MARX OR CHRIST? IN the February number of The Nineteenth Century and After, Lord Salisbury dealt with the teaching of Christianity on the subjects of property and industry. He pointed out that private property is not condemned in the New Testament, and that inequalities of reward are recognised therein. Private ownership, indeed, is equitable, and even necessary, if self-sacrifice is to be free. The ideal motive is the principle of voluntary service. This implies certain duties on the part of owners of property. Lord Salisbury applied this principle to various problems of social reform. His contention may be summed up in the statement that without self-sacrifice there is no redemption. It is the object of the present article, which was written independently, to set out the statements made in recent authoritative Communist books as to the teaching of Christ on property and industry, to examine the real teaching of Christ on these subjects, and to explain the antagonism which present-day Communism shows towards Christianity. Attention is also called to the activity of Communist teachers among school-children. What is the reason for the violent hostility which the advocate of social revolution always evinces towards Christianity, both its precepts and its practice? First let me give some instances of this hostility, taken from authoritative sources. The French Revolution, which began in 1789, went through a phase of strong opposition to Christianity. Laws were passed against the clergy, and personal violence was shown to individual priests. The condition of France in 1799 is thus described by a writer in the Cambridge Modern History (vol. viii., p. 666) : The State, neutral in name and profession, was in reality hostile to all forms of worship. A petty but effective persecution succeeded the coarser forms of violence. No church could summon its congregation by a bell; no priest nor bishop could publish an ecclesiastical charge, or wear his ecclesiastical raiment outside the sacred edifice. To bear a crucifix in a village street was a crime, and a priest was sent to prison for attending a funeral with a surplice hidden under his great-coat. All kinds of petty 1 'An Outline of Christian Anti-Socialism.'. tyrannies were connected with the Culte décadaire (the observance of the week of ten days). All work was to cease on the décadi, save such as was pronounced urgent by an administrative authority. No shops might be opened on the décadi, no shops shut on Sunday. Instances could easily be given of the desecration of churches, violation of altars, and blasphemous enthronement of the Goddess of Reason. Soviet Russia has declared war on Christianity, and on those who profess this faith. In the Russian villages to-day Bolsheviks tear down the crucifix at the cross-roads with sacrilege and insult. They crown the image of Judas Iscariot, and commit other abominations of the same kind. But let us turn to teaching published in our own country. I quote from the A.B.C. of Communism, by N. Buharin and E. Preobrazhensky, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, and published by the Communist Party of Great Britain. Chapter XI. of this book, which was published in 1924, and is now in a second edition, is entitled 'Communism and Religion.'2 It begins with the inquiry, 'Why are religion and Communism incompatible?' and, quoting Karl Marx's statement' Religion is the opium of the people,' proceeds to say that it is the task of the Communist Party to make this truth comprehensible to the widest possible circles of the labouring classes: Religion has been in the past, and still is to-day, one of the most powerful means at the disposal of the oppressors for the maintenance of inequality and exploitation, and slavish obedience on the part of the toilers. . . . A Communist who rejects the commandments of religion, and acts in accordance with the directions of his party, ceases to be one of the faithful. On the other hand, one who, while calling himself a Communist, continues to cling to his religious faith, one who in the name of religious commandments infringes the prescriptions of the party, ceases hereby to be a Communist. For the Communist, the Church is a society of persons who are banded together to keep the proletariat poor and ignorant. The Church assists the State in the oppression of the workers, and receives from the State help in the business of oppression. The demand for the separation of Church and State was originally made by the liberal bourgeoisie and the bourgeois democracy. The real basis of the demand was a desire for the transfer to the bourgeoisie of the revenues allotted by the State to the Church. But when it was realised that the struggle of the working class against the capitalists was growing more intense, it seemed inexpedient to the bourgeoisie to break up the alliance between Church and State. The capitalists thought it would be more advantageous to come to terms with the Church, to buy its * Pages 256, etc. prayers on behalf of the struggle with Socialism, thus keeping alive in the masses the sentiment of slavish submissiveness to the exploiting State. The work which the bourgeoisie had left unfinished was carried to an end by the proletarian State. One of the first decrees of the Soviet power in Russia was the decree concerning the separation of Church from State. All the landed estates of the Church were taken away, and handed over to the working population: Religion has become the private affair of every citizen. The Soviet Power rejects all thoughts of using the Church in any way whatever as a means of strengthening the proletarian State.3 Moreover, in the past the maintenance of religious fanaticism was fostered by the schools, which thus diffused' religious poison among the young : We must not remain content with the expulsion of religious propaganda from the school. We must see to it that the school assumes the offensive against religious propaganda in the home, so that, from the very outset, the children's minds shall be rendered immune to all those religious