We must seek the explanation of this secret elsewhere. Modern psychology
has taught us that human nature has a tendency to place the cause of its
own deficiencies and weaknesses outside of itself, to attribute to some
external agency, to some enemy or group of enemies, the blame for
its own misery. In his great work Marx unconsciously strengthens
and encourages this tendency. The immediate effect of his teaching,
vulgarized and popularized in a hundred different forms, is to relieve
the proletariat of all responsibility for the effects of its reckless
breeding, and even to encourage it in the perpetuation of misery.
The inherent truth in the Marxian teachings was, moreover, immediately
subordinated to their emotional and religious appeal. A book that could
so influence European thought could not be without merit. But in the
process of becoming the "Bible of the working classes," "Capital"
suffered the fate of all such "Bibles." The spirit of ecclesiastical
dogmatism was transfused into the religion of revolutionary Socialism.
This dogmatic religious quality has been noted by many of the most
observant critics of Socialism. Marx was too readily accepted as the
father of the church, and "Capital" as the sacred gospel of the social
revolution. All questions of tactics, of propaganda, of class warfare,
of political policy, were to be solved by apt quotations from the "good
book." New thoughts, new schemes, new programs, based upon tested fact
and experience, the outgrowth of newer discoveries concerning the nature
of men, upon the recognition of the mistakes of the master, could only
be approved or admitted according as they could or could not be tested
by some bit of text quoted from Marx. His followers assumed that Karl
Marx had completed the philosophy of Socialism, and that the duty of
the proletariat thenceforth was not to think for itself, but merely to
mobilize itself under competent Marxian leaders for the realization of
his ideas.
From the day of this apotheosis of Marx until our own, the "orthodox"
Socialist of any shade is of the belief that the first essential for
social salvation lies in unquestioning belief in the dogmas of Marx.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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