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Understanding of Karl Marx
A letter to the author from a union organiser active in New England, who is interested in revolutionary theory, reads in part as follows:
I have had many and quite intimate contacts with trade unions. I know for instance that in Haverhill, Mass, where I tried to run a union for some time, the decisive factors in the working population, sex, religion, nationality, etc, are so strong that while they are all shoemakers, they have no common characteristic. They will act much more readily as men and women – the women get more work than the men – as Irish, Greek, Italian, and as Catholic and Protestant and Jew than as a working class.
This is not an uncommon experience. It poses some crucial problems. If the class struggle is the central doctrine of Marxism, it is important to know whether the class struggle is a theory or a fact, whether there is one class struggle or many, whether it derives from other Marxian doctrines or they from it.
We may begin by pointing out the organic connection which exists between the theory of the class struggle and the theories of historical materialism and surplus-value. The theory of historical materialism holds that the different roles which different classes play in the process of production give rise to a conflict of needs and interests. Out of this conflict there crystallises opposing modes of thought and practice which express themselves in different reactions to a common situation, and, where the conflict is carried on within a common historical tradition, in different emphases and interpretations of supposedly common doctrines. The widening rift between the expanding forces of production and the fixed property relations under which production is carried on, leads to an even sharper differentiation in social philosophy and practical struggle. For this conflict to be historically resolved, classes must identify themselves with, and become the carriers of, conflicting social relations. The march of history is forced by class action, not by the dead instruments of production, nor by isolated individual acts. We have already seen how integral the class struggle is to Marx’s economic theories. The division of the surplus social product is never an automatic affair but depends upon the political struggles between the different classes engaged in production. The truth of the theories of historical materialism and surplus-value presuppose, therefore, the existence of the class struggle. If the facts of the class struggle can be successfully called into question, the whole theoretical construction of Marx crashes to the ground.
Some definitions are in order. What is a class? Logically, in any universe of discourse, a class consists of a collection of elements all of which have a common characteristic not shared by some other elements. When we speak of human beings, any group of men constitutes a class if each one of its members possesses some distinctive property not shared by other men. Any member of such a class may also be a member of some other class. If x is a member of the class of red-heads, he may also be a member of the class of fathers, the class of tall men, the class of Irishmen. Marx, however, is not interested in classes as such but in social classes. Not in every type of social class but only in those social classes which are defined by the roles which different groups of men play in the processes of economic production, that is, in economic classes. Social classes – taken in the broadest sense – are bound up with the existence of any type of society in which there is division of labour; economic classes, however, represent the fundamental social divisions in those societies in which private property in the means of production exists. In what sense economic classes represent ‘fundamental’ social divisions will be indicated below.
In Capital Marx distinguishes between three different economic classes – capitalists, landlords and wage-earners. Their respective source of income is profit, ground-rent and wages. No contemporary society, however, exhibits this stratification of classes in a pure form. There are intermediate, transitional and vestigial groups within and between these classes. In one country there are remnants of a feudal class, in another a large lumpen, or slum, proletariat, and almost everywhere, pauperised peasants, professionals, hand-workers and an officialdom. But already in the Communist Manifesto Marx contended that the normal development of capitalist production would result in ‘splitting society more and more into two great hostile classes... bourgeoisie and proletariat’ [1], and in Capital he shows how this results from the tendency towards centralisation of industry and concentration of wealth. In the era of monopoly capitalism, the interests of large landholders are so closely involved with the interests of the capitalists at many points in the financial and marketing structure, that both groups may be regarded, for all their rivalry, as wings of substantially the same economic class.
