Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (75 page)

As a moral thinker and religious reformer, Tolstoy continued to develop a form of Christianity based on the Sermon on the Mount which rejected all earthly authority and which urged non-violent resistance to evil. He sought to purge Christianity of its mysticism and transform it into a moral code which could appeal to a rational person. But he went so far that the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him in 1901. His response was a simple declaration of faith:

Rather than harming his reputation, Tolstoy’s excommunication made him even more popular amongst the Russian people.

Non-resistance became the key to Tolstoy’s new political creed and it was with considerable joy that he came across Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience. In
The Kingdom of God is Within You
, he rigorously applied the principle of non-resistant love to government, the Church, patriotism and war. He was particularly critical of the evil caused by those who arrogate to themselves the right to prevent evil by force which may occur but has not yet occurred. This is equally true of holy inquisitions, the gaoling of political prisoners, government executions, and the bombs of revolutionaries. True Christianity is revolutionary, but it looks to a moral reform in the individual not a violent social revolution. It can only be accepted if it involves a fundamental change in the life of the individual.

What makes Tolstoy’s Christianity anarchistic is his claim that human beings, in their spiritual journey from darkness to light, outgrow the governmental stage in history. A true Christian is free from every human authority since the divine law of love implanted in every individual — made conscious for us by Christ — is the sufficient and sole guide of life.

Tolstoy is as confident as Godwin that the State will wither away and like him places his confidence in growing public opinion to bring about its demise. There will come a time ‘when all institutions based on violence will disappear because it has become obvious to everyone that they are useless, and even wrong’.
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Human beings will become so reasonable that they will no longer want to rob and murder each other. ‘A time will come’, Tolstoy further prophesizes, ‘and is already coming, when the Christian principles of equality (the brotherhood of man, the community of property, and non-resistance to evil by violence) will appear just as natural and simple as the principles of family, social or national life do now.’
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The sole meaning of life therefore lies in serving the world by promoting the establishment of the Kingdom of God by each individual’s simple avowal of the truth. And in this government and the State have no place.

Although Tolstoy bases his case against government on spiritual grounds, few anarchists have portrayed so incisively the link between government and violence. He insists that governments by their very nature are based on violence. They compel their citizens to act contrary to their wishes and conscience whenever they introduce taxation or conscription. State power moreover cannot be the remedy for private violence since it always introduces fresh forms of violence. The stronger the State becomes, the greater the violence it perpetrates.

Tolstoy goes to the heart of the matter when he makes clear that it is physical force which makes men obey established laws. In a memorable definition, he asserts: ‘Laws are rules made by people who govern by means of organized violence, for non-compliance with which the non-complier is subjected to blows, a loss of liberty, or even to being murdered.’
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They are made not by the will of all but by those in power and always and everywhere they are made in the interests of those who have power.

Tolstoy was ready to admit that there may have been a time when government was necessary, or as he put it, the ‘evil’ of supporting a government was less than being left defenceless against the organized force of hostile neighbours. But he was convinced that humanity no longer needed it. Under the pretext of protecting its subjects, government only exercises a harmful influence. By claiming a moral right to inflict punishment, it merely attempted by immoral means to make a bad action appear good.
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Tolstoy’s principal criticism of government is that it is inextricably linked with war. All governments are based on violence in the form of police, army, courts and prisons. As military organizations, their chief purpose is to wage war. They constantly increase their armies not only against external enemies but also against their oppressed subjects. It follows that a government entrusted with military power is the most dangerous organization possible.

At the same time, Tolstoy did not place the responsibility of war merely on government ministers: ‘In reality war is an inevitable result of the existence of armies; and armies are only needed by governments in order to dominate their own working-classes.’
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In addition, he recognized that war is caused by the unequal distribution of property and the false teaching which inspires feelings of patriotism.

On no account did Tolstoy accept the patriotism which supports governments. Patriotism, the spontaneous love for one’s own nation above other nations, is always rude, harmful and immoral. In
Christianity and Patriotism
(1894) he illustrated forcibly how governments whip up national
patriotism to support war. He went on to argue that patriotism is nothing less than a form of slavery:

Tolstoy even rejected the patriotism of enslaved nations who are fighting for their independence. Preference for one’s own nation can never be good or useful since it overrides the perception of human equality and respect for human dignity. The aim therefore should not be to support nationalist struggles for independence but for conquered nations to liberate themselves by refusing to participate in the violent measures of any governments.

