Whv the Workingman Is without a Church. — The ritualistic churches of
Christenciom grew directly out of the feudal system, reflected the semi-barbaric
culture of the Middle Ages, and supported, by means of the terrors of superstition, baronial oppression. This of course left the bourgeoisie, after their revolt,
without a church. But these middle-class men had use for a church and
organized a group of them which served to check in the wage-earner the vice
which would impair his efficiency as a laborer, and the personal indulgence and
amusement which would lead him to demand higher wages for its satisfaction.
Today the wage-worker is rising in opposition to this bourgeoisie class, and naturally finds himself outside of the church; for the church belongs to his master and voices only the interest of the capitalistic class. Now we find this churchless revolutionary proletariat to seem serenely indifferent either to the organization of a new church, or to accept the eager offer of the Catholic church in America, or of certain of the smaller Protestant denominations, 'to function as a proletarian church.
The proletarian is without a religious organization because it has no subject class to oppress and exploit. There being no subject class to be kept in unwilling subjection there is no economic service that a church can render to the proletariat. To the laboring-man religion is a private affair. It has no economic importance to him, and hence no place in his social life. He may be religious or irreligious as he may privately choose. The failure of modern churches to espouse the course of the workingman is due to a deeper cause than the question of their financial support. It is fundamental, unbridgeable because the proletariat has no end to serve by maintaining an ecclesiastical establishment, and for a church to become a distinctly proletarian organization would be to disband. It is the half-unconscious perception of this lathal atmosphere which compels all churches to remain the instruments of the oppressing class. Since individual workingmen may hold any belief conceivable, and since religion has no economic importance for them, there can be no "religion of socialism" or "religion of the proletariat." The proletarian attitude on these matters must always be, from the necessities of the case, one of perfect individual freedom and collective indifference. — Clarence Meily, International Socialist Review, February, 1907.
The Social Science Literature of the World.— This literature consisted, according to the returns to the International Institute for Social Bibliography in Berlin, of 8,590 books and 10,848 articles (together 19,438 works) in 1906. Of these, 9,455 originated in German-speaking countries, or about 55 per cent. There follows in French-speaking territory, 18 per cent.; English, 16 per cent.; Dutch, 4 per cent.; Russian, 3^^ per cent.; Italian, 3H per cent.; Scandinavian, 3 per cent. The Russian literature production is, as against 1905, three times as great within the scope of the institute — a consequence of the freedom of the press which, though still limited, was started in Russia.
The most works were written on the subject of social politics, viz., 6,134. Then follow political economy, with 3,830 ; general politics, home and foreign (except colonial), with 1,847. Colonial politics alone brought out 469 works. It is interesting in this connection that in the Romance literature the Kongo ques- tion in the German-speaking naturally the German Southwest Africa question, gave rise to a tremendous number of works. The Russian literature included, beside the translations of formerly forbidden works of the German, Romance, and Eng- lish social literature, single works about constitutional questions, agrarian ques- tions and land reform, etc. In the French literature the separation of church and state played a conspicuous role, while in Germany and England the school question stood in the foreground.
As against 1905, in which year the Institute reported 12,526 titles, the pro- duction increased by about 7,000 works. This difference arises less from an abso- lute increase of production than from the fact that 300 more publications and a number of parliaments were added to working territory of the Institute. — Kritische Blatter fiir die gesamten Socialwissenschaften, January, 1907. V. E. H.
