rivista anarchica
anno 41 n. 360
marzo 2011

Italiano

publishing

The slavery of our time
by Bruna Bianchi

BFS editions publish with this title, an original anthology of writings by Lev Tolstoy, very "sui generis" anarchist. Here is the introductory essay by the editor of the anthology, as well as professor of the history of women and history of contemporary political thought at the University Ca 'Foscari of Venice..

 

It happened that the way in which we lived in our environment, the environment of the rich and educated, it became to me not only hateful, but even lost all sense. All our actions, our way of thinking, science, art, all this took on a new meaning to my eyes. [...] And at the same time the lives of working people, of all humanity that built the concrete life, they appeared in their true meaning. I realized that this was real life, I realized that the way that he claimed was the truth, and I accepted it..

In the late sixties Tolstoy went through a crisis of anguish and despair. Tormented by the thought of death and grief, a sense of the vanity of all, disgusted by the lies that surrounded him, wondered about the meaning of denying their own beliefs and way of life. It was then that the peasants, workers appeared to him the only holders of existential truth, of a knowledge that the rich, the educated, the idlers had lost. "And I took to love those men. The more I entered into their lives and [...] the more I loved them so much easier and joyful it was for me the life ".
The years that followed, the period which he considered "the most earnest of a new interior orientation of all [his] conception of the world, " were years of intense religious search. In some works: Confession (1880), Unification and translation of the four Gospels (1880-1881), My Faith (1884), traces the troubled path. He had sought the foundations of Christianity in a reading of the Gospel that regardless of the theology and the interpretation of the Church. Reading in a simple and direct understanding of the Gospel and the teachings of Christ meant to become a child. The words of Jesus: "If I did not receive them as children will never enter the kingdom of heaven" are the key to Tolstoy's reading of the New Testament. The helpless condition of the child takes on a specimen: it is a method of knowledge and way of life.
The principle of non-resistance to evil, expressed in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:39-41), Tolstoy identified the binding rule of human action, the foundation common to all religions, the law written in every heart. His vision of life in fact is based on the certainty of a universal human feeling, "to whose needs, affections, moral instructions are essential anywhere, anytime fundamentally recognizable and he comes to conceive of the divine as" the only way to think about the fundamental principles of the knowledge of good and evil. "
True religion is in harmony with the reason, the bond between man and infinite life around him and guide his actions can not but agree with his reason.

The man can regard himself as an animal among the animals that live only for today, may consider himself as a member of a family, a society, a people who for centuries and still can, and indeed should, consider whether same as part of an infinite world, which takes an infinite time. [...] The introduction by humans of a relationship with this whole, to which it belongs, and which raises the standards for its conduct, is what has been called and is called: religion. And therefore religion has always been and can not cease to be a necessity and an inalienable condition of life for a reasonable man and a reasonable humanity.

To the word "reason", the Russian writer gave an essentially ethical content, it is not abstract rationality, but ability to unite thought and action, and wisdom, seeking the meaning of life. And life is a divine principle which manifests itself in, "the consciousness in themselves, of the divine. "

The doctrine is this: what we call "self," our life is a divine principle, limited in our body, this principle manifests itself in us through love and therefore the true life of every human freedom and divine Manifests itself in love.

Adhering to their true nature, therefore, means recognizing the ethical foundation that exists in every human being and the law of love as the supreme law of life, a universal law, understandable to everyone and can not accept without any exception that its meaning is entirely destroyed.
From this background, ethical, and religious interpretation begins Tolstoy's criticism of the society, they allow him to recognize in all its breadth and depth of violence inherent in the relationship between humans, a violence that had its origin in the state organization and the perversion of the Christian message from the Church. The universal law and simple "do unto others as you would not want done to yourself" was passed unnoticed, obscured by lies and all other laws, ecclesiastical, political and scientific invented "by the ruling, the learned and the rich" designed to maintain inequality among men, primarily those that divided them into workers and parasites.

A caricature of Lev Tolstoy

Towards a spiritual conception of the work

The Bible says: "earn their bread by the sweat of their brow." [...] The muzik Bondarev, who wrote an article on the subject, explained to me the correctness of this ruling.

From the reflection on the condition of workers, those who "carry with them the weight of his life and ours," the gap between manual work and intellectual work, faces a new concept of spiritual work, the constant object of his theoretical writings and political the years to come. The artistic activity, to which he dedicated to "all his strength, "he becomes unsightly and is the earliest form of human activity that he calls into question. Because it implies the exploitation of others' work, artistic activity is part of a system of corruption, an expression of worship of the pleasure of the rich. In fact, contemporary literary trends identified a lack of interest, even a contempt for the working classes that reproduced the unjust division between human beings.

