Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

by them and their brothers, but certainly not by you! ‘Stolen oaks!’ But for ages you have been stealing from them, not oaks but their lives, and the lives of their children, their womenfolk and their old men⁠—who withered away before their time⁠—only because they were deprived of the land God gave to them in common with all men, and they were obliged to work for you.

“Only think of the life those millions of men have lived and are living, and of how you live! Only consider what they do, supplying you with all the comforts of life, and of what you do for them, depriving them of everything⁠—even of the possibility of supporting themselves and their families! All you live on⁠—everything in this room, everything in this house, and in all your splendid cities, all your palaces, all your mad, literally mad, luxuries⁠—has been made, and is still continually being made, by them.

“And they know this. They know that these parks of yours, and your racehorses, motor cars, palaces, dainty dishes and finery, and all the nastiness and stupidity you call ‘science’ and ‘art’⁠—are purchased with the lives of their brothers and sisters. They know and cannot help knowing this. Then think what feelings these people would have towards you, if they were like you!

“One would suppose that, knowing all you inflict on them, they could not but hate you from the bottom of their souls, and could not help wishing to revenge themselves on you. And you know there are tens of millions of them, and only some thousands of you. But what do they do?⁠ ⁠… Why, instead of crushing you as useless and harmful reptiles, they continue to repay your evil with good, and live their laborious and reasonable, though hard life, patiently biding the day when you will become conscious of your sin and will amend your ways. But instead of that, what do you do? From the height of your refined, self-confident immorality, you deign to stoop to those ‘depraved, coarse people.’ You enlighten them, and play the benefactor to them; that is to say, with the means supplied to you by their labour, you inoculate them with your depravity, and blame, correct, and best of all ‘punish’ them, as unreasoning or vicious infants bite the breasts that feed them.

“Yes, look at yourselves, and consider what you are and what they are! Realise that they alone live, while you, with your doumas, ministries, synods, academies, universities, conservatoires, law courts, armies, and all such stupidities and nastinesses, are but playing at life, and spoiling it for yourselves and others. They, the people, are alive. They are the tree, and you are harmful growths⁠—fungi on the plant. Realise, then, all your insignificance and their grandeur! Understand your sin, and try to repent, and at all costs set the people free.⁠ ⁠…”

“How well he speaks!” thought I. “Can it be a dream?”

And as I thought that, I awoke.

This dream set me again thinking about the land question: a question of which those who live constantly in the country, among a poverty-stricken agricultural peasant population, cannot help thinking. I know I have often written about it; but under the influence of that dream, even at the risk of repeating myself, I once more felt the need to express myself. Carthago delenda est. As long as people’s attitude towards private property in land remains unchanged, the cruelty, madness and evil of this form of the enslavement of some men by others, cannot be pointed out too frequently.

People say that land is property, and they say this because the Government recognises private property in land. But fifty years ago the Government upheld private property in human beings; yet a time came when it was admitted that human beings cannot be private property, and the Government ceased to hold them to be property. So it will be with property in land. The Government now upholds that property, and protects it by its power; but a day will come when the Government will cease to acknowledge this kind of property, and will abolish it. The Government will have to abolish it, because private property in land is just such an injustice as property in men⁠—serfdom⁠—used to be. The difference lies only in the fact that serfdom was a direct, definite slavery, while land-slavery is indirect and indefinite. Then Peter was John’s slave, whereas now Peter is the slave of some person unknown, but certainly of him who owns the land Peter requires in order to feed himself and his family. And not only is land-slavery as unjust and cruel a slavery as serfdom used to be, it is even harder on the slaves, and more criminal on the part of the slaveholders. For under serfdom⁠—if not from sympathy, then at least from self-interest⁠—the owner was obliged to see to it that his serf did not wither away and die of want, but to the best of his ability and understanding he looked after his slaves’ morality. Now the landowner cares nothing if his landless slave withers away or becomes demoralised; for he knows that however many men die or become depraved at his work, he will always be able to find workmen.

The injustice and cruelty of the new, present-day slavery⁠—land-slavery⁠—is so evident, and the condition of the slaves is everywhere so hard, that one would have expected this new slavery to have been recognised by this time as out of date, just as serfdom was admittedly out of date half a century ago; and it should, one would have thought, have been abolished, as serfdom was abolished.

“But,” it is said, “property in land cannot be abolished, for it would be impossible to divide equally among all the labourers and non-labourers the advantages given by land of different qualities.”

But that is not true. To abolish property in land, no distribution of land is necessary.

Just as, when serfdom was abolished, no distribution of the people liberated was necessary, but all that was needed was