§ II. Socialism Explicitly Hostile to Religion

It was hardly necessary to labor so much to show the conflict between socialism and Christianity, since we have the express official testimony of the socialists themselves upon the fact. The German social democracy in its official platform declares religion to be a “private matter.” Thus the socialist state, at least, is altogether divorced from religion,—non-religious and atheistic. To put more stress upon this point, the Erfurt platform, besides declaring religion to be a private concern, also demands that “the use of public funds for ecclesiastical and religious purposes be abolished.”

This doctrine is directly antagonistic to the teaching of the Catholic Church, which has always condemned as untenable and injurious the principle of absolute separation of Church and state.¹ It is contradicted also by right reason. The state owes to God, to itself, and to its subjects the duty of supporting and encouraging to the best of its power the true religion instituted by God. In the present order of things this religion is that of Christ and none other. And since, moreover, the entire education of youth, according to socialists, is the business of the state, it follows that education should take no cognizance of religion; in other words, that it should be non-religious and godless. ‘The community as such should not concern itself with God and religion, but must consider both as equally indifferent. The Erfurt platform explicitly demands secularization of the schools, ie., godless education.

¹ Cf. Syllabus thes. 55; also the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII., Immortale Dei.

This view of the matter must needs be the outcome of contempt for religion and is the first step toward a persecution of the Church. Let us suppose that the Church wishes to erect bishoprics and parishes, to entrust priests with the care of souls, to take in hand the religious instruction of the young, to regulate marriage and public holydays, etc.—would, in that case, the socialistic state leave the Church at perfect liberty? Would it be possible for Church and state, which are both concerned with the same human beings, to avoid a conflict? And if the socialistic state would force priests and religious, nay, even bishops, to abandon their vocations and to contribute their share to the public production of wealth—would not that be an open violation of the Church’s rights? Would it not lead to perpetual conflicts, which would finally develop into downright persecution?¹ And what would be the result if the Church would claim a right to at least so much ground as would suffice for its churches, convents, parsonages, hospitals, seminaries, etc., and, moreover, if it should demand labor power and materials for the erection of such institutions? Would not the socialistic state, from its standpoint, be forced, in that case, flatly to refuse such demands on the part of the Church, and thus violate the Church’s most sacred rights, and take away, as it were, the ground from beneath her feet?

¹ Bebel (Die Frau, p. 320) says anent the future order of society: “If any one has still any religious propensities he may satisfy them in company with his congeners. Society will not care about it. To make his living the priest will be obliged to work, and learning thereby he will finally come to the conviction that to be the highest is to be a man. Morality has nothing to do with religion; the contrary is asserted by simpletons and hypocrites. . . . Moral concepts as well as religion are the results of the economic condition of mankind.”

The apparent toleration of religion in the socialist state as a private affair, is, therefore, merely a sop for simple souls. Socialists are not prepared to give offence to those who still maintain in their hearts some attachment to religion by demanding from them all at once the surrender of religion. But of its very nature socialism is the enemy of every religion which undertakes to raise the aspirations of men from earth to heaven, and to preach to man that he does not live on bread alone.² It is not by mere chance that the most noted socialists are so outspoken in their hatred of religion, and that they generally indulge in the most irreligious and blasphemous language.

