We are so accustomed to our false conception of the arrangement of work, that it seems to us that it will be better for a boot maker, a mechanic, a writer, or a musician, if he exempts himself from the labour natural to all men.
Where there is no violence exercised to seize other people’s work and no false faith in the pleasure of idleness, no one will free himself from the physical work necessary for the satisfaction of his needs, in order to occupy himself with specialized work; for specialized work is not an advantage, but a sacrifice a man makes to his special bent and to his fellow men.
A boot maker in a village tearing himself from his customary and joyous field labour and taking to that of mending or making boots for his neighbours, deprives himself of the very joyous and useful field-work only because he likes sewing, and knows that no one can do it as well as he and that people will be grateful to him for it. But he cannot desire to deprive himself for life of joyous change of work. And so it is with a village Elder, a mechanic, a writer, or a scholar. It is only we, with our perverted notions, who suppose that if a master dismisses a clerk from the counting-house and sends him back to work as a peasant, or if a minister is dismissed and deported, that he has been punished and placed in a worse position. In truth he has been benefited, that is to say his special oppressive and difficult work has been changed for a joyous alteration of labour.
In a natural society this is quite different. I know of a Commune in which the people grew their own food. One of the members of this Commune1 was more educated than the others, and he was required to give lectures, which he had to prepare during the day and deliver in the evening. He did this willingly, feeling that he was being of use to others and doing good work. But he grew tired of doing exclusively mental work and his health suffered, and the members of the Commune took pity on him and invited him to work on the land.
For people who look on labour as the essence and joy of life, the background and basis of life will always be the struggle with nature-work on the land, handicraft, mental work, and the establishment of intercourse among men.
A withdrawal from one or several of these kinds of work and a specialization of work will only occur when the specialist, loving such work and knowing that he does it better than other people, sacrifices his own advantage to satisfy direct demands made on him. Only by such an opinion about work and by the natural division of labour that results from it, is the curse lifted which in our imagination is laid on work; and all labour becomes joyful, because either a man does unquestionably useful and joyful work that is not burdensome, or he will be conscious of sacrificing himself in the performance of a more difficult and exceptional task done for the good of others.
‘But the subdivision of labour is more advantageous!’ For whom is it more advantageous?
It is advantageous for the production of more boots and cotton-prints. But who will have to make those boots and prints?
People such as those who for generations have made pin-heads and nothing else. Then how can it be more profitable for them?
If the chief thing were to make as many prints and pins as possible, it would be all right; but men and their welfare are the chief consideration. And the welfare of men lies in life, and their life is in their work. Then how can compulsion to do tormenting and degrading work be advantageous?
If the aim were the advantage of some men regardless of the welfare of all, then the most advantageous thing might be for some men to eat others; it is said that they taste nice. But
1 The Commune in question was the one founded by N. Chaikovsky, in Kansas State, in the eighteen seventies; and the man referred to in this passage was V. K. Heins, who changed his name to William Frey. He visited Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, and an account of him is given in Chap. VI, Vol. 2 of my Life of Tolstoy.-A. M.
what is most profitable for all is what I desire for myself: the greatest possible welfare and satisfaction of all the needs of body and soul and conscience and reason implanted within me. And personally I found that for my welfare and the satisfaction of these needs, I only had to be cured of the madness in which I-like the Krapivenski madman-lived, believing that gentlefolk ought not to work and that all should be done by others-and, without any subtleties, that I had to do only what is natural for a man to do when satisfying his needs. And when I found this out, I became convinced that this work for the satisfaction of one’s needs naturally divides itself into different kinds of work, each of which has its charm and not only is not burdensome but serves as a rest from the other kinds of labour.
Roughly (without at all insisting on the correctness of such a division) I divided that work, according to the demands I make on life, into four parts corresponding to the four spells of work which make up the day, and I endeavour to satisfy those demands.
So these are the replies I found to my question: What must we do?
First: not to lie to myself; and-however far my path of life may be from the true path disclosed by my reason-not to fear the truth.
Secondly: to reject the belief in my own righteousness and in privileges and peculiarities distinguishing me from others, and to acknowledge myself as being to blame.
Thirdly: to fulfil the eternal, indubitable law of man, and with the labour of my whole being to struggle with nature for the maintenance of my own and other people’s lives.
CHAPTER XXXIX
I HAVE finished, having said all that relates to myself; but I cannot refrain from a desire to say what relates to everyone, and to verify the conclusions I have come to, by general considerations.
I wish to say why it seems to me that very many people of our circle must reach the same conclusion that I arrived at; and also what will come of it if even a few people do so.
I think many will come to the conclusion I came to, because if only men of our circle, of our caste, look seriously about them, the young people seeking personal happiness will be horrified at the ever-increasing misery of their lives, clearly drawing them towards perdition; the conscientious people will be horrified at the cruelty and injustice of their lives, and the timid people will be horrified at the danger of their lives.
The unhappiness of our life; patch up our false way of life as we will, propping it up by the aid of the sciences and arts-that life becomes feebler, sicklier, and more tormenting every year; every year the number of suicides and the avoidance of motherhood increases; every year the people of that class become feebler; every year we feel the increasing gloom of our lives.
Evidently salvation is not to be found by increasing the comforts and pleasures of life, medical treatments, artificial teeth and hair, breathing exercises, massage, and so forth; this truth has become so evident that in the newspapers advertisements of stomach-powders for the rich are printed under the heading, ‘Blessings for the poor’, in which it is
said that only the poor have good digestions but that the rich need aids, among which are these powders.
It is impossible to remedy this by any amusements, comforts, or powders-it can only be remedied by a change of life.
Discord of our life and our conscience; try as we may to justify to ourselves our betrayal of humanity, all our excuses crumble to dust in face of the obvious facts: people around us die from excessive work and from want, while we use up food, clothes and human labour, merely to find distraction and change. And therefore the conscience of a man of our circle, if he retains but a scrap of it, cannot rest, and poisons all the comforts and enjoyments of life supplied to us by the labour of our brothers, who suffer and perish at that labour.
And not only does every conscientious man feel this himself (he would be glad to forget it, but cannot do so in our age) but all the best part of science and art-that part which has not forgotten the purpose of its vocation-continually reminds us of our cruelty and of our unjustifiable position. The old firm justifications are all destroyed; the new ephemeral justifications of the progress of science for science’s sake and art for art’s sake do not stand the light of simple common sense.
Men’s consciences cannot be set at rest by new excuses, but only by a change of life which will make any justification of oneself unnecessary as there will be nothing needing justification.
The danger of our way
