Free Thought 1912/1

Text in Hungarian to translate into English

The unborn Jesus

The unborn Jesus. . . I hear two busy bands speaking in the wake of this sentence. He begins with the gentle ringing of Christmas bells and tells the story of the birth of one and the child Jesus, the manger and the three kings, but then he continues to scream priestly curses and end up in a big drum puff of curse against the godless weeds. His other instruments are the roar of sympathetic laughter that mocks naive belief in God, the great voice of arrogant contempt that revels in the god of miracles and sends his friendly greetings to the brave god-denier. But all the strings and winds of this concert understand equally: it is about the unborn Jesus, so he denies the deity of Christ.

The goddesses see a god, a god who has become a man in Christ, the anti-gods see a man, a man exalted as a god in Jesus on the wing of faith. But they both see that the story of the unborn Jesus can only be about the denial of the born Christ. They think I deny the deity of Christ, even though I deny the humanity of Jesus. Christ, the god: reality. Jesus, the man: fiction. Christ, the reality of God, is a reality living in the faith of millions of millennia. Jesus, man is only a creature of modern “liberal” theology. Christ, the god in human history, in the past of the human worldview, is a great flower of thought, a seedling of emotion, sprouted from the rocks of real reality, hard economic life, harsh class struggles.

Today, however, Christ, the god, is also dead and the news of his death is spreading dizzyingly fast all over the world. It wasn't the sound of the forest rumbling like the death of the great Pan for Kadmos, but the horn of the factories, the siren of ocean steamers, the rustle of electric turbines. Christ, the god, has suffered from doubt, at the cross of the sciences, Jesus, the homunculus, is now being born in the flask of liberal theologians.

Ever since the earth entered the planetary ranks of the sun and man has joined one of the chapters of zoology, it cannot be proclaimed that the earth was occupied by three hours of dense darkness at the death of Christ and no longer believe that gods can be born from heaven and the dead will be resurrected. . So theologians are now distilling Christ into Jesus, making God human. They exterminate all tangible lies and unlikely things from the Gospels, decipher the naive miracles from them, and construct a “historical” Jesus whose word is not paralyzed, the blind do not see, but who preaches a wise and profound philosophy, who founded religion and martyrdom faith. This is how the image of the gentle rabbin, the defiant proletarian, or the superior Übermensch is formed in their writings. They cannot save the great god, so they create the great man. The Jesus of Renan and Harnack is not the Christ of the Gospels, for the fine French skeptic and the neck-sober, sober German could not believe in the birth and fabulous youth of the divine child, conceived by a virgin, and through Joseph from the royal house of David to Jerusalem at the same time. irrational impossibilities of his intrusion. So not as a miracle, but with the great suggestive power of his person, they explain the enormous effect and world-success success of his agitation. And they do not realize that this idea that Jesus, the young rabbi alone, created Christianity, the world domination of Catholicism, is more miraculous than all the miracles of the gospel combined.

Yet before and after this turn of theology, theology-free historiography worked from Bruno Banner and David Strauss to present-day Kalthoff and Pfliderer and wreaked terrible destruction in the writings of early Christianity. There was no stone left in the life of Jesus. It has become certain that there are hardly any of the early Christian writings that the person whose name is concerned has written, that they are much later than their date, that they are formatted by additions and reworkings, and that those gospels do not come from Jesus' contemporaries. Even the oldest gospel originated at least half a century later than when Jesus' death was made. So who dares to say that even a single word of Jesus, a single sermon, is authentic, without shorthand, recorded fifty years after their narration.

Serious historiography found no evidence to support the Gospels of Jesus. Neither pagan, nor Jewish, nor Christian writings write a single word of historical authenticity about it. But he found data all over the sea that proves the Christ of the Gospels. The birth of Jesus is a naive and ignorant tale, every word of which has been proven to be a historical impossibility. The birth of Christ is one of the turning points in world history, the explanation of which is provided by the whole forest. Christianity, the Christian church and its great symbol: the birth of Christ required the great unification of three worlds. Just as English capitalism, the French Revolution, the great synthesis of German philosophy created the system of thought of socialism: by soldering together the proletarianism, class struggle, and developmental dialectics, so did the Jewish religion, Greek philosophy, and Christianity of Roman economic life. Jewish messianic faith, Greek ethics, Roman proletariat - these are the three pillars of the dome building of Christianity around the world. Pogány József.

The origin of Christianity

[3] Did Jesus live? It is a question of history that will surely be supported by old and new arguments from both sides for a long time to come, until it is decided to the right or left, which, however, does not really belong to understanding the origins of Christianity. It does not matter whether Christ founded Christianity or whether Christianity created Christ in His own image; it is indifferent whether a man held together the doctrines on which Christianity is based, or whether they developed slowly, unnoticed, without the Messiah, in collective thinking; it is certain that the latter case is also possible, just as, for example, revolutionary syndicalism has not found such a universal advertiser to whose name it would be attached. And in the latter case, a separate explanation is needed as to why and how he made such great significance among the many Messiahs, prophets, founders of the religion of Christ, how did his teachings become a movement, a religion, and then an institution, conquer Israel, Greece, and the world conqueror, Rome?