² The construction which socialists often put upon the expression: Religion is a private concern, is well illustrated by the remarks of the German trades-union journal Der Zimmerer (cf. Cologne Volkszeitung, 1902, n. 230): “The expression in the socialist platform: Religion is a private concern, is often taken to mean that socialists should abstain from religious questions, that to do otherwise is an infraction of the party platform. This, of course, is not and cannot be its meaning. Upon closer inspection it will appear that the demand for declaring religion a private matter is in the second part of the platform which contains the principal demands made for the present. The meaning is, therefore, that the present state should look upon religion as a private concern, that the state should in consequence make no appropriations for any religious purpose nor discriminate in favor of or against any denomination. The above expression does not manifest the attitude of socialism toward religion; it merely declares the attitude toward religion to be assumed by the existing governments. This demand is directed against the arrogance and encroachments of the Church, which should be regarded and treated by the state as a mere private association. If our demand, however, is interpreted to mean that socialists have no right to bother about questions of religion, it is thereby made a bulwark for the Church. The modern labor movement would suffer a thorn to remain in its flesh if it allowed any obscurity to subsist concerning its attitude toward religious belief. Social democracy as a philosophical system can have no other relation to the Church than to reject its soporifics and to wage relentless war on by far the greater part of its doctrines. This attitude is postulated already by the very fact that the Church demands faith in a God of infinite goodness, wisdom, and justice against whose will not even a sparrow falls from the roof. Well then. If such a God exists, it were unheard of temerity, yea, blasphemy on the part of the laborer, to organize in trades and political unions for improving his situation.”

It is scarcely necessary to point out that the last sentence is blooming nonsense. We might as well maintain, that for a Christian it is a sin to work because he must trust in God for assistance. Christianity knows no such nonsensical doctrines. Yet the very same argumentation is applied by the N. Y. Volkszeitung of Nov. 1, 1902, in an article declaring that socialists cannot adhere to any religion, because religion forbids self-help.

The expression “draft on eternity” (Wechsel auf das Jenseits), the trite blasphemy with which they characterize the Christian efforts of social reform, is well known. The Social Demokrat, the former official organ of the German socialists, had almost on every page the most virulent abuse of what is called “clerical ascendency,” and was generally bristling with the most shocking blasphemies. And its successor, the Berlin Vorwärts, the present official party organ, yields in naught to its predecessor. In a Christmas reflection (No. 301) it accuses Christianity of fulfilling none of its promises. ‘We know,” it says, “that Christianity has not brought redemption. We believe in no Redeemer; but we believe in redemption. No man, no God in human form, no Saviour, can redeem humanity. Only humanity itself—only laboring humanity—can save humanity.” In 1891 (No. 261) we read in the same paper: “The fear and anger of Protestants as well as Catholic clericals is proof that socialism threatens their innermost substance. We are sure of success. The priesthood may cling ever so closely to the policeman and the money-bag; this will at most hasten its downfall.” In an article for Pentecost (1893, No. 118) the same journal tells us: “The founders of the Christian Church grafted Christian myths, feasts, and institutions upon pagan myths. ... According to the Christian myth the Holy Ghost came down on the first Pentecost... . Socialism is also a new doctrine, and proclaims the joyful gospel of redemption, but not of redemption through a Messias. May the disciples to-day and to-morrow pour out the spirit of socialism upon thousands of unbelievers. This is our ‘Pentecost.’” Another time it says (1894, No. 70, 1 suppl.): ‘Good Friday was celebrated by a good many Berlin proletarians by a pilgrimage to the German Golgotha, the graves of the March victims (revolutionaries).” On Easter, 1896, we read: ‘About 1863 years ago, according to the Christian legend, the founder of Christianity died on the cross, because He had advocated equality among men. On the day when international socialism shall cast off the twofold yoke of mammon .. . the million-headed son of man—the laboring populace—will celebrate his resurrection. The celebration of that resurrection is our Easter-day, the Easter-day of humanity.”

That the same anti-Christian spirit is still rife in the editorial sanctum of the Vorwärts is proved by the article entitled “Pfingstgeist” (spirit of Pentecost) in No. 21, 1901. “We celebrate a feast of nature and of intellect. Our celebration is not meant for the blind sway of brutish lust, but also not for the supernatural manifestations of a fancied supersensual world. The Holy Spirit of our times does not proclaim humanity and self-denial, as Christianity has done at a period of general decadence. The Holy Spirit of our times preaches humanity, etc.”

The Neue Welt the illustrated supplement of the Vorwärts (1896, No. 47), characterizes the story of Adam and Eve as a “foolish dream.” Another time (1898, No. 6) it says: ‘The threats of hell in a future life are to be laughed at, drafts on heaven are to be despised. The former are fanaticism, the latter are speculation.”

