The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 20, 1926, Page 11

1/Socialism and (Written in December, 1925) ODERN society is entirely built upon the exploitation of the immense masses of the working class by the trifling minority of the population, belonging to the classes of land- lords and capitalists. This society is a slave- owners’ society, because “free” workers, work- ing all their lives for capital, “have the right” only to such means of subsistence as are in- dispensable for keeping alive slaves, who pro- duce profit in order to assure and perpetuate capitalist’ slavery. The economic oppression of the workers in- evitably calls forth and creates all kinds of political oppression, social degradation, coars- ening and obscuring of the spiritual and moral life of the masses. The workers can obtain more or less political liberties as means toward their economic liberation, but no freedom can ‘liberate them from poverty, unemployment and oppression as long as the power of capitalists is not overthrown. Religion is one kind of spir- itual oppression. It rests heavily upon the masses, suppressed by eternal toil for others, n- | by poverty and neglect. The helplessness of °S | the exploited classes in their fight against their le | exploiters creates the belief of a better life after -h | death as inevitably as the helplessness of say- ’s | ages in their fight against nature creates a be- ut | lief in gods, devils, miracles and so on. To 1e | those who toil all of their lives and are in need, is | religion teaches humility and forbearance in up earthly life, hoodwinking them with the hope VE DRIVER ‘s a of aS of n’ hg of ht ‘is »p T- Ww 1d th BS to Ww Q= If By A. L. Pollock War, the Wage Slaves Must Speed Up. d. | over the town of Malden. 7 The following morning Porky, freshly shaven d neatly attired in a resplendent uniform, egan a search for his sister. After several in- 0 | quiries he was informed that she lived in a le | neighboring suburb. With the bright, new, ys | gold watch and chain, his present for Jeff, in its l- | velvet-lined box tucked under his arm, wi in | the hour Porky wiped his feet upon a mat lying at the door of a one-family house. Entering he saw his sister sitting on a chair, her right arm resting upon the edge of-a table. Hollow-eyed " she sat there gazing into nothing. Her empty ’ | stare frightened Pork. Before he could say ‘| “hello,” Ann opened her mouth, and words fluttered out as from a statute. Coldly, un- r | evenly, she said: of reward in heaven. But to those who live on the work of others, religion teaches charity in earthly life, offering them a very cheap justifi- cation for all their exploiting existence, and selling at current price the tickets to heavenly blessedness. Religion is the opium of the peo- ple. Religion is a kind of spiritual drug, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demands for even a little of a life worthy & human being. * But a slave, conscious of his slavery and rousing himself to fight for his liberation al- ready partly ceases to be a slave. The con- temporary conscious worker, who is educated by the great machine industry, enlightened by city life, contemptuously throws away religious superstition, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois hypocrites and conquers for himself a better life here on earth. The contemporary proletariat is on the side of socialism, which adopts science in the struggle with the religious fog and frees the worker from the belief in a life beyond, and makes him more fit for the real fight for a better life on earth. “Religion must be declared a private mat- ter”—with these words the attitude of social- ists towards religion is commonly expressed. But the meaning of these words must be de- fined exactly in order to avoid any misconcep- tion. We demand that religion be a private matter in relation to the state, but we cannot by any means regard religion as a private mat- ter in respect to our own party. The govern- ment should have no say in matters of_religion, religious-societies should not be bound up with state power. Everybody should be given full liberty to preach whatever religion he wishes or not to recognize any religion, that is, to be an atheist, as every socialist commonly is. Any differences between citizens who claim certain rights because of their religious beliefs, is im- permissible and should not be allowed. All mention of a citizen’s creed must be wiped off from official documents. There should be no taxes for the state church, no government ap- propriation to church and religious societies, which must be entirely free, independent of the state power, ‘and :free toxcreate: religious..con= gregations with their fellow believers. Only the complete fulfillment of these demands can end the infamous and cursed past, when the church was in feudal dependence upon » the govern™ ‘ment, and the Russian citizens were in serf- dom to the state church, when there were med- iaeval laws of inquisition (which up to this date are in our criminal laws and regulations), which persecuted for belief or disbelief, violated the conscience of the man, and levied taxes and tithes for several clerical fakes. The complete separation of the church from the state—that is the demand the socialists, the proletariat, presents to the present state and the present church. The Russian revolution must realize this de- mand as a necessary and essential part of pol- itical freedom. The Russian revolution is in this respect placed in a very favorable position, because the loathsome slavery of absolutism has provoked dissatisfaction, resentment and indignation even among the clergy. However degraded, however ignorant the Russian ortho- dox clergy is, even they are aroused by the thunder of the