The Religion of Socialism

by Ernest Belfort Bax

Overview

It cannot be too strongly insisted upon that either the theory of modern Socialism rests on a solid historical basis, or it is nothing. The truth discovered by Marx, that the basal factor determining the constitution of society is its material and economic condition, must be for the Socialist the key to the reconstruction of history. Socialism, we contend, is not a theory "won from the void and formless infinite" of Utopian sentiment and good intentions, very beautiful, but impracticable, as some think; or from that of an aimless discontent acted on by wicked and designing agitators, as others think; but it is a plain deduction from the facts of history. The living form of Socialism has been long perfecting itself within the chrysalis of Civilisation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781463625955
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	06/21/2011
Pages:	148
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.32(d)

Read an Excerpt

SOCIALISM AND THE SUNDAY QUESTION. rRHE question of a" free" Sunday is to no one i more immediately important than to Socialists. For a prolet ariat strong in mind and in body is the first essential to the advent and the success of the revolution in this country as in every other. And no proletariat can be strong in mind or in body which is debarred from the opportunity of the full culture of either. The middle-class employer knows this right well when he protests against any infringement of the " day of rest." It was M. Guizot, so far as we remember, who in conversation with an English statesman sometime during the year 1848, remarked that the safety of England lay in her Sunday. Allowing for exaggeration, there is much truth in this assertion of the typical middle-class statesman of France. The " safety" of England from the point of view of its privileged classes has undoubtedly been conduced to by the British " Beer and Bible " Sunday. A well-conducted English workman, " thrifty and industrious," is no doubt kept in a state of dogged contentment by never knowing what leisure intelligently occupied means, by his tastes being carefully kept under, and by his weekly holiday being ' empty, swept, and garnished " of all relaxation. A man who knows nothing to interest him when he is free from work, naturally cares less about reduction oflabour. It is culture in its widest sense which makes the revolutionist. By culture we do not mean the mere tools of education furnished by the School Board, but the habit of mind which forces a man beyond the here, and the ncnv of his own particular interests, or even of the events uppermost in the newspapers at the moment, and makes him feel a livinginterest and part in the past, the future, the distant. Now, it is the absence of culture in thi...

Table of Contents

	Universal History from a Socialist Standpoint	1
	A French Economist on Collectivism	38
	Socialism and Religion	48
	Socialism and the Sunday Question	54
	The Modern Revolution	60
	Conscience and Commerce	83
	Unscientific Socialism	92
	The Criminal Court Judge	106
	Some Bourgeois Idols; or Ideals, Reals, and Shams	111
	Imperialism v. Socialism	123
	The Two Enthusiasms	128
	The Capitalistic "Hearth"	136
	Civil Law under Socialism	146
	Address to Trades' Unions	154
	Appendix	164