A more in-depth examination of the events of history, which, exploring the springs of social views, ideas, and movements, went deeper and deeper into the study of economic forces from the surface of ideas, also shed new light on the emergence of Christianity. Historical materialism also gave a huge impetus to research at this point. Christianity, as a mass ideology, cannot be an arbitrary invention of a man. Some elements of Christianity have already been found in the philosophical systems of Jewish and pagan writers, from which Christianity could only develop on appropriate soil. And the ground of ideas and movements is the social system, which again rests on economic conditions and, ultimately, on the mode of production. We need to know this ground if we want to know and understand Christianity in its original reality. thus we can then incorporate Christianity into the course of historical development, freeing it from all the mysticism and prejudice that makes its emergence curious.

The views of historical materialism are most clearly asserted by Kautsky in his work Der Ursprung des Christentums. The germ of Christianity came from Israel. In the time before the start of our era, Israel was in a serious and hopeless situation, both economically and politically. The returnees from Babylonian captivity could nowhere find a suitable place on the farm. The entire population became predominantly urban. Land recession declined, the proletariat increased above the ground, without being able to find suitable employment opportunities. The upper class competed with the alien conqueror in oppression and exploitation.

Several orders emerged in the proletariat that hoped from one means or another to change their sad situation. All the desperations of the Republican [4] helots turned against the foreign oppressor and, filled with revolutionary souls and nationalist ideas, awaited the Messiah, who would end Roman rule and restore the golden age of national rule. The Essenes sought a different way, on economic paths. They formed communities, associations in which they worked together on a communist basis. Of course, a corresponding ideology was also developed in which the guiding idea was equality and love. From these Esseneic associations, or only on the model, the first Christian villages were formed.

However, the area where Christianity developed into a great, mighty one compared to the other destroyed organizations, that is, the real homeland of Christianity was not Israel but Rome. The spread of Christian doctrines alone does not explain anything, only the economic and social system of Rome at that time.

The inhabitants of Rome were originally all equally free peasants. However, with the difference in ownership, class differences developed between them. Whoever acquired more property than he could cultivate with his own family had to look for foreign labor. However, according to the state of the art at the time, family work was the most productive form of farming, there was no shortage of land, and there were not many free peasants who would undertake to cultivate other land. So the labor had to be drawn into the family, forced to work, enslaved. thus, in addition to free peasants, the class of landlords and slaves developed.

The more iridescent the household developed into an exchange economy and the greater the momentum of industry in addition to farming, the greater the importance of slaves in economic life. First a large number of slaves were employed in the mines, later in all branches of industry. Production in this way was quite cheap. The slaves were supplied with food and raw materials by the owner's land, which had now grown into a latifundium. And slave material was abundantly provided by the ongoing and victorious wars.

However, the slave economy can only be extensive. Prerequisites are the abundance of land and slaves. As soon as the estate no longer produces enough to supply the slaves in nature, but has to buy the goods needed for their livelihood with money, as soon as, on the other hand, their numbers run out and so the goods rise, production becomes more expensive.

And this happened in the Roman Empire at a time when wars ceased to be successful and a multitude of prisoners of war were poured into Rome, and the fertility of the estate declined as a result of land-based robbery. Acquiring a free wage worker does not cost money, he only receives the amount needed to maintain his daily wage, while the purchase price of a slave is high; the free worker should not be spared, the slave should not be overworked, because with his destruction value is wasted. The internal, natural disadvantages of slave labor become no less noticeable. An exploited, unlawful slave is held in hatred for his master; if it can, it hurts him, he cannot be entrusted with costly work equipment, as a result of which all technical innovations become impossible, ignorant and lazy and he only works under the whiplash of supervisors.

While slave farming thus made itself impossible at some stage of development, on the other hand it led to the oppression and extermination of free peasants.

The peasant could not compete with the extensive slave labor. He was heavily burdened by the military, both in taxes and in military service. The wars, which meant a new slave consignment for the landlords, distracted the peasant from his field work. His destruction was inevitable: when he returned home from the war, he found his land uncultivated, he was forced to apply for a usury loan, he could rarely pay, and so it was easy to deprive him of his possessions. The usurer acquired latifundium, and the wealthy and undeserved peasantry exposed to his estate flocked to the city and formed the class of the ancient proletariat.

