Chapter 9: THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFE WILL EMANCIPATE MEN FROM THE MISERIES OF OUR PAGAN LIFE.
In this chapter, Tolstoy will lay out how the goals of the Christian, those using the new moral framework put forth by Jesus's teachings, is different from those who both participate in the government and those who actively struggle against it. As we've explored in previous chapters, the modern human lives in constant contradiction, upholding a societal construction that is out of date and performing actions that does not match with our moral conscious.
The same is true of the external resemblance between the previous pagan life and the present one: the external condition of men in the times of paganism and in our time is quite different. There the external condition of cruelty and slavery was in full agreement with the internal consciousness of men, and every forward movement increased this agreement; but here the external condition of cruelty and slavery is in complete disagreement with the Christian consciousness of men, and every forward step only increases this disagreement.
So, in a world dominated by oppressive political structures that often do terrible things to innocent people, how is a moral person supposed to react?
When people speak of granting liberty to Christians, or taking it from them, it is evident that they are not speaking of real Christians, but of men who call themselves Christians. A Christian cannot be anything else but free, because the attainment of the end which he has set before himself cannot be retarded or detained by anyone or anything.
For Tolstoy, the true follower of the teachings of Jesus is detached from the world and from political means of power and wealth that oppressive systems cannot actually oppress them. Unlike Utilitarian methods that measure human happiness and teleology as having to do with pleasure or lack of suffering, Christian life embraces suffering and detachment, much like Jesus, who died a rather senseless and cruel death at the hands of a political machine.
this liberation is not accomplished by means of a struggle, not by the destruction of existing forms of life, but only by means of the changed comprehension of life. The liberation takes place in consequence of this, in the first place, that a Christian recognizes the law of love, which was revealed to him by his teacher, as quite sufficient for human relations, and so regards all violence as superfluous and illegal, and, in the second place, that those privations, sufferings, threats of sufferings and privations, with which the public man is brought to the necessity of obeying, present themselves to a Christian, with his different concept of life, only as inevitable conditions of existence, which he, without struggling against them by exercising violence, bears patiently, like diseases, hunger, and all other calamities, but which by no means can serve as a guide for his acts.
The revolutionaries fail, as do the fascists, because happiness and meaning in life is not found through the triumph of a struggle and, as much as it needs to be removed from humanity's conception of life, the reforming or tearing apart society's structure is not what will make humanity happy because the old societal structure will only be replaced by a new one that will find the same tools of oppression to maintain it. Christians, or those who want society to reject violence and radically change, must embrace love, rather than violence or political will, as the ultimate tool. Since political conceptions rely on violence to maintain them, those who reject the institutions will most likely be subject to violence or loss of privileges or necessities. The only way to reject the political institutions is to accept these as part of life and not feel the need to endure the violence of the political institutions in order to continue living life without change. And of course, this is where many people jump off the radical pacifism train. It is one thing to criticize society and to point out the violence of political institutions and wish, and fight, for them to disappear. It is quite another to refuse to resist them and embrace suffering that certainly appears unnecessary to avoid participating in the political structures. And critics of Tolstoy might argue that he is using religion as a crutch, that pacifism and enduring suffering is quite alright if one believes in a just God that has a higher call for humanity, but for non-theistic versions of rebellion, this pacifism is unhelpful and will only cause suffering. For Tolstoy, this attitude is part of the problem.
In their present condition men are like bees which have just swarmed and are hanging down a limb in a cluster. The position of the bees on the limb is temporary, and must inevitably be changed. They must rise and find a new home for themselves. Every one of the bees knows that and wishes to change its position and that of the others, but not one is able to do so before the others are going to do so. They cannot rise all at once, because one hangs down from the other, keeping it from separating itself from the swarm, and so all continue to hang. It would seem that the bees could not get out of this state, just as it seems to worldly men who are entangled in the snare of the social world-conception...If every bee which can fly did not fly, the rest, too, would not move, and the swarm would never change its position. And as one bee need but open its wings, rise up, and fly away, and after it a second, third, tenth, hundredth, in order that the immovable cluster may become a freely flying swarm of bees, so one man need but understand life as Christianity teaches him to understand it, and begin to live accordingly, and a second, third, hundredth, to do so after him, in order that the magic circle of the social life, from which there seemed to be no way out, be destroyed.
The simultaneously mechanic and organic movement of bees as an analogy plays a significant role in Tolstoy's work and here the analogy shows how pacifism can work and why it must work, not only as the correct religious action, but as a pragmatic solution and dissolving of the political structure. It currently seems, especially if one accepts Tolstoy's arguments that violence and reforms cannot fix society, that there is no way out of the way our political machines are set up and one must accept them and participate or undergo suffering by rejecting it. However, it is this attitude that preserves the system. Everyone knows that it must change and that life cannot continue the way it is, that life must be lived in a different way. But at the same time, everyone is afraid to leave the life that they currently have, so they embrace the branch, holding onto it as hard as they can with all the people around them. Each person wants change but is too afraid to enact it. Only when people start to enact the change will people follow it. Keep this tension in mind, as it is certainly a herd mentality type conception of humanity, a follow the leader type view of humanity, all while, as we will see, rejecting both "Great Man" and collectivist interpretations of societal change.
