Communism and Christianism

Marxian socialism is simplicity itself. It requires only three conditions, each of which is perfectly intelligible; but no one of them ever has existed or could exist under any capitalist government, because all such governments, not excepting our own, especially not it, are organized in the interest of parasitic profiteers, not productive laborers. The three indispensable yet simple prerequisites to this real socialism or communism are:

First, that the people within a municipality, either town or city, own and control the utilities within the area occupied by that municipality, which have to do with the immediate comfort of the people who live there.

Second, that the people in each state own and control the utilities that come in contact with the people on a state-wide scale.

Third, that the people within the nation own collectively and control democratically the utilities which affect us on a national scale.

Should we desire to go into more detail, we might say that the things necessary to the individual be owned and controlled by the individual, that the home be controlled by the family, and so on. To go into the question on an international scale we might also add that utilities mutually necessary to all the nations be owned by the nations, as the Panama Canal, for instance. – Higgins.

Prince Kropotkin, though not a bolshevik, says approvingly of the Russian revolution that it is trying to build up a society where the whole produce of the joint efforts of labor by technical skill and scientific knowledge should go entirely to the commonwealth; and he declares that for the unavoidable reconstruction of society, by pacific or any other revolutionary means, there must be a union of all the trade unions of the world to free the production of the world from its present enslavement to capitalism.

Higgins and Kropotkin have here put co-operative socialism or communism in a nutshell both as to its aim and program.

The law of self-preservation is ever the same, but whether its salvation is for a part of the people by competition – capitalist salvation, or for the whole people by co-operation – socialist salvation, depends upon whether it rides or is ridden.

So long as the law of self-preservation was supposed to be the will of a conscious, personal god whose earthly representatives were kings and priests or presidents and preachers, the law did the riding within the large domain of animal competition – the domain of capitalism. War is the normal, indeed necessary evil of this domain, and hence the world must have wars so long as it remains within it, and it will remain there so long as it has celestial divinities with terrestrial representatives in states and churches for its governors.

Now that the law is known to be a matter-force necessity, not a divine decree, the time may rationally be hoped for when the people will do the riding within the small domain of human co-operation – the domain of socialism. Peace is the normal, indeed necessary, state of this domain, and hence the world must cease to have war when it enters it, and is governed by itself instead of by a god and the powers of state and church alleged to have been ordained by him.

Capital punishment should not be administered, if at all, except to a murderer whose guilt has been established to the satisfaction of the great majority of the people in the community to which he belongs, and never in the case of a suspected murderer of whom this is not true.

If William II were really the devil behind the European war by which many millions of the young men of the world have lost their lives, and if Thomas Mooney were really the devil behind the San Francisco explosion by which ten citizens of California lost their lives, their punishment by death might be urged with much show of reason as a social necessity. But if both were hung on the same gallows the world would go on suffering by the ever recurring and closely related misfortunes of war and riot as if nothing had happened. The real devil behind all wars and riots is the capitalist system. There will never be an end of wars and riots until this devil is overthrown.

The so-called Kaiser-war and the so-called Mooney riot are on the same footing, both having the character of an insurrection and both having the aim of self-preservation. The insurrection of the Kaiser was a riot on behalf of the capitalist class of Germany and for the purpose of protecting it against the capitalist class of England. The insurrection of Mooney (assuming his guilt, merely for illustration) was a riot on behalf of the labor class of California and for the purpose of protecting it against the capitalist class of that state.

Incidentally, both riots have secondary aims of world-wide extent. The Kaiser had two of these: to overthrow the commercial supremacy of England that Germany might have it, and to overthrow industrial republicanism (socialism) everywhere. Mooney had this: the overthrow of commercial imperialism (capitalism) everywhere.

As rioters, there is this in common between Kaiser William and Thomas Mooney, that though moving in opposite directions, they are nevertheless carried by the same matter-force law which manifests itself in the same riotous system, capitalism – a system which, under one form or another, has ever produced international wars and class revolutions; and, so long as it is allowed to exist, never will cease the production of them.

Hence the interests of the world require not that these rioters, Kaiser William and Thomas Mooney, should be hung, but that the capitalist system, which by the operation of the law of self-preservation by animal competitions, produced both of the riots with which they are respectively credited, should be overthrown by the labor system, which, by the operation of the same law of self-preservation by human co-operation, will put an end to all bloody conflicts.

But taking the popular view concerning the responsibility for this commercial war and labor riot and assuming that they should be charged respectively to Kaiser William and Thomas Mooney, why should the promoter of the little riot die, or worse, suffer imprisonment during life, and the promoter of the big war live?

