From "Patriotism and Government"

From “Patriotism and Government”

What are governments in our time, without which people think it impossible to exist?

If there was a time when governments were a necessary and lesser evil than that which would result from defenselessness against organized neighbors, now governments have become an unnecessary and far greater evil than all that with which they frighten their peoples.

Governments, not only military but governments in general, could be—I will not say useful—but harmless only if they consisted of infallible, holy people, as is supposed of the Chinese. But governments, by the very nature of their activity, which consists in exercising violence, always consist of elements most opposed to holiness—the most insolent, crude, and corrupted people.

Every government, therefore, and especially a government to which military power is entrusted, is a terrible, most dangerous institution in the world.

Government, in the broadest sense, including capitalists and the press, is nothing other than an organization in which the greater part of the people is under the power of a smaller part standing over them; this smaller part submits to the power of a still smaller part, and this to yet a smaller part, and so on, finally reaching several persons or one person who by means of military violence gains power over all the rest. So that the whole structure is like a cone, all parts of which are in the complete power of those persons or that person who is at its apex.

The apex of this cone is seized by those people or that person who is more cunning, brazen, and shameless than others, or by a chance heir of those who were more brazen and shameless.

Today Boris Godunov, tomorrow Grigory Otrepyev, today the dissolute Catherine, who with her lovers strangled her husband, tomorrow Pugachev, the day after tomorrow the insane Paul, Nicholas I, Alexander II, today Nicholas II with the Chinese-Japanese war. Today Napoleon, tomorrow a Bourbon or an Orléans, Boulanger or a company of Panama swindlers, today Gladstone, tomorrow Salisbury, Chamberlain, Rhodes.

And to such governments is given complete power not only over the property and lives but also over the spiritual and moral development, over the education and religious guidance of all people.

People arrange for themselves such a terrible machine—power—allowing whoever comes along to seize this power (and all the odds are that the morally worst person will seize it), and slavishly submit and are surprised that things go badly for them… They fear mines, anarchists, but do not fear this terrible arrangement that threatens them every minute with the greatest calamities.

People found that in order to defend themselves from enemies, it was useful to bind themselves together, as Circassians do when defending themselves. But there is no danger, and people continue to bind themselves.

They carefully bind themselves so that one end of the rope can do whatever it wants with all of them; then they let the end of the rope that binds them hang loose, leaving it for the first scoundrel or fool to seize and do with them whatever he needs.

For what else is it that peoples do when, submitting themselves, they establish and support a government organized with military power?

—Leo Tolstoy

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Translator’s Notes:

• “Patriotism and Government” was written in 1900 and published by the Free Word Press (Svobodnoe Slovo) in England. The full essay is in Volume 90 of the Jubilee Edition.
• The historical examples span Russian and European history: Boris Godunov (r. 1598-1605), the False Dmitry (Grigory Otrepyev, pretender, r. 1605-1606), Catherine the Great (who indeed came to power after her husband Peter III was killed), the Cossack rebel Pugachev (1773-1775), Paul I (assassinated 1801), Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855), Alexander II (assassinated 1881), and Nicholas II (who was ruling when Tolstoy wrote).
• The reference to “Chinese-Japanese war” refers to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, which Russia entered in support of its interests in Manchuria and Korea—Tolstoy was writing as the conflict was developing.
• The Panama scandal (1892) involved French politicians taking bribes during the failed French Panama Canal project.
• Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) was the British imperialist most associated with expansion in South Africa.
• The image of the Circassians binding themselves together for defense refers to Caucasian mountain warriors who would tie themselves to one another in battle to prevent retreat.
• Tolstoy’s critique anticipates later anarchist analysis of the state as a mechanism for minority rule over the majority, maintained through monopoly of violence.