💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › luigi-galleani-leo-tolstoy-1828-1910.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:03:52. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Author: Luigi Galleani Date: 1910 Language: en Topics: anti-pacifism, anti-religion, Leo Tolstoy, pacifism Source: Retrieved on November 24, 2010 from http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/612k86 Notes: From Cronaca Sovversiva (Barre, Vermont, USA, 2 December 1910) http://www.anarca-bolo.ch/a-rivista/318/36.htm
In our last edition we carried the news that Leo Nikolayevitch Tolstoy
had died on the morning of 30 November this year in Astapova.
We mentioned at the time something which, albeit a matter of
interpretation, is nonetheless true: the report of his death was like a
shooting star. Ten days have elapsed since he died and nobody mentions
him any more.
Within a few years no one outside of the world of literature proper,
where he earned his spurs as long ago as 1863 with War and Peace and
Anna Karenina, will have anything more to say about his teachings, his
philosophical and moral writings. And rightly so.
Because his entire philosophy boils down to a sterile attempt at an
impossible revival of Christianity and his entire morality finishes in
the most mischievous teaching of resignation and forbearance, in the
duty of non-resistance to evil. […] In his eyes, the whole essence of
Christianity was summed up in the address that, according to legend,
Christ delivered to his disciples on the Mount of Olives:
re-establish it.
the other.
[…]
In the name of these five commandments of the Lord, he ventured to rail
at the churches which “have not only continually misunderstood Christ’s
teaching and, as a result of circumstances, have always been bitterly
hostile to it” but “as churches, as congregations preening themselves
upon their own infallibility, they are blatantly anti-Christian
institutions”; and in the name of the five commandments of the Lord, he
hurled thunderbolts at the State, the law, the police, the courts and
the army. Not in the name of humanity, not in the name of freedom, but
in Christ’s name! Christ stated: “Judge not, lest ye be judged!” and in
Christ’s name he repudiated courts and judges; Christ gave to command
“Thou shalt not kill!” and in Christ’s name he rejected military service
which is schooling in murder; he repudiated the state that rules over
these gaols.
He rejected the state and the law because their rigours were reserved
for only a tiny, limited range of actions reproached by morality and
public opinion: “Ever since the time of Moses, public opinion has been
critical of selfishness, cruelty and self-indulgence; it condemns
selfishness in all its forms, not just when it trespasses violently
against one’s neighbours goods; it condemns any sort of fornication with
courtesans, with divorced women as well as with lawful spouses; it
condemns cruelty in every shape; mistreatment, hunger, outrages, not
merely against men but also against animals; whereas the law condemns
only SOME of the forms of selfishness, thievery and fraud: SOME forms of
self-indulgence and cruelty, adultery, mutilation or murder, and thereby
legitimises all other forms of self-indulgence, selfishness and
cruelty.”
Thus Tolstoy was able to conclude that “respect for any law is a sign of
the crassest ignorance”, not on the basis of excess but rather because
it is lacking in severity and authority.
This proud stand by Tolstoy against the church and the state and indeed
against property, for he always looked upon the rich as “culpable just
for being rich” led many to suspect that Tolstoy was an anarchist. And
that suspicion was bolstered by the opinions that he articulated
regarding the summary execution of Alexander II and Umberto I. […]
Tolstoy was no anarchist, principally because anarchism looks to a life
freed of every yoke of authority, of divine authority and then of human
authority, and he was a believer, “a slave of God” as he was wont to
describe himself, because anarchism represents the future and progress
and is the highest form of progress conceivable for a more civilised
human society, whereas he would drag us back to primitive Christianity,
which is a formula superseded by twenty centuries of experience; because
anarchism embraces all of the historical, scientific, economic and moral
factors that represent the patrimony of existing humanity and uses them
as the basis of its thoughts about the new society and is therefore
rational and scientific in its very hypotheses, whereas Tolstoyan theory
is theological metaphysics complicated by an absurdly anti-human
morality; because whereas Tolstoy urges humility, anarchism says pride;
where Christianity says resignation, anarchism says revolt; where the
former urges repentance the latter screams freedom, well-being, and an
intensely, inalienably full life! What previously befell Herbert Spencer
has befallen Tolstoy. In his struggle of the individual against the
state, Herbert Spencer never let slip the chance to make anarchists the
targets of his sarcasm and invective, yet no one has ever furnished
anarchists with more interesting and effective weapons of revolutionary
destruction.
In his crusade against any form of violence so as to expedite through
resignation and passive resistance the advent of the “kingdom of heaven”
here on earth, Tolstoy has injected swirls of obstreperous blood into
the veins of proletarian revolt with his inexorable criticisms of the
basic institutions of bourgeois society.
Which is why among those bourgeois who trust more to the efficacy of the
king’s grapeshot than to the Christian message of the apostles … twenty
years too late, Leo Tolstoy has been forgotten: which may account for
the abundance of pious obituary notices in subversive newspapers and
even in those such as our own which never had any fondness for him but
dared, irreverent iconoclasts as we are to question even the sincerity
of his faith and apostolate.
Because, in all honesty, we had and still have rather more than
suspicions doubts as to the sincerity of his message, and were never
enamoured of it.