Thought-provoking utopianism mixed with drunk-uncle curmudgeonliness
Tolstoy was born to a wealthy aristocratic family. He owned a few thousand acres of land worked by over 300 serfs. Around 1870, Tolstoy had a “born-again” experience. Although not a proponent of organized religion, he developed a philosophical conviction that one should live one’s life in accordance with the moral and ethical teachings of Jesus Christ. From What Shall We Do?, the specifics of Tolstoy’s theological beliefs are not entirely clear (I believe he covers that ground more thoroughly in his 1884 book What I Believe), but he definitely advocates the emulation of Christ’s life by giving up one’s riches for the benefit of others. His ethical views bring to mind those of the Christian socialists or Christian anarchists.
The first dozen chapters or so of What Shall We Do? feel like a waste of time, quite frankly. Tolstoy relates how he discovered poverty while residing in Moscow. He visits the housing projects of the poor and converses with beggars on the street. He tries to come up with charitable endeavors to alleviate the sufferings of the urban poor, but none of his attempts are satisfyingly successful. He asks his rich friends to donate money to the cause, and they all agree to do so, but then never deliver the funds they pledged. There is an annoying disingenuous to the way that Tolstoy discusses poverty in these chapters, acting as if he were a naive country boy who never realized that rich people or poor people existed before he hit the age of 50.
After this lackluster intro, however, Tolstoy starts to get into the nuts and bolts of his views on political economy. He discusses at great length the “division of labor,” which he sees as an excuse for the wealthy and privileged to avoid doing their share of the work in society. Whenever it is pointed out that some people labor like mules while others perform no labor at all, the reason given for this inequality is always “the division of labor.” Tolstoy sees no valid reason why the wealthy, the clergy, scientists and artists should be excused from manual labor, or why they are financially rewarded for doing so. In Tolstoy’s view, everyone should grow their own food, for starters, and contribute a fair share of manual labor required to legitimately justify their existence. Science and art are things should be done in one’s spare time and should not be funded by tax dollars. Tolstoy argues with an old-fashioned curmudgeonliness. In What Shall We Do?, he comes across as anti-government, anti-religion, anti-science, anti-art, and anti-birth control, among many other antis. He calls to mind American thinker Wendell Berry in that they both seem to think we would all be better off if we reverted to some quasi-Amish lifestyle.
Nevertheless, Tolstoy has some very interesting things to say about money, the exploitation of labor, and income inequality. One of his more interesting ideas is that everyone should spend a few hours of each day performing manual labor, intellectual labor, and artisan handicraft labor. That may be an unrealistically utopian idea for today’s world, but it’s a utopia I might enjoy living in. Overall, I found What Shall We Do? to be a confusing mash-up of liberal and conservative ideas, but not without glimpses of enlightening wisdom. You’re bound to find something to agree with here, but it’s unlikely you’ll agree with all of it.
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