Following from last years Yuletide, this Socialist Quotes for Sunday Reflection will have a look into religious themes as well as others. As a party we have members who naturally differ in how the spiritual is experienced. We have Atheistic, Agnostic, Monotheistic and Polytheist members, and we respect the right of everyone to his or her own way of experiencing (or not!) the non-material aspects of everything. Today is the Winter Equinox and of course this time of the year is Yuletide, Saturnalia, Christmas as well. We reproduce these quotes, for reflection and consideration. Take what you will from them......
Karl Marx:
Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state and this society produce religion, an inverted world-consciousness, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the spiritual aroma.
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HG Wells:
In view of what he plainly said, is it any wonder that all who were rich and prosperous felt a horror of strange things, a swimming of their world at his teaching? He was dragging out all the little private reservations they had made from social service into the light of a universal religious life. He was like some terrible moral huntsman digging mankind out of the snug burrows in which they had lived hitherto. In the white blaze of this kingdom of his there was to be no property, no privilege, no pride and precedence; no motive indeed and no reward but love.
Is it any wonder that men were dazzled and blinded and cried out against him? Even his disciples cried out when he would not spare them the light. Is it any wonder that the priests realised that between this man and themselves there was no choice but that he or priest-craft should perish? Is it any wonder that the Roman soldiers, confronted and amazed by something soaring over their comprehension and threatening all their disciplines, should take refuge in wild laughter and crown him with thorns and robe him in purple and make a mock Caesar out of him? For to take him seriously was to enter upon a strange and alarming life, to abandon habits, to control instincts and impulses, to essay an incredible happiness.
---------------The Levellers:
The relation of Master and Servant has no ground in the New Testament; in Christ there is neither bond nor free. Ranks such as those of the peerage and gentry are “ethnical and heathenish distinctions.” There is no ground in nature or Scripture why one man should have £1000 per annum, another not £1. The common people have been kept under blindness and ignorance, and have remained servants and slaves to the nobility and gentry. But God has now opened their eyes and discovered unto them their Christian liberty.
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The Digger, Gerrard Wnstanley:
In the beginning of Time, the great Creator, Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds and Fishes, but not one word was spoken in the beginning, that one branch of mankind should rule over another.
And the reason is this, every single man, male and female, is a perfect creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe dwells in man to govern the Globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his Maker, hath him to be his Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler without him, for he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same Anoynting that ruled in the Son of Man, teacheth him all things.
But since humane flesh (that king of Beasts) began to delight himself in the objects of the Creation, more than in the Spirit Reason and Righteousness . . . Covetousness, did set up one man to teach and rule over another, and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, than the Beasts of the field were to him.
---------------The Chartists' Great Charter of 1842:
The great Political Truths which have been agitated during the last half-century, have at length aroused the degraded and insulted White Slaves of England, to a sense of their duty to themselves, their children and their country. Tens of thousands have flung down their implements of labour. Your task masters tremble at your energy, and expecting masses eagerly watch this great crisis of our cause. Labour must no longer be the common prey of masters and rulers. Intelligence has beamed upon the mind of the bondsman, and he has been convinced that all wealth, comfort and produce, everything valuable, useful, and elegant have sprung from the palm of his hand; he feels that his cottage is empty, his back thinly clad, his children breadless, himself hopeless, his mind harassed, and his body punished, that undue riches, luxury and gorgeous plenty might be heaped in the palaces of the taskmasters, and flooded into the granaries of the oppressor. Nature, God, and Reason have condemned this inequality, and in the thunder of a people’s voice it must perish for ever.
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A modern Druidic position:
Regardless of who you are you can genuinely honor any cultural tradition as we do not believe in cultural appropriation and disapprove of cultural mocking as well as curvature.
Everyone has the same privilege as we do not believe in positional privilege and disapprove of inequality.
Love speech is the national language as we do not believe in divisive speech and disapprove of separatism.
We are all in the same block together as we do not believe in intersectional detachment and disapprove of specific power and supremacy.
Positivity is the dominant environment as we do not believe in unbalanced negativity and disapprove of tearing down other group supporters.
