Communism and Christianism

This revolutionary war is between the working class whose representatives live starvingly, though they produce and distribute all the necessities of life and the capitalist class whose representatives live surfeitingly, though taking no part in the production and distribution of these necessities.

Nearly one hundred years ago our fourth President, James Madison, saw partly and dimly what nearly every one now sees fully and clearly:

We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when that day comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.

The laborers of Russia have turned the country right side up so that they themselves are above and the capitalists below, having the privilege of remaining down to idle and starve or else to crawl up to work and live, but not to rob, war and enslave.

As I lay down my pen the working man's government of Russia is fighting a double war, the Poland-Crimea war, to prevent its overthrow by the capitalist governments of the world, especially England, France, Japan and the United States, which in this war are surreptitiously confederated against it, and the victory seems assured to it, largely because of the sympathy and help of their fellow workers throughout the world.

Marx though dead yet speaketh. He is speaking more widely and persuasively in death than in life. Russia is the megaphone from which his voice goes out through every land and over every sea.

Never man nor god spake with as much power as he speaks. His gospel is to the slave, and this is its thrilling appeal – workers of the world unite, and this is its inspiring assurance – you have nothing to lose but your chains and a world to gain.

WM. M. BROWN

Brownella Cottage, Galion, Ohio.

September 24th, 1920.

1

From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.

2

This section has been slightly changed to make sure of guarding against the advocacy of armed insurrection. Socialists throughout the world want a peaceful evolution from capitalism into socialism; but whether or not it will be so in the case of any country is, as Lenin prophesies, to be determined by the dealings of its capitalists with its laborers. In reply to an inquiry on this vexed subject by an English author, Lenin said, in effect, that in England, as elsewhere, the tactics of the capitalist class will determine the program of the labor class.

3

From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.

4

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.

5

According to the showing of the science of biblical criticism there is more than one Jesus of whom we have an account in the New Testament: (1) a naturalistic, this-worldly, pacific, human Jesus, and (2) a supernaturalistic, other-worldly, belligerent, divine Jesus, the Jesus of orthodox Christians.

6

This shall be true of Marxian socialism when it is triumphant, but it will not be so while it is persecuted. Socialist Russia has asked for peace after every war which the capitalist nations (England, France, Italy and America) have waged against her, not because she could no longer defend herself, but for the reason that her socialism, being co-operative in its character, necessarily imposes humaneness; yet they could not grant it, because their capitalism, being competitive in its character, as necessarily imposes inhumaneness. The hand of the capitalist world is aggressively against socialist Russia, and must be, because the life of capitalism depends upon her death: and her hand is defensively against all the capitalist nations. Capitalism and socialism cannot occupy the earth together. Either the one or the other must have all of it. Mankind in general is illustrating the truth of the proverb which has been illustrated by so many families in particular – a house divided against itself cannot stand.

7

From the Official Manifesto by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, showing the Antagonism between Socialism and Religion.

8

The difference between a political republic, such as America has developed, and an industrial republic, such as Russia is developing, is that the administrators of the former are elected from the geographical divisions and those of the latter from the productive divisions into which the population is divided.

If we liken states to fruit trees, the American tree may be said to have been evolutionized for the purpose of producing the fruit of commodities for the profit of the owning class, and the Russian, the fruit of commodities for the use of the working class.

9

See appendix.

10

Nevertheless I consider church-going to be a bad habit, and if I could live my life over, I would not allow myself to become addicted to it.

11

But if Adam and Eve are not historical personages there is no doctrine of supernaturalistic Christianism resting on the solid ground of facts and the whole of its immense dogmatic structure is floating in the air of theories and myths. – Author.

12

It is questionable whether such persons as Samson, Jonah and Daniel ever lived, but it is certain that their adventures are as mythical as anything in Aesop's Fables. – Author.

13

But these nine texts which for some years were often triumphantly pointed to as the pillars upon which securely rested the historicalness of Jesus as a man are now lying in the dust where the learned and brilliant Professor William Benjamin Smith of Tulane University put them by his great contribution to the Christological problem in a book, entitled Ecce Deus in which he, as I think, proves conclusively that the Jesus of the New Testament never was a real man but always an imaginary god, the Christian recasting of the Jewish God, a new Jehovah. – Author.

14

The capitalist countries of the world constitute the United States of Crazy Lands.