A Parable by Leo Tolstoy

From Samuel Leight's 1984 book, The Futility of Reformism

A Parable by Leo Tolstoy

I see mankind asa herd of cattle inside a fenced enclosure. Outside the fence are green pastures and plenty for the cattle to eat, while inside the fence there is not quite grass enough for the cattle. Consequently, the cattle are tramping underfoot what little grass there is and goring each other to death in their struggle for existence.

I saw the owner of the herd come to them, and when he saw their pitiful condition he was filled with compassion for them and thought of all he could do to improve their condition.

So he called his friends together and asked them to assist him in cutting grass from outside the fence and throwing it over the fence to the cattle. And that they called Charity.

Then, because the calves were dying off and not growing up into serviceable cattle, he arranged that they should each have a pint of milk every morning for breakfast.

Because they were dying off in the cold nights, he put up beautiful well-drained and well-ventilated cowsheds for the cattle.

Because they were goring each other in the struggle for existence, he put corks on the horns of the cattle, so that the wounds they gave each other might not be so serious. Then he reserved a part of the enclosure for the old bulls and the old cows over 70 years of age.

In fact, he did everything he could think of to improve the condition of the cattle, and when I asked him why he did not do the one obvious thing, break down the fence, and let the cattle out, he answered: “If I let the cattle out, I should no longer be able to milk them.”

Blogger's Note:

This piece from Tolstoy appeared between chapter one (the introduction) and chapter two in Leight's book. It also appeared in the March 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard. It is possible that is where Leight first saw it.

Turgid Tolstoy (1991)

Book Review from the October 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Then Must We Do? By Leo Tolstoy. Reissued 1991 with an introduction by Ronald Sampson. Green Books. £8.95.

Leo Tolstoy was a writer of genius: his novels are amongst the best ever written, but this is without doubt his worst book and it is difficult to believe that the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina could write this also.

This book was written in 1886 when Tolstoy believed that his idiosyncratic religious views had given him the answers to society’s problems. A quarter of the book is devoted to Tolstoy’s guilt-ridden forays among the destitute to offer them charity. He rightly concludes that charity is not the answer to poverty but the point could have been made much more succinctly. Tolstoy concludes that money given by the rich to the poor is money that was gained by exploiting their labour in the first place.

Of wage labour he notes:

  Money is the new form of slavery, differing from the old only in its impersonality. in the freedom it gives from any human relation with the slave.

A large section of the book is devoted to the way that institutionalised violence maintains wage slavery. Marxists agree that the state is the instrument which the capitalist class uses to enforce exploitation but Tolstoy overlooks the fact that many workers accept working for wages because they believe it is natural and inevitable. The power of propaganda as a superior instrument of control to avert violence has been recognised more in the present century, but even in Tolstoy’s time the capitalist class used it for their own ends quite successfully.

Tolstoy’s solution to the inequalities of his time was to recommend that everyone should work on the land, living a simple life, without employing the labour of others. But this restriction of consumption would be regressive and not to the tastes of most people. Capitalism has made it possible, through technology, to release productive forces which would be used in a socialist society to eliminate all poverty and austerity.

The introduction by Ronald Sampson is more interesting than the rest of the book, such is the subordination of Tolstoy’s literary skills to the task of getting his message across. Tolstoy the novelist deserves our admiration but Tolstoy the polemicist and self-appointed prophet is downright dull.

Carl Pinel

Rear View: The capitalist farm (2018)

The Rear View Column from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

The capitalist farm

‘China bans George Orwell’s Animal Farm and letter ‘N’ as censors bolster Xi Jinping’s plan to keep power indefinitely. Experts believe increased levels of suppression are sign Xi Jinping hopes to become dictator for life’ (independent.co.uk, 1 March). One famous phrase from this satire concerning the perversion of revolutionary aims is all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. State capitalist China has over 100 billionaires who together have wealth equal to twice Ireland’s GDP and, according to a Peking University report from 2016, its income disparity is getting worse with the top 1 percent owning a third of the country’s wealth and the bottom 25 percent of the population just 1 percent. The human oppressors in Orwell’s classic are overthrown by the farm animals, but their desire for the farm to be run for the benefit of all is thwarted by the emergence of a new ruling class composed of dogs and pigs. Under new management the wealth of the farm grows but is accumulated by the rulers rather than shared. The pigs start to argue and reflecting the power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, one leading pig uses his trained dogs to drive another member of the ruling class off the farm. Such struggles continue today in the real world. We are also informed ‘it was not immediately obvious why the ostensibly harmless letter ‘N’ had been banned, but some speculated it may either be being used or interpreted as a sign of dissent.’ Indeed, why not: the banished pig was called Snowball and the victor Napoleon.

