sometime Archdeacon of Ohio and Special Lecturer at
Bexley Hall, the Theological Seminary of Kenyon College. Now Episcopos
in partibus Bolshevikium et Infidelium.]
* * * * * *
COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View
by
WILLIAM MONTGOMERY BROWN
Banish the Gods from the Skies and Capitalists from the Earth and make
the world safe for Industrial Communism.
The Bradford-Brown Educational Company, Inc. Publishers ... Galion, Ohio
Fortieth Thousand
DEDICATION
This booklet is gratefully dedicated to the Proletariat from whom Bishop
and Mrs. Brown are sprung, and to whose unrequited labors (not to the
good providence of a divinity) they owe their wealth, leisure and
opportunities.
PROLEGOMENA[A]
Religion is the opium of the people. The suppression of religion as
the happiness of the people is the revindication of its real
happiness. The invitation to abandon illusions regarding its
situation is an invitation to abandon a situation which has need of
illusions. Criticism of religion is therefore the germ of a
criticism of the vale of tears, of which religion is the holy
aspect.
--Marx.
Not only, indeed, is the struggle against religion intellectually
useful, but it cannot conscientiously be avoided, for religion is used
against the Socialist movement by the possessing class in every country.
But to abolish religion is not to abolish exploitation, because only one
of the enemy's guns will have been silenced. The workers have, above
all, to dislodge the capitalist class from power. The religious
question, and indeed all else, is secondary to this.
The test of admission to a Socialist Party must be neither more nor less
than acceptance of the following seven working principles and the policy
of Socialism as a class movement:
1. Society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of
the means of living (i. e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the
capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the
working class, by whose labor alone wealth is produced.
2. In society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests,
manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess
but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.
3. This antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the
working class from the domination of the master class by the
conversion into the common property of society of the means of
production and distribution, and their democratic control by the
whole people.
4. As in the order of social evolution the working class is the
last to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class
will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of
race or sex.
5. This emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6. As the machinery of capitalist government, including the armed
forces of the nation, conserves the monopoly by the capitalist
class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must
organize consciously and politically for acquiring the powers of
government, national and local, in order that this machinery,
including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of
oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of
privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.[B]
7. As all political parties are but the expression of class
interests, and as the interest of the working class is
diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the
master-class, the party seeking working-class emancipation must be
hostile to every other party.
If a man supports the church, or in any respect allows religious ideas
to stand in the way of the foregoing seven essential principles of
socialism or the activity of a Party, he proves thereby that he does not
accept Socialism as fundamentally true and of the first importance, and
his place is outside.
No man can be consistently both a Socialist and a Christian. It must be
either the socialist or the religious principle that is supreme, for the
attempt to couple them equally betrays charlatanism or lack of thought.
There is, therefore, no need for a specifically anti-religious test.
So surely does the acceptance of Socialism lead to the exclusion of the
supernatural, that the Socialist has little need for such terms as
Atheist, Free-thinker, or even Materialist; for the word Socialist,
rightly understood, implies one who, on all such questions, takes his
stand on positive science, explaining all things by purely natural
causation, Socialism being not merely a politico-economic creed, but
also an integral part of a consistent world philosophy.
So long as the anarchy of modern competitive society exists, the
accompanying obscurity and confusion in social life will continue to
shelter superstition. This point is illustrated in the following
reference by Marx to the United States:
When we see in the very country of complete political emancipation
not only that religion exists, but retains its vigour, there is no
need, I hope, for other proofs in order to show that the existence
of religion is not incompatible with the full political maturity of
the State. But if religion exists it is because of a defective
social organization, of which it is necessary to seek the cause in
the very essence of the State.
Class domination is the essence of the modern State. It is based on
competitive anarchy and parasitism--the evidences of a defective social
organization. It still leaves room for religion, because it maintains
ignorance and confusion by its structure and contradictions, and because
religion is fostered as a handmaiden of class rule.
Nevertheless, the growth of the social forces of production within
modern society, and the better knowledge the workers obtain of their
true relations to each other and to Nature, loosen the chains of ghost
worship and mysticism from their limbs and lessen the power of religion
as a political weapon in the hands of the ruling class, while they form,
at the same time, the material and intellectual preparation for an
intelligently organized society. The matter has been put in a nutshell
by Marx in the chapter on "Commodities" in "Capital," volume I.
The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then
finally vanish, when the practical relations of every-day life
offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable
relations with regard to his fellow men and to nature.
The life process of society, which is based on the process of
material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it
is treated as production by freely associated men, and is
consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.
This, however, demands for society a certain material groundwork or
set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the
spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.
It is, therefore, a profound truth that Socialism is the natural enemy
of religion. Through Socialism alone will the relations between men in
society, and their relations to Nature, become reasonable, orderly, and
completely intelligible, leaving no nook or cranny for superstition. The
entry of Socialism is, consequently, the exodus of religion.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
[B] This section has been slightly changed to make sure of guarding
against the advocacy of armed insurrection. Socialists throughout the
world want a peaceful evolution from capitalism into socialism; but
whether or not it will be so in the case of any country is, as Lenin
prophesies, to be determined by the dealings of its capitalists with its
laborers. In reply to an inquiry on this vexed subject by an English
author, Lenin said, in effect, that in England, as elsewhere, the
tactics of the capitalist class will determine the program of the labor
class.
THE INTERNATIONAL PARTY.
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation!
Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world's in birth.
No more tradition's chains shall bind us,
Arise, ye slaves! no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations,
We have been naught, we shall be all.
We want no condescending saviors.
To rule us from a judgment hall.
We workers ask not for their favors,
Let us consult for all.
To make the thief disgorge his booty,
To free the spirit from its cell,
We must ourselves decide our duty,
We must decide and do it well.
The law oppresses us and tricks us,
Taxation drains the victim's blood;
The rich are free from obligations,
The laws the poor delude.
Too long we've languished in subjection,
Equality has other laws:
"No rights," says she, "without their duties.
No claims on equals without cause."
Toilers from shops and fields united,
The party we of all who work;
The earth belongs to us, the people,
No room here for the shirk.
How many on our flesh have fattened!
But if the noisome birds of prey
Shall vanish from the sky some morning,
The blessed sunlight still will stay.
CONTENTS
Page
PROLEGOMENA 5
PART I.
COMMUNISM: THE NATURALISTIC THIS-WORLDLY
GOSPEL FOR THE COMING AGE OF CLASSLESS EQUALITY
AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM 13
PART II.
CHRISTIANISM: A SUPERNATURALISTIC OTHER-WORLDLY
GOSPEL FOR THE PASSING AGE OF CLASS INEQUALITY
AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY 85
APPENDIX 157
Hitherto, every form of society has been based on the antagonism of
oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class,
certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at
least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of
serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the
petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to
develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary,
instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and
deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He
becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than
population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the
bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society,
and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an
over-riding law. It is unfit to rule, because it is incompetent to
assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it
cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed
him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under
this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer
compatible with society.--Marx and Engels.
COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW
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
PART II.
Christianism: A Supernaturalistic Other-worldly Gospel for the Passing
Age of Class Inequality and Economic Slavery--An Open Letter to a
Christian Theologian and Brother Churchman.
Revolutionize capitalism out of state and orthodoxy out of church.
FOREWORD[G]
The contradiction in terms known as the Christian Socialist is
inevitably antagonistic to working-class interests and the waging of the
class struggle. His policy (that of the Christian Socialist) is the
conciliation of classes, the fraternity of robber and robbed, not the
end of classes. His avowed object, indeed, is usually to purge the
Socialist movement of its materialism, and this means to purge it of its
Socialism and to divert it from its material aims to the fruitless
chasing of spiritual will-o'-the-wisps. A Christian Socialist is, in
fact, an anti-Socialist.
Clearly, then, the basis of Socialist philosophy is utterly incompatible
with religious ideas; indeed, the latter have been reduced to their
logical absurdity in what is called "Christian Science."
Moreover, the consistent Christian, if such exists, could look upon the
existing world only as an essential part of God's plan, to be accounted
for only through God, and modified at God's pleasure. He could regard
those who sought the explanation of social conditions in purely natural
causes, and who also sought to take advantage of economic development in
order to turn this vale of tears into a pleasant garden, only as men who
denied by their acts the very basis of his faith.
FOOTNOTES:
[G] From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain,
showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
CHRISTIANISM: A SUPERNATURALISTIC OTHER-WORLDLY GOSPEL FOR THE PASSING
AGE OF CLASS INEQUALITY AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY.
Come over and help us. Abandon Reformatory for Revolutionary
Socialism.
My Dear Brother:
Your letter (April 1st, 1920) enclosing an essay, entitled, Is There a
God, came duly to hand and I thank you warmly for it. The essay is a
masterpiece and I hope you can let me keep this copy, or make another
for myself, for reference when I am writing or conversing on its lines,
as is frequently the case.
I.
In the dispute between yourself and friend of which you speak, you are
altogether right and he is entirely wrong. In the last analysis it is a
disputation as to whether or not the Jewish-Christian bible contains an
infallible revelation from an omniscient being, a triune god, Father,
Son and Spirit. It does not.
As an objectivity there is no such divinity. He is a subjectivity
existing in the imagination of orthodox Christians. You do not agree
with me in this, but every day of thought and study deepens the
conviction that it is true. None among the gods of the supernaturalistic
interpretations of religion are objectivities. The lesser ones are
generally ghosts of dead men, and the greater ones are as generally
versions of the sun-myth.
The one god of the Jews and the triune god of the Christians, if taken
seriously, are superstitions; and the bible revelations of their
willings and records of their doings, if taken literally, are lies.
Both the Old and New Testaments are utterly worthless as history. The
twelve patriarchs of the Jewish God, Jehovah, are not historical
personages, but myths, and this is true of the twelve apostles of the
Christian God, Jesus.
Yes, the Old Testament is the Jewish version of the immemorial and
universal sun-myth, rewritten several times for the purpose, not of
telling any truth, but of imposing the fiction that Jehovah and his
people constitute the greatest procession that ever came down the pike
of supernaturalism. The New Testament is the Christian version of the
same myth, only with the view of showing that Jehovah and the Jews were
not, but Jesus and Christians are, this procession.
In itself, the sun-myth, as symbolism, is not only poetically beautiful,
but also scientifically true; yet, as literalism, it is in the case of
the ignorant, superstition, and in the case of the educated,
self-deception.
The sun is, in a very literal and real sense, the creator-god in whom
this world lives, moves and has its being; and he is the saviour-god who
was born of a virgin nebula, and every winter descends into hell and
rises from the dead (the southern solstice) by a new birth and ascends
into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the father (the sky) at
the northern solstice, and finally he is the illuminator god who
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
And the apostles who preached the gospel of the redemption of the world
are the twelve signs of the zodiac through which the sun apparently
passes in its annual ascension to the summer solstice and descension to
the winter solstice.
Nor is this all: "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the
world" is the sign of the zodiac, Aries (sheep, ram) through which the
sun passes towards the end of March, when all the saviour-gods annually
died and rose again. The rising symbolizes the return of the sun towards
the northern solstice from the southern one, upon which return seed-time
and harvest are dependent, without which the world would perish, not
indeed by sin but by starvation.
Jehovah is the sun-myth rewritten to fit in with the ideals and hopes of
the owning, master class of the Jews.
Jesus is the sun-myth rewritten to fit in with the ideals and hopes of
the owning master class of the Christians.
The Christian god, Jesus, is an improvement upon the Jewish god,
Jehovah, because of the division of labor. The task of the owning master
class is a twofold one, the robbing of the weak owners by the strong
ones in wars, and the robbing of the slaves by the masters which under
the capitalist system is done in surplus profits.
Jehovah serves Christians as the god of war. In his name they wage wars,
either as groups within a nation having different commercial interests,
as in the case of the Civil War of the United States, or as nations
against nations with different commercial interests, as in the case of
the Revolutionary war of the Colonies with England, or the World War of
the Allied countries with the Central ones.
Jesus serves Christians as the god of slavery. When they have
successfully waged a war of conquest, as the Pilgrim Fathers did against
the Indians of America, or when they have appropriated all the means and
machines of production, as the capitalists have everywhere, they
reconcile the propertyless to a terrestrial hell of toil, want, sorrow
and slavery by preaching the Jesuine gospel of hope for a celestial
heaven of eternal rest, joy, plenty and freedom.
"Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum."
In remaking the Jewish god to suit their purposes of robbing and
enslaving, the Christian owning master class provided for a further
division of his work by creating the Holy Ghost, who devotes himself to
the giving of new revelations of the will of Jehovah and interpreting
the earlier ones as they are recorded in the bible.
It is generally supposed that the masters are the strong people of the
world, but they are not. Labor is really the giant, the Samson, and it
would be impossible for the pigmy, capital, to rob him, but for his lack
of knowledge. The Holy Ghost sees to it that the slave class is kept in
ignorance.
The English-German, or if you prefer, the German-English war has been an
eye-opener to the giant, labor, and capital is ruined unless he can get
him to sleep again.
Capital knows that Marx was right in characterizing the orthodox
interpretations of religion, including the Christian one, and especially
it, as a sleeping potion.
The churches were the dormitories in which the slaves slept through the
night of the dark ages of traditionalism, but the light of the age of
scientism is breaking upon the world and most of the slaves have left
the churches and are now beyond the reach of their care-takers, the
preachers.
When I wrote the Level Plan for Church Union, I believed that the coming
together of the churches would prove to be a blessing to the world, but
I am now persuaded that it would be a curse, because the league of
churches would co-operate with the league of nations in its robbing and
enslaving schemes, the churches doing the lying and the nations the
coercing.
We are living in the age of scientism and, in the case of its true sons
and daughters, only scientifically demonstrated facts count in any
argumentation.
From the scientific point of view it is seen that there is but one
universal Kingdom of Life, Nature. This kingdom may be divided into
three, perhaps four, states constituting the United States of Life: the
mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human.
Beginning with the highest, each of these states, except the lowest, is
dependent upon the next lower. The only independent autonomous state in
the kingdom is the mineral. This is the greatest both as to its extent
and importance. It is the common source of every supply of all the
states of life, and the seat of each of their governments.
All theologians and some metaphysicians postulate a fifth state of
life, the divine, placing it above the rest as their source.
Comte, who preceded Marx as a social philosopher, and who is the founder
of modern socialism of the reformatory type, as Marx is of the
revolutionary one, had this to say about the theologians, metaphysicians
and scientists, and he was right:
From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all
directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great
fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has
a solid foundation of proof, both in the facts of our organization
and in our historical experience. This law is this: that each of
our leading conceptions--each branch of our knowledge--passes
successively through three different theoretical conditions: the
theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the
scientific, or positive. In other words, the human mind, by its
nature, employs in its progress three methods of philosophizing,
the character of which is essentially different and radically
opposed: viz., the theological method, the metaphysical and the
positive. Hence arise three philosophies, or general systems of
conceptions on the aggregate of phenomena, each of which excludes
the others. The first is the necessary point of departure of the
human understanding; the third is its fixed and definite state. The
second is merely a state of transition.
In order for a man who has reached the scientific stage in his
intellectual development to make anything out of the reasonings of those
who are still in the stage of theological childhood or in that of
metaphysical adolescence, it is necessary for him to use their
insubstantialities as symbols of his substantialities.
The only difference that I can see between a theologian and a
metaphysician is that, whereas the former personifies a generality
which is the creation of his imagination, calling it a god, the latter
objectifies a particularity which is the creation of his imagination
calling it an entity; but all such personifications and objectifications
(gods, things-in-themselves, vital entities, souls) are alike
fictitious, because the childish theologians and metaphysicians proceed
on the basis of philosophically assumed realities, not on scientifically
established facts which pave the way on which an adult proceeds.
Comte analyzes the difference between the intellectuality of theological
children, metaphysical youths and scientific adults as follows:
In the theological state, the human mind, seeking the essential
nature of beings, the first and final causes (the origin and
purpose) of all effects--in short, absolute knowledge--supposes all
phenomena to be produced by the immediate action of supernatural
beings.
In the metaphysical state, which is only a modification of the
first, the mind supposes, instead of supernatural beings, abstract
forces, veritable entities (that is, personified abstractions)
inherent in all beings, and capable of producing all phenomena.
What is called the explanation of phenomena is, in this stage, a
mere reference of each to its proper entity.
In the final, the positive state, the mind has given over the vain
search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the
universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the
study of their laws--that is, their invariable relations of
succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly
combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood
when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the
establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some
general facts the number of which continually diminishes with the
progress of science.
There is no science which, having attained the positive stage, does
not bear the marks of having passed through the others. Some time
since it was (whatever it might be now) composed, as we can now
perceive, of metaphysical abstractions: and, further back in the
course of time, it took its form from theological conceptions. Our
most advanced sciences still bear very evident marks of the two
earlier periods through which they passed.
The progress of the individual mind is not only an illustration,
but an indirect evidence of that of the general mind. The point of
departure of the individual and the race being the same, the phases
of the mind of men correspond to the epochs of the mind of the
race. How each of us is aware, if he looks back upon his own
history, that he was a theologian in his childhood, a metaphysician
in his youth and a natural philosopher in his manhood. All men who
are up to their age can verify this for themselves.
According to the scientific classification, there are only three
kingdoms or states of life, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal.
The life of the vegetable kingdom has arisen out of the life of the
mineral kingdom and is sustained by it.
The distinguished scientist, Professor Lowell, says, "there is now no
more reason to doubt that plants grew out of chemical affinity than to
doubt that stones did," and nearly all outstanding zoologists would say
as much of animals.
Sir J. Burdon Sanderson, one of the most eminent among biologists,
insists that "in physiology the word life is understood to mean the
chemical and physical activities of the parts of which the organism
consists." The renowned Sir Ray Lankester strenuously holds that
"zoology is the science which seeks to arrange and discuss the phenomena
of animal life and form, as the outcome of the operation of the laws of
physics and chemistry," and goes so far as to say that he knows of no
leading biologist who is of a different opinion. The prince of
biologists, the late Professor Haeckel, occupied this position and
impregnably fortified it in several great books, especially in his
"Riddle of the Universe."
There is no force that is not life, nor life which is not force; and
there is no life or force, about which we know anything, without a body
or chemical laboratory.
So far as is known, there is only one life--force. The difference
between lives is a question of the organism, the laboratory, which gives
embodiment to force.
The life that enables the wheels of a locomotive to go, the sap of a
tree to flow, the heart of an animal to beat and the brain of a man to
think is the same chemical potentiality differently organized.
During all historical time and over all the earth, under one name or
another, the whole world has kept days of rejoicing for life, especially
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and Easter.
Nothing is so wonderful as life and perhaps the greatest of its wonders
is that all of it is of the same kind.
Everything and every being is alive with the same life. The Thanksgiving
day sheaf of wheat, the Christmas day Son of Man and the Easter day Son
of God (if there are conscious, personal gods and they have sons) are
alive and their life is the same, the difference being wholly in the
form and degree, not at all in kind.
A proof of the oneness and sameness of all life, notwithstanding its
widely different forms and degrees, is the fact that a bar of iron, a
stick of wood, a piece of flesh and a section of brain respond alike to
the same electrical stimulus, and all may be poisoned or otherwise
killed so that they will make no response to it. Perhaps even a more
conclusive evidence is that the eggs (every form of both vegetable and
animal life develops from an egg) of some animals rather high in the one
tree of mundane life, which has a common root and a stump, but two
stems, the vegetable and the animal, can be mechanically fertilized by
chemical processes.
Even Sir Oliver Lodge, the most conspicuous among the comparatively few
men of science who hold to the theory that life comes to the earth as
vital entities of celestial origin and destination, makes this fatal
admission: "There is plenty of physics and chemistry and mechanics about
every vital action." On the theory of traditional Christianity there was
no physics, chemistry or mechanics connected with the vital actions
which originally brought the universe and all that therein was,
including the earth with its vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, into
existence.
Every representative of each form of life in these kingdoms (in the
vegetable: a grass blade, a wheat stalk, an oak tree; or in the animal:
an insect, a horse, a man) is a chemical laboratory for the production,
sustentation, advancement and procreation of a particular type of one
universal life. These laboratories have all the potentialities of their
respective lives within themselves,--no laboratory, no chemistry; no
chemistry, no life.
What life is, both as to its manifestation and character, is determined
by the form of organization through which force, all there is of life,
becomes a particular and differentiated vital phenomenon. This is as
true of states and churches as it is of trees and men, for a church or a
state is a vital phenomenon as really so as a tree or a man.
The trouble with every reformatory socialism of modern times is that it
undertakes the impossibility of changing the fruit of the capitalistic
state into that of the communistic one, without changing the political
organism; but to do that is as impossible as to gather grapes from
thorns or figs from thistles. Hence an uprooting and replanting are
necessary (a revolution not a reformation) which will give the world a
new tree of state.
Capitalism no longer grows the fruits (foods, clothes and houses) which
are necessary to the sustenance of the world. Hence it encumbers the
ground and must be dug up by the roots in order that a tree which is so
organized that it will bear these necessities may be planted in its
place.
The people of Russia have accomplished this uprooting and replanting
(this revolution) in the case of their state, and those of every nation
are destined to do the same in one way or another, each according to its
historical and economic development, some perhaps with violence, most, I
hope, peaceably. The Russian Bolsheviki occupy the highest peak in man's
history; and while they stand, the world will be safe for industrial
democracy. This democracy is the tree of life whose fruits are for the
sustenance of the nations and whose very leaves are for their healing.
The only lives of which we need know aught are those that we shall live
in our bodies by chemical processes and in the race by conscious or
unconscious influences; for, if there is another, it will take care of
itself, if we take care of these.
Since, therefore, all life is on a level and since morality, religion
and Christianity are but manifestations of it, do you not see how
profoundly and incontrovertibly true is my levelism?
According to this levelism all interpretations of Christianity
(protestant and catholic--congregational, presbyterian, episcopalian and
papal) and all the interpretations of religion (Christian, Jewish,
Mohammedan, Buddhistic and the rest) are essentially on the same
footing, the difference between them being wholly a question of natural
excellencies, not at all of supernatural uniqueness.
The science of biology establishes my levelism by proving that animal
and human life are on a level as to their origin, character and destiny.
