 Translator's introduction 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 Luke Meyer. The Slavery of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy. Translated by Elmer Maud. Translator's introduction. This little book shows, in a short, clear and systematic manner, how the principle of non-resistance about which Tolstoy has written so much is related to economic and political life. The great majority of men, without knowing why, are constrained to labor long hours at tasks they dislike, and often to live in unhealthy conditions. It is not that man has so little control over nature that to obtain a subsistence it is necessary to work in this way. But because men have made laws about land, taxes and property, which result in placing the great bulk of the people in conditions which compel them to labor thus, or to go to the workhouse, or starve. It may be said that man's nature is so bad that were it not for these laws an even worse state of things would exist. That the laws we make and tolerate are outward invisible signs of an inward and spiritual disgrace, the selfishness of man, which is the real root of the evil. But granting that, in a sense, this may be true, we need not suppose man's nature to be immutable, and all progress forever impossible. Nor need we suppose it our duty to leave progress in the hands of some kind of a self-acting evolution, whose operations we can only watch as a passenger watches the workings of a ship's engines. We may consider the effect of the laws we have made, approve or disapprove of them, discern the direction in which it is possible to advance, or to take our part in furthering or hampering that advance. Laws are made by governments, and are enforced by physical violence. We have been so long taught that it is good for some people to make laws for others that most men approve of this. Just as gentle people have been known to approve of wholesale, while they turn up their noses at retail business, so people in general, while disapproving of robbery and murder when done on a small scale, admire them when they are organized, and when they result in allotting most of the land on which forty millions have to live to a few thousands, and in periodically sending out thousands of men to kill and to be killed. Nor are people much shocked at isolated murders, the responsibility for which is subdivided between the queen, the hangman, the judge, jury, and officials. To Tolstoy's mind, violence done by man to man is wrong. We cannot escape the wrongness by doing it wholesale or by subdividing the responsibility. But what would happen if we cease to abet it? If it were possible forcibly to oblige men to cease from using force, the selfishness, which is at the root of the matter, would no doubt burst out in some fresh form. That is, in fact, pretty much what has happened. Weary of strife and private feuds, people consented to leave to governments the use of force. External peace among individuals has ensued, but in place of strife with club or sword a new struggle, almost as fierce, is carried on under legal and commercial forms. Tolstoy's desire is not that people should be compelled to cease from violence, but that violence should become to them abhorrent, and that they should not wish to sway others more than they can be swayed by reason and by sympathy. Were that accomplished, surely we may trust that good would come of good, as now ill comes of ill. At any rate, as Tolstoy shows, there is no other path of advance. We can neither revert to the belief that to use violence as a divine right of kings, nor can we maintain the current belief that to do so is a divine right of majorities. To be subjected by force to a rule we disapprove of is slavery, and we are all slaves or slave owners, sometimes both together, as long as our society bases itself on violence. But can we abolish the use of violence and cease to imprison and kill our fellow men? We can at least consider what Tolstoy says on the matter, and realize that organized violence exists, claiming our approval, and that it is possible to withhold that approval. As for abolishing violence, it is for us not a question of yes or no, but it is a question of more or less. The amount of violence committed depends on the amount of support the violators receive. There are many places where it is now impossible to get anyone to become a hangman. And even in England, comparatively brutal as we are, it would be impossible to re-enact the penal code of George III, under which 160 different crimes were punishable with death. To shake ourselves completely free from all share in violence, if we are not quite ready to become martyrs, may seem and does seem impossible. Tolstoy himself does not profess to have ceased to use postage stamps which are issued, or the highway that is maintained by a government which collects taxes by force. But reform comes by men doing what they can and not what they can't. It would be a very easy and very silly reply to the teachings of Jesus to say that as he tells us to be perfect and we can't be perfect, we can get no guidance from his teaching. In the same way, anyone who wishes to be logical but not reasonable may say that as Tolstoy tells us to stand aside from all violence and as we cannot do so his guidance is useless. Tolstoy relies on his readers to use common sense, and the common sense of the matter is that if we are so enmeshed in a system based on violence and if we ourselves are weak and faulty that we cannot avoid being parties to acts of violence, we should avoid this as much as we can. The mind is more free than the body. Let us at least try to understand the truth of the matter and not excuse a vicious system in order to shelter ourselves. When we have understood the matter, let us not fear to speak out, and when we have confessed our views, let us try to bring our lives more and more in harmony with them. To free ourselves from the perplexity produced by the dual standard of legality and of right would alone be an enormous gain. Take for instance the drink traffic in England. What friction and waste of power has resulted from the attempts to legislate on the matter? How greatly brewers, distillers, and dealers have gained in respectability by the fact that their occupations were legal, if not right. And is it not becoming evident that it is not by laws that such evils as the drink trade can be met? But we are told people are so inconsiderate and so wrong-headed that nothing but the strong arm of the law will restrain them. To disturb their respect for the law is dangerous. Of course it is dangerous. Every great moral movement and every strong reform movement has its very real dangers. A century and a half after St. Francis of Assisi had stirred Europe by his example of self-renunciation and devotion to the service of others, such a crowd of impudent mendicants shirking the drudgery of a workaday world were preying on society in his name, that Wycliffe denounced them as sturdy beggars and strongly censured any man who gives his alms to a begging friar. History is apt to repeat itself in such matters, and no doubt Tolstoy's views will be again and again exploited by unworthy disciples. But is humanity to stagnate because of what is evil is so easily grafted on what is good? To think and to move may be dangerous, but to stagnate is to die. And progress along the path of violence as Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Rome, Spain, and many other nations have shown is progress to destruction. No doubt too that many good people will be shocked at Tolstoy's statement that laws are rules made by people who govern by means of organized violence. They will plead that in modern governments the administrative functions are becoming more and more predominant, and the coercive ones are falling more and more into abeyance. But their reply is that governments need only drop these dwindling and secondary functions in order to escape the criticism here leveled at them. Governments which, without insisting on having their services accepted, are content to offer to organize society on a voluntary basis, killing no one, imprisoning no one, and relying on reason and persuasion to make their decrees prevail, are not here attacked. And whatever good-natured people may wish to believe about governments, the fact is that existing governments rely on force. And that when they do not rely on force we do not call them governments but voluntary associations. That men concerned in governing others know this is shown all through history, and has been again shown recently in South Africa. As long as Kruger and his party had the armed force, the Boer Reform Party, the miners, and even Messers-Bait, Rhodes and Company had to submit. In the time of the raid, the question who in future should make the laws hung in the balance, it might be Kruger or Rhodes or somebody else. But it was sure to be the man or men who could obtain the advantage of being allowed openly, systematically, and unblushingly to do violence to those who disobeyed them. Men who were organizing the buccaneers one day might become, and may yet become, a government another day. In fact, just as in Sparta it was considered immoral not to thieve but to be caught thieving, so among modern moralists such as Paley, it has been gravely argued that the morality of using violence against the men in power depends on the chance of being successful. Tolstoy says that the systematic use of organized violence lies at the root of the ills from which our society suffers, and while agreeing in the indictment socialism brings against the present system, he points out that the establishment of a socialist state would involve the enforcement of a fresh form of slavery, direct compulsion to labor. And if he is not at one with a socialist, neither is he at one with the revolutionary party of Russian anarchists, usually spoken of in England as nihilists. They, indeed, are often very bitter in their denunciations of Tolstoy, whose influence has increased the moral repugnance felt for their policy of assassination. Their accusation that Tolstoy wishes to oppose despotism by mere metaphysics is, however, met in the present work by a direct and explicit appeal to conscientious people not voluntarily to pay taxes to governments which spend the money on organizing violence and murder. This view of the duty of individuals towards governments has had exponents in our own language. St. Lee Quaker John Woolman wrote in his journal in 1757, A few years past, money being made current in our province for carrying on wars and to be called in again by taxes laid on the inhabitants, my mind was often affected with the thoughts of paying such taxes. There was in the depth of my mind a scruple which I never could get over, and at certain times I was greatly distressed on that account. I believed that there were some upright-hearted men who paid such taxes, yet could not see that their example was a sufficient reason for me to do so, while I believed that the spirit of truth required of me, as an individual, to suffer patiently the distress of good rather than pay actively. He found he was not alone among the friends of Philadelphia in this matter. Nearly a century later Henry Thoreau wrote in his admirable essay on civil disobedience, I heartily accept the motto, that government is best which governs least, and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out it finally amounts to this which I also believe, that government is best which governs not at all, and when men are prepared for it that will be the kind of government which they will have. It is not a man's duty as a matter of course to devote himself to the eradication of any even the most enormous wrong. He may properly have other concerns to engage him, but it is his duty at least to wash his hands of it, and if he gives it no thought longer not to give it practically his support. I do not hesitate to say that all those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think it is enough that they have got on their side without waiting for that other one. Moreover any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already. Holding these views he refused to pay the poll tax, and was put in prison for one night till someone paid the tax for him, much to his disgust. Tolstoy therefore is in good company in holding the view that it were better to offer a passive resistance to governments than to voluntarily pay what they demand and misapply. Such refusals might bring about the bloodless revolution of which Thoreau spoke. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of peaceful revolution, if any such as possible. If the tax gatherer or any other public officer asked me, as one has done, but what shall I do, my answer is, if you really wish to do anything, resign your office. When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But while we remember that Tolstoy is in good company in this matter, and that he here offers just what some people pine for, something definite and decided to do or refused to do, we shall, I think, make a sad mistake if we fail to differentiate between the main intention and drift of his work, and such a piece of practical advice as this. The main intention and drift of the work is to show that progress in human well-being can only be achieved by relying more and more on reason and conscience, and less and less on man-made laws. That we must be ready to sacrifice the material progress that we have been taught to esteem so highly, rather than acquiesce in such injustice and inequality as is flagrant among us today. That what we desire is the supremacy of truth and goodness, and that consequently violence from man to man must more and more be recognized as evil, whether it boast itself in high places or lurks in slums, and that we must more and more free ourselves from the taint of murder that clings to all robes of state. These things, to my mind, seem certainly true. We must turn our back on the religion of Jesus if we would rebut them. But as soon as it comes to any definite precept and external rule to do this or not to do that, there is room for reply. What is really needed, and what Tolstoy is aiming at, is that mankind should steadily advance towards perfection, and no one action can be the next step for all men in all places. So when we come to the injunction to pay no tax, we may remember the passage Matthew 17 verses 24 through 27, in which Jesus is reported to have told Peter to catch fish and pay the tax for them both. The passage seems to mean we are in no way bound to pay, but if they demand the tax of you, give it, not because you are under any obligation, but because we must not resist him that is evil. If any man would take your cloak, give him your coat also. And that is what Tolstoy thought it meant when he wrote the Four Gospels. In the present work, however, he is not interpreting the Gospels, but is dealing with present problems on the plane of thought of the jurists and the economists. And whatever may be the best method of undermining the authority of the Prince of this world, his condemnation by Jesus makes in the same direction as Thoreau's civil disobedience and Tolstoy's theory of non-resistance. Each in his own way says, The kings of the Gentiles have lordship over them, and they that have authority over them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so, but he that is greater among you let him become as the younger, and he that is chief as he that doth serve. Luke 22 verses 25 to 26 The Prince of this world is judged. The change foreshadowed is a vast one, and must commence with the change of each man's inner self. But its outward manifestation may be as various as the flowers of the field, which are all fed by the same rain and sunshine from above. Great Baddow-Kemsford, October 1900 End of Translator's Introduction Translated by Almer Maud Almer Maud's translation of Tolstoy's Preface Author's Preface They that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Nearly 15 years ago the census in Moscow evoked in me a series of thoughts and feelings which I expressed as best I could in a book called What Must We Do Then? Towards the end of last year, 1899, I once more reconsidered the same questions and the conclusions to which I came were the same as in that book. But as I think that during these 15 years I have reflected on the questions discussed in What Must We Do Then? more quietly and minutely in relation to the teachings at present existing and diffused among us. I now offer the reader new considerations leading to the same replies as before. I think these considerations may be of use to people who are honestly trying to elucidate their position in society and to clearly define the moral obligations flowing from that position. I therefore publish them. The fundamental thought both of that book and of this is the repudiation of violence, that repudiation I learnt and understood from the Gospels where it was most clearly expressed in the words quote, it was said to you in I for an I end quote, i.e. you have been taught to oppose violence by violence but I teach you, turn the other cheek when you are struck, i.e. suffer violence but do not employ it. I know that the use of those great words in consequence of the unreflectingly perverted interpretations alike of liberals and of churchmen who on this matter agree will be a reason for most so-called cultured people not to read this article or to be biased against it. But nevertheless, I place those words as the epigraph of this work. I cannot prevent people who consider themselves enlightened from considering the Gospel teaching to be an obsolete guide to life, a guide long outlived by humanity, but I can indicate the source from which I drew my consciousness and the truth which people are yet far from recognizing and which alone can save men from their sufferings. And this I do on the 11th of July, 1900. You have heard that it was said in I for an I and a tooth for a tooth, Matthew chapter 5 verse 38, Exodus chapter 21 verse 24. But I say unto you resist him not that is evil and whosoever smighteth thee on thy right cheek turn to him the other also. Matthew chapter 5 verse 39. And if any man would go to law with thee and take away thy coat let him have thy cloak also. Matthew chapter 5 verse 40. Give to every one that asketh thee and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. Luke chapter 6 verse 30. And as ye would that men should do to you do ye also to them likewise. Luke chapter 6 verse 31. And all that believed were together and had all things common. Acts chapter 2 verse 44. And Jesus said, when it is evening ye say it will be fair weather for the heaven is red. Matthew chapter 16 verse 2. And in the morning it will be foul weather today for the heaven is red and lowering. Ye hypocrites ye know how to discern the face of the heaven but ye cannot discern the signs of the times. Matthew chapter 16 verse 3. The system on which all the nations of the world are acting is founded in gross deception and the deepest ignorance or a mixture of both so that under no possible modification of the principles on which it is based can it ever produce good to man. On the contrary, its practical results must ever be to produce evil continually. Robert Owen. We have much studied and much perfected of late the great civilized invention of the division of labor only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labor that is divided but the men, divided into mere segments of men broken into small fragments and crumbs of life so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pen or a nail but exhausts itself in making the point of a pen or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly to make many pins a day but if we could only see with what crystal sand was polished, sand of the human souls we should think there might be some loss in it also. Men may be beaten, chained, tormented, yoke-like cattle slaughtered like summer flies and yet remain in one sense and the best sense free but to smother their souls within them to blight and hue into rotten pollards of the suckling branches of their human intelligence to make the flesh and the skin into leather and thongs to yoke machinery with this is to be slave masters indeed. It is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine which is leading the mass of the nations into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth and against nobility is not forced from them either by the pressure of famine or the sting of mortified pride. These do much and have done much in all ages but the foundations of society were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill-fed but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes but they cannot endure their own for they feel that the kind of labor to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one and makes them less than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy with the lower or charity for them as they have at this day and yet never were they so much hated by them. From the Stones of Venice by John Ruskin Volume 2 Chapter 6 Verses 13-16 Inclusive End of Allmer Maud's translation of Tolstoy's preface Recording by Matthew J. Heath Van Horn Chapter 1 The Slavery of Our Times This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are on 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 Allmer Maud Chapter 1 Goods Porters Who Work 37 Hours An acquaintance of mine who serves on the Moscow Kursk Railway as a wearer in the course of conversation mentioned to me that the men who load the goods on to his scales work for 36 hours on end. Though I had full confidence in the speaker's truthfulness I was unable to believe him. I thought he was making a mistake or exaggerating or that I misunderstood something. But the wearer narrated the conditions under which this work is done so exactly that there was no room left for doubt. He told me that there are two hundred and fifty such goods porters at the Kursk Station in Moscow. They were all divided into gangs of five men and were on piecework receiving from one ruble to one point one five rubles say about two shillings to two shillings four pence for one thousand goods over sixteen tons of goods received or dispatched. They came in the morning work all day and all night at unloading the trucks and when the night has ended they again begin to reload and then work on for another day so that in two days they get one night's sleep. Their work consists of unloading and moving bales of seven, eight and up to ten poods say eighteen, twenty and up to nearly twenty-six stone two men place the bales on the backs of the other three who carry them. By such work they earn less than a ruble about two shillings a day. They work continually without holidays. The account given by the wearer was so circumstantial that it was impossible to doubt it but nevertheless I decided to verify it with my own eyes and I went to the goods station. Finding my acquaintance at the goods station I told him I had come to see what he had told me about. No one I mention it to believes it said I without replying to me the wearer called someone in a shed. Nikita, come here. From the door appeared a tall lean workman in a torn coat. When did you begin work? When? Yesterday morning. And where were you last night? I was unloading of course. Did you work during the night, asked I? Of course we worked. And when did you begin work today? We began in the morning. When else would we begin? And when shall you finish working? When they let us go. When we finish? The four other workmen of his gang came up to us. They all wore torn coats and were without overcoats though there were about twenty degrees remover of cold which is about thirteen degrees below zero I began to ask them about the conditions of their work and evidently surprised them by taking an interest in such a simple and natural thing as it seemed to them as their thirty six hour work. They were all villagers for the most part fellow countrymen of my own from Tula, some however from Orla and some for Ronesh. They lived in Moscow in lodgings some of them with their families but most of them without. Those who have come here alone take lodgings home to the village. They board with contractors their food cost them ten rubles say one pound one shilling per month. They always eat meat disregarding the fasts. Their work always keeps them occupied more than thirty six hours running because it takes more than half an hour to get to their lodgings and from their lodgings and besides they are often kept at work beyond the time fixed. Paying for their own food they spend an hour on end work about twenty five rubles about two pounds twelve shilling six pence a month. To my question why did they such convict work they replied where is one to go but why work thirty six hours on end cannot the work be arranged in shifts we do what we are told to do yes but why do you agree to it we agree because we have to feed ourselves if you don't like it be off if one's even an hour late one has one's ticket shyed at one and are told to march and there are ten men ready to take the place the men were all young only one was somewhat older perhaps about forty all their