This proletariat was a whole special formation of the Austrian world. Kautsky strikingly contrasts the naive: “The whole of society today rests on the work of the modern proletariat. Only this work needs to be stopped and it is basically shaking. The anti-assembled proletariat did not do work, and even the work of the free peasant and the remnant of artisans was indispensable. It was not society that lived then from the proletariat, but the proletariat from society. It was completely unnecessary and could have disappeared without any loss to society. It would even have made society easier. The work of slaves was the foundation on which society rested. ”

This growing mass, made absolutist by lawlessness, landless by the great estate, the slave-factory forced out of industry, deprived not only of its wealth and earnings, but even of the possibility of earning it, this miserable and starving mass was fit for Christianity. to carry over and further develop its ideologies developed in the East, especially the messianic faith and the revolutionary spirit. The economic order and the economic turmoil could offer no hope for the improvement of his destiny, therefore he turned more to the supernatural, the idea of ​​the Savior. His organizations were not economic, like those of the Essenes, but rather ideological, reflecting their economic and social situation and desires. Renan’s analogy is very characteristic: if you want to picture yourself in ancient Christian villages, look at a socialist union. Just as the ideology of the landless class is still communism, so were the rich, against wealth, against the desire to live, proclaiming community, equality, love. Of course, ideological factors also differed in that the old proletariat was economically different from today's productive, self-conscious work.

In the ever-declining, depopulated empire, which had gone so far [6] that Roman citizens had escaped from the burdens of arbitrariness, taxes, and the military from troops to neighboring barbarian tribes, the revolutionary spirit of Christianity meant order and organization, which they longed for life. also frustrated and economically struggling owners. Perhaps the general economic downturn also made them more inclined to embrace the doctrines of the end of the world and of salvation. thus Christianity slowly spread among them as well, entering the upper classes and offices. In order to become an official religion, it was not necessary to deprive it of its revolutionary color and to make its teachings against wealth and the existing social order symbolic. The ruling class appropriated Christianity for itself, but at the same time deprived it of its original character. With the Milan edict, Christianity came to power, but revolutionary Christianity ceased to be a proletarian movement. Sándor Fazekas

Did Jesus Live?

Historical data provide no basis for anyone whose name is associated with the founding of the religion that has played the greatest role in history ever lived. The writers who lived at the time when Jesus traditionally founded the Christian religion, i.e. Josephus Flaüius, Philon Judaeus and Justus of Tiberias, Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, know nothing about the coming, miraculous life and even more miraculous death and resurrection of the Messiah.

Philon in Alexandria from the 20th year before the Christian year to the 54th year of their year. He writes about Jewish theology, but he does not know a single letter about the Messiah who came.

Tiberiasi Justus Kr. U. In his work of 100 years, he wrote much about the Jewish kings and the conditions of Galilee. His work was not left to us, but Bishop Photius of Constantinople, who had read his work, remarked in amazement that the lifeblood of David's seed knew nothing.

Pliny the Younger, who AD. He wrote his work around 112. He writes about Christians as a new and peculiar misconception prevalent in the province, but in the words of the German Catholic Encyclopedia, “the least can be understood is that persecuted Christians would have revered Christ, the Messiah, as a god”.

Tacitus already knows something about Jesus. "Annales" -ei XV. In chapter 44 of his book on the persecution of Christians in the Nero period, he recalls that Pontius Pilatus, the vicar of Tiberius, executed the founder of the Christian sect. He wrote his annales in 115-117, so at a time when Christianity was already widespread, when he could already hear the story from Christians.

The crown witness remains: Josephus Flavius. His "Antiquitatum iudaicarum libri XX." c. XVIII. in his book he writes, “A wise man named Jesus lived in this time, if we can call him a man at all. For he accomplished more and more unbelievable things, and was a teacher to those who loved the truth. In this way he gathered many Jews and Gentiles around him. He was the Christ. Although Pilate sentenced him to death at the urging of the nobles of our people, his old followers had not yet become unfaithful to him. Why on the third day he appeared to them alive again, as prophesied by the messengers of God, the prophets, and thousands of phenomena. And to this day live the people of the Christians, who took their name from him. ” Miraculously, however, he goes on to say: "At this time, even more plagues befell the Jews, and disgraceful things happened in Rome, in the temple of Isis." This sentence is not a logical consequence of the previous paragraph at all, but we will find the connection immediately if we omit the paragraph. Because before the paragraph it is about the cruel repression of a Jewish rebellion.

It becomes even more suspicious when we know that Origen, who lived between 184 and 254, complains that Josephus Flavius ​​knows nothing about Christ and that only Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, discovers this passage much later. It is the same Eusebius who saw with his own eyes, and even copied and translated, the letters of Jesus, a copy of which was later condemned by Pope Galesius as a forgery that severely compromised the church. (Because the church gave Eusebius the name “father of church history.”) And since the oldest manuscript of Josephus-Flavius ​​is from the 5th century, it is certain that this passage was forged by someone in post-Origen times, and in all likelihood it is “ father of church history ”.

