 CHAPTER XIII. What are governments? Is it possible to exist without governments? The cause of the miserable condition of the workers is slavery. The cause of slavery is legislation. Legislation rests on organized violence. It follows that an improvement in the condition of the people is possible only through the abolition of organized violence. But organized violence is government, and how can we live without government? Without governments there will be chaos, anarchy. All the achievements of civilization will perish and people will revert to their primitive barbarism. It is usual, not only for those to whom the existing order is profitable, but even for those to whom it is evidently unprofitable, but who are so accustomed to it that they cannot imagine life without governmental violence, to say we must not dare to touch the existing order of things. The destruction of government will, say they, produce the greatest misfortunes, riot, theft and murder, till finally the worst men will again seize power and enslave all the good people. But not to mention the fact that all this, for example, riots, thefts and murders, followed by the rule of the wicked and enslavement of the good, all this is what has happened and is happening, the anticipation that the disturbance of the existing order will produce riots and disorder does not prove the present order to be good. Only touch the present order and the greatest evils will follow. Only touch one brick of a thousand bricks piled into a narrow column, several yards high, and all the bricks will tumble down and smash. But the fact that any brick extracted, or any push administered, will destroy such a column and smash the bricks certainly does not prove it to be wise to keep the bricks in such an unnatural and inconvenient position. On the contrary, it shows that bricks should not be piled in such a column, but that they should be arranged so that they may lie firmly and so that they can be made use of without destroying the whole erection. It is the same with the present state organizations. The state organization is extremely artificial and unstable, and the fact that the least push may destroy it not only does not prove that it is necessary, but on the contrary shows that, if once upon a time it was necessary, it is now absolutely unnecessary and is therefore harmful and dangerous. It is harmful and dangerous because the effect of this organization on all the evil that exists in society is not to lessen and correct, but rather to strengthen and confirm that evil. It is strengthened and confirmed by being either justified and put in attractive forms or secreted. All that well-being of the people which we see in so-called well-governed states ruled by violence is but an appearance of fiction. Everything that would disturb the external appearance of well-being, all the hungry people, the sick, the revoltingly vicious are all hidden away where they cannot be seen. But the fact that we do not see them does not show that they do not exist. On the contrary, the more they are hidden, the more there will be of them, and the more cruel towards them will those be who are the cause of their condition. It is true that every interruption and yet more every stoppage of governmental action, for example of organized violence, disturbs this external appearance of well-being in our life. But such disturbance does not produce the disorder, but rather displays what was hidden and makes possible its amendment. Until now, say till almost the end of the 19th century, people thought and believed that they could not live without governments. But life flows onward, and the conditions of life and people's views change. And notwithstanding the efforts of governments to keep people in the childish condition in which an injured man feels as if it were better for him to have someone to complain to, people, especially the laboring people, both in Europe and in Russia, are more and more emerging from childhood and beginning to understand the true conditions of their life. You tell us that but for you we shall be conquered by neighboring nations, by the Chinese or the Japanese, men of the people now say. But we read the papers and we know that no one is threatening to attack us, and that it is only you who govern us, who for some objects, unintelligible to us, exasperate each other, and then under pretense of defending your own people, ruin us with taxes for the maintenance of the fleet, for armaments or for strategical railways, which are only required to gratify your ambition and vanity, and then you arrange wars with one another, as you have done now against the peaceful Chinese. You say that you defend landed property for our advantage, but your defense has this effect. That all the land either has passed or is passing into the control of rich banking companies, which do not labor, while we, the immense majority of the people, are being deprived of land and left in the power of those who do not labor. You, with your laws of landed property, do not defend landed property, but take it from those who work it. You say you secure to each man the produce of his labor, but you do just the reverse. All those who produce articles of value are, thanks to your pseudo-protection, placed in such a position that they not only never receive the value of their labor, but are all their lives long and complete subjection to, and in the power of, non-workers. Thus do people at the end of the century begin to understand and to speak, and this awakening from the lethargy in which governments have kept them is going on in some rapidly increasing ratio. Within the last five or six years the public opinion of the common folk, not only in the towns, but in the villages, and not only in Europe, but also among us in Russia, has altered amazingly. It is said that without governments we should not have