Roza and Margarita Riaikkenen's
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TOLSTOY ABOUT SOCIETY By Roza Riaikkenen VI When speaking about Leo
Tolstoy’s views on the society, its politics, economics and morals in his work What Should We Do?, we should have in
mind that these views belonged not to a man from the oppressed part of the
society, unhappy with his country’s social set-up and intending to change it by
revolution. This work has been written by Count Tolstoy, a man born in one of
the most privileged and powerful families of At the same time, this work
has been written by a man who accepted no violence and abuse whatsoever.
Tolstoy didn’t approve of the government’s violent actions directed towards preserving
the existing order; equally he didn’t accept changing the state order by force,
by revolution; and he wrote that Christianity is incompatible with war. Tolstoy’s views on the society
were definitely challenging his contemporaries. His ideas applied to their
conscience and conscious mind. Can we apply these ideas in our modern social
environment, and do the social problems that Tolstoy discovered a century ago
still exist? Tolstoy began his exploration
of the society from a real life situation, which seemed to be hopeless. In a With his inherent
conscientiousness, the writer decided to participate in and to use the census
to become aware of the needs of these poor people and to bring their plight to
the attention of the wealthy. Tolstoy’s habit was to always remain close to the
common people. He would go into the field works with his peasants, and to saw
wood with workers, when living in To his dismay, Tolstoy was
unable to fulfil his plans. The wealthy nobles weren’t ready to give anything
but a pittance, and if even there would be money enough, the problems of the
poor couldn’t be solved simply with money. The problems of poverty, homelessness
and hopelessness of life appeared to be consequences of the deeply hidden
problem of the social system, which was surfacing, on the one hand, as hopeless
poverty, and on the other hand, as meaningless luxury. One impossible without
the other like two sides of one coin. When Tolstoy understood that
the cause and means of preserving the condition of both sides of the society
was money, he began examining – what is money, were did it start and what for
it existed in reality. He applied to the science of economics and recognised
from its statement that money is only the means for trade. Tolstoy doubted this
statement and started examining real life examples to come to a true opinion.
As a result, he came to the conclusion that money in fact is the means of
forcing people to do that what they don’t want to do. Money is power. People
who possess this power can force those who don’t have it to work for their
sake, i.e. they can deprive the poor of their freedom and turn them into
slaves. “There were a people in It started from personal
slavery. The first democracies of ancient The economy of
another democracy, on the American Continent, also started developing primarily
from the slave labour of people who would be brought from Using the example
of the island of Fiji, Tolstoy shows us how the conquerors, Americans, required
a money contribution from the locals and their leader, and how, as the
consequence, the majority of the indigenous people became workers on the
plantations of the white colonists, and were forced to work for a scanty wage
to survive. Tolstoy examined the process by stages, and money was everywhere
serving as an instrument, which enabled those in power to appropriate the results
of the labour of those who didn’t possess money and power. Everywhere, it
destroyed the natural social order of the locals, which the writer respected
and thought to be very important. This is usually done
through the mechanism of rent, i.e. when someone pays with his or her work for
the possibility of using the land and the working tools. Tolstoy writes: “…what
is the cause that the people who possess land and money can enslave the people
who don’t have land and money? The answer, as
common sense would see, is that this originates from the money which has a property
of enslaving people… When people are devoid of the land and the working tools –
this means they are enslaved.” The person who receives the rent will always try
to increase it and to decrease the payment for the work as much as possible. The countries,
which ages ago had grabbed foreign lands with their minerals (metals, oil,
diamonds, etc) and appropriated the labor
of the people, received the starting capital for their fast industrial and
technological development. These additional resources enabled them to become
well developed countries, with living standards that are much higher than these
in their former colonies. Let us have a look
from Tolstoy‘s viewpoint and ask – has money remained a mean of abuse in the
developed countries or not? In all the developed countries, there is a
substantial group of people who live on the edge of poverty and are forced to
work only to survive. At the same time,
any member of the society is constantly bombarded by the advertisements of
competitive consumerism, which often preys on the lowest people’s instincts and
desires, and forces them to rotate in the constantly accelerating cycle of
gaining and spending money. In many of the
