IV.
The church and the state are on the same level as to their origin and importance. Both are human institutions and each is indispensable to the other. It is not at all desirable or possible to rid the world of either, but it is absolutely necessary that both should be revolutionized, the church by having its bible and creed rewritten or at least reinterpreted, on the basis of truth as it is revealed by nature, and the state by having its institutions reorganized on the basis of service to all instead of only to those of a small class, the owner or master class.
All the idealistic aims of churches and all the practical undertakings of states should be directly concerned with the answer to three questions: (1) the question as to how to reach the goal where terrestrial life shall in the case of each man, woman and child be as long and happy as it is within the range of possibilities to make it, by the fullest of attainable knowledge concerning the laws of nature; (2) the question as to how to make the most successful endeavor universally to disseminate such knowledge, and (3) the question as to how resistlessly to persuade to the living of it.
These are the only concerns and aims of Marxian socialism and they cannot be promoted or even avowed by Christian socialists.
The great crime of the ages is the robbing of the producer of the basic necessities of human life by the non-producer.
Capitalism is the robber, and the politics and religion of the old states and churches are the right and left hands by which he has been and is doing the robbing.
Marxian socialism is an undertaking which has for its task the overthrow of the system which makes it possible for those who produce nothing to live surfeitingly, and renders it necessary for those who produce everything to live starvingly.
Poverty is a disease caused by the unjust wage system of competitive capitalism for producing and distributing the necessities of life (food, clothing and shelter) for the profit of capitalists, the few who live by owning the materials and machines of production and distribution; and this blighting malady cannot be cured by charity, but it will spread until this system is supplanted by the just one of co-operative industrialism, a system by which these necessities shall be produced and distributed for the use of laborers, those who live by making and operating the machines.
Every gift to charity by a rich man is a robbery of a poor man. You will not see this at once, if ever, and I shall not blame you for the failure to do so. It was not seen by me until I was much older than you; but I am now seeing it as clearly as I ever saw the sun on a cloudless noonday, and this is true of rapidly growing millions who are resolutely resolved to do away with the prevailing conception of charity, according to which capitalists may rob laborers of the fruit of their toil, giving them of it barely enough to keep body and soul together and to raise up children who are doomed to follow in their footsteps; and then, when the strength of their victim fails, to make amends for the robberies, by giving the most highly favored among them beds in hospitals, poor-houses in which to die prematurely, and nameless graves in potter's fields in which to await hopefully a resurrection and ascension to an inheritance of happiness in a sky, which was denied them on the earth.
The time is at hand when everywhere the unemployed and the underpaid shall begin a resistless march towards the goal of economic levelism under a banner containing this slogan: We want no charity but the right to work and the fruits of our labors that we and our helpless dependents may have every necessity to the fullest life for body and soul.
During more than a whole generation Mrs. Brown and I have not produced a spoonful of any food, a thread of any garment or a shingle of any house; and yet we have had foods, garments and houses in abundance with some to spare, while their producers have had them in scarcity with much to want.
While the world war was on, an ill wind for the producers blew a thousand dollars to us and an ill wind for us blew it into the hands of a committee, ostensibly for investment on behalf of a hospital of which we approved, but really for the purchase of a bond in the interest of a war of which we disapproved.
The fathers of the present generation of producers and distributors of the necessities of life were robbed in order that we might inherit the property from which our income is derived; the sons and daughters are being robbed over and over again and again, year after year, in order that the property may continue to yield this income to us.
We therefore paid nothing of our own for this bond. What we gave for it was of the spoils which the great robber, capitalism, has bestowed upon us, its favorite children, from what it has taken from its unfortunate victims.
The same persons or their children and successors were or shall be robbed first to create our property, then to pay the income of it, next to buy the bond, and now they are being robbed to meet the interest on it and finally they will be robbed to pay its face value. If capitalism stands, of course the victims of the last of these robberies will belong, probably, to a remote generation; but this delay is a misfortune in store for many of all intervening generations.
If the robbery connected with this bond were limited to its original cost, one thousand dollars, and to its accruing interest, which is likely in time to aggregate several thousand dollars, it would indeed be bad enough, yet not nearly as much so as it is under the melancholy circumstances; for the money paid on account of the bond goes towards killing or wrecking its producers, if not those who produced this particular thousand dollars, yet others of their class to whom the world owes all of its wealth; therefore the thousand dollars which went into this bond has been devoted to the robbery of those who were robbed of it and of the most precious of all things: life and limb.
You will ask: how can you and Mrs Brown, in the face of your theory, according to which all who live by owning are robbers of those who live by working, consistently receive and expend the income of your inheritance?