In November, 1897, the Charlottenburg local of the socialdemocratic union of masons passed the following resolution: “If a member of the union dies and a clergyman accompanies the funeral, no floral offerings will be made for the deceased.”

Karl Marx allows no opportunity to pass without an open or covert thrust at Christianity. According to him, religion is an “absurd popular sentiment,” a “fantastic degradation of human nature.” “Man makes religion,” he says, ‘not religion man.” Then, again, religion is “the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” “The abolition of religion as the deceptive happiness of the people is a necessary condition for their true happiness.” ‘Religion is only an illusory sun, which revolves around man as long as man fails to revolve around himself.”¹

¹ Deutsch-Französ. Jahrbücher; Paris, 1844, p. 71. Volksblatt, No. 281. Capital, vol. I. p. 19.

“As man is dominated in religion by the creations of his imagination, thus he is dominated in the capitalist system by the product of his own hand.”² ‘Man becomes a savage after ceasing to be an ape.”³ Marx had resolved to prepare a German edition of Lewis Morgan’s notorious book, which tries to derive the origin of the family from a perfectly bestial state of man. Unable to execute his plan he intrusted it to his friend Engels, who accomplished his task in “The Origin of the Family,” which was subsequently retranslated into English. In his criticism of the socialist platform⁴ Marx demanded that the labor party declare its intention “of delivering men’s consciences from the spectre of religion.”

² Capital, vol. I. p. 585.

³ Zur Kritik des sozialdemokrat. Parteiprogramms, p. 564.

⁴ Ibid., 575.

Engel’s views on religion are sufficiently manifested by his utterances quoted above (p. 121 sqq.). In his work on Feuerbach (p. 52) he says: “Religion had its origin in a very primeval period, from ambiguous and rather primitive views of men concerning their own nature and their surroundings. But ideology, wherever it exists, is developed in accordance with the given subject-matter; otherwise it is no ideology, ie., an occupation with thoughts as though they were independent, self-developed beings subject to no other laws than their own. That the course of this process is determined by the economic conditions of the men in whose minds it takes place, is necessarily hidden from those men, else there would be an end of all ideology.” Religion, therefore, is naught but hallucination!

Bebel, in the words of the frivolous poet Heine, leaves “heaven to the angels and the sparrows.”¹ If we are to believe him, ‘theology is in contradiction with natural science and will disappear in the society of the future.”² Again: “The conviction that heaven is on this earth,” and that “to die is to end all here,” will impel every one to lead a natural life.³ “The gods do not create men, but men create gods and God.” ‘Natural science has shown ‘creation’ to be a myth, astronomy and physics prove that “heaven” is a phantom.”⁴ In the Reichstag session of December 31, 1881, the present leader of German socialism declared: “In politics we profess republicanism, in economics socialism, in religion atheism.”

¹ Unsere Ziele, p. 38.

² Die Frau, p. 319.

³ Ibid., p. 337.

⁴ Ibid., p. 320. Bebel’s Die mohammedanisch-arabische Kultur-periode is a mean and venomous attack on Christianity.

Liebknecht confessed at the Halle convention: “As regards my own self I had done with religion at an early age... . I am an atheist; I do not believe in God. . . . Science is hostile to religion. . . . Science provides for good schools; they are the best means against religion.” He is of opinion that the dependence of the forms of religion upon economic conditions is so evident that there is no need of a conflict with religion. ‘We may peacefully take our stand upon the ground of socialism, and thus conquer the stupidity of the masses in so far as this stupidity reveals itself in religious forms and dogmas.”⁵

⁵ Berlin Volksblatt, 1890, n. 281.