fairy tales which many grown-ups continue to regard as truth. After the separation of the Church from the State, and the school from the Church, there remains a long struggle demanding much steadfastness and great patience-the struggle against the religious prejudices of the masses. But the mere fact of the organisation of the Socialist system will deal religion an irrecoverable blow.' The transition from Socialism to Communism, from the society which makes an end of capitalism to the society which is completely freed from all traces of class division and class struggle, will bring about the natural death of all religion and all superstition. But judgment must be shown in the conduct of the war against religion : The credulous crowd is extremely sensitive to anything which hurts its feelings. If the Church were to be persecuted, it would win sympathy among the masses, for persecution would remind them of the almost forgotten days when there was an association between religion and the defence of national freedom.5 The book gives statistics purporting to show how the Church was directly supported in Russia by the common people, who drained their slender purses for the support of a ' parasitic caste of priests, monks and nuns. The Socialist State will introduce labour service for the clergy, as for all unproductive classes, so that they will have to become workers or peasants. 6 The 'literature' quoted at the end of this chapter of the 3 Page 259. • Page 262. Б Pages 264, 255. • Page 267. book in question contains a number of works with such titles as The Clergy: Its Income, Its Prayers, and its Curses; The Black Army; The Myth of the Immaculate Conception. Communism and Christianism is the title of a work published by the Bradford-Brown Educational Company, of Galion, Ohio, and written by Bishop William Montgomery Brown, D.D., of whom a portrait (in lawn sleeves) is given as a frontispiece. Here the author is described as 'Fifth Bishop of Arkansas, resigned, Member of the House of Bishops, Protestant Episcopal Church, sometime Archdeacon of Ohio, now Episcopus in partibus Bolshevikium et Infidelium.' The contents of the book may be estimated from the motto which appears on the title-page: Banish the Gods from the Skies and Capitalists from the Earth, and make the World safe for Industrial Communism.' It is claimed that 125,000 copies of the book have been sold between 1920 and 1923. Here again Karl Marx is quoted: '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 official manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain lays down, as a test of admission to a Socialist party, the acceptance of a number of working principles, one of which is that the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.' 'No man can be consistently both a Socialist and a Christian. The entry of Socialism is the exodus of religion.' A few extracts from 'Bishop' Brown's work may be of interest : Christianism as a religion has collapsed. It promised to secure to the world peace and goodwill, but it has never had more of strife and hate. This is illustrated by the European war, and by the 'slavery' of the American negro. Again, 'cannibalism is the basis of our Sacrament of the Holy Communion of bread and wine.'s In ancient days the victorious ate the vanquished; then animal sacrifice was substituted for human victims. Our service is a relic of those barbarous times. Jesus was nothing if he was not a revolutionist. Anyhow, his alleged mother is authoritatively represented as believing him to have been foreordained as a revolutionist, 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.'" 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,10 Christian Socialism is essentially imperialistic in its character; Marxian Socialism is essentially democratic.11 The Christian Socialist is a contradiction in terms. His policy is the conciliation of classes. He is, in fact, an anti-Socialist.12 Both the Old and New Testaments are utterly worthless as history. . . 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. . . . Jesus serves Christians as the God of slavery. When the capitalists have appropriated all the means and machines of production, 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.13 In the second part of the book, much use is made of the Encyclopædia Biblica as proving the surrender which Christianity has made to the forces of rationalism.' No confidence, it is said, can be placed in the reliability of the Gospels as historical narratives. None of St. Paul's Epistles were written by him. The whole dogmatic framework of Divine revelation has been surrendered, 14 It is alleged that, on the disappearance of capitalism, human nature will improve so as to fit the new conditions. A classless world will be born and live on a co-operative 15 instead of a competitive basis, in a heaven instead of a hell. Russia points the way. She is now one huge corporation; every man, woman and child is an equal shareholder. The ideal of a human brotherhood is, it is true, not yet realised in Russia. She has had great difficulties to face, and the time since the change has been short. But she is already past the most difficult period of transition from a capitalist State to a Communist State. 16 To avoid misapprehension, Bishop' Brown disclaims any intention of violating the law as laid down in the statutes of Ohio; and he does not advocate the duty, necessity, or propriety of violence as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform. His object is not to promote class hatred and strife. Far from it. It is to persuade to the banishment of gods from skies and capitalists from earth.' 17 It will be seen that Jesus is regarded now as a Sun-myth, now as a revolutionary whom (by some curious process) his followers have converted into the most rigid of Conservatives. It would no doubt be easy to quote from other books similarly inspired by the teaching of Marx, the author of Das Kapital (1867). Marx was a German Jew; he was expelled from one country 11 Page 72. 14 Pages 92, etc. 16 Page 205. |