The lack of understanding of life and the interests of working people, the representation of individuals almost as animals act only with sensuality and malice and greed, and capital is a major defect of most of the recent French authors.

Artistic creativity should be designed to raise awareness, to communicate those feelings that flow from moral awakening - as had happened in America at the time of development of the abolitionist movement in Russia and the repeal of serfdom - and instead ignored the crucial question of modernity: the enslavement of workers who lived in perpetual poverty, ignorance, "despised by those they wore, ate, and served. "
Such a contradiction must be resolved. I wrote to Romain Rolland in 1887:

The main error of this society was and is until today, to free themselves from [manual] occupation and to take advantage, without consideration, the work of the people of the poor, ignorant and unhappy that they are slaves, as slaves of ancient world. The first test of the sincerity of the people of this society, who profess Christian principles, philosophical and humanitarian, is to try to get out as much as possible, from this contradiction. The easiest way to do so, and that is always at hand, is manual labor.

Since the late seventies Tolstoy abandons the literary activity, write short stories and even some masterpieces - like Resurrection and Kreutzer Sonata - but will focus its efforts to produce essays and theoretical writings that expose his radical critique of power. And carry out the manual work, and vegetarianism, try to adapt their way of life to the Christian precept of voluntary simplicity, to adhere to a religious view of life that requires action to others. The satisfaction for themselves and for others of material and spiritual needs of human nature writer will see ever more clearly the profound meaning of human existence.
When, in 1885, he read the Treaty of Timofej Bondarev, hard work and parasitism, which is the exaltation of the farmer, Tolstoy, who was working on What to do?, saw the similarities with what he was elaborating on the moral value of work on the land, on the unjust division of humanity between those who produce the goods necessary to life and who consumes them. The central theme of the Bondarev work, a farmer who had not read anything outside the Bible, had a duty to accept the original law, the oldest of the Mosaic tablets at the beginning of human history: the law of the "work of the sweat of their brow." All the world's ills - he alleged - stemmed from a misunderstanding of that obligation, Tolstoy thought that seemed more real and penetrating than those that could be found throughout the Russian thought.

My opinion is that all Russian thought - since he started to speak - has produced, with its universities and academies, with his books and papers, nothing like it for value, strength and clarity to the two farmers have expressed : Sjutaev and Bondarev.

In the introduction to the French translation, appeared in 1890, Tolstoy praised the clarity with which he denounced Bondarev the unnatural division between manual and intellectual work and emphasized the universal value of his thought. All those who believed in the Old Testament or the Gospel or who simply obey their own right, could recognize the inner truth of the words of Bondarev.

Show eternity, immutability of the law, explaining that his transgression necessarily imply distress, here is what Bondarev wanted to do in this opera.

Bondarev had set out his view of the farm work as a service, an expression of the law of love that unites human beings and that overcomes the hateful division into classes. Tolstoy admired above all else the appeal to universal values and the fact that the author had "turned around the truth, " did not express any reservations or place limits, this truth, in fact,

the meaning and importance only when it is expressed as a absolute law whose violation entails misery and suffering and the observance of which it is required by God or reason.

The work of the bread is not a way of life among many, but "he same life, the only human life by which alone it is possible the outbreak of the highest quality of man." Work closely with nature is a source of joy, a joy that comes from the awareness of "our union with all that time there hiding."
Such a conception of the work took away Tolstoy from Bondarev which meant the "sweat of the work" as a painful expiation of original sin. While Sjutaev and Bondarevalso saw in the State a force able to remedy the ills of society, and called for its intervention, Tolstoy condemned the state power as a source of violence. The interest of the writer, in fact, is addressed rather to the subject of the origin of violence, relations of domination, the nature of oppression.
What was happened that the men had left the original law, "you earn your bread by the sweat of the brow"? What are the choices and paths that led to human oppression and social division of labor?
In a letter to the Bondarev of March 26, 1886, referring to the institution of monarchy among the Jews (Samuel 8 and 10:17-27), provided the source of slavery in the war:

Some took power over others, a number of armed men and they subdued them. Just them, the leaders and soldiers are the first to have reneged on the original law. They began to steal the grain, and then money, so it was possible for them to avoid working in agriculture. After they began to share with their favorites. It appeared the men of white hands.