The science of sociology establishes my levelism by proving that animal
and human institutions are on a level, and that therefore, there is
nothing more supernatural about a human state or church than about an
ant hill or a bee hive.
The science of literary criticism establishes my levelism by proving
that the bibles of the several interpretations of religion are on a
level as to their entirely human origin and authority.
The science of the comparative interpretations of religion establishes
my levelism by proving that all the conscious, personal creator-gods,
destroyer-gods, saviour-gods and illuminator-gods, with all their
angels, heavens and hells, are so many myths--creations of the human
imagination, subjective fictions, not objective realities.
Until comparatively recent times, through all the theological history of
mankind, the sun was almost universally regarded as a god. Manifestly
without it there could be no life on earth, and its annually recurring
motions are such as to give the impression of birth and death--of birth
by ascension into the heaven of the summer solstice--of death by
descension into the hell or grave of the winter solstice. Not only is
the sun the giver and sustainer of life, but it is also the light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
Modern science justifies this ancient conception as to the dependence of
the earth, and all that thereon is, upon the sun for its being. By a
slight adaptation men of science and scientific philosophers could use
the very words of the apostle John at the opening of his version of the
Christian gospel, where he says of Jesus, what they say of the sun:
All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that
was made. In him is life; and the life is the light of men.
The birth, death, descension, resurrection and ascension of all the
Saviour-gods, not excepting Jesus, are versions of the sun-myth.
Yet the naturalness, the universalness, the beautifulness and withal the
profound truthfulness of this myth are such as to render it almost as
undesirable as it is next to impossible to relegate it to the realm of
superstition, to which it should undoubtedly be assigned if a literal
interpretation is a necessity.
The more science advances, the more of precious poetry and pathos, and
of deep verity, too, is seen in the Saviour-gods, who are essentially
the same mythical personifications of the glorious sun and of the happy
events of its annual career, because from it the earth with its brother
and sister planets had their origin, and because from it the earth, not
to speak of the other planets, has the heat, light and force which make
its life a possibility.
There is no reason for believing that any one among the gods of the four
old supernaturalistic interpretations of religion (Jehovah, Jesus,
Allah, Buddha) or that either of the gods of the two new interpretations
by the renowned physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge, and the distinguished
sociologist, Mr. H. G. Wells, has had more to do in creating, sustaining
and governing this world than another, that is to say, there is no
ground for believing that the personal, conscious gods in the skies
either individually or collectively have had anything at all to do with
it.
Science, as it is understood by the great majority of its exponents,
teaches that the earth (with all things, physical and psychical, which
contribute to make its world what it has been, is, and is to be) was
originally in the sun, and would quickly disappear into its original,
unorganized elements but for the sun.
This is as true of man as of all else. He with his brain and its
thought, with his hand and its skill; with his homes, farms, cities,
mines, shops, stores, trains, ships, schools, hospitals and churches;
with his hate, bestiality and barbarism, and with his love, humaneness
and civilization, was in the sun, billions of years before his
appearance on the earth.
Speaking of things appertaining to the world war: there in the sun,
before it had thrown off the earth, were the kaiser on the throne, the
president in the white house, the millions of soldiers, the uniforms,
the rations, the forts, the cannons, guns, powder and shot, the
trenches, the barbed wire, the dreadnoughts, the submarines, the
aeroplanes, the wireless telegraph stations, the wounded, their
sufferings and groans, the doctors and nurses, the corpses, the
cripples, the broken hearts; yes, and all the things connected with that
terrible war; the bereaved mothers, the widowed wives, the outraged
girls, the ruined country, the wrecked cities, were in the sun from its
beginning, indeed while it was yet a nebula, many thousands of millions
of years previous to the birth of the earth.
If we except intruders into our solar system, such as comets and their
comparatively inconsiderable effects, we may say that every physical or
psychical reality which at any time has entered into the history of this
planet and that of its brothers and sisters was in that vast flowing,
swirling, revolving globe of gases which is known to have been at one
time at least five billion miles in diameter, or fifteen billions in
circumference.
Of course no phenomenon, such as Jesus hanging on the cross, if He lived
and was crucified, was in the sun as an actuality, but only as a
potentiality. Nevertheless He, with His doctrine and His suffering, was
there, else He would never have been anywhere, not in the realm of
history, not even in the realm of imagination.
The universe is ever all that it can be, and every potentiality which
contributes to make it so is within itself. What is true in this respect
of the universe as a whole is equally so of every part of it, including
man, and especially him, because he is exceptionally capable of
controlling his own destiny, being able not only to preserve life by a
discovery of and conformity to the laws upon which it is dependent, but
also to enlarge and enrich its content by making these laws co-operative
servants.
The time cannot be far off when it will be seen by all educated,
thoughtful men and women that if the traditional, supernaturalistic
interpretation of Christianity is the only possible one, its message is
not a gospel, because its teaching touching three fundamentals is, in
each case, contrary to that of three relevant sciences:
1. The sciences of astronomy, geology and biology teach that the
representation of traditional supernaturalistic interpretation of
Christianity to the effect that the universe, including the earth with
its physical and psychical life, was supernaturally created out of
nothing by a conscious, personal god is not true and therefore can be no
part of any gospel; for, according to the teaching of these three
sciences, the truth is: the universe with all that therein is, not
excepting mankind and civilization, was naturally evolved out of a
self-existing matter by a self-existing force co-operating in accordance
with the necessity of their nature.
2. The sciences of biology, physiology and embryology teach that the
representation of the traditional, supernaturalistic interpretation of
Christianity to the effect that man and woman are unique beings, who
have supernaturally derived their physical form, vital and psychical
potentialities directly from a conscious, personal creator with whom are
their natural affiliations, is not true, and therefore can be no part of
any gospel; for, according to the teaching of these three sciences, the
truth is: man and woman as to their whole beings (body and mind, life
and soul) were naturally evolved from pre-existing animal life, not
supernaturally created respectively out of the dust and a rib, so that
they owe their existence to and natural affinities with a terrestrial
and bestial parentage, not a celestial and divine one.
3. The sciences of anthropology, sociology and comparative
interpretations of religion teach that the representation of the
traditional, supernaturalistic interpretation of Christianity to the
effect that man and woman were supernaturally created in the image and
likeness of a conscious, personal god, sinless and deathless beings with
ideal environments, but that they fell from this happy estate, through a
serpentine incarnation of a supernatural devil, and are being restored
to it, through a human incarnation of a supernatural saviour, is not
true, and therefore can be no part of any gospel; for, according to the
teaching of these three sciences, the truth is: during many ages man and
woman, in both appearance and predilection, were much more animal than
divine and that gradually, without any supernatural assistance, they
have worked themselves out of a state of bestial barbarism into one of
human civilization.
It follows therefore that the representations of both the Old and New
Testaments, concerning the origin and history of man are largely
fictitious impositions, not historical compositions, so much so, that no
confidence can safely be reposed in any of them.
There is no rational doubt about the fictitious character of the divine
Jesus. Some think that the human Jesus may have been an historical
personage; but, none among outstanding scholars believes that we have a
connected account of his life and work, and most of them insist that we
do not certainly know any saying or doing of his.
No religious doctrine or institution of which we have an account in the
New Testament is peculiar to Christianity and this is equally true of
moral precepts.
The gods of all the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are so
many creations of the dominant or master class, and their revelations
were put into their mouths by the makers for the purpose of keeping the
slave class ignorant and contented.
Orthodox Christians earnestly contend that this naturalistic doctrine
makes for immorality. Heretical socialists rationally answer that the
life which men, women and children live with reference to their
terrestrial influence, rather than to celestial rewards or punishments,
is the only one which is lived to any moral purpose.
According to socialism, morality, religion and Christianity are but
synonyms of one and the same reality, which consists wholly in the
desire and effort of a man to learn the laws or doings of nature, and to
conform his thoughts and words to them, in order to make his present
life on earth, and that of others, as long and happy as possible, and
not at all in a desire and effort to learn what the will of a conscious,
personal god is and to conform to it, in order to avoid a hell and gain
a heaven for a future life in the sky.
O threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies.
If you object that this is a representation of a sceptical poet, I reply
that it is in alignment with a representation of a scriptural preacher:
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts;
Even one thing befalleth them;
As the one dieth, so dieth the other;
Yea, they have all one breath;
So that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast;
For all is vanity.
All go unto one place;
All are of the dust,
And all turn to dust again.
Darwin showed that each man in his physical development from the
embryonic cell to birth passes through, by short cuts, the different
forms of life from say, the worm, fish and lemur with all that went
before, intervened between and followed after, and Romanes showed that
this is as true of the mind as of the body; that, in fact, all the
representatives of the animal kingdom are physically and psychically
related, and therefore on the same level as to their origin and destiny.
In his illuminating book entitled, "The Universal Kinship," Professor
Moore says:
The embryonic development of a human being is no different from the
embryonic development of any other animal. Every human being at the
beginning of his organic existence is a protozoan, about 1-125
inch in diameter; at another stage of development he is a tiny
sac-shaped mass of cells without blood or nerves, the gastrula; at
another stage he is a worm, with a pulsating tube instead of a
heart, and without a head, neck, spinal column, or limbs; at
another stage he has as a backbone, a rod of cartilage extending
along the back, and a faint nerve cord, as in the amphioxus, the
lowest of the vertebrates; at another stage he is a fish with a
two-chambered heart, mesonephric kidneys, and gill-slits, with gill
arteries leading to them, just as in fishes; at another stage he is
a reptile with a three-chambered heart, and voiding his excreta
through a cloaca like other reptiles; and finally, when he enters
upon post-natal sins and actualities, he is a sprawling, squalling,
unreasoning quadruped. The human larva from the fifth to the
seventh month of development is covered with a thick growth of hair
and has a true caudal (tail) appendage, like the monkey. At this
stage the embryo has in all thirty-eight vertebrae, nine of which
are caudal, and the great toe extends at right angles to the other
toes, and is not longer than the other toes, but shorter, as in the
ape.
Surely no argument is needed to convince you that Darwinism corroborates
the representation of our ancient heretical poet and scriptural preacher
concerning a life beyond the grave rather than the representations of
modern orthodox theologians.
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel, too.
--Omar.
II.
In history slavery stands out as a huge mountain range traversing the
whole of a continent. During long ages it was supposed that these
phenomena of the human and physical worlds were due to the will of a god
(Jesus, Jehovah, Allah or Buddha) but the vanguard of humanity has now
reached a viewpoint from which it sees that both are alike due to a law,
that a law is what nature does, not what a god has willed, and that a
system of slavery and a range of mountains are due to the same law.
The matter-force law is everywhere the same, and it is as omnipotent and
immutable in a social order as in a solar system.
"The very law that moulds a tear,
And bids it trickle from its source,
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course."
Most of the time, and especially just now, our world is very full of
tears, almost as much so as space is full of spheres, but there would
not be half so many tears at any time, if the laws of states were so
many correct interpretations of the laws of nature.
In every age, nearly all the hot tears which deluge the world flow, like
streams of springs, from their deep sources as the result of unnecessary
suffering by grinding poverty, by hopeless slavery, by avoidable
diseases and by premature deaths; and by far the most of these and of
all sufferings may be traced to man-made laws which not only have no
correspondence with those of nature but are contrary to them--laws of
which both the civil codes and religious bibles are too full.
You will agree with me that society should punish none of its members by
the slightest fine or shortest imprisonment, not to speak of death,
except on the basis of justice. So far, and it is a long way, we
certainly walk together. We part company, if at all, on the question as
to the basis of justice, but come together again in the conclusion that
it is right, not might.
What, then, is this right? If you answer: the law of the state as it is
interpreted by a competent court, I reply: no legal enactment, and so,
of course, no interpretation of one, can really constitute a right,
unless it is an embodiment of a truth containing an indispensable stone
in the foundation which is necessary to the superstructure of the ideal
civilization, under the roof of which every man, woman and child shall
possess the greatest of possible opportunities to make life for self as
long and happy as it can be, and to help others in an ever widening
circle to do this for themselves.
Laws are not made. All social laws (domestic, civil, commercial, yes,
even the moral and religious ones) are matter-force realities, as much
so as is any other among all the physical or psychical realities
entering into the constitution of the universe; which realities are but
the expressions of the processes necessarily resulting from the
necessary co-existence and co-operation of this matter and force;
therefore, laws are so many eternal necessities and, this being the
case, it is not possible that men in states or churches should make
them, no, not even gods in heavens.
Man would, then, have progressed much further with the superstructure of
an ideal civilization, if only in his efforts to rightly regulate his
life, he had happily searched out the laws of nature as they are
revealed through its phenomena and interpreted by experience and reason,
instead of looking for direction to the laws of the gods (Jehovah,
Allah, Buddha or even Jesus) as they are revealed through prophets and
interpreted by kings or presidents, by priests or preachers and by other
"powers that be of God" in states and churches--institutions which exist
in the interest of the capitalist class and against that of the labor
class. The world owes by far the greater part of its most poignant
sufferings to this fatal mistake of looking to gods in heavens and their
representatives on earth for direction instead of to nature and reason.
Life in the physical realm is dependent upon living in harmony with the
matter-force law. The representative of any form of life (mineral,
vegetable, animal, human) which either through ignorance, accident or
willfulness does not conform to it, is destroyed or at least injured.
Life in the moral part of the psychical realm consists in a disposition
and effort to learn the matter-force law, and to fulfill in thought,
word and deed the individual obligations to self and the social
obligations to others imposed by it when it has been humanely
interpreted by a man for himself.
Religion and Christianity are but wider extensions of one and the same
great all-inclusive virtue, morality, without which human life would not
be worth living, indeed not even a possibility, for without morality a
man is a beast, not a human.
Morality is the greatest thing in the world. Yet, paradoxical as the
representation may seem, there is one greater thing, freedom--the
liberty to think, speak and act in accordance with one's own convictions
as to what is the law and as to what are its requirements. Without this
liberty there could be no morality, and therefore, freedom is greater
than the greatest thing in the world, morality.
But liberty, the greatest and most indispensable necessity to morality,
religion and Christianity, indeed, to the existence of a human being, is
manifestly impossible on the theory that a man must be guided by the
will of a conscious, personal God in the sky as it is interpreted by the
kings and priests, presidents and preachers on earth.
You will note that I am not contending for the liberty to live without
reference to an external authority. If this were my contention you would
rightly insist (as some among my friends do) that I am an atheist in
religion and an anarchist in politics; but I am neither, for I recognize
the fact that I must live with reference to the existence of an external
authority, matter-force law, and there is no other, upon which anything
good in religion or politics is dependent.
No one is an atheist in religion, an anarchist in politics or anything
bad, who, in the physical realm of life, tries to live with reference to
the law of nature, and who, in the moral realm of life, tries to live
with reference to a truth which is that law humanely interpreted by
himself in accordance with his own experience, observation,
investigation and reason. In the nature of things, the interpretation
cannot be by some one else, because one man cannot live the moral life
on another's ideals any more than he can live the physical life on
another's meals.
Since this is the case, it follows that the whole conception of a law
which is willed by a god and revealed or formulated by his
representatives (prophets, kings, priests, legislators) to which a man
must have reference, if he would live the moral life, is, at best, a
harmless fiction and at worst a hurtful superstition.
There is no one (man or god) with whom people can stand in the moral
realm except themselves alone, and if they are not within this realm
they are not men and women.
Manhood is dependent upon standing alone with matter-force nature and
with human reason, and it is manhood which really counts everywhere in
the social realm, for without manhood one is nothing anywhere in that
realm.
Nature is my God. The gods of the several supernaturalistic
interpretations of religion (Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) are so many
symbols of this divinity. The words of this God are the facts of nature.
My religion and politics, worship and patriotism consist in a desire and
effort to discover these facts and to interpret and live them humanely.
My God, Nature, is a triune divinity--matter being the Father, force the
Son, and law the Spirit.
Nature is the sum of the matter-force-law phenomena of which the
universe is constituted. Man with his barbarism and civilization is but
one among such phenomena, on a level with the rest, as to his beginning
and ending, and as to the dependence of his life and its fullness upon
conformity to the matter-force law, without necessary or, indeed,
possible reference to any divine-human system of laws as set forth by a
catholic or protestant church or by an imperialistic or democratic
state.
Unless states and churches persuade, encourage and help man to more
fully discover, more correctly interpret and more perfectly live the
matter-force law they are worthless; and indeed worse, if in the long
run and on the whole they hinder him; and undoubtedly they have done
this in the case of the slave class--a class which, ever since the rise
of private property in the means of producing the necessities of life,
has comprehended the vast majority of the human race.
Whether then man is barbarous or civilized is really and truly, wholly
and entirely a question of the knowledge of and conformity to the
matter-force law, that is, of whether or not the articles of his
religious creed and political code are so many ideal embodiments and
practical interpretations of facts or realities as they are revealed by
the doings of my god, Nature.
There is no other creed, belief in the articles of which, and there is
no other code, obedience to the articles of which, will advance mankind,
individually or collectively, so much as one step in the long, rugged
and steep way towards the goal of a perfect civilization--a civilization
which will secure to every man, woman and child the greatest of possible
opportunities to make the most of life that is within the range of
possibilities.
My god, Nature (the triune divinity, matter-force-motion) the doings of
which god are so many words of the only gospel upon which the salvation
of the world is to any degree dependent, is an impersonal, unconscious,
non-moral being.
For me, this god, Nature, rises into personality, consciousness and
morality in myself, and in no other does nature do this for me, though
what is true of me is of course equally so of every representative of
mankind.
Jesus (either as an historical or dramatic personage, and it does not
matter which he was) said, "I and my Father (god) are one," and in
saying this he gave expression in one form to the most revolutionary and
salutary of all truths. The other form of the same truth as taught by
Darwin and Marx is: man has all the potentialities of his own life
within himself. Every representative of the human race can and should
say with Jesus, "I and my Father, God, are one."
Stop man! where dost thou run?
Heav'n lies within thy heart,
If thou seek'st God elsewhere
Misled, in truth, thou art.
--Angelus Silensius.
This truth constitutes the most ennobling and inspiring part of man's
knowledge, and it was naturally discovered by him, not supernaturally
revealed to him. It is the foundation of socialism and the justification
of optimism.
The universe moves, with all that therein is. The vanguard of mankind is
moving to a viewpoint from which rapidly increasing numbers will see
that a revolution which is necessary on the part of a slave to free
himself from a master is not only justified but required by the great,
first law of the biological realm, the law of self-preservation--a
nature-made law on behalf of freedom. This nature-made law will
ultimately nullify all class laws, every law which is in favor of the
enslaving capitalist class and against the enslaved labor class.
Every state with its executive, legislative, judiciary, military and
educative systems is founded on capitalism. Since this is the case and
since human nature is what it is, all political institutions, the
American with the rest, are of the capitalist, by the capitalist, for
the capitalist, and each to the end that the capitalist may keep the
laborer in poverty and slavery.
Every modern church with its ministry, bible, creed, heaven and hell is
founded on capitalism. Since this is the case, and since human nature is
what it is, all religious institutions, the Christian with the rest, are
of the capitalist, by the capitalist, for the capitalist and each to the
end that the capitalist may keep the laborer in ignorance and slavery.
Whether Jesus was an historical or a dramatic person, the morality
involved in his trial, condemnation and execution is the same. Assuming
the historicity, he was put to death by Pilate because a class of the
people said: We have a law and by it, according to its official
interpretation, he should die. The Governor, finding that the legal
enactment and the judicial decision were in accordance with the
representation of the Jews, turned Jesus over to the executioners for
crucifixion, and the world condemns him because he knew that the law was
the embodiment of a fiction instead of a truth, because he interpreted
it in the interest of a sect instead of a people, and because he basely
acted with reference to his own political interests without regard to
justice for an heroic but helpless champion of slaves in their struggle
against the masters.
Philosophic anarchy differs by the space of the whole heavens from
practical anarchy, and it is the latter that I always have in mind. The
great essential of philosophic anarchy is individualistic freedom. The
great essential of practical anarchy is imperialistic slavery.
Capitalism is the outstanding, overshadowing imperialist, the father of
all the kaisers by which the world has been cursed, not only of the
terrestrial ones such as Wilhelm II, Nicholas II, Woodrow I, but also of
the celestial ones such as Jehovah, Allah, Buddha.
The occupants of regal thrones have no more responsibility for the
existence of imperialism than those of presidential chairs, nor they any
more than I, and I have none. The truth is that the responsibility for
this blight of all the ages is now at last, if indeed it has not always
been, wholly with the representatives of the working class. They have
the great majority in numbers and all of the revolutionary incentives
and power; therefore they, and only they can do away with imperialism,
and they can rid themselves of it whenever they choose. Prince
Kropotkin, the philosophic anarchist, a great soul, would agree to this
representation, for he says:
The working men of the civilized world and their friends in the
other classes ought to induce their Governments entirely to abandon
the idea of armed intervention in the affairs of Russia--whether
open or disguised, whether military or in the shape of subventions
to different nations.
Russia is now living through a revolution of the same depth and the
same importance as the British nation underwent in 1639-1648 and
France in 1789-1794; and every nation should refuse to play the
shameful part that Great Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia
played during the French Revolution.
Since death ends all of consciousness, the most inhuman of all
inhumanities and the most immoral of all immoralities is the shortening
of human life; and next to it is the diminishing of its happiness.
War shortens many lives and fills more with misery; hence its essential
inhumanity and immorality.
A large part of the world has just passed through the furnace of war--a
war between the German and English nations with their respective
national allies. All international wars are contests for supremacy in
the markets of the world, or at least for advantage in some among them.
This one was no exception.
The furnace of this war was seven times larger and seven times hotter
than any other has been. According to the latest estimates (September,
1920) its fierce flames directly and indirectly killed thirty million
young men and wrecked totally twice and partially thrice as many more.
Yet the fire by which the world upon the whole and in the long run
suffers most is not the intermittent, flaming one of the hell of
international war, which is always kindled and sustained by the
capitalists of the belligerent nations for the purpose solely of
securing commercial advantages over each other; but the greater
suffering is by the permanent, smoking fire of the hell of the
inter-class war which is always kindled and sustained by the capitalist
class in each nation for the purpose solely of robbing the labor class
of the fruit of their toil.