Pigs in paradise

‘After long playing second fiddle to China, India has leapfrogged its rival to become the world’s fastest-growing major economy’ (theweek.co.uk, 1 March). Yet this growing prosperity for a small parasitical class has not lessened the chronic malnutrition of children; in the 2017 Global Hunger Index of 119 countries India slipped to the 100th place. In fact, this country is home to a quarter of the world’s hungry – a staggering 190.7 million people or 14.5 per cent of the population is undernourished. India also has the world’s largest number of homeless and landless persons. Furthermore, at least 5,650 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2014. Earlier this year, ‘seven workers died of suffocation…while cleaning an underground drainage pit at a poultry farm in southern India…. Such accidents are common in India, where workers clean deep drainage pits without protective gear’ (arabnews.com, 16 February). India’s ruling class prefer to use the stolen wealth elsewhere: ‘New Delhi and Moscow have finalised contractual terms for four new stealth frigates that Russia will supply the Indian Navy for slightly over Rs 200 billion ($3 billion), or about Rs 50 billion ($775 million) per vessel’ (defensetalk.com, 28 February).

Tolstoy’s farm parable

‘I see mankind as a herd of cattle inside a fenced enclosure. Outside the fence are green pastures and plenty for the cattle to eat, while inside the fence there is not quite grass enough for the cattle. Consequently, the cattle are tramping underfoot what little grass there is and goring each other to death in their struggle for existence. I saw the owner of the herd come to them, and when he saw their pitiful condition he was filled with compassion for them and thought of all he could do to improve their condition. So he called his friends together and asked them to assist him in cutting grass from outside the fence and throwing it over the fence to the cattle. And that they called Charity. Then, because the calves were dying off and not growing up into serviceable cattle, he arranged that they should each have a pint of milk every morning for breakfast. Because they were dying off in the cold nights, he put up beautiful well-drained and well-ventilated cowsheds for the cattle. Because they were goring each other in the struggle for existence, he put corks on the horns of the cattle, so that the wounds they gave each other might not be so serious. Then he reserved a part of the enclosure for the old bulls and the old cows over 70 years of age. In fact, he did everything he could think of to improve the condition of the cattle, and when I asked him why he did not do the one obvious thing, break down the fence, and let the cattle out, he answered: ‘If I let the cattle out, I should no longer be able to milk them’’ (Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910, pamphlet ‘to the working classes of all nations’).

A Parable by Leo Tolstoy (1961)

A Short Story from the March 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

I see mankind as a herd of cattle inside a fenced enclosure. Outside the fence are green pastures and plenty for the cattle to eat. While inside the fence there is not quite enough for the cattle. Consequently, the cattle are trampling underfoot what little grass there is and goring each other to death in their struggle for existence. I saw the owner of the herd come to them and when he saw their pitiable condition, be was filled with compassion for them, and thought of all he could do to improve their condition. So he called his friends together and asked them to assist him in cutting grass from outside the fence and throwing it over the fence to the cattle. And that they called Charity. Then because the calves were dying off and not growing up into serviceable cattle, he arranged that they should each have a pint of milk every morning for breakfast. Because they were dying off in the cold nights, he put up beautiful, well-drained and well-ventilated cow-sheds for the cattle. Because they were goring each other in the straggle for existence, be put corks on the horns of the cattle, so that the wounds they gave each other might not be so serious. Then he reserved a part of the enclosure for the old bulls and the old cows over seventy years of age. In fact, he did everything he could think of to improve the condition of the cattle, and when I asked him why he did not do the one obvious thing, break down the fence and let the cattle out. he answered: “If I let the cattle out. I should no longer be able to milk them."