Dietzgen, in his blasphemous sermons on ‘Religion and Social Democracy,”⁶ surpasses all others in his savage onslaught against religion. As characteristic of his style we quote the following: “If religion is to be understood as a belief in supersensible, immaterial substances and forces, if it consists in a belief in higher gods and spirits, [social] democracy has no religion. In the place of religion it sets up the consciousness of the insufficiency of the individual, who for his perfection requires to be supplemented, and, consequently, subordinated to the entire body social. A cultured human society is the supreme good in which we believe. Our hope rests upon the organization of social democracy. This organization shall make that love a reality for which religious fanatics have displayed such irrational enthusiasm.”¹

⁶ Fifth ed., Berlin, 1891, pp. 16, 17.

¹ The real opinions of socialists concerning religion are revealed in the following pamphlets recently published and widely circulated also in the United States by the Socialist Literature Co. of New York. Bebel, Glossen zu Guyot’s Die wahre Gestalt des Christentums; Stern, Die Religion der Zukunft; Lommel, Jesus von Nazareth; Adolf Douai, Wider Gottes- und Bibelglauben; Losinsky, War Jesus Gott, Mensch oder Uebermensch? and countless others of the same calibre.

In the Neue Zeit² Kautsky lately expressed his dissatisfaction at the French socialists, especially Jaurés, for not being radical enough in their onslaught on the congregations. “I prefer the German method (of waging war on the Church) to the French, not because it renounces war, but wages it much more effectively. The one-sided attack on the congregations . . . is merely like lopping off the branches of the tree, thereby causing it to grow more vigorously. The ax must be laid at the root of the tree, but this can be effected only by withdrawing the state subsidy from the secular clergy.”

² Twenty-first year, vol. I, p. 506.

In the party convention at Hamburg a Mrs. Steinbach spoke in defence of the editor of the Neue Zeit. ‘An editor,” she said, “who is supposed to write a paper for a million of readers and to please them all would have to be God, and in Him we do not believe.” According to the Vorwärts this sentence was received with great applause and merriment. Nevertheless the same woman boldly declared that she looked upon it as barbarous “to deprive those of religion to whom we cannot as yet give a new religion. Religion should remain a private concern.”

This anti-religious tendency recurs in countless variations in the so-called socialist “poetry,” a favorite occupation of which is to parody whatever is Christian. ‘There are socialist songs for Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, full of mockery and blasphemy.

In the “Christmas Marseillaise”³ we read, for instance:

³ Max Kegel, Sozialistisches Liederbuch.

Oh, hope no more in ancient guise
To see a wondrous star arise
To lead thee to the Saviour’s stable,
’Tis not the meaning of the fable.
Look up, a star is shining bright,
’Tis socialism’s beacon light,
And thou thyself redeemer art, etc.

For the day on which Christendom celebrates the death of the Redeemer on the cross the socialist song-book offers the following blasphemous skit:

Woe, woe to that pale Nazarene!
As well as He I am, I ween,
The Godhead’s own incarnate son.

The believer in immortality is thus derided by a socialist versifier:¹

¹ Neue Zeit, 1894, n. 20.

And if I die, what shall to me
Hereafter then be shown?
Thou fool! Thy question has no sense;
Hereafter is on earth alone.

The Christmas number (1897) of the socialist Wahre Jakob was headed by a poem entitled: “We also celebrate Christmas.” One stanza is as follows:

And though we are of faith devoid
In the Christ of our childhood days,
And though from clashing fables dark
We strive to reach the blessèd light,
And though our faith has disappeared
That us from bondage to redeem
A Saviour came in heavenly light—
Yet Christmas still we celebrate,
Because in firmest faith we trust
That tyranny will disappear, etc.

The socialist poet Levy thus mocks those who believe in a life to come:

Ha! your virtue we deride,
For joys hereafter you may wait;
With golden youth we will abide
With light and love in earthly state.²

² Neue Welt, 1903, n. 5.

A few testimonies from socialists outside of Germany will show that socialism is everywhere alike in its anti-religious trend.

B. Malon, a ringleader of French socialism and translator of Marx’s “Capital,” said on his deathbed: “I die in my pantheistic, evolutionistic, socialist faith.”¹

¹ Cf. L. Say, Contre le socialisme (1896), p. 82.