I was told of an incident which happened with a brave rural judge who, upon arriving at a village where the peasants had been riotous and whither the army had been called out, undertook to settle the riot in the spirit of Nicholas I, all by himself, through his personal influence. He sent for several wagon-loads of switches, and, collecting all the peasants in the corn-kiln, locked himself up with them, and so intimidated the peasants with his shouts, that they, obeying him, began at his command to flog one another. They continued flogging one another until there was found a little fool who did not submit and shouted to his companions to stop flogging one another. It was only then that the flogging stopped, and the rural judge ran away from the kiln. It is this advice of the fool that the men of the social order do not know how to follow, for they flog one another without cessation, and men teach this mutual flogging as the last word of human wisdom.
Once one person stands up, by refusing to commit violence, then it becomes easier for the people around them to reject violence, and those who enforce violence will no longer have the power to enforce the violence. The fool, the one that rejects society and does not participate in violence, is the leader, the bee who leaves the tree and is thus called foolish or insane. But once people begin to see that they do not need to follow the violent threats of government and society, society will no longer have the tools to be violent. It takes inspiring leaders to do this, but at the same time, it takes rank and file enforcers seeing the futility of their actions (again, it takes the French corporals deciding to no longer re-enroll in the army, robbing Napoleon of his power). If whole communities decide to reject authority, authorities that rely on people from those communities to enforce their laws will no longer have power. However, for this to happen, something else must happen.
Nothing so much impedes the liberation of men as this remarkable delusion. Instead of directing all his forces to the liberation of himself, to the change of his world-conception, every man seeks for an external aggregate means for freeing himself, and thus fetters him self more and more.
Rather than struggle, whether class struggle or national struggle, being central to progress in society, it only further entraps people. Violence only commits people to further violence and, in many ways, is more of a symptom of an inner illness than an illness in itself. Our institutions are violent and do not match our moral consciousness and that contradiction only exists because we struggle outwardly hoping to fix our problems instead of turning inward and changing ourselves (Tolstoy seems to endorse the seemingly incorrect view that pre-Enlightenment most people did not contemplate their inner selves as much as their relation to the external community and the advancement of society has lead to an evolution of inward self-reflection, whether this is good or bad).
In the meantime it has been getting more and more obvious of late that the liberation of all men will take place only through the liberation of the individual men.
This is a clear rejection of the collectivism of the philosophies related to Marxism. In fact, it can sound, like many of Tolstoy's argumentation, when twisted, or looked at in an uncharitable way, rather conservative in the sense that conservative culture will often argue that the government cannot fix things and society can only be fixed by people acting freely (and then paradoxically and hypocritically impressing their moral absolutes on society at large). And Tolstoy would agree that the moral conception cannot come from edicts from the government nor revolutionary groupings. However, the difference would be that rather than differentiating the private and public governmental life as conservatives do by creating false differences or playing verbal games, in which giving goods to the poor can be something done in private charity but should not be done on a governmental level through redistribution, Tolstoy claims that we must change ourselves and our moral conceptions so we can, as each of us in society do so, change society at large (while conservatives would argue that society at large should not be changed or the moral life has little to do with the public governmental life).
The socialists, communists, anarchists, with their bombs, riots, and revolutions, are by no means so terrible to the governments as these scattered people, who from various sides refuse to do military service, — all of them on the basis of the same well-known teaching. Every government knows how and why to defend itself against revolutionists, and they have means for it, and so are not afraid of these external enemies. But what are the governments to do against those men who point out the uselessness, superfluity, and harmfulness of all governments, and do not struggle with them, but only have no use for them, get along without them, and do not wish to take part in them?
The secret to destroying government and violent institutions that limit humanity's freedom is not to try to destroy the forms and fight against them. Instead, the only way to remove the oppressiveness of government is by voluntary refusal. This is because government knows how to deal with violent combatants and criminals because fighting against these are what the entire structure of government is built upon. However, to refuse to play by the rules at all, while simultaneously refusing to struggle, is an attitude that government does not know how to deal with. The reasons for this and the pragmatic reasoning behind non-resistance, and why and how it can work, is explained later in the book.
The revolutionary enemies struggle with the state from without; but Christianity does not struggle at all, — it inwardly destroys all the foundations of government.