These national and class wars (hells, flaming and smouldering) are due
to the same matter-force law, the law of self-preservation, and,
paradoxical as it may seem, this law is equally operative on both sides
in each war.
Both hells exist as the result of the working out of the same law of
animal preservation by competition--the law of capitalism, and both
hells will be done away with as the result of the working out of the
same law of human preservation by co-operation--the law of socialism.
One proof of the rightness of the co-operative system is the fact that
it necessarily operates for the whole people and not for a class,
whereas the competitive system as necessarily operates for a class and
not for the whole people.
Still another proof, and it is in itself almost if not quite conclusive,
of the rightness of the co-operative system is the fact that its
competitive rival breaks down in every great emergency. It broke down
completely in all the belligerent countries (in none more than the
United States) immediately upon their entrance into the world war. Our
government was obliged to assume control of the railroads, coal mines
and food products.
If a class government, such as ours is, can provide during a war by the
co-operative system, and only by it, for the wants of a country, and
better, too, than during the time of peace, what may we expect in the
way of plenty, comfort and leisure, when under the classless
administration there shall be no more war with its wholesale waste, and
when there shall be one vast army of producers?
All the days which the fifty millions of soldiers spent in idleness will
then be so many holidays for toilers who are in need of them for rest
and self-improvement; and every dollar which is now wasted will then be
two dollars saved, so that the pecuniary prosperity of war times will be
increased, rather than diminished, and made continuous. Under a
classless administration the world would soon become comparatively rich
and happy.[H]
Representatives of the capitalist class are trying to create the
impression that the co-operative system which our government temporarily
established as a military necessity is socialism, and that the labor
class should seek no more than its restoration and continuance: but this
system is the same old wolf in sheep's clothing.
The rickety house in which we are living is a competitive structure and
it cannot be made into a co-operative one, at least not upon its present
foundation, the sand of capitalistic classism. Industrialism must take
it down and rebuild it upon the rock of classless labor. Neither this
demolition nor this reconstruction constitutes any part of the
government program. Its socialism is a mirage, not a reality, and the
matter-force law renders it necessarily so.
Marxian socialism is simplicity itself. It requires only three
conditions, each of which is perfectly intelligible; but no one of them
ever has existed or could exist under any capitalist government, because
all such governments, not excepting our own, especially not it, are
organized in the interest of parasitic profiteers, not productive
laborers. The three indispensable yet simple prerequisites to this real
socialism or communism are:
First, that the people within a municipality, either town or city,
own and control the utilities within the area occupied by that
municipality, which have to do with the immediate comfort of the
people who live there.
Second, that the people in each state own and control the utilities
that come in contact with the people on a state-wide scale.
Third, that the people within the nation own collectively and
control democratically the utilities which affect us on a national
scale.
Should we desire to go into more detail, we might say that the
things necessary to the individual be owned and controlled by the
individual, that the home be controlled by the family, and so on.
To go into the question on an international scale we might also add
that utilities mutually necessary to all the nations be owned by
the nations, as the Panama Canal, for instance.--Higgins.
Prince Kropotkin, though not a bolshevik, says approvingly of the
Russian revolution that it is trying to build up a society where the
whole produce of the joint efforts of labor by technical skill and
scientific knowledge should go entirely to the commonwealth; and he
declares that for the unavoidable reconstruction of society, by pacific
or any other revolutionary means, there must be a union of all the trade
unions of the world to free the production of the world from its present
enslavement to capitalism.
Higgins and Kropotkin have here put co-operative socialism or communism
in a nutshell both as to its aim and program.
The law of self-preservation is ever the same, but whether its salvation
is for a part of the people by competition--capitalist salvation, or for
the whole people by co-operation--socialist salvation, depends upon
whether it rides or is ridden.
So long as the law of self-preservation was supposed to be the will of a
conscious, personal god whose earthly representatives were kings and
priests or presidents and preachers, the law did the riding within the
large domain of animal competition--the domain of capitalism. War is the
normal, indeed necessary evil of this domain, and hence the world must
have wars so long as it remains within it, and it will remain there so
long as it has celestial divinities with terrestrial representatives in
states and churches for its governors.
Now that the law is known to be a matter-force necessity, not a divine
decree, the time may rationally be hoped for when the people will do the
riding within the small domain of human co-operation--the domain of
socialism. Peace is the normal, indeed necessary, state of this domain,
and hence the world must cease to have war when it enters it, and is
governed by itself instead of by a god and the powers of state and
church alleged to have been ordained by him.
Capital punishment should not be administered, if at all, except to a
murderer whose guilt has been established to the satisfaction of the
great majority of the people in the community to which he belongs, and
never in the case of a suspected murderer of whom this is not true.
If William II were really the devil behind the European war by which
many millions of the young men of the world have lost their lives, and
if Thomas Mooney were really the devil behind the San Francisco
explosion by which ten citizens of California lost their lives, their
punishment by death might be urged with much show of reason as a social
necessity. But if both were hung on the same gallows the world would go
on suffering by the ever recurring and closely related misfortunes of
war and riot as if nothing had happened. The real devil behind all wars
and riots is the capitalist system. There will never be an end of wars
and riots until this devil is overthrown.
The so-called Kaiser-war and the so-called Mooney riot are on the same
footing, both having the character of an insurrection and both having
the aim of self-preservation. The insurrection of the Kaiser was a riot
on behalf of the capitalist class of Germany and for the purpose of
protecting it against the capitalist class of England. The insurrection
of Mooney (assuming his guilt, merely for illustration) was a riot on
behalf of the labor class of California and for the purpose of
protecting it against the capitalist class of that state.
Incidentally, both riots have secondary aims of world-wide extent. The
Kaiser had two of these: to overthrow the commercial supremacy of
England that Germany might have it, and to overthrow industrial
republicanism (socialism) everywhere. Mooney had this: the overthrow of
commercial imperialism (capitalism) everywhere.
As rioters, there is this in common between Kaiser William and Thomas
Mooney, that though moving in opposite directions, they are nevertheless
carried by the same matter-force law which manifests itself in the same
riotous system, capitalism--a system which, under one form or another,
has ever produced international wars and class revolutions; and, so long
as it is allowed to exist, never will cease the production of them.
Hence the interests of the world require not that these rioters, Kaiser
William and Thomas Mooney, should be hung, but that the capitalist
system, which by the operation of the law of self-preservation by animal
competitions, produced both of the riots with which they are
respectively credited, should be overthrown by the labor system, which,
by the operation of the same law of self-preservation by human
co-operation, will put an end to all bloody conflicts.
But taking the popular view concerning the responsibility for this
commercial war and labor riot and assuming that they should be charged
respectively to Kaiser William and Thomas Mooney, why should the
promoter of the little riot die, or worse, suffer imprisonment during
life, and the promoter of the big war live?
Yet, if the Kaiser were captured even by England there is no probability
that he would be turned over to a court constituted of representatives
of the allied nations, tried, found guilty and put to death. Why not?
Because, like all wars, his war, no matter which side won the victory,
has been upon the whole, or will be in the long run, in the interest of
the capitalists of every nation on both sides, at least of the great
ones.
If Kaiser William would not be sent to the gallows by such a court why
should the court which tried Thomas Mooney be allowed to send him to it;
and, especially why, since California is part of a republic, and the
Kaiser's war was on behalf of imperialism and a small minority, while
Mooney's riot was on behalf of republicanism and the overwhelming
majority?
Just now the human part of the world is especially afflicted by
unnecessary and therefore unjustifiable deaths. The Governor of
California has the opportunity to prevent one such death. I say to him,
do it. In the name of Justice and in the name of Humanity, I with
millions of others solemnly call upon him to save Mooney, the
revolutionist, as Pilate, the Governor of Judea, according to the
verdict of all right-thinking men and women, should have saved Jesus,
the revolutionist.
III.
You say in effect that we must postulate a divine consciousness to
account for human consciousness; but, on your theory, how could human
consciousness come out of a divine consciousness; and, anyhow, contrary
to your implication, we know of no consciousness which has come, except
by inheritance, from another consciousness, but only of consciousnesses
which have come from unconsciousnesses.
Your contention, in this connection, is to the effect that nothing can
come out of nothing, and this is the core of a book, "A Short Apology
for Being a Christian in the Twentieth Century," by the learned
ex-president of Trinity College, Hartford, Dr. Williamson Smith, with
whom you have had, I think, some correspondence.
This Apology was written against a letter of mine to the House of
Bishops, entitled, "A Natural Gospel for a Scientific Age," which has
never seen the light, partly because the ex-President convinced me that
if I must give up the orthodox conception of God, I could not hold to
the one which I had worked out in the letter.
If you have not seen the ex-President's book, you will, I am sure, enjoy
it more than I did, but I doubt whether you will profit as much by it,
for it verges towards your lines and away from mine; and so it set me to
studying as it will not you, with the result of rejecting the new
conception of God which I had worked out for myself, but with it I threw
over the old one and ceased to believe in the existence of a conscious,
personal divinity. Of course, my faith in the existence of a spiritual
world and hope for a future life in it went with the god.
Dr. Williamson Smith and you are entirely correct in the contention that
something cannot come out of nothing: but I no longer pretend that it
can and I now see that the stones which have been thrown at me by you
both and others have come from glass houses; for this is really the
pretension of orthodox theologians. They affirm that the universe was
created by God out of nothing, but produce no scrap of evidence for His
existence, and even if they could prove that He exists, they would have
to admit that He came out of nothing, or at least from something which
did so.
It is indeed true that I am unable to tell what matter, force and motion
came from, or if I agree with most physicists that they arose from
ether, I cannot give its derivative; but, granting that I am as
incapable of proving their existence as you are of proving the existence
of the Christian trinity, nevertheless I have this immense advantage
over you, that I can prove that everything both physical and psychical
(including man and his civilization) entering into the constitution of
the universe, lives, moves and has its being in my divine
trinity--matter, force and motion: whereas you cannot prove that
anything is indebted for what it is to your divine trinity--Father, Son
and Spirit: therefore I insist that your trinity is a symbol of mine.
What is true of the Christian trinity is true of all the divinities of
the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion. The Jews live with no
reference to the Christian God, or at least not with any to his second
and third persons, and neither Christians nor Jews do so in the case of
either the Mohammedan or Buddhistic divinity, and so on, all around the
whole circle of gods.
But no representative of any god lives without constant reference to
mine, of which yours and all the others are, as I think, symbols, if
they are anything better than fetishes.
If you and ex-President Smith mean by your fundamental thesis, that a
thing which is essentially different from that from which it came is an
impossibility, you are certainly wrong, for the world is full of such
things. In the tree of life there are millions of examples, since (using
language in its general significance) everything above the amoeba must
be regarded as essentially different from it, though all, including man,
came out of it.
Going back as far as we safely can on solid ground, we come to the
nebulae from which the solar systems of the universe have evolved, and
surely a solar system is as essentially different from the nebula as a
man is from an amoeba. Coming to our earth when its primeval, flaming,
swirling gases had been condensed into inorganic matter, the protoplasm
which is organic matter, arose from it, and so something which grows
from within out, comes from something which grows from without in.
The large hoofed horse came from a small five-toed animal, not much
larger than a rabbit. The piano and the gun are brother and sister, born
of the bow and arrow, yet how different the children from the parent.
An infant is unconscious at birth and what it has of consciousness as a
child and an adult is dependent upon the development of its body.
Moreover, as the human body is a development through animal bodies, we
may logically conclude that human consciousness is ultimately dependent
upon and inherited from animal consciousness rather than a divine one.
Jesus is represented as saying that God is a spirit; and the fathers of
the English part of the Christian reformation said that there is but one
living and true God without body, parts or passions. This is their
explanation of his conception of God.
When the Jesuine definition of God and the Anglican explanation of it
were framed, the Divine Spirit was supposed to be an objective
personality.
Modern psychology teaches that no spirit, divine, human or otherwise, is
a personality. According to this science, spirit and soul are synonyms
for the subjective content of a conscious life, which content consists
of feelings, aspirations, ideals, convictions and determinations.
Psychologists know of no spirit or soul without a body constituted of
parts any more than physicists know of a force without matter
constituted of molecules, atoms, electrons and ions.
Gods represent the religious ideals of people and are symbols of what
they think they should be as religionists. They are symbolic,
emblematic, parabolic, allegoric devices of the imagination, and contain
nothing but the ideal, imaginary things which are put into them by
people for themselves, and they do nothing except what the people
perform through them in their names for themselves.
Matter and force constitute a machine, an automatic one, which produces
things, everything which enters into the constitution of the cosmos, by
evolutionary processes, or rather all such things, and there are no
others, are the result of one universal and eternal process of
evolution.
What is known as nature is the aggregation of the products of this
machine by this process. The machine is unconscious and its workings are
mechanical, yet some of its products rise into self-consciousness with
the power of self-determination, but both the consciousness and the
determination are limited. The infinite consciousness, personality and
determination which are postulated of gods are contradictions.
Of all beings man possesses most of consciousness, personality and
determination. What he has of these is not dependent upon gods, but all
they have of them is dependent upon him. Divine beings are, as to their
self-consciousness, personality and determination, human beings
personified and placed in the sky. Man does everything for gods. They do
nothing for him.
Such are the facts and arguments based upon them, which have forced me
step by step over the long way from the position of supernaturalistic
traditionalism in its Christian form, still occupied by you, to that of
naturalistic scientism in its socialist form which I am now occupying,
as tentatively as possible, pending further study in the light of
additional facts, for which (some six years ago, when I was desperately
battling to prevent the shipwreck of my faith in the god and heaven of
orthodox Christianity) I appealed to about 800 outstanding theologians,
among them yourself, representing all parts of christendom and every
great church, including of course all our bishops among the theologians,
and the Anglican communion among the churches.
You may remember how much of correspondence we had at that time, though
neither you nor any one who kindly tried to reach me with the rope of
the new scientific apologetics for which I appealed, can realize how
eagerly I looked for the replies to my questions, nor the sickness of
heart which I experienced when I saw that, in spite of every possible
effort of my own and help of others, I was slowly but surely drifting
towards what I then thought to be the fatal whirlpools and rocks, but
what I now regard as a sheltered port--the golden gate of that
delectable country, Marxian socialism, the only heaven that I am now
hoping to behold.
You earnestly contend that I am wrong in representing that the majority
of outstanding men of science and scientific philosophers do not believe
in the existence of a conscious, personal divinity, who created,
sustains and governs the universe, or in a conscious, personal life for
man beyond the grave, and that none among such scientists and
philosophers are orthodox Christians.
Prof. Leuba, the Bryn Mawr psychologist, is one among my authorities for
these representations. In his "Belief in God and Immortality" (1916) he
exhibits the results of a recent and thorough-going investigation in a
chart from which it appears that, taking the greater and lesser
representatives of the scientists together, they fall below 50 per cent
as to their belief in God, and below 55 per cent in their belief in
immortality.[I]
The showing for the scientists who are especially concerned with the
origin and destiny of life, biologists and psychologists, is much less
favorable to you; for, taking the greater and lesser together, only 31
per cent of the biologists believe in God and 35 per cent in
immortality; and only 25 per cent of the psychologists believe in God,
and 20 per cent in immortality.
But the worst by far, is yet to come; for, taking the greater biologists
and psychologists, those who count most, of the former 18 per cent
believe in God, and 25 per cent in immortality; and of the latter, the
greatest of all authorities, only 13 per cent believe in God, and only 8
per cent in immortality.
The greater psychologists are comparatively consistent in that fewer
among them believe in a conscious, personal life for humanity beyond the
grave than in the conscious, personal life of divinity beyond the
clouds. Human immortality is an absurdity without divine existence. The
overwhelming majority of great psychologists (the greatest of all
authorities, as to whether or not gods "without bodies, parts or
passions" can consciously exist in the skies, and disembodied men, women
and children in celestial paradises) see this and limit the career of
man to earth. In their judgment his heaven and hell are here, and the
gods who make and the devils who unmake civilizations are humans, not
good or bad divinities.
This is the conclusion of a rapidly increasing number of educated
people. A century ago only a few men of science and scientific
philosophers had reached it, not twenty five per cent, but now the
percentage is nearly ninety and it will soon be ninety-nine. The time is
coming, and in the not distant future, when no educated man shall look
to the god of any supernaturalistic interpretation of religion for light
or strength, and when none shall hope for a heaven above the earth or
fear a hell below it.
Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire.
--Omar.
Joseph McCabe and Chapman Cohen are among the most brilliant of present
day writers on scientific and philosophic subjects. They are not
socialists, but both see that modern socialism and orthodox Christianism
are utterly irreconcilable incompatibilities.
"How is it that on the Continent democratic bodies are so
sceptical, or sceptical bodies so democratic? Precisely because
they doubt (or reject altogether) the Christian heaven. They want
to make this earth as happy as it can be, to make sure of happiness
somewhere. Having taken their eyes from the sky, they have
discovered remarkable possibilities in the earth. Having to give
less time to God, they have more time to give to man. They think
less about their heavenly home, and more about their earthly home.
The earthly home has grown very much brighter for the change. The
heavenly home is just where it was.
"The plain truth is, of course, that the sentiment which used to be
absorbed in religion is now embodied in humanitarianism. Religion
is slowly dying everywhere. Social idealism is growing everywhere.
People who want to persuade us that social idealism depends on
religion are puzzled by this. It is only because they are
obstinately determined to connect everything with Christianity, in
spite of its historical record. There is no puzzle. We have
transferred our emotions from God to man, from heaven to
earth."--Joseph McCabe.
"Socialists who have one eye on the ballot box may assure these
people that Socialism is not Atheistic, but few will be convinced.
The statement that Socialism has nothing to do with religion, or
that many professedly religious people are Socialist, is quite
futile. A thoughtful religionist would reply that the first point
concedes the truth of all that has been said against Socialism,
while the second evades the question at issue. No one is specially
concerned with the mental idiosyncracies of individual Socialists;
what is at issue is the question whether Socialism does or does not
take an Atheistic view of life? He might add, too, that a Socialism
which leaves out the belief in God and a future life, which does
not, in even the remotest manner, imply these beliefs, which does
not make their acceptance the condition of holding the meanest
office in the State, and, at most, will merely allow religious
beliefs to exist so long as they do not threaten the well-being of
the State, is, to all intents and purposes, an Atheistical
system."--Chapman Cohen.
In summing up the results of his investigations Prof. Leuba observes
that:
In every class of persons investigated, the number of believers in
God is less and in most classes very much less than the number of
non-believers, and that the number of believers in immortality is
somewhat larger than in a personal God; that among the more
distinguished, unbelief is very much more frequent than among the
less distinguished; and finally that not only the degree of
ability, but also the kind of knowledge possessed, is significantly
related to the rejection of these beliefs.
In another connection Prof. Leuba speaking of Christian dogmatism as a
whole says:
Christianity, as a system of belief, has utterly broken down, and
nothing definite, adequate, and convincing has taken its place.
There is no generally acknowledged authority; each one believes as
he can, and few seem disturbed at being unable to hold the tenets
of the churches. This sense of freedom is the glorious side of an
otherwise dangerous situation.
Your conception of the origin, sustenance and governance of the universe
is burdened, as are all interpretations of religion which are hinged
upon the existence of conscious, personal divinities, with two
difficulties: (1) its physical impossibility, and (2) its moral
impossibility.
1. Physical Impossibilities. The atomic and molecular movements required
for the thinking of a single man would be beyond the capacity of all the
gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion together.
Some idea of the number of such motions which are taking place in every
human brain, will be derived from the conservative representations of
Hofmeister as exhibited in the following condensed form by McCabe in his
book, "The Evolution of Mind:"
We have reason to believe that there are in each molecule of
ordinary protoplasm at least 450 atoms of carbon, 720 atoms of
hydrogen, 116 of nitrogen, 6 of sulphur, and 140 of oxygen.
Nerve-plasm is still more complex.
Recent discoveries have only increased the wonder and potentiality
of the cortex. Each atom has proved to be a remarkable
constellation of electrons, a colossal reservoir of energy. The
atom of hydrogen contains about 1,000 electrons, the atom of carbon
12,000, the atom of nitrogen 14,000, the atom of oxygen 16,000, and
the atom of sulphur 32,000. These electrons circulate within the
infinitesimal space of the atom at a speed of from 10,000 to 90,000
miles a second. It would take 340,000 barrels of powder to impart
to a bullet the speed with which some of these particles dart out
of their groups. A gramme of hydrogen--a very tiny portion of the
simplest gas--contains energy enough to lift a million tons more
than a hundred yards.
Of these astounding arsenals of energy, the atoms, we have, on the
lowest computation, at least 600 million billion in the cortex of
the human brain.
Scientists, says Professor Olerich, in his book, "A Modern Look at
the Universe," estimate that the chemical atom is so
infinitesimally small that it requires a group of not less than a
billion to make the group barely visible under the most powerful
microscope, and a thousand such groups would have to be put
together in order to make it just visible to the naked eye as a
mere speck floating in the sunbeam.
The microscope reveals innumerable animalcules in the hundredth
part of a drop of water. They all eat, digest, move and from all
appearances of their frolics, they are endowed with sensation and
ability of enjoyment. What then shall we say of the minuteness of
the food they eat; of the blood that surges through their veins; of
their nervous system that thrills and guides them? Their minutest
organs must be composed of molecules, atoms, ions and electrons
inconceivably smaller than are the organs themselves.
Is there any god in a celestial field who could care for the movements
which occur in the molecules constituting a hundredth part of a drop of
water, not to speak of those which occur in the bodies of its myriads of
inhabitants? And what shall we say of all the inorganic and organic
movements in a small cup of whole drops of water, let alone those of a
great ocean of them?
But why go further into this subject? Is not the utter childishness of
the orthodox representative of a supernaturalistic interpretation of
religion, who credits his god with the governance of the motions
occurring in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms of this globe,
leaving out of account those of its solar system, and of other systems
which constitute the universe, sufficiently manifest?
If you say that the motions which issue in the phenomena of the universe
are regulated by a law which was once for all willed by the god of the
Christian interpretation of religion, I ask why the law should be
credited to the willing of this god rather than to that of the god of
Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic interpretation.
