The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-04-23

Off His Base
By JORGE

Dear Jorge:
"Your criticism Of the atheist logic in Mon
days Daily is sound but you forget that it is a
two-edged sword. Why all the fuss about the
exploited masses if you are goddess? How do
the masses know that they can trust you to
liberate them once you get into power? Why all
the tears about injustice? Why all the bloody
battles for better world? To my mind, emo
ton is the basis of all life, and Communism
beautifully systematized as it is, is at bottom
an emotional protest against the misery of a
man-made world.
Yours for the revolution,
'Sympathizer."
With all due respect. to the comrade, he-or
she-is talking nonsense. AS Marx said in the
Communist Manifesto:
THE charges against Communism made
from a religious, philosophical and gener-
ally, from theological standpoint, are not
deserving of serious examination
The comrade makes such charges under the
name of friendship, and is yours for the revo-
luton" without, apparently, knowing what it is
all about. Truly, in his case, his Communism"
is "at bottom an emotional protest; which is
precisely why it is not Communism.
In the face of the overwhelming fact that re-
hgious and "god-fearing" leaders are counter
revolutionary, while absolutely the only depend
lists, the comrade is just plain stupid to ask
how the masses can trust goddess" leaders.
However, it is not us leaders who "get into
power" but the masses, and their liberation de-
ponds on themselves. There is mutual inter-
dependence, and you know nothing of Lenin-
ism when you set forth a contradiction as in
herent. Don't compare us to Tammany.
ITO my mind" says the comrade fatty con-
tradictng his very next words emotion is the
basis of all life" Yet the paragraph from Marx
quoted above is followed by:
Does it require deep intuition to compre-
bend that mans ideas, views, and conceptions.
in one word mans consciousness, changes with
every change in the conditions of his material
existence, in his social relations and in his
cial life?"
Again, the comrade has come to the wrong
address asking why all the tears about injus-
tice?" Marxans leave tears over such abstrac-
lions as Justice and injustice" to philistines.
But they properly get angry at the concrete
CLASS justice of the capitalist class. And cheer
Justify for proletarian justice.
Communists are devoted to revolution, but this
is not religion They are capable of emotion, but
it serves the revolution They have sentiment,
but it is class sentiment of affection for COM
rades in arms and hatred for the enemy class.
True there is petty bourgeois distortion; we
recall an instance where certain comrades OF
petty bourgeois origin asked if it not
counter revolutionary to say THANK YOU to a
comrade. And in Chicago we are informed that
one Party member deems it Communist duty
to be uncivil and refuses to say Good morning
comrade," for fear of losing his revolutionary"
balance
But to return to religion and the comrades
letter "a man-madee world" Is set as against
something else unnamed What is it? Nature?
Yet progress depends upon mans conquering
of nature And this cannot be completed until
imam" has been freed from capitalist constraint
According to the comrade "man" made the
misery Hence-remove man! What non
sense is this?
More the stupid idea that Bolshevism is cat
bottom an emotional protest" serves to excuse
every sort of opposition to it. We hear, fsr ca
ample, the Menshevik blather about Commu-,
nism being inherent in the Russian character"
therefore since we are not Russians, or "Asia-
tics" it don't fit in with American psychology"
Basically, the comrade is soaked in Christian
socialism about which Marx wrote:
Nothing is easier than to give Christian
acseticism socialist tinge" Only the comrade
gives Communism a Christian emotional tinge
in fact large dose of it. And Marx added:
christian socialism is but the Holy Water with
which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings
of the aristocrat."
Snap out of it, comrade!