those institutions, enlightening, educational, and public, that are needful for all. But why should we suppose this? Why think that non-official people could not arrange their life for themselves, as well as government people can arrange it, not for themselves, but for others? We see, on the contrary, that in the most diverse matters people in our times arrange their own lives incomparably better than those who govern them arrange things for them. Without the least help from government, and often in spite of the interference of government, people organize all sorts of social undertakings, workmen's unions, cooperative societies, railway companies, cartels, and syndicates. If collections for public works are needed, why should we suppose that free people could not, without violence, voluntary collect the necessary means and carry out anything that is now carried out by means of taxes, if only the undertakings in question are really useful for everybody? Why suppose that there cannot be tribunals without violence? Trial, by people trusted by the disputants, has always existed and will exist, and needs no violence. We are so depraved by long-continued slavery that we can hardly imagine administration without violence, and yet, again, that is not true. Russian communes migrating to distant regions where our government leaves them alone, arrange their own taxation, administration, tribunals, and police, and always prosper until governmental violence interferes with their administration. And in the same way there is no reason to suppose that people could not, by common agreement, decide how the land is to be apportioned for use. I have known people, Cossacks of the Orals, who have lived without acknowledging private property in land, and there was such well-being and order in their commune, as does not exist in society where landed property is defended by violence. And I now know communes that live without acknowledging the right of individuals to private property. Within my recollection the whole Russian peasantry did not accept the idea of landed property. The defense of landed property by governmental violence not merely does not abolish the struggle for landed property, but, on the contrary, intensifies that struggle and, in many cases, causes it. Were it not for the defense of landed property, and its consequent rise in price, people would not be crowded into such narrow spaces, but would scatter over the free land of which there is still so much in the world. But, as it is, a continual struggle goes on for landed property, a struggle with the weapons government furnishes by means of its laws of landed property. And in this struggle it is not those who work on the land, but always those who take part in governmental violence who have the advantage. It is the same with reference to things produced by labor. Things really produced by a man's own labor and that he needs are always protected by custom, by public opinion, by feelings of justice and reciprocity, and they do not need to be protected by violence. Tens of thousands of acres of forest lands belonging to one proprietor, while thousands of people close by have no fuel, need protection by violence. So too do factories and works where several generations of workmen have been defrauded and are still being defrauded. Yet more do hundreds of thousands of bushels of grain belonging to one owner who has held them back to sell them at triple price in time of famine. But no man, however depraved, except a rich man or a government official, would take from a countryman living by his own labor the harvest he has raised or the cow he has bred and from which he gets his milk for his children or the shovels, the skies, and the spades that he has made and uses. If even a man were found who did take from another articles the latter had made and required, such a man would rouse against himself such indignation from everyone living in similar circumstances that he would hardly find his action profitable for himself. A man so immoral as to do it under such circumstances would be sure to do it under the strictest system of property defense by violence. It is generally said only attempt to abolish the rights of property and land and in the produce of labor and no one will take the trouble to work lacking assurance that he will be able to retain what he has produced. We should say just the opposite. The defense by violence of the rights of property immorally obtained, which is now customary, if it is not quite destroyed has considerably weakened people's natural consciousness of justice in the matter of using articles such as has weakened the natural and innate right of property without which humanity could not exist and which has always existed and still exist among all men. And therefore there is no reason to anticipate that people will not be able to arrange their lives without organized violence. Of course it may be said that horses and bulls might be guided by the violence of rational beings, men. But why must men be guided not by some higher beings but by people such as themselves? Why ought people to be subject to the violence of just those men who are in power at a given time? What proves that these people are wiser than those on whom they inflict violence? The fact that they allow themselves to use violence towards human beings indicate that they are not only not more wise but less wise than those who submit to them. The examinations in China for the office of Mandarin do not, we know, ensure that the wisest and best people should be placed in power and just as little as this ensured by inheritance or the whole machinery of promotions and rank or the elections in constitutional countries. On the contrary, power is always seized by those who are less conscientious and less moral. It is said how can people live without governments for example without violence but it should on the contrary be asked how can rational people live acknowledging the vital bond of their social life to be violence and not reasonable agreement? One of two things either people are rational beings or they are irrational beings. If they are irrational beings then they are all irrational and then everything among them is decided by violence and there is no reason why certain people should and others should not have a right to use violence and in that case governmental violence has no justification. But if men are rational beings then their relation should be based on reason and not on the violence of those who happen to have seized power and in that case again governmental violence has no justification. End of Chapter 13. Recording by Matthew J. Heath Van Horn. Chapter 14 of The Slavery of Our Times. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Matthew J. Heath Van Horn. The Slavery of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy. Translated by Almer Maud. Chapter 14. How Can Governments Be Abolished? Slavery results from laws. Laws are made by governments and therefore people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of governments. But how can governments be abolished? All attempts to get rid of governments by violence have hitherto always and everywhere resulted only in this. That in place of the deposed governments new ones establish themselves often more cruel than those they replaced. Not to mention past attempts to abolish governments by violence according to the socialist theory the coming abolition of the rule of the capitalists for example the communalization of the means of production and the new economic order of society is also to be instituted by a fresh organization of violence and will have to be maintained by the same means so that attempts to abolish violence by violence neither have in the past nor evidently can in the future emancipate people from violence nor consequently from slavery. It cannot be otherwise. Apart from outbursts of revenge or anger violence is used only in order to compel some people against their own will to do the will of others but the necessity to do what other people wish against your own will is slavery and therefore as long as any violence designed to compel some people to do the will of others exists there will be slavery all the attempts to abolish slavery by violence are like extinguishing fire with fire stopping water with water or filling up one hole by digging another therefore the means of escape from slavery if such means exist must be found not in setting up fresh violence but in abolishing whatever renders governmental violence possible and the possibility of governmental violence like every other violence perpetuated by a small number of people upon a large number has always depended and still depends simply on the fact that the small number are armed while the large number are unarmed or that the small number are better armed than the large number that has been the case in all the conquests it was thus the greeks the romans the knights the bazaaros conquered nations and it is thus that people are now conquered in africa and asia and in this same way in times of peace all governments hold their subjects in subjection as of old so now people rule over other people only because some are armed and others are not in olden times the warriors with their chiefs fell upon the defenseless inhabitants subdued them and robbed them and all divided the spoils and proportion to their participation courage and cruelty and each warrior saw clearly that the violence he perpetrated was profitable to him now armed men taken chiefly from the working classes attack defenseless people men on strike rioters or the inhabitants of other countries and subdue them and rob them for example make them yield the fruits of their labor not for themselves the assailants but for people who do not even take a share in the subjugation the difference between the conquerors and the governments is only that the conquerors themselves with their soldiers attack the unarmed inhabitants and in case of insubordination carried their threats to torture and to kill into execution while the governments in cases of insubordination do not themselves torture or execute the unarmed inhabitants but oblige others to do it who have been deceived and specially brutalized for the purpose and who are chosen from among the very people on whom the government inflicts violence thus violence was formally inflicted by personal effort by the courage cruelty and agility of conquerors themselves but now violence is inflicted by means of fraud so that if formally in order to get rid of armed violence it was necessary to arm oneself and to opposed armed violence by armed violence now when people are subdued not by direct violence but by fraud it is only necessary in order to abolish violence to expose the deception which enables a small number of people to exercise violence over a large number the deception by means of which this is done consists in the fact that the small number who rule on obtaining power from their predecessors who are installed by conquest saved to the majority there are a lot of you but you are stupid and uneducated and cannot either govern yourselves or organize your public affairs and therefore we will take those cares upon ourselves we will protect you from foreign foes and arrange and maintain internal order among you we will set up courts of justice arrange for you and take care of public institutions schools roads and the postal service and in general we will take care of your well-being and in return for all of this you only have to fulfill certain slight demands which we make and among other things you must give into our complete control a small part of your incomes and you must yourselves enter the armies which are needed for