I. Together with law Tolstoi necessarily has to reject also, for the more highly developed nations of our time, the legal institution of property.
Perhaps there was once a time when the violence necessary to secure the individual in the possession of a piece of goods against all others was less than the violence which would have been practised in a general fight for the possession of the goods, so that the existence of property was better than its non-existence. But at any rate this time is past, the existing order has "lived out its time";[1065] among the men of to-day no wild fight for the possession of goods would break out even if there were no property; they all "profess allegiance to the commands of philanthropy,"[1066] each of them "knows that all men have equal rights in the goods of the world,"[1067] and already we see "many a rich man renounce his inheritance from a specially delicate sense of germinant public opinion."[1068]
Property offends against love, especially against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[1069] But not only this; in founding a dominion of possessors over non-possessors it also offends against the principle that for love "all men are God's sons and there is equality among them all";[1070] and it is therefore to be rejected, even aside from the violence on which it is based as a legal institution. The rich are under "guilt by the very fact that they are rich."[1071] It is "a crime"[1072] that tens of thousands of "hungry, cold, deeply degraded human beings are living in Moscow, while I with a few thousand others have tenderloin and sturgeon for dinner and cover horses and floors with blankets and carpets."[1073] I shall be "an accomplice in this unending and uninterrupted crime so long as I still have a superfluous bit of bread while another has no bread at all, or still possess two garments while another does not possess even one."[1074]—Tolstoi carries this out into detail.
1. Property means the dominion of the possessors over the non-possessors.
Property is the exclusive right to use some things, whether one actually uses them or not.[1075] "Many of the men who called me their horse," Tolstoi makes the horse Linen-Measurer say, "did not ride me; quite different men rode me. Nor did they feed me; quite different men fed me. Nor was it those who called me their horse that did me kindnesses, but coachmen, veterinary surgeons, strangers altogether. Later, when the circle of my observations grew wider, I convinced myself that the idea 'mine,' which has no other basis than men's low and bestial propensity which they call 'sense of ownership' or 'right of property,' finds application not only with respect to us horses. A man says 'this house is mine' and never lives in it, he only attends to the building and repair of the house. A merchant says 'my store, my dry-goods store,' and his clothing is not of the best fabrics he has in his store. There are men who call a piece of land 'mine' and have never seen this piece of land nor set foot on it. What men aim at in life is not to do what they think good, but to call as many things as possible 'mine.'"[1076]
But the significance of property consists in the fact that the poor man who has no property is dependent on the rich man who has property; in order to come by the things which he needs for his living, but which belong to another, he must do what this other wills—in particular, he must work for him. Thus property divides men into "two castes, an oppressed laboring caste that famishes and suffers and an idle oppressing caste that enjoys and lives in superfluity."[1077] "We are all brothers, and yet every morning my brother or my sister carries out my dishes. We are all brothers, but every morning I have to have my cigar, my sugar, my mirror, and other such things, in whose production healthy brothers and sisters, people like me, have sacrificed and are sacrificing their health."[1078] "I spend my whole life in the following way: I eat, talk, and listen; eat, write, and read—that is, talk and listen again; eat and play; eat, talk, and listen again; eat and go to bed; and so it goes on, one day like another. I cannot do, do not know how to do, anything beyond this. And, that I may be able to do this, the porter, the farmer, the cook, the cook's maid, the lackey, the coachman, the laundress, must work from morning till night, not to speak of the work of other men which is necessary in order that those coachmen, cooks, lackeys, and so on may have all that they need when they work for me—the axes, barrels, brushes, dishes, furniture, likewise the wax, the blacking, the kerosene, the hay, the wood, the beef. All of them have to work day by day, early and late, that I may be able to talk, eat, and sleep."[1079]