These are the aspects that G. Tschirn, H.R. Francé and Friedriech Steudel warn us of when evaluating historical data.

Paul 14 knows nothing about the earthly form of Christ. He always has the name of Christ as a symbol, pictorial expression, or parable.

But no less important is the fact that Steudel warns us that the existence of the city of Nazareth dates back to IV. it cannot be detected at all before the 20th century. It is not mentioned by Josephus, or even the Talmud, who lists 60 Galilean locations, thus providing the complete geography of the district.

Internal contradictions and improbability also weaken faith in the historical person of Jesus. Jesus teaches in the temple at a time when the temple is not a place for teaching at all, but only a place for purely religious ceremonies. Despite the strict prohibition of mischra laws, the council sits in law on the largest Jewish holiday, and during the night the jury finds a whole bunch of witnesses to the impromptu sitting. An armed church guard arrests Jesus on Saturday night when Jews are strictly prohibited from wearing weapons. The Dutch Brandt and the Jewish theologian Joel [8] point to a series of such impossibilities, and Brandt concludes that the possibility that Jesus was actually summoned and formally condemned by Jesus is self-defeating. The story of the tax-bearer shows money bearing the image of Caesar, and it is already well-known that Caesar struck extra money without Caesar's image to spare the sensitivity of the Jews.

When Jesus was born, according to Matthew, Herod was still alive. Yet Herod died four years before Jesus was born according to the Church. According to Luke, he was born at a time when "the Emperor of August was commanded that all the earth should be baptized, 2. (This capitulation was first made in Syria by Reverend Zirene.") This happened seven years before Jesus' accepted birth.

So how can the legend of Jesus be explained? The backbone of the legend is provided by the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the coming of the Messiah. Messiah will be of the tribe of David (Jeremiah XXIII.5.6) and will therefore undoubtedly be born in the city of David's tribe, Bethlehem (Mich. V. 2). .) a preacher will prepare his way (Ezsaiah XL. 3) "your king who rides on a donkey" (Zechariah IX. 9), is poor and sits on a donkey, and his successor is called Jesus (Moses V. 31: 7).

Add to that the rest of the legend in the Greeks and Romans, which is already well known in the Buddha Legend, the emergence of one of the most beautiful legends of humanity is clear.

But it is also clear that we either accept the existence of Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer, or we must drop the teaching that Jesus was not alive.

The Gospels do not provide a basis for Renan's 50 percent agreement. Miklós Timár.

Did Christ establish a church?

The Church has stood up to the destructive judgments of biblical criticism. He endured that David Friedrich Strauss called the Gospels religious rhetoric. He endured the Reform Catholics and took them to Canossa as well, the church endures its own immorality: the church can endure everything. Did you endure it and why? We are always in a good mood if Ottokár Prohászka answers for us:
- For someone became a Christian not by professing to teach Jesus, the rabbi's offspring, but by admitting himself into the Christian community, professing what they teach, submitting himself in religious matters to what the heads of these communities are good and true spoken.

Therefore. We can tell them what we want. We can resurrect Jesus himself and be summoned as a crown witness. Reason will be denied as Jesus has been denied for a millennium by honoring in him a pattern of tolerance for meekness and humility, misery, as opposed to the true Jesus we know from the gospel, who was revolutionary and above all: anti-priesthood.

The church is an organization of power. This is not what we say, but Ottokár Prohászka. Because it is not what the scripture says that happens, but what the bishops say. It does not do what the writing prescribes, but what the community establishes. It is not writing that dissolves the shackles and scruples of conscience, but community. You will ask: but where is Jesus then? We ask that too. Reform Catholics also asked this. Bible commentators also asked this, and thinking “believers” asked. This is what people will ask forever, whenever they are upset, amazed, and think about the things of the Church [12]: where is Jesus?

And what is the Church responsible for? He takes the scripture and quotes from the gospel because Matthew says, "For somewhere two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." And Jesus will always be there because they always gather in his name. As long as the church becomes a mighty, strong organization, as long as it has wealth, as long as the vast majority of humanity has little free time, without interruption and continuity, it will be the case that Jesus will always be there and they will always gather in his name. For Frémont says, "The gospels are not the foundation of the church, but the church is the foundation of the gospel."

The Church is so vast that it can embrace all the results of biblical criticism and arrange a new edition of the books of David Friedrich Strauss, Kalthoff, Schell, Loisy, and other reformers. He could make them cheap cheap editions, sell or distribute them in his churches, advertise these indexed books while preaching, all this would not hurt him, the Church would still triumphantly with the one eternal and unchanging tactic: “to protect all the mighty influence ’.

The Church, in its degrading supremacy of all modern culture, imposes on every child born today that: the Savior, in order to restore communion with God to human representation of his divine aspirations, created the visible Church, headed by the Pope of Rome.