faces were lean and had exhausted weary dives as though the men were drunk the lean workmen to whom I first spoke struck me especially by the strange weariness of his look I asked him whether he had not been drinking today I don't drink answered he in the decided way in which men who really do not drink always reply to that question and I do not smoke added he did the others drink asti yes it's brought here the work is not light and a drink always adds to one strength said it the older workmen this man had been drinking that day but it was not in the least noticeable after some more talk with the workmen I went to watch the work passing long rows of all sorts of goods I came to some workmen slowly pushing a loaded truck I learned afterward that the men have to shunt the trucks themselves and to keep the platform clear of snow without being paid for the work it is so stated in the conditions of pay these workmen were just as tattered and amassumpated as those with whom I had been talking when they had moved the truck to its place I went up to them and asked when they had begun work when they had dined I was told that they had started work at 7 o'clock and had only just dined the work had prevented their being let off sooner and when do you get away as it happens sometimes not till 10 o'clock replied the men as if boasting of their endurance seeing my interest in their position they surrounded me and probably taking me for an inspector several of them, speaking at once informed me of what was evidently their chief subject of complaint namely that the apartment which they could sometimes warm themselves and snatch an hour's sleep between the day work and the night work was crowded all of them expressed great dissatisfaction at this crowding there may be 100 men and nowhere to lie down even under the shelves it is crowded the dissatisfied voices have a look at it yourself, it is close here the room was certainly not large enough and the 36 foot room about 40 men might find a place to lie down even under the shelves some of the men entered the room with me and they vied with each other in complaining of the scantiness of the accommodation even under the shelves there is nowhere to lie down these men who in 20 degrees of frost without overcoats carrying on their backs 20 stone loads during the 36 hours who dine and sup not when they need food but when their overseers allow them to eat who live altogether in conditions far worse than those of stray horses it seems strange that these people only complain of insufficient accommodation in the room where they warm themselves but though this seemed to me strange at first yet entering further into their position I understood what a feeling of torture these men who never get enough sleep and who are half frozen must experience when instead of resting and being warmed they have to creep on the dirty floor under the shelves and there in stuffy vitillated air becoming weaker and more broken down only perhaps in that miserable hour of vain attempt to get rest and sleep do they painfully realize all the horror of their life destroying 37 hour work and that is why they are specially agitated by such an apparently insignificant circumstance as the overcrowding of their room having watched several gangs at work and having talked with some more of the men and heard the same story from them all at home convinced that my acquaintance had told me was true it was true that for a bare substance people considering themselves free men thought it necessary to give themselves up to work such as in the days of serfdom not one slave owner however cruel would have sent his slaves to let alone slave owners not one cab proprietor would send his horses to such work for horses cost money and it would be wasteful by 37 hour work to shorten the life of an animal of value End of Chapter 1 Recording by Matthew J. Heath Van Horn Chapter 2 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 Andrew David King The Slavery of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy Translated by Elmer Maud Chapter 2 Society's Indifference While Men Parish To oblige men to work for 37 hours continuously without sleep besides being cruel is also uneconomical and yet such uneconomical expenditure of human lives really goes on around us Opposite the house in which I live is a silk factory built with the latest technical improvements about 3,000 women and 700 men work and live there As I sit in my room now I hear the unceasing din of the machinery and know for I have been there what that din means 3,000 women stand for 12 hours a day in the looms amid a deafening roar winding, unwinding arranging the silk threads to make silk stuffs All the women except those who have just come from the villages have an unhealthy appearance Most of them lead a most intemperate and immoral life Almost all whether married or unmarried as soon as a child is born to them send it off either to the village or the hospital where 80% of those children perish for fear of losing their places the mothers resume work the next day or on the third day after their confinement So that during 20 years to my knowledge tens of thousands of young healthy women mothers have ruined and are now ruining their lives and the lives of their children in order to produce velvets and silk stuffs I met a beggar yesterday a young man on crutches sturdily built but crippled He used to work as a navi with a wheelbarrow but slipped and injured himself internally He spent all he had on peasant women healers and on doctors and has now for 8 years been homeless begging his bread and complaining that God does not send him death How many such sacrifices of life there are that we either know nothing of or know of but hardly notice considering them inevitable I know men working at the blast furnaces of the Tula iron foundry who to have one Sunday free each fortnight will work for 24 hours that is after working all day they will go on working all night I have seen these men they all drink flawed could it keep up their energy and obviously like those goods porters in the railway they quickly expend not the interest but the capital of their lives and what of the waste of lives among those who are employed on admittedly harmful work in looking glass card, match, sugar, tobacco and glass factories in mines or assess pool cleaners there are English statistics showing the average length of life among people of the upper classes is 55 years and the average life among working people and then healthy occupations is 29 years knowing this and we cannot help knowing it we who take advantage of labor that thus costs human lives should one would think unless we are beasts not be able to enjoy a moment's peace the fact is that we well to do people liberals and humanitarians very sensitive to the sufferings not of people only but also of animals and ceasingly make use of such labor and try to become more and more rich that is to say to take more and more advantage of such work and we remain perfectly tranquil for instance having learned of the 37 hour labor of the goods porters and of their bad room we at once send there an inspector who receives a good salary and we forbid people to work more than 12 hours leaving the workmen who are thus deprived of one third of their earnings to feed themselves as best they can and we compel the railway company to erect a large and convenient room for the workmen then with perfectly quiet consciences we continue to receive and dispatch goods by that railway and we ourselves continue to receive salaries dividends rents from houses or from land having learned of the women and girls at the silk factory living far from their families ruin their own lives and those of their children and that a large half of the washer women who iron our starch shirts and of typesetters who print the books and papers that while away our time get consumption we only shrug our shoulders and say that we are very sorry things should be so but that we can do nothing to alter it and we continue with tranquil consciences to buy silk stuffs to wear starch shirts and to read our morning paper we are much concerned about the hours of the shop assistants and still more about the long hours of our own children at school we strictly forbid carters to make their horses, drag heavy loads and we even organize the killing of cattle and slaughterhouses so that the animals may feel it as little as possible but how wonderfully blind you become as soon as the question concerns those millions of workers who perish slowly and often painfully all around us at labors the fruits of which we use for our convenience and pleasure End of Chapter 2 Recording by Andrew David King Find me online at www.andrewdavidking.com For more information or to volunteer please visit www.librivox.org Chapter 3 Justification of the existing position by Science This wonderful blindness which befalls people of our circle can only be explained by the fact that when people behave badly they always invent a philosophy of life which represents their bad actions to be not bad actions at all but merely results of unalterable laws beyond our control In former times such a view of life was found in the theory that an inscrutable and unalterable will of God existed which foreordained to some men a humble position and hard work and to others an exalted position and the enjoyment of the good things of life On this theme an enormous quantity of books were written and an innumerable quantity of sermons preached The theme was worked up from every possible side It was demonstrated that God created different sorts of people slaves and masters and that both should be satisfied with their position It was further demonstrated that it would be better for the slaves in the next world and afterwards it was shown that although the slaves were slaves and ought to remain such yet their condition would not be bad if the masters would be kind to them Then the very last explanation after the emancipation of the slaves was that wealth is entrusted by God to some people in order that they may use part of it in good works there is no harm in some people being rich and others poor These explanations satisfied the rich and the poor especially the rich for a long time But the day came when these explanations became unsatisfactory especially to the poor who began to understand their position then fresh explanations were needed and just at the proper time they were produced new explanations came in the form of science political economy which declared that it had discovered the laws which regulate the division of labour and the distribution of the products of labour among men These laws, according to that science are that the division of labour and the enjoyment of its products depend on supply and demand on capital rent wages of labour in general on unalterable laws governing man's economic activities Soon on this theme as many books and pamphlets were written and lectures delivered as there had been treatises written and religious sermons preached on the former theme and still unceasingly mountains of pamphlets and books are being written and lectures are being delivered and all these books and lectures are as cloudy and unintelligible as the theological treatises and sermons and they too like the theological treatises fully achieve their appointed purpose i.e. they give such an explanation of the existing order of things as justifies some people entranqually refraining from labour and in utilizing the labour of others The fact that for the investigation of the pseudo science there was taken to show the general order of things not the condition of people in the whole world through all historic time but only the condition of people in a small country in most exceptional circumstances England at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries This fact did not in the least hinder the acceptance as valid of the results to which the investigators arrived even more than a similar acceptance is now hindered by the endless disputes and disagreements among those who study that science and are quite unable to agree as to the meaning of rent, surplus value, profits, etc Only the one fundamental position of that science is acknowledged by all namely that the relations among men are conditioned not by what people consider right or wrong What is advantageous for those who occupy an advantageous position? It is admitted as an undoubted truth that if in society many thieves and robbers have sprung up who take from the labourers the fruits of their labour this happens not because the thieves and robbers have acted badly but because such