II. Together with law Tolstoi necessarily has to reject also, for the more highly developed nations of our time, the legal institution of the State.
"Perhaps there was once a time when, in a low state of morality with a general inclination of men to mutual violence, the existence of a power limiting this violence was advantageous—that is, in which the State violence was less than that of individuals against each other. But such an advantage of State violence over its non-existence could not last; the more the individuals' inclination to violence decreased and manners grew milder, and the more the governments degenerated by having nothing to check them, the more worthless did State violence grow. In this change—in the moral evolution of the masses on the one hand and the degeneration of the governments on the other—lies the whole history of the last two thousand years."[979] "I cannot prove either the general necessity of the State or its general perniciousness,"[980] "I know only that on the one hand the State is no longer necessary for me, and that on the other hand I can no longer do the things that are necessary for the existence of the State."[981]
"Christianity in its true significance abolishes the State,"[982] annihilates all government.[983] The State offends against love, particularly against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[984] And not only this; in founding a dominion[985] the State furthermore offends against the principle that for love "all men are God's sons and there is equality among them all";[986] it is therefore to be rejected even aside from the violence on which it is based as a legal institution. "That the Christian teaching has an eye only to the redemption of the individual, and does not relate to public questions and State affairs, is a bold and unfounded assertion."[987] "To every honest, earnest man in our time it must be clear that true Christianity—the doctrine of humility, forgiveness, love—is incompatible with the State and its haughtiness, its deeds of violence, its capital punishments and wars."[988] "The State is an idol";[989] its objectionableness is independent of its form, be this "absolute monarchy, the Convention, the Consulate, the empire of a first or third Napoleon or yet of a Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, the Commune, or the republic."[990]—Tolstoi carries this out into detail.
1. The State is the rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch.
The State is rule. Government in the State is "an association of men who do violence to the rest."[991]
"All governments, the despotic and the liberal alike, have in our time become what Herzen has so aptly called a Jenghis Khan with telegraphs."[992] The men in whom the power is vested "practise violence not in order to overcome evil, but solely for their advantage or from caprice; and the other men submit to the violence not because they believe that it is practised for their good,—that is, in order to liberate them from evil,—but only because they cannot free themselves from it."[993] "If Nice is united with France, Lorraine with Germany, Bohemia with Austria, if Poland is divided, if both Ireland and India are subjected to the English dominion, if people fight with China, kill the Africans, expel the Chinese from America, and persecute the Jews in Russia, it is not because this is good or necessary or useful for men and the opposite would be evil, but only because it so pleases those in whom the power is vested."[994]
The State is the rule of the bad.[995] "'If the State power were to be annihilated, the wicked would rule over the less wicked,' say the defenders of State rule."[996] But has the power, when it has passed from some men to some others in the State, really always come to the better men? "When Louis the Sixteenth, Robespierre, Napoleon, came to power, who ruled then, the better or the worse? When did the better rule, when the power was vested in the Versaillese or in the Communards, when Charles the First or Cromwell stood at the head of the government? When Peter the Third was czar, and then when after his murder the authority of czar was exercised in one part of Russia by Catharine and in another by Pugatcheff, who was wicked then and who was good? All men who find themselves in power assert that their power is necessary in order that the wicked may not do violence to the good, and regard it as self-evident that they are the good and are giving the rest of the good protection against the bad."[997] But in reality those who grasp and hold the power cannot possibly be the better.[998] "In order to obtain and retain power, one must love it. But the effort after power is not apt to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities, pride, craft, and cruelty. Without exalting self and abasing others, without hypocrisy, lying, prisons, fortresses, penalties, killing, no power can arise or hold its own."[999] "It is downright ridiculous to speak of Christians in power."[1000] To this it is to be added "that the possession of power depraves men."[1001] "The men who have the power cannot but misuse it; they must infallibly be unsettled by such frightful authority."[1002] "However many means men have invented to hinder the possessors of power from subordinating the welfare of the whole to their own advantage, hitherto not one of these means has worked. Everybody knows that those in whose hands is the power—be they emperors, ministers, chiefs of police, or common policemen—are, just because the power is in their hands, more inclined to immorality, to the subordinating of the general welfare to their advantage, than those who have no power; nor can it be otherwise."[1003]
The State is the rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch. We shall always find "that the scheming of the possessors of authority—nay, their unconscious effort—is directed toward weakening the victims of their authority as much as possible; for, the weaker the victim is, the more easily can he be held down."[1004] "To-day there is only one sphere of human activity left that has not been conquered by the authority of government: the sphere of the family, of housekeeping, private life, labor. And even this sphere, thanks to the fighting of the Communists and Socialists, the governments are already beginning to invade, so that soon, if the reformers have their way, work and rest, housing, clothing, and food, will likewise be fixed and regulated by the governments."[1005] "The most fearful band of robbers is not so horrible as a State organization. Every robber chief is at any rate limited by the fact that the men who make up his band retain at least a part of human liberty, and can refuse to commit acts which are repugnant to their consciences."[1006] But in the State there is no such limit; "no crime is so horrible that it will not be committed by the officials and the army at the will of him—Boulanger, Pugatcheff, Napoleon—who accidentally stands at the head."[1007]