Newton took the first of the six initiatory steps in the long way which
led to the conclusion that the universe is self-existing,
self-sustaining and self-governing, by showing that all the movements of
the solar systems were necessarily what they have been by reason of a
matter-force law, gravitation. This discovery is the most momentous
event in the whole history of mankind.
Laplace took the second step by showing that the cosmic nebulae contain
within themselves all the potentialities necessary to the formation of
solar systems.
Lavoisier took the third step by showing that the matter which enters
into the constitution of the universe is an eternality.
Mayer took the fourth step by showing that the force which enters into
the constitution of the universe is an eternality.
Darwin took the fifth step by showing that the protoplasm contains all
the potentialities of every form of physical and degree of psychical
life from the moneron to man; that all representatives of both the
vegetable and animal kingdoms, including man, are related and so on a
level as to their origin and destiny, and that the different species are
the natural results of the necessary struggle with rivals and with
adverse environments for existence.
Marx took the sixth step by showing that the essential difference
between humans and beasts is primarily a question of the hand and
secondarily of the machines by which its efficiency is immeasurably
increased; that slavery has been and must continue to be the means of
advancement towards the ideal civilization; that the kinds of human
slavery were what they have been because machines have been what they
were, and that the time is coming when the slaves will no longer be men,
women and children, but machines which will be exploited for the good of
the many, not the profit of the few--then, and not until then, rapid
advance shall be made towards the goal where the whole world shall be
one great co-operative family, every member of which shall have the
greatest of possible opportunities to make the most of terrestrial life
by having it as long and happy as possible.
2. Moral Impossibilities. The moral impossibility of the assumptions of
these apologies is seen by all who have eyes for seeing things as they
are in the fact that if God is credited with the good He must also be
debited with the evil. If for example, He endowed the human body with
its useful and necessary parts. He also endowed it with its harmful and
unnecessary parts.
Experts in the field of anatomy tell us that there are in our bodies at
least 180 useless parts, some among which are the occasion of much
suffering and many premature deaths, the vermiform appendix alone
causing many thousands of such cases annually.
Do you not see that these useless structures, all of which are inherited
from the lower animals, are so many evidences of the truth of Darwinism
and the untruthfulness of Mosaism? Eleven of these wholly useless and
more or less harmful inheritances have been of no use to any of our
ancestors from the fish up and four are inherited from our reptilian and
amphibian forefathers, but according to Moses we have no such
progenitors.
Admitting the fact of the existence of evil there is no escaping from
the logical conclusions of dear, old sensible Epicurus:
Either God is willing to remove evil from this world and cannot, or
he can and is not willing, or finally he can and is willing. If he
is willing and cannot, it is impotence, which is contrary to the
nature of God. If he can and is unwilling, it is wickedness, and
that is no less contrary to the nature of God. If he is not willing
and cannot, there is both wickedness and impotence. If he is
willing and can, which is the only one of these suppositions that
can be applied to God, how happens it that there is evil on earth?
Oh, if only the world had been influenced by this logic instead of by
the metaphysics of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, it
would have been so far on the way towards the ideal civilization as to
have long since passed the point where it would have been possible to
have the world war which has recently deluged the earth with blood and
tears, or to make the Versailles treaty which is destined to issue in
one war after another, ever filling the world fuller with the tyranny,
poverty, slavery and misery which are the inevitable concomitants of all
wars.
In my opinion the fascinating essayist, Mallock, has written the best of
all apologies for theism. I cannot imagine a better one. He, however,
makes no more attempt than Sir Oliver Lodge does to establish
Christianity, or any other supernaturalistic interpretations of
religion. Like Kant and yourself, Mallock takes his stand on the ground
that a belief in a celestial God, and in the immortality which goes with
it, is necessary to morality, the basic virtue upon which civilization
rests. As Kant admits that the existence of God cannot be inferred from
pure reason, so Mallock admits and even strongly contends that it cannot
be established on scientific grounds. I quote a striking passage:
We must divest ourselves of all foregone conclusions, of all
question-begging reverences, and look the facts of the universe
steadily in the face.
If theists will but do this, what they will see will astonish them.
They will see that if there is anything at the back of this vast
process, with a consciousness and a purpose in any way resembling
our own--a Being who knows what he wants and is doing his best to
get it--he is, instead of a holy and all-wise God, a
scatter-brained, semi-powerful, semi-impotent monster. They will
recognize as clearly as they ever did the old familiar facts which
seemed to them evidences of God's wisdom, love and goodness; but
they will find that these facts, when taken in connection with the
others, only supply us with a standard in the nature of this being
himself by which most of his acts are exhibited to us as those of a
criminal madman. If he had been blind, he had not had sin; but if
we maintain that he can see, then his sin remains. Habitually a
bungler as he is, and callous when not actively cruel, we are
forced to regard him, when he seems to exhibit benevolence, as not
divinely benevolent, but merely weak and capricious, like a boy who
fondles a kitten and the next moment sets a dog at it. And not only
does his moral character fall from him bit by bit, but his dignity
disappears also. The orderly processes of the stars and the larger
phenomena of nature are suggestive of nothing so much as a
wearisome court ceremonial surrounding a king who is unable to
understand or to break away from it; whilst the thunder and
whirlwind, which have from time immemorial been accepted as special
revelations of his awful power and majesty, suggest, if they
suggest anything of a personal character at all, merely some
blackguardly larrikin kicking his heels in the clouds, not perhaps
bent on mischief, but indifferent to the fact that he is causing
it.
But we need not attempt to fill in the picture further. The truth
is, as we consider the universe as a whole, it fails to suggest a
conscious and purposive God at all; and it fails to do so not
because the processes of evolution as such preclude the idea that
God might have made use of them for a definite purpose, but because
when we come to consider these processes in detail, and view them
in the light of the only purposes they suggest, we find them to be
such that a God who could deliberately have been guilty of them
would be a God too absurd, too monstrous, too mad to be credible.
The god who had any part in bringing upon the world the English-German
war, the Versailles peace, the Russian blockade, is for me a devil not a
divinity. If you say that the Christian god had nothing to do with
them, I reply that these are among the greatest of all curses wherewith
mankind has been afflicted in modern times; and if he could not or would
not prevent them, what ground is there for looking to him for help in
any time of need?
How can I adequately express my contempt for the assertion that all
things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end? It is the
most utter falsehood, and a crime against the human race.... Human
suffering is so great, so endless, so awful, that I can hardly
write of it.... The whole and the worst, the worst pessimist can
say is far beneath the least particle of the truth.... Anyone who
will consider the affairs of the world at large ... will see that
they do not proceed in the manner they would do for our happiness
if a man of humane breadth of view were placed at their head with
unlimited power. A man of intellect and humanity could cause
everything to happen in an infinitely superior manner. But that
which is ... credited to a non-existent intelligence (or cosmic
"order," it is just the same) should really be claimed and
exercised by the human race. We must do for ourselves what
superstition has hitherto supposed an intelligence to do for
us.--Richard Jeffries.
Would but some winged Angel ere too late
Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise
Enregister, or quite obliterate!
Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Remold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
--Omar.
You frequently intimate that my doctrine concerning the origin and
destiny of the universe with all that therein is, including man, is not
that of the majority of men of science and scientific philosophers, but
that yours is. It will therefore be of interest to you to know that I
have submitted the most radical of my materialistic pieces to three men
of science, all great authorities, one of whom replied, that he was in
substantial agreement with me, but thought me to be 400 years ahead of
our time; another, that he found nothing to criticize unless it might be
my failure to give greater prominence to the fact that the gods of the
redemptive interpretations, of religion were so many versions of the
sun-myth, and the other, that the essay would pass any world congress of
scientists by a large majority.
You think that I am wrong in quoting Newton and Darwin on my side,
because they believed in the existence of a conscious, personal god. I
am persuaded that such was not the case with Darwin at his death; but,
however this may be, it is in neither of these cases, nor in that of any
other scientist, a question of what he philosophically believed
concerning a god, but of what he scientifically established as a fact.
Newton established the fact that the movements of the stars in their
courses are naturally regulated by the law of gravitation, not
supernaturally by the will of a god.
Darwin established the fact that all living species of animal and
vegetable life exist as the natural results of evolutionary processes,
not as the supernatural results of creative acts.
If Newton were to stand by his theological writings, he would fall in
your estimation, for his work on the book of Daniel would be regarded by
you as an absurdity. He considered Daniel to be the great revelation of
a God, Jehovah, but you know it to be the purest fiction of a man, quite
as much the work of the imagination of its author as Don Quixote is that
of Cervantes.
Among the many theological authorities whom you quote against me, the
greatest, in my estimation, is Dr. Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, London,
whose utterances I have been noting with great interest of late; partly,
no doubt, because he seems to be giving up your orthodox side and coming
over, slowly but surely, to my heterodox one. In a London paper which
has just reached me, the Literary Guide, this is said of the Dean:
The theological opinions of Dean Inge, one of the official
mouthpieces of the Church of England, and probably the most
distinguished spokesman for the more liberally minded of the
clergy, have now reached an interesting stage, both for those
without the Church as well as for those within it. Although he does
not feel called upon to state his own private conclusions on such
debatable questions, he no longer regards the doctrines of the
Immaculate Conception and the Bodily Resurrection as essential
prerequisites of Christianity and would consider fit for ordination
any candidate who rejected them, provided such a person still
acknowledged the divine nature of Jesus Christ--that is, he would
not exclude him from the Church's ministry.
If I understand Dean Inge as he is reported in the article of which this
is the opening paragraph, he bases his faith in the divinity of Jesus
upon the uniqueness of his character and teachings, not on the
miraculousness of his birth and healings.
But Dean Inge has no authentic or reliable account of the life and
teachings of Jesus; and so, as a theologian, like all theologians, he
lives, moves and has his being in the realm of fiction, the difference
between him and yourself being that he is in that part of it where the
imagination sits enthroned, and you in the region where metaphysics is
monarch of all it surveys.
An outstanding theologian who, as it seems to me, overshadows Dean Inge,
commenting upon a piece of my writing which is quite as radical as any
part of this letter goes even further than he.
"I have," he says, "just read the Chapter of your Natural Gospel
for a Scientific Age, which you have kindly sent me, with the
greatest interest. Indeed I have come so heartily to share your
point of view that I can find no points for criticism; I can only
say how grateful I am to have had an opportunity of seeing your
uncompromising and clear expression of the only kind of Modernism
that has any promise for the future. I am beginning to feel more
and more uncomfortable in our Christian movement because so many of
our leaders here are attempting an impossible compromise with
dogma. Men like Dr. Rashdall have no place in the movement for men
who cannot accept their 'fullblooded theism.' In fact they are
Harnackians with their one or two unalterably fixed dogmas."
IV.
If you ask why I continue to be a member of an orthodox church and its
ministry, the answer is, there is no reason why I should not for (if
they may be interpreted by myself, for myself, spiritually) I accept
every article of the creed of catholic orthodoxy; but if the articles of
this creed must be interpreted literally there is no one in our church
(the Episcopal) or in any among the churches, who believes all of them.
For example, who believes, that God created the heavens and the earth
out of nothing in six days, as he is represented to have done in his
alleged revelation of which the creed is a condensation? All in this
church, or at least all the ministers of it, who have obeyed its
requirement respecting the devotion of themselves to study, as I have,
know that the firmament or heaven of which the revelation speaks has no
substantial existence, only an imaginary one. What was supposed to be
it, is but the reflection of light upon the dust of the atmosphere. As
for the earth it was not made out of nothing; and, indeed, it was not
supernaturally made at all but naturally evolutionized out of matter and
force, and even they were not created by a god, for they are co-existing
eternalities; nor were their evolutionary processes directed by him, for
they have eternally, automatically and necessarily co-operated in such
processes to the production of every phenomenon which has contributed to
make both the physical and psychical parts of the universe what they
have been at any time, including the divine, diabolical and angelic
fictions which men have made and placed above and below the earth.
If you ask whether I am still a professing Christian, I will answer:
yes, yet the Brother Jesus of the New Testament, catholic creed and
protestant confessions, is not for me an historical personage, but only
a symbol of all that is for the good of the world, even as the Uncle Sam
of American literature is not an historical personage but only a symbol
of all which is for the good of the United States.
If you ask whether I am a praying Christian, I shall answer: yes, yet
when I pray, as I do every day, my prayer is an appeal to a real
divinity within my heart, the better self, of which self all the unreal
divinities in the skies including the Christian trinity, Father, Son and
Spirit, are but poetic symbols, and I no longer expect this God to
answer otherwise than the symbol of parents, Santa Claus, answers the
prayers of children, or the symbol of the United States, Uncle Sam,
answers the prayers of Americans.
If you ask whether I am a communing Christian, I shall answer: yes, yet
when I go to the Lord's Supper, as I do every month, the strength which
I receive is derived from the feeling that through it I place myself in
communion with my human brethren on earth, not with a divine brother in
the sky, particularly with the members of my church and the citizens of
my town and its neighborhood, but generally with all men, women and
children throughout the whole world, of which real brethren the brother
god in the sky, Jesus, is but a poetic symbol; nor do I now regard the
communion of this supper as being essentially different from that of any
ordinary family-meal, lodge-banquet, or socialist-picnic, with each of
which repasts the informal Lord's Supper of the apostolic church had
much more in common than it has with the formal celebrations of the
sacrament in any among the sectarian churches.[J]
Many critics represent that, in view of the changes in my theological
opinion, if I am an honest man, not a hypocrite, I will leave the
ministry and communion of the Episcopal Church. But why should I go
while any of my brother clergymen remain? I give a symbolic or
allegorical interpretation to every article of the whole system of
Christian supernaturalism and uniqueism; yet as symbols, allegories,
parables, or myths, I do not reject any, and no member of our House of
Bishops literally accepts all.
Who among influential preachers of any rank in any church believes: (1)
that the world was made about six thousand years ago by a personal,
Creator-God out of nothing; or that it was made at any time out of
anything? (2) that such a God formed Adam out of dust and Eve out of a
rib; that they left His hands as perfect physical and moral images of
Himself, and fully civilized representatives of the human race; or that
there was any first man and woman? (3) that He planted a Garden of Eden
and placed them therein under ideal conditions, and that He walked in it
and talked with them; or that there ever was any such garden? (4) that a
personal destroyer-Devil, incarnated in a talking serpent, tempted them
into disobedience; or that there ever was any such Devil? (5) that but
for this Devil's influence and their sin, labor and suffering, physical
death and moral degradation would have been unknown on earth, and that
it would have been the permanent abode of mankind, as indeed of all
sentient creatures; or that any of the higher forms of life would have
been possible without death? and (6) that to repair the evils
accomplished by this Destroyer-Devil it was necessary for a personal
Restorer-God to become incarnated in a man, in order that he might shed
this blood as a sufficient sacrifice for the satisfaction of the
offended Creator-God; also, in order that the resurrection of the
bodies (bones, flesh, blood and animal organism) of all deceased men,
women and children and the rehabitation of them by their respective
souls could be accomplished, to the end that a few, on account of their
faith, might be transferred to a permanent home in a heaven on a
firmament above the earth, and the many, because of their lack of faith,
to a permanent home in a hell below; or that there ever was any such
incarnation for these purposes; or that there are any such firmament,
heaven, and hell, or that there will be any such resurrection, ascension
or descension?
If other bishops, priests and deacons can, as they must, bring in their
symbolism or allegorism touching any or all of these six fundamentals,
which constitute the basis of the supernaturalism of traditional
Christianity, and yet not leave the church, why may not I bring in mine
and remain?
Attention is called by several critics to Sir Oliver Lodge, as an
example of an outstanding man of science who accepts supernaturalism.
While I was desperately trying to retain my conception of a
supernaturalistic God and of all the supernaturalism that goes with it
(revelation of truth, answer to prayer, guidance by providence,
resurrection of the dead and their ascension, eternal consciousness and
happiness) I at one time centered a great deal of hope in him, and
eagerly studied his works as indeed I did those of most apologists for
supernaturalism among them the greatest, Flammarion, Balfour, Bergson
and Hudson, but my careful study of his many writings convinced me that
he does not hold any of the supernaturalistic doctrines which are
distinctively Christian.
However, it is my doctrine concerning Jesus, rather than that of
Christian traditionalism, that is in exact alignment with that of this
renowned physicist. We agree that Jesus, if historical, was a Son of God
and the Christ to men in no other sense, and therefore in no higher
degree, than all representatives of the human race may be sons or
daughters of God, if there are gods and christs, to the men, women and
children with whom they come in contact.
Most critics think that I am wrong in representing that the great
majority of the leading men of science are naturalistic, not
supernaturalistic, but Sir Oliver Lodge represents that among such
scientists it is generally believed that the universe is
"self-explained, self-contained and self-maintained;" and speaking on
his own behalf of its creation out of nothing he says: "The
improbability or absurdity of such a conception, except in the symbolism
of poetry, is extreme, and it is unthinkable by any educated person."
All these gods were created, endowed and located by man, and then he had
them make revelations, create churches, institute sacraments and appoint
priesthoods for his redemption from devils whom he also created, endowed
and located.
This is why people of the same country and time have such different gods
and revelations. Jehovah is the god and the Old Testament the revelation
of the kings and plutocrats who are responsible for wars; Jesus is the
god and the New Testament is the revelation of the doctors and nurses
who do what they can to alleviate the misery of them.
The gods, not excepting Jehovah and Jesus, are as mythical as Santa
Claus and answer their suppliants not otherwise than he answers his,
through human representatives. If the suffering, needy or afflicted do
not get help and sympathy from men, women and children they get none
from the gods and angels.
While on the one hand the great majority of scientists, scientific
philosophers and educated people generally doubt that any god ever
answered a prayer or exercised a providence, on the other, no one doubts
that men, women and children answer millions of prayers daily and that
every person's career is wholly different from what it would have been
but for human providence; that, indeed, life would be impossible without
the providence which all people exercise in the hearing and answering of
prayers.
Representatives of many of the interpretations of religion strewed every
battle-field of the European war. The celestial saviours did not care
for one of their devotees. The terrestrial saviours (doctors and nurses)
did everything for the desperately wounded and saved millions who would
have miserably perished but for them. These were the real christs and
angels of whom the celestial ones are but symbols. The celestials always
have passed by on the other side. The terrestrials are the Good
Samaritans when there are any.
Sceptics infer from this negligence that the gods and angels have no
real objective existence. Believers contend that they really exist
objectively and excuse the neglect on account of preoccupation. For
example, the God of traditional Christianity is supposed to spend much
time counting hairs on the heads of His people and watching sparrows
fall to the ground. Sceptics are reverently but earnestly asking: Why
does He not keep the sparrows from falling? Why does He not let the
hairs remain unnumbered, until He has put a stop to wars and promoted
good will among men to a degree which will render it impossible that
the world should any longer be cursed by them?
If believers say that we have no knowledge of the ways of God, sceptics
reply: Since all which is known about any objective reality is
concerning the ways thereof, what the action is under given
circumstances, how do you know that your God has anything to do with
either sparrows or men, or even that He exists?
As to their philosophy concerning the origin, sustenance and governance
of the universe, socialists of the school of Marx, are almost to a man
materialists; but, as to their philosophy concerning life, they are as
generally idealists. There is, I feel sure, as much idealism in my
thinking and living now as there was in the days of my orthodoxy, but I
will let you judge for yourself after reading the following confession
of faith:
My early life was blighted as the result of the premature death of my
father by the Civil War and the consequent breaking up of his family and
my bondage to a German who made a slave of me, broke my health by
overwork and exposure, and, worst of all, kept me in ignorance, so that
when, at the age of twenty-one, I began my education, I was assigned to
the fourth grade of a public school.
The prime of my life has been wasted in preaching as truths the dogmas
of the Christian theology, the representations of which I now believe,
with the overwhelming majority of educated people, to be at best so many
symbols and at worst superstitions.
But though I do not now and probably never shall again believe in the
existence of a conscious, personal god, a knowledge of and obedience to
whose will is necessary to salvation, yet an injustice is done me by
those who say I have abandoned god and religion.
Every one who desires and endeavors to fulfill the requirements of a law
which is independent of his will and beyond his control has a god and a
religion. I desire and endeavor this in the case of two such laws and so
have two gods and two religions. Both of my divinities are trinities.
One is in the physical realm and the other in the moral one.
In the physical realm my triune god is: matter, the father; force, the
son, and motion, the spirit.
In the moral realm, my triune god is: fact, the father; truth, the son,
and life, the spirit.
For me the triune divinity of Christianity is a symbol of these
trinities and it is my desire and effort to discover and fulfill what
they require of me, in order that I may make my own physical, psychical
and moral life as long, happy and complete as possible and help others
in doing this for themselves. This desire and effort is at once my
morality and religion, my politics and patriotism, and they are
spiritual realities.
On account of the first of these sets of spiritual virtues (morality and
religion) I claim to be a Christian of the highest type, and that any
accusation which is raised against me because of alleged disloyalty to
any essential of Christianism is an injustice.
On account of the second of these sets of spiritual virtues (politics
and patriotism) I claim to be an American of the highest type, and that
any accusation which is raised against me because of alleged disloyalty
to an essential of Americanism is an injustice.
From the viewpoint of the self-styled one hundred per cent Christians,
I am a betrayer of Brother Jesus because I do not believe that he ever
had any existence as a god and that, if he was at any time a man, the
world does not now and never can know of one thing that he did or of one
word that he said.
From the viewpoint of the self-styled one hundred per cent Americans, I
am a traitor to Uncle Sam, because I did oppose his going into the
English-German war, and because I do object to the partiality which he
shows to his rich nephews and nieces.
Still Jesus and Uncle Sam are as dear to me as ever and indeed dearer,
yet not as objective, conscious personalities, but as symbols, ideals or
patterns.
However, though I love my Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam all the time, as a
child does Santa Claus at Christmas time, I am no longer childish enough
at any time to look to either of them to do anything for me, because I
know that what is done for me must be done either by myself or by men,
women and children, and that as objective, conscious personalities, my
Brother Jesus and Uncle Sam have had no more to do with my life than the
man-in-the-moon.
Your observation concerning the American government as being the
standard to which all governments will ultimately conform challenges an
earnest word of friendly dissent.
Our government is what all the governments of the world are (with the
single exception of the Russian) a government in the interest of a small
class, the representatives of which own the means and machines of
production and distribution and who produce and distribute things for
profit, each for himself.
