What Shall we do? by Leo Tolstoy

The theory by which men who have freed themselves from personal labour justify themselves, is, in its simplest and most exact form, this: "We men, having freed ourselves from work, and having by violence appropriated the labour of others, we find ourselves better able to benefit them. " In other words, certain men, for doing the people a palpable and comprehensible harm, -- utilizing their labour by violence, and thereby increasing the difficulty of their struggles with nature, -- do to them an impalpable and incomprehensible good. This is a very strange proposition; but the men, both of former as well of modern times, who have lived on the labour of workmen, believe it, and calm their conscience by it.

Let us see in what way it is justified, in different classes of men who have freed themselves from labour in our own days.