Three Days in the Village, and Other Sketches.: Written from September 1909 to July 1910.Tolstoy, Leo, graf
General
Three Days in the Village, and Other Sketches.: Written from September 1909 to July 1910.
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russian fiction -- Translations into English; Short stories, Russian -- Translations into English
Just as, when serfdom was abolished, no distribution of the people
liberated was necessary, but all that was needed was the abolition of
the law that upheld serfdom, so with the abolition of private property
in land: no distribution of land is needed, but only the abolition of
the law sanctioning private property in land. And as when serfdom was
abolished, the serfs of their own accord settled down as best suited
them, so when private property in land is abolished, people will find
a way of sharing the land among themselves so that all may have equal
advantage from it. How this will be arranged, whether by Henry George's
Single-Tax system, or in some other way, we cannot foresee. But it is
certain that the Government need only cease to uphold by force the
obviously unjust and oppressive rights of property in land, and the
people, released from those restrictions, will always find means of
apportioning the land by common consent, in such a way that everyone
will have an equal share of the benefits the use of the land confers.
It is only necessary for the majority of land-owners--that is,
slave-owners--to understand (as they did in the matter of serfdom)
that property in land is as hard on the present-day slaves, and as
great an iniquity on the part of the slave-owners, as serfdom was; and,
having understood that, it is only necessary for them to impress on the
Government the necessity of repealing the laws sanctioning property in
land--that is, land-slavery. One would have thought that, as in the
'fifties, the best members of society (chiefly the serf-owning nobles
themselves), having understood the criminality of their position,
explained to the Government the necessity for abolishing their
evidently out-of-date and immoral rights, and serfdom was abolished,
so it should be now with regard to private property in land, which is
land-slavery.
But strange to say, the present slave-owners, the landed proprietors,
not only fail to see the criminality of their position, and do not
impress on the Government the necessity of abolishing land-slavery, but
on the contrary they consciously and unconsciously, by all manner of
means, blind themselves and their slaves to the criminality of their
position.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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