The first Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, 
translated by Bakunin, was published early in the sixties by the 
printing office of the Kolokol.**' At that time the West could see in 
it (the Russian edition of the Manifesto) only a literary curiosity. 
Such a view would be impossible today. 

What a limited field the proletarian movement still occupied at 
that time (December 1847) is most clearly shown by the last section 
of the Manifesto: the position of the Communists in relation to the 
different opposition parties in the various countries.* Russia and 
the United States of all places are missing here. It was the time 
when Russia constituted the last great reserve of all European 
reaction, when the United States absorbed the surplus proletarian 
forces of Europe through emigration. Both countries supplied 
Europe with raw materials and were at the same time markets for 
its industrial products. At that time both were, therefore, in one 
way or another, pillars of the existing European order. 

How very different today! It was precisely European immigra- 
tion that enabled North America to attain gigantic agricultural 
production, competition from which is shaking the very founda- 
tions of European landed property—large and small. Moreover, it 
enabled the United States to exploit its tremendous industrial 
resources with an energy and on a scale that must shortly break 
the prevailing industrial monopoly of Western Europe, and 
especially of England. Both circumstances react in revolutionary 
manner upon America itself. Step by step the smaller and middle 
landownership of the farmers, the basis of the whole political 

constitution, is succumbing to the competition of giant farms; 
simultaneously, a numerous proletariat and a fabulous concentration 
of capital are developing for the first time in the industrial regions. 

And now Russia! During the Revolution of 1848-49, not only 
the European princes, but the European bourgeois as well, found 
their only salvation from the proletariat, which was just beginning 
to awaken, in Russian intervention. The Tsar* was proclaimed the 
chief of European reaction. Today he” is a prisoner of war of the 
revolution, in Gatchina,*’ and Russia forms the vanguard of 
revolutionary action in Europe. 

The Communist Manifesto had as its object the proclamation of 
the inevitably impending dissolution of modern bourgeois proper- 
ty. But in Russia we find, face to face with the rapidly developing 
capitalist swindle and bourgeois landed property, which is just 
beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by 
the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, a 
form of primeval common ownership of land, even if greatly 
undermined, pass directly to the higher form of communist common 
ownership? Or must it, conversely, first pass through the same 
process of dissolution as constitutes the historical development of the 
West? 

The only answer possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution 
becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that 
the two complement each other, the present Russian common 
ownership of land may serve as the starting point for communist 
development. 

Karl Marx, Frederick Engels 
London, January 21, 1882 

Frederick Engels 

BRUNO BAUER AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY * 

On April 13 in Berlin a man died who once played a role as a 
philosopher and a theologian but was hardly heard of for years, 
only attracting the attention of the public from time to time as a 
“literary eccentric”. Official theologians, including Renan, plagia- 
rised him and therefore maintained a silence of death about him. 
And yet he was worth more than them all and achieved more than 
any of them on an issue which interests us socialists too: on the 
issue of the historical origin of Christianity. 

Let us take his death as an occasion to give a brief account of 
the present position on this question and Bauer’s contribution to 
its solution. 

The view that dominated from the free-thinkers of the Middle 
Ages to the Enlighteners of the eighteenth century, the latter 
included, that all religions, and therefore Christianity too, were 
the work of deceivers, was no longer sufficient once Hegel had set 
philosophy the task of showing a rational development in world 
history." 

It is obvious that if naturally arising religions, like the fetish 
worship of the Negroes or the common primitive religion of the 
Aryans,“ come into being without deception playing any part, 
deceit by the priests very soon becomes inevitable in their further 
development. But in spite of all the sincere fanaticism, artificial 
religions cannot even at their foundation do without deception 
and the falsification of history. Christianity, too, has pretty 
achievements to boast of in this respect from the very beginning, 

as Bauer showed in his criticism of the New Testament.’ But that 
only affirms a general phenomenon and does not explain the 
particular case in question. 