Reform Catholicism fell silent. He was right. What to do with the church in which the Gentile Constantine the Great, who led the Council of Nicea, who needed a state religion in which he himself did not believe that all present were clearly declaring the deity of Christ, silenced 2,000 bishops except 300 by force. Then the majority doubted the deity of Christ, today bishops and priests all stand on the teachings of the Church. What would the Reform Catholic minority, who taught the church to be shattered by foody people, be worth it?

So it is not worth and cannot be argued with the Church. But because the question is raised and because we in Hungary can still raise such a question, we answer, not in the belief that we are dealing a sensitive blow to the Church with it, but we answer as we would respond to someone who e.g. it would call into question the principle of conservation of energy. He fell victim to the reactionaries of the age of Jesus, to the scribes and Pharisees who blackmailed the teachings of Moses for their own benefit. His head became uncertain when he saw the wealth of the Jewish priesthood, its busy, lucrative jobs threatened by the open speeches of Jesus. The Jewish clergy saw it too darkly and judged it. Jesus and his disciples lived in the belief that the end of the world would soon come and the last [14] judgment would follow. “Do not be diligent about tomorrow and take the example of the heavenly fighters who are more vile than man and yet the Lord sustains them,” Jesus said. We must turn away from the Jews who seek worldly advantage. The world will perish, the only good thing you can do is, by practicing virtues, make you worthy of the kingdom of God. Ede Hartmann, in his critique of Christianity, says: Jesus and his disciples were similar to the impatient people gathering in the waiting room. They waited for the train to depart, which takes them to pleasures incomparable to nothing. They didn't care about anything that was happening outside the waiting room. Their best effort was not to be late for the train. If this earthly life is only a preparation for a great happiness, then it is only right to act on what we can hope for happiness. thus understandable Christian communism was done by the apostle Peter.

And does the idea of ​​a church founded forever fit with the proclamation of contempt for earthly life? Isn't it.

Loisy says in L'évangile et l'église:

Food came from people who filled with the teachings of the gospel, which in their former form were impossible to keep. And after the people waited in vain for the coming of the kingdom of the promised god, they organized the church to satisfy the weary excitement and anticipation of the crowd.

The stubborn belief in the doomsday mood and the destruction of the earth, the existence of this belief is a historical reality. It is in this reality that the theorem of the founding of the Church of Christ fails. Béla Kőhalmi.

Christmas conversation

Fourteen little children aged 5-6 complete the first elementary class, growing up together in physical and mental freedom. It’s been two months since they’re studying together and now that they’re saying goodbye to celebrating the Feast of Love, they’re ending their previous “speech and intellect practices” with this conversation. The conversation was recorded by a shorthand writer and will be published in its original form. The aunt, 7 little boys and 7 little girls. Aunt: Kids, do you know what a holiday it will be soon? The kids: Christmas !! It's Christmas, we know! Aunt: Christmas is a big holiday and there will be no school for nine days, you can stay home for nine days. (Children are visibly saddened, silence.) So why are you sad, they loved going to school like that? The kids: Yeah, it's really good to go to school! - If there is no school, that's bad! I will also do school at home. I'll take something home and I'm doing school! - We all do school at home! - We will take everything home! - What should I take home ?! (Great noise.) Aunt: Do you all want to do school separately? Not better together? Then you wouldn't even see each other. Don't you love each other? Huge shout: But we love each other very much! I do too I like! - I like it too! Aunt: Kids, don't make as much noise as the wild. That way we can't talk. Be quiet. (Applaud with his hands.) No one should move. (Great silence for a minute, then Misi blows her nose in a distant voice.) Big laughter, buzz. A little girl: Misi is a prehistoric man! All of them: caveman, caveman!

1. As we imagine the school of the future, it was put together to create an institution some free-thinking parents and teachers. Parents who care about their children their developing sense is protected from the disturbances and spiritual conflicts that it is a necessary corollary of religious teaching and teachers who take pleasure in it teach children free from the hectic formalities of formal schools. The organization, which they have formed is not a school, does not pass an examination, does not give a certificate, is satisfied by teaching and educating. We welcome this courageous experiment, which is the “morale laique ”is the first stop on our journey and we are happy to take this opportunity to to present our readers with a snapshot of the work going on there. This the little conversation is interesting to us in many ways, but now that one the replacement of the holiday ideology is topical, we consider it particularly noteworthy for we see in it a living rebuttal to the very widespread concern that abandoning upbringing deprives children of their festive moods and that without them the social will become gray and unenjoyable for the child teaching duties. We will drop our readers as soon as possible from another point of view, this “par excellence” free-thinking institution. The ed.
Aunt: Kids, don't laugh. You know that prehistoric man he had a very bad thing. How did the prehistoric man live?
The kids: Wrong, quite different! Cave! Cold weather!
Without clothes! The dark! The animals have come! Because not for them it was also Christmas. They didn’t even have a birthday and Christmas they didn't get anything! There were no gifts! In no country There was nothing! There was no tram! There was no phone! Aunt: Yes, the prehistoric people lived very badly. Like that animals. They were almost animals because it took a very long time, while the ugly, dirty monkey became human. They hid all day in the woods, they were very afraid of animals and of each other because they did not live together and did not love each other, but always hurt them each other. The kids: We don’t hurt each other! We love each other. I didn't hurt anyone! I love everyone the best! Aunt: You have such a good thing because you love me each other and because your parents love you too. When it is people began to love their children, looking for caves for them and they hid them from the bad weather and the bad animals and protected them them against everything. It was the first pleasant and useful thing they invented and this out of love for their children invented. Imagine what Christmas was like for prehistoric people.