In the interests of political action, however, at no time is the economic schema of class divisions to be abstractly applied in a way to suggest that all classes or groups outside of the proletariat constitute ‘one reactionary mass’. For one thing, what these classes have in common may at certain times be obscured by their differences. Then again, the composition of classes as well as their impending future is continually changing as the limits imposed by the processes of production narrow. In the fifties of the last century it may have been possible to exploit the antagonism between the English landowners and capitalists to win the Ten-Hour Day. At the present time no antagonism between these groups is so great that it will not be overlooked in the common defence against the working class. During the last century, although the working class made common cause with the continental petty bourgeoisie and peasants to win certain political reforms, it could not overcome the bitter hostility of these classes to its socialist programme. Today, in the face of the impending transfer of large sections of these classes into the ranks of the unemployed or pauperised proletariat, they may be won over for revolutionary social action. This necessitates the use of a broader conception of what constitutes a class – and who constitutes it. So far as history in the making is concerned, the political potentialities of a class are not simply and unequivocally determined by its economic status – though this is basic – but by a whole complex of socio-psychological forces as well. That is why one cannot infer the political future of a country if one has knowledge only of its economic set-up and the numerical strength of its classes. Marx begins by locating an economic class by its role in production and then, by analysis of the particular historical situation, discovers its specific socio-psychological attitude. In the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, as in all other of his political writings, Marx uses the concept of class in this wider socio-psychological sense, but in every case it is based on the functions which a group plays or has played in production:
In so far as millions of families live in economic circumstances which distinguish their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of other classes, and made them more or less hostile to other classes, these peasant families constitute a class. [2]
If classes are defined with reference to their productive functions, it follows that the source of their antagonism must be sought in the processes of production. According to Marx, in any society in which a class has a monopoly of the instruments of production, an inevitable opposition, not necessarily conscious, arises over the distribution of the total social product. The more one class appropriates, the less remains for the other. The best will in the world cannot alter the fact that where a finite amount of goods must be distributed in a society in which there exists potentially unlimited wants, the division must take the form of an inverse relation.
The inverse relation in the distribution of the product does not of itself define a class antagonism although it must always be present wherever class antagonisms are present. For a great many social antagonisms, which are not yet class antagonisms, may arise from the same general social situation. For example, the more electric power is consumed, the less coal will be bought: the public utilities trust, therefore, will find itself in opposition to the coal producers. Orange growers may find that the more tomatoes are sold, the less will be their own sales. The prosperity of the one group may mean the ruin of the other. In certain industries, the higher the wages of the skilled workers are, the lower are the wages of the unskilled. And it is clear that in any human society, so long as some goods or privileges do not exist in sufficiently large quantities to provide everyone with as much as he wants (and it must be remembered that wants and needs are variables, which have no upper limit) there will always be an objective basis for social opposition and conflict. None of these forms of social opposition, from Marx’s point of view, constitutes a class opposition. Why not?
In the first place, the oppositions between different groups of capitalists may in time be ironed out by mergers, combines and trustification. The railroad companies absorb or come to an understanding with the auto-bus companies, the public utilities with the mines, one association of farmers with another. Where this does not take place and one group actually goes under, the opposition is not reproduced as is the case with the continuous opposition between worker and capitalist – an opposition which is a natural consequence of the fact that the social instruments of production are owned and controlled by a class other than that which uses them. Secondly, viewing capitalist production as a whole, all the employers have a common interest against all the workers in that the lower the average wage rate, the higher the profit. Thirdly, oppositions between different vocational groups within capitalist society, as well as the social oppositions which may arise outside of capitalist society, are not oppositions in which one group is exploited by another. This is the key difference between social oppositions which are class oppositions and those which are not. In all societies in which the instruments of production are not held in common, the process of production is at the same time a process of human exploitation. The class opposition which is essential to capitalist production is more important than any other social oppositions, such as are generated in the higgling of the market or in the competition between different industries or in disagreements between different groups of workers. For class oppositions cannot be resolved without changing the structure of society, whereas the other social oppositions are continually being resolved within the unaffected framework of the capitalist mode of production. The most fundamental of all the necessary objective presuppositions of social revolution, therefore, is a class antagonism and not the other social oppositions which are present as contributory factors. Many of the latter, upon analysis, appear to be derived from the former.
So far we have only spoken of class opposition, not of class struggle. Struggle involves consciousness, and not all class opposition is accompanied by class consciousness. Many Negro slaves before, and even during, the Civil War, accepted their lot, if not contentedly, nonetheless without active protestations. Class struggles arise when men become aware of the nature of class antagonisms. This awareness does not come all at once. It grows slowly out of actual participation in a dispute about some immediate issue. It becomes deeper in the face of the severer repressions which the first signs of revolt call forth. It may be expressed in allegiance to abstract ideals. It is always sure to see in the realisation of a specific set of class needs the most effective and most equitable method of realising the needs of the community.