Similarly Leo Franckel, the intimate friend of Marx and Engels, declares in his last will: ‘No priest shall attend my deathbed or my funeral, in order to save my soul. I believe neither in heaven nor in hell.” His testament was read at his grave in the Paris cemetery of Pére Lachaise before a large concourse of socialists of all countries, who were “deeply impressed by the solemnity of the funeral celebration.”²

² Vorwärts, 1896, n. 81.

In an article by the French socialist, Paul Lafargue, translated and published in the International Socialist Review (Nov. 1903), by Charles H. Kerr of the Chicago socialist publishing firm of the same name, we find the following passage (p. 293): “The victory of the proletariat will deliver humanity from the nightmare of religion. ‘The belief in superior beings to explain the natural world and the social inequalities, and to prolong the dominion of the ruling class, and the belief in the posthumous existence of the soul to recompense the inequalities of fate will have no more justification when once man. . . shall dive in a communist society from whence shall have disappeared the inequalities and the injustice of capitalist societies.”

But the hatred of French socialists for everything religious is plainly manifested by their late doings in the Chamber of Deputies. The socialist deputies clamored most for the suppression and expulsion of the congregations. Over 20,000 innocent nuns were driven from their institutions of charity and even from their country, mainly at the instigation and compulsion of socialists. “Comrade” Jaurès, one of their principal leaders, was almost ostracized and had to eat humble pie for having allowed his daughter to be educated and to make her first communion in a convent academy. Thus French socialists understand the phrase: ‘Religion is a private concern.”

The Austrian socialists adopted, May 30, 1898, a resolution proposed by Pernerstorfer, which contains the following expressions: ‘Socialism is directly contradictory to Roman clericalism, which is enslaved to unyielding authority, immutable dogmas, and absolute intellectual thraldom. We doubt all authority, we know of no immutable dogma, we are the champions of right, liberty, and conscience. (!) . . . Besides the struggle for the economic demands of the working class we also combat for the highest spiritual possessions. And this ancient struggle between light and darkness will be decided in favor of- light, in favor of socialism.”

This resolution was passed. “with thunderous applause,” as the Vorwärts reports!¹ At the convention of Austrian socialists at Graz, September 2, 1900, Ellenbogen urged upon socialism the duty of “waging war against clericalism, which is stultifying the people.” (Cologne Volkszeitung, 1900, n. 810). On April 23, 1901, Pernerstorfer declared in the Austrian Reichsrat: ‘Roman fetishism is no religion.”

¹ Vorwärts, 1896, n. 126, suppl.

At the convention of Spanish socialists in Madrid, September 21, 1899, it was resolved “to expel any ‘comrade’ who supported positive religion.” The Berlin Vorwärts (1899, n. 225) characterized this resolution as “an answer to the mediaeval zelotism of Spanish clericals.”’

Also in the United States the chief socialist organs have time and again voiced their anti-religious and atheistic sentiments. A few choice specimens may be quoted here. The New Yorker Volkszeitung, the principal representative of scientific socialism in New York State, writes under date of October 9, 1901:² “Socialism and belief in God as it is taught by Christianity and its adherents are incompatible. Socialism has no meaning unless it is atheistic, unless it declares that we do not need so-called divine help, because we are able to help ourselves. Only the man who ceases to believe begins to feel that he can act. The laborer who relies on God, who in the piety of his heart assumes that all that God does is well done—how can that same laborer develop revolutionary forces for the overthrow of authority and social order, both of which, according to his faith, are instituted by God?”³

² The following three extracts are quoted by the Buffalo Volksfreund, weekly ed., Dec. 25, 1903.

³ Cf. note on p. 212.

For Christmas of the same year the above-mentioned paper regales its readers with an “historical” account of the origin of this feast which is said to be taken from “Egyptian and Grecian myths.” Christmas is said to be “a feast of love,” a feast ‘in honor of the growing light of day.” “We do not believe in the Saviour of the Christians,” our Saviour will come ‘in the shape of the world-redeeming principle of socialism.”