In winter, in the cold, in the woods, where it was already dark by 4 p.m.

Kids: Christmas is the shortest day! Not true. It's on the 21st the shortest day! Christmas is also the shortest day!
Aunt: How awful this shortest day could have been among prehistoric people. Why do you think it was so awful?
The kids: Because they didn't have a lamp! They didn't have a stove! No they had a hot dinner!
One little girl: Because it was dark early and then people they thought they needed to sleep now, but the animals were not they were sleepy and went there in the dark and ate them.
Misi: Such big animals came. (She gets up on a small chair and shows with his hands, how big they were.) People had the worst, for the animals were the best, for they could be best treated in the dark the people.
Aunt: Is it okay for you when it's dark? If it's cold?
The kids: No problem, because we have a lamp, we have a stove, we have kitchen. And we have a fire! The prehistoric man had no fire!
The aunt: Who invented the fire?
The kids: The people! When they lived together and began to love the children! Their brothers! Their friends! All kinds of invented! Aunt: Did the prehistoric people live together?
The children: The prehistoric people did not live together! When they came to animals and they shouted, no one came to help.
The aunt: Well they were able to gather in that wooded, swampy in the countryside?

[…]

The kids: We're still working together! Let's think together! We give you a gift at Christmas! If I'm big, I'll figure it out something! If I'm big, there will be something new. If I do! If you can! (Shouting.) Aunt: Now that you know what a bad thing the caveman used to do in the woods at Christmas, what does the Christmas tree remind you of? Children: To the forest! Aunt: And the many bright candles on it? Children: On fire! To the lamp! They are glad that we have fire and nice, good warmth and everything and the cavemen had nothing. Aunt: Why do you get presents? Kids: Because we're good! Aunt: You get a gift because it's a celebration of love today and because your parents love you. How do you show that you love your parents too? The kids: Let's kiss! No, but that we are good and sleep and do our best. Aunt: Yes, yes, be good. Now go home and tell your parents everything you heard today. Talk to them about everything, because the good kid will tell his parents everything. Kids: We'll talk about everything! Mom, Dad! Aunt Manczi! With grandma! With the maid! With Grandpa! Laughter, roaring, laughing. They leave after saying goodbye. He moderated the conversation and provided the transcript notes.

Strickerné Pólanyi Laura dr.

Church property in Hungary

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The property in the hands of the Catholic Church is the property of the Hungarian state according to Hungarian law.

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Social Issues

Christian socialism

[27] In the last decades since socialism began its conquest in cultural states, a new party has emerged in the Catholic states of Europe: the Christian Socialist Party.

The party was headed everywhere by members of the ruling class and still stands today; catholic magnates, bishops, archbishops. However, the members of the party are lined up from a wide variety of social classes.

In addition to Catholic magnates, there we also find the peasantry, the mass of agricultural workers, small masters, retailers, and industrial workers.

The party’s program is to unite two large and in many respects opposing worldviews, the Christian and the socialist worldview. The Christian worldview, although in its original, Christian form, was the religion of the poor and preached communism, was now quite a protector of the existing social order. The protection of private property is proclaimed by two points in the Ten Commandments: do not steal or trace your neighbor’s property. The Christian worldview commands respect for lords, humility, passive reassurance in poor destiny. It promises too worldly happiness to those who suffer on this earth.

Socialism is just the opposite. He considers private property to be unnecessary and harmful in today’s development of society. It does not preach compassion and reassurance, but truth and struggle. It seeks to overthrow the whole of today’s society; not in the afterlife, but here on earth he wants to create for humanity the external conditions of happiness, culture, prosperity, peaceful livelihood.

How can two such opposing worldviews be connected? Socialism and Christianity have one thing in common: they are a critique of today’s capitalist society.

