In the matter with which I am engaged, what I had always thought was the case has been confirmed, namely, that practice inevitably follows theory and, I will not say justifies it, but cannot be different, and that if! have understood a matter about which I have thought, I cannot do it otherwise than as I understand it.
I wished to help the poor just because I had money and shared the common superstition that money represents work, or is in general a legitimate and good thing. But when I began giving away money I saw that I was giving drafts I had collected-which were drawn on the poor. I was doing what many land-owners used to do, making some serfs serve other serfs. I saw that every use of money, whether by purchase of anything, or as a free gift of it to someone, is the issuing for collection of a draft on the poor, or the giving of it to someone for collection from the poor.
And therefore the absurdity of what I wished to do-help the poor by exactions on the poor-became plain to me. I saw that money in itself is not merely not a good, but is an evident evil, depriving people of the greatest blessing-that of labouring and utilizing the fruits of one’s own exertions-and that I cannot transmit this blessing to anyone, because I myself lack it: I do not labour and have not the happiness of utilizing my own labour.
It might seem that there was nothing particular in this abstract reflection on the question, What is money? But this reflection, which I entered upon not as a mere reflection but to solve a question of my life and sufferings, gave me the answer to the question, What must we do?
As soon as I understood what riches are and what money is, it not only became clear and indubitable to me what I must do, but also what everybody ought to do, and what they will, therefore, inevitably do. In reality I merely understood what I had long known-the truth transmitted to mankind in remote times by Buddha, and Isaiah, and Lao-tsze, and Socrates, and to us particularly clearly and indubitably by Jesus Christ and his forerunner John the Baptist. In reply to the people’s question: What then must we do? John the Baptist replied simply, briefly, and clearly: ‘He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath food, let him do likewise’ (Luke iii. 10, 11).
The same was said by Christ many times and yet more clearly. He said, ‘Blessed are the poor, and woe unto ye that are rich.’ He said, ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’ He forbade his disciples to take money or even two coats. He told the rich young man that because he was rich, he could not enter the kingdom of God, and that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. He said that he who will not renounce all-house, and children, and fields, to follow him, is not his disciple. He spoke the parable of the rich man, who like our rich men did nothing bad but merely clothed himself well and ate and drank sumptuously, and thereby ruined his soul, and of the pauper Lazarus, who did nothing good, but was saved just by the fact that he was a pauper.
That truth had been known to me well enough, but the false teaching of the world had so obscured it that it had become to me merely a ‘theory’ in the sense people like to give that word, that is to say, it was mere empty words. But as soon as I succeeded in destroying in my consciousness the sophistries of the worldly teaching, theory merged with practice and the reality of my own life and of the life of all men showed up as its inevitable consequence.
I understood that man, besides living for his personal welfare, must necessarily serve the welfare of others: that if we are to draw a comparison from the world of animals, as some people are fond of doing when defending violence and strife by the struggle for existence in the animal kingdom, we should draw it from the social animals, such as bees, and that therefore man, to say nothing of his reason or innate love of his fellow man is called on by his very nature to serve others and to serve the common human ends. I understood that that is the natural law of man under which alone he can fulfil his destiny and so be happy.
I understood that this law has been infringed, and is infringed, by the fact that people, like robber bees, forcibly avoid toll and exploit the labour of others and direct their toil not to the common good but to the personal gratification of ever spreading passions (lusts), and themselves like the robber bees, perish thereby. I understood that men’s misfortunes come from the slavery in which some hold others. I understood that the slavery of our time was produced by the violence of militarism, by the appropriation of the land and by the exaction. of money. And having understood the meaning of all three instruments of the new slavery, I could not but wish to free myself from taking part in it.
When I was a serf-owner and understood the immorality of that position, I tried to liberate myself from it, like others who understood it. Considering my rights as slave-
owner to be immoral, I tried (until it should be possible to free myself completely from that position) to exert those rights as little as possible and to live and let others live as if those rights did not exist; and at the same time I tried by all means to instill into other slave-owners a sense of the wrongness and inhumanity of our imaginary rights.
I cannot but do the same in regard to the present slavery. Until I can completely renounce the rights given me by the possession of landed property and money, which are maintained by military violence, I can but exact my rights as little as possible and at the same time do all that I possibly can to make plain to others the illegitimacy and inhumanity of those pseudo rights.
The participation of a slave-owner in slavery consists in making use of other people’s labour, whether that slavery rests on his right to the slave or on his possession of land or money.
And therefore if a man really dislikes slavery and does not wish to be a participant in it, the first thing he will do will be not to use other people’s labour, either by owning land, by accepting government employment, or by money.
And the rejection of all the customary means of exploiting other people’s labour will inevitably make it necessary for such a man, on the one hand to restrict his needs, and, on the other, to do for himself what others formerly did for him.
This very simple and inevitable deduction enters into all the details of my life, immediately alters it all, and at once releases me from the moral sufferings I experienced at the sight of the miseries and depravity of men, and destroys all those three causes which made it impossible to help the poor and which I had encountered when seeking the causes of my failure.
The first cause was the crowding of the people into the towns and the consumption in towns of the wealth of the villages. It is only necessary for a man to wish not to exploit other people’s labour by means of government service, land-ownership, or money-and to wish therefore to satisfy his needs himself to the best of his strength and ability, for it never to enter his head to leave the village, where it is easiest to satisfy one’s needs, for the town where everything is the product of someone else’s labour and everything has to be bought. Then, in the village, he will be in a position to help the needy, and will not experience the feeling of helplessness I experienced in town when I tried to help people not by my own labour but by other people’s labour.
The second cause was the separation of the rich from the poor. It is only necessary for a man not to wish to exploit other people’s labour by means of state service, land-ownership, or by money, for him to find himself obliged to satisfy his wants himself, and immediately the wall separating him from the working people will disappear of itself, and he will blend with them and stand shoulder to shoulder with them, and it will become possible for him to help them.
The third cause was shame, based on conscious-ness of the immorality of my possession of the money with which I wanted to help others. We only need cease to wish to exploit other people’s work by means of government service, ownership of land, or by money, and we shall never have that superfluous mad money, my possession of which evoked in others, who had none, the demands I was unable to satisfy, and evoked in me a consciousness of being in the wrong.
CHAPTER XXIII
I SAW that the cause of men’s sufferings and depravity was that some are in slavery to others, and so I drew the simple conclusion that if! wish to help others I must first of all