The original violence, therefore, derived from the desire to avoid the hard work and download it on the shoulders of others placing itself outside of the struggle of mankind for life, violence legitimized by law, justified from time to time by the churches, the philosophy, the economy. Similarly, in contemporary society, a theory of "smart and evil," that the division of labor, justified the reduction of the others to a condition of slavery and gave the others a false sense of social utility.
On the issue of division of labor and its justification, that hides the priority of human duties, the Russian writer will return in subsequent years in numerous writings, particularly in What to do? and the work Slavery of our time.

What to do?

Participate in the census as thousands of people are doing now is looking in the mirror closely.

In 1881 Tolstoy was moved to Moscow where he was able to observe and reflect on urban poverty. The census of 1882 in Moscow appeared to him an opportunity to tackle a major social issue and look at the society and himself in the mirror.
In What to do?, opera written between 1882 and 1886, he published his impressions of that experience: the widespread acceptance of the idea that it was permissible to use other people's work, the money as an instrument of power, corruption brought down by the use of money in the minds of workers.
The first part is devoted to his inner reactions to poverty, to his desperate attempts to alleviate it, the deep-rooted prejudices that associated degradation to poverty.

We were prepared to only see the horrors, and suddenly, instead of these horrors, there are situations were presented not only terrible, but even positive, which would give rise, without which we wanted to, our respect.

The gesture of handing the money fills him with shame, poverty could not be mitigated by money and the money could not bring the rich close to the poor. "It wasn't money that could change their lives, their needs had done their own tags." During their visits to the poorest districts of Moscow in the first place he observes himself, and is condemned.
The sense of helplessness and shame, revealing his mistake, the feeling is that the approaches to poverty, which indicates the need for a change in their lives and those of his class. The answer to the question "what to do" was for Tolstoy to repent, "in the fullest meaning of the term. "

I realized that the misfortunes of the men are from slavery in which some hold others. I understood that the slavery of our times comes from the violence of military service, the appropriation of the land and collecting money. And once grasped the meaning of all three forms of new slavery, inevitably I began to not want to be more accomplice.

He himself, his family, the rich, should feel ashamed, give up their privileges, get down from the shoulders of workers and embrace a new ideal of life. If the members of the privileged classes did not see the error of their lives it was because they were convinced that the social difference was introduced by an outside force, beyond their control, a way of thinking suggested and supported by the church, philosophy, law, political economy. Those theories had to be demolished by exposing the falsity of their supposed laws and the immorality of their goal.

Tolstoy's critique to contemporary political thought begins by reflecting on the meaning of money. "I needed to fully understand the nature of money. To understand this, I turned to science."
The money is not a medium of exchange, as stated in the political economy, but an instrument of domination. "The dominance of one over the other the economists call it iron law, and the means by which it accomplishes this domain are called the means of exchange." The money is not a commodity like any other, its value is not objective, but constantly altered by an arbitrary domain.

When the money did not exist, each owner could only make the work of its servants, but when two owners eventually agreed to take from their slaves money who did not own, both began to exploit either the forces of both properties. That is why the predatory is more convenient to transform all that cash demands from the work of others and the money is needed just for this.

The money, the easiest way to leverage the work, you need it to increase the number of subservient and complicit of the asserviment. Economists, socialists, Marxists consider the characteristics of production and exchange as objective data, do not morally condemn the domain and, eschewing the simple explanations, are considering a chimerical solution. Political economy, for example, states that to each product contribute three factors: land, capital and labor. The riches are so divided into rent, interest of the capitalist and wage.

But I see that it is not. [...] In addition to the land take part in the production of hay, the sun, water, social structure that protects the grass from damage, the culture of the workers.

The factors of production are much more complex and include natural resources, cultural and social factors, such as workers knowledge and their joint efforts. What economists describe as an objective characteristic of the production is not the alteration of the natural mode of production, or that kind of produce that can be observed when human nature has not yet been violated, when you have not yet established, with the division of labor, illegal claims of some on the freedom of others.
Through the critique of contemporary political thought, theories of Malthus, Comte, Marx and Darwin, or the "experimental science, positivist, evolutionist criticism 'in the last part of the work Tolstoy addresses the issue of division of labor.

A "new fictional science", sociology, interpreting the society as an organism in which each plays an indispensable role in the life of the whole, it offered an additional justification for the division of labor. A comparison, good for up to a parable - that of society with a living organism - it was the fragile foundation of a whole discipline.
The division of labor in industrial society, rather than an exchange of services, is the simplest and oldest of the violence that lurks behind the false glory of progress. The benefits of economic and industrial progress - the railroad and cars - presented as obvious and indisputable, not only have worsened the lives of workers, but had even more closely their chains.

