Laws Concerning Taxes, Land and Property
Leo Tolstoy
[Chapter X from the book, The Slavery of Our
Times,
published in New York by Edwin C. Walker, 1890]
THE German Socialists have termed the combination of conditions which
put the worker in subjection to the capitalists the iron law of wages,
implying by the word "iron" that this law is immutable. But
in these conditions there is nothing immutable. These conditions
merely result from human laws concerning taxes, land, and, above all,
concerning things which satisfy our requirements - that is, concerning
property. Laws are framed and repealed by human beings. So that it is
not some sociological "iron law," but ordinary, man-made law
that produces slavery. In the case in hand the slavery of our times is
very clearly and definitely produced not by some "iron"
elemental law, but by human enactments about land, about taxes, and
about property. There is one set of laws by which any quantity of land
may belong to private people, and may pass from one to another by
inheritance, or by will, or may be sold; there is another set of laws
by which every one must pay the taxes demanded of him unquestioningly;
and there is a third set of laws to the effect that ''any quantity of
articles, by whatever means acquired, may become the absolute property
of the people who hold them. And in consequence of these laws slavery
exists.
We are so accustomed to all these laws that they seem to us just as
necessary and natural to human life as the laws maintaining serfdom
and slavery seemed in former times; no doubt about their necessity and
justice seems possible, and no one notices nothing wrong in them. But
just as a time came when people, having seen the ruinous consequences
of serfdom, questioned the justice and necessity of the laws which
maintained it, so now, when the pernicious consequences of the present
economic order have become evident, one involuntarily questions the
justice and inevitability of the legislation about land, taxes and
property which produces these results.
As people formerly asked, Is it right that some people should belong
to others, and that the former should have nothing of their own, but "should
give all the produce of their labour to their owners? so now we must
ask ourselves, Is it right that people must not use land accounted the
property of other people; is it right that people should hand over to
others, in the form of taxes, whatever part of their labour is
demanded of them? Is it right that people may not make use of articles
considered to be the property of other people?
Is it right that people should not have the use of land when it is
considered to belong to others who are not cultivating it?
It is said that this legislation is instituted because landed
property is an essential condition if agriculture is to flourish, and
if there were no private property passing by inheritance people would
drive one another from the land they occupy, and no one would work or
improve the land on which he is settled. Is this true? The answer is
to be found in history and in the facts of to-day. History shows that
property in land did not arise from any wish to make the cultivator's
tenure more secure, but resulted from the seizure of communal lands by
conquerors and its distribution to those who served the conqueror. So
that property in land was not established with the object of
stimulating the agriculturalists. Present-day facts show the fallacy
of the assertion that landed property enables those who work the land
to be sure that they will not be deprived of the land they cultivate.
In reality, just the contrary has everywhere happened and is
happening. The right of landed property, by which the great
proprietors have profited and are profiting most, has produced the
result that all, or most - that is, the immense majority of the
agriculturalists - are now in the position of people who cultivate
other people's land, from which they may be driven at the whim of men
who do not cultivate it. So that the existing right of landed property
certainly does not defend the rights of the agriculturalists to enjoy
the fruits of the labour he puts into the land, but, on the contrary,
it is a way of depriving the agriculturalists of the land on which
they work and handing it over to those who have not worked it; and,
therefore, it is certainly not a means for the improvement of
agriculture, but, on the contrary, a means of deteriorating it.
About taxes it is said that people ought to pay them because they
are instituted with the general, even, though silent, consent of all,
and are used for public needs to the advantage of all. Is this true?
The answer to this question is given in history and in present-day
facts. History shows that taxes never were instituted by consent, but,
on the contrary, always only in consequence of the fact that some
people having obtained power by conquest, or by other means over other
people, imposed tribute not for public needs, but for themselves. And
the same thing is still going on. Taxes are taken by those who have
the power of taking them. If nowadays some portion of these tributes,
called taxes and duties, are used for public purposes, for the most
part it is for public purposes that are harmful rather than useful to
most people.
For instance, in Russia one-third of the revenue is drawn from the
peasants, but only One-Fiftieth of the revenue is spent on their
greatest need, the education of the people; and even that amount is
spent on a kind of education which, by stupefying the people, harms
them more than it benefits them. The other Forty-nine-Fiftieths are,
spent on unnecessary things harmful for the people, such as equipping
the army, building, strategical railways, forts and prisons, or
supporting the priesthood and the Court, and on salaries for military
and civil officials - that is, on salaries for those people who make
it possible to take this money from the people.
The same thing goes on not only in Persia, Turkey and India, but also
in all the Christian and constitutional states and democratic
republics; money is taken from the majority of the people quite
independently of the consent or non-consent of the payers, and the
amount collected is not what is really needful, but as much as can be
got (it is known how Parliaments are made up, and how little they
represent the will of the people).,-and it is used not for the common
advantage, but for what the governing classes consider necessary for
themselves - on wars in Cuba or the Philippines, on taking and keeping
the riches of the Transvaal, and so forth. So that the explanation
that people must pay taxes because they are instituted with general
consent, and are used for the common good, is as unjust as the other
explanation that private property in land is established to encourage
agriculture.
Is it true that people should not use articles needful to satisfy
their requirements if these articles are the property of other people?
It is asserted that the rights of property in acquired articles is
established in order to make the worker sure that no one will take
from him the produce of his labour.
Is this true?
It is only necessary to glance at what is done in our world, where
property rights are defended with especial strictness, in order to be
convinced how completely the facts of life run counter to this
explanation.
In our society, in consequence of property rights in acquired
articles, the very thing happens which that right is intended to
prevent - namely, all articles which have been, and continually are
being, produced by working people are possessed by, and as they are
produced are continually taken by, those who have not produced them.
So that the assertion that the right of property secures to the
workers the possibility of enjoying the products of their labour is
evidently yet more unjust than the assertion concerning property in
land, and it is based on the same sophistry; first, the fruit of their
toil is unjustly and violently taken from the workers, and then the
law steps in, and these very articles which have been taken from the
workmen unjustly and by violence are declared to be the absolute
property of those who have taken them.
Property, for instance, a factory acquired by a series of frauds and
by taking advantage of the workmen, is considered a result of labour
and is held sacred; but the lives of those workmen who perish at work
in that factory and their labour are not considered their property,
but are rather considered to be the property of the factory owner, if
be, taking advantage of the necessities of the workers, has bound them
down in a manner considered legal. Hundreds of thousands of bushels of
corn, collected from the peasants by usury and by a series of
extortions, are considered to be the property of the merchant, while
the growing corn raised by the peasants is considered to be the
property of some one else if he has inherited the land from a
grandfather or great-grandfather who took it from the people. It is
said that the law defends equally the property of the mill owner, of
the capitalist, of the landowner, and of the factory or country
labourer. The equality of the capitalist and of the worker is like the
equality of two fighters when one has his arms tied and the other has
weapons, but during the fight certain rules are applied to both with
strict impartiality. So that all the explanations of the justice and
necessity of the three sets of laws which produce slavery are as
untrue as were the explanations formerly given of the justice and
necessity of serfdom. All those three sets of laws are nothing but the
establishment of that new form of slavery which has replaced the old
form. As people formerly established laws enabling some people to buy
and sell other people, and to own them, and to make them work, and
slavery existed, so now people have established laws that men may not,
use land that is considered to belong to some one else, must pay the
taxes demanded of them, and must not use articles considered to be the
property of others - and we have the slavery of our times.
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