Frank Ridley
Source: An undated pamphlet published by the Engels Society, 21 Lime Tree Road, Heston, Middlesex. By internal evidence, it was probably published in the late 1940s. Scanned and prepared for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers.
Socialism is a system which in politics expresses itself as republicanism, in economics as communism and in religion as atheism. – August Bebel
The problem of religion is one that is important both in the practical and the theoretical spheres. How comes it that mankind in the past has devoted so large a portion of his energies to the investigation of alleged ‘spiritual’ phenomena to the point of neglecting his proper material environment? And in practice, whence comes the enormous power of organised religion – a power which has dominated what passes for ‘civilisation’ almost throughout its entire existence? A power which, whilst shorn of much of its former influence, still wields today an extensive authority throughout the world. And not only throughout the primitive world of barbarism but also among the ‘civilised’ and professedly scientific nations of the contemporary world.
This important question has naturally aroused much interest and discussion during those comparatively rare epochs in human history in which mankind has been free to think at all about such matters. It goes without saying that, throughout by far the greater part of history, it would have been found distinctly dangerous to ask such questions, indeed impossible, with any measure of legal and personal impunity. Such tribunals as the Inquisition saw to that very effectively! For that matter, in modern Germany and Japan it would have been the reverse of safe to question the divine origin of the ‘herrenvolk’ ('master-race’): in Japan, ruled by the divine descendants of the Sun-Goddess, it would have been distinctly hazardous to draw attention to too many eclipses of the Sun! Not even in Europe does complete religious liberty exist today: in Franco Spain, as in the Ireland of De Valera, the power of the Roman Church still preserves almost mediæval proportions.
In particular, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries an extensive critical and scientific literature was devoted to these questions. For these epochs of capitalist growth and progressive expansion afforded extensive scope for religious toleration and for scientific and disinterested religious investigation. In such works as Frazer’s monumental Golden Bough, and its French and German counterparts, the origins of ‘natural’ religion were subjected to an exhaustive and critical survey, as were also the ‘higher’ cosmopolitan and supernatural religions. The origins, dogmas and general history of Christianity as the traditional religion of Europe were, in particular, made the subject of an elaborate and learned criticism from the time of Voltaire down to the latest researches of our own day.
As a result of these sequential investigations the natural origins and character of religion, including Christianity, are now tolerably well-known. On some details there is, no doubt, still room for controversy. But, in broad outline, we now know what religion is, in what kind of mental environment it originally arose and to what kind of intellectual attitudes its alleged ‘truths’ appealed. And since this is so, can we wonder that the rationalistic critics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – the contemporaries of Voltaire, Renan, Huxley, Darwin, Spencer, Grant Allen and Frazer – believed confidently that, its origins and nature once known and ascribed to purely natural causes in human immaturity and ignorance, religion would speedily and automatically vanish from the social scene?
We now know that these too optimistic ‘rationalists’ were wrong: their ‘rationalism’ was not sufficiently rational! For religion has not died out. On the contrary, in many respects, it has increased its power. And it has done this because religion is not only an intellectual but a social product. Because, as a given society declines, it requires soporifics to drug the multitude. And religion is primarily a social, and not an intellectual phenomenon. For Marx laid bare its essential nature in his classical epigram: ‘Religion is the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless conditions, the opium of the people.’
For, as a social product, and one at that which arises in a society divided into classes and based on exploitation, religion discharges a necessary role in that type of society, and cannot die out while such an exploiting society continues to exist. Hence the socialist criticism of religion differs profoundly from the purely intellectual criticism of capitalist scholars. For religion is necessary to the class state and to class society in general. And, as such, can only perish with it. Hence, no amount of merely expository or destructive criticism, useful and necessary as such criticism is in itself, can finally destroy religion. Only the coming of a classless society can do that, by abolishing the social antagonisms which necessitate its existence. It is from this standpoint that the problem of religion is examined in the following pages.
Note: Many books written by bourgeois specialists can be strongly recommended in their own particular fields. Frazer’s Golden Bough is, of course, a whole literature in itself. Among shorter works we may specially recommend Grant Allen’s Evolution of the Idea of God and S Reinach’s Orpheus, a History of Comparative Religion. The social limitations of such works must, of course, always be borne in mind. It is unfortunate that there is no definitive Marxist book on the subject: such a book would be one of the most valuable additions to contemporary literature. Probably the best single book ever written by a Marxist on a religious theme is still Karl Kautsky’s masterly book The Foundations of Christianity, written when its author was still a Marxist. Everyone interested in the subject and having the time should read this excellent work. The classics of Marxism contain, of course, many valuable observations: in particular, Engel’s Feuerbach; Lenin’s On Religion; NI Bukharin’s Historical Materialism. I must add that none of the works quoted above deal at all fully with the subject nor show much specialised acquaintance with its particular problems. I do not know any existing pamphlet or short work on the subject that is suitable for general reading. The SPGB formerly had a pamphlet which was a work of undoubted merit, though too prone, in my opinion at least, to adhere to the peculiar theories of Herbert Spencer on the origins of religion, but I understand that it is now out of print.