What is anarchism.(Alexander Berkman) NOT FINISHED

Chapter 9: Can the Church Help You?

What's to be done?

How to abolish poverty, oppression, and tyranny? How eliminate evil and injustice, weed out corruption, put an end to crime and murder?

How to do away with wage slavery?

How to secure liberty and well-being, joy and sunshine for every one?

'Turn to God,' commands the church; 'only a Christian life can save the world.'

'Let us pass a new law,' says the reformer; 'man must be compelled to be good"

'Vote for me!' says the politician; 'I'll look after your interests.'

'The Trade Union,' advises your labor friend; 'that's your hope.'

'Only Socialism can abolish capitalism and do away with wage slavery,' insists the Socialist.

'I'm a Bolshevik,' announces another; 'only the dictatorship of the proletariat will free the workers.'

'We'll remain slaves as long as we have rulers and masters,' says the Anarchist; 'only liberty can make us free.'

The Protectionist and the Free Trader, the Single Taxer and the: Fabian, the Tolstoyan and the Mutualist, and a score of other social physicians all prescribe their particular medicine to cure the ills of society, and you wonder who is right and what the true solution might be.

You cannot make any greater mistake than to accept blindly this or that advice. You are sure to go wrong.

Only your own reason and experience can decide where the right road lies. Examine the various proposals and determine with your own common sense which is the most reasonable and practical. Only then will you know what is best for yourself, for the worker, and for mankind.

So let us look into the different plans.

Can the church help you?

Maybe you are a Christian, or a member of some other religion -Jew, Mormon, Mohammedan, Buddhist, or what not.

It makes no difference. A man should be free to believe whatever he pleases. The point is not what your religious faith is, but whether religion can abolish the evils we suffer from.

As I said before, we have only one life to live on this earth, and we want to make the best of it. What will happen to us after we are dead we don't know. The chances are we'll never know, and so it's no use bothering about it.

The question here is of life, not of death. It is the living we are concerned with; with you and me and others like ourselves. Can the world be made a better place for us to live in? That's what we want to know. Can religion do it?

Christianity is about 2,000 years old. Has it abolished any evil? Has it done away with crime and murder, has it delivered us from poverty and misery, from despotism and tyranny?

You know that it has not. You know that the Christian Church, like all other churches, has always been on the side of the masters, against the people. More: the church has caused worse strife and bloodshed than all the wars of kings and kaisers. Religion has divided mankind into opposing beliefs, and the most bloody wars have been fought on account of religious differences. The church has persecuted people for their opinions, imprisoned and killed them. The Catholic Inquisition terrorized the whole world, tortured so-called heretics, and burned them alive. Other churches did the same when they had the power. They always sought to enslave and exploit the people, to keep them in ignorance and darkness. They condemned every effort of man to develop his mind, to advance, to improve his condition. They damned science, and silenced the men who thirsted for knowledge. Till this very day institutionalized religion is the Judas of its alleged Savior. It approves of murder and war, of wage slavery and capitalistic robbery, and always stands for the 'law and order' which crucified the Nazarene.