are inevitable economic laws which can only be altered slowly by an evolutionary process indicated by science and therefore according to the guidance of science people belonging to the class of robbers, thieves or receivers of stolen goods may quietly continue to utilize the things obtained by theft and robbery Though the majority of people in our world do not know the details of these tranquilizing scientific explanations any more than they formerly knew the details of the theological explanations which justify their position yet they all know that an explanation exists that scientific men, wise men have proved convincingly and continue to prove that the existing order of things is what it ought to be and that therefore we may live quietly in this order of things without ourselves trying to alter it Only in this way can I explain the amazing blindness of good people in our society who sincerely desire the welfare of animals but yet with quiet consciences devour the lives of their brother men End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 4 The theory that it is God's will that some people should own others satisfied people for a very long time but that theory by justifying cruelty caused such cruelty as evoked resistance and produced doubts as to the truth of the theory. So now with the theory that economic evolution guided by inevitable laws is progressing in consequence of which some people must collect capital and others must labor all their lives to increase those capitals, preparing themselves meanwhile for the promised communalization of the means of production. This theory, causing some people to be yet more cruel to others, also begins, especially among common people not stupefied by science to evoke certain doubts. For instance, when you see goods porters destroying their lives by 37 hour labor, or when women in factories or laundresses or typesetters are all those millions of people who live in hard unnatural conditions of monotonous stupefying slavish toil, and you naturally ask, what has brought these people to such a state and how were they to be delivered from it? When science replies that these people are in this condition because the railway belongs to this company, the silk factory to that gentleman, and all the foundries, factories, printing shops and laundries to capitalists, and that this state of things will come right by work people forming unions, cooperative societies, strikes and taking part in government, and more and more swaying the masters and the government till the workers obtain first, shorter hours and increased wages, and finally, all the means of production into their hands, and then all will be well. Meanwhile, all is going on as it should go, and there is no need to alter anything. This answer must seem to an unlearned man, and particularly to our Russian folk, very surprising. In the first place, neither in relation to the goods porters, nor the factory women, nor all the millions of other laborers suffering from heavy, unhealthy, stupefying labor, does the possession of the means of production by capitalists explain anything? The agricultural means of production of those men who are now working at the railway have not been seized by capitalists. They have land, and horses, and plows, and heros, and all that is necessary to till the ground, and these women working at the factory not only forced to do it by being deprived of their implements of production, but on the contrary, they have, for the most part, against the wish of their elder members, their families, left the homes where their work was much wanted and where they had implements of production. Millions of work people in Russia, and in other countries, are in like case, so that the cause of the miserable position of the workers cannot be found in the seizure of the means of production by capitalists. The cause must lie in that which drives them from the villages, that in the first place. Secondly, the emancipation of the workers from this state of things, even in that distant future in which science promises them liberty, can be accomplished neither by shortening the hours of labor, nor by increasing wages, nor by the promised communalization of the means of production. All that cannot improve their position. For the laborer's misery, alike on the railway, in the silk factory, and in every other factory or workshop, consists not in the longer or shorter hours of work Agriculturists sometimes work 18 hours a day and as much as 36 hours on end and consider their lives happy ones. Nor does it consist in the low rate of wages, nor in the fact that the railway of the factory is not theirs, but it consists in the fact that they are obliged to work in harmful, unnatural conditions, often dangerous and destructive to life and to live a barrack life in towns, a life full of temptations and immorality, and to do compulsory labor at another's bidding. Laterally, the hours of labor have diminished and the rate of wages has increased, but this diminution of the hours of labor and this increase in wages has not improved the position of the worker. If one takes into account not their more luxurious habits, watches with chains, silk kerchiefs, tobacco, vodka, beef, beer, etc., but their true welfare, i.e. their health and morality and chiefly their freedom. At the silk factory with which I am acquainted, 20 years ago the work was chiefly done by men who worked 14 hours a day, earned on an average 15 rubles a month and sent the money, for the most part, to their families in the villages. Now nearly all the work is done by women, working 11 hours, some of whom earn as much as 25 rubles a month over 15 rubles on the average, and for the most part, do not send it home, but spend all they earn here, chiefly on dress, drunkenness, and vice. The diminuization of the hours of work merely increases the time they spend in the taverns. The same thing is happening to a greater or lesser extent at all the factories and works. Everywhere, notwithstanding the diminuization of the hours of labor and the increase of wages, the health of the operative is worse than that of country workers. The average duration of life is shorter, and morality is sacrificed, as cannot but occur when people are torn from these conditions which most conduce to morality, family life, and free, healthy, buried, and intelligible agricultural work. It is possibly true, as some economists assert, that with shorter hours of labor, more pay, and improved sanitary conditions in mills and factories, the health and morality of the workers improve in comparison with the former condition of factory workers. It is possible also that laterally, and in some places, the position of the factory hands is better in external conditions than the position of the country population. But this is so, and only in some places, because the government and society influenced by the affirmations of science do all that is possible to improve the position of the factory population at the expense of the country population. But the condition of the factory workers in some places is, though only in externals, better than that of country people, it only shows that one can, by all kinds of restrictions, render life miserable in what should be the best external conditions and that there is no position so unnatural and bad that men may not adapt themselves to it if they remain in it for some generations. The misery of the position of a factory hand, and in general of a town worker, does not consist in his long hours and small pay, but in the fact that he is deprived of the natural conditions of life in touch with nature, is deprived of freedom, and is compelled to compulsory and monotonous toil at another man's will. And therefore the reply to the questions, why factoring town workers are in miserable conditions, and how those may be improved cannot be, that this arises because capitalists have possessed themselves of the means of production, and that the workers' conditions will be improved, by diminishing their hours of work, increasing their wages, and communalizing the means of production. The reply to these questions must consist in indicating the causes in which they have deprived the workers of natural conditions of life in touch with nature, and have driven them into factory bondage, and in indicating means to free the workers from the necessity of foregoing a free country life and from going into slavery at the factories. And therefore the question why town workers are in a miserable condition includes, first of all, the question. What reasons have driven them from the villages where they and their ancestors have lived and might live, where in Russia people such as they do still live? And what is it that drove and continues to drive them against their will to the factories and works? If there are workmen, as in England, Belgium, or Germany, who for some generations have lived by factory work, even they live so, not at their own free will, but because their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were, in some way, compelled to exchange the agricultural life which they loved for life which seemed to them hard in towns and at factories. First the country people were deprived of land by violence, says Karl Marx, were evicted and brought to Vega bondage, and then by cruel laws. They were tortured with pincers, with red hot irons, and were whipped to make them submit to the condition of being hired laborers. Therefore the question how to free the workers from their miserable position should, one would think, naturally lead to the question, how to remove those causes which have already driven some, and are now driving and threatening to drive the rest of the peasants from their position which they considered and consider good, and have driven and are driving them to a position which they consider bad. Economic science, although it indicates in passing the causes that drove the peasants from the villages, does not concern itself with the question how to remove those causes, but directs all its attention to the improvement of the workers' position in the existing factories and works, assuming as it were that the workers' position in these factories and workshops is something unalterable, something which must at all cost be maintained for those who are already in the factories and must be reached by those who have not yet left the villages or abandoned agricultural work. Moreover, economic science is so sure that all the peasants have inevitably to become factory operatives and towns, that though all the sages and the poets of the world have always placed the ideal of human happiness amid conditions of agricultural work, though all the workers whose habits are unperverted have always preferred and still prefer agricultural labor to any other, though factory work is always unhealthy and monotonous, while agriculture is most healthy and varied, though agricultural work is free, i.e., the peasant alternates toil and rest at his own will, while factory work, even if the factory belongs to the workman, is always enforced. Independence on the machines, though factory work is derivative, while agricultural work is fundamental and without it no factory could exist. Yet economic science affirms that all the country people not only are not injured by the transition from the country to the town, but themselves desire it and strive towards it. End of Chapter 4. Recording by Matthew J. Heath Van Horn. Section 6, Chapter 5 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 5. Why Learned Economists Asset What is False. However, obviously, unjust may be the assertion of the men of science that the welfare of humanity must consist in the very thing that is profoundly repulsive to human feelings. In monotonous, enforced factory labor, the men of science were inevitably led to make this obviously unjust assertion, just as the theologians of old were inevitably led to make the equally evidently unjust assertion that slaves and their masters were creatures differing in kind and that the inequality of their positions in this world would be compensated in the next. The cause of this evidently unjust assertion is that those who have formulated and who are formulating the laws of science belong to the well-to-do classes and are so accustomed to the conditions advantageous for themselves in which they live that they do not admit that thought that society could exist under other conditions. The condition of life to which people of the well-to-do classes are accustomed is that of an abundant production of various articles necessary for their comfort and pleasure, and these things are