Yet, if the Kaiser were captured even by England there is no probability that he would be turned over to a court constituted of representatives of the allied nations, tried, found guilty and put to death. Why not? Because, like all wars, his war, no matter which side won the victory, has been upon the whole, or will be in the long run, in the interest of the capitalists of every nation on both sides, at least of the great ones.

If Kaiser William would not be sent to the gallows by such a court why should the court which tried Thomas Mooney be allowed to send him to it; and, especially why, since California is part of a republic, and the Kaiser's war was on behalf of imperialism and a small minority, while Mooney's riot was on behalf of republicanism and the overwhelming majority?

Just now the human part of the world is especially afflicted by unnecessary and therefore unjustifiable deaths. The Governor of California has the opportunity to prevent one such death. I say to him, do it. In the name of Justice and in the name of Humanity, I with millions of others solemnly call upon him to save Mooney, the revolutionist, as Pilate, the Governor of Judea, according to the verdict of all right-thinking men and women, should have saved Jesus, the revolutionist.

III

You say in effect that we must postulate a divine consciousness to account for human consciousness; but, on your theory, how could human consciousness come out of a divine consciousness; and, anyhow, contrary to your implication, we know of no consciousness which has come, except by inheritance, from another consciousness, but only of consciousnesses which have come from unconsciousnesses.

Your contention, in this connection, is to the effect that nothing can come out of nothing, and this is the core of a book, "A Short Apology for Being a Christian in the Twentieth Century," by the learned ex-president of Trinity College, Hartford, Dr. Williamson Smith, with whom you have had, I think, some correspondence.

This Apology was written against a letter of mine to the House of Bishops, entitled, "A Natural Gospel for a Scientific Age," which has never seen the light, partly because the ex-President convinced me that if I must give up the orthodox conception of God, I could not hold to the one which I had worked out in the letter.

If you have not seen the ex-President's book, you will, I am sure, enjoy it more than I did, but I doubt whether you will profit as much by it, for it verges towards your lines and away from mine; and so it set me to studying as it will not you, with the result of rejecting the new conception of God which I had worked out for myself, but with it I threw over the old one and ceased to believe in the existence of a conscious, personal divinity. Of course, my faith in the existence of a spiritual world and hope for a future life in it went with the god.

Dr. Williamson Smith and you are entirely correct in the contention that something cannot come out of nothing: but I no longer pretend that it can and I now see that the stones which have been thrown at me by you both and others have come from glass houses; for this is really the pretension of orthodox theologians. They affirm that the universe was created by God out of nothing, but produce no scrap of evidence for His existence, and even if they could prove that He exists, they would have to admit that He came out of nothing, or at least from something which did so.

It is indeed true that I am unable to tell what matter, force and motion came from, or if I agree with most physicists that they arose from ether, I cannot give its derivative; but, granting that I am as incapable of proving their existence as you are of proving the existence of the Christian trinity, nevertheless I have this immense advantage over you, that I can prove that everything both physical and psychical (including man and his civilization) entering into the constitution of the universe, lives, moves and has its being in my divine trinity – matter, force and motion: whereas you cannot prove that anything is indebted for what it is to your divine trinity – Father, Son and Spirit: therefore I insist that your trinity is a symbol of mine.

What is true of the Christian trinity is true of all the divinities of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion. The Jews live with no reference to the Christian God, or at least not with any to his second and third persons, and neither Christians nor Jews do so in the case of either the Mohammedan or Buddhistic divinity, and so on, all around the whole circle of gods.

But no representative of any god lives without constant reference to mine, of which yours and all the others are, as I think, symbols, if they are anything better than fetishes.

If you and ex-President Smith mean by your fundamental thesis, that a thing which is essentially different from that from which it came is an impossibility, you are certainly wrong, for the world is full of such things. In the tree of life there are millions of examples, since (using language in its general significance) everything above the amoeba must be regarded as essentially different from it, though all, including man, came out of it.

Going back as far as we safely can on solid ground, we come to the nebulae from which the solar systems of the universe have evolved, and surely a solar system is as essentially different from the nebula as a man is from an amoeba. Coming to our earth when its primeval, flaming, swirling gases had been condensed into inorganic matter, the protoplasm which is organic matter, arose from it, and so something which grows from within out, comes from something which grows from without in.

The large hoofed horse came from a small five-toed animal, not much larger than a rabbit. The piano and the gun are brother and sister, born of the bow and arrow, yet how different the children from the parent.

An infant is unconscious at birth and what it has of consciousness as a child and an adult is dependent upon the development of its body.

Moreover, as the human body is a development through animal bodies, we may logically conclude that human consciousness is ultimately dependent upon and inherited from animal consciousness rather than a divine one.

