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 labor 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 cozy
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 favorable
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 cozy 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 Program 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 Program is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist,
world-outlook. An explanation of our Program, 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.
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 Program;
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.