only obtained thanks to the existence of factories and work organized as at present. And therefore when discussing the improvement of the workers position, men of science belonging to the well-to-do classes always have in view only such improvements as will not do away with the system of factory production and those conveniences of which they avail themselves. Even the most advanced economists, the socialists who demand the complete control of the means of production for the workers, expect production of the same or almost of the same articles as are produced now to continue in the present or similar factories with the present division of labor. The difference as they imagine it will only be that in the future, not they alone, but all men will make use of such conveniences as only they now enjoy. They dimly picture to themselves that communalization of the means of production they too, men of science and the ruling classes in general, will do some work, but chiefly as managers, designers, scientists, or artists. To these questions who will have to wear a muzzle and make white lead? Who will be the stokers, miners, and cesspool cleaners? They are either silent or foretell that all these things will be so improved that even work at cesspools and underground will afford pleasant occupation. That is how they represent to themselves future economic conditions, both in utopia such as that of Bellamy and in scientific works. According to their theories, the workers will all join unions and associations and cultivate solidarity amongst themselves by unions, strikes, and participation in parliament till they obtain possession of all the means of production as well as the land, and then they will be so well fed, so well dressed, and enjoy such amusements on holidays that they will prefer life in town amid brick buildings and smoking chimneys to free village life amid plants and domestic animals, and monotonous bell-regulated machine work to varied, healthy, and free agricultural labor. Though this anticipation is as improbable as the anticipation of the theologians, about a heaven to be enjoyed hereafter by workmen in compensation for their hard labor here, yet learned and educated people of our society believe this strange teaching, just as formally wise and learned people believed in a heaven for workmen in the next world. And learned men and their disciples, people of the well-to-do classes believe this because they must believe it. This dilemma stands before them, either they must see that all that they make use of in their lives, from railways to lucifer matches to cigarettes, represents labor which costs the lives of many of their brother-men, and that they, not sharing in that toil but making use of it, are very dishonorable men. Or they must believe that all that takes place takes place for the general advantage in accord with unalterable laws of economic science. Therein lies the inner psychological cause compelling men of science, men wise and educated, but not enlightened, to affirm positively and tenaciously such an obvious untruth, as that the laborers for their own well-being should leave a happy and healthy life in touch with nature and go to ruin their bodies and souls in factories and workshops. End of Chapter 5, Recording by Matthew J. Heath Van Horn Chapter 6 of The Slavery of Our Times. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by A. J. Michenski. The Slavery of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Elmer Maud. Chapter 6, Bankruptcy of the Socialist Ideal. But even allowing the assertion, evidently unfounded as it is, and contrary to the facts of human nature, that it is better for people to live in towns and to do compulsory machine work in factories rather than to live in villages and work freely at handicrafts, there remains in the very ideal itself to which the men of science tell us the economic evolution is leading in insoluble contradiction. The ideal is that the workers, having become masters of all the means of production, are to obtain all the comforts and pleasures now possessed by well-to-do people. They will all be well clothed and housed and well nourished and will all walk on electrically lighted asphalt streets and frequent concerts and theaters and read papers and books and ride on auto cars, etc. But that everybody may have certain things, the production of those things must be apportioned and consequently it must be decided how long each workman is to work. How is that to be decided? Statistics may show, though very imperfectly, what people require in a society fettered by capital, by competition, and by want. But no statistics can show how much is wanted and what articles are needed to satisfy the demand in a society where the means of production will belong to the society itself, namely where the people will be free. The demands in such a society cannot be defined and they will always infinitely exceed the possibility of satisfying them. Everybody will wish to have all that the riches now possesses and therefore it is quite impossible to define the quantity of goods that such a society will require. Furthermore, how are people to be induced to work at articles which some consider necessary and others consider unnecessary or even harmful? If it be found necessary for everybody to work say six hours a day in order to satisfy the requirements of the society, who in a free society can compel a man to work those six hours if he knows that part of the time is spent on producing things he considers unnecessary or even harmful. It is undeniable that under the present state of things most varied articles are produced with great economy of exertion thanks to machinery and thanks especially to the Division of Labor which has been brought to an extreme nicety and carried to the highest perfection and that these articles are profitable to manufacturers and that we find them convenient and pleasant to use. But the fact that these articles are well made and are produced with little expenditure of strength and that they are profitable to the capitalists and convenient for us does not prove that free men would without compulsion continue to produce them. There's no doubt that Krupp with the present division of labor makes admirable cannons very quickly and artfully and M very quickly and artfully produces silk materials X, Y, and Z produce toilet sense powder to preserve the complexion or glazed packs of cards and K produces whiskey of choice flavor etc and no doubt both for those who want these articles and for the owners of the factories in which they are made all this is very advantageous but cannons and scents and whiskey are wanted by those who wish to obtain control of the Chinese market or who like to get drunk or concerned about their complexions but there will be some who consider the production of these articles harmful and there will always be people who consider that besides these articles exhibitions academies beer and beef are unnecessary and even harmful how are these people to be made to participate in the production of such articles but even if a means could be found to get all to agree to produce certain articles though there is no such means and can be none except coercion who in a free society without capitalistic production competition and its law of supply and demand will decide which articles are to have the preference which are to be made first and which after are we first to build the Siberian railway and fortified Port Arthur and then macadamize the roads in our country districts or vice versa which is to come first electric lighting or irrigation of the fields and then comes another question in soluble with free workmen which manner to do which work evidently all will prefer hay making or drying to stoking or cesspool cleaning how in apportioning the work are people to be induced to agree no statistics can answer these questions the solution can only be theoretical it may be said that there will be people to whom power will be given to regulate all these matters some people will decide these questions and others will await them but besides the questions of apportioning and directing production and a selecting work when the means of production are communalized there will be another and most important question as to the degree of division of labor that can be established in a socialistically organized society the now existing division of labor is conditioned by the necessities of the workers a worker only agrees to live all his life underground or to make the one hundredth part of one article all his life or remove his hands up and down amid the roar of machinery all his life because he will otherwise not have means to live but it will only be by compulsion that a workman owning the means of production and not suffering want can be induced to accept such stupefying and soul destroying conditions of labor as those in which people now work division of labor is undoubtedly very profitable and natural to people but if people are free division of labor is only possible up to a certain very limited extent which has been far overstepped in our society if one peasant occupies himself chiefly with boot making and his wife weaves and another peasant plows and a third is a blacksmith and they all having acquired special dexterity in their own work afterwards exchange what they have produced such division of labor is advantageous to all and free people will naturally divide their work in this way but a division of labor by which a man makes one one hundredth of an article or a stoker works in one hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit of heat or is choked with harmful gases such division of labor is disadvantageous because though it furthers the production of insignificant articles it destroys that which is most precious the life of man and therefore such division of labor as now exists can only exist where there is compulsion wordbertus says that communal division of labor unites mankind that is true but it is only free division such as people voluntarily adopt that unites if people decide to make a road and one digs another brings stones a third breaks them et cetera that sort of division of work unites people but if independently of the wishes and sometimes against the wishes of the workers a strategical railway is built or an Eiffel Tower or stupidities such as still the Paris exhibition and one workman is compelled to obtain iron another to dig coal a third to make castings a fourth to cut down trees and a fifth to saw them up without even having the least idea of what the things they are making are wanted for then such a division of labor not only does not unite men but on the contrary it divides them and therefore with communalized implements of production if people are free they will only adopt division of labor and as far as the goods resulting will outweigh the evil educations to the workers and as each man naturally sees good in extending and diversifying his activities such division of labor as now exists will evidently be impossible in a free society to suppose that with communalized means of production there will be such an abundance of things as is now produced by compulsory division of labor is like supposing that after the emancipation of the serfs the domestic orchestras and theaters the homemade carpets and laces and the elaborate gardens which depended on serf labor would continue to exist as before so that the supposition that when the socialist ideal is realized everyone will be free and will at the same time have at his disposal everything or almost everything that is now made use of by the well-to-do classes involves an obvious self-contradiction End of Chapter 6 of The Slavery of Our Times Recording by A.J. Mishinsky 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 7 Culture or Freedom Just what happened when serfdom existed is now being repeated Then the majority of the serf owners and of people of the well-to-do classes if they acknowledge the serf's position to be not quite satisfactory yet recommended only such alterations as when not deprived the owners of what was essential to their profit. Now people of the well-to-do classes admitting that the position of the workers was not altogether satisfactory proposed for its amendment only such measures as will not deprive the well-to-do classes of their advantages. As well-disposed owners then spoke of paternal authority and, like Gogol, advised owners to be kind to their serfs and to take care of them but would not tolerate the idea of emancipation considering it harmful and dangerous. Just so the majority of well-to-do people today