If now the worker may, instead of going on foot, use the railway, the railway in contrast, burned the woods, took away the grain under the nose and it reduced him virtually to a slave to the capitalist. If, thanks to the steam engines and machinery, the employee may buy little by little calico robust, on the other hand the engines and cars have private him of the gain at home and have reduced him to a state of slavery to the manufacturer.

In the years between the What to do? and The slavery of our time, especially during the nineties, the reflection of Tolstoy is addressed primarily to the theme of war and militarism. The arms race and the adoption of compulsory military service from all European countries lead the Russian writer to analyze in depth the state violence and the rules of power. These are the themes of his philosophical work more broad and diverse in recent years, The kingdom of God is within you (1893). In it, Tolstoy focuses on the many influences that creep into public life and private life of individuals, is at the center of his analysis of power resources in the manipulation of consciences, and investigates the reasons that lead to obedience. In dealing with the contradiction between life and consciousness, the participation of all the violence that supports the war and the division into classes, writes:

Our whole life is in constant contradiction with everything we know about and consider as necessary and required. This contradiction is in everything, and in economic, and in political life and in international life. As if we had forgotten what we know, and temporarily put aside what we think right, do the opposite of what we call our reason and our common sense.

The rift between the act and the consciousness, the gap between ethical principles and rules of collective life had penetrated all social relations.

The present day governments and ruling classes do not rely on the law, even over a semblance of justice, but on an organization so ingenious [...] that all men are caught in a circle of violence from which they aren't more likely to quit . [...] These funds are tied together like the links of a chain.

For the old methods for the subjugation, intimidation and corruption and other insidious practices were added to halt the moral development of men. All state power is based on the release from liability. The reflection on the relations of domination, the 'seduction state "- in whose name they are fulfilled " the most brutal crimes against the masses" - Tolstoy induce a return to the theme of work, the relations of domination inherent in industrial production, to give a accommodation that had been developing over the years. In the summer of 1900 ended Slavery in our time. The drafting of the text had absorbed completely, as noted on June 23 in his diary: "I have not written for more than a month. All this time I wrote passionately and continuously Slavery in our time. I have added many new and enlightening things. "

Slavery in our time

Thirty-six hours seem to go on. It is important to demonstrate that the current release that promises to be similar to that from serfdom, that loosen a chain when they will have another strong hand. Slavery is abolished when it is already in force the slavery of serfdom. Serfdom was abolished when the land expropriated and the charges has already settled, now that they are removed by means of free labor taxes. They will, they're going to give the workers the means to work only on the condition of compulsory work for all.

The basic idea of the paper is that a part of humanity was never out of a servile condition. Never a form of slavery had been abolished before they were presented the conditions for the emergence of a new and more effective form of slavery.
Like many contemporaries, Tolstoy denounced the deteriorating condition of the workers from direct and personal slavery. For most of the critics of industrial society, however, the comparison was little more than a rhetorical device. Tolstoy, on the other hand, grasp more deeply the intimate connection between the various forms of slavery in history, the expansion of the enslaving and complicity in a growing number of people, find the thin chains of voluntarily slavery, in the first place the new consumption habit of entering into the minds of the workers "as the water enters a dry land", keeping them linked to forced labor. A few years earlier had described as his dark omens:

The chimney of the factory throws out a mass of products to meet the needs of the world market which now seeks to conquer. [...] And then, the European civilized horde [...] will throw itself on unarmed people, "wild" and you will win ... When this happens, when all peoples will bow before the black smoke of the chimney of the workshop, then the European proletariat is too depraved in luxury, depravity as the Romans after the conquest of the world.

Yet the social and economic thought did not analyze this form of voluntary slavery although it was "the most tenacious and difficult to eliminate."
Slavery in the work of our time, compared to most contemporary analysis, interpretation of the expropriation of workers is far more radical. It was not only the extraction of surplus value, extortion related to ownership and competition, the worker was not only expropriated of the land, the value of his work, and the creative use of his product, but also of selection and moral judgments about the objects of their work, as he was forced to produce goods which ended in unnecessary and harmful to be charmed. "I think the job is not only a virtue but poorly organized in our society, it is most often a means of moral anesthesia".
A society based on violence and exploitation, in fact, requires an organization that isolates individuals and severs the link between their actions - direct and coordinate by others - and their moral responsibility. Tolstoy returns to the subject of division of labor, one of the most insidious fetishes of time, as he had already written What to do?.