Tolstoy On Work (1930)

From the May 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was always astonished at the accepted opinion (current especially in Europe) that work is a kind of virtue. I always felt that it was only excusable in an irrational animal, such as the ant in the fable, to elevate work to the rank of a virtue and to make a boast of it. M. Zola assures us that work makes men kind; the contrary has always been true in my experience. Without considering selfish work, which is always bad, the object of which is the well-being or aggrandisement of the worker, even “work for its own sake,” the pride of the worker, renders both ants and men cruel. Which of us does not know these men, untouched by considerations of truth and kindliness, who are always so busy that they not only never have time to do good, but cannot even ask themselves whether their work is not harmful? You say to these people: "Your work is useless, perhaps even pernicious, for the following reasons; pause and consider them for a moment.”

They will not listen to you, but scornfully reply: "You men have leisure to reason about such matters, but what time have I for discussions? I have worked all my life and work does not wait; I have to edit a daily paper with a circulation of half-a-million ; I have the army to organise, the Eiffel Tower to build, Chicago Exhibition to arrange, to cut through the Isthmus of Panama, to make investigations on the subject of heredity, telepathy, or to find out the number of times such and such a word occurs in the works of such and such a classic author.”

The most cruel of men, the Nero’s and the Peter the Great’s, have been constantly active, never pausing or giving themselves a moment free from occupation or distraction. Even if work is not a vice it can from no point of view be looked upon as a merit. Work can no more be considered a virtue than can nutrition; work is a necessity of which one cannot be deprived without suffering, and to elevate it to the rank of a merit is as monstrous as it would be to do the like for nutrition. The only explanation of this strange value attributed to work in our society is that our ancestors regarded laziness as an attribute of nobility, almost of merit, and that people in our time are still influenced by the reaction from that prejudice.

In my opinion, not only is work not a virtue, but in our defectively organised society it is more often a means of moral anaesthesia, just as are tobacco, wine and other means of drowning thought and hiding from ourselves the disorder and emptiness of our lives.

Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy 'Impossibilist'. (1905)

From the November 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

As against those professing Socialists who endeavour to secure the kudos and advertisement attaching to the identification with their position of individuals who have, by diverse methods, attained to prominence in the public eye, we are concerned that the message we bring to the working-class shall be assessed on its own merits. Just as we, knowing its harmfulness as well as its futility, are opposed to the endeavour to obtain support for Socialism by tactics of compromise and the propagation of something less than Socialism, so we are opposed to the endeavour to create for Socialism a standing of greater "respectability" by covering it with the glamour of great names—whether of monarchical countesses or mystic counts. Hence the publication in another column of the letter from Tolstoy.

Tolstoy's disclaimer may come as an awkward pronouncement to those notoriety-mongers who, having claimed to be Socialists, have claimed Count Tolstoy for their supporter and widely advertised the connection. Tolstoy, of course, is simply a Christist who has failed to understand—because perhaps he never studied—the materialist basis to human thought and activity and who thinks that human loves and hates can be divorced from material conditions when, of course, it is precisely the material motive—the desire for material improvement and the methods of realising it—that brought men into association, into groups and tribes and nations, an association that has given birth to, and moulded, their thoughts and aspirations, their loves and and hates and fears.

Generally speaking, man's capacity to love his neighbour will depend upon the economic relationship of both. It is sheer fatuity to expect one to love the other when they are mutually engaged in a grim struggle for the wherewithal to live, a struggle that the conditions governing industry forces upon them. A man may understand that industrial conditions render it impossible for his fellow to do other than battle with him for bread, but he cannot love unless it is possible to conceive of a love that finds expression in a fight in no respect dissimilar from the fight between men who hate and hate whole-heartedly. The law of self preservation impels the fight and the lesson is soon learnt that the victory is to the best hater rather than the best lover. It is quite possible that the participants in the struggle may prefer to love each other, but they will understand if they give heed to the Socialist that the only way by which love can be made possible is through the removal of the conditions that necessitate hate. They must first of all remove the conditions that set them at each other's throat. Tolstoy has laid hold of the wrong end of the problem, and it is because his gospel can only have mischievous effects upon the endeavours we are making to organise the working-class upon the basis of class interests, that we take the opportunity this letter affords to make it clear, upon his own showing, that he is outside the Socialist movement at the same time that we echo the quaintly worded regret of our Japanese comrades that "Tolstoy is yet in error as to Socialism and the solution of social problems just in the same way as the common shallow people do."

