The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy (readera ebook reader txt) π
"We regard as unchristian and unlawful not only all wars, whether offensive or defensive, but all preparations for war; every naval ship, every arsenal, every fortification, we regard as unchristian and unlawful; the existence of any kind of standing army, all military chieftains, all monuments commemorative of victory over a fallen foe, all trophies won in battle, all celebrations in honor of military exploits, all appropriations for defense by arms; we regard as unchristian and unlawful every edict of government requiring of its subjects military service.
"Hence we deem it unlawful to bear arms, and we cannot hold any office which imposes on its incumbent the obligation to compel men to do right on pain of imprisonment or death. We therefore voluntarily exclude ourselves from every legisl
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wives, mothers, children, the families of the tortured man and of
all the others picked out for punishment.
The miserable governor, intoxicated with power, was counting the
strokes on his fingers, and never left off smoking cigarettes,
while several officious persons hastened on every opportunity to
offer him a burning match to light them. When more than fifty
strokes had been given, the peasant ceased to shriek and writhe,
and the doctor, who had been educated in a government institution
to serve his sovereign and his country with his scientific
attainments, went up to the victim, felt his pulse, listened to
his heart, and announced to the representative of authority that
the man undergoing punishment had lost consciousness, and that, in
accordance with the conclusions of science, to continue the
punishment would endanger the victimβs life. But the miserable
governor, now completely intoxicated by the sight of blood, gave
orders that the punishment should go on, and the flogging was
continued up to seventy strokes, the number which the governor had
for some reason fixed upon as necessary. When the seventieth
stroke had been reached, the governor said βEnough! Next one!β
And the mutilated victim, his back covered with blood, was lifted
up and carried away unconscious, and another was led up. The sobs
and groans of the crowd grew louder. But the representative of
the state continued the torture.
Thus they flogged each of them up to the twelfth, and each of them
received seventy strokes. They all implored mercy, shrieked and
groaned. The sobs and cries of the crowd of women grew louder and
more heart-rending, and the menβs faces grew darker and darker.
But they were surrounded by troops, and the torture did not cease
till it had reached the limit which had been fixed by the caprice
of the miserable half-drunken and insane creature they called the
governor.
The officials, and officers, and soldiers not only assisted in it,
but were even partly responsible for the affair, since by their
presence they prevented any interference on the part of the crowd.
When I inquired of one of the governors why they made use of this
kind of torture when people had already submitted and soldiers
were stationed in the village, he replied with the important air
of a man who thoroughly understands all the subtleties of
statecraft, that if the peasants were not thoroughly subdued by
flogging, they would begin offering opposition to the decisions of
authorities again. When some of them had been thoroughly
tortured, the authority of the state would be secured forever
among them.
And so that was why the Governor of Toula was going in his turn
with his subordinate officials, officers, and soldiers to carry
out a similar measure. By precisely the same means, i. e., by
murder and torture, obedience to the decision of the higher
authorities was to be secured. And this decision was to enable a
young landowner, who had an income of one hundred thousand, to
gain three thousand rubles more by stealing a forest from a whole
community of cold and famished peasants, to spend it, in two or
three weeks in the saloons of Moscow, Petersburg, or Paris. That
was what those people whom I met were going to do.
After my thoughts had for two years been turned in the same
direction, fate seemed expressly to have brought me face to face
for the first time in my life with a fact which showed me
absolutely unmistakably in practice what had long been clear to me
in theory, that the organization of ur society rests, not as
people interested in maintaining the present order of things like
to imagine, on certain principles of jurisprudence, but on simple
brute force, on the murder and torture of men.
People who own great estates or fortunes, or who receive great
revenues drawn from the class who are in want even of necessities,
the working class, as well as all those who like merchants,
doctors, artists, clerks, learned professors, coachmen, cooks,
writers, valets, and barristers, make their living about these
rich people, like to believe that the privileges they enjoy are
not the result of force, but of absolutely free and just
interchange of services, and that their advantages, far from being
gained by such punishments and murders as took place in Orel and
several parts of Russia this year, and are always taking place all
over Europe and America, have no kind of connection with these
acts of violence. They like to believe that their privileges
exist apart and are the result of free contract among people; and
that the violent cruelties perpetrated on the people also exist
apart and are the result of some general judicial, political, or
economical laws. They try not to see that they all enjoy their
privileges as a result of the same fact which forces the peasants
who have tended the forest, and who are in the direct need of it
for fuel, to give it up to a rich landowner who has taken no part
in caring for its growth and has no need of it whateverβthe fact,
that is, that if they donβt give it up they will be flogged or
killed.
