As often as I have reflected on these conditions and difficulties, just as often have I been revived by the confidence and the joyous hope that the forces within Christianity that set hearts in motion will come to the aid of the working class, and that the idea of Productive Associations will be realized to a greater extent. This will require large amounts of capital, and far be it from me to think that this assistance for the working class will be suddenly realized everywhere and all at once; but I am looking at this development from afar and hoping that Christian souls will soon set about [raising] its foundations, now here, now there. In all its undertakings, Christianity is a force that affects things from the inside, forges ahead slowly, but then also unfailingly accomplishes the most sublime and unexpected things on behalf of human salvation. It may still be a long time before the effects of Christianity become as extensive as they need to be. The spirit of Christianity also worked for centuries before the grand old Roman families released their slaves by the thousands and gave them freedom. Perhaps some SCHULZE-DELITZSCH* will appear on the scene and proclaim rescue and salvation for the working class until the tower that the last of them has built up collapses, and then convey to the poor working folk the new, tragic knowledge that it has been deceived and that its hopes were in vain. Perhaps the world will even have to attempt the LASSALLEAN program in practice and – after all the sorrows that might result from this dangerous maneuver, namely, if it should be surrendered into the hands of evil demagogues – experience for itself that even the democrats are incapable of helping it if they build their philanthropic ideas on mere drift sand instead of the rock of Christianity. We cannot know, therefore, how and when Christianity will also help the working class in this fashion. On the other hand, we do not doubt that whatever is truthful and good and practicable in the idea of Productive Associations will be accomplished by Christianity. At this moment, admittedly, the class that could achieve great things, the class of rich merchants, wealthy industry, and major capitalists, is rather far removed from Christianity; it now constitutes, above all, the moving, paying, remunerating power behind the major liberal party. Yet here, too, Christianity still has its true adherents, and what is lacking in others need not always need remain so. There was a time when even the old, wealthy Roman patrician families – in which the Roman matron was served by hundreds of slave girls just in washing her body – were very far removed from Christianity, and yet there came a time when the children of these families released the slaves, used their wealth to cover Italy with charitable institutions for the poor slaves, and even gave up their lives for the love of Christ. Christianity is so wonderful! Whoever is its enemy today falls down adoringly on his knees in front of the Cross tomorrow, and the son of man who had cursed Christ
* Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch was the founder of a liberal, market-oriented cooperative and trade union movement in Germany – trans.
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