ich are free from obligations,
The laws the poor delude.
Too long we've languished in subjection,
Equality has other laws:
"No rights," says she, "without their duties.
No claims on equals without cause."

Toilers from shops and fields united,
The party we of all who work;
The earth belongs to us, the people,
No room here for the shirk.
How many on our flesh have fattened!
But if the noisome birds of prey
Shall vanish from the sky some morning,
The blessed sunlight still will stay.

CONTENTS

Page
PROLEGOMENA 5

PART I.

COMMUNISM: THE NATURALISTIC THIS-WORLDLY
GOSPEL FOR THE COMING AGE OF CLASSLESS EQUALITY
AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM 13

PART II.

CHRISTIANISM: A SUPERNATURALISTIC OTHER-WORLDLY
GOSPEL FOR THE PASSING AGE OF CLASS INEQUALITY
AND ECONOMIC SLAVERY 85

APPENDIX 157

Hitherto, every form of society has been based on the antagonism of
oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class,
certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at
least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of
serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the
petty bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed to
develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary,
instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and
deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He
becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than
population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the
bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society,
and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an
over-riding law. It is unfit to rule, because it is incompetent to
assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it
cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed
him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under
this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer
compatible with society.--Marx and Engels.

COMMUNISM AND CHRISTIANISM

ANALYZED AND CONTRASTED FROM THE MA