The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 15, 1925, Page 9

i SS a ea a ee ee eee By WILLIAM SCHNEIDERMAN The evolution trial in Tennéssee seemed a far cry from the revolution- ery movement, nevertheless it is clos- ely linked up with what Marx has taught us about the class struggle. Tho theory of evolution has dealt a blow to one of the main prop of the ruling class, the Ohurch, and the Chureh, and the morons who are fran- tically attempting to stave off the spread of atheism are doomed to fail- ure, Why? Because it is one of the inevitable contradictions of the capi- talist order, that the spread and popu- larization among the masses of science and knowledge which is so necessary to the progress of industry means the end of the superstition and ignorance upon which the bourgecvisie depend to maintain their strangle hold on the toilers, For if the: workingclass can ‘throw off the influence of religion, then they are likely_to go a step fur- ther and refuse to accept the other What About Evolution? |\the capitalists, as eéxampled by the tage of illiteracy and ignorance. The attempt to introduce. religion in the schoolg is & highly desirable one for ing financial authority for the Cham- bers of Commerce, that “the safety of our ‘investments depends upon the numbers of church-going people in America.” No wonder, then, we have Rockefeller Foundations financing zea lous missionaries to China and other “uncivilized” countries. . The liberal lawyers who defended evolution in the Tennessee trial ag: ainst an army of Billy Sundays give a clear-cut example of the control that is exercised by the ideology of bour- geois institutions over everyone but the most advanced section of tho working-class. On what grounds did they defend evolution? Did they come out uncompromisingly and state that the facts of sclence disprove religious | superstitions? No, they are seeking to) prove that evolution “does not con- [> A Living Proof of Darwinism | From monkey to a lawmaker of the Tennessee type who prohibits the teaching of evolution in the schools (as seen by Komsomoiskaya Pravda.) dope they are fed to keep them pas-, flict” with the teaching of)the Bible. sive. Just as the economic conditions spread science and atheism among the masses, so do they teach them thru the bitter experience of the class struggle to destroy the “religion” of “democracy and equality.” The theory of evolution has made ridiculous the Bible and all the teach- ings of the church to intelligent work- ers, by showing that man is not a product of a god, but is merely a high- ly developed creature related to the rest of the animal world by a long process of more or less gradual change from the lowest and simplest forms to the highest and most complex. But forced to utilize. Their paid men, both scientists and preachers, have hasten- explain that evolution does not at ali with religion. One can believe in a divine being, they anxiously point out, and still accept ape-ancestry of man. Oh! yes! but the only trouble is that if God didn't create the world as per the Bible, he hasn’t a single excuse for existing at ee g E The antt-evolution law in Tennessee is part of a wide-spread and vicous at- tempt to keep the minds of the young- er generation especially as dark as ble, and characteristically en- the campaign was started in a with a notoriously high percen- The stientists, too, know well which Side their bread is buttered on and refused to risk their Jobs by giving truthful evidence on the witness stand for fear of their masters. We know that scientists can be as revolutionary as they please if they talk about he stars, but not when they get any near- er home than a few million miles. There is a curious analogy between the role of Marx and Engels in the field of economics and that of Darwin and Wallace in the field of science. In both cases they have contributions that have revolutionized their respec- tive fields, altho in different degreea of importance, and placed them on a scientific basis. Engels was as much under-estimated beside Marx as Wallace was beside Darwin. And finally, in each case attempts have been made to take the real revolution- ary significance out of their theories, and render them tame and harmless. Reformist apologists of the Second In- tepnational have everywhere substitut- ed “evolution” for “revolution”, in- stantly forgetting, however, that even science gives them the lie. To carry the analogy further, just as the theory of evolution has made, the worker turn away from a god to which he has always been told he owes his existence, as has the Marx- Russian Workers Workers correspondents give information about their life. By ANISE MOSCOW, July 14—(By Mail.)— statement of Roger W. Babson, lead-| Tens of thousands of Russian work- ers and peasants are now writing for the Russian press, exposing incom: petency, praising institutions that are doing well, suggesting improvements. The “workers’ correspondents,” which began spontaneously in the desires of workmen to help improve their coun- try, are now a prominent institution in Russia, the unofficial aids to prose- cuting attorneys and to alll inspecting departments of the land. And since |the Russian worker takes a vital in- |terest in the workers of all lands, some of these correspondents are—be- | ginning to write messages to foreign | workers. Two of these letters were brought | to me the other day and I was asked to translate them and forward them to America, They give, more simply and graphically than I could do, the basic facts of Russian life. The first is signed by the “Workers of O. K. L. Mill, City of Red Lugansk, Donetz Basin; writer, representative E. F. Golovachof,” such is the co-operative way in which these letters are often produced, read to an interested group and then forwarded. Pepe workers of America, “We want to inform you how the workers live in the Soviet state, in the city of Red Lugansk, Donetz Basin. “First, we work eight hours a day, on Saturday six hours. Youth under eighteen work six