This is so obvious that were the government to try the experiment of not collecting direct, indirect, and land taxes for a year, all the work on other people’s land and at the factories would come to a standstill. Nine-tenths of the Russian people hire themselves out when the taxes are being collected, and on account of those taxes.
All three methods of enslavement have existed continuously and still exist; but people are inclined not to notice them as soon as new justifications are alleged for them. And what is strange is that this very method on which at the present time everything is based, the screw holding everything together, is just what is not noticed.
When in the ancient world the whole economic structure was based on personal slavery, the greatest intellects did not notice it. To Xenophon and Plato and Aristotle and to the Romans it seemed that things could not be otherwise, and that slavery was an inevitable and natural outcome of wars, without which the existence of humanity was unthinkable.
So also in the Middle Ages, and even down to recent times, people I did not see the significance of land-ownership and the slavery resulting from it, on which the whole economic structure of the Middle Ages rested. And just in the same way now, no one sees or even wishes to see that in our time the enslavement of the majority of people depends on money-taxes-State and land taxes-demanded by the governments and their dependants and collected by the administration and the army-the very administration and army that are paid for out of those taxes.
CHAPTER XXI
WHAT is surprising is not that the slaves themselves-subjected to slavery from of old-are not conscious of their condition and consider the slavery in which they have always lived to be a natural condition of human life, and regard a change in the form of slavery as an alleviation; nor is it surprising that slave-owners sometimes sincerely think they are emancipating their slaves by loosening one screw when another is already screwed tight. Both slaves and owners are accustomed to their position, and the slaves, not knowing freedom only seek alleviation or a mere chancre of the form of their slavery, while the slave-owners-desiring to hide their injustice-wish to attribute a special significance to the new forms of slavery they impose on the people m place of the old.
But it is surprising that science, which is called liberal, can when investigating the economic conditions of a people’s life avoid seeing what is at the base of the whole economic condition of the people. One would think it the business of science to discover the connexion between phenomena and the common cause of a series of phenomena.
But political economy does just the opposite: it carefully conceals the connexion of the phenomena and their significance and carefully avoids answering the simplest and most essential questions; like a lazy and restive horse it only goes well down hill when there is nothing to pull, but as soon as it is necessary to pull, it swerves, pretending that it has to go aside to do its own business. As soon as a serious essential question presents itself to science, a learned discussion is at once begun on irrelevant matters, merely with the purpose of distracting attention from the question at issue.
You ask: What is the cause of the unnatural, abnormal, irrational, and not merely useless but harmful phenomenon-that some men cannot eat or work except by the will of others? And science, with most serious mien, replies: Because some people control the work and the nourishment of others-such being the law of production.
You ask: What is this right of property on the basis of which some people appropriate the land, food, and instruments of labour of others? Science answers with most serious mien:
This right is based on the protection of a man’s work; that is, that the protection of the work of one set of men expresses itself by seizing the work of other men.
You ask: What is this money that is everywhere coined and printed by governments, that is, by the authorities, and which is forcibly demanded of the workers in such enormous quantities, and in the form of national debts is imposed on future generations of labourers? You ask whether this money exacted as taxes in quantities increased to the utmost possibility, has not an effect on the economic relations of the payers towards the receivers? And science with most serious face replies: Money is a commodity like sugar or chintz, and is distinguished only by the fact that it is the most convenient medium of exchange, but taxes have no influence on the economic condition of the people: the laws of the production, exchange, and distribution of wealth are one thing, while taxes are another.
You ask whether the circumstance that government can at its pleasure raise or lower prices, and by increasing taxes can bind in slavery all who do not possess land, has not an influence on economic conditions? And science with most serious face replies: None at all! The laws of production, distribution, and exchange are one science; taxes and State affairs in general are another science-that of finance.
You ask, finally, about the whole people being m slavery to the government, about the government being able at its own will to ruin everybody, to take all the produce of their labour and even to tear the men themselves from their work, putting them into military slavery; you ask whether this circumstance has no influence on economic conditions. To this science does not even take the trouble to reply: this is quite a separate matter-State law.
Science most seriously examining the laws of the economic life of the people whose every function and whole activity depends on the oppressor’s will, and regarding this influence of the oppressor as a natural condition of people’s life, does what an investigator of the economic conditions of the life of personal slaves of various owners would do if he did not take into account the influence exerted on the lives of those slaves by the will of the owner who at his own caprice obliges them to do this or that work and drives them at will from place to place, feeds them or leaves them unfed, and kills them or lets them live.
We should like to think that science does this out of stupidity, but one only has to penetrate and examine the propositions of the science to convince oneself that it is not due to stupidity but to great ingenuity.
This science has a very definite aim, which it attains. That aim is to maintain superstition and deception among the people and thereby hinder the progress of humanity towards truth and welfare. There has long existed, and still exists, a terrible superstition which has done almost more harm than the most fearful religious superstitions.
And it is this superstition which so-called science maintains with all its might and main. This superstition is quite similar to the religious superstitions: it consists in the assertion that, besides man’s duty to man, there exist yet more Important obligations to an imaginary being. For theology this imaginary being is God, but for political science it is the State. The religious superstition consists in this, that sacrifices, sometimes of human lives, to this imaginary being are necessary, and men may and should be brought to them by all means, not excluding violence.
The political superstition consists in this, that besides the duties of man to man there exist more important duties to the imaginary being, and that sacrifices, very often of human life, offered up to this imaginary being, the State, are also necessary, and that men may and should be brought to them by all possible means not even excluding violence. This superstition, formerly supported by the priests of various religions, is now supported by so-called science. Men are thrust into a most terrible slavery, worse than ever before; but science tries to assure people that this is necessary and cannot be otherwise.
The State must exist for the good of the people and must carryon its business: govern the people and defend them from enemies. For this the State needs money and soldiers. The money must be supplied by all the citizens of the State, and therefore all the relations of men must be viewed under the necessary conditions of statehood.
‘I want to help my father in his farm work,’ says a simple ignorant man; ‘I want. to marry, but they take me, and send me for six years to Kazan as a soldier. I leave the army and want to plough the land and support my family, but for a hundred versts around me I am not allowed to plough unless I pay money, which I have not got to people who do not know how to plough and who demand so much money for it that I have to give them all my labour; but for all that I earn something and want to give what I have saved to my children; but an official comes to me and takes away my savings for taxes; again I earn something, and again it is all taken away from
