this formula was twisted to mean that even for the party of the revolutionary proletariat the question of religion was a private matter. It was against this complete betrayal of the revolutionary program of the proletariat that Engels revolted. In 1891 he only saw the very feeble beginnings of Opportunism in his party, and therefore he expressed himself on the subject most cautiously:
"Corresponding with the fact that in the Commune there sat, almost without exception, only workmen or the recognized representatives of the workers, its decisions were distinguished by their resolute proletarian character. These decisions either decreed such reforms as the republican bourgeoisie had rejected only out of base cowardice, but which formed a necessary foundation for the free activity of the working class. Such, for instance, was the adoption of the principle that in relation to the State religion is simply a private matter. Or the Commune promulgated decrees directly in the interests of the working class and, to a certain extent, inflicting deep wounds on the old body social."
Engels deliberately emphasized the words "in relation to the State," not as a mere hint, but as a straight thrust at German Opportunism which had declared religion to be a private matter in relation to the party; thus lowering the party of the revolutionary proletariat to the level of the most superficial "free-thinkers" of the middle class, ready to admit a non-religious State, but renouncing all party struggle against the religious opium which stupifies the people.
The future historian of the German Social-Democracy investigating the root causes of its shameful collapse in 1914, will find no little material of interest on this question, beginning with the evasive declarations in the articles of the intellectual leader of the party, Kautsky, opening the door wide to Opportunism, and ending with the attitude of the party towards the Los-von-Kirche Bewegung (the movement for the disestablishment of the Church) in 1913.
But let us pass on to the manner in which, twenty years after the Commune, Engels summed up its lessons for the struggling proletariat.
Here are the lessons to which Engels attached prime importance:
"It was just this oppressive power of the former centralized Government, the army, the political police, the bureaucracy, which Napoleon created in 1798, and which, from that time onwards,
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