A religion that brought the Roman world empire into subjection 
and dominated by far the larger part of civilised humanity for 
1,800 years cannot be disposed of merely by declaring it to be 
nonsense gleaned together by deceivers. One cannot dispose of it 
before one succeeds in explaining its origin and its development 
from the historical conditions under which it arose and reached its 
dominating position. This applies especially to Christianity. The 
question to be solved, then, is how it came about that the masses in 
the Roman Empire preferred this nonsense—which was preached, 
into the bargain, by slaves and oppressed—to all other religions so 
that the ambitious Constantine finally saw in the adoption of this 
religion of nonsense the best means of exalting himself to the 
position of autocrat of the Roman world.*” 

Bruno Bauer contributed far more to answering this question 
than anybody else. No matter how much even the half-believing 
theologians of the period of reaction may have resisted it since 
1849, he irrefutably proved the chronological order of the Gospels 
and their mutual interdependence, shown by Wilke from the 
purely linguistic standpoint,” by the very contents of the Gospels 
themselves. He exposed the utter lack of scientific spirit of Strauss’ 
vague myth theory according to which anybody can consider 
historical as much as he likes in the Gospel narrations. And if 
almost nothing from the whole content of the Gospels turns out to 
be historically provable—so that even the historical existence of a 
Jesus Christ can be questioned—Bauer has thereby only cleared 
the ground for the solution of the question: what is the origin of 
the ideas and thoughts that have been woven together into a sort 

of system in Christianity, and how did they come to dominate the 
world? 

Bauer studied this question until his death. His research reached 
its culminating point in the conclusion that the Alexandrian Jew 
Philo, who was still living about A.D. 40 but was already very old, 
was the real father of Christianity, and that the Roman stoic 
Seneca was, so to speak, its uncle.* The numerous writings 
attributed to Philo” which have been passed down to us do indeed 
originate in a fusion of allegorically and rationalistically conceived 
Jewish traditions with Greek, particularly stoic, philosophy.**° This 
conciliation of Occidental and Oriental outlooks already contains 
all the essentially Christian ideas: the innate sinfulness of man, the 
Logos, the Word, which is with God and is God and which becomes 
the mediator between God and Man; atonement, not by sacrifices 
of animals, but by bringing one’s own heart to God, and finally the 
essential feature that the new religious philosophy reverses the 
previous world order, seeks its disciples among the poor, the 
miserable, the slaves and the rejected and despises the rich, the 
powerful and the privileged, whence the precept to despise all 
worldly pleasures and to mortify the flesh. 

On the other hand, Augustus saw to it in his time that not only 
the God-man, but also the so-called immaculate conception became 
formulas imposed by the empire. He not only had Caesar and 
himself worshipped as gods, he also had it spread that he, 
Augustus Caesar Divus, the Divine, was not the son of a human 
father but that his mother had conceived him of the god Apollo. 
But was not that god Apollo perhaps a relation of the one sung 
by Heinrich Heine? **’ 

As we see, we need only the keystone and we have the whole of 
Christianity in its basic features: the incarnation of the Logos 
become man in a definite person and his sacrifice on the cross for 
the redemption of sinful mankind. 

Truly reliable sources leave us uncertain as to how this keystone 
was historically introduced into the Stoic-Philonic doctrines. But 
this much is certain: it was not introduced by philosophers, either 
Philo’s disciples or stoics. Religions are founded by people who 
feel a need for religion themselves and have a feeling for the 
religious needs of the masses, and as a rule this is not the case 
with philosophical schools. On the contrary we find that in times 
of general decay—now, for instance—philosophy and religious 