The representatives of one class produce things socially, and those of
another class appropriate them individually. This is capitalistic
anarchy, the worst of possible anarchism, and it must have an end soon
or the world will be lost.
Robbery is the essence of anarchy and Marx showed that every cent of
profit made under the existing system of economics (and in the United
States it amounts to several billions of dollars every year) is so much
robbery of the many who make and operate the machines, because they are
paid less in wages than the value of the products made and distributed
by them.
We are hearing much in these days about the anarchy of those who are
dissatisfied with the capitalistic governments, but the governments
themselves and those in whose interests they exist are the real
anarchists. The flesh and blood of anarchism are robbery and lying, and
these are the meat and drink of capitalism.
The English-German war was the most flagrant act of anarchy in the whole
history of mankind. The peace of Versailles and the blockade of Russia
were outrageous acts of anarchy, and so also are the terrorism and
tyranny of which every capitalistic country is so full, our own with the
rest.
Morality is the very heart of civilization and of all that really makes
for it; but morality is impossible on a capitalistic basis, for it is
founded on the most immoral things in the world, robbery, lying, murder,
ignorance, poverty and slavery.
If I am right in the conviction that the United States is more wholly
given over to capitalism than any other nation, not excepting even
England, it is the greatest robber, liar and murderer on earth. How
then, can the United States become the standard for the governments of
the nations?
If the government of Russia holds its own, it, rather than that of the
United States, will become the standard to which all governments must
measure up or else go down.
Yes, not the government of the United States but that of Russia is
destined to become the standard of all peoples, for the aim of our
government is money, more money, and then some, for the few, while the
infinitely higher aim of theirs is life, more life, fuller life for
every man, woman and child.
Within my generation the vanguard of humanity has passed from the age of
traditionalism to that of scientism and this transition is the greatest
and most salutary event in the whole history of humanity. It is
impossible to exaggerate its importance. It marks the time when man
began consciously to realize that he must look to himself rather than to
any god for salvation.
From time immemorial man has realized that ignorance is his ruin and
knowledge his salvation, but during the too many and too long ages of
traditionalism he made the fatal mistake of supposing that he was
dependent upon a supernatural revelation by an unconscious, personal god
for the necessary knowledge. But now the leading people of the world,
the shepherds of the sheep, are seeing with increasing clearness that
man has naturally inherited his knowledge and must naturally acquire by
his own experience, reason and investigation every addition to it.
The world is indeed passing through a long, dark night, but neither the
longest nor the darkest, and since at last a great and rapidly
increasing multitude happily realize that humanity must work out its own
salvation through the living of its own knowledge by its own inherited
and increased strength, not by a supernatural grace, we of this
generation may rationally hope, as those of no other did or could, for
the dawning of the longest and brightest of all days.
As an old year dies into a new one, and as flourishing generations die
into rising ones, so the old traditional ages, when nations and sects
looked to their rival gods in the skies for help, are happily dying into
the new scientific age, when all sensible and good men, relying upon the
strength of a common divinity which is within themselves, will unite in
an all-inclusive brotherhood for the promotion of the ideal
civilization, a universal reign of righteousness.
It is night,--midnight. The clock is striking twelve. But this is the
very hour and the very minute, when all the saviours of mankind have
always been and ever will be born. Then it is that the Virgin, Nature,
comes to this dark world with her new born Son, Truth, whom to know and
follow is morality, religion, politics and life. It is then that those
who give expression to the highest ideals and deepest longings of
mankind, hear the angels, Reason and Hope, sing: On earth peace and good
will towards men.
Very cordially and gratefully yours,
WM. M. BROWN.
Brownella Cottage,
Galion, Ohio.
[Illustration: FREDERICK ENGELS]
[Illustration: NIKOLAI LENIN]
FOOTNOTES:
[H] The difference between a political republic, such as America has
developed, and an industrial republic, such as Russia is developing, is
that the administrators of the former are elected from the geographical
divisions and those of the latter from the productive divisions into
which the population is divided.
If we liken states to fruit trees, the American tree may be said to have
been evolutionized for the purpose of producing the fruit of commodities
for the profit of the owning class, and the Russian, the fruit of
commodities for the use of the working class.
[I] See appendix.
[J] Nevertheless I consider church-going to be a bad habit, and if I
could live my life over, I would not allow myself to become addicted to
it.
COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM
ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MARXIAN AND DARWINIAN POINTS OF VIEW
Appendix.
I Scientific Socialism.
II God and Immortality.
III Mythical Character of Old and New Testament Personages.
IV Would Socialism Change Human Nature?
V What Will be the Form of the Workers' State?
VI Withdrawal of Prize Offer.
VII Afterword.
Morality is the greatest thing in the world; but paradoxical as it
may seem, there is one greater thing, liberty--the liberty which is
freedom to learn, interpret, live and teach the truth as it is
revealed by the facts or acts of nature. Without this freedom there
can be no morality, and of course no true religion, politics or
civilization.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.
In northern climes, the polar bear
Protects himself with fat and hair,
Where snow is deep and ice is stark,
And half the year is cold and dark;
He still survives a clime like that
By growing fur, by growing fat.
These traits, O bear, which thou transmittest
Prove the Survival of the Fittest.
To polar regions waste and wan,
Comes the encroaching race of man,
A puny, feeble, little bubber,
He has no fur, he has no blubber.
The scornful bear sat down at ease
To see the stranger starve and freeze;
But, lo! the stranger slew the bear,
And ate his fat and wore his hair;
These deeds, O Man, which thou committest
Prove the Survival of the Fittest.
In modern times the millionaire
Protects himself as did the bear:
Where Poverty and Hunger are
He counts his bullion by the car:
Where thousands perish still he thrives--
The wealth, O Croesus, thou transmittest
Proves the Survival of the Fittest.
But, lo, some people odd and funny,
Some men without a cent of money--
The simple common human race
Chose to improve their dwelling place;
They had no use for millionaires,
They calmly said the world was theirs,
They were so wise, so strong, so many,
The Millionaires?--there wasn't any.
These deeds, O Man, which thou committest
Prove the Survival of the Fittest.
--Mrs. Charlotte Stetson.
I. SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM.
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among
millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing
class, have all the good things of life.
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers
of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and
the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.
We find that the centering of management of the industries into
fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with
the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions
foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be
pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby
helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions
aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that
the working class have interests in common with their employers.
These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working
class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all
its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary,
cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department
thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair
day's work", we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary
watchword, "Abolition of the wage system".
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with
capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for
the every-day struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on
production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By
organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new
society within the shell of the old.--Preamble of the Industrial
Workers of the World.
The following Synopsis of Scientific Socialism will serve both as a
summary of and supplement to my little book. It is the introductory part
of a catechism (a series of questions and answers) entitled "Scientific
Socialism Study Course" published by Charles H. Kerr & Company, 341
East Ohio Street, Chicago, and is reprinted here by their consent, with
certain changes in the interests of brevity and perspicuity. As a whole
this short Study Course of only thirty small pages in large type is the
greatest piece of catechetical literature of which I have any knowledge.
Even the synopsis as given here contains more of the education which
makes for the good of the world than all the catechisms of all the
churches. The Catechism was published in 1913.
1. How do you explain the phenomena of History?
Ans.: History, from the capitalist point of view, is a record of
political and intellectual changes and revolutions of so-called great
men, wherein the economic causes for these acts and changes are ignored
or concealed; but, from the socialist view point, history reveals a
series of class struggles between an exploited wealth-producing class
and an exploiting ruling class over the wealth produced.
2. What effect have "great men" had on history?
Ans.: Great men were simply ideal expressions of the hopes of some class
in society that was becoming economically powerful. They formed a
nucleus around which a class gathered itself in attaining economic
conquests in its own interest, and in establishing social institutions
in harmony with, and for the perpetuation of, such class interests.
These men had to embody some vital principles from the economic
conditions of their time and represent some class interest. The same men
with the same ideas would not be great men under a different mode of
production when the time for their ideas was not ripe.
3. What great factor is responsible for the rise of "great men?"
Ans.: The fact that the ideas of these men coincided with the class
interests of some class in society that was becoming economically
powerful. Therefore economic conditions must exist or be developing
which find their highest expression in the ideas of such men.
4. Why do social institutions change and not remain fixed?
Ans.: Because the process of economic evolution will not permit them to
remain fixed. The development and improvement of the means of production
and distribution produce economic changes, therefore social institutions
(the state, church, school and even the family) are forced to change to
conform with changing economic conditions. These are due to evolutionary
and revolutionary processes connected with the means of production and
distribution.
5. What is responsible for the birth of new ideas, and do they occur to
some one individual only?
Ans.: New ideas, theories and discoveries emanate from material
conditions, and such conditions act upon individuals. The same idea or
discovery may be brought out by different individuals independently and
apart from each other. This proves that it is not great men who are
responsible for material conditions, but that material conditions (modes
of production and distribution) produce the men best able to marshal the
facts and express the idea; usually in the interest of some class.
6. What single great idea occurred to both Darwin and Wallace
independently?
Ans.: The theory of "Natural Selection" which showed that the closely
allied ante-type was the parent stock from which the new form had been
derived by variation.
7. What single great idea occurred to both Marx and Engels
independently?
Ans.: The "Materialistic Conception of History."
8. Name the three great ideas developed by Marx and Engels which now
form the bed-rock basis for the socialist philosophy.
Ans.: (1) the Materialistic Conception of History, or, the law of
economic determinism, (2) the Law of Surplus Value, and (3) the Class
Struggle.
9. Explain, briefly, the "materialistic conception of history."
Ans.: "In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic
production and exchange and the social organization necessarily
following from it forms the basis upon which is built up and from which
alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that
epoch." The laws, customs, education, religion, public opinion and
morals are in the long run controlled and shaped by economic conditions;
or, in other words, by the dominant ruling class which the economic
system of any given period forces to the front.
10. What is the most important question in life?
Ans.: The problem of securing food and shelter.
11. What bearing does this have on the materialistic conception of
history?
Ans.: It gives us the only key by which we can understand the history of
the past, and within limits, predict the course of future development.
12. What effect does the prevailing mode of production and exchange in
any particular epoch, have on the social organization and political and
intellectual history of that epoch?
Ans.: "Anything that goes to the roots of the economic structure and
modifies it (the food and shelter question in life) will inevitably
modify every other branch and department of human life, political,
ethical, religious and moral. This makes the social question primarily
an economic one and all our thought and effort should be concentrated on
it."
13. Do the ideas of the ruling class, in any given epoch, correspond
with the prevailing mode of economic production?
Ans.: They correspond exactly, as all connective institutions, civil,
religious, legal, educational, political and domestic have been moulded
in the interest of the economically dominant class who control these
institutions in a manner to uphold their class interests where their
ideas find expression.
14. What effect do these ideas of the ruling class have on the interests
of the subject class?
Ans.: The effect is detrimental to the interests of the subject class as
the different class interests conflict. Therefore the ruling class finds
the institutions mentioned very useful in either persuading or forcing
the so-called "lower classes" to submit to the economic conditions that
are absolutely against their interest, even though they are the wealth
producing class.
15. Distinguish natural environment from man-made environment.
Ans.: Natural environment which consisted of the fertility of the soil,
climatic conditions, abundance of fruits, nuts, game and fish was
all-important in the early stage of man's development. With the progress
of civilization this nature-made environment loses its supreme
importance and the man-made economic environment becomes equally
important.
16. Explain, briefly, the law of Surplus Value.
Ans.: It is the difference between what the working class as a whole
gets for its labor power at its value in wages, say an average of five
dollars per day, for producing commodities, and what the employing class
as a whole gets, say an average of twenty-five dollars, for the same
commodities when sold at their value. According to this conservative
estimate capital is upon the whole and in the long run robbing labor of
four-fifths of the value of its productive power. Capitalism is
therefore the great robber, the Beelzebub of robbers.
17. Since the economic factor is the determining factor, what does the
law of Surplus Value furnish us?
Ans.: "Surplus Value is the key to the whole present economic
organization of society. The end and object of capitalist society is the
formation and accumulation of surplus value; or in other words, the
systematic, legal robbery of the subject working class."
18. Define value and state how measured.
Ans.: Value is the average amount of human labor time socially, not
individually, necessary under average, not special, conditions for the
production or reproduction of commodities.
19. What determines the value of labor power?
Ans.: It is determined precisely like the value of every other
commodity, i. e., by the amount of labor time socially necessary for its
production or reproduction by the raising and support of children to
succeed their parents as wage-earning slaves.
20. Since labor power is a commodity, what condition is it subject to?
Ans.: It is subject to the same conditions that all other commodities
are subject to without regard to the fact that it is the source of all
social value. The worker in whom the commodity labor power is embodied,
does not get the value of the product of his labor, but only about
one-fifth of it, enough to keep him in working order and reproduce more
labor power in his children. If the worker received the value of the
product of his labor he would receive much more than enough to keep him
in working order and to raise his family. Such an economic condition
would abolish all forms of surplus value or profit, also the wage
system, by substituting economic and social organization in the interest
of the working class. No other class could remain in existence and the
class struggle would be ended.
21. In what economic system, past or present, does surplus value appear?
Ans.: It is the root of all social systems since the rise of the
institution of private property, but only under the present system
(capitalism) has labor power assumed the commodity form. Labor power is
a commodity with a two fold character: it has a use and an exchange
value. Its use value consists in its being capable of producing values
over and above its own needs for sustenance and reproduction. Its
exchange value consists in the amount of socially necessary labor time
required for its production and reproduction.
The chattel and feudal systems of slavery were not directly concerned
with the production of commodities for the profit of the masters, but
rather with the producing of the necessities of life for all, masters
and slaves, and the luxuries for some, the masters. That which was not
produced for immediate consumption was sold, if opportunities presented
themselves, and occasionally the professional traders developed, for
example, the Phoenicians; but they were an exception to the rule. The
same holds good for feudalism, except that during the latter stages of
that system commercialism arose; but this commercialism was no feature
of feudalism--it was the rising capitalism that began to unfold and
assert itself.
22. Name the three great systems of economic organization upon which the
structure of past history and social institutions have their basis.
Ans.: (1) Chattel slavery, (2) serfdom, or feudal slavery and (3) wage
slavery.
23. Explain, briefly, how the subject class was exploited under each of
these economic systems.
Ans.: 1. Under chattel slavery the laborer was a chattel (possession or
property) the same as a mule or horse, and only received his "keep,"
that is, enough food, clothing and shelter to keep him in working order
and to reproduce labor power by raising children. All he produced (use
values and children) was taken by his master. The body of the slave was
the property of his master. 2. Under serfdom or feudal slavery, the
worker produced what was necessary to keep him in working order and to
raise a family of slaves, and then the balance of his time produced use
values for his feudal lord. The body of the slave was his own, though he
could not go about with it from one place to another; for it was bound
to the land of his master. 3. Under the wage slavery, the worker
receives wages which again equals only the amount necessary to keep him
in working order and to reproduce more labor power in his children. His
entire product belongs to the capitalist, and out of this resource he
pays the wages for the commodity labor, also for other commodities such
as raw materials, and appropriates all of the balance and converts it
into capital with which he not only continues but increases the
exploitation of his workers. The body of the capitalist's slave is
indeed his own as under the feudal system but with this difference, that
if he does not like his master, or he is disliked by him, he can or must
go abroad with it from one place to another looking for a job--a liberty
or necessity which is to the advantage of the owning class and the
disadvantage of the working class. Unemployment is necessary to the
existence of capitalism, but this necessity is a danger to the system
and will ultimately destroy it in all countries as it has in Russia.
24. Define the "Class Struggle."
Ans.: It is the direct clash between two hostile class interests wherein
the employing class makes every effort to appropriate more of the wealth
produced by the working class, and the working class ever struggles to
retain more of the wealth which it produces. The capitalist class
strives to get more surplus value and the working class strives to get
more wages.
The class consciousness of those who live by working has found one of
its best expressions in the following paragraphs:
"The world stands upon the threshold of a new social order. The
capitalist system of production and distribution is doomed;
capitalist appropriation of labor's product forces the bulk of
mankind into wage slavery, throws society into the convulsions of
the class struggle, and momentarily threatens to engulf humanity in
chaos and disaster.
Since the advent of civilization human society has been divided
into classes. Each new form of society has come into being with a
definite purpose to fulfill in the progress of the human race. Each
has been born, has grown, developed, prospered, become old,
outworn, and, has finally been overthrown. Each society has
developed within itself the germs of its own destruction as well
as the germs which went to make up the society of the future.
The capitalist system rose during the seventeenth, eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries by the overthrow of feudalism. Its great and
all-important mission in the development of man was to improve,
develop, and concentrate the means of production and distribution,
thus creating a system of co-operative production. This work was
completed in advanced capitalist countries about the beginning of
the 20th century. That moment capitalism had fulfilled its historic
mission, and from that moment the capitalist class became a class
of parasites.
In the course of human progress mankind has passed (through class
rule, private property, and individualism in production and
exchange) from the enforced and inevitable want, misery, poverty,
and ignorance of savagery and barbarism to the affluence and high
productive capacity of civilization. For all practical purposes,
co-operative production has now superseded individual production.
Capitalism no longer promotes the greatest good of the greatest
number, It no longer spells progress, but reaction. Private
production carries with it private ownership of the products.
Production is carried on, not to supply the needs of humanity, but
for the profit of the individual owner, the company, or the trust.
The worker, not receiving the full product of his labor, can not
buy back all he produces. The capitalist wastes part in riotous
living; the rest must find a foreign market. By the opening of the
twentieth century the capitalist world--England, America, Germany,
France, Japan, China, etc.--was producing at a mad rate for the
world market. A capitalist deadlock of markets brought on in 1914
the capitalist collapse popularly known as the World War. The
capitalist world can not extricate itself out of the debris.
America today is choking under the weight of her own gold and
products.
This situation has brought on the present stage of human
misery--starvation, want, cold, disease, pestilence, and war. This
state is brought about in the midst of plenty, when the earth can
be made to yield a hundredfold, when the machinery of production is
made to multiply human energy and ingenuity by the hundreds. The
present state of misery exists solely because the mode of
production rebels against the mode of exchange. Private property in
the means of life has become a social crime. The land was made by
no man; the modern machines are the result of the combined
ingenuity of the human race from time immemorial; the land can be
made to yield and the machines can be set in motion only by the
collective effort of the workers. Progress demands the collective
ownership of the land on and the tools with which to produce the
necessities of life. The owner of the means of life today partakes
of the nature of a highwayman; he stands with his gun before
society's temple; it depends upon him whether the million mass may
work, earn, eat, and live. The capitalist system of production and
exchange must be supplanted if progress is to continue.
In place of the capitalist system we must substitute a system of
social ownership of the means of production, industrially
administered by the workers, who assume control and direction as
well as operation of their industrial affairs."
25. Define "class consciousness."
Ans.: Class consciousness of the workers means that they are conscious
of the fact that they, as a class, have interests which are in direct
conflict with the interests of the capitalist class.
26. What function does the state perform in the class struggle?
Ans.: "The state is a class instrument, and is the public power of
coercion created and maintained in human societies by their division
into classes, a power which, being clothed with force, makes laws." It
is, therefore, used by the dominant class to keep the subject working
class in subjection in accordance with the interests of the ruling and
owning class. It is also used to prevent the workers from altering the
economic structure of society in the interests of the working class.
As the author of the catechism, of which these twenty-six questions and
answers constitute a small part, says:
"Society is a growth subject to the laws of evolution. When evolution
reaches a certain point, revolution becomes necessary in order to break
the bonds of the old and bring in the new. As the chicken grows through
evolution until it reaches the point where it must break its shell (the
revolution) in order to continue its growth, so do classes of people
come to the point in their evolution where revolution is necessary in
order to continue their growth, bring in the new society and consummate
the next step in civilization."
Since 1913, when the foregoing catechism was published, we have had the
war to end war and to make the world safe for democracy--a fateful and
mournful war in which millions of lives were lost and other millions
wrecked with the result of multiplying wars and increasing imperialism.
It was a war between national groups of capitalists with conflicting
interests for commercial advantages, which is unexpectedly issuing in
three great crises: (1) the imminent bankruptcy of capitalism; (2) the
communist revolution in Russia, and (3) the imminent taking over of the
world by the revolutionary proletariat.
Hitherto, the sons and daughters of capitalism have owned the earth with
all that thereon and therein is. Henceforth, the sons and daughters of
the useful workers shall be the owners.
The future belongs to the workers, but not until they organize
themselves into one big revolutionary union. What ideas and aims are
involved in the faith and endeavor of Revolutionary Unionism will appear
from this passage in Comrade Philip Kurinsky's Industrial Unionism and
Revolution, a brilliant pamphlet, published by The Union Press, Box 205,
Madison Square, New York City:
"Slavery is not abolished. It is merely a change in the struggle
which throws itself hither and thither like the waves of the seas.
In ancient times chattel slavery existed. Feudalism then took its
place. Feudalism in its turn was overthrown by capitalism which at
present reigns supreme. As the immortal Tolstoy explained, 'The
abolition of the old slavery is similar to that which Tartars did
to their captives. After they had cut up their heels they placed
stones and sand in the wounds and then took the chains off. The
Tartars were sure that when the feet of their prisoners were
swollen, that they could not run away and would have to work even
without chains. Such is the slavery of wages'.
Of this slavery does revolutionary unionism speak in the name of
the revolutionary worker. It analyzes the present society and shows
that it is divided into two economic classes. One class, the
capitalist class, is the master class which controls all the
factories, mills, mines, railroads, lands and fields and all the
finished and raw materials. This class possesses all the natural
riches of the world and this economic supremacy gives it control of
the state, of the church, and of all educational institutions. In
short, this class owns everything and controls the whole social and
political life of each country. The other class, the working class,
owns nothing. It produces all and enjoys little. It uses the
machines and tools but does not possess them, and is therefore
forced to sell its only possession, its labor power, to the master
class. And the latter uses the opportunity to buy that wonderful
power like any raw material or some other commodity (some of the
representatives of craft unionism wish to deny this but
unsuccessfully). For the commodity which the worker is compelled to
sell in order that he might live, he receives a wage which is
determined as is the price of every other commodity. The price is
always smaller than the value of the product which the worker
produces for the capitalist.
