How can a man who considers himself to be,--we will not say a Christian
or an educated and humane man,--but simply a man not entirely devoid of
reason and of conscience,--how can he, I say, live in such a way, taking
no part in the struggle of all mankind for life, only swallowing up the
labour of others struggling for existence, and by his own claims
increasing the labour of those who struggle and the number of those who
perish in the struggle?
Such men abound in our so-called Christian and cultured world; and not
only do they abound in our world but the very ideal of the men of our
Christian, cultured world, is to get the largest amount of
property,--that is, wealth,--which secures all comforts and idleness of
life by freeing its possessors from the struggle for existence, and
enabling them, as much as possible, to profit by the labour of those
brothers of theirs who perish in that struggle.
How could men have fallen into such astounding error?
How could they have come to such a state that they can neither see nor
hear nor understand with their heart what is so clear, obvious, and
certain?
One need only think for a moment in order to be terrified at the way our
lives contradict what we profess to believe, whether we be Christian or
only humane educated people. Whether it be God or a law of nature that
governs the world and men, good or bad, the position of men in this
world, so long as we know it has always been such that naked
men,--without wool on their bodies, without holes in which to take
refuge, without food which they might find in the field like Robinson
Crusoe on his island,--are put into a position of continual and
incessant struggle with nature in order to cover their bodies by making
clothes for themselves, to protect themselves by a roof over their
heads, and to earn food in order twice or thrice a day to satisfy their
hunger and that of their children and their parents.
Wherever and whenever and to whatever extent we observe the lives of
men, whether in Europe, America, China, or Russia; whether we take into
consideration all mankind or a small portion, whether in olden times in
a nomad state, or in modern times with steam-engines, steam-ploughs,
sewing-machines, and electric light,--we shall see one and the same
thing going on,--that men, working constantly and incessantly, are not
able to get clothes, shelter, and food for themselves, their little
ones, and the old, and that the greatest number of men in olden times as
well as now, perish slowly from want of the necessaries of life and from
overwork.
Wherever we may live, if we draw a circle around us of a hundred
thousand, or a thousand or ten, or even one mile's circumference, and
look at the lives of those men who are inside our circle, we shall find
half-starved children, old people male and female, pregnant women, sick
and weak persons, working beyond their strength, who have neither food
nor rest enough to support them, and who, for this reason, die before
their time: we shall see others full-grown who are even being killed by
dangerous and hurtful tasks.
Since the world has existed we find that with great efforts, sufferings,
and privations men have been struggling for their common wants, and have
not been able to overcome the difficulty.
Besides, we also know that every one of us, wherever and however he may
live, _nolens volens_, is every day, and every hour of the day,
absorbing for himself a part of the labour performed by mankind.
Wherever and however a man lives, the roof over his head did not grow of
itself; the firewood in his stove did not get there of itself; the water
did not come of itself either; and the baked bread does not fall down
from the sky; his dinner, his clothes, and the covering for his feet,
all this has been made for him, not only by men of past generations,
long dead, but it is being done for him now by those men of whom
hundreds and thousands are fainting away and dying in vain efforts to
get for themselves and for their children sufficient shelter, food, and
clothes,--means to save themselves and their children from suffering and
a premature death.
All men are struggling with want. They are struggling so intensely that
around them always their brethren, fathers, mothers, children, are
perishing. Men in this world are like those on a dismantled or
water-logged ship with a short allowance of food; all are put by God, or
by nature, in such a position that they must husband their food and
unceasingly war with want.
Each interruption in this work of every one of us, each absorption of
the labour of others which is useless for the common welfare, is
ruinous, alike for us and them.
How is it that the majority of educated people, without labouring, are
quietly absorbing the labours of others which are necessary for their
own lives, and are considering such an existence quite natural and
reasonable?
If we are to free ourselves from the labour proper and natural to all
and lay it on others, and yet not at the same time consider ourselves
traitors and thieves, we can do so only by two suppositions,--first,
that we (the men who take no part in common labour) are different beings
from working-men and have a peculiar destiny to fulfil in society (like
drone-bees, or queen-bees, which have a different function from the
working-bees); or secondly, that the business which we (the men freed
from the struggle for existence) are doing for other men is so useful
for all that it undoubtedly compensates for that harm which we do to
others in overburdening them.
In olden times men who lived by the labour of others asserted, first,
that they belonged to a different race; and secondly, that they had from
God a peculiar mission,--caring for the welfare of others; in other
words, to govern and teach them: and therefore, they assured others, and
partly believed themselves, that the business they did was more useful
and more important for the people than those labours by which they
profit. This justification was sufficient so long as the direct
interference of God in human affairs, and the inequality of human races,
was not doubted.
But with Christianity and that consciousness of the equality and unity
of all men which proceeds from it, this justification could no longer be
expressed in its previous form.
It was no longer possible to assert that men are born of different kind
and quality and have a different destiny; and the old justification,
though still held by some, has been little by little destroyed and has
now almost entirely disappeared.
But though the justification disappeared, the fact itself,--of the
freeing of some men from labour, and the appropriation by them of other
men's labour, remained the same for those who had the power to enforce
it. For this existing fact new excuses have constantly been invented, in
order that without asserting the difference of human beings, men might
be able with apparent justice to free themselves from personal labour.
A great many justifications have been invented. However strange it may
seem, the main object of all that has been called science, and the
ruling tendency of science, has been to seek out such excuses.
