istory has had its determining character from the
tools which brought it into being.

Supernaturalism has no place in the observations, investigations or
experimentations which are necessary to the invention, construction and
operation of a great machine and, hence, the machines have banished the
gods from the roof of the earth and the devils from its cellar, leaving
it to us to make of it what we please, a heaven or a hell without
reference to them. In his brilliant work entitled "Social and
Philosophical Studies", translated by Charles H. Kerr, Paul Lafargue
writes:

The labour of the mechanical factory puts the wage-worker in touch
with terrible natural forces unknown to the peasant, but instead of
being mastered by them he controls them. The gigantic mechanism of
iron and steel which fills the factory, which makes him move like
an automaton, which sometimes clutches him, bruises him, mutilates
him, does not engender in him a superstitious terror as the thunder
does in the peasant, but leaves him unmoved, for he knows that the
limbs of the mechanical monster were fashioned and mounted by his
comrades, and that he has but to push a lever to set it in motion
or stop it. The machine, in spite of its miraculous power and
productiveness, has no mystery for him. The labourer in the
electrical works, who has but to turn a crank on a dial to send
miles of motive power to tramways, or light the lamps of a city,
has but to say, like the God of Genesis, "let there be light," and
there is light. Never sorcery more fantastic was imagined, yet for
him this sorcery is a simple and natural thing. He would be greatly
surprised if one were to come and tell him that a certain god
might, if he chose, stop the machines and extinguish the lights
when the electricity had been turned on; he would reply that this
anarchistic god would be simply a misplaced gearing or a broken
wire, and that it would be easy for him to seek and find this
disturbing god. The practice of the modern factory teaches
scientific determinism to the wage-worker, without it being
necessary for him to pass through the theoretic study of the
sciences.

Earth must be a hell as long as we allow the capitalist system to
continue on it and to enslave the vast majority of its inhabitants.
Marxian socialism will ring out the old era with its hell of