hours, and all per- sons working in high temperatures work six hours and get extra milk and special clothing. wages are paid twiee a month. “Every skilled worker gets yearly one month’s vacation on full pay. Unskilled get two weeks. “A worker and his family get free hospital care; when on sick leave he gets full pay as though working. We have a bathhouse’at the mill for the use of workers and their families. At the mill is a nursery where the working women leave their children and each three hours they are allowed one hour to hurse them. “All of us are members of the union and also of the mutual aid society in the union. From this mutual aid fund a worker can get loans, but not more than a month’s wages. Almost all workers are members of the co-oper- atives, through which they get their food and clothing at prices lower than the market. “Workers are taught how to read and write gratis, no matter how old they are. “Even some sixty year olds are learning for the first time. Con- ditions are improving in many other ways. “Of course, all this did not exist un- der the czar. Naturally, the workers prize the Soviet government very much. The iron unity of the workers will break through all plots of for- eign bourgeois rascals. “Comrade workers, we beg you to unite as strongly as you can into iron ranks and to give such a blow to your exploiting bourgeois as we did, and to join with us in our workers’ family to toil for the workers and peasants’ cause of the whole world. We send fraternal greetings to the whole work- ers and peasants class of America. “Workers of O. K. M. Mill, Red Lu- gansk, Donetz Basin, Correspondent E, F. Golovchot.” Incidentlly the whole address is given so that anyone who wishes may write back. Perhaps someone whom this reach- Write to America es in America, would like to. ~ ’ * Pe gue letter comes from the peasants’ sanitarium-in Livadia, on the shores of the Crimea, With shrewd political taste, the Soviet gov- ernment has used the old sunimer palace of the czar not for Soviet offi- clals, nor even for city workers, but for peasants. It is delightfully sym- bolic. They are saying, “Our officials do not choose td sleep in the czar’s bed, as Kerensky did, thus showing that he aped the czar; neither do we give it to the city workers, who don’t care whether a bed belonged to the ezar or not, if it is otherwise a good bed. ° But we give it to the peasants, the great dark mass of the land, to show them that they are taking the ezar’s place now. Of course, the peas- ant is the one person in Russia now who can get some real excitement out of occupying the czar’s palace; it gives Ivan something to write home about and tell the gaping neighbors in his village. So here is a letter from an employe, working in the Peasants’ Sanitarium of Livadia: s- * *# “Crimea, July, 1925. “In a beautiful park above the sea gleams a white palace, where for- merly the czars rested from the groans of the workers. At present the peasants of Russia rest there, the new rulers. Daily in small groups the patients arrive; now there are more than 300 people. They arrive from all ends of this limitless terri- tory of the United Republics, from the central states and the far removed provinces. “Here you can meet the bright khalat of the Turcoman, the narrow face of the Khirgizian, the short cut hair and basket sandals of the Great Russian. Various dialects and tongues intermingle. But finally they are all washed, dressed in sanitary clothes. It is not so easy to distinguish them now; they have become Jess pittur- : esque and more alike. “The patients like to inquire which Trovm was Nicolai’s and which belong- va to the czarina and the grand duch- esses. With great curiosity they ex- amine the expensive carvings of fur- niture and walls, the tremendous din- ing saloon and vast pantries. They talk and argue how many tractors you could buy for the village with this money, or how many new school build- ings. “Most of the peasants can’t get over the impression of their trip and of this vast health resort. To them who have spent all their lives in the dead villages, in ceaseless labor, it all seems a dream, What it so long ago, only eight years, when even in dreams he could never have seen himself traveling to a resort for a cure at the expense of the state and stopping in the czar’s palace. Even in fairy tales they did not have such things. “Among the peasants, especially the older women, there are a number of believers, but more by habit than con- viction, They will get up from table and hastily cross themselves as they turn around. Then some young neigh- bor will jocularly remark: ‘See what kind of palaces your God built for the ezar. Certainly was a _ kind-hearted God!’ The woman will answer: ‘O my dear son, more by habit does the hand pull up. What is life in heaven if only we can arrange our life on earth.’ . “In this way the Russian peasant regains his health—he who with the worker is rebuilding his own land. Working-women Nikolaieva.” Employe of the Livadia Sanitarium, 8 — — — — eee ian theory stripped the claims of the |Jing real estate in the swamps of Flo- bourgeois economists of the falshood that the workers owe their living to the capitalists. Well-bred scientists still declare that evolution is “in harmony” with religion; m fact, some have shown that it “proves” religion. And preachers chime in, too, with a watch- ful eye on their salaries, It is only the crude ones, of the Billy Sunday type, who cannot reconcile the two, and who will have nothing but God land the Bible, if it will help their sel- 2 rida. And for once we agree with them. |We, too, will not “reconcile” religion ‘and science ,any more than we will .recognize the “harmony” between two |warring classes. We will wage con- stant war against mainstay of bourg- eois rule, until we have destroyed it forever, for the rule of the workers will use science to emancipate instead of to enslave them and will have no need for mysticism and superstition to maintain itself. LLL LLLLLLLLLLLBLBB LLL LLL LLL LLL