fall of the old, medieval order in Russia. Even the clergy leans towards the de- mand for liberty, protests against the bu- reaucratic license, against police outrages, con- nected with the “serving of god.” We, the socialists, must support this move- ment, developing the demands of the sincere and honest elements among the clergy to their logical conclusions, seizing upon their words about liberty, demanding that they decisively cut the bonds between religion and _ police. Hither you are sincere, and then you must stand for the complete separation of the church and state, and the school and church, for the absolute and unconditional declaration of re- ligion as a private matter. Or, you do not ac- cept these consistent demands of libery—and then you are still in the prison of the tradi- tions of the inquisition, then you are still cring- ing before the governmental officers and beg- ging for nF a iy ay oo allowances, then you do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon, you still take bribes of absolutism— and then the conscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war against you. In regard to the party of the socialist prole- 38 “Jett—Jeft was killed down at the mines'yes-|tariat, religion is not a private matter. Our ly | terday.” party is an alliance of* conscious, foremost Gcagit ah S I lh AC a a eS cama is rr a e - By Lenin fighters for the liberation of the working class. This alliance cannot and must not be indiffer- ent in regard to the unconsciousness and ignor- ance of the religious masses. We demand the complete separation of the church from the state in order to fight the religious mists with purely ideological and orfly ideological weapons —our press, our word. We have created our alliance, among other things, just for this fight against all kinds of religious confusion. For us the ideological fight is not a private, but a general party, a general proletarian mat- ter. If so, why do we not declare in our program that we are atheists? That we forbid chris- tians and believers in god to enter our party? The answer to this question must explain a_ very important difference between the bour- geois-democratic and social-democratic (read Communist) method of putting the question of religion. Our program is entirely built up on scienti- fic, materialist philosophy. The explanation of our program inevitably includes, therefore, al- so the explanation of the true historical and economic roots of religious darkness. Our propaganda necessarily includes even the propaganda of atheism, publishing’ the proper scientific literature, which was strictly forbidden and suppressed up to this day by mediaeval absolutist government, and must now become one of the branches of our party work. Perhaps we must now follow the coun- sel sometimes given by Engels to the German socialists: Translate and give mass circulation to the French enlightened and atheist litera- ture of the eighteenth century. But we should not under any circumstances fall into an abstract, idealistic method of con- sideration of the question of religion, look at it from the standpoint of “reason,” a fight above classes—the standpoint often taken by the rad- ical bourgeois democrats. It would be silly to think that in a society based upon the endless suppression and coarsening of the toiling mass- es, you could dissolve religious prejudices mere- ly with propaganda weapons. Jt would be a bourgeois narrowness'to forget ©... that religious tyranny upon humanity is only a product and a reflection of the economic tyran- ny within society. You can enlighten a prole- tariat with no books and no preaching if it will not be enlightened by its own fight against the dark powers of capitalism. Unity in this real revolutionary struggle of the suppressed class- es for the creation of the paradise on earth is more important for us than the unity of opin- ion of the proletariat about the paradise in heaven. It is for this reason that we do not declare and are not declaring our atheism in our pro- gram; it is for.this reason that we do not hin- der.and must: not hinder proletarians, who still have remnants of old superstitions, from ap- proaching our party. We will always preach a scientific outlook. We must always fight against the inconsistency of all kinfs of “Christians.” But this does not mean in any way that we must push religious questions to the foreground, in which they do not belong. We do not allow the splitting up of the forces of the real revolutionary, economie and politi- eal struggle for the sake of opinions on third- grade questions or obstacles which are fast losing all political significance, which will soon be thrown on the garbage-heap by the very process of economic development. The-revolutionary bourgeoisie is everywhere busy—and will soon be busy in our country— instigating religious hatred, to direct the at- tention of the masses from their really impor- tant and basic economic and political ques- tions, which the Russian proletariat is now go- ing to decide, having been unified by its revo- lutionary struggle. This reactionary policy of dispersing the proletariat makes its appear- ance today, mainly in the pogroms of the Black Hundreds, but tomorrow they will perhaps think out some more subtle means. But we will in any case match against it the calm, persistent and patient propaganda of proleta- rian solidarity and scientific viewpoint and avoid all disturbances of secondary differences ' of opinion. The revolutionary proletariat aims to make religion a personal matter as concerns the state. And in the new political system from which all mediaeval slag has been removed, the proletariat will conduct a broad, open fight for the abolition ef economic slavery, the real source of religious dulling of mankind. “