For the first method the oppressor need only have soldiers and need only divide with them; for the second, besides guards over the land and the stores of grain, he also requires collectors and clerks to distribute the grain; under the third method he can no longer himself own all the land, but besides warriors to guard the land and the wealth, he must also have landowners and tax-collectors, officials to allot the taxes and assess them per head or according to the articles used; inspectors, customs-officers, revenue officers and assessors. The organization of the third method is much more complex than that of the second; under the second method the collection of the grain can be farmed out as was done in ancient times and is still done in Turkey; but when the enslaved are taxed, a complex administration is needed to watch that the people or their taxable actions should not escape the tribute.
And so under the third method, the oppressor has to share with a still greater number of people than under the second method; besides which, by the very nature of the case, all people either of that same or of other countries who have money become participants. The advantages for the oppressor of this method over the first or second methods are the following:
In the first place, by means of this method a greater amount of labour can be taken and taken in a more convenient manner, for a money tax is like a screw, it can be easily and conveniently turned to the utmost limit which does not kill the golden hen; so that it is not necessary to await a famine year as in Joseph’s time-for the famine year can always be arranged.
Secondly, because under this method the coercion is extended to all those landless people who formerly escaped and gave only part of their labour for bread, but who are now obliged in addition to that part to give also part of their labour for taxes to the oppressor. The disadvantage for the oppressor is that under this method he has to share with a greater number of people: not only his immediate assistants but, first, with all those private landowners who usually appear where this system is adopted, and secondly, with all those people of his own or even of other nations who have such money tokens as are demanded from the slaves.
The advantage for the oppressed in comparison with the second method is only this, that he has still more personal independence from the oppressor; he can live where he pleases, do what he pleases, and sow or not sow grain; he is not obliged to account for his work, and if he has money he can consider himself quite free, and he can always hope, or actually attain if but for a time-when he has money to spare or has land bought for it-not merely a position of independence but even that of an oppressor.
The disadvantage for him is that, under this third method, the position of the oppressed in general becomes far harder and they are deprived of the greater part of what they produce, since under this third method the number of people who live on the labour of others is still greater and therefore the burden of supporting them falls on a smaller number.
This third method of enslavement is also a very old one, and comes into use together with the two previous ones without entirely excluding them. None of the three methods of enslavement has ever ceased to exist. All three methods may be compared to screws which press down a board that lies on the workers and squeezes them.
The chief, fundamental, and central screw, without which the others cannot hold-the one which is first screwed down and never ceases to act-is that of personal slavery, the enslavement of one set of people by another by means of threats to kill them with the sword; the second-which is screwed down after the former-is the enslavement of people by depriving them of land and of stores of food, a deprivation supported by the personal threat of death; and the third screw is the enslavement of people by a demand for money tokens they have not got, and that too is supported by the threat of murder.
All three screws are operated, and only when one is tightened are the others relaxed. For the complete enslavement of the workers all three screws-all three methods of enslavement-are needed, and in our society all three methods are constantly in use-all three screws are tightened.
The first method, enslaving men by personal violence and by threats to kill them by the sword, has never been abandoned, and will not be abandoned as long as there is any enslavement of man by man, because all enslavement depends upon it. We are all very naively confident that personally slavery has been abandoned in our civilized world, that the last remnants of it were abolished in America and Russia, and that now only among savages is there slavery, but that we have none. We forget only one small circumstance namely about those millions of men who in standing armies without which no single government exists and with the abolition of which the whole economic structure of every government would inevitably go to pieces.
But what are those millions of soldiers if not the personal slaves of those who rule over them? Are not they compelled to do the will of their owners under threat of torture and death-a threat frequently put into execution?
The only difference is that the subjection of these slaves is not called slavery but discipline, and that while the others were slaves from birth to death these are so for the period, more or less brief of what is termed their ‘service’. Personal slavery is not only not abolished in our civilized societies but with the introduction of universal military conscription it has of late been strengthened and still remains what it has always been though somewhat modified. And it cannot fail to exist, for as long as there is any enslavement of man by man there will be this personal slavery which by threat of the sword maintains the territorial and tax enslavement of men.
It may that this slavery that of the army, may be very necessary, as is alleged, for the defence and glory of our fatherland, though this advantage is more than doubtful, for we see that in unsuccessful wars it often serves for the enslavement and degradation of the country; but what is evident is the suitability of this slavery for the maintenance of land and tax slavery. If the Irish or the Russian peasants seized. the land from the estate-owners, the troops would come and take it back again. Build distilleries or breweries and fail to pay the excise dues, and soldiers come and close the establishment. Refuse to pay taxes and the same will happen.
The second screw is the method of enslavement by depriving people of land and therefore of their food supplies. This method of enslavement also has existed and does exist wherever people are enslaved, and however much its form may be altered it exists everywhere. Sometimes the land all belongs to the sovereign, as in Turkey, and a tithe of the harvest is taken for the treasury; sometimes only part of the land, and a tax is collected from it; sometimes again the land all belongs to a small number of people and part of the labour is taken for it, as in England; or a larger or smaller part of it belongs to great landowners, as in Russia, Germany, and France. But where there is enslavement there is also appropriation of land by means of enslavement.
This screw for the enslavement of people is slackened or tightened in proportion to the strain on the other screws’ thus, in Russia when personal enslavement extended to the majority of workmen, land slavery was superfluous; but the screw of personal slavery in Russia was only relaxed when the screws of land and tax enslavement were tightened. The people were all inscribed in communes, their migration or change of location was made difficult, the land was appropriated or given to private owners, and then the peasants were set ‘free’. In England, for instance, the land enslavement is what chiefly acts, and the question of the nationalization of the land merely consists in tightening the tax screw in order to relax the screw of territorial enslavement.
The third method of enslavement-by tribute or taxation-also existed before, and in our time, with the diffusion of uniform money tokens in various states and the intensification of governmental power, it has acquired special force. This method has been so elaborated in our time that it bids fair to replace the second-the territorial-method of enslavement. It is the screw with the tightening of which the land-screw relaxes, as is evident in the economic condition of all Europe.
Within our own memory, we have lived through two transitions of slavery from one form to another in Russia: when we freed the serfs and left the proprietors in possession of most of the land, the proprietors feared that their power over the slaves would slip away; but experience showed that when letting go of the old chain of personal slavery they only had to seize the other, that of land-ownership.
The peasant lacked bread to eat and the proprietor had the land and the stores of grain, and therefore the peasant remained a slave as before. The next transition was when government demands greatly tightened the