This significance of property makes itself especially felt in the case of the things that are necessary for the producing of other things, and so most notably in the case of land and tools.[1080] "There can be no farmer without land that he tills, without scythes, wagons, and horses; no shoemaker is possible without a house built on the earth, without water, air, and tools";[1081] but property means that in many cases "the farmer possesses no land, no horses, no scythe, the shoemaker no house, no water, no awl: that somebody is keeping these things back from them."[1082] This leads to the consequence "that for a large fraction of the workers the natural conditions of production are deranged, that this fraction is necessitated to use other people's stock,"[1083] and may by the owner of the stock be compelled "to work not on their own account, but for an employer."[1084] Consequently the workman works "not for himself, to suit his own wish, but under compulsion, to suit the whim of some idle persons who live in superfluity, for the benefit of some rich man, the proprietor of a factory or other industrial plant."[1085] Thus property means the exploitation of the laborer by those to whom the land and tools belong; it means "that the products of human labor pass more and more out of the hands of the laboring masses into the hands of the unlaboring."[1086]
Furthermore, the significance of property as making the poor dependent on the rich becomes especially prominent in the case of money. "Money is a value that remains always equal, that always ranks as correct and legal."[1087] Consequently, as the saying is, "he who has money has in his pocket those who have none."[1088] "Money is a new form of slavery, distinguished from the old solely by its impersonality, by the lack of any human relation between the master and the slave";[1089] for "the essence of all slavery consists in drawing the benefit of another's labor-force by compulsion, and it is quite immaterial whether the drawing of this benefit is founded upon property in the slave or upon property in money which is indispensable to the other man."[1090] "Now, honestly, of what sort is my money, and how have I come by it? I got part for the land that I inherited from my father. The peasant sold his last sheep, his last cow, to pay me this money. Another part of my assets consists of the sums which I have received for my literary productions, my books. If my books are harmful, then by them I have seduced the purchasers to evil and have acquired the money by bad means. If, on the contrary, my books are useful to people, the case is still worse; I have not given them without ceremony to those who had a use for them, but have said 'Give me seventeen rubles and you shall have them,' and, as in the other case the peasant sold his last sheep, so here the poor student or teacher, and many another poor person, have denied themselves the plainest necessities to give me the money. And thus I have piled up a quantity of such money, and what do I do with it? I bring it to the city and give it to the poor here on condition that they satisfy all my whims, that they come after me into the city to clean the sidewalks for me, and to make me lamps, shoes, and so forth, in the factories. With my money I take all their products to myself, and I take pains to give them as little as possible and get from them as much as possible for it. And then all at once, quite unexpectedly, I begin to distribute to the poor this same money gratis—not to all, but arbitrarily to any whom I happen to take up at random";[1091] that is, I take from the poor thousands of rubles with one hand, and with the other I distribute to some of them a few kopeks.[1092]
2. The dominion which property involves, of possessors over non-possessors, is based on physical force.
"If the vast wealth that the laborers have piled up ranks not as the property of all, but only as that of an elect few,—if the power of raising taxes from labor and using them at pleasure is reserved to some men,—this is not based on the fact that the people want to have it so or that by nature it must be so, but on the fact that the ruling classes see their advantage in it and determine it so by virtue of their power over men's bodies";[1093] it is based on "violence and slaying and the threat thereof."[1094] "If men hand over the greatest part of the product of their labor to the capitalist or landlord, though they, as do all laborers now, hold this to be unjust,"[1095] they do it "only because they know they will be beaten and killed if they do not."[1096] "One may even say outright that in our society, in which to every well-to-do man living an aristocratic life there are ten weary, ravenous, envious laborers, probably pining away with wife and children too, all the privileges of the rich, all their luxury and their abundance, are acquired and secured only by chastisement, imprisonment, and capital punishment."[1097]
Property is upheld by the police[1098] and the army.[1099] "We may act as if we did not see the policeman walking up and down before the window with loaded revolver to protect us while we eat a savory meal or look at a new play, and as if we had no inkling of the soldiers who are every moment ready to go with rifle and cartridges where any one tries to infringe on our property. Yet we well know, if we can finish our meal and see the new play in peace, if we can drive out or hunt or attend a festival or a race undisturbed, we have to thank for this only the policeman's bullet and the soldier's weapon, which are ready to pierce the poor victim of hunger who looks upon our enjoyments from his corner with grumbling stomach, and who would at once disturb them if the policeman with his revolver went away, or if in the barracks there were no longer any soldiers standing ready to appear at our first call."[1100]
3. The dominion which property involves, of the possessors over the non-possessors, is based on the physical force of the ruled.