Literary Curiosities. No. 2 - Tolstoy on Socialism. (1905)

From the November 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Reprinted from "The Chokugen" (the plain speaker), the organ of the Socialist Party of Japan)

Toula, Yasnaya Poliana.

Dear friend IsooAbe (Editor, the Chokugen).

It was a great pleasure for me to receive your letter and your paper, with the English article. I thank you heartily for both.

Though I never doubted that there are in Japan a great many reasonable, moral and religeous men who are opposed to the horrible crime of war, which is now perpetrated by both betrayed and stupefied nations, I was very glad to get the proof of it.

It is a great joy for me to know that I have friends and co-workers in Japan, with which I can be in friendly intercourse.

Wishing to be quite sincere with you, as I wish to be with every esteemed friend, I must tell you that I do not approve of socialism and am sorry to know that the most spiritually advanced part of your—so clever and energetic—people has taken from Europe the very feeble, illusory and fallacious theory of socialism, which in Europe is beginning to be abandoned.

Socialism has for its aim the satisfaction of the meanest part of human nature, his material well-being and by the means it proposes, can never attain them.

The true well-being of humanity is spiritual i.e. moral and includes the material well-being. And this higher goal can be attained only by religeous i.e moral perfection of all the units which composes nations and humanity.

By religeon I understand the reasonably belief in a (general for all humanity) law of God, which practically is exposed in the precept of loving every man and doing to every body what one wishes to be done to you.

I know that this method seems to be less expedient than socialism and other frail theories, but it is the sole true one. And all the efforts we make in trying to realise false—and not realising their aim—theories only hinder as to employ true means to attain the degree of happiness of mankind and of every individual which is proper to our times.

Excuse for the liberty I take to discuss your creed, and for my bad English and believe me to be your friend.

LEO TOLSTOY

See also 'Tolstoy "Impossibilist."'

A Question for Members of the Labour Party (1937)

From the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The modern propertied class, like their slave-owning predecessors, get something for nothing. They can live without working. They live on the surplus products of the wealth-producers, while the latter obtain only a subsistence wage, more or less. The propertied class live on the backs of the working class, but they do not put it as crudely as that. They call it rent, interest and profit, and hedge it about with legal safeguards and moral disguises. They are full of promises of better things for those whom they exploit. They will, as Tolstoy said, do everything for the workers except get off their backs. The workers, therefore, must perform this parasite-shedding operation for themselves. They do not lack counsellors, prominent among them being the Labour Party. In endless pamphlets and speeches the Labour Party promises to put things right. It will do so, it says, by nationalisation, public control, State regulation, investment boards and so on. But all of this is to be subject to one condition which the Labour Party affects to regard as a rather clever strategic move. The condition is that the propertied class are to be compensated. The Labour Party's programme of action, called For Socialism and Peace, says that "the public acquisition of industries and services will involve the payment of fair compensation to existing owners . . . the suggested basis of compensation, broadly, is the net reasonable maintainable revenue of the industry concerned." Major Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, enlarged upon this in a speech at a luncheon of the British Railway Stockholders' Union at the Hotel Splendide, Piccadilly, on January 14th 1937. He assured his audience of investors in the railways that the Labour Party would "like to make your securities more secure. We should like to turn you into holders of shares in the community rather than the railway companies" (Daily Telegraph, January 15th, 1937).

So the parasites are not to be shaken off, only made more secure. Tolstoy's apt words have become out-of-date and must be rewritten: "The Labour Party saviours of the working class will do everything for the working class except get the parasites off their backs."