Do class oppositions automatically produce class struggles? Obviously not. Certain factors operate to prevent the existence of class opposition from becoming a self-conscious opposition. The most important of these factors are other social oppositions which conceal the basic class opposition and often lead to an alliance of a section of a class with its class enemy against other sections of its own class. These social oppositions may be the opposition between the skilled and unskilled, the rich and poor, Negro and white, Catholic and Protestant, employed and unemployed. The social and economic history of Europe and America is rich in illustrations of the way in which these and other varieties of social opposition have served as counteracting forces to arrest the growth of consciousness of class antagonisms. The history of the English Labour Party, and to a considerable extent of the American Federation of Labour, is a history of successive alliances between the highly skilled workers and their employers against the unskilled. Manufacturers have been known in America to foster labour troubles in the plants of richer and more powerful competitors in order to gain for themselves a temporary economic advantage. In the basic American industries, employers have for many years played upon race and national prejudice to divide the ranks of the workers and to recruit an army of strike-breakers in case of industrial disturbance. The Belfast Port Strike was lost because of the religious dissensions created between Protestant and Catholic workers. In the division of the German working class after the war into four types of trade unions, religious differences played an appreciable part. Since 1929, in some industries controlled by conservative unions, employers have been able to cause the employed and unemployed to fall out with each other by offering workers a choice between either reducing wages and spreading work or upholding wages and restricting work.
The simple and undeniable fact is that every member of society is not only a member of a class but a member of other groups as well. In the clash of group loyalties is it necessary and inevitable that loyalty to one’s class will triumph over, say, loyalty to one’s church or to one’s country? Let us listen to Marx apropos of the division in the ranks of the English and international working class:
The English bourgeoisie has not only exploited Irishmen in order to reduce the standard of living of the English working class by compelling the Irish poor to emigrate; in addition, it has split the proletariat into two hostile camps. The revolutionary fire of the Celtic worker does not unite itself with the powerful but slow-moving strength of the Anglo-Saxons. On the contrary, in all the great industrial centres of England there prevails a deep antagonism between the Irish and English proletariat. The ordinary English worker hates the Irishman as a competitor who depresses his wages and living standards. He feels a national and religious antipathy towards him. He regards him almost in the same light as the poor whites of the Southern States of North America regard the black slaves. This opposition between the English proletariat is kept alive and artificially nurtured by the bourgeoisie. It knows that the true secret of the conservation of its power lies in this division. [3]
This antagonism repeats itself on the other side of the Atlantic. The Irishmen who are driven from hearth and home for the sake of oxen and sheep [enclosures] find themselves in America where they constitute an appreciable and ever growing part of the population. Their only thought, their only passion is hatred of the English. The English and American governments – that is to say, the classes which these governments represent – feed these passions, in order to perpetuate the international oppositions which hinder every earnest and honest alliance between the working class of both sides of the water and consequently their common emancipation. [4]
The key questions, then, are 1) under what conditions does the common class opposition which unites the whole of the proletariat against the whole of the bourgeoisie focalise itself in consciousness and struggle, and 2) under what conditions does class consciousness triumph over divisive ties of racial, religious or national consciousness? No final and synoptic answers to these questions can be given; or more accurately, the answers depend on a peculiar complex of social, economic and traditional factors which vary from situation to situation. At best only the most general necessary conditions can be indicated.
Class opposition develops into class struggle whenever in the course of production an exploited class finds that it can no longer sustain itself at the level to which it has been accustomed. The development of the productive forces of society continually widens the gap between those who have property rights to the production forces and those who live by toiling at them. Cultural disparities grow with the differences in material comfort and security. The rapidity with which an oppressed class locates the source of its exploitation and the extent to which its consequent class consciousness triumphs over its other loyalties are functions of a peculiar set of historical circumstances. In one country, due to the accidents of natural wealth and free land, the illusion that every man with initiative can win a living may still prevail even when the original conditions have vanished. In another country, a low standard of living may make for acquiescence. In one country, the population may be divided into opposing races and religions, and a fall in the standard of living may exacerbate their differences instead of uniting them. In another country, a strong revolutionary tradition may result in turning every industrial conflict into an armed battle.
