by J E Scott
SOCIALISM Is IT CHRISTIAN? SHOULD THE CHURCH TAKE ANY INTEREST IN IT?
BY
REV. J. E. SCOTT.
Deliuered before the Presbytery of San Francisco
PRINTED BY REQUEST
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 1895.
CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
MATT. 22: 39.
* * *
THE FIRST QUESTION.
What is SOCIALISM ?
It is a much abused word, often misused, often misunderstood, often feared and maligned without just cause.
It may help to a correct understanding of what it is, if we first put away some misconceptions about it and see what it is not.
It is not Anarchy, nor Nihilism. Anarchy is destructive, Socialism is constructive. Anarchy seeks to disorganize society, Socialism seeks to perfect social organization. The one, in its methods, is the direct antithesis of the other.
Socialism is not a scheme advocating an equal division of wealth or property. This absurd and groundless notion has been the source of much prejudice. It has been often lifted up in the press and in the pulpit as the "folly" of socialism. Logic and sarcasm have been hurled against it, but the "folly" was a Man of strife . Even within a few months, from prominent, pulpits, I heard this "folly" attacked as [unintelligible] objection, and in overthrowing it the impression was left that Socialism had been logically vanquished.
In asserting that the equal division of property is no part of a true idea of Socialism, I will not ask you to rely upon my opinion unsubstantiated. A former Austrian Minister of Finance, Prof. Schaffle, in his volume entitled "The Quintessence of Socialism", says: " It is absolutely false to say that Socialism is the system of periodical redistribution of private possessions. That is absolute nonsense, and every page of a socialistic journal rightly condemns such an account of the matter as the result of gross ignorance."*
Socialism is not Communism. Communism means having all things in common. It abolishes private property and annihilates the distinction between meum and tuum. This is not the idea of Socialism. Again Socialism does not aim at the impossible end of banishing the natural inequalities found among men. It has no affinity with any form of violence or confiscation or class selfishness. The name has sometimes been brought into disrepute by being associated with wild and extravagant schemes and wild and extravagant men, but it belongs to nobler purposes and is rightfully claimed for higher ends.
These are some of the things that Socialism is not. Let us now turn to the positive side and try briefly to ascertain what it is.
WHAT SOCIALISM IS.
Socialism has primarily to do with the practical relations of man to man in what pertains to this life. It considers the race, not as a multitude of isolated beings, but as a social body, a body having individual members, but members knit together by a common life, common needs, common struggles, common sorrows, common desires and a common reality of dependence one upon another. Socialism touches this body of human life and interest mainly upon three sides : the economic, the political and the ethical or moral sides.
On the economic side, Socialism may be defined as a system of cooperation in the chief productive industries, combined with an equitable distribution of the prodticts of industry.
Its distinctive idea is 'distributive justice", the aim being to distribute the products of labor according to the principles of right and justice. It would dis- tribute work and the rewards of work justly.
We are familiar with the idea of cooperation as it exists fragmentarily about us, but socialistic cooperation means more. It involves a different theory of society. The cooperation of to-day is conducted by the union of a few to make up a large atom in a society composed of disconnected and contending atoms. The combined atoms or company acting cooperatively, enter like individuals into the warfare of competition, Its aim is individual profit, without regard to what loss or consequences may come to others. Socialistic cooperation is adjusted to that theory of society which regards it as an organic whole, in which all the members work together, in their varied spheres, for the good of all ; and the individual finds his profit in the profit of all.
Socialistic cooperation means that all shall take an active part in the necessary operations of life. It means that one class shall not be required to do all the work while another class, because of some accident of birth, or fortune, or fraud, does all the resting and eats all the fruit. It means, Paul's Christian doctrine of labor, that if a man will not work, he must exercise the privilege of fasting. It means that the conflict between labor and capital shall be peaceably and permanently settled, by making them one, joined by the bond of a common interest; and that conflict can never be lastingly settled on any other basis. It means the breaking down of caste and the false assumptions of superiority and greatness, and the substitution for them of the Gospel principle that he is great who serves, and the greatest is he who serves best. Socialistic cooperation is illustrated to some extent by the organization of the Christian Church to accomplish, by combined effort, the work of extending the Christian religion and morality. It is illustrated in the common school system, in which society carries on jointly the work of education ; in the army and navy for common defense ; in the work of the post office, and ere long we trust it will be illustrated by the ownership of the railroads, telegraphs, telephones and mines, and other universal necessities, by the people and for the people.
We are familiar, too, with the methods, or rather, the results of the distribution of the fruits of labor under the existing social order. It is needless to dwell here upon the inequalities of condition, upon the growing wealth and growing want, which so startlingly characterize our day and our economic system.
There are few now who do not assent to the declaration of Rev. R. Heber Newton, in his "Social Studies", that "colossal fortunes are always of doubtful legitimacy, if not of open illegitimacy, and are therefore unnatural. They are the system of private production, a premonition of decay, and call for the scythe. "
Whatever else our economic system may have, it has not the element of just distribution, it has not "distributive justice".
ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF ALL PHASES.