It would be interesting to know what the rank and file of the Labour Party really think about this.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: What then must we do? (2011)

Editorial from the May 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, kicked off a speech he gave earlier this year by stealing the words of the 19th century Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. (The speech is available here.) King turns the opening sentence of the latter novel to his own purposes, stating that, ‘all happy economies are alike; each unhappy economy is unhappy in its own way’. He then goes on to tell us what ‘happy’ economies look like: they ‘combine growth, stability of prices and of the financial system, fiscal sustainability, supply-side flexibility and low unemployment’. He leaves aside the puzzling coexistence of such blessed happiness with historically unprecedented levels of stress, anxiety and depression, and presses on instead to give some of the reasons for the present unhappiness.

One reason we might be feeling glum, speculates King, is that most of us are getting poorer. Real take-home pay has already fallen 12 percent and is likely to fall again in 2011 to 2005 levels. ‘One has to go back to the 1920s to find a time when real wages fell over a period of six years,’ says King. But this ‘squeeze in living standards is the inevitable price to pay for the financial crisis and subsequent rebalancing of the world and UK economies’. Here King inadvertently invokes the ghost of another 19th century radical thinker, but does not mention this one’s name: it was Karl Marx who taught us that capitalism inevitably goes through periods of ‘rebalancing’ (i.e., of restoring profitability by destroying capital and devaluing labour), which inevitably leads to a squeeze in living standards (for the working class).

King concludes his speech with Tolstoy ‘s conclusion to Anna Karenina. This is that, despite life’s ups and downs, happiness is less important than trying to live in the right way. King must have been smugly proud of his intellectual prowess, connecting something as dull as a long speech on inflation with the words of one of the world’s best loved novelists. But the result is revealed as putrid when you compare King’s intent with that of Tolstoy’s.

Tolstoy was disturbed and horrified by the high levels of poverty and misery in the towns of the Russia of his day, and turned his mind to identifying the cause of the misery in his book, “What Then Must We Do?” Tolstoy followed Jesus in arguing that the first thing rich men like himself (and Mervyn King) could do would be to ‘get off the backs of the poor’ by giving up their own wealth. King misses this advice.

Tolstoy recognized that even such grand gestures of charity would not make a dent in the problem, because the problem is rooted in the whole system of property ownership and money, backed up by the tyranny of the state machine, which Tolstoy said must all be abolished. King strangely missed these lessons too. Tolstoy was on the right lines because he had the courage and intellectual honesty to pursue social problems to the root, and to state his conclusions regardless of the harm it might do to his previously existing beliefs, or social status or wealth. That makes Tolstoy a truth-telling hero.

What it makes Mervyn King we leave our readers to decide for themselves.

Leo Tolstoy: author and anarchist (1987)

From the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Leo Tolstoy is famous not only for his novels but for his moral and political beliefs which have inspired, and continue to inspire, both anarchists and pacifists.

He was born on 9th September, 1828 into a family of rural aristocrats at their estate at Yasnaya Polyana, near Tula in Russia. His mother, a princess, died when he was barely eighteen months old and his father, a count, died when he was nine. A distant relative, Tatyana Yergolskava, brought up Tolstoy, his sister Maria and his three brothers.

From 1844 to 1847 Tolstoy studied oriental languages and law at the university of Kazan but failed to take a degree. He returned to his estate, his health in decline because of dissipation, where he stayed until 1851 when he went to live with a brother in the Caucasus who persuaded him to join the army.

In 1852 Tolstoy's first story, Childhood, met with considerable success and was followed by Boyhood in 1854 and Youth in 1857. His account of the fighting at Sebastopol made him a national celebrity and on the orders of the Czar he was sent back from the front to St Petersburg where his literary fame enabled him to meet the most distinguished writers and poets of that period.

From 1857 to 1861 Tolstoy traveled abroad, visiting Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland and England. During his travels he met the anarchist Proudhon, the author Auerbach (known for his stories of peasant life) and the Russian revolutionary Alexander Herzen.

His return home in February 1861 saw the emancipation of the serfs and, encouraged by the reforms of the times, he attempted to carry out educational experiments on his estate which ended in failure after two years.