Between these two classes there must, naturally, exist a
tremendous struggle which often has the character of actual war. No
one urges the workers to this war--not the terrible I. W. W.'s nor
the political socialist, neither the Bolsheviks nor the Anarchists,
but the war naturally and inevitably arises from existing
conditions.
On the one hand, the capitalists are continually chasing after
higher profits which results in the employment of cheap labor under
the worst conditions. Naturally the ideal of the capitalist class
is to keep the workers in a condition of slavery. If the workers
attempt to revolt, as they do daily, their masters try to suppress
the revolt with all the power at their command. On the other hand,
the workers struggle with all their power to lighten their burdens.
They strive to get better conditions, higher wages and shorter
hours, and in general the ideal of the working class is to throw
off the yoke of capitalism.
No one rightfully can say that this struggle is merely a theory. We
can see this struggle in the attempts of the capitalist class to
destroy the victorious Russian Proletariat. It is mirrored before
our eyes in the continual strikes. Nothing can stop this struggle
except the abolition of exploitation.
No matter how hard the Citizens' Committees, Boards of Arbitration,
of Conciliation and of Mediation, with their so-called impartial
members try to convince the world that it is possible to bring the
warring classes into closer relations, their attempts are doomed to
failure. At best their success is only temporary and their efforts
succeed only in blinding the eyes of the working masses. And if at
some time these boards claim a victory, the credit is not due to
them, but to the force exerted by the workers. It is the
strike-weapon, held in reserve by the toilers, that brings victory
to the workers--not the efforts of the philanthropic gentlemen.
Furthermore the efforts of these gentlemen greatly harm the
workers, for at times when the workers can attain success through
the use of the strike, these philanthropists interfere, and deaden
the initiative and aggressiveness of the strikers. Often this
causes strife between the strikers themselves. They lose confidence
in one another, and the existence of the organizations which the
workers succeeded in building up through their efforts and
sacrifices are jeopardized.
The "Conciliation," however, can bring no conciliation between the
employers and workers, because that is unnatural. On the contrary,
the hatred of one side to the other is intensified and war breaks
out oftener and assumes a more bitter and more obstinate character.
Thus viewing the two struggling classes of capitalist society,
revolutionary industrial unionism comes to the logical conclusion
that between capital and labor there exists nothing in common, that
the struggle must go on and peace can come only when economic
oppression will cease, which is possible only when the program of
revolutionary unionism will be realized; namely, when the workers
will take over the means of production and abolish the system of
private ownership. The autocratic control of industry, the unequal
division of products will then disappear and society will be built
on a socialist foundation, where the industries will be owned and
operated by the workers, organized in a truly democratic manner,
and where the individual will receive the full product of his
labor.
These are the principles of revolutionary unionism, the principles
of the international proletariat. They are the true expressions of
the class struggle and because of that, revolutionary unionism
attracts more and more followers whose ideal is to develop within
the working masses a consciousness of their historic mission."
In the words of an eloquent representative of the organized workers in
the United States, I exhort the working men and working women of
America: Keep your eyes on Russia. Watch what is going on there and what
the capitalist plunderbund will try to do. Do not be misled by the lies
and slanders that are daily dished up to you. Bear in mind that those
who tell you these yarns have an interest to mislead you. They want to
use you as a makeweight in their game of wresting from the Russian
workers their dearly-won liberty. It is of no use to enumerate the lies
that have already been punctured because they will invent new ones
faster than one can write and print. Let your reason guide you. Think
yourselves into the shoes of your Russian fellow workers. Think how you
would act if placed in the same position and then draw the conclusion
that they act about the same way that you would, because they are like
you moved by the same emotions, the same desires, the same aspirations.
You, too, would like to keep for yourselves the fruits of your toil, if
you only knew how to go about it, if you had the organization that would
make it possible. But as yet you do not know and you have not that
organization. In politics you still vote against one another in the
Republican or Democratic camp. You will have to wait until you do know
and until you do have the means--the Industrial Unions of the entire
working class that will be able to take and hold and administer industry
for the reason that it will have the might, the power to do so. And when
you have expressed through the ballot your will for that new society,
which will guarantee to you the full fruits of your labor, remember the
slogan of revolutionary Russia: "All power to the Soviets," and let your
slogan then be: "All power to the Industrial Unions!"
These are prophetic words written fifty years ago by Frederick Engels:
Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of
production, the appropriation by society of all the means of
production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by
individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But
it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only
when the actual conditions for its realization were there. Like
every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men
understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to
justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish
these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions....
So long as the total social labor only yields a produce which but
slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so
long, therefore, as labor engages all or almost all the time of the
great majority of the members of society--so long, of necessity,
this society is divided into classes....
But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain
historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only
under given social conditions. It was based on the insufficiency of
production. It will be swept away by the complete development of
modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in
society presupposes a degree of historical evolution, at which the
existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but
of any ruling class at all, has become an obsolete anachronism....
With the seizing of the means of production by society, production
of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery
of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is
replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for
individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a
certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal
kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions into really human
ones.... It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to
the kingdom of freedom.
The capitalist countries are ruled through banks, and a bank is
necessarily an institution of the owning class.
Russia is ruled through Soviets, and a soviet is necessarily an
institution of the working class.
Banks and Soviets are so many headquarters for big unions. In capitalist
countries the banks are such for the one big union of the owners, and in
Russia the soviets are this for the one big union of the workers. These
big unions cannot co-exist and flourish in the same country.
All owners everywhere see the necessity for their one big union and in
all capitalistic countries, nowhere more than in the United States, they
have the advantage of being on the ground floor and indeed on all the
floors of all the sky scrapers with their union which is the most
universally inclusive and the most relentlessly efficient organization
on earth.
Some workers everywhere see the necessity for their one big union, but
nowhere is it seen as generally and clearly as in Russia,--the only
country in which the workers have held the ground floor for any
considerable time against all comers.
In all countries a beginning has been made by the workers in laying the
foundation for their one big union, but in only one country, Russia, has
progress been made with the superstructure, and here as everywhere the
owners have hindered the workers so that they must defend themselves
with their right hand while they build with their left. Nevertheless
wonderful progress is being made and when the industrial structure has
been completed, as it soon must be, else the world is doomed to
destruction, it shall tower above its capitalist rival as a mountain
over a foot hill.
After all, the power of the owner is money and it is not a real
potentiality, for within the social realm there is in reality only one
potentiality, the power of productivity which exclusively belongs to the
worker.
In the sky there is no god, and on earth there is no king or priest like
unto Labor, the lord of gods, the tzar of kings and the pope of priests.
Labor is high above all potentialities. The motto, "All Power to the
Workers," which the class-conscious proletarians inscribe on their
banners, is not the expression of an ideal fiction, but the declaration
of a practical reality, the greatest among all realities, that reality
in which the whole social realm lives, moves and has its being.
Down with the one big union of the owners. Long live the one big union
of the workers.
II. GOD AND IMMORTALITY.
We have done with the kisses that sting,
With the thief's mouth red from the feast,
With the blood on the hands of the king,
And the lie on the lips of the priest.
--Swinburne.
Many critics contend that socialism and supernaturalism are not, as I
represent, incompatibilities; but they lose sight of four facts: (1)
this is a scientific age; (2) Marxian socialism is one of the sciences;
(3) the vast majority of men of science reject all supernaturalism,
including of course the gods and devils with their heavens and hells,
and (4) only in the case of one of the sciences, psychology, is this
majority greater than in the science of sociology.
The truth of the last two of these representations will be
overwhelmingly evident from the chart on the next page. It and its
explanation given in the following quotation is taken with the kind
consent of the author and also of the publishers of a book entitled God
and Immortality, by Professor James H. Leuba, the Psychologist of Bryn
Mawr College. This book is having a great influence and I strongly
recommend it to all who think that I am wrong in the contention that
conscious, personal existence is limited to earth; that, therefore, we
are having all that we shall ever know of heaven and hell, here and now,
and that whether we have more of heaven and less of hell depends
altogether upon men and women, not at all upon gods and devils. The
second edition of Professor Leuba's book is now in the press of The Open
Court Publishing Company, 122 South Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. Here is
the quotation in support of our contentions:
[Illustration: Chart XI
PARTIAL SUMMARY OF RESULTS]
What, then, is the main outcome of this research? Chart XI, Partial
Summary of Results, shows that in every class of persons
investigated, the number of believers in God is less, and in most
classes very much less than the number of non-believers, and that
the number of believers in immortality is somewhat larger than in a
personal God; that among the more distinguished, unbelief is very
much more frequent than among the less distinguished; and finally
that not only the degree of ability, but also the kind of knowledge
possessed, is significantly related to the rejection of these
beliefs.
The correlation shown, without exception, in every one of our
groups between eminence and disbelief appears to me of momentous
significance. In three of these groups (biologists, historians, and
psychologists) the number of believers among the men of greater
distinction is only half, or less than half the number of believers
among the less distinguished men. I do not see any way to avoid the
conclusion that disbelief in a personal God and in personal
immortality is directly proportional to abilities making for
success in the sciences in question.
A study of the several charts of this work with regard to the kind
of knowledge which favors disbelief shows that the historians and
the physical scientists provide the greater; and the psychologists,
the sociologists and the biologists, the smaller number of
believers. The explanation I have offered is that psychologists,
sociologists, and biologists in very large numbers have come to
recognize fixed orderliness in organic and psychic life, and not
merely in inorganic existence; while frequently physical scientists
have recognized the presence of invariable law in the inorganic
world only. The belief in a personal God as defined for the purpose
of our investigation is, therefore, less often possible to students
of psychic and of organic life than to physical scientists.
The place occupied by the historians next to the physical
scientists would indicate that for the present the reign of law is
not so clearly revealed in the events with which history deals as
in biology, economics, and psychology. A large number of
historians continue to see the hand of God in human affairs. The
influence, destructive of Christian beliefs, attributed in this
interpretation to more intimate knowledge of organic and psychic
life, appears incontrovertibly, as far as psychic life is
concerned, in the remarkable fact that whereas in every other group
the number of believers in immortality is greater than that in God,
among the psychologists the reverse is true; the number of
believers in immortality among the greater psychologists sinks to
8.8 per cent. One may affirm it seems that, in general, the greater
the ability of the psychologist, the more difficult it becomes for
him to believe in the continuation of individual life after bodily
death.
Within the generation to which I belong Darwin and Marx, the greatest
teachers that the world has had, went over the top of entrenched
ignorance with the greatest books of the world, worth infinitely more to
it than all its bibles together. Darwin did this in 1859 with his Origin
of Species by Natural Selection and Marx in 1867 with his Capital, a
Critique of Political Economy.
Darwin with his book is driving the Christian church out of its trench
of supernaturalism and uniqueism by showing that the different kinds of
vegetable and animal life are not, according to the representation of
its bible, so many separate creations by a personal, conscious divinity,
but interrelated evolutions by an impersonal, unconscious nature, the
higher out of the lower, and that, therefore, man is so far from being a
special creation, having his most vital relationships with a celestial
divinity and his most glorious prospects in a heavenly place with him,
that he is really more or less closely related to every living thing on
earth, and is as hopelessly limited to it, as an elephant, a tree or
even a mountain.
Marx with his book is driving the states out of the trench of
imperialism and capitalism.
As Darwin is driving the conscious, personal gods out of the realm of
biology, placing all animal and human life of body, mind and soul on
essentially the same footing, so Marx is driving all such divinities out
of the realm of sociology, placing all life of family, state, church,
lodge, store and shop on essentially the same level.
According to Darwin, all animal life is what it is at any time by reason
of the effort to accommodate the physical organism to its environment.
According to Marx, human civilization is what it is at any time because
of the economic system by which people feed, clothe and house
themselves.
This Darwinian-Marxian interpretation of terrestrial life in general,
and of the human part of it in particular, is known as materialism. It
is the materialistic, naturalistic, levelistic interpretation of
history, and differs fundamentally from the spiritualistic,
supernaturalistic, uniqueistic interpretation of Christian preachers.
The contrast between these interpretations is especially strong in the
case of human history.
On the one hand the Christian preacher says, man's history is what it is
because of the directing providence of a God, the Father, Son and
Spirit, and because of His directing inspiration of great leaders, such
as Washington, Luther, Caesar and Moses.
On the other hand Darwin and Marx agree in saying that both the triune
god and the inspired leader are what they are, because society is what
it is; that, again, the character of society depends upon the economic
system by which it feeds, clothes and houses itself, and that finally
all such systems owe their existence to the machinery in use for the
production of the basic necessities of life, the primal machine being
the human hand to which all other machines are auxiliaries.
The most insatiable and universal among all human longings is for
freedom--freedom from economic want, social inequality and imperialistic
tyranny, also freedom to learn, think, live and teach truths.
Socialism of the Marxian type is the gospel of freedom, because a
classless god, nature, reveals it in the interest of a classless world:
therefore, it is true, and slavery, of which there never was so much
before on the earth, and nowhere is there more than in the United
States, is utterly incompatible with truth, and classless interests.
All the supernaturalistic gospels are revealed by a class god (Jesus,
Jehovah, Allah, Buddha) in the interest of the capitalist class:
therefore, they are false and freedom is utterly incompatible with
falsehood and class interest.
Ignorance is the destroyer-god and capitalism is the diabolical scourge
by which he afflicts the wage-earner with many unnecessary sufferings,
especially the crushing ones arising from the great trinity of evils,
war, poverty and slavery.
Knowledge is the saviour-god and Marxism is his divine gospel of freedom
from these capitalistic sufferings.
III. MYTHICAL CHARACTER OF OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT PERSONAGES.
What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first,
second, and third days, in which the evening is named and the
morning, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such
an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise like an
husbandman? I believe that every man must hold these things for
images under which a hidden sense is concealed.--Origen.
One of the critics of Communism and Christianism whose representations
are in alignment with several others says:
While the Bishop speaks in the language of scholarship, he entirely
ignores all the findings of modern scholars on the literature of
the Bible.
The failure to show more clearly that my representations concerning the
untenableness of the basic doctrines of Christian supernaturalism are in
alignment with the conclusions of outstanding authorities in the newly
developed sciences of historical and biblical criticisms is indeed a
defect and an attempt will here be made to remove it by a short but
faithful and, as I think, convincing summary of what such authorities in
these sciences have to say on the subject.
My summary is summarized from a pamphlet by Charles T. Gorham, published
by Watts and Company, 17 Johnson's Court, Fleet St., E. C. 4, London,
England, which is itself an able summarization of the relevant facts
which have been scientifically established as they are given in the
greatest of all the Bible Dictionaries, the Encyclopedia Biblica.
It will be seen that all except one among my contentions concerning the
baselessness of the supernaturalism of orthodox Christians are well
sustained. This exception is the contention that Jesus is not an
historical personage, but a fictitious one. However the great critics
are unanimously with me even in this, for two crushing facts are
admitted by them: (1) the Old Testament affords no scientifically
established data from which a reliable history of the Jews can be
written, and (2) the New Testament has no such data for a biography of
Jesus.
The illuminating summary which is a large part of my answer to the
criticism under review follows, and it is as far as possible in the
language of Mr. Gorham:
Once upon a time there was a system of Christian Theology. It was a
wonderful though a highly artificial structure, composed of fine
old crusted dogmas which no one could prove, but very few dared to
dispute. There was the "magnified man" in the sky, the Infallible
Bible, dictated by the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the Fall, the
Atonement, Predestination and Grace, Justification by Faith, a
Chosen People, a practically omnipotent Devil, myriads of Evil
Spirits, an eternity of bliss to be obtained for nothing, and
endless torment for those who did not avail themselves of the
offer.
Now the house of cards has tumbled to pieces, or rather it is
slowly dissolving, as Shakespeare says, "like the baseless fabric
of a vision". The Biblical chronology, history, ethics, all are
alike found to be defective and doubtful. Divine Revelation has
become discredited; a Human Record takes its place. What has
brought about this startling change? The answer is, Knowledge.
Thought, research, criticism, have shown that the traditional
theories of the Bible can no longer be maintained. The logic of
facts has confirmed the reasonings of the independent thinker, and
placed the dogmatist in a dilemma which grows ever more acute. The
result is not pleasant for the believer; but it is well that the
real state of things should be known, that the kernel of truth
should be separated from the overgrown husk of tradition.
During the last few years a work has been issued which sums up the
conclusions of modern criticism better than any other book. It is called
the Encyclopedia Biblica, and its four volumes tersely and ably set
forth the new views, and support them by a mass of learning which
deserves serious consideration. And the most significant thing about it
is not merely that the entire doctrinal system of Christianity has
undergone a radical change, but that this change has largely been
brought about by Christian scholars themselves. A rapid glance at this
store-house of the heresy of such scholars will give the reader some
idea of the extent of the surrender which Christianity has made to the
forces of Rationalism. It must be premised that space will permit of the
conclusions only being given, without the detailed evidence by which
they are supported.
Let us begin with our supposed first parents. Is the story of Adam and
Eve a true story? There are, we are told, decisive reasons why we cannot
regard it as historical, and probably the writer himself never supposed
he was relating history.[K]
The Creation story originated in a stock of primitive myths common to
the Semitic races, and passed through a long period of development
before it was incorporated in the book of Genesis. If, then, it is the
fact, as Christian scholars assert, that this story of the Creation
originated in a pagan myth, and was shaped and altered by unknown hands
for nearly a thousand years, it is nothing more nor less than
superstition to hold that it is divinely true.
As for the Old Testament patriarchs, we now learn that their very
existence is uncertain. The tradition concerning Abraham is, as it
stands, inadmissible; he is not so much a historical personage as an
ideal type of character, whose actual existence is as doubtful as that
of other heroes. All the stories of the patriarchs are legendary.
The whole book of Genesis, in fact, is not history at all, as we
understand history. Exodus is another composite legend which has long
been mistaken for history.
The historical character of Moses has not been established, and it is
doubtful whether the name is that of an individual or that of a clan.
The story of his being exposed in an ark of bulrushes is a myth probably
derived from the similar and much earlier myth of Sargon.[L]
Turning to the New Testament, we find that modern critical research only
brings out more clearly than ever the extraordinary vagueness and
uncertainty which enshroud every detail of the narrative. From the
article on "Chronology" we learn that everything in the Gospels is too
uncertain to be accepted as historical fact. There are numerous
questions which it is "wholly impossible to decide". We do not know when
Jesus was born, or when he died, or who was his father, or what was the
duration of his ministry. As these are matters on which the Gospel
writers purport to give information, the fact of their failure to do so
settles the question of their competency as historians.
The supposed supernatural birth of Jesus has of late exercised the minds
of theologians. It is not surprising that some of them should reject the
notion, for it is one without a shred of evidence in its favor. Setting
aside the well-known fact that many other religions assume a similar
origin for their founders, we may note the New Testament accounts are in
such hopeless conflict with each other that reconciliation is
impossible.
The important subject of the "Resurrection" is treated by Professor P.
W. Schmiedel, of Zurich, who tells us that the Gospel accounts "exhibit
contradictions of the most glaring kind".
The article on the Gospels by Dr. E. A. Abbott and Professor Schmiedel
is crammed with criticism of a kind most damaging to every form of the
orthodox faith. The view hitherto current, that the four Gospels were
written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and appeared thirty or forty
years after the death of Jesus, can, it is stated, no longer be
maintained.
The alleged eclipse of the sun at the Crucifixion is impossible. One of
the orthodox shifts respecting this phenomenon is that it was an eclipse
of the moon!
Modern criticism decides that no confidence whatever can be placed in
the reliability of the Gospels as historical narratives, or in the
chronology of the events which they relate. It may even seem to justify
a doubt whether any credible elements at all are to be found in them.
Yet it is believed that some such credible elements do exist. Five
passages prove by their character that Jesus was a real person, and that
we have some trustworthy facts about him. These passages are: Matthew
xii. 31, Mark x. 17, Mark iii. 21, Mark xiii. 32, and Mark xv. 34, and
the corresponding passage in Matthew xxvii. 46, though these last two
are not found in Luke. Four other passages have a high degree of
probability--viz., Mark viii. 12, Mark vi. 5, Mark viii. 14-21, and
Matthew xi. 5, with the corresponding passage in Luke vii. 22. These
texts, however, disclose nothing of a supernatural character. They
merely prove that in Jesus we have to do with a completely human being,
and that the divine is to be sought in him only in the form in which it
is capable of being found in all men.[M]
The four Gospels were compiled from earlier materials which have
perished, and the dates when they first appeared in their present form
are given as follows:--Mark, certainly after the destruction of
Jerusalem in the year 70; Matthew, about 119 A. D.; Luke, between 100
and 110; and John, between 132 and 140.
The question of the genuineness of the Pauline Epistles, is now far from
being so clear as was once universally supposed. Advanced criticism,
Professor Van Manen tells us in his elaborate article on "Paul", has
learned to recognize that none of these Epistles are by him, not even
the four generally regarded as unassailable. They are not letters to
individuals, but books or pamphlets emanating from a particular school.
We know little, in reality, of the facts of Paul's life, or of his
death: all is uncertain. The unmistakable traces of late origin indicate
that the Epistles probably did not appear till the second century.
The strange book of Revelation is not of purely Christian origin.
Criticism has clearly shown that it can no longer be regarded as a
literary unit, but it is an admixture of Jewish with Christian ideas and
speculations. Ancient testimony, that of Papias in particular, assumed
the Presbyter John, and not the Apostle, as its author or redactor.
The Epistles of Peter, James and Jude are none of them held to be the
work of the Apostles. They probably first saw the light in the second
century; the second Epistle of Peter may even belong to the latter half
of that period.
All the above conclusions are summarized, as nearly as may be, in the
words of the authors of the respective articles. Their significance is
surely enormous. Right or wrong, eminent Christian scholars here
proclaim results in complete antagonism to the ideas usually accepted as
forming the true basis of the Christian faith. They amount, in fact, to
a complete and unconditional surrender of the whole dogmatic framework
which has hitherto been held as divinely revealed, and therefore
divinely true.
Thomas Paine was a Deist. As such he believed that nature may be
compared with a clock and God with its maker. As the clock maker, under
normal conditions, has but little to do with his handiwork, so it has
been with the Creator and his universe. The theists of every name
(Christian, Jew, Mohammedan and Buddhist), not to speak of others,
believe that the universe, with all which therein is, lives, moves and
has its being as the result of the willings of their respective gods.
