Communism and Christianism. Brown William Montgomery
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.
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.
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
FOREWORD3
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.
COMMUNISM: THE NATURALISTIC THIS-WORLDLY GOSPEL FOR THE COMING AGE OF CLASSLESS EQUALITY AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM
My dear Brother and Comrade:
Your letter of June 13th4 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.
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.
From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.
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.