The existence of political groups or parties is just as necessary for the growth of class consciousness as is the development of productive forces. The political party is the agency by which the socio-psychological obstacles to class consciousness are removed. It formulates a class philosophy to express the class needs already dimly sensed in the daily antagonisms of economic life and in the occasional conflicts into which those antagonisms burst out. The political party makes explicit as a programme what is implied in the struggle of the masses. It agitates for action on the basis of ideals, helps organise the masses, and seeks to convince all progressive elements in society of the desirability and practicality of its social ideas. It prepares for the conquest of power. The course of preparation is a course of education in which the religious, national and racial oppositions within the class it represents are overcome. Class struggles are possible without a political party. But of themselves they can never become revolutionary struggles unless they are transformed from sporadic and undirected explosions of pent-up misery into the starting and continuing points of one long campaign. The political organisation serves as the active principles of revolutionary continuity. Marx and Lenin realised that left to itself the working class would never develop a socialist philosophy. Its intermittent class struggles would be regarded as only one kind of social opposition among others and not the most crucial of all social oppositions. The programmes of most conservative trade unions throughout the world proclaim an essential unity, not an antagonism, between the interests of the employer and the wage-earner. [5] A revolutionary socialist philosophy does not flow from the same source as the primitive class struggle of trade unionism. It must be introduced literally into the trade-union movement, although without the existence of such a movement, socialism would have no revolutionary meaning. Only when the working class becomes imbued with the knowledge of the causes of its own existence, and fired with the ideals suggested by this knowledge, can it be called, in a truly radical sense, class conscious.
This emphasis upon the conscious activity of the political party, far from representing an idealistic deviation from Marxism, as most mechanical Marxists imagine, is central to Marx’s revolutionary position. The opening sections of Parts II and IV of the Communist Manifesto make this clear to all who read it. Plekhanov’s epithet of ‘heretic’ to the contrary notwithstanding, Lenin was in direct line with the Marxist tradition when he condemned the attitude of those who held that the spontaneous movement of the working class would result in revolutionary class consciousness:
... subservience to the spontaneity of the labour movement [he wrote], the belittling of the role of the ‘conscious element’, of the role of Social-Democracy, means whether one likes it or not, growth of influence of bourgeois ideology among the workers. All those who talk about ‘exaggerating the importance of ideology’, about exaggerating the role of the conscious element, etc, imagine that the pure and simple labour movement can work out an independent ideology for itself, if only the workers ‘take their fate out of the hands of the leaders’. But in this they are profoundly mistaken. [6]
Class antagonism can develop into revolutionary class consciousness only under the leadership of a revolutionary political organisation. But now, under what conditions do the messages of the revolutionary organisation fall upon willing ears? Here we seem to be arguing in a circle. Taking social need and want for granted, the class consciousness of the workers depends upon revolutionary organisation, and the effectiveness of the revolutionary message upon the class consciousness of the workers. The circle, however, is only apparent. The conjunction of the two necessary conditions gives us the sufficient condition of radical class consciousness. The programme of the political party of the workers wins greater support as the pressure of the environment produces greater misery.
Just as the political party is the agency by which class antagonism comes to life, so there exists a political agency which bends all its energies to prevent class antagonisms from rising to class consciousness. This political agency is the state. Through myriads of instrumentalities it seeks to secure the status quo. Although it is itself the executor of the interests of the dominant social class, it systematically cultivates the mythology that the state is above all classes and that the well-understood interests of all classes are one. Every legal code proclaims this; every school system teaches it. No one can challenge the myth without suffering certain penalties. To the forces of ignorance, inertia and divided allegiance which revolutionary agitation must overcome, must be added the inverted, official, class-struggle propaganda which teaches that there is no class struggle.
It is a well observed fact that ruling groups are always more class-conscious than those over whom they rule. The possession of power and the necessity of making choices compel them to realise that almost every act on behalf of themselves is at the same time an act, directly or indirectly, against other subject classes. Even measures taken presumably for the good of the whole community, for example, protection of the public health, are carried out in such a way that the larger benefits fall upon those who need them least.