Should we be making by our own everything we need, let us clothes, chopping wood? And the division of labor? And the industry, and social enterprises, and finally, what is more terrible: the culture, science, art?

The division of labor is necessary, but to be fair must be born of free will and agreement. In the industrial society it is an expression of the domain because it is based on the separation between the performer and those who coordinates, a separation that only coercion can provide. The socialists and Marxists, who do not accept the challenge but as an inevitable consequence of progress, foreshadow an authoritarian society hierarchically organized. To think that the production, once freed from the capitalist forms of economy, would have allowed welfare for all and a harmonious development of society, was an illusion. The collective ownership of means of production might have done away with the specialization degrading of capitalist production? Would have eliminated slavery?

When asked: "Who should wear a mask and produce white lead? Who will do the fireman, coal miner? Who will clean the sewers?", they do not provide answers or expect that all these activities will improve to the point that even work in the sewers or underground becomes pleasing jobs. Here's how they include future economic conditions both in their theoretical works, in their Bellamy utopias.

Criticism of Marxism

Marxism - Tolstoy wrote - does not place at the center of its analysis, the freedom of labor. Marx had identified the causes of industrial slavery in the expulsion from the land and repressive legislation, but said nothing about the need to remove those causes. On the contrary, he regarded as inevitable given the process of proletarianization and the advent of a free society to a kind of fatalism. Already in 1893, after a conversation with young Social Democrats, had noted these considerations in his diary:

They say: "the capitalist organization will pass into the hands of the workers and then cease its oppression of workers and the unequal distribution of income," but who then organizes workers and who directs them?, I wonder myself." This goes without saying, the workers organize themselves." But the capitalist system has been established because for the technical work is necessary to have people in charge. If there is a production, there will be a direction, there will be abuses of power, the very thing against which you currently struggle.

The production system dominated by technology, and therefore the division of labor, would not work for the benefit of a free society, but he played a slavery "as frightening, but more humiliating than the old one." Tolstoy's critique of Marxism anticipates, in many ways, that of Simone Weil. For the Russian writer, as the French philosopher, the mine is "a vision for the left socialist doctrine", "the bankruptcy of the doctrine":

When the factories are nationalized [...], no one will go in the coal mines. We must renounce civilization or introduce the lash. In either case it is the bankruptcy of the doctrine.

And Simone Weil in 1934::

The abolition of private property is certainly not enough to prevent fatigue in mines and factories as slavery continues to weigh on those subject to it.

So it was not possible to see the premise of capitalism is no liberation, capitalist society was far from having developed within it the conditions for the rise of socialism..

Perhaps it can also bring [socialism], but a forced socialism. The workers will be forced to work together and work less, and the pay will be higher, but it will remain the same as slavery. That men should work together for each other. [...] And this from the relations of capitalism may be forced to improve the material situation of the workers, but in no way give rise to a fulfilled life.

The Russian thinker criticized of Marxism and the socialist movement both the analytical conditions as well as the solutions to social issues. Socialism is a "weak theory, illusory and fallacious, " he wrote to the Japanese pacifist Abe-Iso, as claims to derive the laws of human nature by observation and not from outside their conscience and does not question the way of life each." For this - Maude wrote in 1901 - Tolstoy had little respect for the doctrine of Marx. "
Not the general objective laws may lead the individual, but the moral law, the only indisputable.
The moral law does not predetermine any form of family life, politics, or the relationship between states, nor economic, but needs only to refrain in all spheres of human life by acts contrary to that one law that is inherent in the soul of and each is expressed and recognized by all the great religions of humanity. To fix in advance the best forms of social and economic life according to their point of view is always resolved in breach of the requirements of the moral law: "The laws that govern the economic development of humanity I do not pretend to know them and I take the responsibility to say."
Tolstoy will focus on the negative meaning of freedom in a letter to Chertkov, 20 May 1904.

Freedom, governments, like the revolutionaries, the mean as something positive, as the sum of human rights. The freedom of each must be such as not to violate the freedom of others. Mountains of books have been written on this subject, with several commentaries and explanations. It was written so precisely because the definition that serves as a basis is wrong. The freedom of each individual in his relationship with others isn't a positive concept, but negative. Man is free not when its rights are determined in this or that way, but only when no one forced him to do anything. The determination of human rights includes the concept of human limitation and the limitation may only be achieved by force or threat of force.

The socialist message, moreover, as the Church's, is all projected into the future. With the exception of the struggle to improve workers' conditions, "is useful and natural, " socialism "has no content or achievements in the present."

