Can coercing these people to take part in building the bridge make it a benefit to them? Evidently not, for those who considered free participation in the building of the bridge disadvantageous will consider it yet more disadvantageous when it is compulsory. Let us even suppose that we all without exception agreed to build this bridge and promised to contribute so much money or labour from each household for the work, but it so happens that some of those who promised to contribute have not done so because their circumstances changed, causing them to think it better to be without a bridge than to spend money on it; or simply they have changed their minds; or even reckon on others building the bridge without their contribution and on still being able to use it.
Can the compelling of these people to take part in building the bridge make their compulsory sacrifice a benefit to them? Evidently not, for if they did not fulfill their promise owing to altered circumstances which made it harder for them to contribute to the bridge than to do without a bridge, obligatory contributions will be only a greater evil to them. And if the ref users aimed at taking advantage of the labour of others, still, compelling them to make sacrifices will merely be a punishment for their intention, and a quite unproven intention punished before it had been carried into effect; but in neither case will compulsion to participate in an undesired affair be an advantage to them.
So it is when sacrifices are undertaken for an affair intelligible to everyone and of evident and undoubted utility, such as a bridge across a bog all have to cross. How much more unjust and senseless will it be to compel millions of people to make sacrifices for an aim that is unintelligible, intangible, and often indubitably harmful, as is the case with military service and the payment of taxes. But according to science what appears to everyone an evil is a common good; it seems that there are people, a tiny minority, who alone know wherein the common good lies, and, though all the rest of the people consider this common good to be an evil, this minority, while compelling all the rest to do this evil, can consider this evil to be a common good. . . .
Therein lies the chief superstition and chief deception hindering the progress of humanity towards truth and welfare. The maintenance of this superstition and this deception is the aim of political sciences in general and of what. is called political economy m particular Its aim is to hide from people the condition of oppression and slavery in which they are. The means it employs for this purpose are, when dealing with the violence that conditions the whole economic life of the enslaved, purposely to treat this violence as natural and inevitable, and thus to deceive people and divert their eyes from the real cause of their misery.
Slavery has long been abolished. It was abolished in Rome, and in America, and in Russia, but what was abolished was the word and not the thing itself.
Slavery consists in some men freeing themselves from labour (needed for the satisfaction of their wants) which is compulsorily put upon others; and where there is a man not working, not because others work for him lovingly but because instead of working himself he is able to compel others to work for him-there slavery exists. And where, as in all European countries, there are people utilizing the labour of thousands of others by means of violence and believing that they have a right to do so-while others submit to this coercion and regard it as their duty to do so-there slavery of terrible dimensions exists.
Slavery exists. In what does it consist? In that in which it has always consisted and without which it can never exist-the violence of the strong and armed towards the weak and unarmed.
Slavery in its three fundamental methods of personal violence-military service; land tribute enforced by soldiery; and tribute imposed on inhabitants in the form of direct and indirect taxes and maintained by that same soldiery exists just as it used to. We do not see it only because each of the three forms of slavery has received a new justification, hiding its meaning from us.
The personal violence of the armed towards the unarmed has been justified as the defence of the fatherland against its imaginary foes; in reality it has its old meaning, namely the subjection of the vanquished by oppressors. The violence exerted in depriving the workers of the land they work has received justification as a reward for services supposed to have been rendered to the common good, and it is confirmed by the right of inheritance; in reality it is the same deprivation of land and enslavement of the people, effected by the army (the authorities).
The last, the monetary coercion of taxation the strongest and now the chief method-has received the most amazing justification, namely that people are deprived of their property and freedom and of their whole good for the sake of freedom and general welfare. In reality it is nothing but the same slavery, except that it is impersonal.
Where violence is legalized, there slavery exists. Whether the violence is expressed by incursions made by princes and their retainers, killing women and children and burning the villages; or by slave-owners taking work or money from their slaves for land and in case of non-payment calling in armed forces; or by some people laying tribute on others and riding armed through the villages; or by the Ministry of the Interior collecting money through Provincial Governors and the rural police, and in case of refusals to pay sending in the military-in a word, so long as there is violence supported by bayonets, there will not be a distribution of wealth among the people, but all wealth will go to the oppressors.
A striking illustration of the truth of this conclusion is supplied by Henry George’s project for nationalizing the land.1 George proposes to recognize all land as belonging to the State, and therefore to replace all taxes, both direct and indirect, by a ground rent. That is to say, every one making use of land should pay to the State the rental-value of such land.
What would result? Agricultural slavery would be abolished within the bounds of the State, that is, the land would belong to the State: England would have its own, America its own, and the slave-dues a man had to pay would be determined by the amount of land he used.
Perhaps the position of some of the workers (agrarian) would be improved, but as long as the forcible collection of a rent tax remained there would be slavery. An agriculturalist unable after a failure of crops to pay the rent forcibly demanded of him, to retain his land and not lose everything would have to go into bondage to a man who had money.
1 Accustomed as we are in England to hear of Land Nationalization as a rival project to Henry George’s taxation of land values, Tolstoy’s way of stating the case seems strange. But as his meaning is clear enough, the Russian text has been closely followed in this translation.-A.M.
If a bucket leaks there is certainly a hole in it. Looking at the bottom of a bucket it may seem that the water leaks out of several holes, but however much we may stop up these imaginary holes from outside, the water will still leak out. To stop the flow we must find the place where the water. escapes from the bucket and stop it up from inside. The same must be done with measures proposed for stopping the ill-distribution of wealth-for stopping up the holes through which wealth.
leaks away from the people. People say: ‘organize workers’ associations, make capital public property, make the land public property!’ All this is only external plugging of the places from which the water seems to leak. To stop the leakage of the workers’ wealth into the hands of the leisured classes it is necessary to find from within the hole through which this leakage takes place. This hole is the coercion armed men exert on the unarmed; the violence of troops by means of which the people themselves are taken from their work, and the land and the produce of people’s toil taken from the people. As long as there exists a single armed man arrogating to himself the right to kill any other man whatever, so long will the irregular distribution of wealth exist, that is, slavery.
CHAPTER XXII
I AM always surprised by the oft-repeated words: ‘Yes, in theory that is so, but how is it in practice?’ Just as if theory were some nice phrases needed for conversation but not in order that practice, that is one’s whole activity, should necessarily be based on it. There must have been a terrible number of stupid theories in the world for such a remarkable opinion to be generally accepted. Theory is what a man thinks on a subject, and practice is what he does. How then can it be that a man thinks he should do a thing this way and then does it the opposite way? If the theory of bread-baking is that it has first to be kneaded and then set to rise, no one knowing the theory, except a lunatic, will do the reverse. Yet with us it has become the fashion to