2. The rule in the State is based on physical force.
Every government has for its prop the fact that there are in the State armed men who are ready to execute the government's will by physical force, a class "educated to kill those whose killing the authorities command."[1008] Such men are the police[1009] and especially the army.[1010] The army is nothing else than a collectivity of "disciplined murderers",[1011] its training is "instruction in murdering",[1012] its victories are "deeds of murder."[1013] "The army has always formed the basis of power, and does to this day. The power is always in the hands of those who command the army, and, from the Roman CÆsars to the Russian and German emperors, all possessors of power have always cared first and foremost for their armies."[1014]
In the first place, the army upholds the government's rule against external assaults. It protects it against having the rule taken from it by another government.[1015] War is nothing but a contest of two or more governments for the rule over their subjects. It is "impossible to establish international peace in a rational way, by treaty or arbitration, so long as the insensate and pernicious subjection of nations to governments continues to exist."[1016] In consequence of this importance of armies "every State is compelled to increase its army to face the others, and this increase has the effect of a contagion, as Montesquieu observed a hundred and fifty years since."[1017]
But, if one thinks armies are kept by governments only for external defence, he forgets "that governments need armies particularly to protect them against their oppressed and enslaved subjects."[1018] "In the German Reichstag lately, in reply to the question why money was needed in order to increase the pay of the petty officers, the chancellor made the direct statement that reliable petty officers were necessary for the combating of Socialism. Caprivi merely said out loud what everybody knows, carefully as it is concealed from the peoples,—the reason why the French kings and the popes kept Swiss and Scots, why in Russia the recruits are so introduced that the interior regiments get their contingents from the frontiers and the frontier regiments theirs from the interior. Caprivi told, by accident, what everybody knows or at least feels,—to wit, that the existing order exists not because it must exist or because the people wills its existence, but because the government's force, the army with its bribed petty-officers and officers and generals, keeps it up."[1019]
