Religion is a Private Matter

One of the most persistent misconceptions used as a weapon against us is social democracy's alleged hostility to religion. No matter how unequivocally we claim that religion is a private matter, the old accusation keeps coming back. Now it is obvious that there must be some reason for this; if it were merely a groundless assertion without the slightest semblance of justification, it would have long since proved to be a useless weapon and would have disappeared. Indeed, for unenlightened minds there is a contradiction between this practical demand and the fact that with the rise of social democracy religion is at the same time dwindling more and more in working-class circles, and that our theory, historical materialism, is also in sharp contrast to religious teachings. This alleged contradiction, which has already confused many a comrade, is exploited by our opponents to show that our practical demand, which leaves everyone free to choose their religion, is merely a hypocrisy, a cover-up of our real anti-religious intentions, for the purpose of winning religious workers to our side en masse.

We demand that religion should be regarded as a private matter for each individual to decide for himself, without others interfering or dictating. This demand has arisen as a matter of course from the needs of our practice. It is quite right that we should thereby win over the non-religious and religious workers of different denominations en masse, i.e. unite them in a common struggle for their class interests. The goal of the social democratic workers' movement is none other than an economic transformation of society, the transfer of the means of production into common property. It goes without saying that everything that is alien to this goal and could lead to differences among the workers should be kept out. It takes all the interested narrow-mindedness of theologians to ascribe to us, instead of this openly recognized goal, another, secret one, the destruction of religion. He who directs his whole mind to religious fiddling and has no eye for the great need and the great struggle of the proletarians, cannot be surprised in the end if he sees in the great world-liberating revolution of the mode of production and the spiritual and religious conversion that goes with it nothing but a prevalence of unbelief and passes by the abolition of misery, oppression, servitude and poverty as something indifferent.

Our practical principle on religion has arisen from the need for practical struggle; it is clear from this that it must also be in agreement with our theory, which bases socialism entirely on the practice of the daily struggle. Historical materialism regards economic conditions as the basis of all social life; it has always been a question of material needs, of class struggles, of upheavals in the mode of production, where the previous view, including that of the militants themselves, saw religious differences and religious struggles. Religious views are merely an expression, a reflection, a consequence of the real living conditions of people, i.e. primarily of economic conditions. Today, too, it is a question of economic upheaval, but for the first time in history the class that has to carry it out is clearly aware that it is not a question of the victory of any ideological views. This clear consciousness, which it draws from theory, is expressed in the practical demand: religion is a private matter; this demand is therefore as much an outflow of clear scientific knowledge as of practical need.

It follows from this view, which historical materialism raises about religion, that it must not be lumped together with bourgeois atheism.1 The latter was directly hostile to religion because it saw in it the theory of the reactionary classes and the main obstacle to progress. He saw in religion only stupidity [?] and in education the remedy; therefore he hoped to eradicate the charcoal-burning faith of the stupid peasants and petty bourgeoisie through scientific enlightenment, especially through natural science.

We, on the other hand, see religion as a necessary outgrowth of living conditions, which are mainly economic in nature. The farmer, for whom the vagaries of the weather can limit a good or a bad harvest, the petty bourgeois, for whom the market and competitive relationships can bring poverty or wealth, feel dependent on higher mysterious powers. The bookish wisdom that the weather is determined by natural forces and that the miracles of the Bible are fictitious legends does not help against this immediate feeling. Peasants and burghers are even unwilling and suspicious of this erudition, since it comes from the class that oppresses them, and they themselves, as the declining classes, can find no weapon, no salvation and not even consolation in it. They can only find consolation in supernatural ways, in religious ideas.

Conversely, the class-conscious proletarian; the cause of his misery lies clearly before him in the nature of capitalist production and exploitation, which for him has nothing supernatural about it. And since a hopeful future beckons to him, since he feels that he lacks the knowledge to break his chains, he throws himself with fervor into the study of the social gears. Thus his whole view of the world, even if he knows nothing about Darwin and Copernicus2 , is an unreligious one; he perceives the forces with which he has to create and wrestle as sober worldly facts. Thus the non-religion of the proletariat is not a consequence of certain doctrines preached to it, but of the immediate perception of its situation. Conversely, it is this attitude, which grows of its own accord out of participation in social struggles, that causes the workers to eagerly reach for all anti-theological enlightenment writings, for Büchner and Häckel3 , in order to give this attitude a theoretical foundation through scientific knowledge. This origin of proletarian atheism means that the proletariat never presents it as an object of contention against those who think differently; only its social views and goals, which form the essence of its world view, are an object of contention. Those proletarians who live as classmates in the same oppression are his natural comrades-in-arms, even if their particular circumstances mean that the above-mentioned effects are absent. Such special circumstances do indeed exist, apart from the omnipresent force of tradition, which can only be overcome gradually. Proletarians who work under conditions in which powerful, horrible, unpredictable forces of nature threaten them with death and destruction, such as miners and sailors, will often retain a strong religious feeling, while at the same time they can be strong fighters against capitalism. The practical attitude resulting from this situation is still often misjudged by party comrades who believe that our views must be set against the Christian faith as “a higher religion”.

The relationship between socialism and religion is therefore exactly the opposite of how our theological enemies portray it. We do not make the workers apostate from their former faith by preaching our theory, historical materialism. Rather, they are already losing their faith through the attentive pursuit of social contexts, which allows them to recognize the abolition of misery as a tangibly achievable goal. The need to understand these connections ever more thoroughly leads them to study the historical-materialist writings of our great theorists. These then do not work in an anti-religious sense, because faith is already gone; conversely, they bring about an appreciation of religion as a historically justified phenomenon that will only disappear under future circumstances. This doctrine therefore prevents us from emphasizing ideological differences as the essential, it places our economic goal in the foreground as the only essential, and it expresses this in the practical demand: religion is a private matter.

• 1The difference between bourgeois and proletarian atheism is simple. In bourgeois atheism, attempts are made to prove that God does not exist, as Richard Dawkins explains today: “It is a probability bordering on certainty that God does not exist” (The God Delusion). For agnosticism, the question of the existence of God cannot be answered (according to Charles Darwin: “A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton”). In historical materialism, therefore, the whole question of the existence of God has no purpose and is therefore nonsensical; the 'belief' that God does not exist is therefore also a religion.
• 2Charles Darwin (1809-1882), British natural scientist, founder of the theory of evolution; Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), founder of the heliocentric world view.
• 3Bourgeois atheists and vulgar materialists. Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899); Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919).