This is best shown us by "the Russian colonists. These colonists arrive
on the soil, settle, and begin to work, and no one of them takes it into
his head that any one who does not begin to make use of the land can
have any right to it; on the contrary, the colonists regard the ground
_a priori_ as common property, and consider it altogether justifiable
that everybody plows and reaps where he chooses. For working the fields,
for starting gardens, and for building houses, they procure implements;
and here too it does not suggest itself to them that these could of
themselves produce any income--on the contrary, the colonists look upon
any profit from the means of labor, any interest for grain lent, etc.,
as an injustice. They work on masterless land with their own means or
with means borrowed free of interest, either each for himself or all
together on joint account."[1115]
"In talking of such fellowship I am not setting forth fancies, but only
describing what has gone on at all times, what is even at present taking
place not only among the Russian colonists but everywhere where man's
natural condition is not yet deranged by some circumstances or other. I
am describing what seems to everybody natural and rational. The men
settle on the soil and go each one to work, make their implements, and
do their labor. If they think it advantageous to work jointly, they form
a labor company."[1116] But, in individual business as well as in
collective industry, "neither the water nor the ground nor the garments
nor the plow can belong to anybody save him who drinks the water, wears
the garments, and uses the plow; for all these things are necessary only
to him who puts them to use."[1117] One can call "only his labor his
own";[1118] by it one has as much as one needs.[1119]
6.--REALIZATION
_The way in which the change required by love is to take place,
according to Tolstoi, is that those men who have learned to know the
truth are to convince as many others as possible how necessary the
change is for love's sake, and that they, with the help of the refusal
of obedience, are to abolish law, the State, and property, and bring
about the new condition._
I. The prime necessity is that the men who have learned to know the
truth should convince as many others as possible that love demands the
change.
1. "That an order of life corresponding to our knowledge may take the
place of the order contrary to it, the present antiquated public opinion
must first be replaced by a new and living one."[1120]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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