Those very men of the non-possessing classes who through property are dependent on the possessing classes must do police duty, serve in the army, pay the taxes out of which police and army are kept up, and in these and other ways either themselves exercise or at least support the physical force by which property is upheld.[1101] "If there did not exist these men who are ready to discipline or kill any one whatever at the word of command, no one would dare assert what the non-laboring landlords now do all of them so confidently assert,—that the soil which surrounds the peasants who die off for lack of land is the property of a man who does not work on it";[1102] it would "not come into the head of the lord of the manor to take from the peasants a forest that has grown up under their eyes";[1103] nor would any one say "that the stores of grain accumulated by fraud in the midst of a starving population must remain unscathed that the merchant may have his profit."[1104]
II. Love requires that a distribution based solely on its commandments take the place of property. "The impossibility of continuing the life that has hitherto been led, and the necessity of determining new forms of life,"[1105] relate to the distribution of goods as well as to other things. "The abolition of property,"[1106] and its replacement by a new kind of distribution of goods, is one of the "questions now in order."[1107]
According to the law of love, every man who works as he has strength should have so much—but only so much—as he needs.
1. That every man who works as he has strength should have so much as he needs and no more is a corollary from two precepts which follow from the law of love.
The first of these precepts says, Man shall "ask no work from others, but himself devote his whole life to work for others. 'Man lives not to be served but to serve.'"[1108] Therefore, in particular, he is not to keep accounts with others about his work, or think that he "has the more of a living to claim, the greater or more useful his quantum of work done is."[1109] Following this precept provides every man with what he needs. This is true primarily of the healthy adult. "If a man works, his work feeds him. If another makes use of this man's work for himself, he will feed him for the very reason that he is making use of his work."[1110] Man assures himself of a living "not by taking it away from others, but by making himself useful and necessary to others. The more necessary he is to others, the more assured is his existence."[1111] But the following of the precept to serve others also provides the sick, the aged, and children with their living. Men "do not stop feeding an animal when it falls sick; they do not even kill an old horse, but give it work appropriate to its strength; they bring up whole families of little lambs, pigs, and puppies, because they expect benefit from them. How, then, should they not support the sick man who is necessary to them? How should they not find appropriate work for old and young, and bring up human beings who will in turn work for them?"[1112]
The second precept that follows from the law of love, and of which a corollary is that every man who works as he has strength should have as much as he needs and no more, bids us "Share what you have with the poor; gather no riches."[1113] "To the question of his hearers, what they were to do, John the Baptist gave the short, clear, simple answer, 'He who hath two coats, let him share with him who hath none; and he who hath food let him do likewise' (Luke 3.10-11). And Christ too made the same declaration several times, only still more unambiguously and clearly. He said, 'Blessed are the poor, woe to the rich.' He said that one could not serve God and Mammon at once. He not only forbade his disciples to take money, but also to have two garments. He told the rich young man that because he was rich he could not enter into the Kingdom of God, and that a camel should sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man come into heaven. He said that he who did not forsake everything—house, children, lands—to follow him could not be his disciple. He told his hearers the parable of the rich man who did nothing bad except that he—like our rich men—clothed himself in costly apparel and fed himself on savory food and drink, and who plunged his soul into perdition by this alone, and of the poor Lazarus who did nothing good and who entered into the Kingdom of Heaven only because he was a beggar."[1114]
2. But what form can such a distribution of goods take in detail?
This is best shown us by "the Russian colonists. These colonists arrive on the soil, settle, and begin to work, and no one of them takes it into his head that any one who does not begin to make use of the land can have any right to it; on the contrary, the colonists regard the ground a priori as common property, and consider it altogether justifiable that everybody plows and reaps where he chooses. For working the fields, for starting gardens, and for building houses, they procure implements; and here too it does not suggest itself to them that these could of themselves produce any income—on the contrary, the colonists look upon any profit from the means of labor, any interest for grain lent, etc., as an injustice. They work on masterless land with their own means or with means borrowed free of interest, either each for himself or all together on joint account."[1115]
"In talking of such fellowship I am not setting forth fancies, but only describing what has gone on at all times, what is even at present taking place not only among the Russian colonists but everywhere where man's natural condition is not yet deranged by some circumstances or other. I am describing what seems to everybody natural and rational. The men settle on the soil and go each one to work, make their implements, and do their labor. If they think it advantageous to work jointly, they form a labor company."[1116] But, in individual business as well as in collective industry, "neither the water nor the ground nor the garments nor the plow can belong to anybody save him who drinks the water, wears the garments, and uses the plow; for all these things are necessary only to him who puts them to use."[1117] One can call "only his labor his own";[1118] by it one has as much as one needs.[1119]
