Thursday, January 4, 2018

Socialism is Hostile to Christianity By Percy Stickney Grant 1910

Socialism is Hostile to Christianity By Percy Stickney Grant 1910

The following quotations appeared in a recent letter to the "New York Times." I have not verified them, but I use them because they illustrate the feeling of masses of uneducated socialists I have listened to and represent the older but prevailing attitude.

Marx said: "Religion is a fantastic degradation of human nature."

Liebknecht, the grand old man of socialism, said: "Socialism must conquer the stupidity of the masses in so far as this stupidity reveals itself in religious forms and dogmas."

And Bebel, the present great world leader of socialism, says: "We wish in politics the republic, in economy socialism, and in religion atheism."

Socialism inherited atheism from Marx and Lassalle. These pioneers did not derive it from their economic position, but from Feuerbach and his Hegelianism. Their followers, however, have accepted their philosophical as well as their economic views. The practical effect of socialistic atheism is to deny immortality, to concentrate attention upon this life and to intensify confidence in material well-being. In our Sunday-night meetings, after an eloquent individualist had held forth about the soul, a socialist would stand up and say: "I know nothing about the soul. Where is it? I only know that I have a stomach and that it is empty."

Socialism denies to religion any economic influences. The Pope, for instance, has nothing to fear, theoretically, from socialists who will not for a moment admit that Catholicism has retarded the development of any country in Europe; not because they have studied the facts, but because they claim, as a general principle, that history is interpreted economically, that moral and religious forces have had nothing to do with the growth or decline of states. 

Behind this denial of influence to religion is the denial of important constructive power to ideas. Socialism has not wished to work by means of the slow influence of ideas, but by means of various compulsions—military, legislative, etc., the prize of proletarian power. Nevertheless, their propaganda is an appeal to reason and conscience.

Socialism asserts that morality is the offspring of society. The good individual is the product of a good society; a good society is not the product of good individuals. Moreover, that moral codes are the handiwork of the dominant class, which codifies and gives authority to what will preserve its order.

Socialism maintains that the church is hypocritical, because it received the command, "Love your neighbor as yourself," but supports, nevertheless, an industrial system under which it is impossible to love your neighbor as yourself; whose maxim, in fact, is the old pagan caveat emptor— let the buyer take heed.

Socialism considers the doctrine of the forgiveness of sin to be the source of much industrial and private injustice, because it frees the wrong-doer from the sense of responsibility. Until the priestly power of absolution is destroyed, tyranny will flourish. Socialism calls pietism and passivity (two traits of Christianity) injurious to civilization, because progress has been attained not by meekness, but by struggle. Socialism hates the religious way of dealing with poverty—that is, by charity and philanthropy—because these are remedial and based upon a voluntary spirit. Socialism would legislate poverty out of existence and would have what are now sporadic acts of kindness made compulsory usages. In short, socialism considers religion a rubbish-heap of arbitrary laws and gross superstitions used as a prop to social injustice.

These attitudes of unfriendliness to religion are scientifically mistaken or are ethically weak. Socialism regards religion in an old-fashioned way as an artifice of priests and powerful castes, and not in the new-fashioned way as a biological product—created and perpetuated because it is of use, changing and reshaping itself in response to criticism and increased knowledge.

It was a mistake for socialism to take on atheism, which has no logical connection with its economic position, simply because Marx and Lassalle were atheists. Socialists declaim against mixing up religion with economics. Why, then, mix up irreligion with economics?

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