[50] Memoirs of Marx, by Wilhelm Liebknecht, page 164.
[51] Karl Kautsky, article on F. Engels, Austrian Labor Almanac, 1887.
[52] E. Belfort Bax, article on Friederich Engels, in Justice (London), No. 606, Vol. XII, August 24, 1895.
[53] Cf. Reminiscences of Karl Marx, by W. Harrison Riley, in The Comrade, Vol. III, No. 1, pages 5-6.
[54] Marx opposed the "Alliance de la Démocratic Socialiste," formed by Bakunin, with its headquarters at Geneva, almost as vigorously for its atheistic plank as for its denial of political methods. The first plank in the programme of the "Alliance" was as follows:—
"The Alliance declares itself Atheist; it demands the abolition of all worship, the substitution of science for faith, and of human justice for Divine justice; the abolition of marriage, so far as it is a political, religious, juridical, or civil institution."
This programme is frequently quoted against the Socialist propaganda,—as, for example, by George Brooks, in God's England or the Devil's?—in spite of the fact that the "Alliance" was an Anarchist organization, bitterly opposed by Marx, and, in turn, bitterly opposing him.
In this connection, it may be well to call attention to an alleged "quotation from Marx" which is frequently used by the opponents of Socialism. It appears in the work of Brooks, quoted above, and in Professor Peabody's Jesus Christ and the Social Question (1907), page 16. Used in a public discussion by a New York labor union official, in April, 1908, it was widely discussed by the press, and, according to that same press, drew from the President of the United States enthusiastic praise of the labor-union official in question. The passage reads: "The idea of God must be destroyed. It is the keystone of a perverted civilization. The true root of liberty, of equality, of culture, is Atheism. Nothing must restrain the spontaneity of the human mind." Had the opponents of Socialism been familiar with the teachings of Marx, they would have known that he could not have said anything like this, that it is absolutely at variance with all his teaching. The man who formulated the materialist conception of history could not by any possibility utter such balderdash. The fact is, the quotation is not from Karl Marx at all, but from a very different writer, an Anarchist, Wilhelm Marr, who was a most bitter opponent of Socialism. As given, the quotation is a free translation of a passage contained in Marr's Das junge Deutschland in der Schweiz, pages 131-134. Marr's programme, as given in the Report of the Royal Commission on Labor (Vol. V, Germany), was the abolition of Church, State, property, and marriage, with the one positive tenet of "a bloody and fearful revenge upon the rich and powerful."
[55] See F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, page 16 (London edition, 1892).
[56] F. Engels, Introduction to the Communist Manifesto (English translation, 1888). The italics are mine. J. S.