Free themselves from slavery

To free from slavery need to first recognize the root causes. The "root of evil, " of the dominance of the many by the few, which is sort of a complex organization of violence and oppression, will reside in the domain "to seize for themselves the greatest possible power on the others" .

The taxes, the usurpation of the land, the power of the capitalists, are not the main cause of the miserable condition of the workers, but only a consequence. The main reason why millions of workers live and work under the orders of a minority, is not the fact that a minority has usurped the land and the means of production and collects taxes, but that has the power to do so, since there is the strength and because there is an army that is in the hands of the minority and is ready to kill those who refuse to obey the will of the minority.

The spread of violence and the reasons are explained thus by force of interest, with the benefit of individuals or groups, but especially with the perversion of Christian doctrine by the church, deception, government to halt the development of moral men, to lose their sense of profound religious message.

And as soon as it appeared a new religious doctrine, which always included within it the recognition of equality among men, just the people that inequality was more comfortable, tried to conceal this fundamental characteristic of religious doctrine, perverting it.

It was important to Tolstoy, to reaffirm these principles to the workers to whom the dedication in 1901 wrote The only way in which the work draws on the findings of the previous year.
To break free from the slavery the workers should have exerted negative freedom, disobedience. As soon as they had the chance, they should refuse to work for the capitalists, to work at a wage lower than required, to hold positions of command, military service, to be the customs officers or policemen. Only obedience to the divine law, the only common to all humans, can free from obedience to criminal authorities and is truly revolutionary.
Merely human ideals: justice, common good, progress, could be understood by each in its own way, they are not able to oppose the violence and power of governments that fail to exercise any sort of psychological and ideological conditioning.
Only the religious view of life, incompatible with the submission or the participation in power, could really destroy the power, only the recognition of inviolable human equality could abolish slavery.
With these words, in January 1904, in thanking Chertkov for the biography of Garrison who had sent him, he pointed the way to eliminate slavery:

Garrison [...] understood very early that the reason for slavery would not be an accidental and temporary seizure of several million blacks by Southerners, but in general and radical recognition, against the Christian doctrine, the right of coercion by of some over others. [...] Garrison opposed to slavery not the suffering of slaves or slaveholders cruelty or social equality of men, but the eternal renunciation of the Christian law to respond to evil with force. Garrison including what the most developed among the opponents of slavery did not understand: the only irrefutable argument against slavery is to contest the right of every person on any terms to limit the freedom of others.

The influence of Henry George

Our much vaunted freedom necessarily imply slavery as long as we continue to recognize the private ownership of land.

In all the theoretical writings on the subject of work and the worker question Tolstoy had identified in the private ownership of land one of the causes of slavery of workers. The land, like air, water, sunlight, conditions essential to human life, can not be exclusive property of any. Despite all attempts to turn it into a law, the ownership of land exists only by virtue of violence.
Both in What to do?, and in The slavery of our time, Tolstoy had made reference to Henry George, his proposal for abolition of land ownership and a single tax on land, as a useful, but not conclusive proposal. In fact, any system of taxation, having to entrust the government action, would leave open the way for state violence and slavery.

Those who like Henry George and his followers want to abolish the laws which empower the private ownership of land, are proposing new laws that impose a mandatory fee on earth. And this charge necessarily give rise to a new form of slavery for a man, forced to pay an annuity or a one-time fee, in case of a bad harvest or some other adversity, will have to borrow money from someone else who has and will plummet again in slavery.

Diaries and correspondence, on the contrary, especially since the beginning of the century until the year of death, Tolstoy devotes much attention to the American economist. The first mention of George is in a letter to his wife, Sofya Andreevna of 22 February 1885.

I read my George. [...] It is an important book. The liberation of the peasants and the land from private property is a decisive step on the path of the common good. [...] You have to read Henry George, who has clearly presented the problem permanently. He puts you to one side or the other. My questions go far beyond this, but this is the first rung of a ladder on which I'm going.

That same day, and again on February 24, expressed his appreciation for Chertkov's Progress and poverty.

This book is wonderful, of incalculable value, destroying all the constructions of the political economy of Spencer Mill. [...] In keenly draws people to an awareness of moral cause and defines this case. In the book there is a weakness, as in all things created by man, but there is a genuine reflection and genuine humanitarian feelings, not junk science. I'd like to know his address and write him a letter. I see him as a brother

Tolstoy approached to Henry George in the first place for the reference to universal principles and the Gospel message, as he wrote March 31, 1909 supporters of the English one-time fee,

Henry George must be especially appreciated by those who profess true Christianity not only because the foundations of his teaching, but his methods are deeply Christian. As Jesus in his statement: "you heard that it was said not to kill, but I tell you, do not resist evil," pointed out that the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" can not be transgressed, never, and in no case [. ..], exactly the same way Henry George states that the commandment "thou shalt not steal," can not and should not be violated under any circumstances.