Jesus is represented as saying that God is a spirit; and the fathers of the English part of the Christian reformation said that there is but one living and true God without body, parts or passions. This is their explanation of his conception of God.

When the Jesuine definition of God and the Anglican explanation of it were framed, the Divine Spirit was supposed to be an objective personality.

Modern psychology teaches that no spirit, divine, human or otherwise, is a personality. According to this science, spirit and soul are synonyms for the subjective content of a conscious life, which content consists of feelings, aspirations, ideals, convictions and determinations.

Psychologists know of no spirit or soul without a body constituted of parts any more than physicists know of a force without matter constituted of molecules, atoms, electrons and ions.

Gods represent the religious ideals of people and are symbols of what they think they should be as religionists. They are symbolic, emblematic, parabolic, allegoric devices of the imagination, and contain nothing but the ideal, imaginary things which are put into them by people for themselves, and they do nothing except what the people perform through them in their names for themselves.

Matter and force constitute a machine, an automatic one, which produces things, everything which enters into the constitution of the cosmos, by evolutionary processes, or rather all such things, and there are no others, are the result of one universal and eternal process of evolution.

What is known as nature is the aggregation of the products of this machine by this process. The machine is unconscious and its workings are mechanical, yet some of its products rise into self-consciousness with the power of self-determination, but both the consciousness and the determination are limited. The infinite consciousness, personality and determination which are postulated of gods are contradictions.

Of all beings man possesses most of consciousness, personality and determination. What he has of these is not dependent upon gods, but all they have of them is dependent upon him. Divine beings are, as to their self-consciousness, personality and determination, human beings personified and placed in the sky. Man does everything for gods. They do nothing for him.

Such are the facts and arguments based upon them, which have forced me step by step over the long way from the position of supernaturalistic traditionalism in its Christian form, still occupied by you, to that of naturalistic scientism in its socialist form which I am now occupying, as tentatively as possible, pending further study in the light of additional facts, for which (some six years ago, when I was desperately battling to prevent the shipwreck of my faith in the god and heaven of orthodox Christianity) I appealed to about 800 outstanding theologians, among them yourself, representing all parts of christendom and every great church, including of course all our bishops among the theologians, and the Anglican communion among the churches.

You may remember how much of correspondence we had at that time, though neither you nor any one who kindly tried to reach me with the rope of the new scientific apologetics for which I appealed, can realize how eagerly I looked for the replies to my questions, nor the sickness of heart which I experienced when I saw that, in spite of every possible effort of my own and help of others, I was slowly but surely drifting towards what I then thought to be the fatal whirlpools and rocks, but what I now regard as a sheltered port – the golden gate of that delectable country, Marxian socialism, the only heaven that I am now hoping to behold.

You earnestly contend that I am wrong in representing that the majority of outstanding men of science and scientific philosophers do not believe in the existence of a conscious, personal divinity, who created, sustains and governs the universe, or in a conscious, personal life for man beyond the grave, and that none among such scientists and philosophers are orthodox Christians.

Prof. Leuba, the Bryn Mawr psychologist, is one among my authorities for these representations. In his "Belief in God and Immortality" (1916) he exhibits the results of a recent and thorough-going investigation in a chart from which it appears that, taking the greater and lesser representatives of the scientists together, they fall below 50 per cent as to their belief in God, and below 55 per cent in their belief in immortality.9

The showing for the scientists who are especially concerned with the origin and destiny of life, biologists and psychologists, is much less favorable to you; for, taking the greater and lesser together, only 31 per cent of the biologists believe in God and 35 per cent in immortality; and only 25 per cent of the psychologists believe in God, and 20 per cent in immortality.

But the worst by far, is yet to come; for, taking the greater biologists and psychologists, those who count most, of the former 18 per cent believe in God, and 25 per cent in immortality; and of the latter, the greatest of all authorities, only 13 per cent believe in God, and only 8 per cent in immortality.

The greater psychologists are comparatively consistent in that fewer among them believe in a conscious, personal life for humanity beyond the grave than in the conscious, personal life of divinity beyond the clouds. Human immortality is an absurdity without divine existence. The overwhelming majority of great psychologists (the greatest of all authorities, as to whether or not gods "without bodies, parts or passions" can consciously exist in the skies, and disembodied men, women and children in celestial paradises) see this and limit the career of man to earth. In their judgment his heaven and hell are here, and the gods who make and the devils who unmake civilizations are humans, not good or bad divinities.

This is the conclusion of a rapidly increasing number of educated people. A century ago only a few men of science and scientific philosophers had reached it, not twenty five per cent, but now the percentage is nearly ninety and it will soon be ninety-nine. The time is coming, and in the not distant future, when no educated man shall look to the god of any supernaturalistic interpretation of religion for light or strength, and when none shall hope for a heaven above the earth or fear a hell below it.