The state is indirectly involved in every manifestation of the class struggle. Not only in the obvious sense that the court, police and soldiers are often brought in to break strikes with injunctions, clubs and bayonets, but in the more important sense that every class struggle which seeks to abolish the social conditions of exploitation out of which class antagonisms arise, is aimed at the very existence of the state power itself. The sine qua non of political clarity, whether it be in the interest of reaction or revolution, is the realisation that every class struggle is a political struggle; for the consequences of a class struggle are such as either to weaken or to strengthen the political rule of the class which controls the instruments of production. The fact that every class struggle is a political struggle suggests why Marx believed that the class struggle is more fundamental than any other forms of social struggle whether they be religious, national or racial. Only through class struggle can a change in property relationships, that is, social revolution, be achieved. That is how Marx read the great revolutions of the past. That is how he evaluated the instrumentalities of social change in the present. He did not deny that other social oppositions – notably religious, ethical and national – play an important part in historical change. But they never assert themselves as revolutionary forces unless they are linked up with the immediate interests of the class struggle. Cromwell’s men marched into battle with hymns on their lips, but their victories sealed the fate of the feudal nobility. The rising German bourgeoisie and the revenue-hungry princes backed Luther’s fierce attack on Rome; but church estates and not the doctrine of transubstantiation was at issue. Later all parties to this dispute joined in a religious war against the Anabaptists, peasants and plebeians whose poverty led them to take the social doctrines of primitive Christianity seriously.
Marx held that religious oppositions in bourgeois society, in contradistinction to the past, no longer paralleled class antagonisms. As a consequence of institutionalisation, all influential religions have become wedded to the existing order of property relations. Doctrinal differences remain, but these are as nothing compared to the unity of interest in their real estate holdings, educational privileges and practical political power wielded through their communicants. Any attack upon the stability of the social order, that is, upon the existing order of property relations, is an attack upon their vested interests. Whereas they regard atheism as only a disease of modern civilisation, they denounce communism – free thought in economics – as the enemy of all civilisation. In his own day Marx observed that ‘the English Established Church will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1-39th of its income’. [7] Whether or not this be literally and universally true, there can be no doubt that all institutionalised churches have nothing to gain by the abolition of class antagonisms and a great deal to lose. That is why whenever any crucial class issue arises, religious leaders of all denominations make a common front against the common enemy. The daily press offers pointed illustrations. [8]
What is true of the religious differences of the ruling classes is true of their national differences. Tradition, local piety and immediate interests feed the spirit of patriotism. But once the class war raises its head at home or in the enemy’s country, the fires of nationalism are banked and out of the smouldering flame there springs up the furies of international class interest more relentless than any national zeal can be. Bismarck permitted republican France to live in order to scotch the deadly threat of the Paris Commune; France helped save bourgeois Germany from the proletarian revolution in 1919 and 1923; Miliukov, who had accused the Bolsheviks of being German agents because of their refusal to continue war against Germany, after the October Revolution fled for help and refuge to the arms of the German general staff.
In order to avoid easy simplification, it will bear repeating that class struggles have often been fought, at least in the minds of the participants, as national and religious wars. Marx does not deny this. But he holds that this is the case only when the ruling class within a country has identified itself with one form of religion, so that an attack upon its religion is an attack upon the whole complex of social institutions of which its religious practices are a part. This is the key, as most scholars have admitted, to the attack of the German Reformation and the French Revolution upon Catholicism. Similarly for the national consciousness which becomes a unifying force in most colonial wars. A local class, proclaiming its interests to be identical with that of the whole of the subject nation, may, as in the case of the American Revolution, lead in the attack against the national oppressor. But however it may have been in the past, in the era of monopoly capitalism economic considerations and class divisions overshadow all others. In an era in which the slogan, ‘where markets and raw materials are, there is the fatherland’, expresses an economic necessity, in an era in which all religions are equally true, if only they inculcate respect for the mysterious ways by which God works in the social order, national and religious differences are clearly subordinate to class interests.
What is true for the ruling class is decidedly not true for the class over whom it rules. The international working class is torn by the national, racial and religious differences which the culture of capitalism breeds, teaches and systematically intensifies. If these differences and conflicting loyalties did not exist, capitalism would disappear. As it is, until the social revolution takes place, they will never completely disappear. Until then, the class struggle may be regarded legitimately as permanent war between the state and the political party of the working class, in which the state is aided by all the agencies of existing bourgeois culture, and the revolutionary party by all the consequences of existing bourgeois production.