Like Tolstoy, Henry George was also in conflict with the church hierarchy: in 1881 he published The Land Question, a work in which he accused the churches to hinder social justice; in 1887 one of his most ardent supporters, Father Edward McGlynn, had been excommunicated. In 1891 George published The Condition of Labor, an Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII, a response to the Encyclical Rerum Novarum in which the Pope condemned the theories which denied the right to private property.
The proposal of one-time fee struck Tolstoy by its simplicity, its universal applicability, its proximity to the thinking and spirit of the Russian peasants.

This project is as fair and as it is effective, and is especially easy to apply everywhere, in every society whatever the laws governing land ownership.

In particular, in the chapter The enslavement of workers, the final result of land ownership, the writer caught many similarities with his thinking. Many pages, in fact, seem to come from the pen of the same Tolstoy.
Henry George saw private ownership of land as the cause of social inequality and slavery. The necessary relationship that exists between labor and land, "the source of all wealth and range of each job," implies that whoever owns the land is also the owner of the men who live on it. In controversy with Malthus wrote:

The equal right of men to use the land is equally clear, as their equal right to breathe the air, is a law proclaimed by the very fact of their existence. Therefore, we can not assume that some people have a right to be in this world and others do not.

The conspiracy of silence

The right to land ownership is the negation of the original right of the individual to exercise its option, the law that man has for himself, which brings emerging, sharing with future generations and therefore can not yield.

As long as this property will not be abolished, the Declaration of Independence, the acts of emancipation will be in vain. Until one man can claim sole ownership of the land, from which other men must live, slavery continues to exist and, in proportion as material progress goes on, will become wider and deeper. [...] The ownership of the land is the mill below, the material progress, the mill above, among them are the working classes, with even greater force, dunks.

In September 1894, in a letter to Mrs. MacGahan, as he thank her for having sent him some of the works of George, Tolstoy wrote that anyone who wanted to address the issue of land could not help but have as a reference to the theory of George, who "had laid the foundations of economic organization of the future."
In the early nineties, during the famine, when Tolstoy immersed himself in the activities of aid to the people and tried to develop practical proposals to solve the land problem, he turned to the works of George, he read some passages to the peasants and proposed a form of self-assessed the proceeds of which would be used for common needs.
The American economist and the Russian writer came into contact in the spring of 1896, when Henry George, which was supposed to go to Yasnaya Polyana, announced that he was forced to cancel the trip due to commitments in the election campaign for mayor in charge of New York. Tolstoy said on April 4 and expressed his appreciation and hope to meet him in the future.

Tolstoy and George will never meet, and only many years later, in June 1909, the son of George Henry went to Yasnaya Polyana. It was a moment of intense emotion that Tolstoy wanted to welcome his visitor with a eulogy written by the author of Progress and Poverty, and sent to a newspaper in St. Petersburg. The conversation reinforced the desire to act and a few weeks after the meeting Tolstoy was thinking of writing a letter to the king on the agrarian question.
Already in 1894 the writer wanted to turn to the Tsar. The American told his disciple Ernest Crosby:

If the new czar asks me advice on what to do, I would say "use your autocratic power to abolish the land ownership in Russia and to introduce the system of one-time fee and then relinquish power and give the people a liberal constitution."

Only in January of 1902 Tolstoy wrote to Nicholas II. If the Russian people had been able to express himself - reads the letter - would have called for the abolition of the right of private ownership of the land.

And it is the right of private ownership of land that is, in my opinion, the immediate goal whose achievement is to be taken by the Russian government as its task. [...] For the Russian people that liberation can only be achieved by abolishing the private ownership of land and recognizing the earth as a common good.

In the same year, writing To the working people, Tolstoy explained the project of Henry George presenting it as the only one capable of an immediate peace in the countryside and to start the justice in the social order.