And yet if it is clear that it was only by means of menaces,
blows, or murder, that the mill in Orel was enabled to yield a
larger income, or that the forest which the peasants had planted
became the property of a landowner, it should be equally clear
that all the other exclusive rights enjoyed by the rich, by
robbing the poor of their necessities, rest on the same basis of
violence. If the peasants, who need land to maintain their
families, may not cultivate the land about their houses, but one
man, a Russian, English, Austrian, or any other great landowner,
possesses land enough to maintain a thousand families, though he
does not cultivate it himself, and if a merchant profiting by the
misery of the cultivators, taking corn from them at a third of its
value, can keep this corn in his granaries with perfect security
while men are starving all around him, and sell it again for three
times its value to the very cultivators he bought it from, it is
evident that all this too comes from the same cause. And if one
man may not buy of another a commodity from the other side of a
certain fixed line, called the frontier, without paying certain
duties on it to men who have taken no part whatever in its
productionβand if men are driven to sell their last cow to pay
taxes which the government distributes among its functionaries,
and spends on maintaining soldiers to murder these very taxpayers-
οΏ½it would appear self-evident that all this does not come about as
the result of any abstract laws, but is based on just what was
done in Orel, and which may be done in Toula, and is done
periodically in one form or another throughout the whole world
wherever there is a government, and where there are rich and poor.
Simply because torture and murder are not employed in every
instance of oppression by force, those who enjoy the exclusive
privileges of the ruling classes persuade themselves and others
that their privileges are not based on torture and murder, but on
some mysterious general causes, abstract laws, and so on. Yet one
would think it was perfectly clear that if men, who consider it
unjust (and all the working classes do consider it so nowadays),
still pay the principal part of the produce of their labor away to
the capitalist and the landowner, and pay taxes, though they know
to what a bad use these taxes are put, they do so not from
recognition of abstract laws of which they have never heard, but
only because they know they will be beaten and killed if they
donβt do so.
And if there is no need to imprison, beat, and kill men every time
the landlord collects his rents, every time those who are in want
of bread have to pay a swindling merchant three times its value,
every time the factory hand has to be content with a wage less
than half of the profit made by the employer, and every time a
poor man pays his last ruble in taxes, it is because so many men
have been beaten and killed for trying to resist these demands,
that the lesson has now been learnt very thoroughly.
Just as a trained tiger, who does not eat meat put under his nose,
and jumps over a stick at the word of command, does not act thus
because he likes it, but because he remembers the red-hot irons or
the fast with which he was punished every time he did not obey; so
men submitting to what is disadvantageous or even ruinous to them,
and considered by them as unjust, act thus because they remember
what they suffered for resisting it.
As for those who profit by the privileges gained by previous acts
of violence, they often forget and like to forget how these
privileges were obtained. But one need only recall the facts of
history, not the history of the exploits of different dynasties of
rulers, but real history, the history of the oppression of the
majority by a small number of men, to see that all the advantages
the rich have over the poor are based on nothing but flogging,
imprisonment, and murder.
One need but reflect on the unceasing, persistent struggle of all
to better their material position, which is the guiding motive of
men of the present day, to be convinced that the advantages of the
rich over the poor could never and can never be maintained by
anything but force.
There may be cases of oppression, of violence, and of punishments,
though they are rare, the aim of which is not to secure the
privileges of the propertied classes. But one may confidently
assert that in any society where, for every man living in ease,
there are ten exhausted by labor, envious, covetous, and often
suffering with their families from direct privation, all the
privileges of the rich, all their luxuries and superfluities, are
obtained and maintained only by tortures, imprisonment, and
murder.
The train I met on the 9th of September going with soldiers, guns,
cartridges, and rods, to confirm the rich landowner in the
possession of a small forest which he had taken from the starving
peasants, which they were in the direst need of, and he was in no
need of at all, was a striking proof of how men are capable of
doing deeds directly opposed to their principles and their
conscience without perceiving it.
The special train consisted of one first-class carriage for the
governor, the officials, and officers, and several luggage vans
crammed full of soldiers. The latter, smart young fellows in
their clean new uniforms, were standing about in groups or sitting
swinging their legs in the wide open doorways of the luggage vans.
Some were smoking, nudging each other, joking, grinning, and
laughing, others were munching sunflower seeds and spitting out
the husks with an air of dignity. Some of them ran along the
platform to drink some water from a tub there, and when they met
the officers they slackened their pace, made their stupid gesture
of salutation, raising their hands to their heads with serious
faces as though they were doing something of the greatest
importance. They kept their eyes on them till they had passed by
them, and then set off running still more merrily, stamping their
heels on the platform, laughing and chattering after the manner of
healthy, good-natured young fellows, traveling in lively company.
They were going to assist at the murder of their
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