Part 40 (2/2)
”All, Bolsheviki included, feel that as long as the Soviets remain in power in Russia and Bolshevism does not spread to other lands, peace cannot be more than a truce in the international cla.s.s warfare.”
Again, in his cable printed in the ”New York World” of March 4, 1920, Lincoln Eyre says:
”The Red Army's victories against Kolchak, Yudenitch and Denikine are in themselves paradoxical, in that they serve to increase the Russian need for peace.... Every advance recorded in Siberia or the Crimea brings the front line further from the base and complicates the task of supplying munitions, food and equipment. Thus it becomes increasingly evident to all Russians, whatever their political leanings may be, that Russia must have peace in order to survive economically. And yet--another paradox--all feel that any peace established now between Soviet authority and Governments of the bourgeois and democratics cannot be more than a brief truce because Socialism and capitalism cannot abide side by side, and because neither can be suppressed without warfare. The Bolshevik faith in the ultimate appearance of a world revolution has not waned, but their hope of its speedy coming has lessened considerably.”
Who but the long-suffering Russians would endure the hopeless fate imposed by Socialism on Russian labor? The workingmen were conscripted by Trotzky's armies. They won victories, but these have not freed them.
Returning from the front they are conscripted for labor armies, to work as they fought, under military discipline, subject to court martial and death if they rebel. Yet this military toil will not free them. They slave under the pistols of the commissaries only to get themselves economically equipped for a new war against their ”capitalistic”
neighbors, and in this war the workingman, if he can still walk, will be conscripted to go to the front again. Should he survive this, must he begin the same round over again?
But why not strike against this slavery? Russian labor does not dare to strike. Tender-hearted Socialism has made the labor strike a crime in Russia. Says Lincoln Eyre, in a cable dated March 11, 1920, and printed in the ”New York World” of March 13, 1920:
”The unions, of course, lost their former princ.i.p.al weapon--the strike. Today any body of workers that would venture out on strike would be considered, to quote President Melnitchansky of the Moscow unions, as traitors to their Socialist fatherland and as such would doubtless be shot.”
With this utter collapse of Socialist theories and professions in Bolshevikiland, we need not wonder that, according to a cable in the ”New York Times” of March 2, 1920, the French National Socialist Congress adjourned at Strasbourg, March 1, 1920, ”after voting down by more than 2 to 1 a motion to ally the Socialists of France with Lenine and Trotzky.” According to the same cable, ”The pleaders for the Third Internationale, formed at Moscow, were answered by the reply that the beautiful doctrines enunciated there had been thrown aside by Lenine and Trotzky and that any one who believed in real Socialism would be a fool to get behind the leaders of Soviet Russia.”
Is it now in order for our American Bolshevists, Gene Debs, Morris Hillquit (_alias_ Hilkovitz) and Vic Berger, solemnly to inform us that Russian Bolshevism never was Socialism, nor anything like it, but only a base counterfeit? And will they also inform us that Lenine and Trotzky are unprincipled adventurers and cold-blooded blackguards who have hidden behind the mask of Socialism to blackjack a great people and filch a wealth they never did a day's work to acc.u.mulate?
When our American wavers of the Red Flag try to hide their s.h.i.+pwrecked theories behind a repudiation of Bolshevikiland, we shall have to remind them of their many, many utterances jubilantly a.s.suring us that ”Bolshevism is Socialism in practice.” A specimen will do, taken from one of the books published by the Jewish Socialist Federation of America, a ”part of the Socialist Party” of the United States piloted by Debs, Hilkovitz and Berger, which we quote as cited on page 34 of the ”Outline of the Evidence Taken Before the Judiciary Committee” of the New York a.s.sembly:
”Bolshevism is not a new Socialist theory, but the practical carrying out in life of the old Socialist theory.
”Bolshevism especially is not a theory. Bolshevism is a method of how to establish Socialism in life.
