III.
The salvation of the world from its unnecessary sufferings is dependent upon such an equitable sharing of the labor involved in the making and operating of the machines of production and distribution, and upon such an equitable sharing of the products as shall issue in a cla.s.sless mankind by doing away, through a revolution, with the cla.s.s which lives by owning the means and machines of production and distribution.
It is this advocacy of cla.s.sless levelism which const.i.tutes the theoretical core of revolutionary socialism. Those who oppose this socialism proceed upon the a.s.sumption of the permanency of existing religious and political inst.i.tutions, the most ruinous of all heresies.
What this heresy is and the fatal policy to which it gives rise has its cla.s.sic expression, so far as religion is concerned, in the exhortation--"earnestly contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints"--and, so far as politics is concerned, in the representation--"the laws of the Medes and Persians which altereth not."
There is no such faith in religion, and cannot be, for as a creed becomes stereotyped it loses the religious character and degenerates into superst.i.tion.
There are no such laws in politics, and cannot be, for as a law becomes stereotyped it loses the political character and degenerates into tyranny.
Religion, which is the ideal half, and politics, which is the practical half, of the same reality, human socialism, are like all else in the universe, constantly changing, and necessarily so, because life and progress are dependent upon change.
Orthodoxy in religion and politics is the blight of the ages, because of its a.s.sumption that the great inst.i.tutions, the family, state and church with their customs, laws and doctrines, as they exist for the time being, const.i.tute the foundation of society, without which it could not exist; that these inst.i.tutions are almost if not altogether what they should be, and that, therefore, the welfare of society, if not indeed its existence, is dependent upon their continuance with but little if any change.
But the foundation of society always has been a system for the production and distribution of the necessities of life, and hence social inst.i.tutions, customs, laws and creeds are what they are at any time because an economic system is what it is.
If we compare an economic system for the production of the primary necessities of life (foods, clothes and houses) to a king or bishop (we may well do so, for in all ages such systems have been the power behind every regal and episcopal throne) we shall see that states, with their rulers, codes and police, armies and jails; and churches, with their G.o.ds, revelations, heavens and h.e.l.ls, are but so many expediencies for the protection of the system from change.
What is true in this respect of the state and church is equally so of the family, the school, the press, the lodge, the club, the library, the theater, the chautauqua and, in short, every inst.i.tution.
Why all these age-long safeguards against change? Because, so far, every economic system has divided society into two cla.s.ses, a comparatively small cla.s.s who own things and a large one who make things, and if the few honest owners are to hold their own as divinely favored "grab-it-alls," they must be protected at every point against the many dishonest makers who are diabolically tempted to be "keep-somes!"
These rounded out children of G.o.d have nothing in common with these caved in imps of the devil, no more than the flea and the dog, or the tapeworm and the man.
David hastily said: All men are liars. He might leisurely have said this of every representative of any religious or political orthodoxy, for they insist that their religion and politics are the permanent elements in social truth which remain unchanged from generation to generation through all ages, whereas no religion or politics continues the same during one decade, nor even a single year.
Orthodox Christians say that Jesus founded their sectarian churches, though each sect insists that he had to do with only one church, theirs.
I doubt that he lived. In any case, I am certain that if he did live and founded a church in the first century and were to come to earth again in this twentieth century, he could not if he would and would not if he could become a member of it, because of its changes.
Our own country is different by the width of the whole s.p.a.ce of the heavens from what it was before the war, and it is destined to a much wider change.
So far are churches with their doctrines, and states with their laws from being changeless, that they are more or less modified by every development in the economic system to which they owe their existence and of which they are servants.
In the case of every nation its king, the economic system, has always been a robber and enslaver of the overwhelming majority of the people, and the church and state have been the hands by which he accomplished the robbing and enslaving.
Insofar as they differ, Roman orthodoxy is what it is because of its starting out as the religious product of the feudal system of economics; and Protestant orthodoxy is what it is because of its starting out as the religious product of the capitalistic system of economics.
Protestantism is preferred before Romanism by most of the leading people in the financial world, because it is the child of capitalism, their sister, so to speak, whereas its rival is only a cousin.
As to the Roman and Protestant orthodoxies they are on the same footing.
I would not turn my hand over for the difference between them. If literally interpreted in the light of modern science, both are utterly antiquated and irrational.
Orthodox Romanists and Protestants have essentially the same bible and creed. In my opinion, as in that of all Marxian and Darwinian socialists, every supernaturalistic representation in both must be regarded as having either a figurative or a superst.i.tious character, for there is not one among them which can endure a scientific and rational a.n.a.lysis; yet, this is an age of science and reason.
The difference between Romanism and Protestantism is not at all a question of relative supernaturalism, nor of rightness and wrongness, but wholly one of the difference between the systems of economics which gave them birth.
If you ask, is not this difference at least partly a question of the age in which they took their rise, I reply, yes; but the age itself depends upon the system.