Though I have my god, indeed two gods, one god in the world of my
physical existence--a trinity: matter, force and motion, and another god
in the world of my moral existence--a trinity: fact, truth and life, yet
if the rejection of both deism and theism is atheism, I am an atheist.
But assuming for the sake of argument that there is a conscious personal
being who has had and is having something to do with making things what
they are, I set my seal to this arraignment:
Of all the systems of religion that were ever invented, there is
none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more
repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this
thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to
convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart
torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of
power, it serves the purpose of despotism and as a means of wealth,
the avarice of priests; but for the good of mankind it leads to
nothing here or hereafter.
--Thomas Paine.
William Rathbone Greg in his Creed of Christendom says that much of the
Old Testament which Christian divines, in their ignorance of Jewish
lore, have insisted on receiving and interpreting literally, the
informed Rabbis never dreamed of regarding as anything but allegorical.
The literalists they called fools.
Origen and Augustine, the two greatest men which Christianity has
produced, would agree with Greg in this. We have already quoted the
motto of this section from Origen, and we will now quote this from
Augustine:
It very often happens that there is some question as to the earth
or the sky, or the other elements of this world, respecting which
one who is not a Christian has knowledge derived from most certain
reasoning or observation, and it is very disgraceful and
mischievous and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a
Christian, speaking of such matters as being according to the
Christian Scriptures, should be heard by an unbeliever talking such
nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving him to be as wide from the
mark as east from west, can hardly restrain himself from laughing.
FOOTNOTES:
[K] But if Adam and Eve are not historical personages there is no
doctrine of supernaturalistic Christianism resting on the solid ground
of facts and the whole of its immense dogmatic structure is floating in
the air of theories and myths.--Author.
[L] It is questionable whether such persons as Samson, Jonah and Daniel
ever lived, but it is certain that their adventures are as mythical as
anything in Aesop's Fables.--Author.
[M] But these nine texts which for some years were often triumphantly
pointed to as the pillars upon which securely rested the historicalness
of Jesus as a man are now lying in the dust where the learned and
brilliant Professor William Benjamin Smith of Tulane University put them
by his great contribution to the Christological problem in a book,
entitled Ecce Deus in which he, as I think, proves conclusively that the
Jesus of the New Testament never was a real man but always an imaginary
god, the Christian recasting of the Jewish God, a new Jehovah.--Author.
IV. WOULD SOCIALISM CHANGE HUMAN NATURE?
Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,
Or the priests of the bloody Faith:
They stand on the brink of that mighty river
Whose waves they have tainted with death,
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams and rages and swells,
And their swords and their scepters I floating see
Like wrecks in the surge of eternity.
--Shelley.
My revolt against the existing capitalist system of economics and the
capitalized political and religious systems which support it is
complete, and the end which I have in view in this booklet is that of
primitive Christianism, as it is taught by Mary in the Magnificat, the
putting down of the owning masters of the world and the exaltation of
the working slaves, only that I do not recommend, as she did, that the
masters should be banished to starve but rather that they should be
allowed to become producers and to live then as such, not as robbers, as
they now live.
This is bolshevism. It is not anarchy, but a new dictatorship instead of
the old, that of the proletariat in place of the bourgeoisie. But this
dictatorship (though necessary during the period of transition from the
capitalist system, by which commodities are made only for the profit of
a few to an industrial system by which they will be made only for use of
the many) is not the goal of socialism. Its goal is a classless world--a
world in which all who are able to work shall directly or at least
indirectly contribute their due proportion, according to their abilities
and opportunities, towards feeding, clothing, housing and educating it.
Perhaps the truest thing in the Bible relates to the utterly corrupt
condition of civilization, nor was it ever truer than now, and it always
must be equally true while the world is divided into master and slave
classes under the dictatorship of the masters:
The whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. From the sole of
the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but
wounds and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been
closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
Capitalism and Socialism differ fundamentally in that the former always
has sought and always will seek to exercise a permanent dictatorship,
whereas that of the latter is to constitute the temporary bridge over
which the world is to pass from the economic system under which
commodities are competitively made for the profit of the few, to the
economic system under which they will be co-operatively made for the use
of the many.
It is contended with much show of reason that the dictatorship of the
proletariat will not lead to the goal, because human nature being what
it is the slaves will automatically develop into another class of
masters.
But those who raise this contention proceed upon the assumption that
human nature is a constant quantity so that it cannot be essentially
changed and that it has made the economic systems, what they have been.
This is not the case. Human nature, like animal nature, is constantly
changing and neither the one nor the other voluntarily changes itself,
but both are forced to change by the development of new and external
conditions and by the necessity of conformity to them.
Professor Joseph McCabe, not a socialist, observes that these
developments and conformities were so many revolutions and that the man
who says, the secret of progress is evolution, not revolution, may be
talking very good social philosophy but he is not talking science, as he
thinks. In every modern geological work you read of periodical
revolutions in the story of the earth, and these are the great ages of
progress--and, I ought to add, of colossal annihilation of the less fit.
Darwin discovered that animal nature changed (for example snake nature
changed into bird nature) because of changed physical environments and
the necessity of life to adaptation to them.
Marx discovered that human nature changed from what it was during the
period of chatteldom to what it was during serfdom and from that to what
it is under capitalism by reason of the difference in the economic
systems of these periods by which the world fed, clothed and housed
itself and that these differences are in turn accounted for by the
differences in the machines by which the necessities of life are
produced.
Thus Darwin explained the history of animal life without the hypothesis
of a divine creator, and Marx explained the history of mankind without
the hypothesis either of a divine ruler or human leaders. These
Darwinian and Marxian explanations constitute what is known as the
materialistic explanation of history.
Marx represented that capitalism would end the class struggle and issue
in a classless world because its profiteering system of production and
distribution could not be succeeded by another, since it divides mankind
into masters who are ever growing less numerous and slaves who are ever
growing more numerous, without the possibility of those who are half
capitalists and half workers rising out of their nondescript condition
into a new master class, as did the bourgeoisie under feudalism. For
these reasons he contended the proletarian slaves would become the grave
diggers for the bourgeois masters and so end capitalism with the burial
of its representatives.
But with the complete and sustained triumph of the proletarian class the
bourgeois class will rapidly pass away, as is now the case with it in
Russia, and a classless world will be born to live on a co-operative
instead of a competitive basis, in a heaven instead of a hell.
V. WHAT WILL BE THE FORM OF THE WORKERS' STATE.
Hail Soviet Russia, the first Communist Republic, the land of, by
and for the common people. We greet you, workers and peasants of
Russia, who by your untold sacrifices, by your determination and
devotion, are transforming the Russia of black reaction, of the
domination of a few, into a land of glorious promise for all.
Comrades in America, watch the bright dawn in the East; you have
but your chains to lose, and a world to gain!--The Workers'
Council.
In general outline the form of the workers' state will be that of the
Russian Soviet Republic, and what it is will appear from the following
semi-official description, the briefest and clearest of any which I have
seen. Its authorship is unknown to me but I know it to be the work of a
committee of which Zinoviev, one of the directing and inspiring minds of
the proletarian movement in Russia, was a member, and it may be that he
is the author. Anyhow it is a recently published, authoritative classic
containing the information for which a large part of the world has been
waiting:
We have before us the example of the Russian Soviet Republic, whose
structure, in view of the conflicting reports printed in other
countries, it may be useful to describe briefly here.
The unit of government is the local Soviet, or Council, of
Workers', Red Army, and Peasants' Deputies.
The city Workers' Soviet is made up as follows: Each factory elects
one delegate for a certain number of workers, and each local union
also elects delegates. These delegates are elected according to
political parties--or, if the workers wish it, as individual
candidates.
The Red Army delegates are chosen by military units.
For the peasants, each village has its local Soviet, which sends
delegates to the Township Soviet, which in turn elects to the
County Soviet, and this to the Provincial Soviet.
Nobody who employs labor for profit can vote.
Every six months the City and Provincial Soviets elect delegates to
the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which is the supreme governing
body of the country. This Congress decides upon the policies which
are to govern the country for six months, and then elects a Central
Executive Committee of two hundred, which is to carry out these
policies. The Congress also elects the Cabinet--The Council of
People's Commissars, who are heads of Government Departments--or
People's Commissariats.
The People's Commissars can be recalled at any time by the Central
Executive Committee. The members of all Soviets can be recalled
very easily, and at any time, by their constituents.
These Soviets are not only Legislative bodies, but also Executive
organs. Unlike your Congress, they do not make the laws and leave
them to the President to carry out, but the members carry out the
laws themselves; and there is no Supreme Court to say whether or
not these laws are "constitutional."
Between the All-Russian Congresses of Soviets the Central Executive
Committee is the supreme power in Russia. It meets at least every
two months, and in the meanwhile, the Council of People's
Commissars directs the country, while the members of the Central
Executive Committee go to work in the various government
departments.
In Russia the workers are organized in Industrial Unions all the
workers in each industry belonging to one Union. For example, in a
factory making metal products, even the carpenters and painters are
members of the Metal Workers' Union. Each factory is a local
Union, and the Shop Committee elected by the workers is its
Executive Committee.
The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the federated Unions
is elected by the annual Trade Union Convention. A Scale Committee
elected by the Convention fixes the wages of all categories of
workers.
With very few exceptions, all important factories in Russia have
been nationalized, and are now the property of all the workers in
common. The business of the Unions is therefore no longer to fight
the capitalists, but to run industry.
Hand in hand with the Unions works the Department of Labor of the
Soviet Government, whose chief is the People's Commissar of Labor,
elected by the Soviet Congress with the approval of the Unions.
In charge of the economic life of the country is the elected
Supreme Council of People's Economy, divided into departments, such
as, Metal Department, Chemical Department, etc., each one headed by
experts and workers, appointed, with the approval of the Union by
the Supreme Council of People's Economy.
In each factory production is carried on by a committee consisting
of three members: a representative of the Shop Committee of the
Unions, a representative of the Central Executive of the Unions,
and a representative of the Supreme Council of People's Economy.
The Unions are thus a branch of the government--and this government
is the most highly centralized government that exists.
It is also the most democratic government in history. For all the
organs of government are in constant touch with the working masses,
and constantly sensitive to their will. Moreover, the local Soviets
all over Russia have complete autonomy to manage their own local
affairs, provided they carry out the national policies laid down by
the Soviet Congress. Also, the Soviet Government represents only
the workers, and cannot help but act in the workers' interests.
The motto of this section is the conclusion of a good article in the
first number of one among the best of the periodicals devoted to the
promotion of Marxism, The Workers' Council, published by the
International Educational Company, New York City. This article is so
short and lends itself so naturally as a supplement to the foregoing
explanation of the new economic system which has been established and is
being developed in Russia that I quote the rest as the conclusion of
this section about Sovietism.
Communist Russia, the Russia of the common people, marks a new
epoch in the world's history. It marks a basic change in the
structure of human society. Up to this time society lived under the
rule of the few, under the rule of the class which possessed the
wealth of the country. The methods were different at different
periods in the world's history, but the results were the same:
riches and power for the few, a bare existence and endless toil for
the many. The slaves, the serfs, or the wage workers of today, who
compose the masses of the people, have ever been the hewers of wood
and the carriers of water, the beasts of burden on whose backs
sported and fattened kings and nobles, landlords and capitalists.
They who possessed wealth had the power. And they passed laws to
protect that power, to make the possession of wealth a social
institution. Private property was enthroned and every striving of
mankind was subjected to the rule of property. Thence grew the
exploitation of man by man for private profit, and all abuses
resulting therefrom; fear of loss of property, care of possession,
dread of the future, fear of loss of employment, envy and greed.
Human society was ruled by property grabbers; masters, kings,
capitalists, providing toil, disease, war for the masses of
mankind. That is the rule of capitalism, and cannot be otherwise.
But under communism, profit is abolished, and with it the exploitation
of man by man; private property is no longer a factor in the life of
man; property becomes universal, all natural and created wealth belong
to society, to every member of the community, as secure a birth right as
air and sunlight. Everybody's measured work provides a common fund of
things to satisfy material needs, today, tomorrow and in years to come.
There can be no fear of losing one's job, of seeing one's children
starve, of the poor-house in old age. As sure as the sun will rise on
the morrow, man is secure of his bread, his shelter and clothing. Man is
freed from animal cares, free to develop his human qualities, his
intelligence, his brain and heart.
Russia points the way. Russia is now one huge corporation, every man,
woman and child an equal shareholder. The state is administered as a
business; the benefit of the stockholders being the object of the
corporation. The individual contributes his labor, whatever it may be:
manual, mental, artistic. This labor is applied to available materials:
the soil of the farm, the natural resources, the mines, and mills and
factories. The finished product is distributed through the agencies of
the corporation, in the shape of food and clothes and shelter, of
education and amusement, of protection to life and limb, of literature
and art, of inventions and improvements: to every man, woman and child
of the nation.
To be sure this ideal of a human brotherhood is not yet realized in
Russia. No sane person would expect so tremendous a change to be
consummated in three years, in the face of universal aggression,
intrigues and blockades. It may take ten years, perhaps a generation.
What of it! Russia is past the most difficult period of transition from
the capitalist state to a communist state, while other capitalist
countries must still face the period of revolution. Therefore let Russia
lead the way. Let the American workers realize that Russia's fight is
their fight, that Soviet Russia's success is the success of the laboring
people the world over!
Have you ever been to Crazy Land,[N]
Down on the Looney Pike?
There are the queerest people there--
You never saw the like!
The ones that do the useful work
Are poor as poor can be,
And those who do no useful work
All live in luxury.
They raise so much in Crazy Land
Of food and clothes and such,
That those who work don't have enough
Because they raise too much.
They're wrong side to in Crazy Land,
They're upside down with care--
They walk around upon their heads,
With feet up in the air.
--T.
VI. WITHDRAWAL OF PRIZE OFFER.
Never have anything to do with those who pretend to have dealings
with the supernatural. If you allow supernaturalism to get a
foothold in your country the result will be a dreadful
calamity.--Confucius.
Mrs. Brown and I hereby withdraw, for the present at least, our prize
offer, and for two reasons:
1. We are convinced that it is as necessary to the welfare of the world
to smite supernaturalism in religion as capitalism in politics, but
while many are able and willing to attack the octopus of capitalism,
this is true of only a few in the case of the dragon of supernaturalism.
Some hesitate because they feel with one of the critics of Communism and
Christianism that revolutionary forces are coming to the surface in the
churches.
"Where," he asks, "shall we classify the stand of the Catholic Church
against the open shop? What shall be said of the Interchurch report on
the steel strike? What of the attitude of the combined commission in
Denver of Catholics, Protestants and Jews on the street car strike?"
We have no desire to belittle such efforts nor to discourage their
promoters; but (though they may afford some local and temporary
alleviation to the miseries of far the greater part of the
world--miseries growing out of its division into two classes, a small
class of owning masters and a large class of working slaves) we center
no hope in them, because the whole history of the supernaturalistic
interpretations of religion, not excepting the Christian, show these
efforts to be only reformatory and temporary bubbles which sooner or
later are always pricked by the masters of what little revolutionary air
they contain, and so never issue in any general or permanent improvement
of the sad lot of the overwhelming majority of the slaves.
How little the church serves the working slaves, and how much the owning
masters, will appear from the following representations of Roger W.
Babson, the well-known financial expert and adviser:
The value of our investments depends not on the strength of our
banks, but rather upon the strength of our churches. The underpaid
preachers of the nation are the men upon whom we really are
depending, rather than the well-paid lawyers, bankers and brokers.
The religion of the community is really the bulwark of our
investments. And when we consider that only 15 per cent of the
people hold securities of any kind and less than 3 per cent hold
enough to pay an income tax, the importance of the churches becomes
even more evident.
For our sakes, for our children's sakes, for the nation's sake, let
us business men get behind the churches and their preachers. Never
mind if they are not perfect. Never mind if their theology is out
of date. This only means that were they efficient they would do
very much more. The safety of all we have is due to the churches,
even in their present inefficient and inactive state. By all that
we hold dear, let us from this very day give more time, money and
thought to the churches, for upon these the value of all we own
ultimately depends.
What our critics say about the recent efforts of the American churches
being in the right direction is interesting to Mrs. Brown and me, but we
are much more impressed by the observation of a writer in a late issue
of Soviet Russia. In speaking of the baneful influence of the Russian
church through all the ages he says:
Out of the shadows of antiquity, from the morning of man's cupidity
and avarice, two sinister figures have crawled with crooked talons
through history, leaving a trail of blood and fear most horrible
which has not halted yet. These are the monarch and the priest. The
one is symbolical of despotic or oligarchic power, the other
typifies the sordid ignorance and fearful superstition of the
credulous masses which maintains the power of the first. High in
the streets of Moscow, where one may see the pallid, long-haired,
degenerate-looking venders of holy lies and pious impositions
shuffle along like spectres from a remoter age, there hangs a woven
streamer of scarlet hue with huge white lettering, which defiantly
proclaims that religion is the opium of the people.
Though many still cross themselves a score of times daily on
passing the church, yet nevertheless the people are rapidly
assimilating the knowledge which elevates and enlightens, and
learning to reject that which terrorizes and deforms the mind, and
just so sure as the last filthy tyrant has been placed for ever
beyond mischief, so will the last priest soon vanish from the land
once contemptuously known as "Holy Russia".
The foregoing is from a revolutionary sympathizer with soviet Russia and
the following is from a reactionary criticizer of it, but both are to
the same effect, that orthodox Christianity is wholly against the
interest of the proletariat and entirely for that of the bourgeoisie:
One of the most striking characteristics of Bolshevism is its
pronounced hatred of religion, and of Christianity most of all. To
the Bolshevik, Christianity is not merely the theory of a mode of
life different from his own; it is an enemy to be persecuted and
wiped out of existence.
To understand this is not difficult. The tendency of the Christian
religion to hold before the believer an ideal of a life beyond
death is diametrically opposed to the ideal of Bolshevism, which
tempts the masses by promising the immediate realization of the
earthly paradise. From that point of view Christianity is not only
a false conception of life; it is an obstacle to the realization of
the Communist ideal. It detaches souls from the objects of sense
and diverts them from the struggle to get the good things of this
life. According to the Bolshevist formula, religion is opium for
the people: and serves as a tool of capitalist domination.
This influence of the churches, in the long run and on the whole has
been and will continue to be the same throughout christendom everywhere
and everywhen, not excepting these United States in the twentieth
century.
Nor is it to any convincing purpose that the representatives of the
owning class contend that kings and priests have lost their supremacy to
presidents and preachers, for it is imperialism in politics which
enthralls and supernaturalism in religion which degrades. The world is
greatly afflicted with both, none of it much, if any, more than our
country.
It seems to us that we see two fundamentally important facts more
clearly than our critics see them: (1) the first step in the way of
salvation for the proletariat is class consciousness, and (2) the
Christian interpretation of supernaturalistic religion has been, and
until it is discredited will continue to be the most efficient among the
many preventives to this consciousness.
Let me show this to be the case by an experience which I had some years
ago when Mr. Pierpont Morgan, Senior, was at the height of his glory, as
the king of the great realm of big business, receiving homage on the one
hand from the Rockefellers and Rothschilds, and on the other hand from
the Blockheads and Henry Dubbs of all the world.
At that time I made a confirmation visitation for my sick episcopal
brother, the Bishop of New York, to what was popularly known as Pierpont
Morgan's church (St. George's, one of the downtown churches for working
people.) He was the senior warden of this great parish having nearly
5,000 communicants. He went with the collecting procession out through
the great congregation and back to the chancel where each collector
ceremoniously emptied the contents of his basket into the great gold
alms basin held by the Rector.
While the famous financier was collecting contributions from obscure
toilers, how could any, brought up as I was and as nearly all of the
great congregation were, see that capitalism has divided humanity into
two conflicting classes which "have nothing in common, the working class
and the employing class, between which a struggle must go on until the
workers organize, take possession of the earth and the machinery of
production and abolish the wage system!"
By the light of what I had been taught all along and of what I was then
seeing with my own eyes from the bishop's chair such a representation
would have seemed preposterous and what was true of me was equally so of
all present, rector, wardens, vestrymen, members and visitors.
There were not many I. W. W.'s. in those days, but if one had been there
and upon leaving the church had made a representation to this effect to
a fellow-worker who was a member of St. George's would not the reply
have been something as follows:
See what Pierpont Morgan and I have in common: the same God; the same
religion; the same church; the same services for worship; the same
collection basket in which he puts a $100.00 bill and I a ten cent
piece; the same Lord's Supper where we eat and drink together; and,
besides all this, there is the same hell where he will go unless he
gives me a fair day's wage and where I will go unless I do a fair day's
work, and the same heaven where both will go to equally glorious
mansions, if we are alike 100 percenters in church and state, and if he
pays me liberally for my work and I slave hard enough for his money.
Assuming the truth of the Christian interpretation of religion this
conclusion is correct. But this Christian religion is not true.
Christianism offers nothing to either the owners or workers in the sky
for its god and heaven, devil and hell are lies. And neither religious
Christianism nor political Republicanism or Democracy, not to speak of
the other isms of religion and politics, offers the workers aught on
earth.
Capitalism is the god of this world, of no part of it more than of these
United States, and capitalism is to the laborer a robbing, lying,
murderous devil, not a good divinity.
2. The recall of the prize offer is also occasioned and justified, we
think, by a demand, which was as unexpected as it is gratifying, for our
little propagandist in foreign countries, and we have been persuaded
that it should be met by securing to him the gift of tongues. We propose
to do this by devoting the money which was set aside for the prizes to
the encouragement of making and publishing translations.
FOOTNOTES:
[N] The capitalist countries of the world constitute the United States
of Crazy Lands.
VII. AFTERWORD.
"So many Gods, so many Creeds,
So many ways that wind and wind,
When all this sad world really needs
Is just the art of being kind."
--Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
I.
My title, given in Latin on the picture page, is bestowed upon me by
some in jest and by others in reproach, and I am accepting it from both
as compliments, because they prove that I have at least succeeded in
making clear the general outlines of my religious and political
position.
