Off-list, a comrade asked me for a source for my claimed Lenin quote -- I
have to say that this has only the status of hearsay; I'll try to find one,
if no one else can supply a source, but in the meantime many may find a
(re?)reading of the following timely. It comes from the very wonderful
Marxists Internet Archive at
http://www.marxists.org/
The paragraphs I've marked *** seem to bear on current issues.
Julian
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Lenin Internet Archive
Socialism and Religion
Written: approx. December 3, 1905 First Published: Nozvaya Zhizn (No. 28),
December 3, 1905 Source: Collected Works Volume 10, p. 83-87
Transcription\Markup: Brian Basgen Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive
(marxists.org) 2000
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 practice 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 fulfillment 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 ideological 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.["Fluchtlings-Literatur", Volksstaat (No. 73) June 22, 1874)]
*** 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.
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