But that only seems so; it is only necessary to examine the essence of our present justification to become convinced that there is nothing new in it.
It is only a little disguised, but is the same, for it is founded on the same thing. Every justification of man for consuming the labour of others without himself working-the justification of Pharaoh and the priests, of the Roman and medieval emperors, and of the knights, priests, and clerics-was always constructed on two assumptions: (1) We take the labour of the common people because we are a special kind of people destined by God to rule the common folk and teach them divine truths; (2) members of the common
people cannot be judges of the amount of labour we take from the common people, because, as was said already by the Pharisees (John vii. 49), This multitude which knoweth not the law are accursed. The people do not understand what is good for them, and cannot therefore be the judge of the benefits conferred on them.
The justification employed in our time, despite its apparent difference, is constructed essentially of those same two fundamental propositions: (1) We are special people, we educated people who serve progress and civilization and thereby confer great benefit on the common folk; (2) the common uneducated people do not understand the benefit we confer on them and therefore cannot be judges of it.
We free ourselves from toil, and use up the toil of others and thereby make their condition more burdensome, and we affirm that in exchange for this we render them great service of which, from their ignorance, they cannot be the judges.
Is not this the same? The difference is only in the fact that formerly the right to other people’s work belonged to the Roman citizens, priests, knights, and nobles, but now to one caste of people who call themselves the educated classes. The falsehood is the same, for the false position of the people justifying themselves is the same. That falsehood lies in the fact that before reasoning about the advantage rendered to the people by those who free themselves from toil, certain people, the Pharaohs, the priests, or we educated people, occupy that position, maintain it, and then devise a justification for it.
That position of some people coercing others, both in former times and in the present, serves as the basis of it all.
The only difference between our justification and the most ancient one is that ours is more fallacious and has less basis than the former.
The ancient emperors and popes if they themselves and the people believed in their divine appointment, could explain simply why they were the people who should have the use of other people’s labour: they said they were appointed thereto by God himself, and that God destined them to transmit to the people the divine truths which had been revealed to them, and to govern the people.
But educated people of our times who do not work with their hands, acknowledging the equality of man, can no longer explain why just they and their children (for education also is only obtained by money, that is by power) are the chosen, fortunate people ordained to confer a certain easy benefit, and not others from among the millions who perish by hundreds and thousands while rendering education for the few possible.
Their only justification is that they-those who are there now-in exchange for the evil they do to people by avoiding work and consuming the labour of others confer on the people a benefit the people do dot understand, but which compensates for all the harm they do.
CHAPTER XXVII
proposition by which people who have emancipated themselves from labour justify their emancipation, in its simplest and at the same time its most exact expression is this: We, people who, having emancipated ourselves from labour, are able by violence to make use of other people s work as a result of this position of ours confer benefits on those other people; or in other words, certain people in exchange for palpable and comprehensible harm they inflict on the masses by forcibly taking their labour and thus augmenting the hardship of their struggle with nature, confer a benefit on the masses which is impalpable and incomprehensible to them. This proposition is a very strange one, but like the people of former times those of the present who sit on the backs of the working folk believe in it and relieve their consciences by it.
Let us see how this proposition is in our times justified among the various classes that have emancipated themselves from labour.
I serve people by my official or ecclesiastical activity, as a king, a minister of state, or a prelate; I serve people by my commercial. or industrial activity, I serve people by my scientific or artistic activity. All our activities are as necessary to the people as their work is to us.
So say the various kinds of people of our day who have exempted themselves from labour.
Let us examine in succession each of the grounds on which they affirm the utility of their activities.
There can only be two tests of the utility of one man’s activity for another: the external, consisting in the recognition of this utility by him who is benefited, and the internal, a desire to benefit another which lies at the root of the activity of him who confers the benefit.
The government people (I include among them the ecclesiastics of the Church established by the State) confer benefit on those whom they rule.
An emperor, king, president of a republic, prime minister, minister of justice, minister of war of education, a bishop, and all their subordinates who serve the State, live exempting themselves from the struggle of humanity for life and leaving the whole burden of that struggle to other people, on the ground that their activity compensates for this. .
Let us apply the first test: is the benefit conferred by this activity recognized by the working men upon whom the activity of the governing class is directly exerted?
Yes, it is acknowledged: the majority of men consider the governmental activity to be necessary for them-the majority acknowledges the usefulness of this activity in principle; but in all its known manifestations, in all particular cases known to us, each of the institutions and acts of that activity encounters in the circle of those for whose benefit it is done not merely a denial of benefit received, but assertion that this activity is harmful and disastrous.
There is no State or social activity which is not considered to be harmful by very many people; there is no institution which is not considered harmful: the courts, banks, county councils, district, councils, the police, the clergy, every State activity from the highest authorities down to the town and rural police, from the bishops to the sextons, IS by some people considered to be beneficial and by others harmful. And this is so not in Russia only, but in the whole world also-in France, and in America.
The whole activity of the Republican party is considered harmful by the Democratic party, and vice, versa; the whole activity of the Democratic party, if it is in power, is considered harmful by the Republican party and by others.
But not only is the activity of the government people in general never considered useful by all men-that activity has also this characteristic that it always has to be enforced by violence, and that to attain its benefit murders executions jails, forcibly collected taxes and so forth, are necessary.
It turns out, therefore, that besides the fact that the advantage of government activity is not acknowledged by all men and is always denied by part of the people, this benefit is characterized by always manifesting itself by means of violence. And so the benefit of political activity cannot be confirmed on the ground that it is acknowledged by those people for whom it is carried on.
Let us apply the second test. Let us question the government people themselves, from king to policeman, from president to office-clerk, and from patriarch to sexton, asking them to reply sincerely: Have they all of them in view, when occupying their positions, the benefit they wish to confer on the people, or some other aim? Are they prompted in their wish to occupy the post of king, president, minister, rural policeman, sexton, or schoolmaster, by a striving for other people’s benefit or for their own personal advantage?
And the reply of conscientious men will be, that their chief impulse is their own personal advantage.
And so it appears that one class of people availing themselves of the work of others, who perish at their labour, redeem the indubitable harm they cause, by an activity which is always considered by very many people to be not a benefit but an injury, and is not accepted voluntarily but must always be enforced by violence, and the aim of which is not the benefit of others but the personal advantage of those who exert it.
What then confirms the supposition. that governmental activity is beneficial to the people?
Only this, that those who carry it on are firmly convinced that it is useful, and that this activity has always existed. But institutions have always existed which were not merely useless but even harmful, such as slavery, prostitution, and wars. Industrialists-including under that heading traders, manufacturers, railroad men, bankers, and landowners-believe that they confer benefits which redeem the unquestionable harm they do.
On what grounds do they think so?
To the question, who and what sort of people acknowledge the usefulness of