In its voluminous literature, Socialism appears in many phases ; but whether we consider the paternal Socialism of Owen, the state Socialism of Bismarck, the international Socialism of Karl Marz, the Christian Socialism of Maurice, the evolutionary Socialism of the Fabian Essays, or the national Socialism advocated in "Looking Backward", the essential ideas which underly and give vitality to them all are these :
(a) Cooperation, i. e. man working with man for a common end, in contrast with man working against man for private gain ;
(b) A just apportionment of the fruits of toil and the common bounties of nature.
IS IT CHRISTIAN ?
My chief purpose, at this time, is to bring the ethical side of the subject into view. In fact every economic question speedily discloses a moral question. CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM is the title of our theme. Is the title justifiable? If it be then it is of emphatic importance to the Church and to the Ministry of the Church of Christ.
Socialism is a word that not only has an economic meaning ; it expresses also the fact of the existence of a momentous movement among men. No one doubts the existence of a "Social Question", a question as wide in its agitation as the race of civilized man, a question full of vitality, instinct with activity and human hope.
It is this question of which a distinguished minister said :
"This movement which is now mounting into a tidal wave of reform or revolution, according as it finds yielding channels or resisting dikes, is the cresting of a billowy agitation, which has been long gathering
force in the 'vast deep' of humanity."
The social question rises from great human needs and human wrongs, and if Socialism is, as is claimed, "applied Christianity", then Socialism, in its spirit and end, is the answer to the social question.
Is Socialism Christian ?
TESTIMONY OF VARIOUS STUDENTS OF THE SUBJECT
In looking for an answer, let us hear in few words, what some of the best writers on and exponents of Socialism have said :
Rev. Dr. Behrends , in his " Socialism and Christianity",* referring to the historic origin of the Socialistic idea, says :
"The ancient (Mosaic) commonwealth was to be a democratic theocracy, a fraternal community, under God's paternal guard and care. Its citizens were not to regard themselves as 'competitors in an open market', but as members of a great and loving household ; and in the two underlying principles of their social compact, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, the New Testament idea of the kingdom, agrees with that of the ancient commonwealth."
Emile de Laveleye, the gifted author of a critical History of Socialism, a devout Christian says with emphasis :
" It was from Judea that there arose the most persistent protests against inequality and the most ardent aspirations after justice that have ever raised humanity out of the actual into the ideal. It is thence has come the revolution that still moves the world". The same author in his "Socialism of To-day", says: "Is it not remarkable that Christian countries are precisely those which have evolved socialism? What is the reason of that: It is because Socialism has its root in Christianity. In reality Socialism springs from the sentiment of the revolt produced by the sight of the contrast between the existing economical constitution of society and a certain Christian ideal of justice and equality. Socialism and Christianity both aspire to so change things that justice shall reign everywhere. If the existing inequality of conditions is permanent and necessary^ then to spread the Gospel, to open schools, to establish a printing press, to extend the suffrage, are so many ways to attack the social order". In the introduction he says : "Every Christian who under- stands and earnestly accepts the teaching of his Master, is at heart a Socialist; and every Socialist, whatever be his hatred against all religion, bears within himself an unconscious Christianity." In " Primitive Property" he declares that "If Christianity were taught and understood, conformably to the spirit of its founder, the existing social organization could not last a day".
JAMES RUSSEL LOWELL, in the N. A. Review, says: "Socialism means in short, the practical application of Christianity to life."
Webb, in his "Socialism in England" enumerates three prominent features of Christianity when he says that on its ethical side Socialism expresses the real recognition of Fraternity, the universal obligation of personal service, and the subordination of individual ends to the common good."
Thomas Kirkup, in his "Inquiry into Socialism", says: "Considered as a principle and theory of social and economic life, Socialism is marked by the entire harmony and even identity of its moral spirit with that of Christianity" * Fraternity is one of the precepts of Christianity, but what is the meaning of human brother- hood when the existing arrangements of property are such as to make the word a mockery."
Prof. Graham, of Queen's College, Belfast, in his "Socialism New and Old", says: "The principles of the Gospel and of Socialism are one and the same, and if the Socialists only knew it and made the most of the fact, it would constitute the strongest plank in their platform".
Philips Brooks says: "Men are coming to see that beyond and above this individualism there is something higher, a mutualism. Sometimes it is called Socialism, sometimes communism, applying to this or that plan for attaining the end sought. Don't you see that in this mutualism the world becomes an entirely different thing ? This new life, where service is the universal law is but the coming of the life of God upon Man; the coming into the inlets of our life of the great ocean life that lies beyond."
These quotations might be multiplied, but enough has been given to show that men who have made special study of the subject, agree in the belief that the spirit and aim of Socialism, so far as it reaches into practical life, is radically Christian.
We often learn the character of things by comparing or contrasting them with their opposites. The opposite of a system morally unchristian must be a system morally Christian. The opposite of the system of cooperation is competition.
Competition is the basal principle of society as it now exists. The tenacity with which men have held to this principle is one of the anomalies of rational life. A more irrational, baneful, destructive, debasing and sinful system could never be concocted by all the powers of darkness combined. Yet God causes even the wrath of men to praise him, and it is true that material good has come in connection with, or it may be in spite of the wickednesses of competition. But because man prospers for a time in the use of iniquitous methods, it does not make iniquitous methods right methods, nor prove that he would not have been more prosperous with right methods.