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fireCast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire.– Omar.

Joseph McCabe and Chapman Cohen are among the most brilliant of present day writers on scientific and philosophic subjects. They are not socialists, but both see that modern socialism and orthodox Christianism are utterly irreconcilable incompatibilities.

"How is it that on the Continent democratic bodies are so sceptical, or sceptical bodies so democratic? Precisely because they doubt (or reject altogether) the Christian heaven. They want to make this earth as happy as it can be, to make sure of happiness somewhere. Having taken their eyes from the sky, they have discovered remarkable possibilities in the earth. Having to give less time to God, they have more time to give to man. They think less about their heavenly home, and more about their earthly home. The earthly home has grown very much brighter for the change. The heavenly home is just where it was.

"The plain truth is, of course, that the sentiment which used to be absorbed in religion is now embodied in humanitarianism. Religion is slowly dying everywhere. Social idealism is growing everywhere. People who want to persuade us that social idealism depends on religion are puzzled by this. It is only because they are obstinately determined to connect everything with Christianity, in spite of its historical record. There is no puzzle. We have transferred our emotions from God to man, from heaven to earth." – Joseph McCabe.

"Socialists who have one eye on the ballot box may assure these people that Socialism is not Atheistic, but few will be convinced. The statement that Socialism has nothing to do with religion, or that many professedly religious people are Socialist, is quite futile. A thoughtful religionist would reply that the first point concedes the truth of all that has been said against Socialism, while the second evades the question at issue. No one is specially concerned with the mental idiosyncracies of individual Socialists; what is at issue is the question whether Socialism does or does not take an Atheistic view of life? He might add, too, that a Socialism which leaves out the belief in God and a future life, which does not, in even the remotest manner, imply these beliefs, which does not make their acceptance the condition of holding the meanest office in the State, and, at most, will merely allow religious beliefs to exist so long as they do not threaten the well-being of the State, is, to all intents and purposes, an Atheistical system." – Chapman Cohen.

In summing up the results of his investigations Prof. Leuba observes that:

In every class of persons investigated, the number of believers in God is less and in most classes very much less than the number of non-believers, and that the number of believers in immortality is somewhat larger than in a personal God; that among the more distinguished, unbelief is very much more frequent than among the less distinguished; and finally that not only the degree of ability, but also the kind of knowledge possessed, is significantly related to the rejection of these beliefs.

In another connection Prof. Leuba speaking of Christian dogmatism as a whole says:

Christianity, as a system of belief, has utterly broken down, and nothing definite, adequate, and convincing has taken its place. There is no generally acknowledged authority; each one believes as he can, and few seem disturbed at being unable to hold the tenets of the churches. This sense of freedom is the glorious side of an otherwise dangerous situation.

Your conception of the origin, sustenance and governance of the universe is burdened, as are all interpretations of religion which are hinged upon the existence of conscious, personal divinities, with two difficulties: (1) its physical impossibility, and (2) its moral impossibility.

1. Physical Impossibilities. The atomic and molecular movements required for the thinking of a single man would be beyond the capacity of all the gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion together.

Some idea of the number of such motions which are taking place in every human brain, will be derived from the conservative representations of Hofmeister as exhibited in the following condensed form by McCabe in his book, "The Evolution of Mind:"

We have reason to believe that there are in each molecule of ordinary protoplasm at least 450 atoms of carbon, 720 atoms of hydrogen, 116 of nitrogen, 6 of sulphur, and 140 of oxygen. Nerve-plasm is still more complex.

Recent discoveries have only increased the wonder and potentiality of the cortex. Each atom has proved to be a remarkable constellation of electrons, a colossal reservoir of energy. The atom of hydrogen contains about 1,000 electrons, the atom of carbon 12,000, the atom of nitrogen 14,000, the atom of oxygen 16,000, and the atom of sulphur 32,000. These electrons circulate within the infinitesimal space of the atom at a speed of from 10,000 to 90,000 miles a second. It would take 340,000 barrels of powder to impart to a bullet the speed with which some of these particles dart out of their groups. A gramme of hydrogen – a very tiny portion of the simplest gas – contains energy enough to lift a million tons more than a hundred yards.

Of these astounding arsenals of energy, the atoms, we have, on the lowest computation, at least 600 million billion in the cortex of the human brain.

Scientists, says Professor Olerich, in his book, "A Modern Look at the Universe," estimate that the chemical atom is so infinitesimally small that it requires a group of not less than a billion to make the group barely visible under the most powerful microscope, and a thousand such groups would have to be put together in order to make it just visible to the naked eye as a mere speck floating in the sunbeam.