This is why Capitalism is exclusive: it creates an economy that is managed, owned, and controlled by the few, and it is done against the interests of the workers who have produced everything. Socialism provides the most simple remedy to the problem: the economy should be managed, owned, and controlled by those who have built it. Anything else is exploitation. Atheism perfectly blends into this concept of social justice. Socialism admits no master over the labor of the worker -- Atheism admits no master over the mind of the individual. Both philosophies have made no compromises, but have only gone so far as truth has demanded.

     Atheism has befriended Socialism, as both have taken their attention from the heavens to the daily affairs of living, human society. Similarly, religion has befriended Capitalism, as both are based on starry concepts that exist only so long as people believe in them. Religion tells the people that they must spend their time in reverence of god if they expect to enter the afterlife. Likewise, Capitalism tells people that there are these rights that come from heaven, which allow a very few people to treat the rest like slaves. It is an improvisation of the technique used in the past by kings, who likewise received a right to property over a kingdom -- also a right bestowed by a heavenly master. The right to monarchy or property, both have been consecrated and blessed by unknown beings, though human beings struggle to find any natural cause for either that doesn't include tyranny.

     Religion has attacked Socialism for the same reason it once attacked art, poetry, and written history -- and why it still continues to attack science today, whether Evolution or Global Warming. The reason for attacking Socialism is that it draws the minds of people away from the heavens to the present world. Knowing that humanity at large is doomed to a social system that guarantees want and hunger, the mind is motivated to ideas that relate to the here-and-now and not the here-after. The individual, knowing such great suffering and seeing the absence of god's honor, becomes unconcerned with heaven and hell. For to enjoy heaven, in the sight of all this misery, seems wicked and cruel -- and hell, for the most part, would simply be a continuation of our existence, without much change in conditions. Religion itself becomes dishonorable, as the mind is drawn more to those who working for our world than to working for a world after this one.

"That the crying-out demand of today is for a circle of principles that shall forever make it impossible for one man to control another by controlling the means of his existence. They would realize that, unless the freethought movement has a practical utility in rendering the life of man more bearable, unless it contains a principle which, worked out, will free him from the all-oppressive tyrant, it is just as complete and empty a mockery as the Christian miracle or Pagan myth.

"Eminently is this the age of utility; and the freethinker who goes to the Hovel of Poverty with metaphysical speculations as to the continuity of life, the transformation of matter, etc.; who should say, 'My dear friend, your Christian brother is mistaken; you are not doomed to an eternal hell; your condition here is your misfortune and can't be helped, but when you are dead, there's an end of it,' is of as little use in the world as the most irrational religionist.

"To him would the hovel justly reply: 'Unless you can show me something in freethought which commends itself to the needs of the race, something which will adjust my wrongs, 'put down the mighty from his seat,' then go sit with priest and king, and wrangle out your metaphysical opinions with those who mocked our misery before.'"
          --Voltairine De Cleyre, 1890
          "The Economic Tendency of Freethought"