”Bolshevism is practical Socialism, the Socialism of today, and not of the remote future day.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST RELIGION ABROAD
It is but proper to begin this chapter by conceding that there are many church-going members among those who vote the Marxian ticket--not as an indors.e.m.e.nt of the teachings of international Socialism, but merely as a protest against political corruption and the abuses of capitalism.
Justice, moreover, demands that we acknowledge the existence of a small minority of dues-paying members of the Socialist Party who neither attack religion nor tacitly approve of the atheistic propaganda carried on in the official Marxian press, as well as in the books, pamphlets and magazines on sale not only in the leading Socialist book-stores of America, but even at the National Office of the party in Chicago.
In most countries of Europe, where the war against religion is much more open and widespread than in America, the Socialists are frank in confessing that their movement is atheistic and anti-religious.
In our own country some of the more violent Socialistic enemies of the church admit both in their speeches and in their writings that they would be extremely happy to see the very idea of G.o.d become a matter of ancient history. Christian Socialists of the old Carr faction, who const.i.tute a minority of far less than one per cent of the Socialist Party of the United States, have not only conceded the existence of an atheistic propaganda within the ranks, but have attacked it and utterly failed to suppress it.
Apart from these two cla.s.ses of American Socialists, who admit the existence of a campaign in favor of atheism, most Socialists in our country, because they fear that votes will be lost if our people are convinced of the anti-religious character of the party, steadfastly deny that they are conspiring against religion. Indeed they are quite cunning and crafty in their effort to beguile the unwary. If the person hesitates joining the party, owing to his conviction that nearly all the Socialist leaders have been the enemies of religion, he is informed that it would be just as foolish for him not to be a Revolutionist for this reason, as it would be for one not to become a Republican because Robert Ingersoll did not believe in G.o.d and even propagated atheism.
As the conspirators against religion have, by this plausible argument, involving the name of Ingersoll, removed the prejudices that many persons formerly had against Socialism on account of the atheistic teachings of its leaders, it seems but fitting to give a short refutation of the deceptive argument and to point out the absurdity of the comparison just mentioned.
In the first place, although Robert Ingersoll was an atheist, he never stated that Republicanism was anti-religious. On the other hand, very many of the highest authorities in the Marxian Party, whose extensive knowledge of Socialism justifies our belief that they know but too well the policy of the revolutionary movement, admit that Socialism postulates atheism and war against religious beliefs. Ingersoll, moreover, never attacked religion nor taught atheism with a view to furthering the cause of Republicanism. But a very large number of the Socialists, whether Europeans or Americans, in their endeavor to promote what they consider to be the best interests of their party, have in their books, magazines, pamphlets and papers been waging a relentless war against religion. The atheistical works of Robert Ingersoll were not purchased by the rank and file of the Republican Party for purposes of party propaganda, but the rank and file of the Revolutionary Party spend large sums of money on publications in which their avowed leaders teach atheism as part of the Socialist program. Not content even with this, the members do their utmost to increase the circulation of anti-religious Socialist books, magazines, pamphlets and papers.
Before producing the evidence that will convict the Socialist leaders and the rank and file of the party of openly advocating atheism and hostility to religion, or at least of tacitly approving of such a propaganda, a few words must be said relative to the materialistic conception of history, or of economic determinism, as it is often called. According to this doctrine, which is one of the fundamental teachings of the Socialists, the whole history of mankind, including its political, intellectual and religious development, is nothing more than a process of evolution, the guiding principle of which is the prevailing economic conditions and their resultant cla.s.s struggles. Consequently, the Socialists who believe this doctrine deny the intervention of G.o.d in the development and spread of the Christian religion; for economic determinism teaches that the development of the church is not the work of Divine Providence, but of the economic conditions and cla.s.s struggles of society.
W. D. P. Bliss, the Socialist editor of the ”New Encyclopedia of Social Reform,” in an article on page 1135 of his work, admits that it is perfectly true that the large majority of avowed Socialists are divorced from recognized religion and the church, and that this leads many of them to extreme radicalism on all questions of ethics, money and the family.
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