The religion of socialism, being essays in modern socialist criticism

by Ernest Belfort Bax

About the author

Ernest Belfort Bax (1854-1926), was an English Socialist, journalist, economist, and philosopher; who helped William Morris found the Socialist League, co-edited its organ 'Commonweal'; joined the Social Democratic Federation after the League became anarchist, and edited the paper 'Justice.' His parents were strict Nonconformists who came from families that had suffered religious persecution.

Ernest was educated at home by private tutors and as a young man been encouraged to read John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. In his books The Religion of Socialism (1887) and Ethics of Socialism (1889), Bax argued that Christian ethics was gradually being replaced by the Utilitarian idea that ethical change was produced by the needs of society rather than from a supernatural level.

Bax believed that this would develop into a "new ethic" called socialism. The highest expression of this new ethic was "self-sacrifice for the cause of true social change and human consciousness". Bax was one of the ablest, and in literary terms at least, most aggressive exponents of English socialism.

Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

About the author

Ernest Belfort Bax (23 July 1854 – 26 November 1926) was an English socialist journalist and philosopher, associated with the Social Democratic Federation (SDF).

Born into a nonconformist religious family in Leamington, he was first introduced to Marxism while studying philosophy in Germany. He combined Karl Marx's ideas with those of Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer and Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann. Keen to explore possible metaphysical and ethical implications of socialism, he came to describe a "religion of socialism" as a means to overcome the dichotomy between the personal and the social, and also that between the cognitive and the emotional. He saw this as a replacement for organised religion, and was a fervent atheist, keen to free workers from what he saw as the moralism of the middle-class.

Bax moved to Berlin and worked as a journalist on the Evening Standard. On his return to England in 1882, he joined the SDF, but grew disillusioned and in 1885 left to form the Socialist League with William Morris. After anarchists gained control of the League, he rejoined the SDF, and became the chief theoretician, and editor of the party paper Justice. He opposed the party's participation in the Labour Representation Committee, and eventually persuaded them to leave.

Almost throughout his life, he saw economic conditions as ripe for socialism, but felt this progress was delayed by a lack of education of the working class. Bax supported Karl Kautsky over Eduard Bernstein, but Kautsky had little time for what he saw as Bax's utopianism, and supported Theodore Rothstein's efforts to spread a more orthodox Marxism in the SDF.

Initially very anti-nationalist, Bax came to support the British in World War I, but by this point he was concentrating on his career as a barrister and did little political work.

Bax was an ardent anti feminist since, according to Bax, feminism was a part of the "anti-man crusade". According to Bax, "anti-man crusades" were responsible for "anti-man laws" during the time of men-only voting in England. Bax wrote many articles in The New Age and elsewhere about English laws partial to women against men, and women's privileged position before the law, and expressed his view that women's suffrage would unfairly tip the balance of power to women. In 1908 he wrote The Legal Subjection of Men as a response to John Stuart Mill's 1869 essay "The Subjection of Women." In 1913 he published an essay, The Fraud of Feminism, detailing feminism's adverse effects. Section titles included "The Anti-Man Crusade", "The 'Chivalry' Fake", "Always The 'Injured Innocent'", and "Some Feminist Lies and Fallacies".

Bax died in London.

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