The answer was given to a friend who asked us why we did not follow the heroic example of a young American who had recently renounced what had been inherited by him, and this is, in effect, what we said:
As we look at the question, our course is more rational than his, because the wealth which he renounces may go to some one who is without his sympathy for the proletariat. We prefer to receive our inheritance and use it to overthrow the economic system which makes it possible for us to do nothing and have everything, and for those who do everything to have nothing.
Capitalists, as such, people who live by the owning of the machines of production and distribution, instead of by the making and operating of them, have much to say against the alleged anarchism of socialists and yet they are necessarily what they accuse anarchism of being, robbers and murderers. Every cent of profit, interest and rent is so much robbing, and all wars are so many conflicts between the capitalistic bandits or robbers in the countries involved, and the peace conferences, which follow them, are so many attempts of the bandits on the successful side to have the spoils as large as possible, and to satisfactorily divide them.
It is Holy Week 1921. The week in which during all the years of many and long ages benighted people sacrificed their Christs to Shylock gods. If Jesus lived and was a Christ, unhappily He was neither the first nor the last, for there were many both before and after Him. Were they who superstitiously led these victims to their Golgothas greater sinners against humanity than those who did avariciously during the war drive large armies of young men to the terrible trenches, a wholesale sacrifice of the lords of power and wealth and who do now drive the vast majority of the nations involved in that war to a terrible body and soul destroying poverty and slavery? No. The modern robbers even more than the ancient ones are in need of the prayer: Forgive them for they know not what they do.
Communism and Christianism have, indeed, this in common, that their object is to promote life, long life, and happy life, both lives in a large and full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.
Yet, with this sameness in the gospels of Communism and Christianism there is this difference in the aims of the christs who preached them, which separate them as widely as the east is from the west, leaving a great and impassable gulf between them.
Marx, the christ of the Communist gospel, said: I am come that the world might have terrestrial life for body, mind and soul, and have it for each in the fullest of possible measures by co-operation with each other in the discovery of the laws of nature and in making them serve men, women and children by securing for them food, clothing, shelter, health and comfort for the body, and leisure for the mind to think and for the soul to grow.
Jesus, the christ of the Christian gospel, according to orthodoxy, said: I am come that ye might have celestial life for mind, body and soul and have it for each in the largest and fullest possible measure by co-operation in persuading each other in particular and the world in general to receive a revelation of the will of a conscious, personal God, made through prophets, preserved in the bible and interpreted by the church.
With me it is a melancholy but resistless and deepening conviction, that, if orthodox Christianism should become associated with Marxian socialism, as Kingsley and you would associate them, we should soon have a glaring illustration of the truth of two proverbs: a house divided against itself cannot stand; and no man can serve two masters.
Moreover, I believe that if Christian socialism were to become a door to Marxian socialism, through which orthodox Christianism could enter and make itself at home, the revolutionary aims of the slave class would be thwarted and the world would enter upon a new dark age, as it did when Constantine was converted to Christianity and Christians became the most loyal citizens and valiant soldiers of the Empire.
At that time chattel slavery had run its course as wage slavery has now; and, if it had not been prolonged by a military despotism, as I fear this may be, the world would have had something of the feudal slavery, but nothing of the dark age. This age was the baneful fruit of Christianism. Christianity has held the world back from civilization instead of advancing it towards civilization.
The Christianization of Marxian communism, in accordance with the program of Kingsley and our Church Socialist League, would spell another military despotism for the prolongation of a second system of slavery, which has run its course and is in a fair way of being overthrown; but if the revolutionists fail, as the result of being trampled under the iron heel, we are at the threshold of a second dark age and shall soon be passing through all the miseries of it.
My interest in the movement within our church looking towards a Christian socialism of a more radical and revolutionary type would be great, if only I could feel as I should so much like, that the Christian socialism to which you have consecrated the whole prime of your life, and the Marxian socialism, to which I have consecrated all of the little that remains of mine, the fag-end, are not utter incompatibilities, so much so that it is absolutely impossible that they can co-exist and co-operate to any good purpose.
The irreconcilable incompatibility of Christian socialism and Marxian socialism is due to the fact that, whereas the Christian is essentially imperialistic in its character, the Marxian is as essentially democratic. The reason for this fundamental and ineradicable difference, and the consequent incompatibleness, is the fact that orthodoxism, whether Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan or Buddhistic, is nothing unless it is supernaturalistic and traditional; and Marxism is nothing unless it is naturalistic and scientific, as much so as is Darwinism.
In order that you may see the reason, as I understand it, for this wide, deep and bridgeless difference, I draw the following contrasts between the essential beliefs of Marxian socialists and orthodox Christians:
1. Marxian socialism is essentially naturalistic. Orthodox Christianism is essentially supernaturalistic. The consistent socialist says: I have all the potentialities of my own life within myself. The consistent Christian says: My strength is from God.
