PANTHER -> Site news -> CN.I. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky: The ABC of Communism Chapter 11: Communism and Religion
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 17 December 2011, 11:57 PM
 CN.I. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky: The ABC of Communism Chapter 11: Communism and Religion
§ 89. Why religion and communism are incompatible 'Religion is` the opium of the people,' said Karl Marx. It is the task of the Communist Party to make this truth comprehensible to the widest possible circles of the labouring masses. It is the task of the party to impress firmly upon the minds of the workers, even upon the most backward, that religion has been in the past and still is today one of the most powerful means at the disposal of the oppressors for the maintenance of inequality, exploitation, and slavish obedience on the part of the toilers.
Many weak-kneed communists reason as follows: 'Religion does not prevent my being a communist. I believe both in God and in communism. My faith in God does not hinder me from fighting for the cause of the proletarian revolution.'
This train of thought is radically false. Religion and communism are incompatible, both theoretically and practically.
Every communist must regard social phenomena (the relationships between human beings, revolutions, wars, etc.) as processes which occur in accordance with definite laws. The laws of social development have been fully established by scientific communism on the basis of the theory of historical materialism which we owe to our great teachers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This theory explains that social development is not brought about by any kind of supernatural forces. Nay more. The same theory has demonstrated that the very idea of God and of supernatural powers arises at a definite stage in human history, and at another definite stage begins to disappear as a childish notion which finds no confirmation in practical life and in the struggle between man and nature. But it is profitable to the predatory class to maintain the ignorance of the people and to maintain the people's childish belief in miracles (the key to the riddle really lies in the exploiters' pockets), and this is why religious prejudices are so tenacious, and why they confuse the minds even of persons who are in other respects able.
The general happenings throughout nature are, moreover, in no wise dependent upon supernatural causes. Man has been extremely successful in the struggle with nature. He influences nature in his own interests, and controls natural forces, achieving these conquests, not thanks to his faith in God and in divine assistance, but in spite of this faith. He achieves his conquests thanks to the fact that in practical life and in all serious matters he invariably conducts himself as an atheist. Scientific communism, in its judgements concerning natural phenomena, is guided by the data of the natural sciences, which are in irreconcilable conflict with all religious imaginings.
In practice, no less than in theory, communism is incompatible with religious faith. The tactic of the Communist Party prescribes for the members of the party definite lines of conduct. The moral code of every religion in like manner prescribes for the faithful some definite line of conduct. For example, the Christian code runs: 'Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.' In most cases there is an irreconcilable conflict between the principles of communist tactics and the commandments of religion. A communist who rejects the commandments of religion and acts in accordance with the directions of the party, ceases to be one of the faithful. On the other hand, one who, while calling himself a communist, continues to cling to his religious faith, one who in the name of religious commandments infringes the prescriptions of the party, ceases thereby to be a communist.
The struggle with religion has two sides, and every communist must distinguish clearly between them. On the one hand we have the struggle with the church, as a special organization existing for religious propaganda, materially interested in the maintenance of popular ignorance and religious enslavement. On the other hand we have the struggle with the widely diffused and deeply ingrained prejudices of the majority of the working population.
§ 90. Separation of the church from the state The Christian catechism teaches that the church is a society of the faithful who are united by a common creed, by the sacraments, etc. For the communist, the church is a society of persons who are united by definite sources of income at the cost of the faithful, at the cost of their ignorance and lack of true culture. It is a society united with the society of other exploiters such as the landlords and the capitalists, united with their State, assisting that State in the oppression of the workers, and reciprocally receiving from the State help in the business of oppression. The union between church and State is of great antiquity. The association between the church and the feudalist State of the landowners was exceedingly intimate. This becomes clear when we remember that the autocratic-aristocratic State was sustained by the landed interest. The church was itself a landlord on the grand scale, owning millions upon millions of acres. These two powers were inevitably compelled to join forces against the labouring masses, and their alliance served to strengthen their dominion over the workers. During the period in which the urban bourgeoisie was in conflict with the feudal nobility, the bourgeoisie fiercely attacked the church, because the church owned territories which the bourgeoisie wanted for itself. The church, as landowner, was in receipt of revenues extracted from the workers - revenues which the bourgeoisie coveted. In some countries (France for instance), the struggle was extremely embittered; in other countries (England, Germany, and Russia), it was less fierce. But this conflict explains why the demand for the separation of church and State was made by the liberal bourgeoisie and the bourgeois democracy. The real basis of the demand was a desire for the transfer to the bourgeoisie of the revenues allotted by the State to the church. But the demand for the separation of the church from the State was nowhere fully realized by the bourgeoisie. The reason is that everywhere the struggle carried on by the working class against the capitalists was growing more intense, and it seemed inexpedient to the bourgeoisie to break up the alliance between State and church. The capitalists thought it would be more advantageous to come to terms with the church, to buy its prayers on behalf of the struggle with socialism, to utilize its influence over the uncultured masses in order to keep alive in their minds the sentiment of slavish submissiveness to the exploiting State. ('All power comes from God.') The work which the bourgeoisie in its struggle with the church had left unfinished was carried to an end by the proletarian State. One of the first decrees of the Soviet Power in Russia was the decree concerning the separation of the church from the State. All its landed estates were taken away from the church and handed over to the working population. All the capital of the church became the property of the workers. The endowments which had been assigned to the church under the tsarist régime were confiscated, although these endowments had been cheerfully continued under the administration of the 'socialist' Kerensky. Religion has become the private affair of every citizen. The Soviet Power rejects all thoughts of using the church in any way whatever as a means for strengthening the proletarian State.
