Can a Socialist be a Christian? (1908)

Pamphlet Review from the March 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism, Atheism and Christianity. By C. Cohen. London. The Pioneer Press, 2 Newcastle St., E.C. 16 pp., 1d.

Mr Cohen does not take up the cudgels on behalf of Socialism. His position is simply that “Socialism is fundamentally Atheistic in the sense that it is without the belief in God”. That Socialism traces all the phenomena with which it concerns itself to natural causes, and relies on purely secular forces for its realisation; while “Christianity cannot combine with any system in which the belief in God does not rank as an essential feature”.

And there is good ground for this. If such a person as a consistent Christian ever existed, he could only regard this “vale of tears” as an essential part of God’s plan, to be accounted for only through God, and to be modified only through His pleasure. He could only regard those who sought the explanation of social conditions in purely natural causes, to the tacit exclusion of God, and also sought to take advantage of the natural development in order to turn this “vale of tears” into a pleasant garden, as men who denied by their acts the very basis of his faith.

Socialism is the application of science to the relations between men, and will infallibly drive superstition from this its last ditch. Socialism, as the science of Society, is an essential part of a scientific view of all phenomena regarded as an interdependent whole; and such a Monistic view of the universe, with each part in inseparable causal relation to the rest, can leave no nook or cranny for God.

The consistent Socialist, therefore, cannot be a Christian, and although (as Mr. Cohen justly complains) many “Socialists” keep their views on religion in the background in the belief that it is irrelevant to their propaganda, yet that Socialism implies the rejection of superstition cannot be disputed.

Our author, however, has come across the “Labour” politicians angling for middle-class votes, and uses his cudgels to some effect in belabouring such pandars to the cant and hypocrisy known as the “Nonconformist Conscience”. In this scramble for votes it has been said that Socialism is profoundly religious! And Mr. Cohen quotes Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s statement that the Socialist finds in the Gospels “a marvellous support for his economic and political proposals”. This and other statements by the same shifty politician are effectively riddled in the pamphlet under review.

Nor has Mr. Cohen failed to indicate the material basis of the religious ardour that has infected many Labour M.P.s. Commenting upon a passage of a work by Mr. MacDonald, our authors says:

“The striking thing about this passage is its almost obtrusively party political character. At present the Parliamentary Labour Party is in a state of pseudo-alliance with a Liberal Government that relies on Nonconformists. Many Nonconformists are also – since the return of thirty Labour M.P.s – patronising “Socialism” and professing it from the pulpit. For these reasons Mr. MacDonald leaves the Bible – the Nonconformist fetish – alone, while attacking the Prayer Book . . . It is texts and quotations from the Prayer Book that were used – as though texts and quotations from the Bible were not used as frequently, and as though plenty of texts might not be quoted from the New Testament as to the blessings of poverty, the virtues of non-resistance, the lawfulness of slavery, and the duty of obeying constituted authority, with a threat of damnation against all in rebellion. In the same way, it is the Established Church parson who is singled out for attack, while the middle-class manufacturer, with his mouthpiece, the Nonconformist minister, escapes scot free. Yet all Socialists are aware that it is from this class that the greatest enemies of Socialism have been drawn.”

Nothing, indeed, is more typically middle class than Nonconformity, and the servile truckling to that section, characteristic of certain Labour candidates, has already been commented upon by other writers in these columns. No P.S.A. is nowadays complete without a Labour M.P. on show. And in the present connection, the mere fact that the falsely so-called “Socialism” of the Labour M.P.’s is acceptable to large sections of the reactionary Nonconformist middle class, is in itself sufficient to prove its incompatibility with working-class interests rightly understood.

The religious appeal betrays the shoddy politician. To attempt to stir the workers into an electoral activity by the disinterment of decomposing religious sentiment is to play the game of the enemy. Those whose standpoint is that of the welfare of the working class can make no appeal on the grounds of religion; for religion is an instrument of domination which cannot be used as an agent of emancipation at this stage of social development. The great theoretic weapon of the workers in their fight for emancipation is science, not religion; and religion and science are as incompatible as fire and water.

The working class, moreover, though not as yet hostile to religion, are nevertheless becoming increasingly indifferent to it. This is so partly because the workers never find religion, when put to the test, to be on their side. It is also and chiefly due to the fact that the workers are daily in contact with the hard realities of life; and, in spite of their lack of learning, the mass of them find little basis for belief in divine interference, and little reason for doubting that the inevitable warp and woof of cause and effect seen in all industrial processes extends unremittingly over the whole universe. The worker learns in the factory that the most awful natural forces are regular, explicable, and controllable; while the feelings of helplessness before natural forces, and the obscurity and incomprehensibility of these to man, recede before the lessons of man-made productive forces rivalling nature in their giant strength and rational complexity. In technical processes all is reduced to system based on belief in the uninterrupted sequence of cause and effect, and all mysteries are made to yield to persistent effort. Upon such a foundation religion cannot firmly stand. As Lafargue says: “the practice of a modern factory teaches scientific determinism to the wage-worker without him having to pass through the theoretic study of the sciences.” Nature, indeed, appears ruthless, inevitable, and cruelly precise to the workers, and their materialistic experience of life provides a less and less fertile soil for superstition.

And the worker who becomes a Socialist finds there also a belief in the supernatural logically excluded. He discovers that the study of man and Society is, in effect, a branch of natural history.

Nor is there hope for religion in the future. The matter has been put in a nutshell. In the deeply philosophical chapter on “Commodities” in Capital, Marx says: –

“The religious reflex of the real world can, in any case, only then finally vanish, when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men and to nature.

“The life process of Society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan. 

“This, however, demands for Society a certain material groundwork or set of conditions of existence which in their turn are the spontaneous product of a long and painful process of development.”

From this it becomes obvious that Mr. Cohen’s position is completely justified when he maintains, in opposition to Mr. J. R. MacDonald, that such a great social change as Socialism must profoundly affect religious beliefs.

The natural history of religion is a deeply interesting subject, for the association of certain phases of religion with certain political interests is by no means accidental. Doubtless this aspect of the matter did not come within the plan of the pamphlet, while the tail end of a review is no place for the discussion of so big a theme. The general principles of the religious reflex of social life are, however, easily grasped in the light of the Marx-Morgan conception of Society, while occasion may be had to revert in greater detail to this aspect of the subject at a later date.

As a belief, religion is a manifestation of man’s ignorance of Nature’s working, and of the mastery which the uncomprehended natural and social forces have over man. As rites and ceremonies it is a legacy of the relatively changeless forms of ancient society, and of the supreme importance of mysterious and venerable custom to the existence of the primitive community. By the inertia of the mind religion tends to live on through newer conditions in so far as it serves some interest. So the successive modifications of religion have been the reflexes of changed conditions and interests, although it has ever been attempted to pour the new wine into old bottles.

This evolution of religion, if such it may be called, is curious in that it is an evolution into thin air. Religious change has usually been more remarkable in what was abandoned than in what was added or retained; and religion from being inextricably bound up with the whole social life of a people, becomes a more and more insignificant reflex of the remaining dark corners of that life.

In primitive societies the non-observance of the ancient, sacred, and mysterious customs meant the break up of social life. What was old was tried, venerated and holy; what was new meant disorder and strife. The innovator was slain. In modern society the methods of producing the means of life are no longer invariable and upon ancient model and precedent, but are in the process of great and continued change. What is old is now often synonymous with antiquated, outworn and useless; what is new is hailed as advance and improvement, and novelty is always in demand. The inventor is less frequently slain. Following lamely after this change the old religious forms crumble slowly and tardily away in spite of the frantic efforts of the priestly interest at restoration or readaptation.

As Mr. Cohen points out vigorously and clearly in the concluding portion of his pamphlet, Christianity has ever been the tool of rapacity and tyranny. From the dawn of civilisation religion has been a weapon of political domination. But to continue to be so used, religion must retain a hold upon the people, and if the capitalist class institute secular education it will only be because the growing irreligion of the proletariat compels the master class to rely solely on their other instruments of domination over the workers. But that time is not yet.

To abolish religion is not to end exploitation. The workers have, above all, to dislodge the exploiting class from power, and all else is secondary to this. Not that it is sought to belittle the specifically anti-religious fight, for many a Socialist has received from the actively materialist propaganda of the secularists the spark that brightened later into an illuminating, scientific light upon Society and led him to Socialism.

The supreme aim of the workers, however, must be their emancipation from wage-slavery, and the fight against superstition is but one phase of this great fight. But it must never be forgotten that since religion is ever used as a weapon by the ruling class against the workers, no Socialist in the struggle for working class emancipation can honestly avoid the religious conflict.

F. C. Watts

Halo Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo! column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shakespeare used the idiom ‘He who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon’. The ‘Devil’ is a character in a fairy story, similar to the one wherein this month millions still ‘celebrate’ the birth of a made-up ‘messiah’.

As a writer in a previous Socialist Standard wrote, ‘religion is intensely anti-working-class… the whole panoply of belief, ritual, salvation and miracle stands against the interests of all working people.’ The Catholic Church and totalitarian states have much in common.

Proponents of mumbo jumbo, the Catholic Church, should have used a longer spoon. A United States Commission on International Religious Freedom report noted that ‘the Vatican entered into an undisclosed agreement with the Chinese Communist Party (sic) in 2018 that established cooperation between Church authorities and Chinese officials in appointing bishops. But “the government has unilaterally installed CCP-aligned bishops without the Vatican’s consultation and approval” despite that agreement’.

‘Chinese officials have ordered the removal of crosses from churches and have replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with images of President Xi Jinping. They have also censored religious texts, forced members of the clergy to preach CCP ideology, and mandated the display of CCP slogans within churches. “Ultimately, the Chinese government is solely interested in instilling unwavering obedience and devotion to the CCP, its political agenda, and its vision for religion, not protecting the religious freedom rights of Catholics”’ (Ncresister.com).

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In Malaysia, where almost two thirds of the populace practise Islam, the state’s official religion, the government is seeking to enact a Mufti Bill which would grant ‘greater authority to religious courts, potentially eroding the rights of non-Muslims’. ‘The Mufti bill is not just about religious matters. It’s about power and control. If this bill passes, it could lead to a situation where religious authorities have the final say on a wide range of issues, from personal relationships to public policy. Supporters of the bill contend that it is necessary to strengthen the role of Islamic law to uphold traditional values. They argue that the bill would not infringe upon the rights of non-Muslims.’ Flying pigs come to mind. Oh, not halal. Flying gibbons or crocodiles?

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Christmas, and hopefully all other religious festivals, may be on its way to extinction. The UK now has more atheists than people who believe in the existence of God.

‘Queen’s University Belfast, in a global project Explaining Atheism (nearly 25,000 people from six countries surveyed) to find out why people become atheists and agnostics. found that the common notion of the “purposeless unbeliever”, lacking a sense of ultimate meaning in life, objective morality, and strong values is not accurate, challenging the stereotype that atheists lead lives devoid of meaning, morality, and purpose. Dr Lee said: “The UK is entering its first atheist age. Whilst atheism has been prominent in our culture for some time, be it through Karl Marx, George Eliot, or Ricky Gervais, it is only now that atheists have begun to outnumber theists for the first time in our history”’.

DC

Whose thoughts are you thinking? (2006)

From the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Dawkins, the biologist, has become something of a celebrity through his outspoken advocacy of atheism as in his new book “The God Delusion”. But his approach to religion is still an idealist one.

The Dawkins approach to the question of religion is, like religion itself, an idealist one: religion is false, rationally unsustainable; morally enfeebling and a basis for hatred and division. Presumably Dawkins sees the death or meaningful diminution of religion by means of secularist persuasion just as religion hopes to resist secularisation by what it sees as ethical persuasion.

Dawkins looks into the biological evolution of homo sapiens for the origin and growth of the multiplicity of religious faiths. He is speculative rather than dogmatic on the issue but much more convincing when showing how the stringency of faith-based social morality has been softened over time by an intellectual response to the social development of society. He recognises this but, unlike Marx and Engels on the question of religion, simply reports it as a phenomenon under the label of moral Zeitgeist.

Unlike Dawkins, the pioneers of scientific socialism sought to show religion as a reflex of the social organisation of society. Marx, in the Introduction to his Critique of Hegel’s of Philosophy of Right, wrote:

“This state, this society, produces religion, a reversed world consciousness, because they are a reversed world. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction. The struggle against religion is therefore immediately the fight against the other world of which religion is the spiritual aroma. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” (original italics)

It wasn’t simply a question of religion being false, or brutal or divisive; it was a weapon of the ruling class, a bulwark in the way of the emancipation of the working class, a hurdle to be overcome in the progress to socialism nor could it be overcome while the conditions that nourished it continued to exist. Thus, the socialist sees religion as an integral part of the class struggle while the secularist sees it simply as a harmful, false premise on which to base a system of moral rectitude. As far as capitalism’s subject class is concerned, whether those who govern it or those who exploit it reject or accept faith is irrelevant; the morality of capitalism is not governed either by humanistic or religious considerations but by the constraints and compulsions of the marketplace.

Inculcating religion

Dawkins deals well, even poignantly, with the religious indoctrination of children pointing, for example, to the absurd practice of labelling young children with the faith identity of their parents or guardians. Even very young children, as young as three or four are referred to as, for example, ‘Catholic’, ‘Protestant’ or ‘Muslim’ children because society accepts the legitimacy of parents or guardians or clerics or teachers hijacking the innocence of children for the inculcation of beliefs more likely to be resisted if they were offered initially to an older person. Dawkins rightly calls it child abuse with ramifications sometimes even more devastating than the sexual abuse of children.

Obviously socialists agree that the indoctrination of children is a contemptible invasion of the rights of a child but, grave as it is, it is less socially heinous than the ruthless inculcation of the appalling precepts and values of capitalism – accompanied usually by the notion of a ubiquitous Divine Policeman – to which both children and adults of all ages are remorselessly exposed.

Science and the system

Indoctrination makes a nonsense of the claim that we live in a democracy. Democracy is about choice and choice is based on information and knowledge. But nowhere in the world of capitalism are the people offered the slightest hint that there could be a way of running our society that might free us from the appalling problems that are built-in, inevitable aspects of global capitalism. Instead we have intense conditioning and thought control to the extent were we look on the utterly absurd, like war and world hunger, as natural and as inevitable as the seasons.

Capitalism and its institutions rape our consciousness and rob us of the ability to think independently. Every situation must be reasoned within the paradigm of a world in which we are beholden to a class of owners not only for our daily bread but for every aspect of our life-functions from the cradle to the grave and unless our needs are consistent with the profit needs of the owning class they will not be met.

Richard Dawkins sings the praises of science and in a general sense socialists join in the chorus. But science, possibly more than most other disciplines, is a prisoner of capitalism. The scientists have to beg at the table of the system for funding to pursue their projects; their sponsors are usually largely mammoth capitalist enterprises bent on discerning means of further enriching their directors and shareholders or capitalist governments dedicated to the overall concerns of national capitalism.

Just like the rest of us, the scientist is a prisoner of the crazy logic of the system and just  like the rest of us if his or her dedicated function does not hold promise of profit for those who directly or indirectly employ them, irrespective of the potential social benefits of their work, it will be denied funding.

The first phase in the struggle to end the political and economic exploitation of our class is to learn to question the thoughts we inherit from well-intentioned parents and teachers; to challenge the strictures of the priests, parsons, rabbis and mullahs and to question why in a world of potential abundance, where a parasite class of non-productive money shufflers and profit-takers are rich beyond measure, and the working class that produces all real wealth endure mere want or dire poverty.

Richard Montague

Religion or Capitalism: Which is the Root of Evil? (2007)

From the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Atheists have been coming out of the closet in recent years. But will these freethinkers also embrace the “heresy” of criticizing capitalism?

Atheism—thank god—is gaining in popularity and in converts. Books by atheists have been appearing on non-fiction bestseller lists, such as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. Even Christopher Hitchens, who has been cheering on the US imperialist crusade with his Christian comrades in the 101st Keyboard Brigade, has cashed in on the trend with his new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

These prominent atheists have pointed out the ill effects of religion on society and exposed the errors and outright stupidity of religious thought. Such efforts are all-too necessary today, unfortunately, especially in countries like the United States, where politicians cannot even order a cup of coffee without declaring: “God bless America.” It is encouraging that atheists are now confidently voicing their ideas and that their criticism of religion has struck a chord with so many people.

 

If anything, though, the “new atheists” take religion too seriously, extending their criticism to the point that religion seems to be the fundamental cause of many—if not most—of the society’s ills. Dawkins, for instance, depicts an epic struggle between religion (evil) and science (good), while effectively detaching both from the society in which they exist and function. He and others overlook capitalism and the role that religion and science play within this system of production for profit.

 

Neither religion nor science exists in a vacuum, isolated from society at large. The pursuit of science, for instance, is hardly exempt from the life-or-death struggle to accumulate capital that is all around us. Indeed, the main force that is narrowing the directions that scientific research can take is not religion but the capitalist system of production itself.

 

Examples of this abound, whether it be the degree of intellectual energy channelled to the creation of lethal new weapons for the never-ending struggle over markets and resources, or the simple fact that any new device must not only be useful but profitable as well. Under capitalism, the development of science and technology is driven forward by the unceasing competition to raise the productivity of labour as a means of augmenting profit—not a desire to better satisfy human needs—so the potential of science to improve the quality of our lives is severely curtailed.

 

Atheists thus do science no great favour in letting capitalism off the hook and presenting religion as the primary obstacle to the free development of science. They view religion as an ugly carbuncle crouching upon what would otherwise be a beautiful and healthy body, hoping to lance this unsightly growth with the sharp blade of science. But the carbuncle of religion is more like the ones that plagued poor Karl Marx, as it will always grow back, perhaps in a more “delicate” spot, as long as society remains in a constricted and unhealthy state.

 

Having said all of that, socialists still enthusiastically welcome the new books by atheists. It is just that we would go a step further. In addition to pointing out (for the thousand-and-first time) that religion is bunk, or describing its negative impact on society, we would pose the more interesting question: Why does religious thought continue to exist (and even flourish) in modern capitalist society? That is to say: Why does “God”—who has been declared dead on so many occasions—keep popping up in people’s imaginations?

 

To answer that question we need to consider the relationship between religion and society. More specifically: What is the usefulness of religion as far as capitalism is concerned, and what aspects of life in capitalist society make religious thought appealing to individuals?

A convenient untruth

In a class-divided society, as capitalism so clearly is, religious thought comes in handy for those in positions of wealth and power. It promises workers—who happen to form the bulk of the population—that we will get some pie in the sky (after we die), as a reward for our suffering here on earth. Religious leaders encourage their working class “flock” to stoically accept their existence as wage slaves, going on about how “the meek shall inherit the earth.” The benefits to the ruling class of inculcating workers with such a masochistic outlook goes without saying.

 

Granted, the rich are lambasted in most “holy books” and told that they should give up their wealth if they hope to enter heaven. And this would pose a real concern to them if such a place actually existed. In reality, the religious criticism of the rich and powerful, far from threatening their social position, only serves to reinforce their rule. Religion may promise that the filthy rich will be punished—but the court date is in the hereafter, not the here-and-now.  

 

While religious ideology is no doubt a useful means of dampening social discontent, it would be mistaken, I think, to exaggerate how effective it is today, at least in the urban areas where most people live and work. It seems safe to say that the key ideology propagated by capitalists is not religion, but nationalism, which is more effective in blinding workers to their class interests and chaining them to a system that turns their blood and sweat into profits.

 

Capitalists, however, do not have to choose between religion and nationalism. Both come in handy as far as distorting the nature of the problems we face and offering false solutions. They also complement each other nicely: religion encouraging patient suffering, while nationalism offers a way to channel frustrations. The point to note here is simply that one important reason why religion continues to exist, and to be enthusiastically propagated, is that a religious outlook—particularly its focus on a better life after death instead of here on earth—serves the interests of the minority ruling class.

And this is also an important reason for socialists to oppose religion. Still, in our zeal to debunk religion, we should not forget that it is only one ideological form at the disposal of the capitalist class. We need to remember that our criticism of religion is one part of a broader struggle against the ideas that hinder the socialist movement.

 

The need to believe

Pointing out the benefits of religious ideology for the capitalist class, however, does not account for why individuals actually believe in religion.

 

Part of the answer to that question, as already touched on, is that religion can diminish the frustrations we experience in class society, offering the hope (illusion) of divine reward and retribution in an afterlife. It seems likely, though, that there are more people who believe in the possibility of winning the lottery some day than who truly and consistently believe in the existence of heaven and hell.

 

Perhaps some souls do invest in religious faith in the hope of later gain, or out of fear of eternal damnation, but that sort of purely selfish impulse does not adequately explain the stubborn charms of religion in modern-day capitalism. More than the temptation of immortality it offers, much of religion’s power seems to come from its view of the real world in which we live and the answers it provides to baffled and worried minds.

 

The attraction of a religious worldview is not hard to understand in the case of the early human societies. Surrounded by a natural world that was poorly understood and often experienced as a hostile force, religion provided answers and a good deal of comfort. A terrifying flash of lightning or the roar of thunder, for example, could be explained as the sky god communicating his anger or indigestion to the mortals down below. Even this early religious notion that the world is governed by the arbitrary decisions of (often peevish) gods must have been far more reassuring than a view of the world as complete chaos.

 

The development of science chipped away at those unfounded religious beliefs, answering questions about the natural world that had previously been explained by fairy tales. And with the increase in scientific knowledge, the natural world became less threatening and more subject to human control.

 

The social world, however, continued to be a confusing place. And with the development of capitalism, where relations between human beings in production present themselves as relations between things, society became even more difficult to decipher. Not only confusing, capitalist society is every bit as hostile as the natural environment was to early human societies. If the primitive hunter feared the lion in the bush or death by starvation, workers today face the danger of unemployment or crushing debt, not to mention the wars and environmental devastation that continually arise from a system driven by competition for profit. Even the “lucky ones” with jobs face the drudgery of work in the office, at the cash register, or on the production line—driven only by a dire need for money. And when boom turns to bust, or the financial bubble bursts, those workers too might be thrown out on the street. As the saying goes: “It’s a jungle out there.”

 

In the face of this dizzying anarchy that characterizes capitalist production, our knowledge gained from the natural sciences is of little help. (In fact, more than a few scientists contribute to our sense of despair by advancing the fatuous argument that selfish, competitive behaviour is a reflection of an unchanging human nature, rather than being determined by our social system.) Religious ideas can thrive in this situation. Religion not only offers the comforting thought that if this world goes to hell there is a “better world” out there after death, but also provides an explanation of why things are so bad, arguing that it is the outcome of our evil thoughts and actions. Religion even holds out the hope that life on earth could be better if we would only be less selfish and love—or at least tolerate—our neighbours.

 

By offering a criticism of the status quo, and suggestions for social improvements, religion is able to attract some of the vast majority of people who are frustrated with life under capitalism. But the superficial criticism that religion offers only serves to bolster capitalism, suggesting that the problem is our “sinful” behaviour rather than a social system that encourages and rewards such behaviour.

The “promised land”

Socialists present an analysis that differs sharply from the religious worldview (and from the views of those who mechanically apply theories of natural science to explain human behaviour under capitalism).Instead of viewing present-day society (capitalism) as unfathomable chaos or an eternal state of affairs linked to our human nature, socialists arrive at an understanding of its fundamental nature as a system driven by the need to generate profit through the exploitation of labour. It is this essence of the social system that accounts, above all, for the selfish or “sinful” behaviour that is so rampant within it. This understanding of capitalism does not exempt socialists from the difficulties of living under it, needless to say, but it does reveal the “method to the madness”—just as science has demystified nature. And this understanding is also a great source of hope. It shows us that we can solve many of the problems we face by moving beyond capitalism—towards a new, cooperative form of society.

 

In such a socialist society, where class divisions have dissolved and our lives are no longer at the mercy of the market, religion will have lost its basis in reality and its seductive powers will quickly fade away. Conversely, as long as its social foundation remains intact, religion will continue to exist—no matter how many times it has been refuted.

 

Atheists who only fight against religion—turning a blind eye to the hell of capitalism—thus ironically end up prolonging the life of their bête noire.

Michael Schauerte

I Believe . . . (2007)

From the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

It appears there has been a recent proliferation of books published (none of which I have read) on the subject of defending or promoting atheism or giving the case against religion and an even greater number of words written about them in reviews, newspaper articles and journals, of which I have skimmed a few. My main wonder is what all the fuss is about.

Except for creationists or similar it is generally accepted that the Universe, of which Earth is one tiny speck, has been around for many billions of years. Of the approximately two million years that humans  in some form have inhabited the earth, it is only a few thousand years ago that their development led some groups to believe they could influence nature by offering prayers and/or sacrifices. Eventually there developed the various religions as we know them around the world today which recognise either many gods, one god or none at all.

The Peters World Atlas 2002 reveals interesting statistics. The ‘one god’ school has numbers for Christianity at 22 percent and Islam 11 percent with Hinduism (many deities) at 10 percent. This shows 43 percent of the world’s population have belief in a religion which recognises a god or gods. Interestingly there is no mention of Judaism because it accounts for less than 1 percent of world population. A search on the web shows Judaism to be ranked 12th with about 14 million adherents worldwide which is less than ¼ percent of world population. With other religions factored in, Buddhism 5 percent (no concept of God), Confucianism 3 percent (ethical principles and no hereafter), ‘Natural’ religions 4 percent and Shintoism 1 percent (worship of ancestors and nature), it is shown that there is about 43 percent of the world’s population with no theist faith at all.

Historically coercion has been used to persuade the masses to accept one religion or another. Military coercion in the form of raids and invasions to expand territory resulting in gradual conversion of populations, economic coercion in the form of higher taxes for non-adherents and political coercion as in England between Catholic and Protestant monarchs and later in communist states where all religion was supposedly banned. Helping to keep the masses under the control of the elites included such threats as excommunication, fear of not winning a place in heaven – or worse, everlasting hell, or even death by execution for reneging on the faith as during the Catholic Inquisition and also in Islam.

Presumably much of the egocentricity in the west, with so much emphasis on the three religions of the same god, Yahweh, God and Allah (together accounting for 33 percent of world-wide population), is geographical. In India the antagonism is mainly between Hinduism and Islam. Different locations reveal different local problems as currently in the Middle East between Islam and Judaism and also the sectarianism problems between Shi’a and Sunni.

Wherever the accident of birth sees each child born, each individual is born totally dependent and without language or religion. A child develops speaking the language of its home. A child raised in a religion-free zone will not acquire religious knowledge. For this to occur it would need to be exposed habitually to ideas, concepts and beliefs by those around it. How many people make a conscious choice of religion and how many simply continue with what they were born into as part of their traditional culture, religious or not?

As evolution marched on there came a point when this particular species – human kind – developed the power of thought, separating it forever from other species. Then came the questions. Why? What does it all mean? What is life’s purpose? Perhaps this is where the divergence between believers (in a theist sense) and believers (in a non-theist sense) causes the greatest difficulties. Religionists usually talk of atheists or those without religion in a negative sense as if they have no belief or have rejected their (the religionists’) notions of a god. I see it a different way. As an atheist I do have belief, – it is a positive belief – in the universe as it is, as it evolved and as it will continue to do. I could accuse the religionists of denigrating my belief when they say that isn’t enough, but why bother, I don’t need their validation.

I believe we don’t need to be intellectuals, philosophers, academics, students of theology or popular authors to know how we feel about religion and why we feel the way we do about world issues.

I believe that we should try to leave the world a better place than the one into which we were born.

Janet Surman

Blogger's Note:

From the same issue of the Socialist Standard, see the following.

The Anti-God Squad (2007)

Book Reviews from the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who Was Jesus? by Kamal Salibi, Taurus Parke Paperbacks, 2007

Against All Gods by A. C. Grayling, Oberon Books, 2007

God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Books, 2007

It has long been acknowledged by Christian theologians, and by anyone else who cares to study the evidence, that the Bible does not give a coherent account of the life and sayings of Jesus. There are just too many contradictions and inconsistencies within and between the various books which make up the New Testament. Not only that, many of the historical and geographical references involving Jesus are not confirmed by modern scholarship. For instance, the earliest known archaeological record for the existence of Nazareth in Palestinian Galilee dates from no earlier than the third century AD, which undermines the case for a “Jesus of Nazareth.”  Salibi, a Christian, does a good job of pulling together many of these problems in his book Who Was Jesus?. He draws on the Koran and other sources to argue that “Jesus” is actually a compilation of two people: an Arabian named “Issa” who lived around 400 BC, was a Jewish preacher but was not executed; and about four hundred years later “Jeshu,” a preacher who was crucified in Jerusalem (though the Koran insists that only the first is the real “Jesus” and the latter account is false). Salibi’s method is to reconstruct the Jesus story so as to iron out the contradictions and inconsistencies, using careful selection and a fair amount of his own speculations (“it could well have been true”). But it doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that the Biblical evidence is so unreliable as to be worthless.

One of the sources Salibi believes early Christianity drew upon was the ancient fertility cult of  the “god” of “life-giving water” — that is, semen. Grayling doesn’t swallow this and sticks mainly to a philosophical critique of religion, as befits a professor of philosophy at the University of London. His Against All Gods is short and bluntly put (64 pages and no index). Religions are not deserving of respect just because they are religions; they must be subject to the same scrutiny as any other belief and cannot hide behind the notion that they are personal beliefs. Are atheists themselves fundamentalists? Is atheism itself an act of faith? These claims are often found coming from religious folk who are somewhat taken aback by the plain speaking of people like Grayling. His humanism is guided by reason and respect for the evidence, the antithesis of fundamentalism and faith. And then there is the familiar objection that secular Stalinism and Nazism were worse than religion. Grayling’s response is to point out that  Stalinism and Nazism were basically the same as religions in that they were monolithic ideologies of oppression and control.

However, Grayling also argues that most wars in the world’s history “owe themselves directly or indirectly to religion.” Granted that in the Crusades of the Middle Ages religion was an important causal factor, but are religions a cause of war in the modern world? Were the First and Second World Wars (where a largely Christian Britain and France declared war on Christian Germany in both cases) caused, even indirectly, by religion? Even if we accept Grayling’s description of GW Bush’s foreign policy as “conducting jihad for American/Baptist values,” this is not convincing as an explanation of the war against Iraq. Because he doesn’t take into account material interests, Grayling confuses cause and consequence: propaganda instead of the underlying cause; religion invoked in the furtherance of material interests.

In contrast, Hitchens’ God Is Not Great is lengthy and detailed. The title is his riposte to the Arabic-Islamic phrase Allahu Akbar: “God is Great,” which is brave considering what happened to his friend Salman Rushdie. Subtitled “The Case Against Religion” (in the American edition it’s “How Religion Poisons Everything”), it’s a powerful and vehement denunciation of all religion and its practitioners. According to Hitchens, religionists allow themselves “permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.” All the usual arguments and some you may never have heard of are here. Like Grayling, Hitchens deals with the secular-Nazism-and-Stalinism-was-worse-than-religion argument, only in much more detail. He makes what should be an obvious point, that Hitler claimed to be a defender of Christianity against the “Christ-killer” Jews. (Incidentally, it was not until the 1960s that the Vatican officially absolved “the Jewish people” from collective guilt in Jesus’ death.) And prior to Stalin’s political career he did have a strict religious upbringing and did train to be a priest, so he would have conformed to the Jesuit saying: “Give me the child until he is ten, and I will give you the man.” Hitchens claims to have been a Marxist in his youth but now says its “glories” were in the past, without specifying what those glories were or why they are in the past. And Marxism is “no longer any guide to the future,” again without giving any reason. He was a Trotskyist however and he may be really talking about his loss of faith in that dismal ideology. If he had taken a Marxist stand against capitalist imperialism, he would have avoided having to, as he saw it, support the Bush-Blair war against Iraq.

Grayling and Hitchens see themselves as defenders of the Enlightenment tradition of respect for reason and evidence against its traditional foe, religion. But they see nothing wrong in capitalism. Socialists share in the Enlightenment inheritance but recognise that the main source of irrationality in the modern world is to be found in the capitalist system of society. For socialists, therefore, the struggle against religion cannot be separated from the struggle for socialism. We fight religious superstition wherever it is an obstacle to socialism, but we are opposed to religion only insofar as it is an obstacle to socialism.

Lew Higgins

SPGB Discord Meetings (2020)

Party News from the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The following SPGB Discord Meetings from November 2020 were recorded for posterity. Sound quality varies:

• Belling the cat: Marx and Engels on the practical organization of socialism. (Speaker: Bill Martin) Link.
• Attachment Theory (Speaker: Tim Kilgallon) Part 1, Part 2.
• The new atheism (Speaker: Nigel McCullough) Part 1, Part 2.
• Bitcoin and the Dark Web (Speaker: Paul Edwards) Link. 

Against religion (2010)

From the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the first things the pope did as soon as he got off the plane was to launch into a bitter attack on “aggressive secularists” and “extremist atheists”. Here’s our reply.

The only reasonable position to adopt towards any religion is one of atheism: unbelief. There is a presumption in favour of not believing fantastic claims. It is up to the believer to present proof for the existence of God or life after death. After all, few are agnostic about Father Christmas, fairies or unicorns; we know they don’t exist. The same scepticism should also apply to the extraordinary beliefs of religion. With religious believers, however, there is a willingness to believe despite the lack of evidence. And it is this gullibility which socialists find to be dangerous and objectionable.

Of course religious believers do claim to have evidence, and they cite their holy texts as proof of the infallible word of God. But these writings contain so many contradictions and absurdities that no reasonable person can take them seriously. Traditional interpretations of the Bible, for instance, are highly selective and leave out the inconsistencies. In the Old Testament there are two different creation stories (Genesis 1-2, 4;2, 4-24) and two different versions of the Flood (Genesis 6,5-9,17). Needless to say, geological evidence does not confirm the Biblical accounts of the Earth’s age or the Earth being flooded to a depth of five miles all over its surface.

Nor do the prophecies fare any better. No unicorns or dragons have been found, as foretold (Isaiah 13,22;34,7). God promised the Jewish people that they will never lose their land (Psalms 89,3-4), that no uncircumcised man will ever enter Jerusalem (Isaiah 52,1) and that Jerusalem will always be a quiet place, undamaged by war (Isaiah 33,20).

In the New Testament Jesus is often reported as saying that the world is about to end, and that the end will come in the lifetime of his listeners (Matthew 4,17;10,23,-16,28;24,34). This is why he advocated giving away personal possessions, and forms the basis of the myth that Jesus was an early socialist. There is nothing socialist about making yourself deliberately poor in any case. Jesus is usually portrayed as peace-loving, but he also said: “Think not that I come to send peace on earth: I come not to send peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10,34). Carl Lofmark, from whom many of these examples are taken, comments in his book What is the Bible?:

“This passage has been useful to army chaplains and church leaders who have had to persuade people that they should go to war in spite of all that Jesus said about peace and forgiveness.”

But if the Bible and other religious texts are not literally true, as many theologians now accept, are they true symbolically? As with the above examples, do they have a “deeper” meaning? The trouble with this line of argument is that it is even more selective in choosing what to believe. It means turning a blind eye to the contradictions and obscenities and choosing to believe something you know is not true.

Once you have rejected the special authority of the Bible (or whatever text) as the infallible word of God, how do you know that you have interpreted the symbolism in the way the writers intended? Fundamentalists have a point when they say that this changes religion into a form of art appreciation.

Then there is morality. Many who would not describe themselves as religious will, nevertheless, have their children given religious indoctrination at school on the grounds that it will give them a moral education. In this country the law requires that Religious Education be “broadly Christian” in content. But would you want your child to be stoned to death for being disobedient, as God commands (Deuteronomy 21,18-21)? This is the morality they keep quiet about. If a husband finds that his bride is not a virgin on her wedding day, then she shall be stoned to death on her father’s doorstep (Deuteronomy 22,21). God instructed Moses:

“Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourself” (Numbers 31,17-18).

Not only does God give this approval of the murder and rape of children, but slavery also (Exodus 21,1-11). Jesus says that to be a true believer you must hate your mother and father and “yea, and his own life also” (Luke 14,26). For the unbeliever, “thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of they daughters” (Deuteronomy 28,53). Jesus says that anyone who does not believe him will burn forever in hell (Mark 16,16). It has frequently been said that it is a very sick morality which can punish by sending people to hell. Even Hitler and Stalin only had their victims tortured and killed and then their suffering ended, but God wants the suffering to continue – literally –- for an eternity.

Faith is the last refuge of a believer. Religious faith, however, would only make sense if what was believed in were plausible. Neither the existence of a God nor life after death are plausible, though faith in them undoubtedly offers solace to many. It can make the unbearable seem bearable. But why should an all-loving God allow so much suffering, so much pain in this world – including the so-called “Acts of God” – earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and the rest? If God really did exist, we have no reason for supposing that he cares for us.

For some in recent years religion has combined with New Age beliefs, largely at the expense of the traditional religions whose emphasis on personal guilt, sexual repression and the inferiority of women have become unacceptable. This pick and mix approach can combine elements from the New Testament, Buddhism, psychoanalysis, paganism, astrology and various other bits of the occult. So why, the, the persistence of religious belief?

The socialist analysis of religion derives from our basic materialism (not in the acquisitive sense, but how we view the production of wealth in society and the sort of ideas it gives rise to). Historical materialism traces how religions have evolved, from their beginnings in ancestor worship and private property in primitive societies, to established social institutions. Marx hit a number of nails on the head when he described the social psychology of religion:

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people . . . The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about their condition is a demand to give up a condition that requires illusion. The criticism of religion in therefore the germ of the criticism of the valley of tears whose halo is religion.”

For the materialist, in other words, society is not really under human control and humans really are at the mercy of blind, impersonal forces – in ancient times the forces of nature, in the modern world the economic forces of capitalism. Under capitalism people feel, rightly, that they are governed by forces they can’t control but attribute this, wrongly, to forces operating from outside the world of experience. Churches of all types are then at hand for the sustaining of fear and superstition. For the socialist alternative to our lives being controlled by impersonal forces we must bring about a society in which humans consciously control the forces of production.

It is on this basis that we can say, rather than being abolished, religion can be expected to (as Engels put it in another context) “wither away”. And it can be seen that the socialist case against religion differs from the usual humanist position: there are rationalist superstitions as well as religious. For humanists, criticism of religion is a process towards the eventual “triumph of reason”. But they ignore the material circumstances which give rise to superstition:

“Consequently, in his worship of the ‘Idea’ the bourgeois freethinker is, like the Christian, attributing miraculous powers to the figments of men’s brains” (Socialism and Religion, Socialist Party pamphlet, 1911).

Capitalism has many opiates to offer the unwary. Reject the pedlars, reject the product, but above all, reject a society which can create such an unhealthy psychological dependency. On the new basis of material security and social co-operation individuals can gain a sense of meaning in their lives, and hope for a future free from the dead hand of religious belief and tradition.

 Lew Higgins

A Devil’s Chaplain (2003)

Book Review from the September 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Devil’s Chaplain by Richard Dawkins (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2003)

The ironic title of this collection of essays comes from a letter Darwin wrote to a friend commenting on his own work, Origin of the Species: “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write . . .” Most of the essays here concern Darwin’s intellectual legacy. Dawkins is probably the world’s foremost advocate of Darwinism – or as he prefers to call it, “Neo-Darwinism.” His uncompromising defence of scientific method and scorn for irrationally held beliefs has earned Dawkins some notoriety, and some reviewers of this book have been dismayed by what they perceive as his arrogance. But what is offensive to some is refreshingly outspoken to others.

The core of Darwinism, argues Dawkins, is the “theory that evolution is guided in adaptively nonrandom directions by the nonrandom survival of small random hereditary changes.” Several of the essays here defend and expand on that theory. But at the same time as Dawkins supports Darwinism as a science, he states “I am a passionate anti-Darwinian when it comes to politics and how we should conduct our human affairs.” This corrects the impression which may have been given to some by his earlier book The Selfish Gene that we are all somehow prisoners of our genes. He denies ever holding a belief in genetic determinism in the sense that genes determine social behaviour.

Dawkins’s withering criticism is mainly directed at religion and associated beliefs. Yet it is important to realise that Dawkins is not being gratuitous; where irrational beliefs affect us all they should be subject to the closest scrutiny. Dawkins tells the story of a TV debate he had with a cleric (later elevated to the House of Lords). The cleric refused to shake hands with any women in the studio for fear that they might be menstruating and so be, in religious terms, “unclean.” Dawkins’s comment is typical Dawkinsism: “They took the insult more graciously than I would have, and with the ‘respect’ always bestowed on religious prejudice – but no other kind of prejudice”. Dawkins is an honorary member of the Rationalist Press Association, and it’s safe to say he is no socialist, though he did come out publicly against the recent Gulf War.

Lew Higgins

The Atheists and Auntie (1958)

From the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was surprised when I read that, according to the chairman of the B.B.C., Sir Arthur fforde, in the B.B.C. staffs there was "a complete belief in the absolute importance of the love of God." Does that mean atheists are barred from Broadcasting House?

(Sarah Jenkins, in the News Chronicle, June 21st, 1958.)

50 Years Ago: Atheism on the Air (2005)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard  

It would appear that in over 30 years of its existence the B.B.C. has never once permitted anybody to voice an opinion in favour of Atheism in any shape or form, until one evening in January when Mrs. Margaret Knight (lecturer in Psychology at Aberdeen University), was permitted to state in her broadcast on “Morality without Religion” that we should tell our children that we no longer believed in God although some people still do. She compared God with Santa Claus and referred to the Christian myths as useless for moral instruction. In her opinion if we taught children these biblical myths, when they grew up and learnt that they were at variance with the facts, they would be easy bait for Communism. The problem of evil was one point which she dealt with by declaring that an infinitely wise and all powerful God would not create evil. “If God cannot prevent evil then he is not all powerful, and if he will not, then he is not all Good.” The answer that many Christians give is that evil is man-made and nothing to do with God, or that its existence proves that man has departed from God. But here she said that there are a lot of evil things among the animals for which mankind certainly is not responsible. “The cat,” she said, “takes delight in playing with a mouse and inflicting torture on it until the mouse dies after a long drawn out and painful death.” The rest of the talk was about what she called “scientific humanism” and the education of children without the traditional religious beliefs.

The next day the Press was shocked and upset. The News Chronicle's leading article was headed “Atheism on the Air” in which it declared “Should she have been allowed to put and press her points without a balancing exposition of Christian beliefs? That is where we think the B.B.C. went wrong .” (14/1/55.)

Why this wonderful tolerant idea of a balancing exposition? Has not the B.B.C. been broadcasting religious beliefs for 30 years every day and often several times a day on all programmes and by thousands of exponents? Have they not a committee that on religious broadcasts see that we are all well soaked in traditional religious ideology?

Letters to the Press poured in by the thousand; such an hysterical outburst of injured religious pride has not been seen for a long time. 

(From an article by H. Jarvis, Socialist Standard, March, 1955)

God Behind The Iron Curtain (1951)

From the April 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Vatican and many Protestant prelates in the Western bloc thunder against “Godless Communism" but their diatribes are out-of-date, for the Communist Party has adopted God as one of its allies. The Daily Worker admitted this in a recent editorial when it wrote, “The Communists and the genuine Christians have much in common. They can find ways of working together to achieve a peaceful world.” (Daily Worker, 29th December, 1950.)

It is true that in the early days of the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks tried to liquidate religion, to tear down the ikon from the peasant’s hovel and replace it by a picture of Little Father Lenin. The programme of the Communist International adopted by the Sixth World Congress in 1928 contained the following attack on religion, “The fight against religion, the opium of the people, occupies an important position among the tasks of the cultural revolution. The fight must be carried on persistently and systematically. The proletarian power must withdraw all State support from the Church, and abolish the influence exercised by the Church.” (“Lenin on Religion” published by Lawrence and Wishart.) But religion could not be liquidated. The people of Russia were not Socialists and they shared with people all over the world the poverty, insecurity and frustration of capitalism. In their ignorance many of them turned for hope and consolation to religion with its message of the transience of human suffering and everlasting bliss in a world to come. The Second World War gave a fillip to religion in Russia and in 1943 Stalin made a non-aggression pact with Christ by approving the formation of a Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church. Since then the Patriarchs of this Church have been faithful servants of the Russian state. As good lieutenants of the God of Battles they gave enthusiastic support to Russia’s war effort; as humble followers of the Prince of Peace they have been prominent at the Peace Conferences which have been staged to support Russia's current foreign policy. And judging by the amounts that some of them have been able to invest in Russian War Loans they have benefited materially as well as spiritually.

In Czechoslovakia, too, religion prospers under State patronage. The clerics who oppose the Government share the same fate as rebellious laymen, but those who are prepared to serve both God and Gottwald are well looked after. According to “Prague News Letter,” a periodical published in Prague (1st January, 1951) “All church expenses such as electricity bills, bell-ringers’ and organists’ wages, candles and wine are . . . met by the civil authorities” and . . . “several hundred million crowns were spent on other ecclesiastical needs, such as the maintenance of theological faculties and seminaries.” The same paper informs us that “ All priests have rent-free houses;” and the “average salary of priests in the Prague diocese . . . is about 6,500 crowns per month.” “Czechoslovak Life,” another journal published in Prague (December, 1950), states that this amount is “nearly twice the average industrial wage,” and the Czechoslovak minister. Josef Plojahr, himself a Catholic priest, declared that “Czechoslovakian priests are the best paid in the whole world, and not only the Catholics, but the priests of all other religions.” (“Soviet Weekly,” March 1st, 1951). It is hoped that this information does not become too generally known in clerical circles or there may be a mass invasion of Czechoslovakia by poverty-stricken Anglican curates. And what shall we do without our padres?

The Socialist Party alone maintains its hostility to all forms of religion. It considers all religious beliefs to be incorrect and a barrier to the acceptance of the Socialist case. Therefore one of the tasks of a Socialist is to show the falsity of religious ideas and not to compromise with them. A Socialist cannot be religious, and when Socialism is established religion will be dead, for the overwhelming majority of the world’s population will have become Socialists. If anyone remains who wishes to tell his beads or sing his hymns he will be tolerated. But a world of enlightenment and security will not provide fertile soil for the growth of religious ideas, which flourish in the rubbish heap of misery and ignorance.

J. M.

Religion and Socialism (2020)

From the April 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of religion is not infrequently broached with socialists. A variety of cases are made ranging from the absolutely irrefutable word of God, as recorded in the bible (or sacred scripture of choice), to attempts to reconcile religious faith with Marxism.

Liberation theology is perhaps the most systematic attempt at this latter approach on a society-wide basis. However, this turns out to be a melding of Roman Catholicism and ‘Leninist socialism’ of the Cuban variety in Latin America where this theology was concocted.

Sympathy with the poor rather than being the spiritual mask of the rich is laudable, but does nothing to address the fundamental cause of that poverty, the material relations of wealth production and distribution. Not only is the pursuit of profit not sinful in capitalism, it is a basic requirement any lachrymose response by the Church cannot challenge.

Socialists can respond to religious entreaties in a trenchant manner, insisting that atheism expressed as materialism is the only credible way of understanding capitalism and bringing about the conscious change required by the working class, the vast majority, to strive for and achieve socialism.

But what is meant by atheism? Rejection of an anthropomorphic God who judges every human action, rewarding the good and punishing the bad, was achieved by serious theology centuries ago. There are still the credulous who believe they can achieve great wealth by praying for it, but they usually end up considerably poorer having gifted what little money they have to the religious sect making ‘divine’ promises.

A more robust atheism takes issue with all forms of God promotion, anthropomorphic, theistic, deistic, pantheistic, non-interventionist uncaused cause etc. Marx, it is commonly asserted, held with this position, and yet he declined to be identified with it.

This is in no way meant to indicate that Marx held some vague quasi-religious view. Far from it. He didn’t want to deny religion, but move beyond the religious question entirely. As atheism is merely the counter to theism, such a move required setting both aside. In a letter to Arnold Ruge, Marx wrote that he rejected:

  ‘… the label atheism (which reminds one of children assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogey man) …’ (Letter to Ruge, 1842).

Two years later, in the 1844 Manuscripts, Marx argued:

  ‘Atheism, as a negation of God, has no longer any meaning, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as socialism no longer stands in any need of such mediation.’

It is worth socialists reminding themselves what Marx wrote in the paragraph that ends with his most quoted phrase on this subject:

  ‘Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.’

Atheism is not limited to merely attacking the symptom, religion, rather than the disease, capitalism, it also constitutes an assault on the means by which suffering may be endured.

Today it could be football or Facebook, consumerism and credit, gambling or gardening, even actual opiates or drugs of choice that have supplanted religion as the analgesic of social ills.

In Britain, people have now largely, for all intents and purposes, given up on religion. As Marx wrote in his Theses on Feuerbach (No. 8):

  ‘All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.’

For all that religion has been abandoned by the majority of the working class in Britain and many other western countries, it still exerts an obviously strong influence in many parts of the world. Where that is the case religion continues to fulfil its role as a reaction to poverty, both economic and philosophic. In extremis, the opiate proves deadly, as with ISIS.

Of course, just because Marx took a view it doesn’t mean it is of necessity correct: his writings are not to be quoted as pseudo-holy writ. However, on the subject of religion it would seem that the better case to be made is for socialism rather than atheism.

Religion is not to be abolished in the name of socialism. That can be left in the past with Stalin and Enver Hoxha. Better to progress the case for the working class to pursue actual socialism which requires collective conscious action by the class on its own behalf.

This does not entail any compromise with religion, not even if it attempts to accommodate itself to the socialist cause.

  ‘Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat’ (Communist Manifesto).

The point is not to negate religion but to transcend it through socialism harnessing the material resources available to humanity and employ them democratically for the commonweal, if not for heaven on earth, then as close as mankind can get to it.

Dave Alton

The Programme of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune. by Frederick Engels. (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

 [The general line running through this criticism of the Programme of the Blanquist refugees is still so applicable that despite the praise given to the German Workers' Party, it is well worth reprinting. The misunderstanding of social development by the Blanquists has been parallelled during the war period by groups both here and in Germany and Russia. Engels' criticism tells with even greater force against these groups than it did against the Blanquists, because the social conditions are more highly developed now than then, and there is, therefore, even less excuse for the misunderstanding.]

After the failure of every revolution or counter revolution, a feverish activity develops among the fugitives, who have escaped to foreign countries. The parties of different shades form groups, accuse each other of having driven the cart into the mud, charge one another with treason and every conceivable sin.

At the same time they remain in close touch with the home country, organise, conspire, print leaflets and newspapers, swear that the trouble will start afresh within twenty-four hours, that victory is certain, and distribute the various government offices beforehand on the strength of this anticipation.

Of course, disappointment follows disappointment, and since this is not attributed to the inevitable historical conditions, which they refuse to understand, but rather to accidental mistakes of individuals, the mutual accusations multiply, and the whole business winds up with a grand row. This is the history of all groups of fugitives from the royalist emigrants of 1792 until the present day. Those fugitives, who have any sense and understanding, retire from the fruitless squabble as soon as they can do so with propriety and devote themselves to better things.

The French emigrants after the Commune did not escape this disagreeable fate.

Owing to the European campaign of slander, which attacked everybody without distinction, and being compelled particularly in London, where they had a common center in the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, for the time being, to suppress their internal troubles before the world, they had not been able, during the last two years, to conceal the signs of advancing disintegration. The open fight broke out everywhere. In Switzerland a part of them joined the Bakounists, mainly under the influence of Malon, who was himself one of the founders of the secret alliance. Then the so-called Blanquists in London withdrew from the International and formed a group of their own under the title of "The Revolutionary Commune". Outside of them numerous other groups arose later, which continue in a state of ceaseless transformation and modulation and have not put out anything essential in the way of manifestos. But the Blanquists are just making their program known to the world by a proclamation to the "Communeux".

These Blanquists are not called by this name, because they are a group founded by Blanqui. Only a few of the thirty-three signers of this program have ever spoken personally to Blanqui. They rather wish to express the fact that they intend to be active in his spirit and according to his traditions.

Blanqui is essentially a political revolutionist. He is a socialist only through sentiment, through his sympathy with the sufferings of the people, but he has neither a socialist theory nor any definite practical suggestions for social remedies. In his political activity he was mainly a "man of action", believing that a small and well organized minority, who would attempt a political stroke of force at the opportune moment, could carry the mass of the people with them by a few successes at the start and thus make a victorious revolution. Of course, he could organize such a group under Louis Phillippe's reign only as a secret society. Then the thing, which generally happens in the case of conspiracies, naturally took place. His men, tired of beings held off all the time by the empty promises that the outbreak should soon begin, finally lost all patience, became rebellious, and only the alternative remained of either letting the conspiracy fall to pieces or of breaking loose without any apparent provocation. They made a revolution on May 12th, 1839, and were promptly squelched. By the way, this Blanquist conspiracy was the only one, in which the police could never get a foothold. The blow fell out of a clear sky.

From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.

We see, then, that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the preceding generation.

These conceptions of the march of revolutionary events have long become obsolete, at least for the German Workingmen's party, and will not find much sympathy in France, except among the less mature or the more impatient laborers. We shall also note, that they are placed under certain restrictions in the present program. Nevertheless our London Blanquists agree with the principle that revolutions do not make themselves, but are made; that they are made by a relatively small minority and after a previously conceived plan; and finally, that they may be made at any time, and that "soon".

It is a matter of course that such principles will deliver a man hopelessly into the hands of all the self-deceptions of a fugitive's life and drive him from one folly into another. He wants above all to play the role of Blanqui, "the man of action". But little can be accomplished by mere good will. Not every one has the revolutionary instinct and quick decision of Blanqui. Hamlet may talk ever so much of energy, he will still remain Hamlet. And if our thirty-three men of action cannot find anything at all to do upon what they call the field of action, then these thirty-three Brutuses come into a more comical than tragic conflict with themselves. The tragic of their situation is by no means increased by the dark men which they assume, as though they were so many slayers of tyrants with stilettos in their bosoms, which they are not.

What can they do? They prepare the next "outbreak" by drawing up lists of proscription for the future, in order that the line of men, who took part in the Commune, may be purified. For this reason they are called "The Pure" by the other fugitives. Whether they themselves assume this title, I cannot say. It would fit some of them rather badly. Their meetings are secret, and their resolutions are supposed to be kept secret, although this does not prevent the whole French quarter from ringing with them next morning. And as always happens to men of action that have nothing to do, they became involved first in a personal, then in a literary quarrel with a foe worthy of themselves, one of the most doubtful of the minor Parisian journalists, a certain Vermersch, who published during the Commune the "Pére Duchene", a miserable caricature of the paper published by Hébert in 1793. This noble creature replies to their moral indignation, by calling all of them thieves or accomplices of thieves in some leaflet, and smothering them with a flood of Billingsgate that smells of the dungheap. Every word is an excrement. And is with such opponents that our thirty-three Brutuses wrestle before the public !

If anything is evident, it is the fact that the Parisian proletariat, after the exhausting war, after the famine in Paris, and especially after the fearful massacres of May, 1871, will require a good deal of time to rest, in order to gather new strength, and that every premature attempt at a revolution would bring on merely a new and still more crushing defeat. Our Blanquists are of a different opinion.

The rout of the Royalist majority in Versailles forebodes to them "the fall of Versailles, the revenge of the Commune. For we are approaching one of those great historical moments, one of those great crises, in which the people, while seemingly sunk in misery and doomed to death, resume their revolutionary advance with new strength."

In other words, another outbreak will "soon" come. This hope for an "immediate revenge of the Commune" is not a mere illusion of the fugitives, but a necessary article of faith with men, who have their mind set upon being "men of action" at a time when there is absolutely nothing to be done in the sense which they represent, that of an immediate outbreak.

Never mind. Since a start will be made soon, they hold that "the time has come, when every fugitive, who still has any life in him, should declare himself."

And so the thirty-three declare that they are: (1) atheists; (2) communists,; (3) revolutionaries.

Our Blanquists have this in common with the Bakounists, that they wish to represent the most advanced, most extreme line. For this reason they often choose the same means as the Bakounists, although they differ from them in their aims. The point with them is, then, to be more radical in the matter of atheism than all others. Fortunately it requires no great heroism to be an atheist nowadays. Atheism is practically accepted by the European working men's parties, although in certain countries it may at times be of the same calibre as that of a certain Bakounist, who declared that it was contrary to all socialism to believe in God, but that it was different with the virgin Mary, in whom every good socialist ought to believe. Of the vast majority of the German socialist working men it may even be said that mere atheism has been outgrown by them. This purely negative term does not apply to them any more, for they maintain no longer merely a theoretical, but rather a practical opposition to the belief in God. They are simply done with God; they live and think in the real world, for they are materialists. This will probably be the case in France also. But if it were not, then nothing would be easier than to see to it that the splendid French materialist literature of the preceding century is widely distributed among the laborers, that literature; in which the French mind has so far accomplished its best in form and content, and which, with due allowance for the condition of the science of their day, still stands infinitely high in content, while its form has never been equalled since.

But this cannot suit our Blanquists. In order to show that they are the most radical, God is abolished by them by decree, as in 1793: "May the Commune for ever free humanity from this ghost of past misery (God), from this cause of its present Misery." (The non-existing God a cause !) There is no room in the Commune for priests; every religious demonstration, every religious organisation, must be forbidden."

And this demand for a transformation of people into atheists by order of the star chamber is signed by two members of the Commune of the first place, that a multitude of things may be ordered on paper without being carried out, and in the second place, that persecutions are the best means of promoting disliked convictions. So much is certain, that the only service, which may still be rendered to God to-day, is that of declaring atheism an article of faith to be enforced and of outdoing even Bismarck's anti-Catholic laws by forbidding religion altogether.

The second point of the program is Communism.

Here we are more at home, for the ship in which we sail here is called "The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in February 1848." Already in the fall of 1872 the five Blanquists who withdrew from the International had adopted a socialist program, which was in all essential points that of the present German Communism. They had justified their withdrawal by the fact that the International refused to play at revolution making after the manner of these five. Now this council of thirty-three adopts this program with its entire materialist conception of history, although its translation into Blanquist French leaves a good deal to desire, in parts where the "Manifesto" has not been almost literally adopted, as it has, for instance, in the following passage: "As the last expression of all forms of servitude, the bourgeoisie has lifted the mystic veil from the exploitation of labor, by which it was formerly obscured: Governments, religions, family, laws, institutions of the past and the present, finally revealed themselves in this society, reduced to the simple antagonism between capitalist and wage workers, as instruments of oppression, by the help of which the bourgeoisie maintains its rule and holds the proletariat down."

Compare with this "The Communist Manifesto", Section 1: "In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoise has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverend awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation, etc." 

But as soon as we descend from theory to practice, the peculiarity of the thirty-three manifests itself: "We are Communists, because we want to reach our goal without stopping at any intermediate stations, at compromises, which merely defer the victory and prolong the slavery."

The German Communists are Communists, because they clearly see the final goal and work towards it through all intermediate stations and compromises, which are created, not by them, but by historical development. And their goal is the abolition of classes, the inauguration of a society, in which no private property in land and means of production shall exist any longer. The thirty-three, on the other hand, are Communists, because they imagine that they can skip intermediate stations and compromises at their sweet will, and if only the trouble begins, as it will soon according to them, and they get hold of affairs, then Communism will be introduced the day after to-morrow. If this is not immediately possible, then they are not Communists.

What a simple hearted childishness, which quotes impatience as a convincing argument in support of a theory !

Finally the thirty-three are "revolutionaries."

In this line, so far as big words are concerned, we know that the Bakounists have reached the limit; but the Blanquists feel that it is their duty to excel them in this. And how do they do this? It is well known that the entire socialist proletariat, from Lisbon to New York and Budapest to Belgrade has assumed the responsibility for the actions of the Paris Commune without hesitation. But that is not enough for the Blanquists. "As for us, we claim our part of the responsibility for the executions of the enemies of the people" (by the Commune), whose names are then enumerated; "we claim our part of the responsibility for those fires, which destroyed the instruments of royal or bourgeois oppression or protected our fighters."

In every revolution some follies are inevitably committed, just as they are at any other time, and when quiet is finally restored, and calm reasoning comes, people necessarily conclude: We have done many things which had better been left undone, and we have neglected many things which we should have done, and for this reason things went wrong.

But what a lack of judgment it requires to declare the Commune sacred, to proclaim it infallible, to claim that every burnt house, every executed hostage, received their just dues to the dot over the i! Is not that equivalent to saying that during that week in May the people shot just as many opponents as was necessary, and no more, and burnt just those buildings which had to be burnt, and no more? Does not that repeat the saying about the first French Revolution: Every beheaded victim received justice, first those beheaded by order of Robespierre and then Robespierre himself! To such follies are people driven, when they give free rein to the desire to appear formidable, although they are at bottom quite goodnatured.

Enough. In spite of all follies of the fugitives, and in spite of all comical efforts to appear terrible, this program shows some progress. It is the first manifesto, in which French workingmen endorse the present German Communism. And these are moreover workingmen of that calibre, who consider the French as the chosen people of the revolution and Paris as the revolutionary Jerusalem. To have carried them to this point is the undeniable merit of Vaillant, who is one of the signers of the manifesto, and who is well known to be thoroughly familiar with the German language and the German socialist literature. The German Socialist workingmen, on the other hand, who proved in 1870 that they were completely free from jingoism, may regard it as a good sign that French workingmen adopt correct theoretical principles, even when they come from Germany. 

(From “Der Volksstaat,” No. 73, 1874. Translated by Ernest Untermann.)