The anguish for revolutionary violence, the horror of the repression, the concerns raised by a land reform that threatened to permanently destroy the old community structure in the Russian countryside, yet in subsequent years will push the writer to submit the George's draft to Representatives of the Duma, to send them his works, advises its visitors to write to the Minister Stolypin.
On August 1, 1905 appeared in London on The Times The Great Iniquity, a call that had great response, setting out the theory and the remedy of George and denounced the conspiracy of silence that had enveloped the proposal of one-time fee. Also in 1905, reworked the letter to Bondarev in 1894 in which it indicated the project of one-time fee, in 1906 returned to the land question on Appeal to the Russians and wrote the introduction to the Russian edition of the work of Henry George's Social Problems. To its many visitors never failed to explain the advantages and opportunity of its adoption policy. To the journalist Herman Bernstein said:

And I think that right now is the right time to introduce this idea, now and in Russia. It's just the right time because there is a revolution in Russia, whose real motivation is the refusal by all the people, genuine people, of land ownership. In Russia, where nine tenths of the population is made up of farmers and where the theory [of Henry George] is merely the conscious expression of what has always been considered a right by the Russian people in Russia, I say that especially in this time of reconstruction of social conditions, this idea should now be applied and so the revolution, direct so much wrong and criminal, is crowned by a great act of justice. This is my answer to your question on the future of Russia. As long as this idea is not new in the life of our people, the future of Russia may not be bright.

In the summer of 1907 he wrote to Stolypin to recognize his mistakes and decide not to pursue a reform that favored the small private property and in 1909 he tried once again to draw attention to the Duma on one-time fee.

Yesterday morning came Maklakov, Cinger, Semenov. I took part Maklakov and talked with him, telling him to raise the issue in the Duma. He said he knows nothing of Henry George and that the proposal not only has no chance of being passed, but it can provoke hostile reactions. He is a man of great practical intelligence, but closed to all true and necessary human problems, like many, very many.

How to interpret such passionate support from the writer? His report to the authorities, the claim of state intervention appeared a flagrant contradiction with all his thought. So he wrote his biographer and translator Aylmer Maude:

Here, at first glance, we are faced with what seems a strange contradiction. Tolstoy disapproves of the violence of man by man. Neither an emperor nor a government elected by a majority, has the right to kill or imprison anyone. He is a nonviolent anarchist. Still, he admires Henry George whose system requires the existence of a government that imposes the decisions of a majority over a minority that can disagree and be happy that the tax was only introduced in Russia. "The vast majority of people still believe in government and law - and then, at least let us make him see that they can get good laws," said Tolstoy.

On 2 April 1906 had confided in his diary that a practical point of view could not find anything more convincing than the system of George:

I discuss the system of Henry George. What interests me is not the system (although I do not know or can imagine something better), but that this system establishes a relationship with the land common and equal for everyone. Find something better.

But it is during a conversation with the Socialist Pavel Axelrod that the writer is addressing the gradual process of improvement in personal and social relationship between the theory and the problems associated with its implementation:

For a true Christian does not exist, nor Henry George or anything else. All his efforts were directed only toward what is in his power, or to himself, and at the same time he lives in an unyielding conviction that there is no activity more useful to the world of this work on himself. Henry George is a concession, a weakness. Not killing people is good, do not kill people or animals or pest is better. [...] Similarly, some say that for the good of humanity should be erected a gallows in each center, and others say, "No, the socialist planning is better." And we say that Henry George is even better. But, I repeat, this is a weakness.

For this reason in the theoretical works of Russian thinker had made no concessions and was firmly based on the negative meaning of freedom and human duties.
"If the application for all teaching is always a compromise - he wrote in 1889 to Adin Ballou - in theory we can not accept any compromise, even though we know that we can never draw a perfectly straight line, not unlike we ever closer to defining between two points. ""The greatest sin - he added - is to accept a devaluation of the Christian ideal to make it applicable."
Under the pressure of world events, facing the specter of revolution, the advance of industrialization processes, Tolstoy felt the duty to act, to take the first step towards social justice. An action that would confirm the aspirations of the masses of the people, as had happened with the abolition of slavery and serfdom, could have avoided the evils of industrialization, with such clarity that he had expected.

To this possibility Tolstoy devoted all the energies of his tormented past years. To his daughter Tatiana, who was so close to the positions of his father, he wrote in November 1909:

I am tormented by the stupid cynical decision by our government on this unfortunate matter and its complete lack of understanding by people who are considered advanced. [...] The question bothering me so much that I recently had a vivid dream in which, while I was among the "wise", arguing their point of view.

And that dream inspired a few months later, one of his last writings, The Dream, contained in a series of sketches of country life, Three days at the village.

I know I have written so much about this, but under the influence of this dream, even at the risk of repeating myself, once again I felt the need to express myself. Cartago Delenda est. Up to that attitude toward private ownership of land will not change, cruelty, madness and evil of this form of slavery will never be condemned enough.