Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1908
Source: From RevoltLib.com
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
‘Those who think that there is no other way of governing people than by force, disregarding their reason, do to people what is done to horses by blinding them in order to make them walk around the circle more submissively.
Why does man have reason if he can only be influenced by violence?
The right for violence is not a right, but a simple fact which can only be a right when it does not meet with protest and opposition. It is like the cold, darkness and weight, which people had to put up with until recently when warmth, illumination and leverage were discovered. All human industry is liberation from the power of raw nature; progress in justice is nothing other than a series of limitations to which the tyranny of the mighty must be subjected. Just as the purpose of a medicine is in victory over a sickness, the essence of goodness is in victory over the blind brutality and the unbridled lust of man-beast. In the same way, I always see one and the same law, i.e. growing liberation of a personality and the ascent of the whole creature during its life toward goodness, justice and wisdom. Greedy avarice is the point of departure; rational magnanimity is the point of achievement.’ (Amiel)
‘From the fact that it is possible to submit people to justice by force, it certainly does not follow that it would be just to submit people to violence.’ (Pascal)
Violence produces something only resembling justice, but it distances people from the possibility of living justly, without violence.
The majority of people in the Christian world feel the increasing wretchedness of their condition and, employ the only means of salvation that, according to their conception of life, they consider effective. This method is the use of violence exerted by some over others. Some people, who consider the existing order to be advantageous to themselves, try to maintain this order through the use of political measures, while others use the violence of revolutionary activity to try to destroy the existing order and erect another, better one in its place.
There have been many revolutions and many suppressions of revolutions in the Christian world. The external forms have altered but the essential structure of the State – the power of a few over many, the corruption, the lies, the fear of the ruling classes for the oppressed, the submission, enslavement, torpor and embitterment of the masses – even if altered in form has not only not diminished in reality, but has noticeably increased and is still increasing. What is now happening in Russia shows particularly clearly not just the aimlessness but the manifest perniciousness of employing violence as a means of uniting people.
In recent times all the newspapers have produced less and less news of things like where and how such and such a cash-box was robbed, assassinations of constables, officers and policemen, discoveries of plots and so on; but in all of them one finds, with increasing frequency, news of executions and death-sentences.
For the last year or two they have been shooting and hanging people ceaselessly; thousands have been strangled and shot. There are also thousands who have been killed and blown apart by revolutionary bombs; but, since the number who have recently been killed by the rulers has grown larger and larger, and the number killed by the revolutionaries smaller and smaller, the ruling classes are triumphant and feel they have won and can now resume their usual way of life, upholding deceit through violence, violence through deceit.
The essence of the mistake of all political doctrines, from the most conservative to the most advanced, which has led people to this unfortunate situation, lies in the fact that the people of this world have considered, and still consider, that it is possible, through violence, to unite people in such a way that everyone submits, without resistance, to the same structure of life and guidance for conduct that results from it. It is understandable that people, yielding to passion, might employ forcible methods in order to make opposing people do what they want. One can use force to drag a person to a place he does not want to go to. (Like animals, people always behave in this way when they are under the influence of passion.) And this one can understand, but the reasoning that says that violence can be a means of provoking people to behave in the way we want them to is incomprehensible.
All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do. And therefore those who are coerced will only do that which they do not wish to do while they are weaker than the tyrants and cannot avoid doing it from fear of the threats for not fulfilling what is demanded. As soon as they grow stronger they naturally not only cease to do what they do not want to do, but, embittered by the struggle against their oppressors and everything they have had to suffer from them, they first free themselves from the tyrants, and then, in their turn, force their opponents to do what they regard as good and necessary. It would therefore seem evident that the struggle between oppressors and oppressed cannot unite people but, on the contrary, the further it progresses the further it divides them. It would seem so obvious it would hardly be worth mentioning if it were not for the fact that the age-old lie that violence exerted by some over others can be useful to men and unite them had not been so popularized and accepted mutely as the most unquestionable truth, not just by those for whom violence is profitable, but by the majority of those very people who have suffered and who still suffer the most from it. This deceit has been in existence since long before Christianity, and has persisted until today in full strength throughout the Christian world.
The difference between what existed in ancient times, before the emergence of Christianity, and what goes on in today’s Christian world is only that in ancient times the fact that there is no basis to the claim that violence, employed by some over others, can be useful and unifying, was completely concealed from the people; whereas today, the truth Christ expressed so clearly that violence exercised by some over others cannot unite and can only separate people has become more and more apparent. And as soon as people realize that the violence of some over others, apart from being the cause of their suffering, is irrational, those who used to bear their oppression quietly, immediately become provoked and embittered by it.
This very thing is going on right now among inhabitants of all the oppressed nations.
But it is not only the oppressed who are becoming increasingly aware of this truth; the oppressors are also becoming aware of it. Today, not even the most powerful men are convinced that they are behaving well and justly by exerting violence over others. This delusion is being destroyed for both rulers and their opponents. Both parties, although influenced by their position, try through every kind of argument to convince themselves that violence is useful and necessary, while knowing in the depth of their hearts that their acts of cruelty only achieve a semblance of what they want – and that only a temporary one which, in reality, distances them from their aims rather than drawing them closer.
And so, this awareness is becoming ever clearer to the members of the Christian world, and is inevitably leading them to the only conclusion that can help them out of their present miserable position. The way out consists in one thing: in mankind accepting the true meaning of Christ’s teaching, which has been concealed from them and which is still unknown to the majority of people, together with the guidance for conduct that flows from it and which excludes violence.