CHAPTER 4 |
Most of the Russian non-laboring classes are quite convinced that the Russian people can do nothing better in this crisis than follow the path the Western nations have trodden and are still treading: to fight the power, limit it, and place it more and more in the hands of the whole people.
Is this opinion right, and is such action good? Have the Western nations, travelling for centuries along that path, attained what they strove for? Have they freed themselves from the evils they wished to be rid of?
The Western nations, like all others, began by submitting to the power that demanded their submission, choosing to submit rather than to fight. But that power, in the persons of the Charleses (the Great and the Fifth), the Philips, the Louis, and the Henry the Eighths, becoming more and more depraved, reached such a condition that the Western nations could no longer endure it. The Western nations, at different times, revolted against their rulers and fought them. This struggle took place in different forms, at different periods, but always found expression in the same ways – in civil wars, robberies, murders, and executions – and finished with the fall of the old power and the accession of a new one. And when the new power became as oppressive to the people as that which had been overthrown, it too was upset, and another new one was put in its place, which by the same unalterable nature of power became in due course as harmful as its predecessors. Thus, for instance, in France there were eleven changes of power within eighty years: the Bourbons, the Convention, the Directory, Bonaparte, the Empire, again the Bourbons, a Republic, Louis Philippe, again a Republic, again a Bonaparte, and again a Republic. The substitution of new powers for old ones took place among other nations too, though not so rapidly as in France. These changes in most cases did not improve the condition of the people, and therefore those who made these changes could not help coming to the conclusion that the misery they suffered did not so much depend on the nature of the persons in power as on the fact that a few persons exercised power over many. The people therefore tried to render the power harmless by limiting it, and such limitation was introduced in several countries in the form of elected chambers of representatives.
But the men who limited the arbitrariness of the rulers and found the assemblies, becoming themselves possessors of power, naturally succumbed to the depraving influence that accompanies power, and to which the autocratic rulers had succumbed. These men, becoming sharers in power even though not singly, perpetrated, jointly or separately, the same kind of evil, and became as great a burden on the people as the autocratic rulers had been. Then, to limit the arbitrariness of power still more, monarchical power was abolished altogether in some countries, and a government was established chosen by the whole people. In this way republics were instituted in France, America and Switzerland. The referendum and the initiative were introduced, giving every member of the community the possibility of interfering and participating in legislation.
But the only effect of all these measures was that the citizens of these states, participating more and more in power, and being more and more diverted from serious occupations, grew more and more depraved. The calamities from which the people suffered remain, however, exactly the same under constitutional, monarchical, or republican governments, with or without referendums.
Nor could it be otherwise, for the idea of limiting power by the participation in power of all who are subject to it is unsound at its very core, and self-contradictory. If one man rules over all with the aid of his helpers, it is unjust, and in all likelihood such rule will be harmful to the people. The same will be the case when the minority rules over the majority. But the power of the majority over the minority also fails to secure a just rule, for we have no reason to believe that the majority participating in government is wiser than the minority that avoids participation.
To extend the participation in government to all, as might be done by still greater extension of the referendum and the initiative, would only mean that everybody would be fighting everybody else. That man should have a power over his fellows that is founded on violence is evil at its source, and no kind of arrangement that maintains the right of man to do violence to man can cause evil to cease to be evil.
Therefore, among all nations, however they are ruled, whether by the most despotic or most democratic governments, the chief and fundamental calamities from which the people suffer, remain the same: the same ever-increasing, enormous budgets; the same animosity towards their neighbors, necessitating military preparations and armies; the same taxes; the same state and private monopolies; the same depriving the people of the right to use the land, which is given to private owners; the same enslaving of subject races; the same constant threats of war and the same wars, destroying the lives of men and undermining their morality.