You never have to worry about being persecuted as we do not believe in intimidating others and disapprove of any sort of bullying.
You are free to share your virtues and not expect to be virtue signaled by someone in obeying them as we do not believe in identity politics and disapprove of any specific political validity.
There there is no shaming because of the way you think as we do not believe in shaming others and disapprove of one idea being worth more than another.
Ideas are added upon as we disagree with ideas being subtracted from and disapprove of silencing other voices.
Heart and soul, make up the sum of you not any one part of you as we do not believe in damaging interactions and disapprove of hypercritical analysis that is derisive.
Mind and spirit unify with others as we do not believe in tearing down any other person by spinning information as we disapprove of false consequence philosophies.
One's voice will not be shut down by any other person as do we do not believe in blatant accusation and disapprove of Salem Witch Trials.
Unfair judgement is not permitted as we do not believe in blatant accusation due to appearance and disapprove of codirectional any "ism", "phobia", and "ist".
The only agenda that is lobbied is fairness as we do not believe in personal agenda and disapprove of profits associated with ideals that aren’t aligned with ours.
Diversity is not what we look like as we do not believe in appearance being the sum of us and disapprove of promoting what we look like over our heart and soul, mind and body.
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The Pagan Socialist, 4th May 1912:
It is not an uncommon thing to hear on the part of persons who consider themselves Socialists, and hence ought to know better, deprecatory references to something or other as “pagan.” Not merely with those who call themselves Christian Socialists, but with many who repudiate this designation, there often seems to linger a feeling as though Socialist and even general humanitarian sentiment were something specially alien to Paganism. Why this is so it would be difficult to say. In a sense, of course, the modern spirit of which Socialism is the logical outcome stands apart from the world-outlook of older creeds outworn, as it does from the world-outlook of the traditional Christian theology. But there is, I contend, no reason to regard it as in any special manner opposed to the outlook of Paganism more than to that of Christianism. On the contrary, there is a sense, I maintain, in which the spirit animating modern Socialism represents a return, with a difference of course, but still a return, to the pagan view of the world and of life.
Let us analyse for a moment what the mental attitude of Paganism – of the ancient heathen world – connoted. Before everything else it supposed a corporate life, In Paganism the end of the individual life was always the family, the clan, the tribe, or the city. The sentiment and rites constituting the Pagan’s religion, which did not involve, be it remembered, any system of dogma, or theological tenets, maybe summed up in one word – absorption in, and devotion to, the life of the community in one or other of its forms. This, in contradistinction to the Christian idea, according to which the corporate life of man here below is a matter of small concern compared with the future life of the individual soul up above. What the Pagan, as such, cared for, was not so much the fate of the individual soul after death as the continuity and prosperity of the society to which he belonged on this earth. Of course, in the later ages of Paganism its whole vision became dimmed, and the potter with which for ages it had moulded the minds of men weakened. The new spirit, on the soil of which Christianity took root and grew up, asserted itself at the expense of the Pagan spirit. But the Pagan spirit finally disappeared only with the extinction of the life of the ancient world itself. Indeed, in the true sense of the word, it did not even then finally disappear, continuing as one of the deeper under-currents of life throughout the Middle Ages. Now, surely this Pagan outlook upon life is more akin to that of modern Social-Democracy than is Christianity with its spiritual-individualistic point of view.
Another aspect of Paganism in which it should have an affinity with the healthy spirit of modern Socialism is that of the “joie de vivre.” The increasing tendency of the modern man, atendency in which the great bulk of Socialists share, is towards what is sometimes called “the rehabilitation of the flesh” – that is, towards an antagonism to the sordidly ascetic outlook of the industrial and middle classes, especially the small middle class, to which the name of Puritanism is commonly given. The attitude of mind embodying the latter tendency has always been conspicuously that of the classes named. But the working classes, in their earlier stage of development, as an off-shoot it the small middle class, naturally shared its intellectual and moral outlook to a great extent. With the workmen of the modern great industry, from whom the main body of the modern Socialist Party is drawn, the hold upon them of middle-class ideals of life has progressively weakened, as a separate class-consciousness has sprung into life. It is the task of the Socialist thinker to press home the truth not only that Socialism has no part or lot with Puritanism, but that the latter is the enemy of rational living and personal liberty. One of the tasks of that spirit which finals its ultimate expression in the Socialistic view of life in the rehabilitation to a modern form of the joyous, nay, if you will, sensuous, ideal of the ancient world, which was but the reflection of its corporate life, before the individualistic spirit of self-introspection, of self-brooding, cast its baneful and morbid shadow over human society.
