coop'd we live and die,Lift not your hands to It for help – for It
As impotently moves as you or I.
Yes, and a god moves more impotently than a man; for, whereas the god is driven hither and thither by the laws of matter and force, according to which they co-exist and co-operate through evolutionary processes to the making of the universe what it is, and the god cannot help himself by making it or conditioning himself otherwise, the man, if only he will learn those laws, may combine, guide and ride them to almost any predetermined destination, even out of the class hell of competitive capitalism to the classless heaven of co-operative socialism.
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 classless mankind by doing away, through a revolution, with the class which lives by owning the means and machines of production and distribution.
It is this advocacy of classless levelism which constitutes the theoretical core of revolutionary socialism. Those who oppose this socialism proceed upon the assumption of the permanency of existing religious and political institutions, the most ruinous of all heresies.
What this heresy is and the fatal policy to which it gives rise has its classic 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 superstition.
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 assumption that the great institutions, the family, state and church with their customs, laws and doctrines, as they exist for the time being, constitute the foundation of society, without which it could not exist; that these institutions 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 institutions, 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 gods, revelations, heavens and hells, 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 institution.
Why all these age-long safeguards against change? Because, so far, every economic system has divided society into two classes, a comparatively small class 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 god 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 space 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 superstitious character, for there is not one among them which can endure a scientific and rational analysis; 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 constitute 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
