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WorkLeo Tolstoy

What Then Must We Do?

A failed attempt to help Moscow's poor during the census of 1882, and forty chapters working out why charity could not work.

by Leo Tolstoy720 passages held

  • Russian, the original language
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Original title
Так что же нам делать?
First published
(aged 58)
Original language
Russian

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Overview

For the Moscow census of January 1882 Tolstoy asked to be given the worst district in the city: the lodging houses near the Smolensk market known as the Rzhanov fortress. He came with a plan, written as an article and read to the City Duma: the census-takers, most of them students, should use their rounds to find out what the poor needed, and rich Moscow should pay for it. The listeners were embarrassed. The pledges he had counted on, around three thousand roubles, never arrived, and the only money he was given was the students' own census pay, about twelve roubles. The book begins as the story of that failure, told against himself, and turns into an inquiry into why it was bound to fail. Tolstoy's answer is that the hunger in the Rzhanov house and the comfort of his own drawing room were a single arrangement. Money, whatever the economists said, was a claim on other people's labour, the successor to personal slavery and to the seizure of land; he traces the mechanism through the story of Fiji, where a tax payable only in coin put the islanders to work for colonists. The rich man handing out alms was returning a fraction of what he took. The remedy was not giving but ceasing to take: living by one's own work, cutting one's needs and using no one as a servant. The last chapter hands that task to women, as mothers. In January 1885 the censor stopped the book after twenty chapters had been set for Russkaya Mysl; pieces then appeared in the journal Russkoe Bogatstvo, disguised as separate articles, and a Geneva edition came out in 1886. In Russia it appeared complete only in 1906, from Posrednik ("The Intermediary"), the popular press founded by Tolstoy's disciple Vladimir Chertkov.

Key concepts

Why does What Then Must We Do? say charity cannot work?

Because the giver's wealth and the receiver's poverty are one arrangement. Tolstoy came to see the hunger in the Rzhanov lodging houses and the comfort of his own drawing room as two sides of a single order. Alms leave that order untouched: the rich man handing them out is returning a fraction of what he took, and he goes on taking.

What does Tolstoy mean by calling money a claim on labour?

He means that money is not a neutral token of exchange but a power to make other people work. Against the economists, Tolstoy treats it as the successor to personal slavery and to the seizure of land: the master no longer needs to own the worker when he can demand the coin the worker must earn. Whoever holds money holds a claim on someone's labour.

What does the story of Fiji show in What Then Must We Do?

It shows the mechanism by which money compels labour. In Fiji a tax was imposed that could be paid only in coin, and the islanders were put to work for colonists to earn it. No one was enslaved by name, yet the tax did what ownership once did. Tolstoy uses the case to make visible what the same mechanism hides at home.

What does 'ceasing to take' mean in What Then Must We Do?

It is Tolstoy's alternative to giving. Since alms return only part of what the rich take, the real remedy is to stop taking: to live by one's own work, to cut one's needs and to use no one as a servant. The demand falls on the person asking the question, not on the poor, and the last chapter hands it on to women, as mothers.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Why Charity Could Not Work

Can the rich help the poor by giving, when their comfort and the others' hunger are one arrangement? The Moscow census of 1882 taught Tolstoy that they cannot.

It begins as a failure told against himself. For the Moscow census of January 1882 Tolstoy asked for the worst district, the lodging houses of the Rzhanov fortress, and came with a plan for rich Moscow to pay for what the poor needed. His listeners were embarrassed, the pledges never came, and all he received was the students' census pay. What he learned was that the hunger in the Rzhanov house and the comfort of his own drawing room were a single arrangement, and alms only handed back a fraction of what was taken.

  • charity
  • poverty
  • social inequality
  • urban life
  • social reform
  • moral responsibility
  • social responsibility
  • self-deception
  • privilege
  • conscience

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Money as a Claim on Other People's Labour

What is money, if it is not a neutral means of exchange? For this book it is the successor to slavery: a way of making others work without owning them.

Whatever the economists said, money for Tolstoy was a claim on other people's labour, the successor to personal slavery and to the seizure of land. He traces the mechanism through the story of Fiji, where a tax payable only in coin put the islanders to work for colonists. The consequence reaches every purse. Whoever lives on money is living on work that others were made to do, and the rich man handing out alms is returning, in small change, a part of what he took.

  • money
  • taxation
  • slavery
  • colonialism
  • exploitation
  • labor exploitation
  • economic coercion
  • coercion
  • political economy
  • property
  • wealth

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Ceasing to Take: Living by One's Own Work

If giving cannot undo taking, what is left for someone who wants out of the arrangement? The answer is to stop taking: to work, to need less, to be served by no one.

The remedy the book arrives at is not giving but ceasing to take. A person who wants to stand outside the arrangement must live by their own work, cut their needs and use no one as a servant. The question of the poor thereby becomes a question about the reader's own day, and it cannot be settled by a donation or a reform voted by someone else. The last chapter hands the task on to women, as mothers.

  • labor
  • division of labor
  • social class
  • class
  • education

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Within this work

passages held
720
distinct concepts
655
by passages held, corpus-wide
#93

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “charity” and “poverty”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 24 pairings. 86 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
charitypoverty53
exploitationlabor29
laborsocial inequality22
laborpoverty18
laborscience17
charitylabor16
charitymoral responsibility16
povertysocial inequality15
coercionlabor11
labormoral responsibility11
moral responsibilitypoverty10
charityexploitation8
exploitationsocial inequality8
exploitationmoral responsibility6
moral responsibilitysocial inequality5
charitysocial inequality4
coercionpoverty4
exploitationscience4
exploitationpoverty3
sciencesocial inequality3
coercionscience2
coercionexploitation1
coercionsocial inequality1
povertyscience1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1884 A Confession (Исповедь)

    Tolstoy submitted it as an introduction to a larger, then-unpublished work, his critique of church theology and his own reading of the Gospels, and it stands at the door of everything he wrote after his conversion.

     RU
  2. 1885 What I Believe (В чём моя вера?)

    A statement of positive faith, written between 1882 and 1884: where A Confession ends at the threshold of belief, this book sets out what the belief is.

     RU
  3. 1886 What Then Must We Do? (Так что же нам делать?) you are here RU
  4. 1888 On Life (О жизни)

    After the social criticism of What Then Must We Do?, it gives Tolstoy's religious turn the form of a philosophical treatise, tried out first on Moscow's university philosophers.

     RU
  5. 1892 The Four Gospels Harmonized and Translated (Соединение и перевод четырёх Евангелий)

    The workshop behind What I Believe and everything after it, and the long study that A Confession was written to introduce: a work of translation and commentary rather than argument.

     RU
  6. 1893 Religion and Morality (Религия и нравственность)

    In the same year he finished The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Tolstoy set down here, in compact form, what he meant by religion.

     RU
  7. 1893 The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Царство Божие внутри вас)

    The doctrine of non-resistance that What I Believe set out as a personal faith is here turned against the state itself.

     RU
  8. 1897 What Is Art? (Что такое искусство?)

    Standing apart from the religious and political writing around it, this is Tolstoy's treatise on aesthetics.

     RU
  9. 1900 Patriotism and Government (Патриотизм и правительство)

    It follows "Christianity and Patriotism" (1894) and "Patriotism or Peace?" (1896), and goes further than either, from the feeling itself to the governments that live by it.

     RU
  10. 1908 I Cannot Be Silent (Не могу молчать!)

    Two years before his death, Tolstoy turned from the treatise to the newspaper page: a signed article addressed to everyone who ordered, carried out or lived by the executions of 1908.

     RU
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