For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary
character of their criticism that their chief accusation against
the bourgeoisie amounts to this, that under the bourgeois regime
a class is being developed, which is destined to cut up root and
branch the old order of society.
What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it
creates
a proletariat, as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.
In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive
measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite
their high falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden
apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth,
love,
and honour for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato
spirits.
As the parson has ever gone band in hand with the landlord,
so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.
Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist
tinge.
Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against
marriage,
against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these,
charity and
poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life
and
Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy, water with
which
the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism
The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that has ruined by
the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence
pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society.
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