3. The rule in the State is based on the physical force of the ruled.
It is peculiar to government that it demands from the citizens the very force on which it is based, and that consequently in the State "all the citizens are their own oppressors."[1020] The government demands from the citizens both force and the supporting of force. Here belongs the obligation, general in Russia, to take an oath at the czar's accession to the throne, for by this oath one vows obedience to the authorities,—that is, to men who are devoted to violence; likewise the obligation to pay taxes, for the taxes are used for works of violence, and the compulsory use of passports, for by taking out a passport one acknowledges his dependence on the State's institution of violence; withal the obligation to testify in court and to take part in the court as juryman, for every court is the fulfilment of the commandment of revenge; furthermore, the obligation to police service which in Russia rests upon all the country people, for this service demands that we do violence to our brother and torment him; and above all the general obligation to military service,—that is, the obligation to be executioners and to prepare ourselves for service as executioners.[1021] The unchristianness of the State comes to light most plainly in the general obligation to military service: "every man has to take in hand deadly weapons, a gun, a knife; and, if he does not have to kill, at least he does have to load the gun and sharpen the knife,—that is, be ready for killing."[1022]
But how comes it that the citizens fulfil these demands of the government, though the government is based on this very fulfilment, and so mutually oppress each other? This is possible only by "a highly artificial organization, created with the help of scientific progress, in which all men are bewitched into a circle of violence from which they cannot free themselves. At present this circle consists of four means of influence; they are all connected and hold each other, like the links of a chain."[1023] The first means is "what is best described as the hypnotization of the people."[1024] This hypnotization leads men to "the erroneous opinion that the existing order is unchangeable and must be upheld, while in reality it is unchangeable only by its being upheld."[1025] The hypnotization is accomplished "by fomenting the two forms of superstition called religion and patriotism";[1026] it "begins its influence even in childhood, and continues it till death."[1027] With reference to this hypnotization one may say that State authority is based on the fraudulent misleading of public opinion.[1028] The second means consists in "bribery; that is, in taking from the laboring populace its wealth, by money taxes, and dividing this among the officials, who, for this pay, must maintain and strengthen the enslavement of the people."[1029] The officials "more or less believe in the unchangeability of the existing order, mainly because it benefits them."[1030] With reference to this bribery one may say that State authority is based on the selfishness of those to whom it guarantees profitable positions.[1031] The third means is "intimidation. It consists in setting down the present State order—of whatever sort, be it a free republican order or be it the most grossly despotic—as something sacred and unchangeable, and imposing the most frightful penalties upon every attempt to change it."[1032] Finally, the fourth means is to "separate a certain part of all the men whom they have stupefied and bewitched by the three first means, and subject these men to special stronger forms of stupefaction and bestialization, so that they become will-less tools of every brutality and cruelty that the government sees fit to resolve upon."[1033] This is done in the army, to which, at present, all young men belong by virtue of the general obligation to military service.[1034] "With this the circle of violence is made complete. Intimidation, bribery, hypnosis, bring men to enlist as soldiers. The soldiers, in turn, afford the possibility of punishing men, plundering them in order to bribe officials with the money, hypnotizing them, and thus bringing them into the ranks of the very soldiers on whom the power for all this is based."[1035]
II. Love requires that a social life based solely on its commandments take the place of the State. "To-day every man who thinks, however little, sees the impossibility of keeping on with the life hitherto lived, and the necessity of determining new forms of life."[1036] "The Christian humanity of our time must unconditionally renounce the heathen forms of life that it condemns, and set up a new life on the Christian bases that it recognizes."[1037]
1. Even after the State is done away, men are to live in societies. But what is to hold them together in these societies?
Not a promise, at any rate. Christ commands us to make "no vows,"[1038] to "promise men nothing."[1039] "The Christian cannot promise that he will do or not do a particular thing at a particular hour, because he cannot know what the law of love, which it is the meaning of his life to obey, will demand of him at that hour."[1040] And still less can he "give his word to fulfil somebody's will, without knowing what the substance of this will is to be";[1041] by the mere fact of such a promise he would "make it manifest that the inward divine law is no longer the sole law of his life";[1042] "one cannot serve two masters."[1043]
Men are to be held together in societies in future by the mental influence which the men who have made progress in knowledge exert upon the less advanced. "Mental influence is such a way of working upon a man that by it his wishes change and coincide with what is wanted of him; the man who yields to a mental influence acts according to his own wishes."[1044] Now, the force "by which men can live in societies"[1045] is found in the mental influence which the men who have made progress in knowledge exert upon the less advanced, in the "characteristic of little-thinking men, that they subordinate themselves to the directions of those who stand on a higher level of knowledge."[1046] In consequence of this characteristic "a body of men put themselves under the same rational principles, the minority consciously, because the principles agree with the demands of their reason, and the majority unconsciously, because the principles have become public opinion."[1047] "In this subordination there is nothing irrational or self-contradictory."[1048]