The foul and blackguard manner in which certain socialist publications wage war against Christianity is exemplified by the report concerning Archbishop Corrigan’s death contained in the Vorwärts, a weekly supplement of the New Yorker Volkszeitung. It is from the issue of May 10, 1902.

“New York, May 6. Archbishop Corrigan died last night after a protracted illness. Preparations are going on for a grand funeral with the usual paraphernalia. The ‘soul’ of the prelate whizzed out of his mortal remains straight up into the seventh heaven, and now the Bishop is staying there with lovely little angels and other beautiful beings hovering about him. Let him who is fool enough, believe it.”

For Comrade Buck¹ it is a self-evident proposition that “proud man himself must see in the Pithecanthropus Erectus, or extinct Ape-man of Malaysia, the link of kinship that binds him to the rest of the animal kingdom,” and that there was a “development of the human race from animality, and through savagery to civilization.” We need not point out that this is an implicit denial of Christian revelation. Charles H. Kerr plainly tells us that the main principle of socialist philosophy is “historical materialism,” i.e., atheism.² Walt Whitman, the “poet of wider selfhood,” the favorite bard of American socialists, thus voices his mission: ‘'I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.”³

¹ International Socialist Review, Chicago, Sept. 1903, p. 153.

² What to Read on Socialism, p. 4.

³ Ibid., p. 27.

How atheism and irreligion are propagated among socialist and union laborers in the United States is well illustrated by the following notice in the Buffalo Arbeiterzeitung, March 10, 1901: “Dr. Titus Voelkel, the well-known free-thought agitator of North America, will soon arrive in Buffalo and present two or three of his lectures. His subjects will be: ‘The Blessings of Infidelity;’ ‘Christianity and Socialism,’ and ‘Immortality.’ Certainly most interesting questions for thoughtful and progressive people. The comrades, male and female, should see to it that the meetings are well attended, and especially that such of the union laborers be induced to come who are as yet entirely in the bondage of religious superstitions... .

“He (Voelkel) will hold up a lighted torch before the minds of reactionaries in political, religious, and social matters, and will furnish the irrefutable proof that belief in dogmas and a Church is the bane of humanity.”

These utterances might perhaps be repudiated by native-born American socialists as being the exaggerations of a German agitator. But how could the antagonism between genuine Christianity and thorough-going socialism be more forcibly stated than in the following passage culled from an article by George D. Herron,¹ erstwhile Congregationalist minister at Burlington, Iowa, later on professor of “Applied Christianity” at Grinnell University, but now one of the intellectual chiefs of the Socialist Party and secretary for the United States in the International Socialist Bureau? Says Mr. Herron: “Every appeal to men to become socialists in the name of Christianity will result in the corruption and betrayal of socialism in the end, and in the use of the movement for private ends. People cannot separate Christ from Christianity. And Christianity to-day stands for what is lowest and basest in life. The Church of to-day sounds the lowest note in human life. It is the most degrading of all our institutions, and the most brutalizing in its effects on the common life. The Church is simply organized Christianity. For socialism to use it, to make terms with it, or to let it make approaches to the socialist movement, is for socialism to take Judas to its bosom. . . . Official religion and militarism are the two guardians of capitalism, and the subtle methods of the Church, in destroying the manhood of the soul and keeping it servile, are infinitely more to be dreaded by the socialist movement than the world’s standing armies.”

¹ Quoted by Goldstein, Socialism: The Nation of Fatherless Children, p. 93. Other utterances of American socialists concerning religion may be found on p. 85 sqq.

And yet a Chicago socialist publishing-house, to whose periodicals Mr. Herron is a frequent contributor, advertises a pamphlet by C. W. Woolridge, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand,” as “an excellent book to give to a minister or a church member. It shows how the teachings of Jesus lead directly to socialism.”¹ This looks pretty much like trying to catch a gudgeon, if he is simple enough to take the bait.

¹ What to Read on Socialism (Kerr & Co.), p. 29.