Self-reliance is not an outward attribute in the way modern libertarians and conservatives fetishize wealth or some naturalist sects fetishize being able to live off the land, but rather a spiritual self-reliance. For Tolstoy, Christians are self-reliant because they do not need what the state can provide or withhold from them, not because they already have the physical goods or status and do not rely on "handouts" but because their goals in life, their moral conception, are completely different. They do not want status or wealth and the punishments that the state is willing to apply to non-conformers does not cause them fear since their "hearts" are focused on the teachings of Jesus rather than anything considered tangible by society.
What are the governments to do against these men? Indeed, the governments can kill off, forever shut up in prisons and at hard labour their enemies, who wish by the exercise of violence to overthrow them; they can bury in gold half of the men, such as they may need, and bribe them; they can subject to themselves millions of armed men, who will be ready to destroy all the enemies of the governments. But what can they do with men who, not wishing to destroy anything, nor to establish anything, wish only for their own sakes, for the sake of their lives, to do nothing which is contrary to the Christian law, and so refuse to fulfil the most common obligations, which are most indispensable to the governments?
And this is where I think Tolstoy's anarchism has roots, or at least similarities, in radical Buddhist thought, with the goal not being a material ideal that people should strive for, but something inside of humanity itself, a goal of happiness that divorces itself from ambition or anything that can be measured. This religious, or at least inward spiritualism, conception of political life is of course in the eyes of revolutionaries not only misguided, but very suspicious. Just as Tolstoy views the church as an instrument of social control, it isn't unusual for leftists to view spirituality and "mindfulness" (to give Tolstoy's conceptions a more modern terminology) as instruments of apathy used by the affluent class to not only divorce themselves from the suffering of the less affluent, but as an instrument of social control by attempting to shift the focus on the lower classes from their very real material needs to an inward looking conception, thrusting political action aside. And perhaps this is why mindfulness culture, which seems to work, even if it is only a placebo level (studies seem to suggest participants do become happier, but it also has the problem of being difficult to prove), has not caught on in poor or minority cultures in America and has become a culture almost entirely white and extremely corporate (though of course, several other class factors play a role as well, such as idle time and education availability). Just as in Tolstoy's portrayal of peasants, whom he admires, in his work, agitation based on material and political needs is very real and it is difficult to imagine that these can be squelched without the change in material distribution, which without some violence or the unexpected surrender of class and wealth from a significant portion of the wealthy class, seems impossible. There is a reason why voluntary withdraw from society, as well as the refusal to pay taxes, in American culture is associated with the dream of the wealthy that feel paradoxically burdened by the non-wealthy (in fact, America's fictional myth of withdrawing from society, when not associated with cults or the much maligned hippie movement, is not associated with Thoreau or benevolent anarchism, but with Ayn Rand's John Galt in Atlas Shrugged). Without the necessary goods or tools to survive, it is impossible to imagine a withdrawal from society by the lower classes without a rather drastic drop in standard of living. But at the same time, we should not completely reject what Tolstoy has to say about radical non-participation by the oppressed classes bringing about positive change, as the following analogy shows.
The situation of the governments is like the situation of a conqueror who wants to save the city that is fired by its own inhabitants. He no sooner puts out the fire in one place than it begins to burn in two other places; he no sooner gives way to the fire and breaks off what is burning in a large building, than even this building begins to burn from two sides. These individual fires are still rare, but having started with a spark, they will not stop until everything is consumed.
It is impossible to read this passage without thinking of the burning of Moscow in 1812 as shown in War and Peace (though it is important to note that Tolstoy bucks historical convention by claiming that the fires were not on purpose but rather started because "they had to happen"). Just as the rejection of Napoleon's armies in Russia had little to do with the plans of leaders and generals and more to do with a combination of historical phenomena that we cannot fathom (which may or may not be God's will) and the will of the people as a whole, the rejection of government and violence cannot happen through better leadership, reforms, or revolutions but from the individuals that light the fires. Notice that Tolstoy doesn't quite endorse collective action as the instrument of change, seemingly because he rejects collectivism for reducing free choice, but instead the actions of individuals operating from a similar moral conception (i.e. the teachings of Jesus). Rather than a group of people coming together to do something, such as overthrow the capitalist class, Tolstoy imagines certain individuals (certainly not "great men" or those acting out of selfishness or attempting to protect their wealth) acting by themselves and doing what is in their moral conscious rather than excusing their actions. If enough people do this and stand up against the government (by not participating), then the government will be forced to change because, Tolstoy seems to believe, governments, even unpopular autocratic ones, have to bend to the will of the people, or at least make concessions, in order to operate. Ordinary people fulfill the bureaucracy and instruments of government. If soldiers refuse to go to battle, police officers refuse to subdue nonviolent offenders, and those who work on selling instruments of death decide that they will no longer do these things, then the machine can no longer work. This is of course optimistic and we certainly see "ordinary people" with moral conceptions that seem particularly warped and undeveloped, but, at least for Tolstoy, this is the only way real social change will happen. Society cannot be remade from the top and have those morals trickle down. Instead, the "bottom" must change the top.
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