Anna Karenina (Penguin) - Leo Tolstoy [339]
‘Of course it’s work. It’s work in this sense, that if it weren’t for him and others like him, there wouldn’t be any railways.’
‘But it’s not the same as the work of a muzhik or a scholar.’
‘Granted, but it is work in the sense that it produces a result - railways. But then you think railways are useless.’
‘No, that’s another question. I’m prepared to admit they’re useful. But any acquisition that doesn’t correspond to the labour expended is dishonest.’
‘But who defines the correspondence?’
‘Acquisition by dishonest means, by cunning,’ said Levin, feeling that he was unable to draw a clear line between honest and dishonest, ‘like the acquisitions of banks,’ he went on. ‘This evil, the acquisition of huge fortunes without work, as it used to be with tax farming, has merely changed its form. Le roi est mort, vive le roi!be Tax farming was no sooner abolished than railways and banks appeared: the same gain without work.’
‘Yes, all that may be true and clever ... Lie down, Krak!’ Stepan Arkadyich called to the dog, who was scratching and churning up all the hay. He was obviously convinced of the justice of his theme, and therefore spoke calmly and unhurriedly. ‘But you haven’t drawn the line between honest and dishonest work. That I receive a higher salary than my chief clerk, though he knows the business better than I do - is that dishonest?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, then I’ll tell you: that you get, say, a surplus of five thousand for your farm work, while the muzhik here, our host, however hard he works, will get no more than fifty roubles, is as dishonest as my getting more than my chief clerk, and Malthus getting more than a railway engineer. On the other hand, I see some hostile, absolutely unfounded attitude of society towards those people, and it seems to me there’s envy here ...’
‘No, that’s unjust,’ said Veslovsky. ‘There can be no envy, and there’s something unclean in this whole business.’
‘No, excuse me,’ Levin went on. ‘You say it’s unjust that I get five thousand and a muzhik gets fifty roubles. That’s true, it is unjust, and I feel it, but...’
‘Indeed it is. Why do we eat, drink, hunt, do nothing, while he’s eternally, eternally working?’ said Vasenka, apparently thinking about it clearly for the first time in his life, and therefore quite sincerely.
‘Yes, you feel it, and yet you don’t give him your property,’ said Stepan Arkadyich, as if deliberately provoking Levin.
Lately some sort of secret antagonism had been established between the two brothers-in-law: as if a rivalry had arisen between them, since they had married two sisters, as to whose life was set up better, and that antagonism now showed itself in the conversation, which was beginning to acquire a personal nuance.
‘I don’t give it to him because no one demands it of me, and I couldn’t if I wanted to,’ replied Levin, ‘and there’s nobody to give it to.’
‘Give it to this muzhik; he won’t refuse.’
‘Yes, but how am I going to give it to him? Shall I go and draw up a deed of purchase with him?’
‘I don’t know, but if you’re convinced that you have no right...’
‘I’m not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel that I don’t have the right to give it up, that I have responsibilities to the land and to my family.’
‘No, excuse me, but if you think this inequality is unjust, why don’t you act that way? ...’
‘I do act, only negatively, in the sense that I’m not going to try to increase the difference of situation that exists between him and me.’
‘No, excuse me now: that is a paradox.’
‘Yes, it’s a somewhat sophistic explanation,’ Veslovsky confirmed. ‘Ah, it’s our host!’ he said to the muzhik, who opened the creaking barn door and came in. ‘You’re not asleep yet?’
‘No, what sleep! I thought you gentlemen were asleep, but then I heard you talking. I need to get a hook here. He won’t bite?’ he added, stepping cautiously with bare feet.
‘And where are you going to sleep?’
‘We’re going to night pasture.’
‘Ah, what a night!’ said Veslovsky, looking at the end of the cottage and the unharnessed