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Title: Was Tolstoy an anarchist?
Author: Albert Meltzer
Date: 1991
Language: en
Topics: Leo Tolstoy, book review
Source: Retrieved on 19th May 2021 from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/ffbgxz
Notes: Published in KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 1 [1991]

Albert Meltzer

Was Tolstoy an anarchist?

Government Is Violence: Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism

by Leo Tolstoy (as edited by David Stephens) Phoenix Press

There may be an obvious answer as to why those who think Tolstoy the

greatest mind of the century assume they know better than he did himself

as to what he believed. In an introduction to a new selection of

Tolstoy’s essays, David Stephens trashes Black Flag for saying he wasn’t

an Anarchist (nor was he as supposed a Christian or a Pacifist).

Stephens cites Woodcock to prove his case, wow, that’s us squashed. A

few pages later we read Tolstoy never called himself an Anarchist, but

how would he know what he was? (He never read Prof. Woodcock).

Stephens also admits Tolstoy attacked the Church — and was

excommunicated for his opposition to Christianity as generally

understood. But how would the Church know? They hadn’t read Woodcock

either. (Read his ‘Resurrection’ for a bit of superb blasphemy, he

wasn’t half as bad as admirers of his writings make you think).

There is no mention of his not being a Pacifist in this book as his

writings on guerrilla warfare are dismissed as belonging to the time

when he was a ‘dissolute novelist’. (Consider Shakespeare’s philosophy,

but you must start from King Lear. When he wrote Hamlet he was still a

dissolute playwright).

Stephens thinks rejection of the Count as an Anarchist is because of an

‘antipathy’ existing between aspects of anarchist thought — a typical

liberal pacifist remark (usually they put it down to personal antipathy,

never to fundamental political differences: they have no politics).

‘Uncompromising rejection’ of Tolstoyans — rather than Tolstoy — he

thinks, finds no echo among Anarchists in other countries and he cites

Germany, though the kingdom-of-love-within-you-resist-not-evil crap gets

very short shrift there in anarchist circles unless you count the

Anglo-American influenced peace-firsters as anarchists when they’re not

voting Green.

What did Tolstoy really think about Anarchism? In ‘On Anarchy’ he

writes: “The Anarchists are right in everything … they are mistaken only

in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by revolution’. In this

edition, inserted before the word revolution is [violent, Ed] ignoring

the editorial advice that Tolstoy didn’t mean what he said, the message

is plain and later made plainer. The transformation to anarchy, used as

a synonym for the Kingdom of Heaven, is within you, transform your

lives, do as you would be done by, rulers and rulers alike obey the

teachings of Jesus and ignore those laid down by Christianity and the

State. Live under tyranny but do not join it. You can’t change it (not

just by “violence” but at all) but you can change yourself.

This is Anarchism turned inside-out and made into its opposite. In other

hands it is an excuse to attack Anarchism, but nothing else, as

‘violent’ (echoed by the media and judges, ignoring Tolstoy’s comments

on government) unless accepting impossible conditions. It plainly

differs from anarchism as conceived by working people in terms of

struggle. It doesn’t work — Tolstoy’s own life was a testimony it

didn’t, as also shown by the neo-Tolstoyans who worship their State hand

outs and reject revolution, or the drop-out middle class woollyhats/

woolly-minds regarding themselves as peasants. It is the alternative

caricature of Anarchism to the mindless-violent caricature it

originated.

The politico most influenced by Tolstoy was Gandhi, neither an

Anarchist, a Christian nor precisely a Pacifist (he didn’t mind people

getting killed for his glory so long as they didn’t kill). Tolstoy’s

problem was the old ‘Buddhist’ one: when he said stop worshipping Jesus

and instead listen to what he had to say, his followers worshipped

Tolstoy instead and never listened to him either (not that it was always

worthwhile doing so).

Another lasting minor Buddha was Mary Baker Eddy. There are Christians

who are scientists, but her philosophy of Christian Science is neither

scientific nor (as normally understood) Christianity. It is a magic

cult. Similarly, it is not to say pacifists (as the term is normally

understood) or Christians could not possibly be Anarchists. They could.

But the words Christian anarchism or Anarcho-Pacifism are usually

synonyms for a type of liberalism, often the worst kind.