On September 23rd in 1862 Tolstoy married Sophia Andreyevna Behrs and for nearly twenty years he lived a settled life on his estate, raising thirteen children and writing some of his best known novels such as War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, until the end of his life, Tolstoy became preoccupied with moral and ethical questions and much of his later works such as My Confession (1879); The Gospel in Brief (1880); What I Believe (1884) What Shall We Do Then? (1885); On Life (1887); The Kingdom of God is Within You (1889); What is Religion? (1902) increasingly concentrated on putting across his idiosyncratic theological views.

His last long novel, Resurrection (1899), written on behalf of the religious sect, the Doukhobres, was instrumental in ending their persecution and gaining permission for them to emigrate to Canada, but its hostile and outspoken criticisms of Church and State led to his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. But even during this period of his Iife when Tolstoy the propagandist had largely taken over from Tolstoy the novelist, he was still able to produce such masterpieces as The Death of Ivan Ilyitch (1886); The Power of Darkness (1886); Master and Man (1895); Father Sergius (1898); Nedji Murat (1904); The False Coupon (1905.

Finally, on 28th October 1910, in a dramatic flight from his home, Tolstoy went to the convent of Shamardino near Kaluga, where his sister Maria was a nun. He then traveled towards Novo-Cherkask but developed pneumonia and died at Ostapovo railway station on 7th November, 1910.

Toistoy's political and ethical views developed partly as a result of his experiences in the Crimean war, his later pacifism resulting from his participation in the siege of Sebastopol. But it was the witnessing of a public execution in Paris in 1857 that led to his opposition to organised state rule. Woodcock states:

"The cold, inhuman efficiency of the operation aroused in him a horror far greater than any scenes of war had done, and the guillotine became for him a frightful symbol of the state that used it. From that day he began to speak politically - or anti-politically - in the voice of an anarchist." (Woodcock, G. 'Anarchism' 1963, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.)

Tolstoy was influenced by the French anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his ideal of the free peasant life; on a trip to Western Europe he made a detour to visit him in Brussels. They talked mainly about education, a subject which had interested Tolstoy from an assiduous reading of his childhood hero, Rousseau. He was also impressed by Proudhon's book 'La Guerre et la Paix' which was nearing completion, the title of which he was to borrow for his longest and best known novel.

The years of Tolstoy's youth coincided with the economic and political changes arising from the ending of serfdom and the development of capitalism in Russia, which threatened to change the way of life for the landed gentry who found themselves dependent on hired labour in competition with industry.

Besides the economic threat to the landed gentry Tolstoy saw encroaching industrialisation as a threat to the simple life, close to nature, which he loved and which is described in The Cossacks, written in 1852 but not published until ten years later:

"Oleninm had entered into the life of the Cossack village so fully that his past seemed quite foreign to him. As to the future, especially a future outside the world in which he was now living, it did not interest him at all. When he received letters from home, from re1atives and friends, he was offended by the evident distress with which they regarded him as a lost man, while he in his village considered those as did not live as he was living."

But even though the simple life is eulogised in 'The Cossacks', Tolstoy's natural exuberence breaks through the narrative:

"It's all nonsense what I have been thinking about - love and self-sacrifice and Lukaska. Happiness is the one thing. He who is happy is right", flashed through Olenin's mind, and with a strength unexpected to himself he seized and kissed. tbe beautiful Maryanka on her ternple and her cheek."

These two opposing tendencies were to plague Tolstoy for the greater part of his adult life. On he one hand was the sensualist; the lover of life; the dissipated youth who failed to obtain a degree at university; the father of thirteen children, with a strong sexual appetite. On other hand was the brooding moralist; the relentless critic of organised religion; the puritanical advocate of celibacy; the anarchist, castigating the rule of law, privilege and power.

Tolstoy put his own moral doubts into his characters in 'Anna Karenina' which was completed in 1877. The country-loving, goodhearted Levin, after a Titanic struggle to find meaning and purpose to life, eventually finds happiness and contentment with Kitty, whilst the lovers Anna Karenina and Vronsky are crushed by their adulterous relationship, which ends in despair and disaster with Anna's suicide.

