It was hard for me to own this; but when I had got so far I was
terrified at the delusion in which I had been living. I had been head
over ears in the mud myself, and yet I had been trying to drag others
out of it.
What is it that I really want? I want to do good; I want to contrive so
that no human beings shall be hungry and cold, and that men may live as
it is proper for them to live. I desire this; and I see that in
consequence of all sorts of violence, extortions, and various expedients
in which I too take part, the working people are deprived of the
necessary things, and the non-working community, to whom I also belong,
monopolize the labour of others. I see that this use of other people's
labour is distributed thus: That the more cunning and complicated the
devices employed by the man himself (or by those from whom he has
inherited his property), the more largely he employs the labours of
other people, and the less he works himself.
First come the millionaires; then the wealthy bankers, merchants,
land-owners, government officials; then the smaller bankers, merchants,
government officials and land-owners, to whom I belong too; then
shopmen, publicans, usurers, police sergeants and inspectors, teachers,
sacristans, clerks; then, again, house-porters, footmen, coachmen,
water-carters, cabmen, pedlers; and then, last of all, the workmen,
factory hands and peasants, the number of this class in proportion to
the former being as ten to one.
I see that the lives of nine-tenths of the working people essentially
require exertion and labour, like every other natural mode of living;
but that, in consequence of the devices by which the necessaries of life
are taken away from these people, their lives become every year more
difficult, and more beset with privations; and our lives, the lives of
the non-labouring community, owing to the co-operation of sciences and
arts which have this very end in view, become every year more sumptuous,
more attractive and secure.
I see that in our days the life of a labouring man, and especially the
lives of the old people, women, and children of the working-classes, are
quite worn away by increased labour out of proportion to their
nourishment, and that even the very first necessaries of life are not
secured for them. I see that side by side with these the lives of the
non-labouring class, to which I belong, are each year more and more
filled up with superfluities and luxury, and are becoming continually
more secure. The lives of the wealthy have reached that degree of
security of which in olden times men only dreamed in fairy-tales, to the
condition of the owner of the magic purse with the "inexhaustible
ruble"; to a state where a man not only is entirely free from the law of
labour for the sustenance of his life, but has the possibility of
enjoying all the goods of this life without working, and of bequeathing
to his children, or to anyone he chooses, this purse with the
"inexhaustible ruble."
I see that the results of the labour of men pass over more than ever
from the masses of labourers to those of the non-labourers; that the
pyramid of the social structure is, as it were, being rebuilt, so that
the stones of the foundation pass to the top, and the rapidity of this
passage increases in a kind of geometric progression.
I see that there is going on something like what would take place in an
ant-hill if the society of ants should lose the sense of the general
law, and some of them were to take the results of labour out of the
foundations and carry them to the top of the hill, making the foundation
narrower and narrower and thus enlarging the top, and so by that means
cause their fellows to pass also from the foundation to the top.
I see that instead of the ideal of a laborious life, men have created
the ideal of the purse with the "inexhaustible ruble." The rich, I among
their number, arrange this ruble for themselves by various devices; and
in order to enjoy it we locate ourselves in towns, in a place where
nothing is produced but everything is swallowed up.
The poor labouring man, swindled so that the rich may have this magic
ruble, follows them to town; and there he also has recourse to tricks,
either arranging matters so that he may work little and enjoy much (thus
making the condition of other workingmen still more heavy), or, not
having attained this state, he ruins himself and drifts into the
continually and rapidly increasing number of cold and hungry tenants of
doss-houses.
I belong to the class of those men who by means of these various devices
take away from the working people the necessaries of life, and who thus,
as it were, create for themselves the inexhaustible fairy ruble which
tempts in turn these unfortunate ones.