§ 91. Separation of the school from the church The association of religious propaganda with scholastic instruction is the second powerful weapon employed by the clergy for the strengthening of the ecclesiastical régime and for increasing the influence of the church over the masses. The future of the human race, its youth, is entrusted to the priests. Under the tsars, the maintenance of religious fanaticism, the maintenance of stupidity and ignorance, was regarded as a matter of great importance to the State. Religion was the leading subject of instruction in the schools. In the schools, moreover, the autocracy supported the church, and the church supported the autocracy. In addition to compulsory religious teaching in the schools and compulsory attendance at religious services, the church had other weapons. It began to take charge of the whole of popular education, and for this purpose Russia was covered with a network of church schools.
Thanks to the union of school and church, our young people were from their earliest years thralls to religious superstition, this making it practically impossible to convey to their minds any integral outlook upon the universe. To one and the same question (for instance concerning the origin of the world) religion and science give conflicting answers, so that the impressionable mind of the pupil becomes a battle ground between exact knowledge and the gross errors of obscurantists. In many countries, young people are trained, not only in a spirit of submissiveness towards the dominant régime, but also in a spirit of submissiveness towards the overthrown autocratic, ecclesiastico-feudal order. This happens in France. Even from the outlook of the bourgeois State, propaganda of such a kind is reactionary.
The programme of bourgeois liberalism used to contain a demand for the separation of the school from the church. The liberals fought for the replacement of religious instruction in the schools by instruction in bourgeois morality; and they demanded the closing of schools organized by religious associations and by monasteries. Nowhere, however, was this struggle carried through to an end. In France, for instance, where for two decades all the bourgeois ministries had solemnly pledged themselves to dissolve the religious orders, to confiscate their property, and to forbid their educational activities, there has been one compromise after another with the Catholic clergy. An excellent example of such a compromise between State and church was the recent action of Clemenceau. This minister in his day had been fiercely opposed to the church. In the end, however, he forgot his hostility, and personally distributed orders of distinction among the Catholic clergy as a reward for their patriotic services. In the struggle for the exploitation of other lands (the war with Germany), and in the domestic struggle with the working class, the bourgeois State and the church have entered into an alliance, and give one another mutual support. This reconciliation of the bourgeoisie with the church finds expression, not merely in the abandonment by the bourgeoisie of its old anti-religious watchwords and of its campaign against religion, but in something more significant. To an increasing extent, the bourgeoisie is now becoming a 'believing class'. The forerunners of the contemporary European bourgeoisie were atheists, were freethinkers, were fiercely antagonistic to priests and priestdom. Their successors have taken a step back- wards. A generation ago, the bourgeois, though they were them- selves still atheistically inclined, though they did not believe in religious fairy tales, and though they laughed covertly at religion, nevertheless considered that the fables must be treated with respect in public, since religion was a useful restraint for the common people. Today, the scions of the bourgeoisie are not content with looking upon religion as providing useful fetters for the people, but they have themselves begun to wear the chains. Under our very eyes, after the November revolution, the liberal bourgeois and the members of the professional classes crowded into the churches and prayed fervently to that which in happier days they had regarded with contempt. Such is the fate of all dying classes, whose last resource it is to seek 'consolation' in religion.
Among the bourgeoisies of Central and Western Europe, which still hold the reins of power, a similar movement in favour of religion is observable. But if the bourgeois class begins to believe in God and the heavenly life, this merely means it has realized that its life here below is drawing to a close!
The separation of the school from the church aroused and continues to arouse protest from the backward elements among the workers and peasants. Many of the older generation persist in demanding that religion should still be taught in the schools as an optional subject. The Communist Party fights resolutely against all such attempts to turn back. The teaching of ecclesias- tical obscurantism in the schools, even though the instruction should be merely optional, would imply the giving of State aid to the maintenance of religious prejudices. In that case the church would be provided with a ready-made audience of children - of children who are assembled in school for purposes which are the very opposite of those contemplated by religion. The church would have at its disposal schoolrooms belonging to the State, and would thereby be enabled to diffuse religious poison among our young people almost as freely as it could before the separation of the school from the church.
