I am always surprised by the oft-repeated words: "Yes, this is so in
theory, but how is it in practice?" Just as though theory were fine
words, requisite for conversation, but not for the purpose of having all
practice, that is, all activity, indispensably founded on them. There
must be a fearful number of stupid theories current in the world, that
such an extraordinary idea should have become prevalent. Theory is what
a man thinks on a subject, but its practice is what he does. How can a
man think it necessary to do so and so, and then do the contrary? If the
theory of baking bread is, that it must first be mixed, and then set to
rise, no one except a lunatic, knowing this theory, would do the reverse.
But it has become the fashion with us to say, that "this is so in theory,
but how about the practice?"
In the matter which interests me now, that has been confirmed which I
have always thought,--that practice infallibly flows from theory, and not
that it justifies it, but it cannot possibly be otherwise, for if I have
understood the thing of which I have been thinking, then I cannot carry
out this thing otherwise than as I have understood it.
I wanted to help the unfortunate only because I had money, and I shared
the general belief that money was the representative of labor, or, on the
whole, something legal and good. But, having begun to give away this
money, I saw, when I gave the bills which I had accumulated from poor
people, that I was doing precisely that which was done by some landed
proprietors who made some of their serfs wait on others. I saw that
every use of money, whether for making purchases, or for giving away
without an equivalent to another, is handing over a note for extortion
from the poor, or its transfer to another man for extortion from the
poor. I saw that money in itself was not only not good, but evidently
evil, and that it deprives us of our highest good,--labor, and thereby of
the enjoyment of our labor, and that that blessing I was not in a
position to confer on any one, because I was myself deprived of it: I do
not work, and I take no pleasure in making use of the labor of others.
It would appear that there is something peculiar in this abstract
argument as to the nature of money. But this argument which I have made
not for the sake of argument, but for the solution of the problem of my
life, of my sufferings, was for me an answer to my question: What is to
be done?
As soon as I grasped the meaning of riches, and of money, it not only
became clear and indisputable to me, what I ought to do, but also clear
and indisputable what others ought to do, because they would infallibly
do it. I had only actually come to understand what I had known for a
long time previously, the theory which was given to men from the very
earliest times, both by Buddha, and Isaiah, and Lao-Tze, and Socrates,
and in a peculiarly clear and indisputable manner by Jesus Christ and his
forerunner, John the Baptist. John the Baptist, in answer to the
question of the people,--What were they to do? replied simply, briefly,
and clearly: "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath
none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise" (Luke iii. 10, 11). In
a similar manner, but with even greater clearness, and on many occasions,
Christ spoke. He said: "Blessed are the poor, and woe to the rich." He
said that it is impossible to serve God and mammon. He forbade his
disciples to take not only money, but also two garments. He said to the
rich young man, that he could not enter into the kingdom of heaven
because he was rich, and that it was easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. He
said that he who should not leave every thing, houses and children and
lands, and follow him, could not be his disciple. He told the parable of
the rich man who did nothing bad, like our own rich men, but who only
arrayed himself in costly garments, and ate and drank daintily, and who
lost his soul thereby; and of poor Lazarus, who had done nothing good,
but who was saved merely because he was poor.
This theory was sufficiently familiar to me, but the false teachings of
the world had so obscured it that it had become for me a theory in the
sense which people are fond of attributing to that term, that is to say,
empty words. But as soon as I had succeeded in destroying in my
consciousness the sophisms of worldly teaching, theory conformed to
practice, and the truth with regard to my life and to the life of the
people about me became its conclusion.
I understood that man, besides life for his own personal good, is
unavoidably bound to serve the good of others also; that, if we take an
illustration from the animal kingdom,--as some people are fond of doing,
defending violence and conflict by the conflict for existence in the
animal kingdom,--the illustration must be taken from gregarious animals,
like bees; that consequently man, not to mention the love to his neighbor
incumbent on him, is called upon, both by reason and by his nature, to
serve other people and the common good of humanity. I comprehended that
the natural law of man is that according to which only he can fulfil
destiny, and therefore be happy. I understood that this law has been and
is broken hereby,--that people get rid of labor by force (like the robber
bees), make use of the toil of others, directing this toil, not to the
common weal, but to the private satisfaction of swift-growing desires;
and, precisely as in the case of the robber bees, they perish in
consequence. [I understood that the original form of this disinclination
for the law is the brutal violence against weaker individuals, against
women, wars and imprisonments, whose sequel is slavery, and also the
present reign of money. I understood that money is the impersonal and
concealed enslavement of the poor. And, once having perceived the
significance of money as slavery, I could not but hate it, nor refrain
from doing all in my power to free myself from it.] {135}
When I was a slave-owner, and comprehended the immorality of my position,
I tried to escape from it. My escape consisted in this, that I,
regarding it as immoral, tried to exercise my rights as slave-owner as
little as possible, but to live, and to allow other people to live, as
though that right did not exist. And I cannot refrain from doing the
same thing now in reference to the present form of slavery,--exercising
my right to the labor of others as little as possible, i.e., hiring and
purchasing as little as possible.
The root of every slavery is the use of the labor of others; and hence,
the compelling others to it is founded indifferently on my right to the
slave, or on my possession of money which is indispensable to him. If I
really do not approve, and if I regard as an evil, the employment of the
labor of others, then I shall use neither my right nor my money for that
purpose; I shall not compel others to toil for me, but I shall endeavor
to free them from the labor which they have performed for me, as far as
possible, either by doing without this labor or by performing it for
myself.
And this very simple and unavoidable deduction enters into all the
details of my life, effects a total change in it, and at one blow
releases me from those moral sufferings which I have undergone at the
sight of the sufferings and the vice of the people, and instantly
annihilates all three causes of my inability to aid the poor, which I had
encountered while seeking the cause of my lack of success.
The first cause was the herding of the people in towns, and the
absorption there of the wealth of the country. All that a man needs is
to understand how every hiring or purchase is a handle to extortion from
the poor, and that therefore he must abstain from them, and must try to
fulfil his own requirements; and not a single man will then quit the
country, where all wants can be satisfied without money, for the city,
where it is necessary to buy every thing: and in the country he will be
in a position to help the needy, as has been my own experience and the
experience of every one else.
The second cause is the estrangement of the rich from the poor. A man
needs but to refrain from buying, from hiring, and, disdaining no sort of
work, to satisfy his requirements himself, and the former estrangement
will immediately be annihilated, and the man, having rejected luxury and
the services of others, will amalgamate with the mass of the working
people, and, standing shoulder to shoulder with the working people, he
can help them.
The third cause was shame, founded on a consciousness of immorality in my
owning that money with which I desired to help people. All that is
required is: to understand the significance of money as impersonal
slavery, which it has acquired among us, in order to escape for the
future from falling into the error according to which money, though evil
in itself, can be an instrument of good, and in order to refrain from
acquiring money; and to rid one's self of it in order to be in a position
to do good to people, that is, to bestow on them one's labor, and not the
labor of another.