According to the traditional superstitious conception, a truth is the revelation of the will of a god, involving a service to be rendered directly or indirectly to him, and morality consists in a fulfillment of it.
According to the modern scientific conception, a truth is the interpretation of a fact involving a service to be rendered to men. On the scientific theory each man must have what truth he has, either by his own interpretation or by the adoption for himself of another's interpretation.
No man can live the moral part of his psychical (soul) life on the truth of another any more than he can live his physical (body) life on the meals of another. Every one must have his own truths, even as he must have his own meals.
Hence the necessity of freedom to morality. Hence, too, the impossibility of the moral life under restraint, such as is imposed by orthodox churches in their official dogmas, and such as is imposed by belligerent states in their espionage laws.
Capitalism is essentially competitive and therefore necessarily belligerent in character: hence a complete, an ideal moral life is an utter impossibility under it, but even the little of moral life which otherwise might be possible is lessened to one-half by official dogmas and espionage laws; if, then, the governments of churches and nations have any regard for the morality of their memberships and citizenships they will at once repeal them, and never enact others.
The democracy which means freedom to learn the laws of the physical realm of nature and to interpret them into laws for the regulation of human life (a democracy which will secure to each one the longest and happiest life which, under the most favorable of conditions, would be within the range of possibilities for him) must wait until the competitive system of capitalism for the production and distribution of the necessities has been universally and completely supplanted by the co-operative system of socialism.
The conclusion of the whole matter, as it is well put by an able contributor to the excellent Proletarian, is this:
What is needed is a complete revolution of the economic system. Private ownership of the tools of wealth production stands in the way of further peaceful social development and private ownership must be eliminated. The capitalists themselves will not eliminate it. That is certain. It remains for the working class to do so. In order to accomplish this task it will be necessary for the workers to take control of the institution by which the capitalists maintain their ownership of the tools of production—the political state. That is the historic mission of the working class. The mission of the Socialist is to organize and train the workers for this "conquest of political power."
Among the signs of the times which unmistakably point to the great day of the happy consummation of the movement towards the proletarian revolution, and the glorious sky is full of them, is the fact that the world has recently learned from the great war that man must work out his own salvation without the least help from the gods of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion:
And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, Lift not your hands to It for help—for It As impotently moves as you or I.