advise employers to look after the well-being of their work people but do not admit the thought of any such alteration of the economic structure of life as would set the laborers quite free. And just as advanced liberals then while considering serfdom to be an immutable arrangement demanded that the government should limit the power of the owners and sympathized with the serfs' agitation so that the liberals of today while considering the existing order immutable demand the government should limit the powers of capitalists and manufacturers and they sympathize with unions and strikes and in general with the workers' agitation. And just as the most advanced men then demanded the emancipation of the serfs but drew up a project which left the serfs dependent on private landowners or fettered them with tributes and land taxes so now the most advanced people demand the emancipation of the workmen from the power of the capitalists the communalization of the means of production but yet would leave the workers dependent on the present apportionment and division of labor which in their opinion must remain unaltered. The teachings of economic science which are adopted though without close examination of their details by all those of the well-to-do classes who consider themselves enlightened and advanced seem on a superficial examination to be liberal and even radical containing as they do attacks on the wealthy classes of society but essentially that teaching is in the highest degree conservative gross and cruel. One way or another that the men of science and in their train all the well-to-do classes wish at all costs to maintain the present system of distribution and division of labor which makes possible the production of that great quantity of goods which they make use of. The existing economic order is by the men of science and following them by all the well-to-do classes called culture and in this culture railways, telegraphs, telephones photographs, retigin rays, clinical hospitals, exhibitions and chiefly all the appliances of comfort they see something so sacrosanct that they will not allow even a thought of alterations which might destroy it all or but in danger a small part of these acquisitions. Everything may, according to the teachings of that science be changed except what it calls culture but it becomes more and more evident that this culture can only exist while the workers are compelled to work yet men of science are so sure that this culture is the greatest of blessings that they boldly proclaim the contrary of what the jurists once said fiat, justitia, periat, mundus they now say fiat, culture, periat, justitia and they not only say it but act accordingly everything may be changed in practice and in theory except culture except all that is going on in workshops and factories and especially what is being sold in the shops but I think that enlightened people professing the Christian law of brotherhood and love to one's neighbor should say just the contrary electric lights and telephones and exhibitions are excellent and so are all the pleasure gardens with concerts and performances and all the cigars and matchboxes and braces and motor cars but may they all go to perdition and not they alone but the railways and all the factory made chint stuffs and cloths in the world if to produce them it is necessary that 99% of the people should remain in slavery and perished by the thousands in factories needed for the production of these articles if in order that London or Petersburg may be lighted by electricity or in order to construct exhibition buildings or in order that there may be beautiful paints or in order to weave beautiful stuffs quickly and abundantly it is necessary that even a very few lives should be destroyed or ruined or shortened and statistics show us how many are destroyed let London and Petersburg rather be lit by gas or oil let there be no exhibition no paints or materials only let there be no slavery and no destruction of human lives resulting from it truly enlightened people will always agree to go back to riding on horses and using pack horses and even to tilling the earth with sticks and their own hands rather than to travel on railways which regularly every year crush a number of people as is done in Chicago merely because the proprietors of the railway find it more profitable to compensate the families of those killed than to build the line so that it should not kill people the motto for the truly enlightened people is not Fiat Kaltra Periat Justitia but Fiat Justitia Periat Kaltra but culture, useful culture, will not be destroyed it will certainly not be necessary for people to revert to tillage of the land with sticks or to lighting up with torches it is not for nothing that mankind in their slavery have achieved such great progress in technical matters if only it is understood that we must not sacrifice the lives of our brother men for our own pleasure it will be possible to apply technical improvements without destroying men's lives and to arrange life so as to profit by all those methods giving us control of nature that have been devised and that can be applied without keeping our brother men in slavery all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org The Slavery of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy translated by Almer Maud Chapter 8 Slavery Exists Among Us Imagine a man from a country quite different to our own with no idea of our history or of our laws and suppose that after showing him the various aspects of our life we were to ask him what was the chief difference he noticed in the lives of people of our world the chief difference which such a man would notice in the way people live is that some people a small number who have clean white hands and are well nourished and clothed and lodged do very little and very light work or even do not work at all but only amuse themselves spending on these amusements the results of millions of days devoted by other people to severe labor but other people always dirty poorly clothed and lodged and fed with dirty horny hands toil unceasingly from morning to night and sometimes all night long working for those who do not work but who continually amuse themselves if between the slaves and slave owners of today it is difficult to draw as sharp a dividing line as that which separated the former slaves from their masters and if among the slaves of today there are some who are only temporarily slaves and then become slave owners or some who at one and the same time are slaves and slave owners this blending of the two classes at their points of contact does not upset the fact that the people of our time are divided into slaves and slave owners as definitely as in spite of the twilight each 24 hours is divided into day and night if the slave owner of our times has no slave john whom he can send to the cesspool to clear out his excrements he has five shillings of which hundreds of johns are in such need that the slave owner of our times may choose anyone out of hundreds of johns and be a benefactor to him by giving him the preference and allowing him rather than another to climb down into the cesspool footnote Moscow has a very defective system of drainage and a large number of people are engaged every night pumping and bailing the contents of the cesspools into huge barrels and carting it away from the city and footnote the slaves of our times are not only all those factory and workshop hands who must sell themselves completely into the power of the factory and foundry workers in order to exist but nearly all the agricultural laborers are slaves working as they do unceasingly to grow another's corn on another's field and gathering it into another's barn or tilling their own fields only in order to pay to bankers the interest on debts they cannot get rid of and slaves also are all the innumerable footmen cooks housemates porters coachmen bathmen waiters etc who all their life long perform duties most unnatural to a human being and which they themselves dislike slavery exists in full vigor but we do not perceive it just as in europe at the end of the 18th century the slavery of serfdom was not perceived people of that day thought that the position of men obliged to till the land for their lords and to obey them was a natural inevitable economic condition of life and they did not call it slavery it is the same among us people of our day consider the position of the laborers to be a natural inevitable economic condition and they do not call it slavery and as at the end of the 18th century the people of europe began little by little to understand that what had seemed a natural and inevitable form of economic life namely the position of peasants who were completely in the power of their lords was wrong unjust and immoral and demanded alteration so now people today are beginning to understand that the position of hired workmen and of the working classes in general which formally seemed quite right and quite normal is not what it should be and demands alteration the question of the slavery of our times is just in the same phase now in which the question of serfdom stood in europe towards the end of the 18th century and in which the questions of serfdom among us and of slavery in america stood in the second quarter of the 19th century the slavery of the workers in our time is only beginning to be admitted by advanced people in our society the majority as yet are convinced that among us no slavery exists a thing that helps people today to misunderstand their position in this matter is the fact that we have in russia and in america only recently abolished slavery but in reality the abolition of serfdom and of slavery was only the abolition of an obsolete form of slavery that had become unnecessary and the substitution for it of a firmer form of slavery and one that holds a great number of people in bondage the abolition of serfdom and of slavery was like what the tartars of crimea did with their prisoners they invented the plan of slitting the souls of the prisoners feet and sprinkling chopped up bristles into the wounds having performed that operation they released them from their weights and chains the abolition of serfdom in russia and of slavery in america though it abolished the former method of slavery not only did not abolish what was essential in it but was only accomplished when the bristles had formed swords on the souls and one could be quite sure that without chains or weights the prisoners would not run away but would have to work the northerners in america boldly demanded the abolition of the former slavery because among them the new monetary slavery had already shown its power to shackle the people the southerners did not yet perceive the plain signs of the new slavery and therefore did not consent to abolish the old form among us in russia serfdom was only abolished when all the land had been appropriated when land was granted to the peasants it was burdened with payments which took the place of the land slavery in europe taxes that kept the people in bondage began to be abolished only when the people had lost their land were dis accustomed to agricultural work and having acquired town tastes were quite dependent on the capitalists only then where the taxes on corn abolished in england and they are now beginning in germany and in other countries to abolish the taxes that fall on the workers and to shift them on to the rich only because the majority of the people are already in the hands of the capitalists one form of slavery is not abolished until another has already replaced it there are several such forms and if not one than another and sometimes several of these means together keeps a people in slavery i e places it in such a position that one small part of the people has full power over the labor and the life of a larger number in this enslavement of the larger part of the people by a smaller part lies the chief cause of the miserable condition of the people and therefore the means of improving the position of the workers must consist in this first and admitting that among us slavery exists not in some figurative metaphorical sense but in the simplest and plainest sense slavery which keeps some people the majority in the power of others the minority secondly having admitted this and finding the causes of the enslavement of some people by others and thirdly having found these causes and destroying them end of chapter eight chapter nine 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 the slavery of our times by Leo Tolstoy translated by Elmer Maud chapter nine what is slavery in what