IV.
A nutshell 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-gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion are symbols of this one.
(4) Ignorance is the devil of the world. The destroyer-gods 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 god has consciously willed. There are no other facts.
(7) A truth is a fact so interpreted that if it is lived it will contribute towards making the most of life. There are no other truths.
(8) Hence the greatest people in the world are the scientists who discover facts, and the preachers who interpret them and persuade to their living. If you contend that mothers are greater than teachers, I shall agree with you on condition that you will admit that a mother is not really great unless she is a teacher.
(9) The desire and effort to learn facts, interpret and live them constitute morality.
(10) Morality is the greatest thing in the world, because it is all there is of real religion and politics.
(11) But, paradoxical as it may seem, there is one thing which is greater than the greatest thing in the world—freedom.
(12) And the freedom which is greater than morality consists in the liberty to learn, interpret, live and teach facts, without which liberty a man may be a non-moral child, or an immoral hypocrite, but he cannot be the possessor of the pearl of great price—morality, without which human life is not worth the living or even possible.
II. My political faith is summed up in the following creed of twelve articles:
(1) As the universe in general is self-existing, self-sustaining and self-governing, so man in particular, who is but one among the transitory, cosmic phenomena, has all of the potentialities of his own life within himself, so that every man can say of himself what the makers of Jesus had him say: I and my Father are one.
(2) Man has set a far-off and high-up goal of an ideal civilization for himself, and is finding the way to it by his own discoveries, and is walking therein by his own strength, so that he is not in the least indebted to any of the gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, either for the setting of the goal, or for what progress he has made towards it.
(3) Nor is humanity indebted to its outstanding representatives for the advance in the way of civilization, as is evident from the fact that, but for the gods, it would have long since been far beyond the point where the English-German war would have been within the range of possibilities, and these gods are the gifts to a blind humanity by its blind leaders.
(4) Humanity is not indebted to its physical scientists any more than to its spiritual prophets for its advance in the way of civilization, because the scientists have always worked, as the prophets have preached, in the interests of the profiteers of the existing system of economics. Economic systems have been the chief, if not indeed, the only promoters of war, and the world war with its tremendous horrors would not have been possible but for science.
(5) So, then, the history of civilization has been what it is because of the economic systems by which the material necessities of life (foods, raiments and houses) have been produced, not because gods have made spiritual revelations, nor yet because men have made great discoveries and persuasively taught them. According to Marx, who discovered the key to the door of history, it is constituted neither by the gods in the skies, nor the great men on earth; but by economic systems. These create the divinities and the leaders, not they them.
(6) Thus far in the history of mankind every civilization has rested upon the institution of slavery and there have been, speaking broadly, three different forms of it, with their correspondingly different civilizations, chattel, feudal and capital. Each of these forms of slavery has been the foundation for a superstructure of a civilization peculiar to a distinct period of history. Chattel, feudal and capital slaveries respectively constituted the foundations for the superstructures of ancient, mediaeval and modern civilizations. The second of the two great discoveries by Marx was that the wage slavery of capitalism, by far the worst of all slaveries, is due to surplus profits.
(7) Since civilizations have their embodiments in religious and political institutions (churches and states with what goes with them) so clearly as to justify the contention that religion and politics are the halves of one and the same reality—civilization—it follows that I am right in carrying my materialism over from the realm of religion into that of politics.
(8) A system of economics is about the most materialistic thing in the world, yet it is the only key which will open the door to the temple of human history. Having opened it with this key, the first thing to be seen is a world divided into two classes, one class whose representatives live by owning the material means and the machines for production and distribution; and another class whose representatives live by working in making and operating these machines, with the result of producing and distributing the material commodities by which the world is fed, clothed and housed, but to the surfeiting of the owners who as such produce nothing and have everything and the starving of the workers who produce everything and have nothing.
(9) Capitalists and communists agree that when the goal of humanity has been reached the world will find itself to be one all inclusive co-operating family.
(10) Capitalists say that then the co-operating will be between the owners as fathers, and the workers as children. The capitalists will recognize every laborer who does a fair day's work as a good son or daughter, and the laborer will recognize every owner who gives a fair day's wage as a good father.
(11) But communists say that then the co-operating will be between men, all of whom are on the same footing as laborers, since, when the goal is reached, the world will no longer be divided as it has been, from time out of mind, into a small owning or master class and a large working or slave class; but it will constitute one great all inclusive family, every member of which will be on the same footing with all others, except that the older members will regard the younger as sons and daughters, and they in turn will be regarded as fathers and mothers, and all of the same generation will look upon each other as brothers and sisters.
(12) Civilization always has been and ever will be impossible without slavery, because leisure and opportunity for study, social intercourse and travel are necessary to it, but under capitalism, as it works out, only representatives of the owning or master class have these prerequisites, and those of the working or slave class must be deprived of them. When communism supplants capitalism all will have their equal parts in both the labor necessary to the sustenance of the physical (body) life, and also the leisure necessary to the development of the psychical (soul) life. There will still be slavery, indeed much more of it than the world has hitherto known, but machines, not men, women and children will be the slaves. Of course there will remain much work connected with the making and operating of the machines, but the time and energy required for it will more and more decrease with the inevitable increase in the number and efficiency of the machines until, according to conservative estimates, three or four hours per day of comparatively light and pleasant employment will be quite sufficient to provide the necessities of life in abundance for every worker and his dependents, so that, then, all will have as much of them as the few have now; and this without any sense of slavery because when one is working for the benefit of himself and his own in particular, and the public to which he belongs in general, not for the profit of a class of which he is not a representative, there is no feeling of irksome servitude.