"..a society accustomed to slavery..justifies it.."
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Today’s passage is from “What Is To Be Done” a non-fiction work by Leo Tolstoi in which he describes the social conditions in nineteenth century Russia. In writing this book Tolstoi felt that the pursuit and worship of money does not bring satisfaction and that the possession of talents and privilege positions are “a call to serve those less fortunate not a justification for self-indulgence.”
Although in modern times serfhood and brutal human enslavement no longer exist in Russia and the United States, respectively, the fundamental problem remains. As Tolstoi then, over 150 years age, noted, “Being poor does not deprive men of reason. They never have admitted and never will admit that it is right for some to have a continual holiday while others must always fast and work…Where there is a man not working because he is able to compel others to work for him—there slavery exists…”
Tolstoi introduced chapter one of this book with this biblical scripture, “And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He answered and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.” LUKE iii. 10,11.
“What Is To Be Done”
“I saw that the cause of the sufferings and depravity of men lies in the fact that some men are in bondage to others; and therefore I came to the obvious conclusion that if I want to help men, I have to first of all to leave off causing those very misfortunes which I want to remedy,—in other words, I must not share in the enslaving of men. I was led to the enslaving of men by the circumstance that from my infancy I had been accustomed not to work, but to utilize the labor of others, and I have been living in a society which is not only accustomed to this slavery, but justifies it by all kinds of sophistry, clever and foolish. I came to the following simple conclusion, that, in order to avoid causing the sufferings and depravity of men, I ought to make other men work for me as little as possible, and work myself as much as possible. I came to that simple natural conclusion, that if I pity the exhausted horse on whose back I ride, the first thing for me to do, if I really pity him, is to get off him and walk.”