In 'Anna Karenina' Tolstoy put political opinions into the mouths of his characters in addition to his moral views, in the character of Levin:

"You know that capitalism oppresses the workers. Our workmen the peasants bear the whole burden of labour, but are so placed that, work as they may, they cannot escape from their degrading condition. All the profits on their labour, by which they might better their condition, give themselves some leisure, and consequently gain some education, all this surplus value is taken away by the capitalists. And our society has so shaped itself that the more the people work the richer the merchants and landowners will become, while the people will remain beasts of burden for ever. And this system must be changed."

His views on education are also voiced by Levin:

"Schools are no remedy, but the remedy would be an economic organisation under which the people would be better off and have more leisure. Then schools would come."

But although 'Anna Karenina', 'The Cossacks' and also 'War and Peace' portray Toistoy's love of the countryside. a life' close to nature, his distrust of industrialisation and an occasional attack on capitalism they are not anarchist novels or propagandist novels in the same way that most of his later books were.

In 'What Shall We Do Then?' published in 1885, he attacked money:

"Money is the new form of slavery, distinguished from the old solely by its impersonality, by the lack of any human relation between the master and the slave.
..the essence of all slavery consists in drawing the benefit of another's labour force by compulsion, and it is founded upon property in the slave or upon property in money which is indispensable to the other man."

In his last long novel Tolstoy enlarged upon moral attacks under capitalism:

"People usually imagine a theief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, knowing their occupation to be evil, must be ashamed of it. But the very opposite is true. Men who have been placed by fate and their own sins in a certain position, however irregular that position may be, adopt a view of life as a whole which makes their position appear to them good and respectable. In order to back up their view of life they instinctively mix only with those who accept their ideas of life and their place in it. This surprises us when it is a case of thieves bragging of their skill, prostitutes flaunting their depravity or murderers boasting of their cruelty. But it surprises us only because their numbers are limited and - this is the point - we live in a different atmosphere. But can we not observe the same phenomenon when the rich boast of their wealth, i.e. of robbery; when commanders of armies pride themselves on their victories, i.e. on murder; and when those in high places vaunt their power - their brute force? We do not see that their ideas of life and of good and evil are corrupt and inspired by a necessity to justify their position, only because the circle of people with such corrupt ideas is a larger one and we belong to it ourselves."

In 'The Kingdom of God is Within You' Tolstoy's anarchist ideas and his opposition to organised religion is clearly stated:

"Christianity in its true significance abolishes the state, annililates all governments.
Revolutionary enemies fight the government from outside; Christianity does not fight at all, but wrecks its foundation from within."

He attacked power in the same book:

"All men find themselves in power assert that their power is necessary in order that the wicked may not do violence to the good, and regard it as self-evident that they are the good and are giving the rest of the good protection against the bad. But in reality those who grasp and hold the power cannot possibly do the better.
In order to obtain and retain power, one must love it. But the effort after power is not apt to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities, pride, craft and cruelty. Without exalting self and abasing others, without hypocrisy, lying, prisons, fortresses, penalties, killing, no power can arise or hold its own."

In response to the inequalities of wealth and the injustices of the capitalist system Tolstoy proposed that the remedy should be:

"If you are a landlord, to give your land at once to the poor, and, if you are a capitalist, to give your money and your factory to the working-man; if you are a prince, a cabinet minister, an official, a judge or a general, you ought at once to resign your position, and, if you are a soldier, you ought to refuse obedience without regard to any danger." ('The Kingdom of God is Within You')

Three years earlier, in 1890, Tolstoy had tried to put his principles into practice by renouncing his property, although he continued to live in comfort on his estate, the management of which passed to his wife. In the following year he gave up the posthumous rights on his books written after 1881.

To the end of his life Tolstoy continued to propagate his views regardless of his personal safety, for it must be remembered that the Czarist government frequently imprisoned political opponents without trial for periods of twenty years more. The reason why Tolstoy remained unscathed is unclear but it is possible that the police did not wish to make a martyr of a writer of such international fame. Whatever the reason, Tolstoy took advantage of the situation to attack the government at every opportunity.

In 'Christianity and Patriotism'(1894) he stated:

"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable mneaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary, aims, and a renunciation of. human dignity. common sense. and conscience by!the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold-power, That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery."