your own safety and government and most people agree to this not because they have weighed the advantages and disadvantage of these conditions they never have a chance to do that but because from their very birth they have found themselves in conditions such as these if doubts suggest themselves to some people as to whether all this is necessary each one thinks only about himself and fears to suffer if he refuses to accept these conditions each one hopes to take advantage of them for his own profit and everyone agrees thinking that by paying a small part of his means to the government and by consenting to military service he cannot do himself very much harm but as soon as the governments have the money and the soldiers instead of fulfilling their promises to defend their subjects from foreign armies and to arrange things for their benefit they do all they can to provoke the neighboring nations and to produce war and they not only do not promote the internal well-being of their people but they ruin and corrupt them in the arabian nights there's a story of a traveler who being cast upon an uninhabited island found a little old man with withered legs sitting on the ground by the side of a stream the old man asked the traveler to take him on his shoulders and to carry him over the stream the traveler consented but no sooner was the old man settled on the traveler's shoulders than the former twined his legs around the ladders neck and would not get off again having control of the traveler the old man drove him about as he liked plucked fruit from the trees and ate himself not giving any to his bearer and abused him in every way it is not even needed for war when the war is defensive and national as the bowers have recently shown it is wanted and wanted only for the purposes indicated by william for the perpetuation of the greatest crimes fratricide and patricide the terrible old man who sat on the traveler's shoulders behaved as the government's do he mocked him and insulted him knowing that as long as he sat on the traveler's neck the ladder was in his power and it is just this fraud by means of which a small number of unworthy people called the government have power over the people and not only impoverish them but do what is the most harmful of all actions pervert whole generations from childhood upwards just this terrible fraud which should be exposed in order that the abolition of government and of the slavery that results from it may become possible the german writer eugene schmitt in the newspaper own stolt which he published in budapest wrote an article that was profoundly true and bold not only in expression but in thought in it he showed that governments justifying their existence on the ground that they ensure a certain kind of slavery to their subjects are like the calabrian robber chief who collected a regular tax from all those who wish to travel and safety along the highways schmitt was committed for trial for that article but was acquitted by the jury we are so hypnotized by the governments that such a comparison seems to us an exaggeration a paradox or a joke but in reality is not a paradox or a joke the only inaccuracy in the comparison is that the activity of all the government's is many times more inhuman and above all more harmful than the activity of the calabrian robber the robber generally plundered the rich the governments generally plunder the poor and protect those rich men who assist in their crimes the robber doing his work risked his life while the governments risk nothing but base their whole activity on lies and deception the robber did not compel anyone to join his band the governments generally enroll their soldiers by force all who paid the tax to the robber had equal security from danger but in the state the more anyone takes part in the organized fraud the more he receives not merely of protection but also of reward most of all the emperor's kings and presidents are protected with their perpetual bodyguards and they can spend the largest share of the money collected from the tax-paying subjects next in the scale of participation in governmental crimes come the commanders in chief the ministers the heads of police governors and so on down to the policemen who are the least protected and who receive the smallest salaries of all those who do not take part in the crimes of the government who refuse to serve to pay taxes or to go to law are subjected to violence as among the robbers the robber does not intentionally violate people but the governments to accomplish their ends violate whole generations from childhood to manhood with false religious and patriotic instruction above all not even the most cruel robber no stenka resin no cartouche can be compared for cruelty pitilessness and ingenuity in torturing i will not say with the villain kings notorious for their cruelty john the terrible lewis the 11th the elizabeth's etc but even with the present constitutional and liberal governments with their solitary cells disciplinary battalions suppressions of revolts and their massacres and war towards governments as towards churches it is impossible to feel otherwise then with veneration or aversion until a man has understood what a government is and until he has understood what a church is he cannot but feel a veneration for those institutions as long as he is guided by them his vanity makes it necessary for him to think that what guides him is something primal great and holy but as soon as he understands that what guides him is not something primal and holy but that it is a fraud carried out by unworthy people who under the pretense of guiding him make use of him for their own personal ends he cannot but at once feel aversion towards these people and the more important the side of his life that has been guided the more aversion he will feel people cannot but feel this