former colonies, people are often working long hours in unbearable conditions,
only to provide the basics of life for their families. These people make the
majority of the planet’s population. This majority of low paid workers allow
the minority to live a life where the abuse of money is not as noticeable as
the convenience of using it. In the last
decades, the joint technological, informational and social development of the
world has diminished the differences between countries. In the majority of
countries, money is working in the same market economic mechanisms. Some of the
former colonies are rapidly developing, and their citizens are becoming richer
and gaining access to the goods of which they couldn’t even dream before. On the one hand, we
can be happy for them. The world economy is developing, productivity is
growing, and the opportunities of consuming are expanding limitlessly… On the other hand,
the development of economies around the world has already contaminated the
planet’s land, water and air and led to varied ecological degradation. Now we
face the dangers of irreversible climate change with possible dire
consequences. These dangers increased when the world most populated countries,
like It appeared that
while attempting to limitlessly raise productivity, using more and more of
natural resources and producing more of waste, we are worsening the ecological
situation around the globe. The first sufferers, as usual, become these who
already existed on the brink of survival. A century ago,
Tolstoy was puzzled with a question: why does the economic science see only
land, working tools and labour as the means of production; “why solar rays,
water, food and knowledge aren’t understood as separate factors of production”.
He thought that this is because economics sees only the factors which can be in
someone’s possession. In Tolstoy’s opinion, in order to really understand
economy, we have to have in mind many other factors like these. The author is
speaking about a human being as the purpose and meaning of society’s existence
and searching for the ways of freeing people from abuse. He thinks that it is
essentially not right to force people to do that what they don’t want to do.
“The only sign of good in any job is that people execute it freely. The
people’s life is full of such jobs… At the same time, if people have to be
forced to do a job, then because of this abuse, the job ceases to be the common
duty and good.” The need for labour
and for sharing its results is inherent in a human being. In an environment
free from abuse, if a person cannot or doesn’t feel able to earn a living, the
“others are working for his or her sake with love”. They are voluntarily working
for this person’s sake because they understand that, by acting in this way,
they help this man or woman to fulfil another duty, which this person sees as
important for themselves and other people. According to Tolstoy, the greatest
abuser in
the world is the State. It can force people
not only to work, but also to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the
powerful, when sending them to war to fight for their interests. “Where abuse
is a law, there is slavery also.” The goals and the
means by which any State is reaching its goals are always arguable. They are
contested by the opposition within and without the state. And history often
recognises that these goals were either a mistake or even a crime before
humanity. Tolstoy didn’t
believe that a person has any obligations towards the State – only towards
another human being. He sees that “all the human life, with its complicated and
varied, seemingly morally independent activities, - the State, scientific,
artistic and trade life – doesn’t possess another aim but the understanding,
affirmation, simplification and common accessibility of the moral truth”. It “only seems to
people that humanity is busy with trade, treaties, wars, sciences and arts; it
has only one important job, and it does only this job – it comes to understand
the moral laws, with which it is living. The moral laws already exist, humanity
only attempts to understand them, and this understanding seems to be
unimportant and even invisible for the person who doesn’t need this moral law,
who doesn’t want to live in harmony with it. But this understanding of the
moral law is not only the main, but the only job for all of the humanity”. Tolstoy believed
that humanity would understand the moral law and live in conformity with it. He
predicted that humanity would change its understanding of the purpose of life.
Tolstoy decided to begin the process of transformation from himself. He started
from confessing that his previous way of life aimed to his personal good had
been not right, and then found for himself out the answers to the question – “What
should we do?” “First: I should not lie to myself, however
far away my way of life would appear to be from the right way, which my
conscious mind had opened to me. Second: I should
renounce that which I thought of as my rights, my privileges, my
particularities compared to the other people and recognize my guilt. Third: I should
fulfil this eternal and undoubted human law – to work with all of my strength, not
being ashamed of any job, to fight whatever the nature of circumstances to sustain
my life and support the lives of other people.” |
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