Communism and Christianism Part 22

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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 accomplis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.semblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism. If any such meaning shall be read into any pa.s.sage 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 cla.s.s hatred and strife. Far from it. It is to persuade to the banishment of G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, then we know that poverty is caused by men and may be removed by men. If there be a G.o.d who answers prayers, the remedy for social injustice is to pray. But if there be no such G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d" will use his sword, and will not use it "in vain."

He says that the sword-bearer is G.o.d's minister.

Christ himself recites a parable about a rich man who went to h.e.l.l 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 "G.o.d," which has always meant such a being, should be dropped. I would have no objection to the current use of the word "G.o.d" 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d as this, I reply that there is, or there is none. The G.o.d of every Christian creed is the G.o.d of the rulers, the G.o.d of the idle rich. There never has been any other G.o.d known to the world. This is the G.o.d that the church now wors.h.i.+ps and always has wors.h.i.+ped.

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 G.o.d 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 t.i.thes 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 pa.s.sages 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 const.i.tutes 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 G.o.ds or great men) const.i.tute 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.sociates 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 circ.u.mstance that enables a certain individual to a.s.sert 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 a.s.sociate "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 G.o.d, 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d, Jesus, were (if they occurred) material realities.

And the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of the G.o.d sounds like materialism, especially according to the explanation of the Greek, Roman, Lutheran and Anglican churches.

IV.

A nutsh.e.l.l 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-G.o.ds of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are symbols of this one.

(4) Ignorance is the devil of the world. The destroyer-G.o.ds 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 G.o.d has consciously willed. There are no other facts.