dogmatism are shallowly and universally spread in a vulgarised 
form. While classical Greek philosophy in its last forms— 
particularly in the Epicurean school**—led to atheistic material- 
ism, Greek vulgar philosophy led to the doctrine of a one and only 
God and of the immortality of the human soul. Likewise Judaism, 
rationally vulgarised in mixture and intercourse with aliens and 
half-Jews, came to neglect the ritual and transform the formerly 
exclusively Jewish national god, Jahveh,* into the one true God, 
the creator of heaven and earth, and adopt the idea of the 
immortality of the soul which was alien to early Judaism. Thus 
monotheistic vulgar philosophy came into contact with vulgar 
religion, which presented it with the ready-made one and only 
God. And so the ground was prepared on which the elaboration 
among the Jews of the likewise vulgarised Philonic notions could 
produce Christianity which, once produced, could find acceptance 
among the Greeks and Romans. The fact that it was popularised 
Philonic notions and not Philo’s own works that gave birth to 
Christianity is proved by the New Testament’s almost complete 
disregard of most of these works, particularly the allegorical and 
philosophical interpretation of the narrations of the Old Testa- 
ment. This is an aspect to which Bauer did not devote enough 
attention. 

One can get an idea of what Christianity looked like in its early 
form by reading the so-called Revelation of John. Wild, confused 
fanaticism, only the beginnings of dogmas, of the so-called Christian 
morals, only the mortification of the flesh, but on the other hand a 
multitude of visions and prophecies. The emergence of the dogmas 
and moral doctrine belongs to a later period in which the Gospels 
and the so-called Epistles of the Apostles were written. In this—at 
least as regards morality—unceremonious use was made of the 
philosophy of the stoics, of Seneca in particular. Bauer proved that 
the Epistles often copy the latter word: for word”, in fact, even the 
faithful noticed this, but they maintained that Seneca had copied 
from the New Testament, though it had not yet been written in his 

* As Ewald has already proved,? the Jews used dotted script (containing vowels 
and reading signs) to write under the consonants in the name of Jahveh, which it 
was forbidden to pronounce, the vowels of the word Adonai, which they read in its 
place. This was subsequently read as Jehovah. This word is therefore not the name 
of a god but only a vulgar mistake in grammar: in Hebrew it is simply impossible. 

time. Dogma developed, on the one hand, in connection with the 
evangelical legend of Jesus which was then taking shape and, on the 
other hand, in the struggle between Jewish Christians and those of 
pagan origin. 

Bauer also gives very valuable data on the causes which helped 
Christianity to triumph and attain world domination.’ But here 
the German philosopher is prevented by his idealism from seeing 
clearly and formulating precisely. Phrases often replace substance 
at decisive points. Instead, therefore, of going into details on 
Bauer’s views, we shall better give our own conception of this point, 
based on Bauer’s works and also on our personal study. 

The Roman conquest first directly dissolved in all subjugated 
countries the previous political systems and then indirectly also the 
old social conditions of life. Firstly, by substituting the simple 
distinction between Roman citizens and non-citizens or subjects of 
the state for the former organisation according to social estates 
(slavery apart). Secondly, and mainly, by exacting tribute in the name 
of the Roman state. If under the empire a limit was set as far as 
possible in the interest of the State to the governors’ thirst for wealth, 
that thirst was replaced by ever more effective and oppressive 
taxation for the benefit of the state treasury, an exaction which was 
terribly destructive. Thirdly, and finally, Roman law was adminis- 
tered everywhere by Roman judges while the native social systems 
were declared invalid insofar as they did not tally with the provisions 
of Roman law. These three levers were bound to develop a 
tremendous levelling power, particularly when they were applied for 
a century or two to populations the most vigorous part of which had 
been either suppressed or taken away into slavery in the battles 
preceding, accompanying and often even following the conquest. 
Social relations in the provinces came nearer and nearer to those 
obtaining in the capital and in Italy. The population became more 
and more sharply divided into three classes thrown together out of 
the most varied elements and nationalities: rich people, including 
not a few emancipated slaves (cf. Petronius°), big landowners or 
usurers or both at once, like Seneca, the uncle of Christianity; 
propertyless free people, who in Rome were fed and amused by the 
state—in the provinces they got on as they could by themselves— 
and finally the great mass, the slaves. In relation to the state, i.e., the 
emperor, the first two classes had almost as few rights as the slaves in 

relation to their masters. From the time of Tiberius to that of Nero in 
particular, it was a practice to sentence rich Romans to death in order 
to confiscate their property. The support of the government was, 
materially, the army, which was more like an army of hired 
mercenaries than the old Roman peasant army, and morally, 
the general view that there was no way out of this situation; 
that not, indeed, this or that emperor, but an empire based 
on military domination was an inevitable necessity. Here is not the 
place to examine what eminently material facts this view was based 
on. 

