Communists in Council

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 15, 1877

Communists in Council.

A CONGRESS of Socialists has just been held at Ghent. Nearly all European countries were represented by delegations from communistic societies. These disorganizers reveal their principles and spirit as clearly by certain set phrases constantly recurring in the report of their discussions, as by any resolutions which they adopt. From the London Times’ report we cull a few of these: Their cause is declared to be a “struggle with the ‘classes which possess;’” the socialist movement was declared to be a party distinct from and antagonistic to every party formed of the governing classes; one of the reports which were read declared that, “politics and religion have dropped from the social system we desire;” laws, it was affirmed, were fortresses let out to those who could hire them; the “abolition of the wages system” was recognized as one of the arms of the association.

An international organization was effected. As is not surprising, some of the sessions of the Congress were furious altercations between the advocates of conflicting measures. United in their assault upon existing institutions, it was plain that they could unite upon nothing else. Their anarchical and destructive designs may seem so absurd as to provoke a smile, but when we remember that the socialist party polled seven hundred thousand votes at the last parliamentary elections in Germany, we can understand why European Governments watch the movement with anxiety. Leon Frankel, one of the presidents of the Congress, did not appear to take his chair on the last day. He was a member of the Paris Commune, and is now an exile from France. This fact having been published in the Belgian papers, he had been conducted by the Belgian police to the frontier, and sent straight back to Austria, the country which now enjoys his presence and reaps the fruits of his labors. Communism and its related heresies will bear watching even in the United States.—Christian Statesman.