A WAIF AND ITS ADOPTION 



conclusions of the socialist philosophy. For 

 these conclusions reach far beyond the present 

 and future requirements of party activity. But 

 this cannot prevent us from making use of our 

 right of free speech within and without the party 

 for the mutual education of ourselves and others 

 by means of free discussion of vitally human 

 problems. On the contrary, it is one of our 

 greatest duties to make use of this right and 

 guard it against reactionary attempts to stifle the 

 free word in the interest of some " sacred " hal- 

 lucination. 



Materialist monism is not " atheism." The 

 atheist is distinctly a product of class rule and 

 will die out with bourgeois culture. Atheism 

 is simply mental anarchy, a reflex of the indus- 

 trial and political anarchy in the " spiritual " 

 world. It is the bare negation of supernatural 

 gods, without any recognition of the construc- 

 tive tendencies of evolution, and its historical 

 place is in the museum of antiquities by the side 

 of the mechanical materialism of the i8th and 

 1 9th centuries, where the Christian theologies 

 will in due time also find a quiet resting place. 

 The fact that materialist monism has no god does 

 not make it identical with atheism any more than 

 the fact that Christianity believes in a supernat- 



173 