[28] The capitalist social order with its ruthless exploitation, the mass sinking of small people into the proletariat, the accumulation of wealth in the hands of some people of great wealth, the industrial work of women and children, the feverish economic life created by capitalism are all contrary to medieval economic conditions. with Christian ideology. The ideal of Christianity is the gracious landlord who was a nobleman in safety while keeping it, he benevolently descends among his peasants, listens to their troubles, and helps them; the humble peasant who stands in front of his master, taking off his hat and kissing his hand; the sober little master who sings in the choir on Sundays, eats and works with his lads. But where can the modern great man, who employs many thousands of workers, be placed in this world order; the stockbroker, the railway contractor, the labor agitator; hundreds of thousands of industrial workers tossed back and forth without a home and a normal lifestyle, miserable women and school children doomed to factory work.

In the critique of the capitalist social order, the two otherwise so opposing worldviews, Christianity and socialism, met. The first Christian socialists declared themselves socialists because, like the real socialists, they wanted to eliminate the social troubles caused by capitalism. The first Christian Socialists, Le Play, Schaffte, Vogelsang, etc. the abuses of capitalism have been sharply criticized; The critique of Le Play and Vogelsang can be embraced by any socialist.

Beyond criticism, however, the community between socialism and Christian socialism disappeared.

Socialism based on historical materialism saw capitalism as a necessary stage in the development of mankind. Whatever troubles the poor people cause for classes, it ultimately benefits humanity because it incredibly enhances productivity and thus prepares for communist production and, with it, social society. The troubles of capitalist society, according to socialism, are necessary concomitants of capitalism: it is not the heartlessness and evil of individual capitalists, but capitalist society itself that causes the exploitation of labor and all the troubles of today’s social order.

Christian socialism, on the other hand, sees capitalism as an accidental evil, something that could be done back, which will pass if people return to the Christian worldview. In its original form, Christian socialism is completely reactionary in nature, seeking to restore the old feudal, medieval world. This is the point that explains the Christian-socialist nature of the Catholic lords. It hurts to the magnates that the big manufacturers and bankers are richer and more powerful than they are; that the manufacturing industry deprives them of labor, that their social prestige and political weight diminish in proportion to the rise of the great bourgeoisie. This brings them together with the workers in the camp of Christian Socialism.

[29] “In this way, feudal socialism, half-mourning, half-mocking, half-echoing from the past, half-threatening the future, found the bourgeoisie in its heart with its bitter, witty-minded judgment, comedic at all times with its perfect inability to understand modern history .

The proletarian beggar taris was waved as a flag in their hands to gather the people around them. However, as soon as he followed them, he immediately saw the obsolete coat of arms of allegiance on their backs and left them with a loud and disrespectful laugh at the wooden picture. ”

These remarkably characteristic lines are found in Marx’s communist proclamation of “feudal socialism,” as this variety of socialism was called at the time.

Where, however, Christian Socialism, as a political party, was enslaved to greater power, not as a party of lords, but as a party of little men, craftsmen, retailers, and peasants.

Capitalism has wreaked havoc among independent existences. Whole industries and crafts were destroyed; replaced by factory products from large industry. And this destruction was slow, the dying was long lasting. Until the rupture of the nails, the little masters defended themselves against the cheap goods of capitalism: working together day and night and working their bachelors, apprentices, and children to somehow stop the competition.

Similarly, the peasantry suffered from the expansion of capitalism. With the liberation of serfdom, the spread of commodity production, and the indebtedness associated with modern credit relations, the situation of the peasantry worsened. Usury, in particular, played a part in the exploitation of the peasantry. The petty bourgeois and peasant masses oppressed by capitalism formed the main contingent of Christian Socialist parties.

There are a large number of Jews among usury knives as well as manufacturers; it was therefore easy to criticize capitalism with anti-Semitism and connected with the glorification of Christianity. In this way the petty-bourgeois anti-Semitic Christian Socialist Party was formed, the purest type of which was the Christian Socialist Party of Vienna under Lueger.

“Above this, socialism sharply discussed the contradictions of modern production conditions. He revealed the colorful embellishments of national economists. It has irrefutably demonstrated the devastating effects of machinery and the division of labor, the concentration of capital and land, overproduction, crises, the necessary fall of the peasant and the peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the headlessness of production, the misgivings of the distribution of wealth, death struggle, old morals, old marital status, destruction of old nationalities.

According to its positive content, this socialism either wants to restore the old relations of production and transport and with it the old property relations and the old society, or it wants to force the modern production and transport relations within the limits of the old property relations, among the property relations that it had to separate. In both cases, it is both reactionary and utopian.”

[30] Marx's characterization is also in every respect petty-bourgeois Christian socialism, which is reactionary because it seeks to restore a past social order and is utopian because it seeks to change the way people think rather than developing economic forces.

The contradiction that is inherent in Christian-Socialism, the reconciliation of two contradictory worldviews, Christianity and Socialism, is, of course, the failure of the whole political direction. This is all the more so because most leaders now see clearly the impossibility of Christian-Socialism's program. While the founders were, at least individually, honorable, honest people who truly believed that the political program they were promoting would benefit the populations oppressed by capitalism, today's Christian-socialist advertisers are deliberately false.