I wish to help men; and therefore it is clear that first of all I ought
on the one side to cease to plunder them as I am doing now, and on the
other to leave off tempting them. But by means of most complicated,
cunning, and wicked contrivances practised for centuries, I have made
myself the owner of this ruble; that is, have got into a condition
where, never doing anything myself, I can compel hundreds and thousands
of people to work for me, and I am really availing myself of this
privileged monopoly notwithstanding that all the time I imagine I pity
these men and wish to help them.
I sit on the neck of a man, and having quite crushed him down compel him
to carry me and will not alight from off his shoulders, though I assure
myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his
condition by every means in my power--except by getting off his back.
Surely this is plain. If I wish to help the poor, that is, to make the
poor cease to be poor, I ought not to create the poor. Yet I give money
capriciously to those who have gone astray, and take away tens of rubles
from men who have not yet become bad, thereby making them poor and at
the same time depraved.
This is very clear; but it was exceedingly difficult for me to
understand at first, without some modification or reserve which would
justify my position. However as soon as I come to see my own error, all
that formerly appeared strange, complicated, clouded, and inexplicable,
became quite simple and intelligible; but the important matter was, that
the direction of my life indicated by this explanation, became at once,
simple, clear, and agreeable, instead of being, as formerly, intricate,
incomprehensible, and painful.
Who am I, I thought, that desire to better men's condition? I say I
desire this, and yet I do not get up till noon, after having played
cards in a brilliantly lighted saloon all night,--I, an enfeebled and
effeminate man requiring the help and services of hundreds of people, I
come to help them! to help these men who rise at five, sleep on boards,
feed on cabbage and bread, understand how to plough, to reap, to put a
handle to an axe, to hew, to harness horses, to sew; men who, by their
strength and perseverance and skill and self-restraint are a hundred
times stronger than I who come to help them.
What _could_ I experience in my intercourse with these people but shame?
The weakest of them, a drunkard, an inhabitant of Rzhanoff's house, he
whom they call "the sluggard," is a hundred times more laborious than I;
his balance, so to say,--in other words the relation between what he
takes from men and what he gives to them,--is a thousand times more to
his credit than mine when I count what I receive from others and what I
give them in return. And such men I go to assist!
I go to help the poor. But of the two who is the poorer? No one is
poorer than myself. I am a weak, good-for-nothing parasite who can only
exist under very peculiar conditions, can live only when thousands of
people labour to support this life which is not useful to anyone. And I,
this very caterpillar which eats up the leaves of a tree, I wish to help
the growth and the health of the tree and to cure it!
All my life is spent thus: I eat, talk, and listen; then I eat, write,
or read, which are only talking and listening in another form; I eat
again, and play; then eat, talk, and listen, and finally eat and go to
sleep: and thus every day is spent; I neither do anything else nor
understand how to do it. And in order that I may enjoy this life it is
necessary that from morning till night house-porters, dvorniks, cooks
(male and female), footmen, coachmen, and laundresses, should work; to
say nothing of the manual labour necessary so that the coachmen, cooks,
footmen, and others may have the instruments and articles by which and
upon which they work for me,--axes, casks, brushes, dishes, furniture,
glasses, shoe-black, kerosene, hay, wood, and food. All these men and
women work hard all the day and every day in order that I may talk, eat,
and sleep. And I, this useless man, imagined I was able to benefit the
very people who were serving me! That I did not benefit any one and that
I was ashamed of myself, is not so strange as the fact that such a
foolish idea ever came into my mind.
The woman who nursed the sick old man helped him; the peasant's wife,
who cut a slice of her bread earned by herself, from the very sowing of
the corn that made it, helped the hungry one; Simon, who gave three
kopeks which he had earned, assisted the pilgrim, because these three
kopeks really represented his labour; but I had served nobody, worked
for no one, and knew very well that my money did not represent my
labour.
And so I felt that in money, or in money's worth, and in the possession
of it, there was something wrong and evil; that the money itself, and
the fact of my having it, was one of the chief causes of those evils
which I had seen before me; and I asked myself, What is money?