when they have understood what governments are people must feel that their participation in the criminal activity of governments whether by giving part of their work in the form of money or by direct participation in military service is not as is generally supposed an indifferent action but besides being harmful to oneself and to one's brothers is a participation in the crimes unceasingly committed by all governments and a preparation for new crimes which governments by maintaining disciplined armies are always preparing the age of veneration for governments notwithstanding all the hypnotic influence they employ to maintain their position is more and more passing away and it is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary but are harmful and highly immoral institutions in which an honest self-respecting man cannot and must not take part and the advantage of which he cannot and should not enjoy and as soon as people clearly understand that they will naturally cease to take part in such deeds for example cease to give the government soldiers and money and as soon as the majority of people ceases to do this the fraud which enslaves the people will be abolished only in this way can people be freed from slavery end of chapter 14 recording by Matthew Jay Heath Van Horn chapter 15 of The Slavery of Our Times this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings earn the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Matthew Jay Heath Van Horn The Slavery of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy translated by Almer Maud chapter 15 what should each man do but all these are general considerations and whether they are correct or not they are inexplicable to life will be the remark made by people accustomed to their position and who do not consider it possible or who do not wish to change it tell us what to do and how to organize society is what people of the well-to-do classes usually say people of the well-to-do classes are so accustomed to their role of slave owners that when there is talk of improving the workers condition they at once begin like our surf owners before the emancipation to devise all sorts of plans for their slaves but it never occurs to them that they have no right to dispose of other people and that if they really wish to do good to people the one thing they can and should do is to cease to do the evil they are now doing and the evil they do is very definite and clear it is not merely that they employ compulsory slave labor and they do not wish to cease from employing it but that they also take part in establishing and maintaining this compulsion of labor that is what they should cease to do the working people are also so perverted by their compulsory slavery that it seems to most of them that if their position is a bad one it is the fault of the masters who pay them too little and who own the means of production it does not enter their heads that their bad position depends entirely on themselves and that if only they wish to improve their own and their brothers position and not merely each to do their best he can for himself the great thing for them to do is themselves to cease to do evil and the evil they do is that desiring to improve their material possession by the very means which have brought them into bondage the workers for the sake of satisfying the habits they have adopted sacrificing their human dignity and freedom except humiliating and immoral employment or produce unnecessary and harmful articles and above all they maintain governments taking part in them by paying taxes and by direct service and thus they enslave themselves in order that the state of things may be improved both the well-to-do classes and the workers must understand that improvement cannot be affected by safeguarding one's own interests service involves sacrifice and therefore if people really wish to improve the position of their brother men and not merely their own they must be ready not only to alter the way of life to which they're accustomed and to lose those advantages which they have held but they must be prepared for an intense struggle not against governments but against themselves and their families and must be ready to suffer persecution for non-fulfillment of the demands of government and therefore the reply to the question what is it we must do is very simple and not merely definite but always in the highest degree applicable and practicable for each man though it is not what is expected by those who like people of the well-to-do classes are fully convinced that they are appointed to correct not themselves as they are already good but to teach and correct other people and by those who like the workmen are sure that not they but only the capitalists are in fault that their position is so bad and think that things can only be put right by taking from the capitalists the things that they use and arranging so that all might make use of these conveniences of life which are now used only by the rich the answer is very definite applicable and practicable for it demands the activity of that one person over whom each of us has real rightful and unquestionable power namely oneself and it consists in this that if a man whether slave or slave owner really wishes to better not his position alone but the position of people in general he must not himself do those wrong things which enslave him and his brothers and in order not to do the evil which produces misery for himself and for his brothers he should first of all neither willingly nor under compulsion take any part in governmental activity and should therefore be neither a soldier nor a field marshal nor minister of state nor a tax collector nor a witness nor an alderman nor a journeyman nor a governor nor a member of parliament nor in fact hold any office connected with violence that is one thing secondly