Chapter 31
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19041904

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Author : Leo Tolstoy

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“Division of Labor” is the law pervading everything that exists,
therefore it must exist in human societies too.
 That may be so; but the
question still remains, whether the existing division of labor in human
society is the division which ought to exist. And when men consider a
certain division of labor unreasonable and unjust, no science whatever can
prove to men that what they consider unreasonable and unjust ought to
continue.

The theological theory demonstrated that “Power is of God”; and it very
well may be so. But the question still remains, To whom is the power given,
to Catherine
 the Empress, or to the rebel Pugatchof? And no theological
subtleties whatever can solve this difficulty. Moral philosophy
demonstrates that “A State is merely a form of the social development of
the individual”; but the question still remains,—Can the state of a
Nero or that of a Gengis Khan be considered a form of such development? And
no transcendentalism whatever can solve that difficulty.

It is the same with Scientific Science also. Division of Labor is the
condition of the life of organisms and of human societies; but what have we
to consider in these human societies as an organic division of labor?
However much science studies the division of labor in the molecules of a
tape-worm, all the observations cannot compel men to acknowledge as correct
a division of labor which is repudiated by their reason and conscience.
However convincing the proofs of the division of labor in the cells of
investigated organisms may be, a man who has not yet lost his reason will
say it is wrong that some should only weave cloth all their long life, and
that this is not division of labor, but oppression of human beings.

Herbert Spencer and others affirm that as there is a whole population of
weavers, the weaver's activity is in organic division of labor. In saying
this they use a similar line of reasoning to the theologians: There is a 
 
 power, therefore it is of God, whatever it may be: there are weavers,
therefore they exist as a result of the law of division of labor. There
might be some sense in this if the power and the position of weavers were
created by themselves; but we know that they are not but that it is we who
create them. Well, then, we ought to ascertain whether we have established
this power according to the will of God or of ourselves, and whether we
have called these weavers into being by virtue of some organic law or from
some other cause.

Here are men earning their living by agriculture, as it is proper for all
men to do: one man has set up a smith's forge and mended his plow; his
neighbor comes to him and asks him to mend his plow, too, and promises to
give labor or money in return. A second comes with a similar request;
others follow; and in the society of these men a form of division of labor
arises. Thus, one man becomes a smith.

Another man has taught his children well; his neighbor brings him his
children and asks him to teach them, and thus a teacher is formed: but the
smith as well as the teacher become, and continue to be, a smith and a
teacher, only because they were asked, and they remain a smith and a
teacher only as long as people require their trades. If it happens that too
many smiths and teachers appear, or if their labor is no longer wanted,
they at once, according to common sense, throw aside their trade and become
laborers again, as it everywhere and always happens where there is no cause
for the violation of a right division of labor.

Men who behave in such a way are directed both by their reason and their
conscience; and therefore we who are endowed with reason and conscience,
all agree that such a division of labor is a right one. But if it were to
happen that smiths, having the possibility of compelling other men to labor
for them, were to continue to make horseshoes when there was no longer a
demand for them, and teachers were to wish to continue to teach when there
was nobody to be taught, then, to every impartial man endowed with reason
and conscience, it would be obvious that this is not real division of labor
but a usurpation of other men's labor; because such a division could no
longer be tested satisfactorily by the sole standard by which we may know
whether it is right or not,—the demand of such labor by other men, and a
voluntary compensation offered for it by them. But exactly such a surplus,
however, is what Scientific Science terms “a division of labor.”

 Men do what is not required, and they ask to be fed for it, and say it is
just, because it is division of labor. The chief social evil of a
people,—not with us alone,—is the countless horde of State officials.
The chief cause of the economical misery of our days, is what is called in
England “over-production” (that is, the production of an enormous
quantity of articles, wanted by nobody, and which no one knows how to get
rid of). All this comes simply from the strange idea about the “division
of labor?”

It would be very strange to see a boot-maker who considered that men were
bound to feed him because, forsooth, he continued to produce boots wanted
by no one; but what shall we say about those men in government, church,
science, and art, who not only do not produce any thing tangibly useful for
the people but whose produce is wanted by nobody, yet who as boldly require
to be well fed and clothed on account of “The division of labor.”

There may be magicians for whose activity there is a demand and to whom men
give casks and spirits; but we cannot even imagine the existence of
magicians who, while their magic is not wanted by anybody, require to be
fed simply because they wish to practice their art. Yet in our world this
is the very position of the men in church and state, of the men of science
and art. And it all proceeds from that false conception of the division of
labor, defined, not by reason and conscience, but by deductions to which
these scientists so unanimously resort.