General slackening and demoralisation were consonant with the 
general lawlessness and despair as to the possibility of better 
conditions. The few surviving old Romans of the patrician type 
and views were either removed or died out; Tacitus was the last of 
them. The others were glad if they were able to keep away from 
public life; all they existed for was to collect and enjoy riches, and 
to indulge in private gossip and private intrigue. The propertyless 
free citizens were state pensioners in Rome, but in the provinces 
their condition was an unhappy one. They had to work, and to 
compete with slave labour into the bargain. But they were 
confined to the towns. Besides them, there were in the provinces 
peasants, free landowners (here and there probably still in 
communal-ownership) and, as in Gaul, bondsmen for debts to big 
landowners. This class was the least affected by the social 
upheaval; it was also the one to resist the religious upheaval 
longest.* Finally, there were the slaves, deprived of rights and of 
their own will and the possibility to free themselves, as the defeat 
of Spartacus had already proved *”; most of them, however, were 
former free citizens or sons of freed citizens. It must therefore 
have been among them that hatred of their condition of life was 
still generally vigorous, though externally powerless. 

We shall find that the type of ideologists at the time 
corresponded to this state of affairs. The philosophers were either 
mere money-earning schoolmasters or buffoons in the pay of 
wealthy revellers. Some were even slaves. What became of them if 
they were fortunate is shown by Mr. Seneca. This stoic and 
preacher of virtue and abstinence was Nero’s first court intriguer, 
which would not have been possible without servility; he secured 

* According to Fallmerayer? the peasants in Maina, Peloponnesus, still offered 
sacrifices to Zeus in the ninth century. 

from Nero presents in money, estates, gardens and palaces, and, 
while he preached the poor man Lazarus of the Gospel, he was in 
reality the rich man in the same parable. Not until Nero wanted to 
get at him did he request the Emperor to take back all his 
presents, his philosophy being enough for him. Only a very few 
isolated philosophers like Persius had the courage to brandish the 
lash of satire over their degenerated contemporaries. But as for 
the second type of ideologists, the jurists, they enthused at the 
new system because the abolition of all differences between social 
estates allowed them broad scope in elaborating their favourite 
private law, in return for which they prepared for the emperors 
the vilest system of state law that ever existed. 

With the political and social peculiarities of the peoples, the 
Roman Empire also doomed to ruin their particular religions. All 
religions of antiquity were naturally arising tribal and later national 
religions which sprang from and grew together with the social and 
political conditions of the respective peoples. Once these, their 
foundations, were destroyed and their traditional forms of society, 
their inherited political institutions and their national indepen- 
dence shattered, the religion corresponding to these naturally also 
collapsed. The national gods could suffer other national gods, in 
other nations beside them, as was the general rule in antiquity, but 
not above them. The transplantation of Oriental divinities to 
Rome was harmful only to the Roman religion, but could not 
check the decay of the Oriental religions. As soon as the national 
gods are unable to protect the independence and sovereignty of 
their nation, they engineer their own destruction. This was the 
case everywhere (except with peasants, especially in the moun- 
tains). What vulgar philosophical enlightenment—I almost said 
Voltairianism—did in Rome and Greece, was done in the 
provinces by Roman subjugation and the replacement of men 
proud of their freedom by desperate subjects and self-seeking 
ragamuffins. 

Such was the material and moral situation. The present was 
unbearable, the future perhaps still more menacing. There was no 
way out. Only despair or refuge in the commonest sensuous 
pleasure, for those at least who could afford it, and they were a 
tiny minority. Otherwise, nothing but languid surrender to the 
inevitable. 