such a man should not voluntarily pay taxes to governments either directly or indirectly nor should he accept money collected by taxes either as salary or as pension or as a reward nor should he make use of governmental institutions supported by taxes collected by violence from the people that is the second thing thirdly a man who desires not to promote his own well-being alone but to better the position of people in general should not appeal to governmental violence for the protection of his positions in land or in other things nor to defend him and his near ones but should only possess land and all products of his own or other people's toil in so far as others do not claim them from him but such an activity is impossible to refuse all participation in governmental affairs means to refuse to live is what people will say a man who refuses military service will be imprisoned a man who does not pay taxes will be punished and the tax will be collected from his property a man who having no other means of livelihood refuses government service will perish of hunger with his family the same will be fall a man who rejects governmental protection for his property and his person not to make use of things that are taxed or of governmental institutions is quite impossible as the most necessary articles are often taxed and just in the same way it is impossible to do without governmental institutions such as the post the roads etc it is quite true that is difficult for a man of our times to stand aside from all participation in governmental violence but the fact that not everyone can so arrange his life as not to participate in some degree in governmental violence does not at all show that it is not possible to free oneself from it more and more not every man will have the strength to refuse conscription though there are and will be such men but each man can abstain from voluntarily entering the army the police force or the judicial or revenue service and can give the preference to a worst-paid private service rather than to a better paid public service not every man will have the strength to renounce his landed estates though there are people who do that but every man can understanding the wrongfulness of such property diminish its extent not every man can renounce the possession of capital there are some who do or the use of articles defended by violence but each man can by diminishing his own requirements be less and less in need of articles which provoke other people to envy not every official can renounce his government salary though there are men who prefer hunger to dishonest governmental employment but everyone can prefer a smaller salary to a larger one for the sake of having duties less bound up with violence not everyone can refuse to make use of government schools though there are some who do but everyone can give the preference to private schools and each can make less and less use of articles that are taxed and of government institutions between the existing order based on brute force and the ideal of a society based on reasonable agreement confirmed by custom there are an infinite number of steps which mankind are ascending and the approach to the ideal is only accomplished to the extent to which people free themselves from participation in violence from taking advantage of it and from being accustomed to it we do not know and cannot foresee still less like the pseudoscientific men foretell in what way this gradual weakening of governments and emancipation of the people will come about nor do we know what new forms man's lives will take as the gradual emancipation progresses but we do know certainly that the life of people who having understood the criminality and harmfulness of the activity of governments strive not to make use of them or to take part in them will be quite different and more in accord with the law of life and with our own consciousnesses then the present life in which people while themselves participating in governmental violence and taking advantage of it make a pretense of struggling against it and try to destroy the old violence by new violence the chief thing is that the present arrangement of life is bad and about that all are agreed the cause of the bad conditions and of the existing slavery lies in the violence used by governments there's only one way to abolish governmental violence it is that people should abstain from participating in violence and therefore whether it be difficult or not to abstain from participating in governmental violence and whether the good results of such abstinence will or will not be soon apparent are superfluous questions because deliberate people from slavery there is only that one way and no other to what extent and when voluntary agreement confirmed by custom will replace violence in each society and in the whole world will depend on the strength and clearness of people's consciousness and on the number of individuals who make this consciousness their own each of us is a separate person and each can be a participator in the general movement of humanity by his greater or lesser clearness of recognition in the aim before us or he can be an opponent of progress each will have to make his choice to oppose the will of God building upon the sands of the unstable house of his brief and elusive life or to join in the eternal deathless movement of a true life in accord with God's will but perhaps I am mistaken and the right conclusion to draw from human history are not these and the human race is not moving towards emancipation from slavery perhaps it can be proved that violence is a necessary factor of progress and that the state with its violence is a necessary form of life and that it will be the worst for people if governments are abolished and if the defense of our persons and properties abolished let us grant it to be so and say that all