The old New England home-life on the farm has not yet faded from all our memories. The father and mother and a goodly number of sons and daughters, were a small commonwealth. Together they carried on the varied industries of the home and farm, embracing what to-day constitutes a dozen distinct branches of labor. The farm was the property of the family. Tho' legally it stood in the name of the father, each member felt a sense of ownership. The instruments of labor belonged to the family. The welfare of each was in the welfare of all. As all prospered, so each one prospered. They had a miniature cooperative state. They were a Socialistic community. They bore each other's burdens. They lived in peace.
Let us change the method of the family life, animate it with the spirit of private enterprise, make it individualistic, competitive. What is the result ? One of the boys is stronger, shrewder, more unscrupulous than the rest. He can out-work and out-wit the others. He is able to appropriate to himself the lion's share of the profits. There is strife and bitterness. The weaker members are driven to the wall. They must work for wages or starve. In due time, the old people, unable to work, become subjects of charity or wend their way to the poor-house, for competition knows no mercy, it admits of no sense of brotherhood or kinship. Its mottoes are "Business is business" and "Every man for himself."
I need not stop to ask which method in the family is Christian. "Waste, antagonism, injustice, oppression, these are the synonyms of competition*; waste, antagonism, injustice, oppression, the synonyms of wickedness too." Competition is wrong, because it "develops servility, hatred, untruthfulness, cunning, trickery, pride, oppression, everything but brotherly love." "It gives activity and growth to all that is hard, combative, unscrupulous and unsympathetic in man, and hinders the development of helpfulness, truthfulness and public spirit. Its tendency is to undo all that religion, ethics and law are trying to do for the ennoblement of man- kind." It is the mother of monopoly, the breeder of plutocracies. In spirit, it is divisive and disintegrating. It corrupts governments, engenders revolutions and ends in anarchy. In the words of Prof. Parsons (Arena), "competition is the insanity of the past and the colossal crime of the present."
To all this the spirit of cooperation is antipodal. Under a true Socialistic order, the text : "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself conveys a significance of possible realization. But how can one love his neighbor as himself, when he must fight with that neighbor for bread and butter ? As Washington Gladden says ("Tools and the Man") : " The principle of competition is the law of the survival of the fittest ; it is the law of plants and brutes, and brutish men, but it is not the highest law of civilized society. That the law of Christ is the law of cooperation seems. to me very plain."
HAS THE CHURCH ANY INTEREST IN IT ?
We have thus far attempted to set forth the essential elements of Socialism, and to establish the justice of calling it CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. Let us now turn briefly to some considerations of the subject relating more especially to the church.
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Christian Socialism, like Christianity, is emphatically the cause of the poor man. It is the emancipation of labor. It is good tidings, it is the dawn of a new hope and new possibilities to the toilers of every land. That is the reason the common people hear its voice gladly ; and that may be the reason why not many mighty, not many rulers, not many who dwell in palaces and revel in luxury, hear this call to common service and common brotherhood.
It is sometimes said that the Church has nothing to do with the forms of social organization, that economic conditions are outside of its mission. But the Church can not safely ignore the environments, the material side of the lives of those whom it seeks to renew in character, and to build up into a kingdom of righteousness and peace.
The Church is everywhere endeavoring to solve the problem of how to reach the masses. It sees with anxiety the masses, in lengthening processions, going by its doors. Is there nothing in this subject which looks towards a possible, or at least, a partial solution of this problem ?
A few years since the United States Senate Committee on Labor and Education invited Rev. Heber Newton to come before it and give his views on the ''Labor Question". After reading a paper containing his views, the chairman said to him :
"Men popularly known as leaders in the labor movement and organizations, have been before the committee, and many of them have given testimony to the effect, that evangelical Christianity is rapidly losing its hold upon the masses of wage workers in this country. I would like to know your views, and whether you think that is the fact." The answer was :
"I fear there is too much truth in this view."
Q. "How do you explain that fact?"
A. "I explain it to my own mind, partly by the intellectual movement of our age, and partly by the social movement of our age, from both which move- ments the evangelical churches have held back." Among other things in his reply he said :
"A sense of wrong is a mighty strong eye-wash ; it will clear out a lot of sophisms which blind men's eyes. The well-to-do classes are not quick to see how completely the Christian Church has forgotten its Master's Gospel and become the Church of respectability and wealth and 'society'; how it has accepted the anti- christian dogmas of the older political economists and in so doing, really turned traitor to the ethics of Jesus Christ. But the working man sees all this quickly enough, his eye-sight, as I said, being sharpened by the sense of wrong. Is it any wonder that he turns away from a church that has no better Gospel than laissez faire, no better brotherhood than the selfish strife of competition, no kingdom of God here upon earth, but only one up in the skies ; a Church which baptizes the kingdom of Satan with Christian names, and asks the suffering masses of men to accept it as the will of the good Father in heaven ? The only wonder is that in such an apostacy from its Lord's life and spirit, the church has kept any hold upon the working men".