An economically free community cannot fail to be the foundation of a free social life, a life free from the shackles which Christian theology, in conjunction with the sordid struggle for gain; or for the bare means of subsistence, have between them contrived to impose on mankind. The Socialist who looks beyond the immediate present should lose no opportunity of combatting an ideal of life proper to a section of the exploiters of the modern proletariat and expressed in the word Puritanism. The Puritan, with his arrogant self-assertion, his tyrannical attempt to impose his theory of conduct upon the world at large. His sordid hypocrisy, must be hit as soon he appears upon the scene, He can never be sufficiently exposed. Where he is possessed of no strong influence, he may be safely left to be suppressed by the weapon of ridicule. If he becomes dangerous, where he imposes, as he sometimes does, on the very elect, he must be encountered with sterner argument if need be. Every new movement aiming at serious new changes in social life has to run the gauntlet of the Puritanical pest. The old Adam of asceticism in man is always there latent if not active. It is altogether a mistake to suppose that the tendency of human nature is exclusively towards self-indulgence, as is often assumed. The strain of asceticism, of useless self-mortification, which feeds on human vanity, love of domination, any stray particles of cruelty present in character, is also as constant, if somewhat less frequent, an ethical phenomenon than the self-indulgence we hear so much about
This strain of asceticism, this old Adam of Puritanism, is one of the enemies we have to combat. In the past men have spent quite enough of their best energies in attempts at repressing their nature, in striving to attain the false ideal of self-mortification. Upon this false ideal the man of the future will have to turn his back definitively if humanity is to be saved from being swamped once again in the back-wash of reaction – the more treacherous, since it occupies the ground of conscience, duty and noble endeavour. Puritanism is the cuckoo of ethics. It seeks to lay its eggs in every new movement. Let us, before all things, keep our ideal of social service based on economic reconstruction free from any admixture with the old individualist ideal of mere personal self-immolation. The man who is best fitted for social service will be assuredly he who has not wasted his energies on useless repression, but who fully recognises the reasonable right of the “appetites,” even the purely animal appetites. An open and frank recognition of this truth which, as above said, has sometimes been termed the “rehabilitation of the flesh.” is the central point in the new Paganism. The ancient world, before its decadence, recognised openly and without reserve the rights of man’s animal nature.
This healthy Pagan view of life became gradually superseded by the ascetic ideal of the early centuries of the Christian era. The new morality, if it is to correspond to the needs of modern man, must be, before all things, sympathetic, sympathetic towards all sides of human nature, certainly not excepting those sides whose claims have been unduly repressed, and which have hence had to seek their own satisfaction furtively as a thing forbidden. The new order, we would fain hope, will recognise in theory, no less than in practice, the full claims of human nature once for all, branding with its disapproval all attempts to crush man into Spanish boots. Socialism means the proclamation of the “joy of life” as the right of all. The sourness, the crabbedness, the hardness of the Puritanic spirit is the enemy for the annihilation of which the Pagan should hold all means justifiable.
E. Belfort Bax
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The Christian angle:
44 And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; 45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
Acts 2: 44, 45
32 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
33 And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.
34 Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
35 And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.
36 And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus,
37 Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.
Acts 4:32-37
Mathew 25: 31-4631 When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory.
32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.
35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,
36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?
38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?
39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
41 Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46 Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
1 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.
2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.
4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.
5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.
6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.
7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
Romans 13:1-7
13 But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. 14 You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.
Luke 14:13, 14
If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.
Matthew 19:21
24 You cannot serve both God and Money.
Matthew 6:24.
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