Communism and Christianism. Brown William Montgomery
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.
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,