does the slavery of our time consist what are the forces that make some people the slaves of others if we ask all the workers in Russia and in Europe and in America alike in the factories and in various situations in which they work for hire in towns and villages what has made them choose the position in which they are living they will all reply that they have been brought to it either because they had no land on which they could and wish to live and work that will be the reply of all the Russian workmen and of very many of the Europeans or that taxes direct and indirect were demanded of them which they could only pay by selling their labour or that they remain at factory work ensnared by the more luxurious habits they have adopted and which they can gratify only by selling their labour and their liberty the two first conditions the lack of land and the taxes drive man to compulsory labour while the third his increased and unsatisfied needs decoy him to it and keep him at it we can imagine that the land may be freed from the claims of private proprietors by Henry George's plan and that therefore the first cause driving people into slavery the lack of land may be done away with we can also beside the single tax plan imagine the direct abolition of taxes or that they should be transferred from the poor to the rich as is being done now in some countries but under the present economic organization one cannot even imagine a position of things under which more and more luxurious and often harmful habits of life would not be adopted among the rich and that these habits should not little by little pass to those of the lower classes who are in contact with the rich as inevitably as water sinks into dry ground and that these habits should not become so necessary to the workers that in order to be able to satisfy them they will be ready to sell their freedom so that this third condition though it is a voluntary one i.e it would seem that a man might resist the temptation and though science does not acknowledge it to be a cause of the miserable condition of the workers is the firmest and most irremovable cause of slavery workmen living near rich people always are infected with new requirements and only obtain means to satisfy these requirements in so far as they devote their most intense labor to this satisfaction so that workmen in england and america receiving sometimes 10 times as much as is necessary for subsistence continue to be just such slaves as they were before three causes as the workmen themselves explain produced the slavery in which they live and the history of their enslavement and the facts of their position confirm the correctness of this explanation all the workers are brought to their present state and are kept in it by these three causes these causes acting on people from different sides are such that none can escape from their enslavement the agriculturist who has no land or who has not enough will always be obliged to go into perpetual or temporary slavery to the landowner in order to have the possibility of feeding himself from the land should he in one way or another obtain land enough to be able to feed himself from it by his own labor such taxes direct or indirect are demanded from him that in order to pay them he has again to go into slavery if to escape from slavery on the land he ceases to cultivate land and living on someone else's land begins to occupy himself with a handicraft and to exchange his produce for the things he needs then on the one hand taxes and on the other hand the competition of capitalists producing similar articles to those he makes but with better implements of production compel him to go into temporary or perpetual slavery to a capitalist if working for a capitalist he might set up free relations with him and not be obliged to sell his liberty yet the new requirements which he assimilates deprive him of any such possibility so that one way or another the laborer is always in slavery to those who control the taxes the land and the articles necessary to satisfy his requirements end of chapter nine recording by Michaela O'Connor chapter ten 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 A.J. Mishinsky the slavery of our times by Leo Tolstoy translated by Almer Maud chapter 10 laws concerning taxes land and property the German socialists have termed the combination of conditions which put the workers in subjection to the capitalists the iron law of wages implying by the word iron that this law is immutable but in these conditions there's nothing immutable these conditions merely result from human laws concerning taxes land and above all concerning things which satisfy our requirements namely concerning property laws are framed and repealed by human beings so that is not some sociological iron law but ordinary man-made law that produces slavery in the case in hand the slavery of our times is very clearly and definitely produced not by some iron elemental law but by human enactments about land about taxes and about property there's one set of laws by which any quantity of land may belong to private people and may pass from one to another by inheritance or by will or may be sold there's another set of laws by which everyone must pay the taxes demanded of him unquestioningly and there's a third set of laws to the effect that any quantity of articles by whatever means acquired may become the absolute property of the people who hold them and in consequence of these laws slavery exists we are so accustomed to all these laws that they seem to us just as necessary and natural to human life as the laws maintaining serfdom and slavery seemed in former times no doubt about their necessity and justice seems possible and we notice nothing wrong in them but just as a time came when people having seen the ruinous consequences of serfdom questioned the justice and necessity of the laws which maintained it so now when the pernicious consequences of the present economic order have become evident one involuntarily questions the justice and inevitability of the legislation about land taxes and property which produces these results as people formerly asked is it right that some people should belong to others and that the former should have nothing of their own but should give all the produce of their labor to their owners so now we must ask ourselves is it right that people must not use land to count the property of other people is it right that people should hand over to others in the form of taxes whatever part of their labor is demanded of them is it right that people may not make use of articles considered to be the property of other people is it right that people should not have the use of land when it is considered to belong to others who are not cultivating it it is said that this legislation is instituted because landed property is an essential condition if agriculture is to flourish and if there were no private property passing by inheritance people would drive one another from the land they occupy and no one would work or improve the land on which he has settled is this true the answer is to be found in history and in the facts of today history shows that property in land did not arise from any wish to make the cultivator's tenure more secure but resulted from the seizure of communal lands by conquerors in its distribution to those who serve the conquerors so that property in land was not established with the object of stimulating the agriculturists present day facts show the fallacy of the assertion that landed property enables those who work the land to be sure that they will not be deprived of the land they cultivate in reality just the contrary has everywhere happened and is happening the right of landed property by which the great proprietors have profited most and are profiting has produced the result that all or most namely the immense majority of agriculturists are now in the position of people who cultivate other people's land from which they may be driven at the whim of men who do not cultivate it so that the existing right of landed property certainly does not defend the rights of the agriculturist to enjoy the fruits of the labor he puts into the land but on the contrary is a way of depriving the agriculturists of the land on which they work and handing it over to those who have not worked it and therefore it is certainly not a means for the improvement of agriculture but on the contrary a means of deteriorating it about taxes it is said that people ought to pay them because they are instituted with the general even though silent consent of all and are used for public needs to the advantage of all is this true the answer to this question is given in history and in present day facts history shows that taxes never were instituted by common consent but on the contrary oh always only in consequence of the fact that some people having obtained power by conquest or by other means over other people in post-tribute not for public needs but for themselves and the same thing is still going on taxes are taken by those who have the power to take them if nowadays some portion of these tributes called taxes and duties are used for public purposes it is for the most part for public purposes that are harmful rather than useful to most people for instance in russia one third of the peasants whole income is taken in taxes but only one fiftieth of the state revenue is spent on their greatest need the education of the people and even that amount is spent on a kind of education which by stupefying the people harms them more than it benefits them the other 49 fiftieths are spent on unnecessary things harmful for the people such as equipping the army building strategical railways forts and prisons or supporting the priesthood in the court and on the salaries for military and civil officials namely on salaries for those people who make it possible to take this money from the people the same thing goes on not only in persia turkey and india but also in all the christian and constitutional states and democratic republics money is taken from the majority of the people quite independently of the consent or non-consent of the payers and the amount collected is not what is really needful but as much as can be gut we know how parliaments are made up and how little they represent the will of the people and it is used not for the common advantage but for things governing classes consider necessary for themselves on wars in cuba or the philippines on taking and keeping the riches of the trans vol and so forth so that the explanation that people must pay taxes because they are instituted with general consent and are used for the common good is as unjust as the other explanation that private property in land is established to encourage agriculture is it true that people should not use articles needful to satisfy their requirements if those articles are the property of other people it is asserted that the right of property in acquired articles is established in order to make the worker sure that no one will take from him the produce of his labor is this true it is only necessary to glance at what is done in our world where property rights are defended with a special strictness in order to be convinced how completely the facts of life run counter to this explanation in our society in consequence of the right of property and acquired articles the very thing happens which that right is intended to prevent namely all articles which have been and continually are being produced by working people are possessed by and as they are produced are continually taken by those who have not produced them so that the assertion that the right of property secures to the workers the possibility of enjoying the products of their labor is evidently yet more unjust than the assertion concerning property in land and is based on the same sophistry first the fruit of their toil is unjustly and violently taken from the workers and then the law steps in and these very articles which have been taken from the workmen unjustly and by violence are declared to be the absolute property of those who have stolen them property for instance a factory acquired by a series of frauds and by taking advantage of the workmen is considered a result of labor and is held sacred but the lives of those workmen who perish at work in that factory and their labor are not considered their property but are rather considered to be the property of the factory owner if he taking advantage of the necessities of the workers has bound them down in a manner considered legal hundreds of thousands of bushels of corn collected from the