The use of this title is due to the desire that those who pick up the
booklet should not buy it, much less undertake to read it, under a
mistaken impression as to its doctrinal trends. In English the Latin
title is, "Bishop of the Countries belonging to the Bolsheviki and the
Infidels."
Certain friends greatly fear that some things said in this booklet may
fall foul of the criminal-syndicalism laws. I have carefully read those
of Ohio and believe that the booklet contains nothing which is not
safely within them.
Anyhow, I have spoken the truth about supernaturalistic religion and
capitalistic politics as I understand it, and I believe that I have
adequately supported all my representations on bases of relevant facts
which cannot be gainsaid or, at any rate, upon sound arguments which
have such facts for their foundations.
However, I am trying to hold myself open to conviction; and, this being
the case, if "the powers that be" in state or church feel that they must
proceed against me, I beg that, in justice to all the persons and
interests concerned, they will come with their resources of persuasion,
not coercion.
My appeal to the religious and political rulers to do this shall be in
the burning words of a celebrated defender of the capitalistic system of
economics, John Stuart Mill, words which constitute the most remarkable
passage in his powerful essay on Liberty:
No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting
a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the
people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines
or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear.
Speaking generally, it is not, in constitutional countries, to be
apprehended, that the government, whether completely responsible to
the people or not, will often attempt to control the expression of
opinion, except when in doing so it makes itself the organ of the
general intolerance of the public.
Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one
with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion
unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice.
But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion,
either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is
illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the
worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in
accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it.
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person
were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in
silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be
justified in silencing mankind.
Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the
owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a
private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury
was inflicted on only a few persons or on many. But the peculiar
evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is
robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing
generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than
those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of
the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose,
what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and
livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
This passage should be inscribed in letters of gold on the doors of
every church and court house in the world. It was written in
condemnation of the persecution by majorities of minorities in states,
but it applies equally to all intolerance of dissentient opinions.
It is utterly impossible in a printed discussion of the length of this
booklet to weed out every word capable of misconstruction; and equally
so to furnish a definition or limitation to every doubtful word or
phrase. Nevertheless I call attention to a few:
The word "revolution" as used here should not be taken as implying armed
insurrection or violence, unless expressly so described. These are not
necessary features of revolution. There have been both political and
industrial revolutions entirely unattended by violence or bloodshed; for
example, the political revolution of 1787 when the old Articles of
Confederation were abolished and the federal Constitution imposed upon
the United States; also the political and industrial revolution of 1919
in Hungary when for a time a soviet system was established, with Bela
Kun as premier.
The bloodshed which often attends revolutions comes almost invariably
from the lawless counter-revolutionary efforts of the deposed ruling
class to maintain themselves in power or regain power by terrorism and
murder.
When I eulogize the Bolsheviki and their system in Russia, I am not to
be taken as advocating for the United States the employment of the
bloody tactics for gaining power, which the capitalist press of America
persists in describing--and as I believe, falsely. I deal in this
booklet not with tactics but with facts. I concern myself here not with
the ways by which the Bolsheviki of Russia gained power, but with what
they did with the power after gaining it.
As I was trained in theology, I am certain that my religious position
has been so clearly outlined that no mistake as to where I stand will be
made by the rulers in my church; but, having had no training in the law,
I am less certain that my political position will be as unmistakably
understood by the rulers in my state. Therefore, to avoid
misinterpretation of certain words and phrases in this booklet, I here
expressly disclaim any intention of violating the criminal-syndicalism
statute of Ohio, following as closely as may be its phraseology in these
my denials of criminal intention:
Nothing herein is to be understood as advocating or teaching the
duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence or
unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing
industrial or political reform. This booklet is not issued for the
purpose of advocating, advising, or teaching the doctrine that
industrial or political reform should be brought about by crime,
sabotage, violence or unlawful methods of terrorism; nor of
justifying the commission or the attempt to commit crime, sabotage,
violence or unlawful methods of terrorism with intent to exemplify,
spread or advocate the propriety of the doctrines of criminal
syndicalism; nor of organizing any society, group or assemblage of
persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal
syndicalism. If any such meaning shall be read into any passage of
this booklet by any reader, it will be a wrong meaning, not what I
intended to convey.
A revolution by which a new industrial democracy--the freedom to make
things for the use of workers--will supplant the old capitalist
democracy--the freedom to make things for the profit of owners--is an
inevitable event in the history of every country within the twentieth
century.
II.
My object in this booklet is not the promotion of class hatred and
strife. Far from it. It is to persuade to the banishment of gods from
skies and capitalists from earth.
Theism and capitalism are the great blights upon mankind, the fatal ones
to which it owes, more than to all others together, the greatest and
most unnecessary of its suffering, those arising from ignorance, war,
poverty and slavery.
This recommendation as to banishments and this representation in support
of it stand out on nearly every page of the booklet, and in order to
make sure of special prominence for them on its last pages, I quote the
following from an article by G. O. Warren (a major in the British army,
I think) an occasional contributor of brilliant articles to rationalist
publications on sociological lines:
If there be a God who rules men and things by His arbitrary will,
it is an impertinence to attempt to abolish poverty, because it is
according to His will. But if there be no such God, then we know
that poverty is caused by men and may be removed by men. If there
be a God who answers prayers, the remedy for social injustice is to
pray. But if there be no such God, the remedy is to think and act.
If men go to heaven when they die, and if heaven is a place in
which everybody will be made perfectly happy, then there is no need
to struggle against poverty in this world, because a few years of
trouble, or even degradation, in this world are of no consequence
when compared with an eternity of happiness that must be ours by
simply following the directions of the clergy. But if there be no
such heaven, then it becomes a matter of first importance that we
make our condition as happy as possible in this world, which is the
only one of which we are certain.
I maintain that there is no God who rules men and things by His
arbitrary will and who answers prayers, and that there is no heaven
of everlasting bliss to which we are to be wafted after death. And
I maintain this not only because I think that these religious
beliefs are erroneous, but because I know that they are most potent
to make men docile and submissive to the most degrading conditions
imposed on them. I feel sure that the doctrine that obedience to
rulers and contentment in poverty are according to the will of God,
and the doctrine that the poor and the oppressed will be
compensated in heaven are the chief causes of slums, prisons,
lunatic asylums and poor-houses.
All political tyranny is backed up and made possible by belief in
an arbitrary God, and all poverty is endured because of the belief
that after death everlasting happiness and wealth await us. Two
conditions are necessary to human happiness: personal freedom and
general wealth. But we never can be free as long as we believe that
it is the will of an infinite heavenly ruler that we should submit
to a finite earthly ruler, whether he gets upon the throne by
hereditary succession or by the votes of a majority; and wealth
will never be justly, and therefore, generally, distributed as long
as most of the people believe that because they are poor in this
world they will be rich in the world to come.
The apostle Paul says that political rulers are ordained by God and
must be obeyed, from the King to the constable, from the President
to the policeman. He says that if you are refractory, "the
minister of God" will use his sword, and will not use it "in vain."
He says that the sword-bearer is God's minister.
Christ himself recites a parable about a rich man who went to hell
because he was rich and a poor man who went to heaven because he
was poor. Rich Christians are told by the clergy that the surest
way for them to get to heaven is by being rich; but they use this
parable to console the poor with the idea that the surest way for
them to get to heaven is by being poor. And this idea is confirmed
by the saying of Christ: 'Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.'
I claim that it is impossible to prove that any being exists who
can do, or ever does, anything outside of the regular processes of
Nature, and therefore that the word "God," which has always meant
such a being, should be dropped. I would have no objection to the
current use of the word "God" if that use were harmless, but it is
very far from that. It is a word that every despot conjures with to
keep the people in ignorance and subjection. It is a word that
crafty politicians use in carrying out their schemes of bribery and
plunder.
The same thing applies to the word "heaven." It is impossible to
show that there is any such place, and the word is used as a bribe
to the poor to keep them quiet under injustice. I do not see how
there can be a life after death, but if there is it will not be any
better because we are poor and undeveloped in this world, and
therefore immortality should be a reason rather for discontentment
among the poor than for submission to injustice.
As an atheist, I object to a God who is for every tyrannical ruler
and against the rebels that he imprisons, tortures and slays; who
is for the idle landlord and usurer and against the workers; who is
for the purse-proud prelate and against the people; who is for the
boodle politician and against the happiness of the many; who is
for the white exploiter and against the simple colored man; who is
for the rich profiteer and against the petty burglar and
pickpocket.
If I am told there is no such God as this, I reply that there is,
or there is none. The God of every Christian creed is the God of
the rulers, the God of the idle rich. There never has been any
other God known to the world. This is the God that the church now
worships and always has worshiped.
There are forces in Nature that we do not yet understand, and
therefore should not name. But they can only help us as we learn
what they are and how to use them. It is therefore neither our duty
nor our privilege to pray, nor can any good be thus achieved. It is
for us to observe, to think, and to examine the pretensions of the
privileged. It is for us to understand that there is no God to
raise our wages, and no heaven to compensate us for our poverty and
all the misery it entails in this world.
"Said the parson, 'Be content;
Pay your tithes due, pay your rent;
They that earthly things despise
Shall have mansions in the skies,
Though your back with toil be bent,'
Said the parson, 'be content.'
"Then the parson feasting went
With my lord who lives by rent;
And the parson laughed elate
For my lord has livings great,
They that earthly things revere
May get bishop's mansions here.
"Be content! Be content!
Till your dreary life is spent,
Lowly live and lowly die,
All for mansions in the sky!
Castles here are much too rare,
All may have them--in the air!"
III.
According to Marxian socialism, the history of man arose from the need
of his body for food, raiment and shelter. This is the materialistic
explanation of history, and the following is one of the passages in
which Marx clearly shows that it is true and reasonable:
In the social production which men carry on they enter into
definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their
will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage
of development of their material powers of production. The sum
total of these relations of production constitutes the economic
structure of society--the real foundations, on which rise legal and
political superstructures and which correspond to definite forms of
social consciousness. The mode of production in material life
determines the general character of the social, political and
spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men
that determines their existence but, on the contrary, their social
existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of
their development, the material forces of production in society
come in conflict with the existing relations of production,
or--what is but a legal expression for the same thing--with the
property relations within which they had been at work before. From
forms of development of the forces of production these relations
turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social
revolution.
Marx and his followers are justified in their contention that the
physical necessities of man (not gods or great men) constitute the key
to his history by the fact that there was no mind of man before the
human body nor will there be any mind when the body has been
disintegrated; for the mind was made by the body, for the body, not the
body by the mind, for the mind. This very remarkable fact, when duly
considered, will change nearly all the ideas of most men and women about
almost everything.
A leader is but a mouthpiece of a people through which they give
expression to their deepest convictions and highest aspirations. Early
in my life Lincoln was the great leader of the people in the United
States, and late in it Lenin is the great leader of the people of the
world. The earlier of these was at least a rationalist and the latter is
an atheist, so that the first probably did not suppose himself to have
been inspired by a divinity, and the second certainly does not.
I claim, said Lincoln, not to have controlled events, but confess
plainly that events have controlled me.
In Lenin's Birthday Anniversary number of the magazine, Soviet Russia,
the Editor says:
At the very outset, we must clearly state that much of Lenin's
powerful position in present-day history is made by the history
itself,--by the fact that we are living at the moment when the
entire life of the race is vindicating in a most emphatic manner
the theoretical position occupied by Lenin for many years. After
all, Lenin, like Trotsky, was an unknown man, except to certain
political circles, and the mass of Russian revolutionists, even as
late as 1916. And yet, he was the same Lenin; had not the
opportunity come to put into practice the system for which he and
his associates had been laboring and suffering for many years, no
doubt the circle of his admirers and readers would not be much
wider in 1920 than it was in 1916. Lenin would probably be the
first to admit--nay, insist--that the material circumstance that
enables a certain individual to assert himself is the prime element
in building his reputation. So that, if the Russian Revolution had
not taken the course it did take, Lenin, with exactly the same
mental and idealogical preparation, might have remained a
relatively unknown man.
Those who on the one hand interpret life from the naturalistic or
materialistic point of view, and those who on the other hand interpret
it from the supernaturalistic viewpoint need not and generally do not
differ as widely as is commonly supposed.
Materialism is the name for two totally different things, which are
constantly confused. There is, in the first place, materialism as a
theory of the universe--the theory that matter is the source and
the substance of all things. That is (if you associate "force" or
"energy" or "motion" with your "matter," as every materialist does)
a perfectly arguable theory. It has not the remotest connection
with the amount of wine a man drinks or the integrity of his life.
But we also give the name of materialism to a certain disposition
of the sentiments, which few of us admire, and which would kill the
root of progress if it became general. It is the disposition to
despise ideals and higher thought, to confine one's desires to
selfish and sensual pleasure and material advancement. There is no
connection between this materialism of the heart and that of the
head.
For whole centuries of Christian history whole nations believed
abundantly in spirits without it having the least influence on
their morals; and, on the other hand, materialists like Ludwig
Buchner, or Vogt, or Moleschott, were idealists (in the moral
sense) of the highest order. Look around you and see whether the
belief or non-belief (for the Agnostic is in the same predicament
here) in spirit is a dividing-line in conduct. There is no ground
in fact for the confusion, and it has wrought infinite
mischief.--McCabe.
As to their philosophy concerning the origin, sustenance and governance
of the universe, communists are almost to a man materialists; but, as to
their philosophy concerning life, they are as generally idealists. There
is, I feel sure, as much idealism in my thinking and living now as there
was in the days of my orthodoxy.
Many of the representations of the Jewish-Christian Bible are
materialistic in a high, if not gross, degree. This is true of the
account of the creation according to which the god, Jehovah, with hands
moulded a man out of dust; performed a surgical operation upon him for
the purpose of securing a rib out of which he carved a woman; made a
garden; and provided worship for himself by a system of material
sacrifices. The ark of the covenant was a wooden chest, and its contents
(a pot, some manna, and Aaron's rod) were materialities.
The conception, birth, death, descension, resurrection, ascension and
session of the god, Jesus, were (if they occurred) material realities.
And the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of the god sounds
like materialism, especially according to the explanation of the Greek,
Roman, Lutheran and Anglican churches.
IV.
A nutshell summary of this booklet is contained in these confessions of
my religious and political faith:
I. My religious faith is summed up in the following creed of twelve
Articles:
(1) The chief end of every man should be to make the most of his own
life by having it as long and as happy as possible and to help others in
doing this for themselves.
(2) Though parents live unconsciously in their children and all do so in
those over whom they have had any influence, yet all there is of
conscious, personal life for man is of a terrestrial character, none
celestial.
(3) Knowledge is the Christ of the World. The saviour-gods of the
supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are symbols of this one.
(4) Ignorance is the devil of the world. The destroyer-gods of the
supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are symbols of this one.
(5) Knowledge consists in knowing facts and truths. Every real fact and
truth is a word of the only gospel which the world possesses.
(6) A fact is something which matter, force and motion have
unconsciously done, not what a god has consciously willed. There are no
other facts.
(7) A truth is a fact so interpreted that if it is lived it will
contribute towards making the most of life. There are no other truths.
(8) Hence the greatest people in the world are the scientists who
discover facts, and the preachers who interpret them and persuade to
their living. If you contend that mothers are greater than teachers, I
shall agree with you on condition that you will admit that a mother is
not really great unless she is a teacher.
(9) The desire and effort to learn facts, interpret and live them
constitute morality.
(10) Morality is the greatest thing in the world, because it is all
there is of real religion and politics.
(11) But, paradoxical as it may seem, there is one thing which is
greater than the greatest thing in the world--freedom.
(12) And the freedom which is greater than morality consists in the
liberty to learn, interpret, live and teach facts, without which liberty
a man may be a non-moral child, or an immoral hypocrite, but he cannot
be the possessor of the pearl of great price--morality, without which
human life is not worth the living or even possible.
II. My political faith is summed up in the following creed of twelve
articles:
(1) As the universe in general is self-existing, self-sustaining and
self-governing, so man in particular, who is but one among the
transitory, cosmic phenomena, has all of the potentialities of his own
life within himself, so that every man can say of himself what the
makers of Jesus had him say: I and my Father are one.
(2) Man has set a far-off and high-up goal of an ideal civilization for
himself, and is finding the way to it by his own discoveries, and is
walking therein by his own strength, so that he is not in the least
indebted to any of the gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of
religion, either for the setting of the goal, or for what progress he
has made towards it.
(3) Nor is humanity indebted to its outstanding representatives for the
advance in the way of civilization, as is evident from the fact that,
but for the gods, it would have long since been far beyond the point
where the English-German war would have been within the range of
possibilities, and these gods are the gifts to a blind humanity by its
blind leaders.
(4) Humanity is not indebted to its physical scientists any more than to
its spiritual prophets for its advance in the way of civilization,
because the scientists have always worked, as the prophets have
preached, in the interests of the profiteers of the existing system of
economics. Economic systems have been the chief, if not indeed, the only
promoters of war, and the world war with its tremendous horrors would
not have been possible but for science.
(5) So, then, the history of civilization has been what it is because of
the economic systems by which the material necessities of life (foods,
raiments and houses) have been produced, not because gods have made
spiritual revelations, nor yet because men have made great discoveries
and persuasively taught them. According to Marx, who discovered the key
to the door of history, it is constituted neither by the gods in the
skies, nor the great men on earth; but by economic systems. These create
the divinities and the leaders, not they them.
(6) Thus far in the history of mankind every civilization has rested
upon the institution of slavery and there have been, speaking broadly,
three different forms of it, with their correspondingly different
civilizations, chattel, feudal and capital. Each of these forms of
slavery has been the foundation for a superstructure of a civilization
peculiar to a distinct period of history. Chattel, feudal and capital
slaveries respectively constituted the foundations for the
superstructures of ancient, mediaeval and modern civilizations. The
second of the two great discoveries by Marx was that the wage slavery of
capitalism, by far the worst of all slaveries, is due to surplus
profits.
(7) Since civilizations have their embodiments in religious and
political institutions (churches and states with what goes with them) so
clearly as to justify the contention that religion and politics are the
halves of one and the same reality--civilization--it follows that I am
right in carrying my materialism over from the realm of religion into
that of politics.
(8) A system of economics is about the most materialistic thing in the
world, yet it is the only key which will open the door to the temple of
human history. Having opened it with this key, the first thing to be
seen is a world divided into two classes, one class whose
representatives live by owning the material means and the machines for
production and distribution; and another class whose representatives
live by working in making and operating these machines, with the result
of producing and distributing the material commodities by which the
world is fed, clothed and housed, but to the surfeiting of the owners
who as such produce nothing and have everything and the starving of the
workers who produce everything and have nothing.
(9) Capitalists and communists agree that when the goal of humanity has
been reached the world will find itself to be one all inclusive
co-operating family.
(10) Capitalists say that then the co-operating will be between the
owners as fathers, and the workers as children. The capitalists will
recognize every laborer who does a fair day's work as a good son or
daughter, and the laborer will recognize every owner who gives a fair
day's wage as a good father.
(11) But communists say that then the co-operating will be between men,
all of whom are on the same footing as laborers, since, when the goal is
reached, the world will no longer be divided as it has been, from time
out of mind, into a small owning or master class and a large working or
slave class; but it will constitute one great all inclusive family,
every member of which will be on the same footing with all others,
except that the older members will regard the younger as sons and
daughters, and they in turn will be regarded as fathers and mothers, and
all of the same generation will look upon each other as brothers and
sisters.
(12) Civilization always has been and ever will be impossible without
slavery, because leisure and opportunity for study, social intercourse
and travel are necessary to it, but under capitalism, as it works out,
only representatives of the owning or master class have these
prerequisites, and those of the working or slave class must be deprived
of them. When communism supplants capitalism all will have their equal
parts in both the labor necessary to the sustenance of the physical
(body) life, and also the leisure necessary to the development of the
psychical (soul) life. There will still be slavery, indeed much more of
it than the world has hitherto known, but machines, not men, women and
children will be the slaves. Of course there will remain much work
connected with the making and operating of the machines, but the time
and energy required for it will more and more decrease with the
inevitable increase in the number and efficiency of the machines until,
according to conservative estimates, three or four hours per day of
comparatively light and pleasant employment will be quite sufficient to
provide the necessities of life in abundance for every worker and his
dependents, so that, then, all will have as much of them as the few have
now; and this without any sense of slavery because when one is working
for the benefit of himself and his own in particular, and the public to
which he belongs in general, not for the profit of a class of which he
is not a representative, there is no feeling of irksome servitude.
V.
A world-wide revolution has begun and is rapidly spreading over the
earth. Why? Because a world-wide economic system for feeding, clothing
and housing the people has broken down so that it must be supplanted by
a new system, else mankind will perish for the lack of food, raiment and
shelter.
This revolutionary war is between the working class whose
representatives live starvingly, though they produce and distribute all
the necessities of life and the capitalist class whose representatives
live surfeitingly, though taking no part in the production and
distribution of these necessities.
Nearly one hundred years ago our fourth President, James Madison, saw
partly and dimly what nearly every one now sees fully and clearly:
We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our
Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility
because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A
republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when that day comes, when
the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we
must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to
readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.
The laborers of Russia have turned the country right side up so that
they themselves are above and the capitalists below, having the
privilege of remaining down to idle and starve or else to crawl up to
work and live, but not to rob, war and enslave.
As I lay down my pen the working man's government of Russia is fighting
a double war, the Poland-Crimea war, to prevent its overthrow by the
capitalist governments of the world, especially England, France, Japan
and the United States, which in this war are surreptitiously
confederated against it, and the victory seems assured to it, largely
because of the sympathy and help of their fellow workers throughout the
world.
Marx though dead yet speaketh. He is speaking more widely and
persuasively in death than in life. Russia is the megaphone from which
his voice goes out through every land and over every sea.
Never man nor god spake with as much power as he speaks. His gospel is
to the slave, and this is its thrilling appeal--workers of the world
unite, and this is its inspiring assurance--you have nothing to lose but
your chains and a world to gain.
WM. M. BROWN.
Brownella Cottage, Galion, Ohio.
September 24th, 1920.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The typographical error "overwhelmlingly" was changed to
"overwhelmingly." All other spelling, capitalization, and
punctuation was retained.
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