Christian Socialism has evolved into a means of war for the ruling class: Christian Socialism is an ideology suppressed by the ruling class on oppressed classes, capable of making their struggle for liberation more difficult. Christian Socialism has served ministry of clericalism, the Catholic Church, landowners and big capitalists. Criticism of capitalism is getting weaker and weaker, whipping only the "outgrows" of the capitalist order. It targets Jewish capitalists in particular. From Christian-Socialism to Socialism, to Christianity only, to all social systems a peacefully assertive Christianity that sanctioned all existing exploitation remained.

Internal contradiction thus causes the fall of Christian Socialism. The more it transforms into an ideology favorable to the ruling classes, the more it seeks to serve the interests of the ruling classes, the Catholic Church, the landlords and the bourgeois, the more it loses credibility with the masses. As Enlightenment progresses, it will become increasingly difficult for the masses to support the policies of foreign classes through religious sentiment. Christian Socialism is now confined to believers in the most stubborn, uneducated populations. With the advancement of the Enlightenment, Christian Socialism as an ideology as a program completely loses its attractiveness and with it the Christian-Socialist Party disappears.

The development of Christian social unions is very interesting in this regard. Initially, these organizations preached the harmony of workers and employers and overstretched the strikes. But as they got stronger and evolved, real interest prevailed over false ideology. Trade unions based in Germany on the Christian social basis are striking nowadays, practicing just as much as class struggle as the Social Democratic unions. A similar fate awaits all Christian Socialist parties; either stick to its original program, then its believers will abandon it, or cling to its followers, it will be forced to give up its original program.

[31] To some degree of social development, the Christian-social movement is grounded everywhere: at a stage when individual ethnic classes are dissatisfied but do not see the causes of their plight and the way out. It is at this point that Hungary is now. Therefore, it is expected that there will be a Christian-social movement in Hungary in the near future, which, however, will have the same fate as similar movements abroad in a few decades.
Jenő Varga.

[…]

Movements

[…]

Most of its operation in november-december falls on seminars. At the free-thinking seminar, Jenő Lóránt gave a lecture on the worldview of the free-thinking, and at the end of this seminar, the circle organized a discussion on the free-thinking world [60] movement. The discussion was attended by dr. Kende Zsigmond, dr. Károly Pólányi, László Rubin and dr. Hugó Székely s partly explained the theory of the movement and partly discussed its practical issues, especially the issue of secularization and non-denominationalism.

The natural philosophy seminar of the disease dr. Led by Pál Dienes and Marx's seminar dr. He held meetings every week under the leadership of Sándor Varjas.

The Faculty of Medicine organized a seminar on Freud's psychoanalysis, which was conducted by dr. Sándor Ferenczi held it every Monday. In the same department dr. Ede Surányi spoke about anaphylaxis and Mihály Pólányi spoke about colloid chemistry in a one-hour seminar.

In the legal department dr. Solomon Beck began a seminar on the issue of strikes. In the first hour, the significance of the strike for the national economy was discussed, and in January, the private and criminal aspects of it will continue. In the technical department, Mór Hoor-Tempis, a university professor, gave a lecture.

The circle gave two lectures from its series of lectures on the issue of women in the Great Hall of the old House of Representatives. The first was done by Dr. Stricker. Laura Pólányi held: The social and economic situation of women, the second by dr. Zoltán Rónai: The development of the family.

On 13 November, at the initiative of the Galileo Circle, a student assembly on library relations in Budapest also met in the Great Hall of the old House of Representatives, which urged the expansion of libraries and the necessary reforms.

The last major lecture of the semester was given by dr. It was held on December 17 by Péter Ágoston under the title Militarism and War.

The members of the circle gave lectures in several trade unions and organized workers' mothers.

In order to fill the vacancies, an extraordinary general meeting was convened on 10 December, at which the staff of the Galilee Circle was supplemented as follows: President: László Rubin, Secretary General: dr. Miklós Gines, first secretary: László Scheff-Dabis, chief treasurer: Alfréd Weisz, housewife: Kálmán Bittera.

The circle held member meetings on December 5 and 18 to discuss rural agitation and the circle’s next program.

Notice to the Publications Office.
The first year of our paper ended with the November 7th issue. The table of contents has been compiled in this sense. We provide this double number to our subscribers as a replacement for the December number, but we only include one number in the subscription fee.

Issue Informations

Src: http://mtdaportal.extra.hu/szabadgondolat/1912/1912_01.pdf
Original Publication: Szabadgondolat, 2.1, January 1912
Other Languages:

Lge	Name
DE
FR	Libre Pensée 1911/7
ES	El Pensamiento Libre 1912/1