the foregoing reasoning is wrong but beside the general considerations about the life of humanity each man has also to face the question of his own life and notwithstanding any considerations about the general laws of life a man cannot do what he admits to be not merely harmful but wrong very possibly the reasonings showing the state to be a necessary form of the development of the individual and governmental violence to be necessary for the good of society can all be deduced from history and all are correct each honest and sincere man of our times will reply but murder is an evil that I know more certainly than any reasonings by demanding that I should enter the army or pay for hiring and equipping soldiers or for buying cannons and building ironclads you wish to make me an accomplice in murder and that I cannot and will not be neither do I wish to nor can I make use of money you have collected from hungry people with threats of murder nor do I wish to make use of land or capital defended by you because I know that your defense of it rests on murder I could do these things when I did not understand all their criminality but when I have once seen it I cannot avoid seeing it and can no longer take part in these things I know that we are also bound up by violence that it is difficult to avoid it altogether but I will nevertheless do all I can not to take part in it I will not be an accomplice to it and will not try to make use of what is obtained and defended by murder I have but one life and why should I in this brief life of mine act contrary to the voice of conscience and become a partner in your abominable deeds I cannot and I will not and what comes of this I do not know only I think no harm can result from acting as my conscience demands so in our time should each honest and sincere man reply to all the arguments about the necessity of governments and of violence and to every demand or invitation to take part in them the conclusion to which general reasoning should bring us is thus confirmed to each individual by that supreme and unimpeachable judge the voice of conscience end of chapter 15 recording by Matthew J Heath Van Horn in afterward of The Slave River Times this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Matthew J Heath Van Horn The Slave River Times by Leo Tolstoy translated by Almer Maud in afterward but this is again the same old sermon on the one hand urging the destruction of the present order of things without putting anything in its place on the other hand exhorting to non-action is what many will say on reading what I have written governmental action is bad so is the action of the landowner and of the man of business equally bad is the activity of the socialist and of the revolutionary anarchists that is to say all real practical activities are bad and only some sort of moral spiritual indefinite activity which brings everything to utter chaos and inaction is good thus I know many serious and sincere people will think and speak what seems to people most disturbing in the idea of no violence is that property will not be protected and that each man will therefore be able to take from another what he needs or merely likes and to go unpunished to people accustomed to the defense of property and person by violence it seems that without such defense there will be perpetual disorder a constant struggle of everyone against everyone else I will not repeat what I have said elsewhere to show that the defense of property by violence does not lessen but increases this disorder but allowing that in the absence of defense disorder may occur what are people to do who have understood the cause of the calamities from which they are suffering if we have understood that we are ill from drunkenness we must not hoping the men matters by drinking moderately continue to drink nor take medicines that short-sighted doctors give us and continue drinking and it is the same with our social sickness if we have understood that we are ill because some people use violence to others we cannot improve the position of society either by continuing to support the governmental violence that exists or by introducing a fresh kind of revolutionary or socialist violence that might have been done as long as the fundamental cause of people's misery was not clearly seen but as soon as it has become indubitably clear that people suffer from the violence done by some to others it becomes impossible to improve the position by continuing the old violence or by introducing a new kind as the sick men suffering from alcoholism has but one way to be cured by refraining from intoxicants which are the cause of his illness so there is only one way to free men from the evil arrangement of society and that is to refrain from violence the cause of the suffering from preaching violence and from in any way justifying violence and not only is this the only way to deliver people from their ills but we must also adopt it because it coincides with the moral consciousness of each individual man of our times if a man of our day has once understood that every defense of property or person by violence is obtained only by threatening to murder or by murdering he can no longer with a quiet conscience make use of that which is obtained by murder or by threats of murder and still less can he take part in the murders or in threatening to murder so that what is wanted to free people from their misery is also needed for the satisfaction of the moral consciousness of every individual and therefore for each individual there can be no doubt that both for the general good and to fulfill the law of his life he must neither take part in violence nor justify it nor make use of it the end end of the afterward recording by Matthew J. Heath Van Horn End of The Slavery of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy translated by Almer Maud