Division of labor, indeed, has always existed; but it is correct only when
man decides it by his reason and conscience, and not by his making
observations on it. And the conscience and the reason of all men solve this
question in the simplest and surest way. They always decide the question by
recognizing the division of labor to be right only when the special
activity of a man is so necessary to others, that they freely offer to feed
him in compensation for what they ask him to do for them. But when a man
from his infancy up to his thirtieth year lives on the shoulders of other
men, promising to do, when he finishes his studies, something very useful,
which nobody has ever asked him for, and then for the rest of his life
lives in the same way, promising only to do presently something which
nobody asks him to do, this would not be a true division of labor, but, as
it really is, only the violation by a strong man of the labor of others;
the same appropriation of other men's labor 
 
 by a strong man, which formerly Theology called Divine predestination;
Philosophy, Inevitable Conditions of Life; and now Scientific Science, the
Organic Division of Labor.

The entire importance of the ruling science consists in this alone. This
science is now the dispenser of diplomas for idleness, because in her
temples she alone analyzes and determines what activity in the social
organism is parasitic and what organic. As if each man could not decide
much better and more quickly, too, by consulting his own reason and
conscience.

As formerly, both for clergy and for statesmen, there could have been no
doubt as to who were most necessary to other people, so now for the
believers in Positive Science it seems that there can be no doubt about
this, that their own activity is undoubtedly an organic one: they, the
factors of science and art, are the cells of the brain, the most precious
cells of all the human organism.

Let us leave them to reign, eat, drink, and be feasted, as priests and
sophists of old have before them, so long as they do not deprave men!

Since men are reasonable creatures they have discriminated good from evil,
making use of what has been done in this direction before them by others,
have struggled with evil, seeking a true and better way, and slowly but
unceasingly have advanced in this way. But always across the road different
deceptions stood before them, trying to assure them that this struggle was
not at all necessary, and that they should submit to the tide of life.
First the awful deceptions of the old Church; little by little with
dreadful struggle and effort men got rid of them: but scarcely had they
done so when in their place arose new ones—state and philosophical
deceptions.

Men freed themselves from these too, and now a new deceit, a still worse
one, has sprung up in their path,—the scientific deception.

This new deception is exactly what the old ones were: its essence consists
in the substitution of an externality for reason and conscience, and this
externality is observation, as in theology it was revelation.

The snare of this science consists in this, that having exposed some
bare-faced perversions of the activity of reason and conscience, it
destroys men's confidence in both reason and conscience. Hiding their lie
clothed in a scientific theory, scientists assure men that by studying
external phenomena they study undeniable facts which will reveal to them
the law of man's life. Things which 
 
 are the property of conscience and reason are now to be discovered by
observation alone. These men lose the conception of good and evil and thus
become unable to understand those expressions and definitions of good and
evil which have been worked out during the entire former existence of
mankind.

All that reason and conscience say to them, all that they have said to the
highest representatives of men since the world has existed, all this, in
their slang, is “conditional and subjective.” All this must be left
behind.

It is said that by reason one cannot apprehend the truth, because reason is
liable to error: there is another way, unmistakable and almost
mechanical,—one must study facts on the ground of science; that is, on
two groundless suppositions, Positivism and Evolution, which are offered as
the most undoubted truths. With mock solemnity the ruling science asserts
that the solution of all the questions of life is only possible through
studying the facts of nature, and especially those of organisms.

The credulous crowd of youth, overwhelmed by the novelty of this
authority,—not only not destroyed, not yet even touched by
critics,—rush to the study of these facts of natural sciences, to that
“only way” which, according to the assertion of the ruling doctrine,
alone can lead to the elucidation of all questions of life. But the farther
the students proceed in this study, the farther do they remove not only the
possibility of solving the questions of life, but even the very thought of
this solution. The more they grow accustomed, not so much to observe
themselves, as to believe other men's observations on their word (to
believe in cells, in protoplasm, in the fourth dimension of matter, and so
on), the more the form hides from them the contents. The more they lose the
consciousness of good and evil and the capacity of understanding those
expressions and definitions of good and evil which have been worked out in
all the former career of mankind, the more they appropriate to themselves
that special scientific slang of “conditional” expressions which have
no common human meaning in them. The farther and farther they get into the
thick forest of observations lighted by anything, the more they lose the
capacity, not only of independent thought, but even of understanding other
men's fresh human ideas which are not included in their Talmud. But chiefly
they pass their best years in losing the habit of life, that is, of labor,
and accustom themselves to consider their own position justified, and thus
become, physically, good-for-nothing 
 
 parasites, and, mentally, dislocate their brains and lose all power of
thought-production.

So, their capacities more and more blunted, they acquire by degrees
self-assurance which deprives them forever of the possibility of returning
to a simple, laborious life, and to any plain, clear, common, human manner
of thinking.


     From : Gutenberg.org

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     Chapter 31 -- Publication : November 30, 1903

     Chapter 31 -- Added : February 19, 2017

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