This has been the object of the theological sciences and of the science
of law: this was the object of so-called philosophy, and this became
lately the object of modern rationalistic science, however strange it
appears to us, the contemporaries, who use this justification.
All the theological subtleties which aimed at proving that a certain
church is the only true successor of Christ, and that, therefore, she
alone has full and uncontrolled power over the souls and bodies of men,
had in view this very object.
All the legal sciences,--those of state law, penal law, civil law, and
international law,--have this sole aim.
The majority of philosophical theories, especially that of Hegel, which
reigned over the minds of men for such a long time, and maintained the
assertion that everything which exists is reasonable, and that the state
is a necessary form of the development of human personality, had only
this one object in view.
Comte's positive philosophy and its outcome, the doctrine that mankind
is an organism; Darwin's doctrine of the struggle for existence,
directing life and its conclusion, the theory of the diversity of human
races, the anthropology now so popular, biology, and sociology,--all
have the same aim. These sciences have become favourites, because they
all serve for the justification of the existing fact of some men being
able to free themselves from the human duty of labour, and to consume
other men's labour.
All these theories, as is always the case, are worked out in the
mysterious sanctums of augurs, and in vague, unintelligible expressions
are spread abroad among the masses and adopted by them.
As in olden times the subtleties of theology, which justified violence
in church and state, were the special property of priests; and among the
masses of the people, the conclusions, taken by faith, and ready made
for them, were circulated, that the power of kings, clergy and nobility
was sacred: so afterwards, the philosophical and legal subtleties of
so-called science became the property of the priests of science; and
through the masses only the ready-made conclusion, accepted by
faith,--that social order (the organization of society) must be such as
it is, and cannot be otherwise,--was diffused.
So it is now. It is only in the sanctuaries of the modern sages that the
laws of life and the development of organisms are analyzed. Whereas in
the crowd, the ready-made conclusion, accepted on trust,--that division
of labour is a law confirmed by science, and therefore it must be that
some starve and toil and others eternally feast, and that this very ruin
of some and feasting of others is the undoubted law of man's life, to
which we must submit,--is circulated.
The current justification of their idleness by all so-called educated
people, with their various activities, from the railway proprietor down
to the author or artist, is this: We men who have freed ourselves from
the common human duty of taking part in the struggle for existence, are
furthering progress, and so we are of great use to all human society, of
such use that we counterbalance all the harm we do the people by
consuming their labour.
This reasoning seems to the men of our day to be not at all like the
reasoning by which the former non-workers justified themselves; just as
the reasoning of the Roman emperors and citizens, that but for them the
civilized world would go to ruin, seemed to them to be of quite another
order from that of the Egyptians and Persians; and so also an exactly
similar kind of reasoning seemed in turn to the knights and clergy of
the Middle Ages totally different from that of the Romans.
But it only _seems_. One need only reflect on the justification of our
time in order to ascertain that there is nothing new in it. It is only a
little differently dressed up, but it is the same because it is based on
the same principle. Every justification of one man's consumption of the
labour of others, while producing none himself, as with Pharaoh and his
soothsayers, the emperors of Rome and those of the Middle Ages and their
citizens, knights, priests, and clergy, always consists in these two
assertions: First, we take the labour of the masses because we are
different from others, people called by God to govern them and to teach
them divine truths: Secondly, those who compose the masses cannot be
judges of the measure of labour which we take from them for the good we
do for them, because, as it has been said by the Pharisees, "This
multitude which knoweth not the law are accursed" (John vii. 49).
The people do not understand what is for their good, and therefore they
cannot be judges of the benefits done to them. The justification of our
time, notwithstanding all apparent originality, consists in facts of the
same fundamental assertions: First, we are a different people,--we are
an educated people,--we further progress and civilization, and by this
fact we procure for the masses a great advantage. Secondly, the
uneducated crowd does not understand the advantages we procure for them,
and therefore cannot be judges of them.
The fundamental assertions are the same. We free ourselves from labour,
appropriate the labour of others, and by this increase the burden of our
fellows; and then assert that in compensation for this we bring them a
great advantage, of which they, owing to ignorance, cannot be judges.
Is it not, then, the same thing? The only difference lies in this: that
formerly the claims on other men's labour were made by citizens, Roman
priests, knights, and nobility, and now these claims are put forward by
a caste who term themselves educated.
The lie is the same, because the men who justify themselves are in the
same false position. The lie consists in the fact, that, before
beginning to reason about the advantages conferred on the workers by
people who have freed themselves from labour,--certain men, Pharaohs,
priests, or we ourselves, educated people, assume this position first,
and only afterwards manufacture a justification for it.
The very position universally serves as a basis for the justification.
The difference of our justification from the ancient ones consists
merely in the fact that it is more false and less well grounded. The old
emperors and popes, if they themselves, and the people, believed in
their divine calling, could easily explain why they were to control the
labour of others: they asserted that they were appointed by God himself
for this very thing, and from God they had a commandment to teach the
people divine truths revealed to them, and to govern them.
But modern, educated men, who do not labour with their hands, and who
acknowledge the equality of all men, cannot explain why they and their
children (for education is only by money; that is, by power) should be
those lucky persons called to an easy, idle life, out of those millions
who by hundreds and thousands are perishing to make it possible for them
to be educated. Their only justification consists in this, that, just as
they are, instead of doing harm to the workers by freeing themselves
from labour, and by swallowing up labour, they bring to the people some
advantages, unintelligible to them, which compensate for all the evil
they perpetrate.