And in his 'Address to the Swedish Peace Congress' in 1909 when he was turned eighty, he was still able (despite the emotional turmoil of his domestic life) to write eloquently in support of his views:

"...the military profession and calling, not withstanding all the efforts to hide its real meaning, is as shameful a business as an executioner's and even more so. For the executioner only holds himself in readiness to kill those who have been adjudged harmful and criminal, while a soldier promises to kill all whom he is told to kill, even though they be dearest to him or the best of men."

Tolstoy's influence is difficult to sum up: he advocated giving up one's personal wealth to help the poor in spite of having realised that it is the exploitation of workers' labour power which is the cause of poverty; he was a pacifist, but in practising non-violence his supporters were slaughtered and imprisoned by the Bolsheviks in the years following the Russian revolution; he wrote of "Christian love" but had a chauvinistic attitude to women and advocated celibacy which would lead to the extinction of the human race instead of its advancement; his simple, rural existence may be to the taste of some people but it avoids the problems of capitalism instead of solving them.

The most enduring Tolstoyan community has been the Catholic Worker group which was established in the USA in the 1930s. And in Britain the Christian anarchists who held meetings at St. Paul's Church, Bow, in East London in 1967 all belonged to established churches. And though this may seem surprising in view of Tolstoy's hostility towards organised religion, his own rationalist religious beliefs were so individualistic that they have been accepted less readily than his other teachings.

Socialists wish to end capitalism, only it will not be done by individuals withdrawing from society, but by the mass of workers understanding, wanting, and working for socialism.

Socialists reject religious beliefs because they postpone the struggle to achieve a better life in the hope of finding rewards in a mythical after-life. Such practices stop workers from questioning their exploitation, hence their enthusiastic endorsement by the state.

The literary gifts of Tolstoy have assured him of a place in history. His work is rightfully admired by all who appreciate good literature, and will continue to do so for generations to come. But Tolstoy, the pamphleteer. is rapidly being forgotten and already many of his religious and political tracts are unobtainable.

Towards the end of his life Tolstoy said to Gorky:

"I write a lot and that's not right because I do it from senile vanity, from the desire to make everyone think as I do."

Perhaps that is why his pamphlets are being forgotten, because the imperious aristocrat in Tolstoy's personality dominated how he would have wished to be, and people do not like being bullied.

Nearly eighty years after his death we can admire the moral courage of Tolstoy and his literary genius, and continue to do so long after Tolstoy the prophet has been forgotten.

Carl Pinel

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (43)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 43rd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1238 friends!

Recent blogs:

Reply to the BNP

Who Cares? (U.S. elections and the treatment of armed services personnel)

Home Is Where The Heart Attack Is...

This week's top quote:

"Patriotism . . . for rulers is nothing else than a tool for achieving their power-hungry and money-hungry goals, and for the ruled it means renouncing their human dignity, reason, conscience, and slavish submission to those in power. . . . Patriotism is slavery." Leo Tolstoy, Christianity and Patriotism, 1894.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

A Parable by Leo Tolstoy

I see mankind as a herd of cattle inside a fenced enclosure. Outside the fence are green pastures and plenty for the cattle to eat, while inside the fence there is not quite grass enough for the cattle. Consequently, the cattle are tramping underfoot what little grass there is and goring each other to death in their struggle for existence.

I saw the owner of the herd come to them, and when he saw their pitiful condition he was filled with compassion for them and thought of all he could do to improve their condition.

So he called his friends together and asked them to assist him in cutting grass from outside the fence and throwing it over the fence to the cattle. And that they called Charity.

Then, because the calves were dying off and not growing up into serviceable cattle, he arranged that they should have a pint of milk every morning for breakfast.

Because they were dying off in the cold nights, he put up beautiful well-drained and well-ventilated cowsheds for the cattle.

Because they were goring each other in the struggle for existence, he put corks on the horns of the cattle, so that the wounds they gave each other might not be so serious. Then he reserved a part of the enclosure for the old bulls and the old cows over 70 years of age.

In fact, he did everything he could think of to improve the condition of the cattle, and when I asked him why he did not do the one obvious thing, break down the fence, and let the cattle out, he answered: "If I let the cattle out, I should no longer be able to milk them."