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

the abolition of the law that upheld serfdom, so with the abolition of private property in land: no distribution of land is needed, but only the abolition of the law sanctioning private property in land. And as when serfdom was abolished, the serfs of their own accord settled down as best suited them, so when private property in land is abolished, people will find a way of sharing the land among themselves so that all may have equal advantage from it. How this will be arranged, whether by Henry George’s Single-Tax system, or in some other way, we cannot foresee. But it is certain that the Government need only cease to uphold by force the obviously unjust and oppressive rights of property in land, and the people, released from those restrictions, will always find means of apportioning the land by common consent, in such a way that everyone will have an equal share of the benefits the use of the land confers.

It is only necessary for the majority of landowners⁠—that is, slave-owners⁠—to understand (as they did in the matter of serfdom) that property in land is as hard on the present-day slaves, and as great an iniquity on the part of the slave-owners, as serfdom was; and, having understood that, it is only necessary for them to impress on the Government the necessity of repealing the laws sanctioning property in land⁠—that is, land-slavery. One would have thought that, as in the ’fifties, the best members of society (chiefly the serf-owning nobles themselves), having understood the criminality of their position, explained to the Government the necessity for abolishing their evidently out-of-date and immoral rights, and serfdom was abolished, so it should be now with regard to private property in land, which is land-slavery.

But strange to say, the present slave-owners, the landed proprietors, not only fail to see the criminality of their position, and do not impress on the Government the necessity of abolishing land-slavery, but on the contrary they consciously and unconsciously, by all manner of means, blind themselves and their slaves to the criminality of their position.

The reasons of this are: first, that serfdom in the ’fifties, being the plain, downright enslavement of man by man, ran too clearly counter to religious and moral feeling; while land-slavery is not a direct, immediate slavery, but is a form of slavery more hidden from the slaves, and especially from the slave-owners, by complicated governmental, social and economic institutions. And the second reason is that, while in the days of serfdom only one class were slave-owners, all classes, except the most numerous one⁠—consisting of peasants who have too little land: labourers and working men⁠—are slave-owners now. Nowadays nobles, merchants, officials, manufacturers, professors, teachers, authors, musicians, painters, rich peasants, rich men’s servants, well-paid artisans, electricians, mechanics, etc., are all slave-owners of the peasants who have insufficient land, and of the unskilled workmen who⁠—apparently as a result of most varied causes, but in reality as a result of one cause alone (the appropriation of land by the landed proprietors)⁠—are obliged to give their labour and even their lives to those who possess the advantages land affords. These two reasons⁠—that the new slavery is less evident than the old, and that the new slave-owners are much more numerous than the old ones⁠—account for the fact that the slave-owners of our day do not see, and do not admit, the cruelty and criminality of their position, and do not free themselves from it.

The slave-owners of our day not only do not admit that their position is criminal, and do not try to escape from it, but are quite sure that property in land is a necessary institution, essential to the social order, and that the wretched condition of the working classes⁠—which they cannot help noticing⁠—results from most varied causes, but certainly not from the recognition of some people’s right to own land as private property.

This opinion of land-owning, and of the causes of the wretched condition of the labourers, is so well established in all the leading countries of the Christian world⁠—France, England, Germany, America, etc.⁠—that with very rare exceptions it never occurs to their public men to look in the right direction for the cause of the wretched condition of the workers.

That is so in Europe and America; but one would have expected that for us Russians, with our hundred million peasant population who deny the principle of private ownership in land, and with our enormous tracts of land, and with the almost religious desire of our people for agricultural life, an answer very different to the general European answer to questions as to the causes of the distress among the workers, and as to the means of bettering their position, would naturally present itself.

One would think that we Russians might understand that if we really are concerned about, and desire to improve, the position of the people and to free them from the aggravating and demoralising fetters with which they are bound, the means to do this are indicated both by common sense and by the voice of the people, and are simply⁠—the abolition of private property in land, that is to say, the abolition of land-slavery.

But, strange to relate, in Russian society, occupied with questions of the improvement of the condition or the working classes, there is no suggestion of this one, natural, simple and self-evident means of improving their condition. We Russians, though our peasants’ outlook on the land question is probably centuries ahead of the rest of Europe, can devise nothing better for the improvement of our people’s condition than to establish among ourselves, on the European model, doumas, councils, ministries, courts, zemstvos, universities, extension lectures, academies, elementary schools, fleets, submarines, airships, and many other of the queerest things quite foreign to and unnecessary for the people, and we do not do the one thing that is demanded by religion, morality, and common sense, as well as by the whole of the peasantry.

Nor is this all. While arranging the fate of our