Communism and Christianism. William Montgomery Brown
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