Party and class
[The first section What is a Program illustrates the view of the
party as the agent of a class or classes:]
Every party pursues definite aims, whether it be a party of landowners or
capitalists, on the one hand, or a party of workers or peasants, on the
other. Every party must have definite aims, for otherwise it is not a
party.
If it be a party representing the interests of landowners, it will pursue
the aims of landowners; it will endeavour to tighten the grasp of the
owners upon the soil; to hold the peasants in bondage; to secure a high
price for the produce of the landowners' estates; to hire labour cheaply;
to rackrent the farms.
If it be a party of capitalists and factory owners, it will likewise have
its own aims: to procure cheap labour, to keep the workers well in hand, to
find customers to whom the wares can be sold at the highest possible price,
to obtain ever larger profits, for this purpose to compel the workers to
toil harder- but, above all, so to arrange matters that the workers will
have no tendency to allow their thoughts to turn towards ideas of a news
social order; let the workers think that there always have been masters and
always will be masters.
Such are the aims of the factory owners. It is self-evident that the
workers and peasants will have utterly different aims from these, seeing
that their interests are utterly different from those of the capitalists
and landowners.
People used to say: "What is wholesome for a Russian is death to a German."
It would, in fact, be more accurate to say "What is wholesome for a worker
is death to a landowner or capitalist." That is to say, the worker has
certain things to do, the capitalist other things, and the landowner yet
others.
Not every landowner. however, thinks out logically what is the best way of
getting the last farthing out of the peasants; many landowners are drunk
most of the time, and do not even consider their bailiff's reports. The
same thing happens in the case of the peasants and of the workers. There
are some who say: "Oh, well, we shall get along somehow; why bother? we
shall go on living as our fathers have always lived". Such persons never
achieve anything, and do not even understand their own interests.
On the other hand, those who realise how they can best defend their own
interests, organise themselves into a party. Of course the class as a whole
does not enter the party, which is composed of the best and most energetic
members of the class; thus those who enter the party lead the
rest...
Religion and Science
Why Religion and Communism are incompatible
"Religion is the opium of the people", said Karl Marx. It is the task of
the Communist Party to make this truth comprehensible to the widest
possible circles of the labouring masses. It is the task of the party to
impress firmly upon the minds of the workers, even upon the most backward,
that religion has been in the past and still is today one of the most
powerful means at the disposal of the oppressors for the maintenance of
inequality, exploitation, and slavish obedience on the part of the
toilers.
Many weak-kneed communists reason as follows: "Religion does not prevent me
being a communist. I believe in God and in communism. My faith in God does
not hinder me from fighting for the cause of the proletarian revolution".
This train of thought is radically false. Religion and communism are
incompatible, both theoretically and practically.
Every communist must regard social phenomena (the relationship between
human beings, revolutions, wars, etc.) as processes which occur in
accordance with definite laws. The laws of social development have been
fully established by scientific communism on the basis of the theory of
historical materialism which we owe to our great teachers Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels. This theory explains that social development is not
brought about by any kind of supernatural forces. Nay more. The same theory
has demonstrated that the very idea of God and of supernatural powers
arises
at a definite stage of human history, and at another definite stage begins
to disappear as a childish notion which finds no confirmation in practical
life and in the struggle between man and nature.
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