The decree whereby the school is separated from the church must be rigidly enforced, and the proletarian State must not make the slightest concession to medievalism. What has already been done to throw off the yoke of religion is all too little, for it still remains within the power of ignorant parents to cripple the minds of their children by teaching them religious fables. Under the Soviet Power there is freedom of conscience for adults. But this freedom of conscience for parents is tantamount to a freedom for them to poison the minds of their children with the opium which when they were young was poured into their own minds by the church. The parents force upon the children their own dullness, their own ignorance; they proclaim as truth all sorts of nonsense; and they thus greatly increase the difficulties which the unified labour school has to encounter. One of the most important tasks of the proletarian State is to liberate children from the reactionary influence exercised by their parents. The really radical way of doing this is the social education of the children, carried to its logical conclusion. As far as the immediate future is concerned, we must not rest content with the expulsion of religious propaganda from the school. We must see to it that the school assumes the offensive against religious propaganda in the home, so that from the very outset the children's minds shall be rendered immune to all those religious fairy tales which many grown-ups continue to regard as truth.
§ 92. Struggle with the religious prejudice of the masses It has been comparatively easy for the proletarian authority to effect the separation of the church from the State and of the school from the church, and these changes have been almost painlessly achieved. It is enormously more difficult to fight the religious prejudices which are already deeply rooted in the consciousness of the masses, and which cling so stubbornly to life. The struggle will be a long one, demanding much steadfastness and great patience. Upon this matter we read in our programme: 'The Russian Communist Party is guided by the conviction that nothing but the realization of purposiveness and full awareness in all the social and economic activities of the masses can lead to the complete disappearance of religious prejudices.' What do these words signify? Religious propaganda, belief in God and in all kinds of supernatural powers, find their most grateful soil where the institutions of social life are such as to incline the consciousness of the masses towards supernatural explanations of the phenomena of nature and society. The environment created by capitalist methods of production has a strong tendency in this direction. In capitalist society, production, and the exchange of products, are not effected with full consciousness and in accordance with a preconceived plan; they proceed as if they were the outcome of elemental forces. The market controls the producer. No one knows whether commodities are being produced in excess or in deficiency. The producer does not fully understand how the great and complicated mechanism of capitalist production works; why crises occur and unemployment suddenly becomes rife; why prices rise at one time and fall at another; and so on. The ordinary worker, knowing nothing of the real causes of the social happenings amid which his life takes place, readily inclines to accept the 'will of God' as a universal explanation.
In organized communist society, on the other hand, the realms of production and distribution will no longer contain any mysteries for the worker. Every worker will not merely perform his allotted portion of social work. He will in addition participate in the elaboration of the general plan of production, and will at least have clear ideas upon the matter. Throughout the entire mechanism of social production there will no longer be anything mysterious, incomprehensible, or unexpected, and there will therefore be no further place for mystical explanations or for superstition. Just as the joiner who has made a table knows perfectly well how the table came to exist and that he need not lift his eyes towards heaven in order to find its creator, so in communist society all the workers will clearly understand what they have produced with their collective energies and how they have produced it. For this reason, the mere fact of the organization and strengthening of the socialist system, will deal religion an irrecoverable blow. THE TRANSITION FROM SOCIALISM TO COMMUNISM, THE TRANSITION FROM THE SOCIETY WHICH MAKES AN END OF CAPITALISM TO THE SOCIETY WHICH IS COMPLETELY FREED FROM ALL TRACES OF CLASS DIVISION AND CLASS STRUGGLE, WILL BRING ABOUT THE NATURAL DEATH OF ALL RELIGION AND ALL SUPERSTITION.
But this must by no means be taken to imply that we can sit down at our ease, satisfied with having prophesied the decay of religion at some future date.
It is essential at the present time to wage with the utmost vigour the war against religious prejudices, for the church has now definitely become a counter-revolutionary organization, and endeavours to use its religious influence over the masses in order to marshal them for the political struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Orthodox faith which is defended by the priests aims at an alliance with the monarchy. This is why the Soviet Power finds it necessary to engage at this juncture in widespread anti-religious propaganda. Our aims can be secured by the delivery of special lectures, by the holding of debates, and by the publication of suitable literature; also by the general diffusion of scientific knowledge, which slowly but surely undermines the authority of religion. An excellent weapon in the fight with the church was used recently in many parts of the republic when the shrines were opened to show the 'incorruptible' relics. This served to prove to the wide masses of the people, and precisely to those in whom religious faith was strongest, the base trickery upon which religion in general, and the creed of the Russian Orthodox church in particular, are grounded.