2. But in the future societary condition how shall the functions which the State at present performs be performed? Here people usually have three things in mind.[1049]
First, protection against the bad men in our midst.[1050] "But who are the bad men among us? If there once were such men three or four centuries ago, when people still paraded warlike arts and equipments and looked upon killing as a brilliant deed, they are gone to-day anyhow; nobody any longer carries weapons, everybody acknowledges the commands of philanthropy. But, if by the men from whom the State must protect us we mean the criminals, then we know that they are not special creatures like the wolf among the sheep, but just such men as all of us, who like committing crimes as little as we do; we know that the activity of governments with their cruel forms of punishment, which do not correspond to the present stage of morality, their prisons, tortures, gallows, guillotines, contributes more to the barbarizing of the people than to their culture, and hence rather to the multiplication than to the diminution of such criminals."[1051] If we are Christians and start from the principle that "what our life exists for is the serving of others, then no one will be foolish enough to rob men that serve him of their means of support or to kill them. Miklucho-Maclay settled among the wildest so-called 'savages', and they not only left him alive but loved him and submitted to his authority, solely because he did not fear them, asked nothing of them, and did them good."[1052]
Secondly, the question is asked how in the future societary condition we can find protection against external enemies.[1053] But we do know "that the nations of Europe profess the principles of liberty and fraternity, and therefore need no protection against each other; but, if it were a protection against the barbarians that was meant, a thousandth part of the armies that are now kept up would suffice. State authority not merely leaves in existence the danger of hostile attacks, but even itself provokes this danger."[1054] But, "if there existed a community of Christians who did evil to nobody and gave to others all the superfluous products of their labor, then no enemy, neither the German nor the Turk nor the savage, would kill or vex such men; all one could do would be to take from them what they were ready to give voluntarily without distinguishing between Russians, Germans, Turks, and savages."[1055]
Thirdly, the question is asked how in the future societary condition institutions for education, popular culture, religion, commerce, etc. are to be possible.[1056] "Perhaps there was once a time when men lived so far apart, when the means for coming together and exchanging thoughts were so undeveloped, that people could not, without a State centre, discuss and agree on any matter either of trade and economy or of culture. But to-day this separation no longer exists; the means of intercourse have developed extraordinarily; for the forming of societies, associations, corporations, for the gathering of congresses and the creation of economic and political institutions, governments are not needed; nay, in most cases they are rather a hindrance than a help toward the attainment of such ends."[1057]
3. But what form will men's life together in the future societary condition take in detail? "The future will be as circumstances and men shall make it."[1058] We are not at this moment able to get perfectly clear ideas of it.[1059]
"Men say, 'What will the new orders be like, that are to take the place of the present ones? So long as we do not know what form our life will take in future, we will not go forward, we will not stir from this spot.'"[1060] "If Columbus had gone to making such observations, he would never have weighed anchor. It was insanity to steer across an ocean that no man had ever yet sailed upon toward a land whose existence was a question. With this insanity, he discovered the New World. It would certainly be more convenient if nations had nothing to do but move out of one ready-furnished mansion into another and a better; only, by bad luck, there is nobody there to furnish the new quarters."[1061]
But what disquiets men in their imagining of the future is "less the question 'What will be?' They are tormented by the question 'How are we to live without all the familiar conditions of our existence, that are called science, art, civilization, culture?'"[1062] "But all these, bear in mind, are only forms in which truth appears. The change that lies before us will be an approach to the truth and its realization. How can the forms in which truth appears be brought to naught by an approach to the truth? They will be made different, better, higher, but by no means will they be brought to naught. Only that which was false in the forms of its appearance hitherto will be brought to naught; what was genuine will but unfold itself the more splendidly."[1063]
"If the individual man's life were completely known to him when he passes from one stage of maturity to another, he would have no reason for living. So it is with the life of mankind too; if at its entrance upon a new stage of growth a programme lay before it already drawn up, this would be the surest sign that it was not alive, not progressing, but that it was sticking at one point. The details of a new order of life cannot be known to us, they have to be worked out by us ourselves. Life consists only in learning to know the unknown, and putting our action in harmony with the new knowledge. In this consists the life of the individual, in this the life of human societies and of humanity."[1064]
