Communism and Christianism Part 23

(7) A truth is a fact so interpreted that if it is lived it will contribute towards making the most of life. There are no other truths.

(8) Hence the greatest people in the world are the scientists who discover facts, and the preachers who interpret them and persuade to their living. If you contend that mothers are greater than teachers, I shall agree with you on condition that you will admit that a mother is not really great unless she is a teacher.

(9) The desire and effort to learn facts, interpret and live them const.i.tute morality.

(10) Morality is the greatest thing in the world, because it is all there is of real religion and politics.

(11) But, paradoxical as it may seem, there is one thing which is greater than the greatest thing in the world--freedom.

(12) And the freedom which is greater than morality consists in the liberty to learn, interpret, live and teach facts, without which liberty a man may be a non-moral child, or an immoral hypocrite, but he cannot be the possessor of the pearl of great price--morality, without which human life is not worth the living or even possible.

II. My political faith is summed up in the following creed of twelve articles:

(1) As the universe in general is self-existing, self-sustaining and self-governing, so man in particular, who is but one among the transitory, cosmic phenomena, has all of the potentialities of his own life within himself, so that every man can say of himself what the makers of Jesus had him say: I and my Father are one.

(2) Man has set a far-off and high-up goal of an ideal civilization for himself, and is finding the way to it by his own discoveries, and is walking therein by his own strength, so that he is not in the least indebted to any of the G.o.ds of the supernaturalistic interpretations of religion, either for the setting of the goal, or for what progress he has made towards it.

(3) Nor is humanity indebted to its outstanding representatives for the advance in the way of civilization, as is evident from the fact that, but for the G.o.ds, it would have long since been far beyond the point where the English-German war would have been within the range of possibilities, and these G.o.ds are the gifts to a blind humanity by its blind leaders.

(4) Humanity is not indebted to its physical scientists any more than to its spiritual prophets for its advance in the way of civilization, because the scientists have always worked, as the prophets have preached, in the interests of the profiteers of the existing system of economics. Economic systems have been the chief, if not indeed, the only promoters of war, and the world war with its tremendous horrors would not have been possible but for science.

(5) So, then, the history of civilization has been what it is because of the economic systems by which the material necessities of life (foods, raiments and houses) have been produced, not because G.o.ds have made spiritual revelations, nor yet because men have made great discoveries and persuasively taught them. According to Marx, who discovered the key to the door of history, it is const.i.tuted neither by the G.o.ds in the skies, nor the great men on earth; but by economic systems. These create the divinities and the leaders, not they them.

(6) Thus far in the history of mankind every civilization has rested upon the inst.i.tution of slavery and there have been, speaking broadly, three different forms of it, with their correspondingly different civilizations, chattel, feudal and capital. Each of these forms of slavery has been the foundation for a superstructure of a civilization peculiar to a distinct period of history. Chattel, feudal and capital slaveries respectively const.i.tuted the foundations for the superstructures of ancient, mediaeval and modern civilizations. The second of the two great discoveries by Marx was that the wage slavery of capitalism, by far the worst of all slaveries, is due to surplus profits.

(7) Since civilizations have their embodiments in religious and political inst.i.tutions (churches and states with what goes with them) so clearly as to justify the contention that religion and politics are the halves of one and the same reality--civilization--it follows that I am right in carrying my materialism over from the realm of religion into that of politics.

(8) A system of economics is about the most materialistic thing in the world, yet it is the only key which will open the door to the temple of human history. Having opened it with this key, the first thing to be seen is a world divided into two cla.s.ses, one cla.s.s whose representatives live by owning the material means and the machines for production and distribution; and another cla.s.s whose representatives live by working in making and operating these machines, with the result of producing and distributing the material commodities by which the world is fed, clothed and housed, but to the surfeiting of the owners who as such produce nothing and have everything and the starving of the workers who produce everything and have nothing.

(9) Capitalists and communists agree that when the goal of humanity has been reached the world will find itself to be one all inclusive co-operating family.

(10) Capitalists say that then the co-operating will be between the owners as fathers, and the workers as children. The capitalists will recognize every laborer who does a fair day's work as a good son or daughter, and the laborer will recognize every owner who gives a fair day's wage as a good father.

(11) But communists say that then the co-operating will be between men, all of whom are on the same footing as laborers, since, when the goal is reached, the world will no longer be divided as it has been, from time out of mind, into a small owning or master cla.s.s and a large working or slave cla.s.s; but it will const.i.tute one great all inclusive family, every member of which will be on the same footing with all others, except that the older members will regard the younger as sons and daughters, and they in turn will be regarded as fathers and mothers, and all of the same generation will look upon each other as brothers and sisters.

(12) Civilization always has been and ever will be impossible without slavery, because leisure and opportunity for study, social intercourse and travel are necessary to it, but under capitalism, as it works out, only representatives of the owning or master cla.s.s have these prerequisites, and those of the working or slave cla.s.s must be deprived of them. When communism supplants capitalism all will have their equal parts in both the labor necessary to the sustenance of the physical (body) life, and also the leisure necessary to the development of the psychical (soul) life. There will still be slavery, indeed much more of it than the world has. .h.i.therto known, but machines, not men, women and children will be the slaves. Of course there will remain much work connected with the making and operating of the machines, but the time and energy required for it will more and more decrease with the inevitable increase in the number and efficiency of the machines until, according to conservative estimates, three or four hours per day of comparatively light and pleasant employment will be quite sufficient to provide the necessities of life in abundance for every worker and his dependents, so that, then, all will have as much of them as the few have now; and this without any sense of slavery because when one is working for the benefit of himself and his own in particular, and the public to which he belongs in general, not for the profit of a cla.s.s of which he is not a representative, there is no feeling of irksome servitude.

V.

A world-wide revolution has begun and is rapidly spreading over the earth. Why? Because a world-wide economic system for feeding, clothing and housing the people has broken down so that it must be supplanted by a new system, else mankind will perish for the lack of food, raiment and shelter.

This revolutionary war is between the working cla.s.s whose representatives live starvingly, though they produce and distribute all the necessities of life and the capitalist cla.s.s whose representatives live surfeitingly, though taking no part in the production and distribution of these necessities.

Nearly one hundred years ago our fourth President, James Madison, saw partly and dimly what nearly every one now sees fully and clearly:

We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when that day comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.

The laborers of Russia have turned the country right side up so that they themselves are above and the capitalists below, having the privilege of remaining down to idle and starve or else to crawl up to work and live, but not to rob, war and enslave.

As I lay down my pen the working man's government of Russia is fighting a double war, the Poland-Crimea war, to prevent its overthrow by the capitalist governments of the world, especially England, France, j.a.pan and the United States, which in this war are surrept.i.tiously confederated against it, and the victory seems a.s.sured to it, largely because of the sympathy and help of their fellow workers throughout the world.

Marx though dead yet speaketh. He is speaking more widely and persuasively in death than in life. Russia is the megaphone from which his voice goes out through every land and over every sea.

Never man nor G.o.d spake with as much power as he speaks. His gospel is to the slave, and this is its thrilling appeal--workers of the world unite, and this is its inspiring a.s.surance--you have nothing to lose but your chains and a world to gain.

WM. M. BROWN.

Brownella Cottage, Galion, Ohio.

September 24th, 1920.