But the campaign against the backwardness of the masses in this matter of religion, must be conducted with patience and considerateness, as well as with energy and perseverance. The credulous crowd is extremely sensitive to anything which hurts its feelings. To thrust atheism upon the masses, and in conjunction therewith to interfere forcibly with religious practices and to make mock of the objects of popular reverence, would not assist but would hinder the campaign against religion. If the church were to be persecuted, it would win sympathy among the masses, for persecution would remind them of the almost forgotten days when there was an association between religion and the defence of national freedom; it would strengthen the antisemitic movement; and in general it would mobilize all the vestiges of an ideology which is already beginning to die out. We propose to append a few figures, showing how the tsarist régime paid over the people's money to the church; how the church was directly supported by the common people, who drained their slender purses to this end; and how wealth accumulated in the hands of the servants of Christ.
Through the synods and in other ways the tsarist government annually supplied the church with the average amount of 50,000,000 roubles (at a time when the rouble was worth one hundred times as much as today). The synods had 70,000,000 roubles to their credit in the banks. The churches and the monasteries owned vast areas of land. In the year 7905 the churches owned 1,872,000 desyatinas, and the monasteries owned 740,000 desyatinas. Six of the largest monasteries owned 782,000 desyatinas. The Solovyetsky monastery owned 66,000 desyatinas; the Sarovskaya, 26,000; the Alexandro-Nevskaya, 25,000; and so on. In 7903, the churches and monasteries of Petrograd owned 266 rent-producing properties in the form of houses, shops, building sites, etc. In Moscow, they owned 1,054 rent-paying houses, not to mention 32 hotels. In Kiev, the churches owned 114 houses. Here are the stipends of the metropolitans and the archbishops. The metropolitan of Petrograd received 300,000 roubles per annum; the metropolitans of Moscow and of Kiev were paid 100,000 roubles per annum each; the stipend of the archbishop of Novgorod was 370,000 roubles.
There were about 30,000 church schools, and these were attended by 1,000,000 pupils. More than 20,000 teachers of religion were 'at work' in the elementary schools of the Ministry for Education.
Everyone knows that the autocracy supported the Orthodox church as the dominant and only true church. Many millions of roubles were raised by taxing Musulmans (Tartars and Bashkirs), Catholics (Poles), and Jews. This money was used by the Orthodox clergy to demonstrate that all other faiths were false. Under the tsarist régime, religious persecution attained unprecedented proportions. In the population of Russia, for every hundred inhabitants there were (besides the 70 Orthodox), 9 Catholics, 11 Mohammedans, 9 Protestants, 4 Jews, and 7 of various creeds. As for the number of the Orthodox clergy, the following were the figures for the year 1909:
The 52,869 churches of Russia were served by Archpriests 2,912 Priests 46,730 Deacons 14,670 Readers 43,518 In the 455 monasteries were Monks 9,987 Lay-brethren 9,582 In the 418 nunneries were Nuns 14,008 Lay-sisters 46,811 Total 188,218
The figures relate exclusively to the Orthodox church. A similar parasitic caste is found in every nation, though of course, professing some other religion. These masses of people, instead of extracting vast sums of money from the population in order to promote popular ignorance, would have been able, had they been engaged in manual work, to produce immense quantities of values. The socialist State, when its economic apparatus has been perfected, will introduce labour service for the clergy as for all unproductive classes, so that they will have to become workers or peasants. Of the State revenues paid to the church under the tsarist régime, more than 12,000,000 roubles went every year to the urban and rural clergy. It is plain enough why the reverend fathers were opposed to the separation of the church from the State, since this implied the separation of a dozen million roubles from their pockets. This sum, however, was but a fraction of the clerical incomes, which for the most part were derived from professional fees, land rents, and interest upon the capital of the church. No one has been able to ascertain the precise amount of the revenues of the Russian church. Approximately the sum may be considered to have been 150,000,000 roubles - at a time (we repeat) when the rouble was worth one hundred of our present roubles. A considerable proportion of this income is still paid by the people to the clergy.

PANTHER -> Site news -> VI Lenin: Socialism and Religion
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 17 December 2011, 11:51 PM
  Socialism and Religion (1905)
Of course no-one in the world has ever kicked clerical ass before, never ever, I'm mad, a freak Present-day society is wholly based on the exploitation of the vast masses of the working class by a tiny minority of the population, the class of the landowners and that of the capitalists. It is a slave society, since the "free" workers, who all their life work for the capitalists, are "entitled" only to such means of subsistence as are essential for the maintenance of slaves who produce profit, for the safeguarding and perpetuation of capitalist slavery.
The economic oppression of the workers inevitably calls forth and engenders every kind of political oppression and social humiliation, the coarsening and darkening of the spiritual and moral life of the masses. The workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation, but no amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of capital is overthrown. Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.
But a slave who has become conscious of his slavery and has risen to struggle for his emancipation has already half ceased to be a slave. The modern class-conscious worker, reared by large-scale factory industry and enlightened by urban life, contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots, and tries to win a better life for himself here on earth. The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a better life on earth.
Religion must be declared a private affair. In these words socialists usually express their attitude towards religion. But the meaning of these words should be accurately defined to prevent any misunderstanding. We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become absolutely free associations of like-minded citizens, associations independent of the state. Only the complete fulfilment of these demands can put an end to the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in feudal dependence on the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal dependence on the established church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to this day remaining in our criminal codes and on our statute-books) were in existence and were applied, persecuting men for their belief or disbelief, violating men’s consciences, and linking cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes with the dispensation of this or that dope by the established church. Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church. The Russian revolution must put this demand into effect as a necessary component of political freedom. In this respect, the Russian revolution is in a particularly favourable position, since the revolting officialism of the police-ridden feudal autocracy has called forth discontent, unrest and indignation even among the clergy. However abject, however ignorant Russian Orthodox clergymen may have been, even they have now been awakened by the thunder of the downfall of the old, medieval order in Russia. Even they are joining in the demand for freedom, are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the spying for the police imposed on the "servants of God". We socialists must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair. Or you do not accept these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still held captive by the traditions of the inquisition, in which case you evidently still cling to your cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes, in which case you evidently do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon and continue to take bribes from the state. And in that case the class-conscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war on you.
So far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideo logical and solely ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth. But we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat.
If that is so, why do we not declare in our Programme that we are atheists? Why do we not forbid Christians and other believers in God to join our Party?
The answer to this question will serve to explain the very important difference in the way the question of religion is presented by the bourgeois democrats and the Social-Democrats.
Our Programme is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist, world-outlook. An explanation of our Programme, therefore, necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog. Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism; the publication of the appropriate scientific literature, which the autocratic feudal government has hitherto strictly forbidden and persecuted, must now form one of the fields of our Party work. We shall now probably have to follow the advice Engels once gave to the German Socialists: to translate and widely disseminate the literature of the eighteenth-century French Enlighteners and atheists.[1]
But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an "intellectual" question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.
That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various "Christians". But that does not mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course of economic development.
Everywhere the reactionary bourgeoisie has concerned itself, and is now beginning to concern itself in Russia, with the fomenting of religious strife—in order thereby to divert the attention of the masses from the really important and fundamental economic and political problems, now being solved in practice by the all-Russian proletariat uniting in revolutionary struggle. This reactionary policy of splitting up the proletarian forces, which today manifests itself mainly in Black-Hundred pogroms, may tomorrow conceive some more subtle forms. We, at any rate, shall oppose it by calmly, consistently and patiently preaching proletarian solidarity and the scientific world-outlook—a preaching alien to any stirring up of secondary differences.
The revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a really private affair, so far as the state is concerned. And in this political system, cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the religious humbugging of mankind. Notes
[1] See Frederick Engels, "Flüchtlings-Literatur", Volksstaat, Nr, 73 vom 22.6.1874.      

​ PANTHER -> Site news -> Marx: 'So much for the social principles of Christianity' 1847
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 17 December 2011, 11:12 PM
  The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submissiveness and humbleness, in short, all the qualities of the rabble, and the proletariat, which will not permit itself to be treated as rabble, needs its courage, its self-confidence, its pride and its sense of independence even more than its bread. I should really hate you to think I am saying anything either original or (worse!) unMarxist.. How does it go again, ' cast aside your superstitions! Servile masses, arise, arise!' _______________________________________________________________________________-- “One-third of the people has no basis for its existence, and another third is on the decline.” Ten million individuals, therefore, are to be individually compensated for. Does the Consistorial Counsellor believe in all seriousness that the pauvre Prussian government will be able to achieve this? To be sure, and what is more by means of the Income Tax, which leads to communism, as it happens to be understood by the Rh[einischer] Beobachter. Magnificent. After bemusing us with confused balderdash about alleged communism, after declaring that society has a duty of solidarity in respect of the existence of its members, that it has to care for, them, although it cannot do so, after all these aberrations, contradictions and impossible demands, we are urged to accept the Income Tax as the measure which will resolve all contradictions, make all impossibilities possible and restore the solidarity of all members of society. We refer to Herr von Duesberg’s memorandum on the Income Tax, which was presented to the Diet. In this memorandum employment had already been found for the last penny of the revenue from the Income Tax. The hard-pressed government had not a farthing to spare for the compensation in respect of the particular for general fluctuations, for the fulfilment of society’s duties of solidarity. And if, instead of ten million, only ten individuals had been through the nature of circumstances thrown upon Herr von Duesberg’s mercy, Herr von Duesberg would have rejected all ten of them. But no, we are mistaken; besides the Income Tax the Herr Consistorial Counsellor has yet another means for introducing communism, as he happens to understand it: “What is the Alpha and omega of the Christian faith? The dogma of original sin and redemption. And therein lies the association in solidarity of humanity in its highest potential: one for all and all for one.” Thrice happy people! The cardinal question is solved for all eternity! Under the double wings of the Prussian eagle and the Holy Ghost, the proletariat will find two inexhaustible springs of life: first, the surplus from the Income Tax above the ordinary and extraordinary needs of the state, which surplus equals zero, and second, the revenues from the heavenly domains of original sin and redemption, which likewise equal zero. These two zeroes provide a splendid basis for the one-third of the people which has no basis for its existence, a powerful support for the other third which is on the decline. Imaginary surpluses, original sin and redemption will undoubtedly satisfy the people’s hunger in quite another way than the long speeches of liberal deputies! It is further stated: “We also pray, in the Lord’s prayer: ‘Lead us not into temptation.’ And what we supplicate for ourselves we ought to practise with regard to our fellow human beings. Our social conditions undoubtedly tempt man, and the excess of poverty incites to clime.” And we, gentlemen, we bureaucrats, judges and Consistorial Counsellors of the Prussian state, practise this consideration by having people broken on the wheel, beheaded, locked up and flogged to our heart’s content, thereby “leading” the proletariat “into the temptation” to have us later similarly broken on the wheel, beheaded, locked up and flogged. Which will not fail to occur. “Such conditions,” declares the Consistorial Counsellor, “must not be tolerated by a Christian state, it must remedy them.” Indeed, with absurd blusterings about society’s duties of solidarity, with imaginary surpluses and unacceptable bills of exchange on God the Father, Son and Company. “We can also save ourselves all this tedious talk of communism,” opines our observing Consistorial Counsellor. “If only those who have the vocation for it develop the social principles of Christianity, then the Communists will soon fall silent.” The social principles of Christianity have now had eighteen hundred years to be developed, and need no further development by Prussian Consistorial Counsellors. The social principles of Christianity justified the slavery of antiquity, glorifies the serfdom of the Middle Ages and are capable, in case of need, of defending the oppression of the proletariat, with somewhat doleful grimaces. The social principles of Christianity preach the necessity of a ruling and an oppressed class, and for the latter all they have to offer is the pious wish that the former may be charitable. The social principles of Christianity place the Consistorial Counsellor’s compensation for all infamies in heaven, and thereby justify the continuation of these infamies on earth. The social principles of Christianity declare all the vile acts of the oppressors against the oppressed to be either a just punishment for original sin and other sins, or trials which the Lord, in his infinite wisdom, ordains for the redeemed. The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submissiveness and humbleness, in short, all the qualities of the rabble, and the proletariat, which will not permit itself to be treated as rabble, needs its courage, its self-confidence, its pride and its sense of independence even more than its bread. The social principles of Christianity are sneaking and hypocritical, and the proletariat is revolutionary. So much for the social principles of Christianity. From: The Communism of the Rheinischer Beobachter

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PANTHER -> Site news -> Anti-Church demo in Hyde Park, 1855
by Ysabel Howard - Saturday, 17 December 2011, 11:08 PM
  Works of Karl Marx, 1855 Anti-Church Movement
Demonstration in Hyde Park Written: June 25, 1855, London
Published: Neue Oder-Zeitung June 28 1855
Translation: Institute of Marxism-Leninism, 1957
Transcription: [email protected], Dec 31 1995. It is an old and historically established maxim that obsolete social forces, nominally still in possession of all the attributes of power and continuing to vegetate long after the basis of their existence has rotted away, inasmuch as the heirs are quarrelling among themselves over the inheritance even before the obituary notice has been printed and the testament read -- that these forces once more summon all their strength before their agony of death, pass from the defensive to the offensive, challenge instead of giving way, and seek to draw the most extreme conclusions from premises which have not only been put in question but already condemned. Such is today the English oligarchy. Such is the Church, its twin sister. Countless attempts at reorganization have been made within the Established Church, both the High and the Low, attempts to come to an understanding with the Dissenters and thus to set up a compact force to oppose the profane mass of the nation. There has been a rapid succession of measures of religious coercion. The pious Earl of Shaftesbury, formerly known as Lord Ashley, bewailed the fact in the House of Lords that in England alone five millions had become wholly alienated not only from the Church but from Christianity altogether. “Compelle intrare,” replies the Established Church. It leaves it to Lord Ashley and similar dissenting, sectarian and hysterical pietists to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for it. The first measure of Religious coercion was the Beer Bill, which shut down all places of public entertainment on Sundays, except between 6 and 10 p. m. This bill was smuggled through the House at the end of a sparsely attended sitting, after the pietists had bought the support of the big public-house owners of London by guaranteeing them that the license system would continue, that is, that big capital would retain its monopoly. Then came the Sunday Trading Bill, which has now passed its third reading in the Commons and separate clauses of which have just been discussed by commissions in both Houses. This new coercive measure top was ensured the vote of big capital, because only small shopkeepers keep open on Sunday and the proprietors of the big shops are quite willing to do away with the Sunday competition of the small fry by parliamentary means. In both cases there is a conspiracy of the Church with monopoly capital, but in both cases there are religious penal laws against the lower classes to set the consciences of the privileged classes at rest. The Beer Bill was as far from hitting the aristocratic clubs as the Sunday Trading Bill is from hitting the Sunday occupations of genteel society. The workers get their wages late on Saturday; they are the only ones for whom shops open on Sundays. They are the only ones compelled to make their purchases, small as they are, on Sundays. The new bill is therefore directed against them alone. In the eighteenth century the French aristocracy said: For us, Voltaire; for the people, the mass and the tithes. In the nineteenth century the English aristocracy says: For us, pious phrases; for the people, Christian practice. The classical saint of Christianity mortified his body for the salvation of the souls of the masses; the modern, educated saint mortifies the bodies of the masses for the salvation of his own soul. This alliance of a dissipated, degenerating and pleasure-seeking aristocracy with a church propped up by the filthy profits calculated upon by the big brewers and monopolizing wholesalers was the occasion yesterday of a mass demonstration in Hyde Park, the like of which London has not seen since the death of George IV, “the first gentleman of Europe.” We were spectators from beginning to end and do not think we are exaggerating in saying that the English Revolution began yesterday in Hyde Park. The latest news from the Crimea acted as an effective ferment upon this “unparliamentary,” “extra-parliamentary” and “anti-parliamentary” demonstration. Lord Robert Grosvenor, who fathered the Sunday Trading Bill, when reproached on the score of this measure being directed solely against the poor and not against the rich classes, retorted that “the aristocracy was largely refraining from employing its servants and horses on Sundays.” The last few days of the past week the following poster, put out by the Chartists and affixed to all the walls of London, announced in huge letters: “New Sunday Bill prohibiting newspapers, shaving, smoking, eating and drinking and all kinds of recreation and nourishment, both corporal and spiritual, which the poor people still enjoy at the present time. An open-air meeting of artisans, workers and ‘the lower orders’ generally of the capital will take place in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon to see how religiously the aristocracy is observing the Sabbath and how anxious it is not to employ its servants and horses on that day, as Lord Robert Grosvenor said in his speech. The meeting is called for three o'clock on the right bank of the Serpentine” (a small river in Hyde Park), “on the side towards Kensington Gardens. Come and bring your wives and children in order that they may profit by the example their ‘betters’ set them!” It should be borne in mind, of course, that what Longchamps [Ed. -- A hippodrome in the outskirts of Paris] means to the Parisians, the road along the Serpentine in Hyde Park means to English high society -- the place where of an afternoon, particularly on Sunday, they parade their magnificent horses and carriages with all their trappings, followed by swarms of lackeys. It will be realized from the above placard that the struggle against clericalism assumes the same character in England as every other serious struggle there -- the character of a class struggle waged by the poor against the rich, the people against the aristocracy, the “lower orders” against their “betters.” At three o'clock approximately 50,000 people had gathered at the spot announced on the right bank of the Serpentine in Hyde Park’s immense meadows. Gradually the assembled multitude swelled to a total of at least 200,000 due to additions from the other bank. Milling groups of people could be seen shoved about from place to place. The police, who were present in force, were obviously endeavouring to deprive the organizers of the meeting of what Archimedes had asked for to move the earth, namely, a place to stand upon. Finally a rather large crowd made a firm stand and Bligh the Chartist constituted himself chairman on a small eminence in the midst of the throng. No sooner had he begun his harangue than Police Inspector Banks at the head of 40 truncheon-swinging constables explained to him that the Park was the private property of the Crown and that no meeting might be held in it. After some pourparlers in which Bligh sought to demonstrate to him that parks were public property and in which Banks rejoined he had strict orders to arrest him if he should insist on carrying out his intention, Bligh shouted amidst the bellowing of the masses surrounding him: “Her Majesty’s police declare that Hyde Park is private property of the Crown and that Her Majesty is unwilling to let her land be used by the people for their meetings. So let’s move to Oxford Market.” With the ironical cry: “God save the Queen!” the throng broke up to journey to Oxford Market. But meanwhile, Finlen, a member of the Chartist executive, rushed to a tree some distance away followed by a crowd who in a twinkle formed so close and compact a circle around him that the police abandoned their attempt to get at him. “Six days a week,” he said, “we are treated like slaves and now Parliament wants to rob us of the bit of freedom we still have on the seventh. These oligarchs and capitalists allied with sanctimonious parsons wish to do penance by mortifying us instead of themselves for the unconscionable murder in the Crimea of the sons of the people.” We left this group to approach another where a speaker stretched out on the ground addressed his audience from this horizontal position. Suddenly shouts could be heard on all sides: “Let’s go to the road, to the carriages!” The heaping of insults upon horse riders and occupants of carriages had meanwhile already begun. The constables, who constantly received reinforcements from the city, drove the promenading pedestrians off the carriage road. They thus helped to bring it about that either side of it was tined deep with people, from Apsley House up Rotten-Row along the Serpentine as far as Kensington Gardens -- a distance of more than a quarter of an hour. The spectators consisted of about two-thirds workers and one-third members of the middle class, all with women and children. The procession of elegant ladies and gentlemen; “commoners and Lords,” in their high coaches-and-four with liveried lackeys in front and behind, joined, to be sure, by a few mounted venerables slightly under the weather from the effects of wine, did not this time pass by in review but played the role of involuntary actors who were made to run the gauntlet. A babel of jeering, taunting, discordant ejaculations, in which no language is as rich as English, soon bore down upon them from both sides. As it was an improvised concert, instruments were lacking. The chorus therefore had only its own organs at its disposal and was compelled to confine itself to vocal music. And what a devil’s concert it was: a cacophony of grunting, hissing, whistling, squeaking, snarling, growling, croaking, shrieking, groaning, rattling, howling, gnashing sounds! A music that could drive one mad and move a stone. To this must be added outbursts of genuine old-English humour peculiarly mixed with long-contained seething wrath. “Go to church!” were the only articulate sounds that could be distinguished. One lady soothingly offered a prayer-book in Orthodox binding from her carriage in her outstretched hand. “Give it to your horses to read!” came the thundering reply, echoing a thousand voices. When the horses started to shy, rear, buck and finally run away, jeopardizing the lives of their genteel burdens, the contemptuous din grew louder, more menacing, more ruthless. Noble lords and ladies, among them Lady Granville, the wife of a minister and President of the Privy Council, were forced to alight and use their own legs. When elderly gentlemen rode past wearing broad-brimmed hats and otherwise so apparelled as to betray their special claim to perfectitude in matters of belief, the strident outbursts of fury were extinguished, as if in obedience, to a command, by inextinguishable laughter. One of these gentlemen lost his patience. Like Mephistopheles he made an impolite gesture, sticking out his tongue at the enemy. “He is a windbag, a parliamentary man! He fights with his own weapons!” someone shouted on one side of the road. “He is a psalm-singing saint!” was the antistrophe from the opposite side. Meanwhile the metropolitan electric telegraph had informed all police stations that a riot was about to break out in Hyde Park and the police were ordered to the theatre of military operations. Soon one detachment of them after another marched at short intervals through the double file of people, from Apsley House to Kensington Gardens, each received with the popular ditty: Where are the geese?
Ask the police! This was a hint at a notorious theft of geese recently committed by a constable in Clerkenwell. The spectacle lasted three hours. Only English lungs could perform such a feat. During the performance opinions such as, “This is only the beginning!” “That is the first step!” “We hate them!” and the like were voiced by the various groups. While rage was inscribed on the faces of the workers, such smiles of blissful self-satisfaction covered the physiognomies of the middle classes as we had never seen there before. Shortly before the end the demonstration increased in violence. Canes were raised in menace of the carriages and through the welter of discordant noises could be heard the cry of “you rascals!” During the three hours zealous Chartists, men and women, ploughed their way through the throng distributing leaflets which stated in big type: “Reorganization of Chartism!
“A big public meeting will take place next Tuesday, June 26th, in the Literary and Scientific Institute in Friar Street, Doctors’ Commons, to elect delegates to a conference for the reorganization of Chartism in the capital. Admission free.” Most of the London papers carry today only a brief account of the events in Hyde Park. No leading articles as yet, except in Lord Palmerston’s Morning Post. It claims that “a spectacle both disgraceful and dangerous in the extreme has taken place in Hyde Park, an open violation of law and decency -- an illegal interference by physical force in the free action of the Legislature.” It urges that “this scene must not be allowed to be repeated the following Sunday, as was threatened.” At the same time, however, it declares that the “fanatical” Lord Grosvenor is solely “responsible” for this mischief, being the man who provoked the “just indignation of the people.” As if Parliament had not adopted Lord Grosvenor’s bill in three readings! Or perhaps he too brought his influence to bear “by physical force on the free action of the Legislature"?
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1855/06/25.htm​