But in all classes there were necessarily a number of people 
who, despairing of material salvation, sought in its stead a spiritual 
salvation, a consolation in their consciousness to save them from 
utter despair. This consolation could not be provided by the stoics, 

any more than by the Epicurean school, for the very reason that 
they are philosophies and therefore not intended for the common 
consciousness and, secondly, because the conduct of their disciples 
brought the doctrines of the schools into disrepute. The consola- 
tion was to be a substitute not for the lost philosophy, but for the 
lost religion; it had to take on a religious form, just as anything 
which was to grip the masses then and even as late as the 
seventeenth century. 

We hardly need to note that of those who were pining for such 
consolation of their consciousness, for this flight from the external 
world into the internal, the majority were among the slaves. 

It was in the midst of this general economic, political, 
intellectual and moral decay that Christianity appeared. It was 
decisively at odds with all previous religions. 

In all previous religions ritual had been the main thing. Only by 
taking part in the sacrifices and processions, and in the Orient by 
observing the most cumbersome diet and cleanliness regulations, 
could one show to what religion one belonged. While Rome and 
Greece were tolerant in the latter respect, there was in the Orient 
an obsession with religious prohibitions that contributed no little 
to the final collapse. People of two different religions (Egyptians, 
Persians, Jews, Chaldeans) could not eat or drink together, 
perform any everyday act together, or hardly speak to each other. 
It was largely due to this segregation of man from man that the 
Orient met its demise. Christianity knows no distinctive rituals, not 
even the sacrifices and processions of the classical world. By thus 
rejecting all national religions and their common ritual and 
addressing itself to all peoples without distinction, it becomes the 
first potential world religion. Judaism, too, with its new universal god, 
had made a start towards becoming a world religion; but the 
children of Israel always remained an aristocracy among the 
believers and the circumcised, and Christianity itself had to get rid 
of the notion of the superiority of the Jewish Christians (still 
dominant in the so-called Revelation of John) before it could really 
become a world religion. Islam itself, on the other hand, by 
preserving its specifically Oriental ritual, limited the area of its 
propagation to the Orient and the North Africa conquered and 
populated anew by Arab Bedouins; here it could become the 
dominant religion, but not in the West. 

Secondly, Christianity struck a chord that was bound to echo in 
countless hearts. To all complaints about the wickedness of the 
times and the general material and moral misery, Christian 
consciousness of sin answered: It is so and it cannot be otherwise; 

thou art to blame, ye are all to blame for the corruption of the 
world, thine and your own internal corruption! And where was 
the man who could deny it? Mea culpa!* The admission of each 
one’s share in the responsibility for the general misfortune was 
irrefutable and was made now the precondition for the spiritual 
salvation which Christianity at the same time announced. And this 
spiritual salvation was so instituted that it could be easily 
understood by members of every old religious community. The idea 
of atonement to placate the offended deity was current in all the old 
religions; how could the idea of the self-sacrifice of the mediator 
atoning once and for all for the sins of humanity not easily find 
ground there? Christianity, therefore, clearly expressed the 
universal feeling that men themselves are guilty of the general 
decay as the consciousness of sin of each one; at the same time it 
provided, in the sacrificial death of its founder, a form easily 
understood everywhere of the universally longed-for internal 
salvation from the decadent world, the consolation of conscious- 
ness; it thus again proved its capacity to become a world religion 
and, indeed, a religion which suited the world as it then was. 

So it happened that among the thousands of prophets and 
preachers in the desert that filled that period with their countless 
religious renovations the founders of Christianity alone met with 
success. Not only Palestine, but the entire Orient, swarmed with such 
founders of religions, and between them there raged what can be 
called a Darwinist struggle for ideological existence.“ Thanks 
mainly to the elements mentioned above, Christianity won the day. 
How it gradually developed its character of a world religion by 
natural selection in the struggle of sects amongst themselves and 
against the pagan world is taught in detail by the history of the 
Church in the first ‘three centuries.