However, it is a fact that while an economic system does const.i.tute the foundation of every religious and political superstructure, yet below the foundation itself there is always a bed rock upon which it ultimately rests, and this is a question of machinery by which the necessities of life are produced and distributed.
The age of feudalism was essentially traditional or theoretical in its character.
The age of capitalism is essentially scientific or experimental in its character.
This difference between these ages is due to the fact that during the earlier age things were made with hand tools, and during the later one with machine tools.
Machinery in a theoretical or traditional age would be an anachronism.
It must have an experimental or scientific age for its development, and, paradoxical as it may seem, this the machinery must make for itself.
Every period in human history has had its determining character from the tools which brought it into being.
Supernaturalism has no place in the observations, investigations or experimentations which are necessary to the invention, construction and operation of a great machine and, hence, the machines have banished the G.o.ds from the roof of the earth and the devils from its cellar, leaving it to us to make of it what we please, a heaven or a h.e.l.l without reference to them. In his brilliant work ent.i.tled "Social and Philosophical Studies", translated by Charles H. Kerr, Paul Lafargue writes:
The labour of the mechanical factory puts the wage-worker in touch with terrible natural forces unknown to the peasant, but instead of being mastered by them he controls them. The gigantic mechanism of iron and steel which fills the factory, which makes him move like an automaton, which sometimes clutches him, bruises him, mutilates him, does not engender in him a superst.i.tious terror as the thunder does in the peasant, but leaves him unmoved, for he knows that the limbs of the mechanical monster were fashioned and mounted by his comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city, has but to say, like the G.o.d of Genesis, "let there be light," and there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He would be greatly surprised if one were to come and tell him that a certain G.o.d might, if he chose, stop the machines and extinguish the lights when the electricity had been turned on; he would reply that this anarchistic G.o.d would be simply a misplaced gearing or a broken wire, and that it would be easy for him to seek and find this disturbing G.o.d. The practice of the modern factory teaches scientific determinism to the wage-worker, without it being necessary for him to pa.s.s through the theoretic study of the sciences.
Earth must be a h.e.l.l as long as we allow the capitalist system to continue on it and to enslave the vast majority of its inhabitants.
Marxian socialism will ring out the old era with its h.e.l.l of human slavery and ring in the new era with its heaven of machine slavery.
One point must be grasped and held by all who would understand the changes which take place within the social realm and it is this: they are due to the differences in the instrumentalities or machines by which the necessities of life are produced.
Man has risen above the lower animals which have common ancestors with his own, because of the superiority of the hand by which he does things to the hands by which they do things. If a man"s body in general and hand in particular were not a great improvement over the bodies and hands of the apes, his mind and morality would differ but little from theirs.
The superiority of the civilization of this age over its predecessors is a question of instrumentalities by which the efficiency of the hand is increased.
If all the modern machinery were taken from this generation and replaced by the implements of the stone age the civilization of the next generation would begin to sink, and within a century it would reach the ancient level.
Strong expression is also given to the great truth upon which we are here dwelling by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in its noteworthy Manifesto:
Obviously, in order that there may be ideas and human history, two material things must first be present: human beings, and food and shelter for them. And the fundamental fact that is so seldom realized is, that where, by what means, and how much, food and shelter can be obtained, determines if, where, and how, man shall live, and the forms his social inst.i.tutions and ideas shall take.
It is, indeed, the very basis of Socialist philosophy that, in the words of Frederick Engels:
"In every historical epoch the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which, alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch."
This materialist concept is the Socialist key to history. It is the first principle of a science of society, and, being directly antagonistic to all religious philosophy, it is destined to drive this "philosophy" and all its superst.i.tions from their last ditch.
Civilization will not die with the death of the capitalist system of production any more than it did with the feudal system. It improved under capitalism, because of the improvement in the machinery of production, and it is destined to continue its progress so long as new and better machines are made and this will be to the end.
Marxian socialism is a machine optimism. Under this socialism the number and efficiency of machines would increase more rapidly than they have under capitalism and feudalism, because its aim will be the production of commodities for use within the shortest time by the least exertion at the slightest risk of injury.
Up to the point of over production, that is, of glutting the markets, it is to the interest of capitalism to encourage improvements in machinery, but the ability to do this has been reached, as is evident from what we hear at increasingly frequent intervals about an over production of commodities.
What machinery we now have renders it possible to produce more commodities than can be sold without employing all the labor power. But the idle, starving slave is a danger to the idle, surfeiting master.
Hence, under capitalism there can be no further development of machinery, at least not on a large scale.
An industrial government would have for its aim to produce enough of everything for all with the least expenditure of energy and time. Hence, the greatest benefactors and heroes under socialism would be the inventors of labor saving, leisure giving machinery.
We hear much about the mental superiority of the representatives of the master cla.s.s over those of the slave cla.s.s, but there is little or no truth in it.