"In politics we profess Republicanism, in economics Socialism, in religion atheism."
According to the 1903 platform of the German Socialists, adopted at Dresden, "No religious instructions of any kind shall be given to children under the age of sixteen; after that they can select their own religious tenets and teachings, as they please. Superstitious religious notions that are current among the less educated classes are to be eradicated through proper instructions."
"The Comrade," September, 1904, confesses that the satirical weekly "L'Asino," published by the Socialists of Italy, and known throughout the world for its attacks on religion, carries on a bitter fight against the Catholic Church. In the early part of 1913, "L'Asino," speaking of the coming Italian election, boasted that the Socialists would proclaim their anti-clericalism and atheism in the public meetings.
The Austrian Socialists in convention at Linz, May 30, 1898, passed a resolution proposed by Pernerstorfer to the effect that "Socialism is directly contradictory to Roman clericalism, which is enslaved to unyielding authority, immutable dogmas, and absolute intellectual thralldom. We doubt all authority, we know of no immutable dogma, we are the champions of right, liberty and conscience." [Reported in "Vorwärts," 1898, no. 126, suppl.]
The bitter persecution that has for years been waged against the church in France is too well known to require much comment. The representatives of the French Socialist Party at Tours in March, 1903, voted upon a program from which several clauses will be cited:
"The Socialist Party needs to organize a new world, free minds emancipated from superstition and prejudices. It asks for and guarantees every human being, every individual, absolute freedom of thinking, and writing and affirming their beliefs. Over against all religious dogmas and churches as well as over against the class conceptions of the bourgeoisie, it sets the unlimited right of free thought, the scientific conception of the universe, and a system of public education based exclusively on science and reason. Thus accustomed to free thought and reflection, citizens will be protected against the sophistries of the capitalistic and clerical reaction." The program also declares for the "abolition of the congregations, nationalization of property in mortmain of every kind belonging to them, and appropriation of it for works of social insurance and solidarity."
In the Tours program, therefore, we have the open confession of the Socialist Party of France that it is anti-religious and that it favors the disgraceful robbery of the church that has for many years been going on in that country.
The Belgian Socialists are quite as violent as the French in their hatred of the church, for in addition to the large number of vile anti-religious pamphlets distributed during the campaign that preceded the elections of 1912, we have the testimony of no less an authority than the Socialist leader, Emile Vandervelde, in the "Social Democrat," England, January, 1903:
"In the end the question to be solved is: what is the essential aim of Socialism? There is not a Socialist who would hesitate to say that it is the emancipation of the workers, the freedom of the proletariat--and by this freedom we mean its complete freedom, the abolition of all slavery in the spiritual sphere as well as in the material sphere.... Can a sincere believer follow the church's teachings and yet be a Socialist? We are bound to admit that both in philosophy and in politics there must be war between Socialism and the Church."
In England, too, the Socialists are the avowed enemies of religion. Blatchford, who is well known to his comrades for his extreme work in propagating Socialism by the pen, wrote in the "Clarion," October 4, 1907: