Socialism and Religion. (1924)

From the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bishop Montgomery Brown, the retired Bishop of Arkansas, U.S.A., a divine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, has been expelled from the Church for heresy. He is the author of “Communism and Christianism,” and the wide sale of this book has made him known far beyond the little town of Galion, Ohio, where he resides.

The Bishop came to write the book through reading the pamphlet issued by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, entitled “Socialism and Religion.” Amidst all the sentimental and superstitious writings published on this question in America, our pamphlet stood out as a unique and scientific declaration and commanded wide attention. The interest was so great that the last order from the “Socialist Party of Michigan” was for 1,000 copies, and it was due to this latter body that the Bishop obtained the pamphlet.

* * *

The best part of the Bishop’s book is the series of quotations from our party pamphlet. Nearly all the religious section of “Communism and Christianism” is unscientific, sentimental and confusing. Take the following : “Socialism is for me the one comprehensive term which is a synonym at once of morality, religion and Christianity” (p. 26). Then he says that Christianism “is a system of parasitism” (p. 31). He claims the same faith as Jesus, of whom he says, “his loyalty was to the truth and to the proletarian” (p. 25). Throughout the Bishop puts far-fetched meanings into Jesus’ words and makes a Christianity peculiar to himself. This is a quite common method amongst the “Christian Socialists” whom he condemns. He claims that Jesus taught that “it was the mission of Himself and disciples to establish a new heaven, that is, to remodel the Church, and new earth, that is to remodel the state; both remodellings being with reference to the service of humanity by enlightening its darkness and alleviating its misery here and now, rather than teaching it to look for light and happiness elsewhere and elsewhen” (p. 23). This must be some other Jesus personally known to the Bishop. The Jesus of Christianity, the Jesus of the New Testament, certainly gives no teaching about remodelling the State and enlightening the darkness. Jesus gave no social teaching. “Take no thought for the morrow,” “Resist not evil,” “Blessed are ye poor,” “Love your enemies,” and similar anti-working class notions are not instructions to remodel the State. So far from seeking happiness here, Jesus starts out with the supernatural, and it runs right through the New Testament. “My Kingdom is not of this world,” and “I go to my Father in heaven” is the spirit of the Book; the Socialist finds no message for him in the gospel of Jesus, from the beginning to the end. The Bishop admits this later where he says the “Gospel of Jesus” is “exclusively concerned with a celestial world” (p. 32).

This “rebuilding” of Jesus by the Bishop is dangerous to the workers. It is calculated to keep the workers on the side of religion by the false picture of Jesus and his alleged “Socialist” character. It is quite easy to understand how Bishop Brown remained within the Church and’ fought against his expulsion. Although he is an associate of the Rationalist Press Association, and a professed Evolutionist and self-styled “Marxian,” he understands these matters so little that it was possible to reconcile them with a Bishop’s position in the Episcopal Church. His muddled attitude went further, for he defended his position at the trial by claiming that the clergy did not literally accept the Bible, and that they had given up many orthodox dogmas. To attempt to compare the “modernizing” of Christianity with the materialism he claimed to hold, is a joke. The “reconciling” of ordination vows of a Bishop with the scientific and revolutionary attitude of our pamphlet on Socialism and Religion is a farce.

We differ therefore from the Labour and Communist Press in America, whose papers are very bitter against the Church for its expulsion of Bishop Brown. We affirm that the materialist and revolutionary nature of Socialism involves opposition to the Church and to Christianity. One who accepts the Socialist position, and realises therefore, the implications of its scientific basis, has no place as a member of the “holy” Church of Christianity. The superstition and submission taught by religion is in direct opposition to the philosophy of Socialism.

* * *

Our pamphlet was a bombshell to the professional politicians of the Social Reform parties. John M. Work, the secretary of the “S. P. of America,” tried to minimise its influence by saying the pamphlet was an irresponsible statement. The “Socialist Labour Party,” in reply to questions, continually answered in the words of De Leon that Religion was a private matter, and that a Socialist could hold any opinion he liked about the matter. And the I.W.W. in their leaflets repudiated being “anti-religious,” and said “members of the I.W.W. differ as much in their political and religious views as do members of any other organisation” (“The Labour Defender,” Dec. 1, 1918). The publication of dozens of pamphlets and books after the style of “Why a Christian should be a Socialist” and Bouck White’s “Call of the Carpenter” made our pamphlet a necessary antidote to this rubbish. The issues of an American edition by the Socialist Educational Society of New York a few months ago is therefore very welcome, being made more necessary than ever by the distorted edition issued by an enterprising orator who used its covers to advertise his spiritualist writings.

* * *

Mr. John Spargo, who until 1916 was a highly-paid lecturer for the “S.P. of America,” devoted a good deal of attention to our pamphlet in his book “Marxian Socialism and Religion.” He tries to answer us by saying that Marx was a deeply spiritual man, and that the materialist conception of history was not intended by Marx to be applied as we have done. He quotes part of F. Engels’ letters to attempt to show there are spiritual driving forces in history, but the publication of the complete letters in “The Socialist Standard” showed that Mr. Spargo was relying upon the awful ignorance of his dupes and followers in the alleged Socialist Party of America. Spargo knew better than he wrote, as can be seen from the columns of “The Comrade” of New York, for the period in which he edited that paper. His statements of the conflict between Socialism and Religion have been quoted in all the American textbooks for anti-Socialist speakers.

In Great Britain to-day the Socialist Party of Great Britain is still the only party which declares the truth about Socialism and Religion. The parties which seek numbers at the expense of principle are busier than ever preaching all things to all men, and trying to repudiate the charge that Socialism is opposed to Religion. From the Protestant George Lansbury, M.P., to the Catholic, John Wheatley, M.P., the gospel of Jesus is used to swell the ranks of the so-called Labour Parties. The pandering to the ignorance of the masses in order to get votes can find no place in a party working for Socialism. Socialists must rid the workers’ minds of their superstitions, religious, economic and political, in order to develop that scientific and revolutionary outlook upon life without which Socialism is impossible. We are not disturbed, therefore, to see that the organ of the British Empire Union—the “Empire Record” (June, 1924)—devotes much space to our pamphlet as an exposure of Socialist hostility towards religion. We take our stand upon the scientific truths of Socialism, regardless of the opposition from fool or knave. The “Empire Record” says: “These Socialists scorn the view that any moral or spiritual reforms are first needed in man himself.” Spiritual reforms are then still required after 2000 years of Christianity ! His talk about moral reform by those who support a system which results in moral degradation is a joke. And moral reform talk by the Empire Builders who shouted in 1914 for “war to the knife” is not a joke. For the preachers of “hate” in 1914 it is evidently a personal question. No wonder the “Empire Record” heads the paragraph from which we quote, “The decalogue out of date.”

* * *

“Communist” politicians anxious to “get in” are careful to dodge the question of religion. At Kelvingrove Bye-Election, where Ferguson ran under Labour Party auspices, a complaint was made that some orator attacked religion. The Communist paper “The Worker” (June 7th, 1924), says: “We cannot say we heard of any Communist orator attacking religion as mentioned by the special correspondent.” It further states that “it is absurd to suggest that Communist speakers generally attacked religion.” The same dodging of the materialist nature of Socialism was made by the Catholic Francis Meynell when editor of the “Communist,” who answered an enquirer by stating that while the logical person must recognise the conflict between Socialism and Religion, logical people are as rare as white blackbirds. This is an evasion of the subject, and is typical of Jesuitical methods.

* * *

In Ireland, where asylum attendants have been on strike some time, the strikers have issued leaflets using the Pope’s “message” in their support. This message is a quotation from the Encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII on “The Condition of the Working Classes” in 1891. The quotation opens thus:—

  “Religion teaches the wealthy owner and employer that their workpeople are not to be accounted their bondsmen,” and it goes on to exhort the rich to give the workpeople “a fair wage.” The strikers follow the quotation with the slogan, “Labour demands justice.” These good Catholic strikers fail to see that the same letter of the Pope can be quoted with greater force by the employers. For Pope Leo says : 

  “Thus religion teaches the labouring man and artisan to carry out honestly and fairly all equitable agreements freely entered into; never to injure the property nor to outrage the person of an employer, never to resort to violence in defending their own cause nor to engage in riot or disorder.”

The employers could quite easily quote the Encyclical letter of the recent Pope Benedict XV (1914) entitled “Ad Beatissimi,” an extract, from which is the following :—-

  “The second cause of the general unrest we declared to be the absence of respect for the authority of those who exercise ruling. Ever since the source of human powers has been sought apart from God the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, in the free will of men, the bonds of duty which should exist between superior and inferior have been so weakened as almost to have ceased to exist. The unrestricted striving after independence together with overweening pride has little by little found its way everywhere; it has not even spared the home although the natural origin of the ruling power is as clear as the noonday sun; nay, more deplorable still is has not stopped at the steps of the sanctuary. Hence comes contempt for laws, insubordination of the masses and wanton criticism of orders issued, hence innumerable cases of undermining authority. . . .

‘There is no power but from God and those that are, are ordained of God.’”

* * *

The increasing indifference of the workers to religion is shown by the speech of the Rev. E. W. Sara, Director of the Bishop of London’s Sunday School Council. The Times reports his speech to the Church of England's Men’s Society at Bradford

  “Mr. Sara described the present-day drift away from organised religion as ‘an appalling leakage.’ It constituted a grave challenge to the Church. While Churchmen continued to think chiefly of the respectable few in the front pews, the young people were being lost. In the London diocese alone 16,000 boys and girls had been lost from Bible classes since the war, 16,000 from the Church Lads’ Brigade, nearly 4,000 from the Girls’ Friendly Society, and 8,000 from the senior Bands of Hope. Those figures were typical of the whole country. There were 3,000,000 lapsed communicants, of whom the London Diocese alone counted 300,000.”

The decay of religion amongst workers of the Hebrew race has caused much uneasiness to the clergy. Professor C. G. Montefiore in his “Judiasm and Democracy” states that:

  “There is a considerable section of the Jewish proletariat. which is out of sympathy with the Jewish religion, or, indeed, with religion generally, and at all. This estrangement from religion is mainly true as regards one particular section of Jewish democracy, namely, the social democrats or socialists. . . . They are inclined to be opposed to everything which has been a comfort to, and has been held dear by, the upper class, the bourgeoisie.”

The Professor has to make this confession about religion :—

  “It has bidden people be obedient to their rulers and their kings, obedient and subservient. The book of proverbs, for instance, encourages submission to, and fear of, the constituted authority. A King is the Lord’s Anointed. Religion has devised a sort of hierarchy from the authority of fallible and visible men to the authority of an infallible and invisible God. It has entered, as I have said, into an understanding with the great ones of the earth. In return for their support and acknowledgment it has buttered and buttressed them up in their greatness and their privileges.”

This lecturer of the Jewish Religious Union justifies all we say of the function of religion in the class struggle. It is the agent of class domination.

W. Edgar

"Socialism and Religion."

The Socialist Educational Society of New York have, by permission of the S.P.G.B. reprinted the above pamphlet. The S.P.G.B. are the sole agents for the pamphlet in this country, and copies can be obtained from Head Office at 5d. each, postage 1d. extra, special terms for quantities.

Blogger's Note:

There's no mention of a W. Edgar in the membership records, and what with it being such an exhaustive and detailed article, it does make me think that it might be a regular writer writing under another pen-name. What with the reference to John Spargo and his journalistic work in New York, it does suggest that 'W. Edgar'  might have been Adolph Kohn. Kohn lived in the United States for a number of years during the First World War and its immediate aftermath, and had an in-depth knowledge of the American radical scene. It's also the case that Kohn was already over-represented in this issue of the Socialist Standard (he has at least three articles in this issue elsewhere), so it might have been the case that he employed yet another pen-name for this article, so it wouldn't be seen as a 'Adolph Kohn' issue.

Just a thought. 

War Fever in America. (1917)

From the November 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialist" Activity.

Many leading "Socialists” supported the candidature of President Wilson because “he kept os oat of war." Now the same alleged Socialists are supporting him because be has declared war. Ever since the Socialist Party adopted a resolution at their St. Louis Conference (1917) criticising the war these “comrades" have bean resigning.

At the time of writing (September) the members of the Socialist Party of America are more active in other organisations than in their own. Scores of new reform organisations have been formed upon every pretext under the sun.

The “Intellectuals.”

A. M. Simons has long been known as a great "Socialist.” His Socialism (!) recently consisted of advising Congressmen of the necessity of ridding the Socialist Party of all opponents of the war and turning over to the Government inside information concerning party activity. He was expelled from the party. His co-worker in this “Socialist" work was W. R. Gaylord, the Socialist Party candidate for Congress from Wisconsin. The "intellectual" was also expelled.

Many others, however, who have been guilty of equally treacherous work, are allowed to remain in the party or else to resign with a great show of injured innocence.

John Spargo— Patriot!

John Spargo's actions ever since he made his home in America confirm oar position that reformers are dangerous to the movement. He has turned his energies continuously towards helping the enemies of Socialism. At one time slandering Marx, at another time endeavouring to give a religious twist to Socialism, he has latterly filled the Press with jingoism in the name of Socialism. He has now resigned from the Socialist Party because it has criticised the war. Loop inflictions from him fill the columns of the capitalist papers with the usual wails of of such jingoes.

"Socialist” Exports to Russia.

As soon as things looked doubtful for the continuance of the war by Russia the American Government, like their English pattern, proposed sending a Commission of friendly advice to Russia— just as though Russia had not suffered enough without having to endure delegations from the autocrats of the West— Lloyd George and President Wilson.

To lend a political touch to the Commission the President, of course, selected a “Socialist." Needless to say, the chosen one was one of the most notorious jingoes of the party, Charles Edward Russell. He has since been expelled for joining the Commission without the party consent.

Nationalist "Internationalists."

Upton Sindair and his wife rose to fame with his book "The Jungle,” and later by his exhibition of starvation as the road to happiness. Ha has again sought notoriety by resigning from the Socialist Party, attaching a long, wild screech about the necessity of joining the Allies in the fight for "World Democracy.” Our millionaire "comrade” J. G. Phelps Stokes, and his wife Rose Pastor Stokes, have also joined the “struggle for liberty” and resigned from the party.

William English Walling, W. J. Ghent, (ex-Rev.) Geo. D. Herron, Robert R. La Monte, and Allan Benson (Presidential candidate), are among the number of the (in)famous supporters of the war in America.

All Workers Unite—Except Germans!

Most of these “comrades” seized the opportunity of the Russian situation to send a telegram to the Russian Soldiers and Peasants Council, begging the workers of Russia not to make a separate peace. In the name of “World Democracy” and of Western liberty they beseeched them to keep in the fight to smash Germany and free Europe of the honor of future war! Mrs. Jack London consecrated (!) her husband’s memory by signing the reactionary message. Spargo is now calling upon them to form a new party—a “real Socialist party” on the lines of the nationalist body that H. M. Hyndman adorns in England.

Several new papers have sprung into existence to voice the views of each section. Louis M. Boudin, author of “Theoretical System of Karl Marx,” objected to the telegram sent by Victor Berger and Maurice Hillquit to President Wilson at the outbreak of war. This telegram begged the President to place an embargo on all boats in the danger zone.

Boudin claimed this was pro-German. At the St Louis Conference he quarrelled with some of his fellow members of the S.P. Executive, and has been active ever since combatting the views of Hillquit.

One notable recantation he made at the St Louis Conference was that he withdrew his support of national defence at the end of his book on Socialism and War.

"The Class Struggle.”

Boudin and others hove started a new monthly —"The Class Struggle”— to express their aims. In the main it is against the war, but it supports the growing Industrial Unionist movement without explaining its real value. Many of the contributors are also connected with the “New International,” the monthly paper of the Socialist Propaganda League. This is an organisation of the self-styled “left wing” of the Socialist Party of America. Their advanced teaching consists mainly of supporting "direct action” by means of Industrial Unionism. This anti-Socialist propaganda is carried on in conjunction with “The International Socialist Review.”

The "Socialist for President.”

Allan Benson of the Socialist Party was boomed as the great anti-war Presidential candidate of the Socialist Party in Nov. 1916. Workingmen throughout America objected to sending a capitalist with Elihu Root’s black record as chairman of the U.S. commission to Russia. Allan Benson showed his revolutionary conceptions by issuing the following to the Press from Yonkers, N.Y., on May 4th:

  If the German submarines are sinking 400,000 tons of shipping a week it doesn’t make any difference whether we send Elihu Root or Billy Sunday to Russia. Elimination of the submarine is the thing of paramount importance, overshadowing everything else. I never regarded Root as a good exponent of democratic principles, nor do I now regard him as such. But I have no sympathy with any opposition to Root which is really more of an attempt to bring about a separate peace between Russia and Germany than it is to prevent Root going. I would infinitely rather have Root go on the commission than have some man go who might work for a separate peace between Russia and Germany.

The Call of the Wild.

One of the carious documents of the war is Upton Sinclair’s resignation statement sent to local Pasadena (California) of the Socialist Party. Below is an interesting extract taken from the “New York Call” (July 18):

  I say that this war must be fought until there has been a thorough and complete democratization of the governments of Germany and Austria, and I say that any agitation for peace which does not include this demand is, whether it realizes it or not, a pro-German agitation. The argument that we have no right to say under what institution the German people shall live seems to me without force. The Germans did not scruple to make war on the French and to set up a republic in that country. They did this because they believed that a republic would be less formidable from a military standpoint; and it is now on the cards that the world shall do the same thing for the Germans, and to the same purpose.
  For these reasons, Comrades, 1 cannot follow you in your declaration that this is "the most unjustifiable war in history,” or in your policy of mass opposition to the draft. But I would not have you think that I have gone over bag and baggage to the capitalist system. I believe that there is a work of enormous importance to be done by the forces of radicalism in the present crisis.

The Blind Leading the Blind.

On May 12th the capitalist Press was ablaze with the long telegram to the German Socialists sent by some of the prominent “Socialist” jingoes. I reproduce below the essentials of the traitorous message:

  The democratic peoples of the world now in league against the kaiser and kaiserism will be compelled to continue their war against Germany and her autocratic allies until the kaiser and kaiserism are overthrown. The German Socialist faction that opposes the Government has already realised that both an early peace and German liberty require that the power of the kaiser should be rigidly and immediately curtailed and they have announced the following program as a core for kaiserism:
   Responsibility of the government to the reichstag, reichstag control of peace and war; equal reichstag election districts; abolition of the upper houses of the states and the empire, as well as equal suffrage in Prussia—now apparently on the way to accomplishment tho not yet promised even “after the war.”
     This program is fundamental and excellent—so excellent, indeed, that it is extremely unlikely to be granted without a protracted series of overwhelming German defeats. It is fully half of what is needed. But it is not enough. The Hohenzollerns must go.
     The rest of the world realises, whether the German people realise or not, that liberty in Germany and peace in the world must remain a sham as long as the Hohenzollerns and their supporters retain any real power.
      But whether Germany prefers a republic or a constitutional monarchy the Hohenzollerns' tradition and prestige must not only be reformed—it must be broken.
     The kaiser himself claims that kaiserism is to be democratized and strengthened in its fight against the other nations. It will be difficult if not impossible, to convince the democracies of the world that a reformed kaiserism is anything else than an effort of the Hohenzollerns to make the German people more willing tools of his foreign policy. Nothing but the overthrow of the autocrat can prove finally to the world that the German people repudiate his past crimes and refuse to have any share in the crimes he is planning for the future.
      There is only one way to bring the war to an early end —the kaiser must go.

Signed to the cable were these names:

Wingfield R. Gaylord, “Socialist” candidate for congress from Milwaukee; Robert Dives La Monte, Socialist author and editor of Connecticut; Charles Edward Russell, Socialist candidate for governor of New York, 1914 ; A. M. Simons, world-renowned Socialist, editor and author; J. G. Phelps Stokes ; Rose Pastor Stokes, author ; William English Walling, author and Henry L. Slobodin, formerly national secretary of the American Socialists’ committee.

Judas!

An instance of the treachery can be gathered from the following cutting from the daily papers in America of May 4th:

SOCIALISTS IN U.S.A. CAN'T URGE PEACE.
  WASHINGTON, May 4.—German Socialists in the United States who attempt to force or influence a separate peace between Russia and Germany will be dealt with to the full extent of American laws.
  The state department indicated this today following publication of charges by J. G. Phelps Stokes, that some of the German wings of American Socialists are trying to force such a peace.
   Such efforts are considered extremely treasonable acts.
  The new censorship will be applied vigorously to prevent the socialists communicating with the Slav leaders.

An indication of the attitude of the coming party is revealed by the following:

  Expressing Socialism in terms of American life and experience, this new party . . .  will not cling to formulae and let the substance of the Socialist hope pass by unnoticed. . . .  It will make its appeal not to one class alone, but to all men and women of good will and social vision. It will be a party of toilers, not because it sets them apart and panders to them, but because its principle carried into effect must bring their emancipation.—(John Spargo in the “Philadelphia Public Ledger.”)

Thus the English reader will observe that the language and methods of the traitor are curiously similar, whichever hemisphere they belong to. Their dainty stomachs revolt at the idea of the class struggle, while they bawl for butchery by nations.

Adolph Kohn

Darwin and socialism (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The viewpoint that discerns and identifies an historic linkage between Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in regard to their respective, earthshaking theories seems not to be obvious to scientists, generally, in our times. Most scientific people, to the extent that they do attempt analysis of our social system, are no more cognisant of the traditional Marxist critique than is the bulk of the population. When it comes to political science, their thinking is dominated by the ruling class approach to the extent of permitting their political views to influence, or colour, their research efforts. In any case, a century and a quarter after the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species it would not be easy to find scientists, other than an occasional Marxist, who do see a connection between scientific evolution and scientific socialism.

This was not always the case and in the decades immediately following the publication of Darwin’s monumental work in 1859. there was frequent and heated debate among scientists over the question. For example in 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the famed German embryologist, delivered an eloquent address in which he defended and propagated Darwinism which was, at that time, under violent attack. A few days afterwards Virchow, the noted pathologist, assailed the Darwinian theory of organic evolution raising a terrible cry of alarm: “Darwinism leads directly to socialism".

The German Darwinians, headed by Haeckel and Oscar Schmidt, immediately protested, insisting that Darwinism is in direct, open and absolute opposition to socialism. In the words of Schmidt, writing in the Ausland of 27 November 1877

If the Socialists were prudent they would do their utmost to kill, by silent neglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphatically proclaims that the socialist ideas are impracticable.

And Haeckel wrote (in Les preuves du transformisme, Paris, 1879. p. 110 et seq):

. . . there is no scientific doctrine which proclaims more openly than the theory of descent that the equality of individuals, toward which socialism tends, is an impossibility; that this chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessary and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals . . .

In the ever popular misconception of Marxist goals. Haeckel portrayed socialism as a demand for “equal rights, equal duties, equal possessions and equal enjoyments". And having erected this straw man (one need not elaborate on the vast difference between the concept of equality in work and rewards on the one hand and a society based on from each according to one’s ability to each according to one’s needs, the societal goal of socialism, on the other) the scientist demolished it with an outpouring of words calculated to demonstrate that Darwin’s theory of descent proved that there can be no scientific validity to the “socialist goal" of equality in work or reward. In fact it proved, he argued. that the tendency of society is not even toward democracy — let alone socialism — that it can only be evolving in the direction of aristocracy!

But that was all argued out a long time ago and little if anything seems now to be said about a relationship between Darwinism and human societies. The Darwin theory has long since graduated to the status of an accepted fact by all but a minority of die-hard fundamentalists whose effect on the machinery of capitalist society is minimal at most. The capitalist class has long since accepted Natural Selection. To them, perhaps, it also provides a logical explanation for their own status; they, the "fittest", have survived the no-holds-barred struggle.

In point of fact, Darwinism has nothing to do with democracy, aristocracy, socialism, or any other sort of social system. The theory of Natural Selection, no doubt, was somewhat applicable to primitive humans but once they got organised into civilised societies (slavery, serfdom, capitalism) their survival depended more on human-made factors than natural. True, there is a ferocious competition among members of the same class — for profits or for jobs — as well as relentless contention between the classes (workers against capitalists) in capitalist society. But that is a by-product of this social order and will become non-existent in a society based on common ownership and free access to all wealth.

But aside from this factor, scientists for the most part have gone overboard on Natural Selection. As Darwin also pointed out, human beings have always been social animals with the propensity for mutual aid. At the end of Chapter 11 of The Descent of Man he wrote:

The small strength and speed of man, his want of natural weapons, etc are more than counterbalanced, firstly, by his intellectual powers, through which he has formed for himself weapons, tools, etc, though still remaining in a barbarous state, and. secondly by his social qualities which lead him to give and receive aid from his fellow-men. No country in the world abounds in a greater degree with dangerous beasts than Southern Africa; no country presents more fearful physical hardships than the Arctic regions; yet one of the puniest races, that of the Bushmen, maintains itself in Southern Africa. as do the dwarfed Esquimaux in the Arctic regions . . . (p.333, Modern Library ed.)

So much for what Haeckel had to say — especially on that “pitiless" struggle for existence that supposedly has always taken place among the human race. Even among the most primitive it was not that pitiless — according to Darwin and Mutual Aid naturalists such as Peter Kropotkin. Populations among the more primitive have always been small — whereas in civilised societies, despite the most horrible hardships, death-dealing implements and pollutants unimagined by primitives, populations have continued to multiply. Mutual aid does play an important role, even under advanced capitalism.

But what of the socialists and their reaction to Darwinism? Beginning with Marx himself, there was tremendous enthusiasm. Darwin’s book was published in the same year as Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In the words of John Spargo of the old Socialist Party of America:

. . . Marx regarded it as a fortunate coincidence that his own book appeared in the same year as that of Darwin. He recognised at once the importance and merit of Darwin's work, and at once brought it to the attention of his fellow radicals at their meetings. Liebknecht has told us how for months the Marx circle spoke of nothing except the value of Darwin’s work. With great frankness Marx likened his own work in the sociological field to that of Darwin in the biological field, and he was always manifestly pleased when others made the comparison Once, in the late sixties, when it had become commonplace in Marxian circles. W. Harrison Riley, editor of the International Herald, made the now familiar comparison and Marx replied: "Nothing ever gives me greater pleasure than to have my name thus linked with Darwin’s. His wonderful work makes my own absolutely impregnable. Darwin may not know it, but he belongs to the Social Revolution”. (Karl Marx: His Life and Work, B. W Huebsche, NY. 1910. p 200)

It did not take long for Darwin to indicate that he was not anxious to be thought of as belonging to “the Social Revolution". Isaiah Berlin writes, in his Karl Marx, His Life and Environment:

(Marx) offered to dedicate his Capital to Darwin, for whom he had a greater intellectual admiration than for any other of his contemporaries. regarding him as having, by his theory of evolution and natural selection, done for the morphology of the natural sciences what he himself was striving to do for human history.

But Darwin was apparently not interested in being identified with a revolutionary socialist. He must have realised that his own book would give him more than enough troubles as it was, so:

(he) hastily declined the honour in a polite, cautiously phrased letter, saying that he was unhappily ignorant of economic science, but offered the author his good wishes in what he assumed to be their common end — the advancement of human knowledge. (A Galaxy Book, NY, Oxford University Press. 1959. p.232)

We should also have a brief look at what Engels had to say on the subject. In his Anti-Duhring, he devotes some eleven pages to a defence of Darwin against the attack by Herr Eugen Duhring, a German “reformer” of socialism:

The main reproach levelled against Darwin is that he transferred the Malthusian population theory from political economy to natural science, that he was held captive by the ideas of an animal breeder, that in his theory of the struggle for existence he pursued unscientific semi-poetry, and that the whole of Darwinism, after deducting what had been borrowed from Lamarck, is a piece of brutality against humanity. (Foreign Languages Publishing House. Moscow. 1954. p.97)

A little later Engels writes:

Now Darwin would not dream of saying that the origin of the idea of the struggle for existence is to be found in Malthus. He only says that his theory of the struggle for existence is the theory of Malthus applied to the animal and plant world as a whole. However great the blunder made by Darwin in accepting the Malthusian theory so naively and uncritically, nevertheless anyone can see at the first glance that no Malthusian spectacles arc required to perceive the struggle for existence in nature — the contradiction between the countless host of germs which nature so lavishly produces and the small number of those which ever reach maturity, a contradiction which in fact for the most part finds its solution in a struggle for existence — often of extreme cruelty . . . the struggle for existence can take place in nature, even without any Malthusian interpretation. For that matter, the organisms of nature also have their laws of population, which have been left practically uninvestigated, although their establishment would be of decisive importance for the theory of the evolution of species. But who was it that lent decisive impetus to work in this direction too? No other than Darwin, (page 99)

In retrospect one can understand the excitement of revolutionaries like Marx and Engels, in the latter half of the 19th Century, over a book such as Origin of the Species. The basic message of Darwinian evolution, they were certain, would sweep the world and with the spread of scientific information superstition would be forced into swift retreat. The superstition of religion had been, historically, a major pillar of capitalism. Origin of the Species knocked the very props from under it. And the general acceptance of biological evolution must, they thought, lead inexorably to an acceptance of social evolution and the principles of socialism.

To put it mildly, the pioneers of scientific socialism were over-optimistic. On the one hand, in these last two decades of the 20th Century, we have a battle still being waged between so-called Scientific Creationists and Evolutionists while religions such as Roman Catholicism and various Protestant denominations are able to teach Darwinian evolution in their Church-owned schools of higher learning with no apparent damage to the future stability of their adjoining temples of superstition. On the other hand, some nations of state capitalism such as Russia. China and North Korea, have demonstrated that they are able to carry on the basics of a capitalist economy with little more than a limited toleration of religion — or no apparent organised religion whatever.

So the general acceptance of Darwinism in modern biology, even in the “communist" and “socialist" worlds has added little to the basic political understanding of the workers.

Harmo.