We can now answer the fundamental question, which served as our point of departure, less ambiguously. Class antagonism and opposition is a fact in the sense that its existence does not depend upon class consciousness. Class consciousness is a fact in the sense that sometimes class antagonisms have developed from implicit opposition to explicit struggle. The class struggle is the most important of all other social struggles in the sense that the historical record shows that a change from one social order to another has always been achieved by class struggle and in no other way. The class struggle is a theory in the sense that today as in the past it is regarded as the most fundamental struggle in contemporary society. As a theory, it is a guide to action. That is what is meant by saying that it is the most fundamental struggle. The proof that the class struggle is the most fundamental of social oppositions in society can be found only in revolutionary action which by socialising the productive base of society therewith transforms all existing national and racial oppositions from anti-social antagonisms to cooperative and mutually fructifying antagonisms. For example, one of the most striking consequences of the still incomplete Russian Revolution is the progressive elimination of national, cultural and racial hostilities among its heterogeneous peoples. This has been accomplished not by suppressing national units or indigenous cultures but by strengthening them – strengthening them by showing that their local political autonomy, natural piety for countryside, and legitimate pride in the best of their language and traditions can be perpetuated most fruitfully by voluntary participation in a socialist economy.
This is not saying that after the socialist revolution has been completed there will no longer be social oppositions. It simply asserts as an hypothesis to be tested in practice that these social oppositions will not be accompanied by economic oppression. Nor is this merely a matter of definition, as some Marxists believe who argue that since class struggles arise only in class societies, therefore, in the classless society by definition there cannot be any class struggle. It is only in the realm of Platonic essences that anything can be settled by definitions. Here it is a question of the adequacy of definition. From the point of view of the materialistic dialectic, definitions, if they are to have any relevance to the things defined, are predictions; and no predictions about anything which happens in time – especially about the social events in which man is an active element – can claim necessity or finality. That is why the apparent paradox is inescapable that the truth of Marx’s theory of the class struggle can be established only in the experience of social revolution, that is, after class society has been overthrown. For a Marxist, there is no other avenue than the concrete experience of social action by which the truth of any theory of human history can be discovered. That is the method by which he tests the doctrines of his opponents. That is the method by which he must test his own. Any other method involves faith, revelation – in short, superstition.
1. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, available here. – MIA
2. Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, English translation, p. 133. [available at here. – MIA]
3. Karl Marx, Letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, 9 April 1870, available here. – MIA
4. Karl Marx, Letter to Kugelmann, 28 March 1870 [actually Confidential Communication on Bakunin, 28 March 1870. – MIA]
5. For example, Paragraph 10 of the constitution of the Federation of Conservative Trade Unions of Berlin, organised in 1913, reads: ‘The trade unions see in the employer not an economic enemy of the worker but a collaborator in the processes of production. It follows from this conception that the interests of the workers and employers far from being always antagonistic are, on the contrary, in most cases in harmony with each other.’ (Correspondenzblatt, 11 October 1913, p. 627, quoted by Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenz des Gruppenlebens (revised second edition, Leipzig 1925) The theory and practice of the American Federation of Labour is too well known to need documentation.
6. V.I. Lenin, Works, Volume IV, English translation, p. 122 [V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, Collected Works, Volume 5. – MIA
7. Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1. – MIA
8. Of the many citations available, none is more eloquent than a modest death notice taken from the New York Times, 14 September 1925: ‘Chicago, 14 September (AP) – The death of Max Pam in New York City today closed a noted legal career in which he was associated not only with Judge E.H. Gary, the late E.H. Harriman and the late John W. Gates, but with Vice-President Dawes in the organisation of the Central Trust Company of Illinois. He had a large collection of paintings and was known as a lover of music, literature and art. Mr Pam was an unrelenting foe of Socialism, and, although a Jew, contributed liberally to several Roman Catholic institutions on the ground that they would oppose the spread of Marxian doctrines. He also was a frequent contributor to the Zionist movement and active in that international organisation. Burial will be in Chicago.’
‘A frank recognition of the real social issues at stake is contained in the report of the Layman’s Foreign Missions inquiry which summons all denominations to forget their theological differences and to unite in a common struggle against “the real foe” of all “prophets, books, revelations, rites and churches” – the philosophies of Marx, Lenin and Russell.’ (New York Times, 7 October 1932)
Last updated: 20 February 2020