It was hard for me to come to this confession, but when I had come to it
I was shocked at the error in which I had been living. I stood up to my
ears in the mud, and yet I wanted to drag others out of this mud.
What is it that I wish in reality? I wish to do good to others. I wish
to do it so that other people may not be cold and hungry, so that others
may live as it is natural for people to live.
[I wish this, and I see that in consequence of the violence, extortions,
and various tricks in which I take part, people who toil are deprived of
necessaries, and people who do not toil, in whose ranks I also belong,
enjoy in superabundance the toil of other people.
I see that this enjoyment of the labors of others is so arranged, that
the more rascally and complicated the trickery which is employed by the
man himself, or which has been employed by the person from whom he
obtained his inheritance, the more does he enjoy of the labors of others,
and the less does he contribute of his own labor.
First come the Shtiglitzy, Dervizy, Morozovy, the Demidoffs, the
Yusapoffs; then great bankers, merchants, officials, landed proprietors,
among whom I also belong; then the poor--very small traders, dramshop-
keepers, usurers, district judges, overseers, teachers, sacristans,
clerks; then house-porters, lackeys, coachmen, watch-carriers,
cab-drivers, peddlers; and last of all, the laboring
classes--factory-hands and peasants, whose numbers bear the relation to
the first named of ten to one. I see that the life of nine-tenths of the
working classes demands, by reason of its nature, application and toil,
as does every natural life; but that, in consequence of the sharp
practices which take from these people what is indispensable, and place
them in such oppressive conditions, this life becomes more difficult
every year, and more filled with deprivations; but our life, the life of
the non-laboring classes, thanks to the co-operation of the arts and
sciences which are directed to this object, becomes more filled with
superfluities, more attractive and careful, with every year. I see,
that, in our day, the life of the workingman, and, in particular, the
life of old men, of women, and of children of the working population, is
perishing directly from their food, which is utterly inadequate to their
fatiguing labor; and that this life of theirs is not free from care as to
its very first requirements; and that, alongside of this, the life of the
non-laboring classes, to which I belong, is filled more and more, every
year, with superfluities and luxury, and becomes more and more free from
anxiety, and has finally reached such a point of freedom from care, in
the case of its fortunate members, of whom I am one, as was only dreamed
of in olden times in fairy-tales,--the state of the owner of the purse
with the inexhaustible ruble, that is, a condition in which a man is not
only utterly released from the law of labor, but in which he possesses
the possibility of enjoying, without toil, all the blessings of life, and
of transferring to his children, or to any one whom he may see fit, this
purse with the inexhaustible ruble.
I see that the products of the people's toil are more and more
transformed from the mass of the working classes to those who do not
work; that the pyramid of the social edifice seems to be reconstructed in
such fashion that the foundation stones are carried to the apex, and the
swiftness of this transfer is increasing in a sort of geometrical ratio.
I see that the result of this is something like that which would take
place in an ant-heap if the community of ants were to lose their sense of
the common law, if some ants were to begin to draw the products of labor
from the bottom to the top of the heap, and should constantly contract
the foundations and broaden the apex, and should thereby also force the
remaining ants to betake themselves from the bottom to the summit.
I see that the ideal of the Fortunatus' purse has made its way among the
people, in the place of the ideal of a toilsome life. Rich people,
myself among the number, get possession of the inexhaustible ruble by
various devices, and for the purpose of enjoying it we go to the city, to
the place where nothing is produced and where every thing is swallowed
up.
The industrious poor man, who is robbed in order that the rich may
possess this inexhaustible ruble, yearns for the city in his train; and
there he also takes to sharp practices, and either acquires for himself a
position in which he can work little and receive much, thereby rendering
still more oppressive the situation of the laboring classes, or, not
having attained to such a position, he goes to ruin, and falls into the
ranks of those cold and hungry inhabitants of the night-lodging houses,
which are being swelled with such remarkable rapidity.
