Editorial: The Communists and Religion
Recent utterances of Church dignitaries on the attitude of the Church towards Marxism have provoked some noteworthy declarations. It started with the differentiation made by the Archbishop of Canterbury between “Marxian Communism” and non-Marxian Communism. Addressing journalists on the report of the Church conference held at Lambeth, he quoted a resolution which asserted that “Marxian Communism is contrary to Christian faith and practice,” but went on to say “there are Communists who are practising Christians.” (Manchester Guardian, 18/8/48.) When he was asked who are these Christian Communists who are neither Marxists nor atheists, he mentioned Czechoslovakia and the Orthodox Church in Russia.
Then Mr. W. Gallacher, the Communist M.P., entered the fray with a letter to the Times (17/11/48) in which he put the point of view that Communism is “a theory of society based on the proposition that the land and the means of wealth production should be the common property of the people,” and asked “Where is there a Christian, a Jew, a Mohammedan or a Buddhist who can take exception on moral grounds to that?” He quoted passages from the New Testament to show that the early Christians “had all things in common.” The Daily Worker (30/11/48) published an editorial endorsing Gallacher’s views and adding the information that “many Christians find no difficulty in reconciling their beliefs with membership of the Communist Party.” After mentioning that in Russia, too, millions of Christians have no difficulty in reconciling their beliefs with loyalty to the Soviet State and with confidence in the victory of Communism, the Worker wrote :—
“These facts, life itself, give the answer to those who rant about the deadly incompatibility of Christianity and Communism.”
Whereas Mr. Gallacher had avoided the question of the incompatibility of Marxist materialism with any form of religious belief, the Daily Worker did point out that “Marxist-Leninism . . . excludes, of course, the supernaturalism and the dogmatism of theology.”‘
A few days later, T. A. Jackson, in the Daily Worker, backed up Mr. Gallacher and claimed that the example of the early Christians not only proves that the “practice of Communism” is quite compatible with “believing on the Lord Jesus Christ,” but “is in fact, more compatible with that belief than in any alternative practice.” He added the prediction that when the theologians find that they must do so they will “adjust themselves to Marx just exactly as they have adjusted themselves to his scientific predecessors.” There is certainly evidence that some of the Church leaders are making at least tactical adjustments as they see the declining interest of the workers in religion, but anyone who compares the present line of the Communists and Russian Government with the views of Lenin and the Communist Parties of 30 years ago will notice some striking adjustments in those quarters also. While usually taking care to maintain the outward form of consistency the Communists have so altered their propaganda, and particularly the emphasis they place on different aspects of it, that they have changed direction without admitting it, possibly some of them, including Mr. Gallacher, without realising what they are doing.
The views of Lenin and the earlier views of the Communist parties will be found in the interesting booklet “Lenin on Religion” (Lawrence & Wishart, 1s.). Marxism, wrote Lenin, is “relentlessly opposed to religion,” and the Marxist party must conduct an “untiring atheist propaganda and struggle.”
Like Engels, he opposed making the attack on religion a paramount issue and embodying it in the party programme, but insisted, as also did Engels, that the party cannot, if it is logical, evade the basic issue by allowing that the holding of religious beliefs by party members is their “private matter.” Allowing that some individuals might enter the parly while still religious this would be in the confident expectation that further knowledge of the basis of Marxism would eradicate those beliefs. He emphasised the point that it is not anti-religious propaganda alone that can free the workers from superstition:—
“No amount of reading-matter, however enlightening, will eradicate religion from those masses who are crushed by the grinding toil of capitalism and subjected to the blind destructive forces of capitalism, until those masses, themselves, learn to fight against the social facts from which religion arises in a united, disciplined, planned and conscious manner—until they learn to fight against the rule of the capitalist in all its forms. (P. 20.)
Where then do the present day Communists differ from Lenin? In the first place Mr. Gallacher is guilty of an evasive half-truth when he says that “the main idea” and basis of Communism is simply the proposition about common ownership. What he leaves out and Lenin took particular care to put in is that “Social Democracy builds its whole philosophy on the basis of scientific Socialism, i.e., Marxism” (“Lenin,” page 16) and that “the political line of Marxism” on the religious question “is inseparably bound up with its philosophical principles” (p. 18). In short, the modern Communists, taking their line from Russia, are treating it as a question of tactics, not of fundamental principle.
Wanting religious support in the constituencies, just as the Russian Government wants the support of the Russian Church, the Communists now soft-pedal on the unbridgeable opposition between Marxism and religion. So Mr. Gallacher argues that “there is every reason why Catholics should be members of the Communist Party” (Daily Worker, 17/6/48), and the Daily Worker waters down Lenin’s irreconcilable conflict between Marxism and Christian idealism into the less harsh sounding description, “controversy which will continue for many years to come.” (Daily Worker 30/11/48.)
Lenin denounced all forms of “ideological corpse-worship,” as he termed religion, but now Lenin’s mummified body at the Kremlin plays its role in maintaining the authority of the Russian State by pandering to the ignorance of superstitious people.
On the question of the relationship of the State to religious bodies, Lenin was emphatic that there should be religious freedom but that “the State must not concern itself with religion ; religious societies must not be bound to the State” (p. 12), and again, “We demand the entire separation of the State from the Church. . . . . ” (P. 13.)
The Russian Communists have so far departed from this that there is now official contact between the Government and the Church in the form of the Council on the affairs of the Orthodox Church, set up in August, 1943, to act as liaison between the two.
Another example of the change of the Communist line on religion is the use they make of people like the Dean of Canterbury who, among other activities, is a member of the Editorial Board of the Daily Worker. The Dean, without ever being criticised or repudiated by the Communist Party, goes about persuading the faithful to support Communism, because it “will help to speed the coming of God.” (From a speech in Canada, Manchester Guardian, 5/11/48.)
Lenin, in an attack on Maxim Gorky, had caustic things to say about such propaganda. “By redecorating the idea of God you actually repaired the chains by which the ignorant workers and peasants are bound” (p. 53) ; and “Rotten Philistinism is disgusting always, but ‘democratic philistinism,’ engaged in its ideological corpse worship, is especially disgusting.” (P. 51.)
It must, however, be admitted that in this the modern Communists are not being original, for back in the twenties they had a Catholic, Mr. Francis Meynell, as editor of their official journal, the Communist.
The Dean, by the way, addressing journalists in New York in November, professed not to know whether Stalin is a Christian or an atheist (“I never asked Stalin that, but he was very kind to me when I talked to him”—Manchester Guardian, 1511/48), and said he did not know whether the Russians had renounced the Communist doctrine of atheism.
For one who claims to be an authority on Russia his now admitted lack of knowledge is somewhat surprising.
A basic question to the Communists is how do they explain the fact that, 30 years after the Communist seizure of power in Russia, religious superstition not only persists among a population the great majority of whom were educated under the Communist regime, but, according to the head of the Russian Church, “church communities are increasing”? (Manchester Guardian, 13/5/48). Is it not, as Lenin wrote, that “the roots of modern religion are deeply embedded in the social oppression of the working masses,” and that what Lenin then said about “modern capitalist countries” applies to Russia to-day?