e an imaginary vault, and only a very small part of the world
sincerely worships him.

International socialism of the Marxian or Russian type, is for those who
starvingly live by working, the most uplifting thing in the world, and
for those who surfeitingly live by owning, it is the most depressing
thing in the world.

Wise people consider theories without losing too much, if any, sleep on
their account, but they study conditions and lie awake nights over them.

Millions of wise Americans have, in the past, been studying socialism as
a theory but, in the future, they will study it as a condition, in the
only way by which it can rightly and adequately be studied--the way of
reading its official documents, accredited periodicals and books. Of all
such, the most notable is the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.

This Manifesto is the Marxian gospel. I read two pages in it every day
as faithfully as ever I read a chapter in the Jesuine gospel, and with
much greater profit; for, whereas the gospel of Marx is exclusively
concerned with this terrestrial world, about which I know much and for
which I can do a little, the gospel of Jesus is as exclusively concerned
with a celestial world, about which I know nothing and for which I
cannot do the least. Here, as a sample of this gospel, I give half of
yesterday's reading and most of today's:

The immediate aim of the Communists (Socialists) is the same as
that of all the other proletarian parties; formation of the
proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy,
conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based
on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by
this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing
from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going
on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property
relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to
historical change consequent upon the change in historical
conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in
favor of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of
property generally, but the abolition of