peasants by usury and by a series of extortions are considered to be the property of the merchant while the growing corn raised by the peasants is considered to be the property of someone else if he has inherited the land from a grandfather or great grandfather who took it from the people it is said that the law defends equally the property of the mill owner of the capitalists of the land owner and of the factory or a country laborer the equality of the capitalists and of the worker is like the equality of two fighters of whom one has his arms tied and the other has weapons but to both of whom certain rules are applied with strict impartiality while they fight so that all the explanations of the justice and necessity of the three sets of laws which produce slavery are as untrue as where the explanations formerly given of justice and necessity of serfdom all those three sets of laws are nothing but the establishment of that new form of slavery which has replaced the old form as people formerly established laws enabling some people to buy and sell other people and to own them and to make them work and slavery existed so now people have established laws that men may not use land that is considered to belong to someone else must pay the taxes demanded of them and must not use articles considered to be the property of others and we have the slavery of our times end of chapter 10 of the slavery of our times recording by A. J. Mishinsky chapter 11 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 the slavery of our times by Leo Tolstoy translated by Almer Maud chapter 11 laws the cause of slavery the slavery of our times results from three sets of laws those about land taxes and property and therefore all the attempts of those who wish to improve the position of the workers are inevitably though unconsciously directed against those three legislations one set of people repeals taxes weighing on the working classes and transfer them to the rich others propose to abolish the right of private property in land and attempts are being made to put this in practice both in New Zealand and in one of the American states the limitation of landlords rights in Ireland is a move in the same direction a third set the socialists propose to communalize the means of production to tax incomes and inheritances and to limit the rights of capitalist employers it would therefore seem as though the legislative enactments which cause slavery were being repealed and that we may therefore expect slavery to be abolished in this way but we need only look more closely at the conditions under which the abolition of these legislative enactments is accomplished posed to be convinced that not only the practical but even the theoretical prospects for the improvement of the workers position are merely replacing one legislation producing slavery by another establishing a newer form of slavery thus for instance those who abolish taxes and duties on the poor first abolishing direct dues and then transferring the burden of taxation from the poor to the rich necessarily have to retain and do retain the laws making private property of land of the means of production and of other articles on to which the whole burden of the taxes is shifted the retention of the laws concerning land and property keeps the workers in slavery to the landowners and the capitalists even though the workers are freed from taxes those who like Henry George and his partisans would abolish the laws making private property of land propose new laws imposing an obligatory rent on the land and this obligatory land rent will necessarily create a new form of slavery because a man compelled to pay rent or single tax may at any failure of the crops or other misfortune have to borrow money from a man who has some to lend and he will again lapse into slavery those who like the socialists in theory wish to abolish the legalization of property and land and in means of production not only retain the legalization of taxes but must moreover inevitably introduce laws of compulsory labor i.e. they must re-establish slavery in its primitive form so that this way or that way all the practical and theoretical repeals of certain laws maintaining slavery in one form have always and do always replace it by new legislation creating slavery in another and a fresh form what happens is something like what a jailer might do who shifted a prisoner's chains from the neck to the arms and from the arms to the legs or took them off and substituted bolts and bars all the improvements that have hitherto taken place in the position of the workers have been of this kind the laws giving a master the right to compel his slaves to do compulsory work were replaced by laws allowing the masters to own all the land the laws allowing the land to become private property of the masters may be replaced by taxation laws the control of the taxes being in the hands of the masters the taxation laws may be replaced by others defending the right of private property in articles of use and in the means of production the laws maintaining property in land and in articles of use and means of production may as is now proposed be replaced by an enactment of compulsory labor so it is evident that the abolition of one form of legalization producing the slavery of our time whether taxes or land owning or property in articles of use or in the means of production will not destroy slavery but will only repeal one of its forms which will immediately be replaced by a new one as was the case with the abolition of chattel slavery and of serfdom and with the repeal of taxes even the abolition of all three groups of laws together will not abolish slavery but evoke a new and previously unknown form of it which is now already beginning to show itself and to shackle the freedom of labor by legislation concerning the hours of work the age and state of health of the workers as well as by demanding obligatory attendance at schools by deductions for old age insurance or accidents by all measures of factory inspection etc all this is nothing but transitional legislation preparing a new and as yet untried form of slavery so that it becomes evident that the essence of slavery lies not in those three roots of legislation on which it now rests and not even in such or such other legislative enactments but in the fact that legislation exists that there are people who have power to decree laws profitable for themselves and that as long as people have that power there will be slavery formally it was profitable for people to have chattel slaves and they made laws about chattel slavery afterwards it became profitable to own land to take taxes and to keep things one had acquired and they made laws correspondingly now it is profitable for people to maintain the existing direction and division of labor and they are devising such laws as will compel people to work under the present apportionment and division of labor thus the fundamental cause of slavery is legislation the fact that there are people who have the power to make laws what is legislation and what gives people the power to make laws end of chapter 11 chapter 12 of the slavery of our times this is LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by A. J. Mishinsky the slavery of our times by Leo Tolstoy translated by Almer Maud chapter 12 the essence of legislation is organized violence what is legislation and what enables people to make laws there exists a whole science even more ancient mendacious and confused than political economy the servants of which in the course of centuries have written millions of books for the most part contradicting one another to answer these questions but as the aim of the science as a political economy is not to explain what now is and what ought to be but rather to prove that what now is is what ought to be it happens that in the science of jurisprudence we find very many dissertations about rights about object and subject about the idea of a state and other such matters which are unintelligible both to the students and to the teachers of the science but we get no clear reply to the question what is legislation according to science legislation is the expression of the will of the whole people but as those who break the laws or who wish to break them and only refrain from doing so through fear of being punished are always more numerous than those who wish to carry out the code is evident that legislation can certainly not be considered as the expression of the will of the whole people for instance there are laws about not injuring telegraph posts about showing respect to certain people about each man performing military service or serving as a juryman about not taking certain goods beyond a certain frontier or about not using land considered to be the property of someone else about not making money tokens not using articles which are considered to be the property of others and about many other matters all these laws and many others are extremely complex and may have been passed for most diverse motives but not one of them expresses the will of the whole people there is about one characteristic common to all these laws namely that if any man does not fulfill them those who have made these laws will send armed men and the armed men will beat deprive of freedom or even kill the man who does not obey the law if a man does not wish to give as taxes such part of the produce of his labors as is demanded of him armed men will come and take from him what is demanded and if he resists he will be beaten deprived of freedom and sometimes even killed the same will happen to a man who begins to make use of land considered to be the property of another the same will happen to a man who makes use of things he wants to satisfy his requirements or to facilitate his work if these things are considered to be the property of someone else armed men will come and will deprive him of what he has taken and if he resists they will beat him deprive him of liberty or even kill him the same thing will happen to anyone who will not show respect to those whom it is decreed that we are to respect and to him who will not obey the demand that he should go as a soldier or who makes money tokens for every non fulfillment of the established laws there is punishment the offender is subjected by those who make the laws to blows to confinement or even to loss of life many constitutions have been devised beginning with the English and the American and ending with the Japanese and the Turkish according to which people are to believe that all laws established in their country are established at their desire but everyone knows that not in despite a country's only but also in the country's nominally most three England America France and others the laws are made not by the will of all but by the will of those who have power and therefore or always and everywhere are such as are profitable to those who have power be they many or few or only one man everywhere and always the laws are enforced by the only means that has compelled and still compels some people to obey the will of others i.e by blows by deprivation of liberty and by murder there can be no other way it cannot be otherwise for laws or demands to execute certain rules and to compel some people to obey certain rules i.e to do other people want of them can only be affected by blows by deprivation of liberty and by murder if there are laws there must be the force that can compel people to obey them and there's only one force that can compel people to obey rules i.e to obey the will of others and that is violence not the simple violence which people use to one another in moments of passion but the organized violence used by people who have power in order to compel others to obey the laws they the powerful have made in other words to do their will and so the essence of legislature does not lie in subject or object in rights or in the idea of the dominion of the collective will of the people or in other such indefinite and confused conditions but it lies in the fact that people who wield organized violence have power to compel others to obey them and do as they like so that the exact and irrefutable definition of legislation intelligible to all is that laws or rules made by people who govern by means of organized violence for non-compliance with which the non-complier is subjected to blows to loss of liberty or even to being murdered this definition furnishes the reply to the question what is it that renders it possible for people to make laws the same thing makes it possible to establish laws as enforces obedience to them namely organized violence