2. Marxian socialism is essentially classless. Orthodox Christianism is essentially a class system by which the world is divided into two classes, saints and sinners. The consistent socialist says: Every man is my brother. The consistent Christian (like the theist of every name—Jew, Mohammedan, Buddhist and the rest) says: Every true believer is my brother, but those who are not are only potential brethren.
3. Marxian socialism is essentially terrestrial. Orthodox Christianism is essentially celestial. The consistent socialist says: Earth is my home. The consistent Christian says: Heaven is my home.
4. Marxian socialism is essentially materialistic. Orthodox Christianism is essentially spiritualistic. The consistent socialist says: The basic necessities of life, and therefore its first concern, are foods, raiments, shelters, comfort and leisure. The consistent Christian says: Take no primary thought for these, but only for faith in and obedience to God, regarding all else of secondary importance.
5. Marxian socialism is essentially proletarian. Orthodox Christianism is essentially bourgeois. The consistent socialist says: I am, by reason of my antecedents, a man, a woman, a child of nature on an essential level as to my origin and destiny with every other representative of humanity and indeed animality. The consistent Christian, like the theist of every name, says: I am (by reason of my faith, baptism or conversion) a prince or princess, the son or daughter of a king, God.
6. Marxian socialism is essentially democratic. Orthodox Christianism is essentially imperialistic. The consistent socialist says: I live with reference to the will of the majority. The consistent Christian says: I live with reference to the will of a God.
7. Marxian socialism is essentially pacific.[F] Orthodox Christianism is essentially belligerent. The consistent socialist says: Since you are a man, I co-operate with you. The consistent Christian says: Since you are not a believer, I contend with you.
8. Marxian socialism is essentially non-sectarian. The consistent socialist says: All the world is my home and the desire and effort to render service to men, women and children is my religion. The consistent Christian says: Only Christendom is my home and the desire and effort to serve a God is my religion.
9. Marxian socialism is, as to the source of knowledge and the means of attaining it, essentially scientific. Orthodox Christianism is essentially traditional. The consistent socialist says: The salvation of the world is dependent upon what is learned by natural experience, observation and investigation about the doings of a matter-force-law, nature. The consistent Christian says: This salvation depends upon what is learned by revelation, tradition and inspiration about the willings of a father-son-spirit, God.
10. Marxian socialism explains the history of mankind on the naturalistic theory that it has been determined during every period by the existing system for supplying the materialistic necessities of life. Orthodox Christianism explains this history on the supernaturalistic theory that it is determined by the providential directions of a triune divinity. The consistent socialist says: If you will tell me of the economic system by which a people have fed, clothed and housed themselves, I will tell you, at least in general outline, what has been their history. The consistent Christian says: If you will tell me what the providences of my God have been towards a people, I will tell you their history.
11. Marxian socialism has inscribed on one of its banners: Liberty. Orthodox Christianism has this inscription on its corresponding banner: Obedience. The consistent socialist says: This Liberty-banner is the symbol of my freedom as a son of man to be progressively learning, living and teaching the unfolding revelations of nature—to know and to live which is to have life, terrestrial life in an ever increasing measure, all the life there is here and now or elsewhere and elsewhen, if there is to be a conscious, personal life anywhere or anywhen else. The consistent Christian says: This Obedience-banner is a symbol of my slavery as a son of God by which I am bound to receive, live and teach the faith once for all delivered to the saints in the Old and New Testaments or else lose the permanent life in the sky which is to follow this temporary one on the earth.
12. Marxian socialism has inscribed on another of its banners: Justice to Man. Orthodox Christianism has on its corresponding banner: Love to God. The consistent socialist says: It is my aim to do unto others as I would have them do unto me if our circumstances were reversed. The consistent Christian says: It is my aim to love God with all my heart, mind and soul.
And if there be any further contrast between this Christianism and Socialism, it is briefly comprehended in these three statements,—in themselves sufficient to show how absolutely impossible it is for a consistent Jesuine Christian to be a consistent Marxian Socialist:
1. Marx seeks to save by doing away with both the master and slave classes—Jesus by exalting the slave class above the master class.
2. Marx exhorts the slave class to look to itself for deliverance—Jesus taught it to look to a God for this.
3. Marx promises salvation for this world here and now, a world about which everybody knows much—Jesus promised it for another world elsewhere and elsewhen, a world about which nobody knows anything.
The world has never had a gospel which is at all comparable in its excellency to that of Marxian Socialism. The gospel of Jesuine Christianism, according to the orthodox interpretation of it, is no exception; for, granting it to be superior to the Mosaic, Buddhistic, Mohammedan and other gospels, it is, nevertheless, almost infinitely inferior to the Marxian gospel. Gospels are for the purpose of saving the world from its suffering. The Jesuine and Marxian gospels are alike in having for their object the salvation of the proletarian world.