In
Patriotism and Government
(1900), Tolstoy exposed the hypocritical profession of great powers calling for peace while preparing for war. Rejecting the deterrence argument (since made popular by apologists for nuclear weapons) that the invention of terrible instruments of destruction will put an end to war, he insisted that the only lasting remedy is to do away with governments which are the ultimate instruments of violence: ‘To deliver men from the terrible and ever-increasing evils of armaments and wars, we want… the destruction of those instruments of violence which are called Governments, and from which humanity’s greatest evils flow.’
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Unless there was universal disarmament, Tolstoy prophesized that more terrible wars were to come. If only people could recognize that they are not the sons of a fatherland or the slaves of a government, but the sons of God, ‘those insane unnecessary, worn-out, pernicious organizations called Governments, and all the sufferings, violations, humiliations, and crimes they occasion, would cease’.
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War, military conscription and all other coercive governmental actions will end only with the gradual dissolution of the State.

Tolstoy is an anarchist — and a vigorous one at that — because he specifically called for a society without government and the State. He argued as follows: ‘Slavery results from laws, laws are made by Governments, and, therefore, people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of Governments.’ Even if the State were once necessary, Tolstoy concluded that ‘it is now absolutely unnecessary, and is therefore harmful and dangerous’. He rejects the charge that without governments there will be chaos or a foreign invasion. His experience of Cossack communes in the Urals had shown him that order and well-being are possible without the organized violence of government. Rational beings can arrange their social life through agreement. It is therefore quite possible to create a
society based on voluntary and ‘reasonable agreement confirmed by custom’.
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The only moral principle necessary would be to act towards others as one would like them to act towards oneself.

Tolstoy wrote: ‘The anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that anarchy can be instituted by a revolution.’
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Tolstoy was well aware of the arguments of previous anarchist thinkers, recognizing that they wished to abolish power not by force but by a change in people’s consciousness. He quoted Godwin on the possibility of organizing a society without government and law. He met Proudhon, borrowed his book tide, and was impressed by his advocacy of ordered anarchy. Initially, he admired Bakunin, before learning about his celebration of violence. He referred to Kropotkin’s
The Conquest of Bread
and
Fields, Factories and Workshops
to demonstrate the possibility of food for all.
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Nevertheless, he found the philosophy of Godwin and Proudhon lacking because of their utilitarian emphasis on general welfare and justice, and rejected the violent revolutionary means advocated by Bakunin and Kropotkin. He did not care for the appeal of Stirner and Tucker to personal interest. Above all, he felt that in their materialistic conception of life, atheistic anarchist thinkers lacked the spiritual weapon which has always destroyed power – ‘a devout understanding of life, according to which man regards his earthly existence as only a fragmentary manifestation of the complete life’. What previous anarchists had failed to understand was that the highest welfare lies not in human happiness or the general good but in the fulfilment of the laws of this ‘infinite life’ which are far more binding than any human laws.
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Despite his metaphysical disagreement with most of the major nineteenth-century anarchist theorists, Tolstoy shared their ultimate goal of a society without government. To his critics who asked what he would put in the place of government, he simply replied that there was no need to replace it with anything: an organization, which being unnecessary had become harmful, would simply be abolished and society would continue on its own beneficial course as before. Indeed, ‘even if the absence of Government really meant Anarchy in the negative, disorderly sense of that word — which is far from being the case — even then no anarchical disorder could be worse than the position to which Governments have already led their peoples, and to which they are leading them.’
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Tolstoy sees no risk of chaos in abolishing the government and the State since he firmly believed that ‘God has implanted His law in our minds and our hearts, that there may be order, not disorder, and that nothing but good can arise from
our following the unquestionable law of God, which has been so plainly manifested to us.’
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Tolstoy based his case for anarchism on a love of freedom and a hatred of coercion. He did not for instance condemn Negro slavery merely because it was cruel, but because it was a particular case of universal coercion. His position, like that of the American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, was founded on the principle that ‘under no pretext has any man the right to dominate,
i.e.
, to use coercion over his fellows.’
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According to Tolstoy, true liberty consists in ‘every man being able to live and act according to his own judgement’ which is incompatible with the power of some men over others.
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It was Tolstoy’s love of freedom which led him to condemn the factory system and to call for a return to the land. The misery of the factory hand and town worker consists not so much in his long hours and low pay, as in the fact that he is deprived of freedom and the ‘natural conditions of life in touch with nature’ and compelled to perform compulsory and monotonous labour at another man’s will.
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Although Tolstoy sees a major cause of social evil in government, he does not overlook the question of property. In his address
To the Working People
, he emphasized the link between government and property, since the laws of government are intended to protect private property. The resulting exploitation is the root of all evils; it not only causes suffering to those who possess property and to those who are deprived of it, but gives rise to conflict between the two. War, executions, imprisonment, murder, and vice are all a direct result of the private ownership of property. If it were not eliminated, Tolstoy prophesized thirty-one years before the Russian Revolution: ‘A worker’s revolution with horrors of destruction and murder threaten us … The hatred and contempt of oppressed masses are growing and the physical and moral forces of the wealthy classes are weakening; the deception, on which everything depends, is wearing out.’
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