I belong to the class of those people, who, by divers tricks, take from
the toiling masses the necessaries of life, and who have acquired for
themselves these inexhaustible rubles, and who lead these unfortunates
astray. I desire to aid people, and therefore it is clear that, first of
all, I must cease to rob them as I am doing. But I, by the most
complicated, and cunning, and evil practices, which have been heaped up
for centuries, have acquired for myself the position of an owner of the
inexhaustible ruble, that is to say, one in which, never working myself,
I can make hundreds and thousands of people toil for me--which also I do;
and I imagine that I pity people, and I wish to assist them. I sit on a
man's neck, I weigh him down, and I demand that he shall carry me; and
without descending from his shoulders I assure myself and others that I
am very sorry for him, and that I desire to ameliorate his condition by
all possible means, only not by getting off of him.
Surely this is simple enough. If I want to help the poor, that is, to
make the poor no longer poor, I must not produce poor people. And I
give, at my own selection, to poor men who have gone astray from the path
of life, a ruble, or ten rubles, or a hundred; and I grasp hundreds from
people who have not yet left the path, and thereby I render them poor
also, and demoralize them to boot.
This is very simple; but it was horribly hard for me to understand this
fully without compromises and reservations, which might serve to justify
my position; but it sufficed for me to confess my guilt, and every thing
which had before seemed to me strange and complicated, and lacking in
cleanness, became perfectly comprehensible and simple. But the chief
point was, that my way of life, arising from this interpretation, became
simple, clear and pleasant, instead of perplexed, inexplicable and full
of torture as before.] {122a}
Who am I, that I should desire to help others? I desire to help people;
and I, rising at twelve o'clock after a game of _vint_ {122b} with four
candles, weak, exhausted, demanding the aid of hundreds of people,--I go
to the aid of whom? Of people who rise at five o'clock, who sleep on
planks, who nourish themselves on bread and cabbage, who know how to
plough, to reap, to wield the axe, to chop, to harness, to sew,--of
people who in strength and endurance, and skill and abstemiousness, are a
hundred times superior to me,--and I go to their succor! What except
shame could I feel, when I entered into communion with these people? The
very weakest of them, a drunkard, an inhabitant of the Rzhanoff house,
the one whom they call "the idler," is a hundred-fold more industrious
than I; [his balance, so to speak, that is to say, the relation of what
he takes from people and that which they give him, stands on a thousand
times better footing than my balance, if I take into consideration what I
take from people and what I give to them.] {122a}
And these are the people to whose assistance I go. I go to help the
poor. But who is the poor man? There is no one poorer than myself. I
am a thoroughly enervated, good-for-nothing parasite, who can only exist
under the most special conditions, who can only exist when thousands of
people toil at the preservation of this life which is utterly useless to
every one. And I, that plant-louse, which devours the foliage of trees,
wish to help the tree in its growth and health, and I wish to heal it.
I have passed my whole life in this manner: I eat, I talk and I listen; I
eat, I write or read, that is to say, I talk and listen again; I eat, I
play, I eat, again I talk and listen, I eat, and again I go to bed; and
so each day I can do nothing else, and I understand how to do nothing
else. And in order that I may be able to do this, it is necessary that
the porter, the peasant, the cook, male or female, the footman, the
coachman, and the laundress, should toil from morning till night; I will
not refer to the labors of the people which are necessary in order that
coachman, cooks, male and female, footman, and the rest should have those
implements and articles with which, and over which, they toil for my
sake; axes, tubs, brushes, household utensils, furniture, wax, blacking,
kerosene, hay, wood, and beef. And all these people work hard all day
long and every day, so that I may be able to talk and eat and sleep. And
I, this cripple of a man, have imagined that I could help others, and
those the very people who support me!
It is not remarkable that I could not help any one, and that I felt
ashamed; but the remarkable point is that such an absurd idea could have
occurred to me. The woman who served the sick old man, helped him; the
mistress of the house, who cut a slice from the bread which she had won
from the soil, helped the beggar; Semyon, who gave three kopeks which he
had earned, helped the beggar, because those three kopeks actually
represented his labor: but I served no one, I toiled for no one, and I
was well aware that my money did not represent my labor.