On the Fundamental Land Question

Leo Tolstoy

[A letter written in 1909, reprinted in the booklet,
Land and Real Tariff Reform, published in London]

I WRITE what I am writing because I, standing at the brink of the grave, cannot heap silent.

The majority of working men, though externally holding the old Church faith, no longer believe in it, and are not guided by it in their lives, but keep its traditions merely from habit and for appearance' sake ; while, the greater part of the minority try to justify their faith by all sorts of complicated sophistries.

The majority of working people, deprived of land and therefore of the possibility of enjoying the products of their labour, hate the landowners and capitalists who enslave them. The landowners and capitalists, aware of this attitude of the working daises towards them, fear and hate them, and by the aid of force, organised by Governments, keep them enslaved.

And steadily and unceasingly the position of the workers grows worse, their dependence on the rich increases; and equally steadily and unceasingly the wealth of the rich and their power over the workers increase, together with their fear and hatred.

As I pointed out in my introductory note to the Russian version of Social Problems, Henry George's great idea, outlined so clearly and so thoroughly more than thirty years ago, remains to this day entirely unknown to the great majority of the people. This is quite natural. Henry George's idea, which changes the entire system in the life of nations. In favour of the oppressed voiceless majority and to the detriment of the ruling minority, is so undeniably convincing, and above all so simple, that it is impossible not to understand it; and, understanding it, it is impossible not to make an effort to introduce it into practice; and therefore the only means against this idea is to pervert it and pass it in silence.

And this has been true of the Henry George theory for more than thirty years. It has been both perverted and passed by in silence, so that it has become difficult to induce people to read his work attentively and to think about it.

To my regret I have done too little for the cause which unites us. Of late I have been thinking more and more about it, and should I yet be afforded power for work, I will endeavour to express the teaching of Henry George as clearly, as briefly, and as accessibly to the great mass of workers as possible.

The injustice of the seizure of the land as property has long ago been recognised by thinking people, but only since the teaching of Henry George has it become clear by what means this injustice can be abolished. At the present time the abolition of property in land everywhere demands its solution as insistently as, 50 years ago, the problem of slavery demanded solution in Russia and in America. The supposed rights in landed property are the foundation not only of economic misery, but also of political disorder, and, above all, of the moral depravation of the people.

The wealthy ruling classes, foreseeing the loss of the advantages of their position to be inevitable with the solution of the problem, are endeavouring, by various false interpretations, justifications and palliatives, with all their power to postpone as long as possible its solution.

But the time comes for everything. As the time came for the abolition of man's property in man, so the time has now come for the abolition of the supposed right of property in land, which involves the appropriation of other people's labour. The time for this is now so near at hand that nothing can arrest the abolition of this dreadful means of oppressing the people.

Yet a little effort and this great emancipation of the nations shall be accomplished.