Tolstoi quotes from the Gospel of Matthew concerning the renunciation of all wealth. His own three step program of how to live deviates in part from this command. Is he simply “deluding” himself much like those whom he accuses?
Is Tolstoi’s depiction of urban vs. rural poverty applicable today? In New York city vs. Shoreham, Vt.”
Is Tolstoi a precursor of today’s “sustainability”?
Does Tolstoi’s clearly sexist depiction of women have any validity? Does it weaken or undermine all that precedes it?
Answer One but be prepared to address all four in class.
I think Tolstoy’s depiction of urban poverty is applicable today because of the anonymity that comes with living in a city that allows individual struggles to be independent and yet form a part of the larger society. Life in the urban context also creates a need for the division of labor and specialization of identity. Tolstoy battles with these terms and ideologies throughout What Shall We Do and realized that the domination of labor by capital ($$$$) results in the specialization of identity, and when individuals lack this “specialization” they are marginalized and forced into the life of a beggar. Tolstoy describes the ways in which money is the new form of slavery and demoralizes the slave (beggars/homeless population). I believe that this is especially relevant in modern cities and speaks directly on the issues of homelessness in urban cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and NY.
I agree with the general sentiment of those who commented on the feminist critique of Tolstoy’s work. While reading through I had this question in mind and at first was sympathetic to Tolstoy, who I believed would have a different view towards women and their roles after reading for example “that a woman must gratify the passions of men, and for that she must be fed, dressed, and taken care of” in a sarcastic tone, which I should not have done. In the end of the text Tolstoy launches into an extreme antifeminist rant separating women into two groups – those that bear children and those that do not. Even if a women is married, she is a prostitute if she does not have children. Women are seen as parasites using men’s labor to support themselves so they can go out and “satisfy their desires.” He also reiterates that women’s work is essentially to serve men, and part of that work is to bear and raise children. Also, the idea that women seek to be prostitutes because of lust was a ridiculous theory to me. Even if it was a prevailing sentiment of the time, how many women from the upper class were turning to prostitution for work? This view towards women certainly undermines much of his previous thought throughout the work. I don’t understand how he can reconcile his Christian beliefs with, as someone mentioned earlier, his extremely judgmental attitude, especially regarding women’s sexuality. Did he forget “he who casts the first stone…?”
I agree pretty heartily with the responses posted up to this point, which criticize Tolstoi’s sexism and self-delusion. The piece is essentially based on the idea that the main concern facing Russian intellectual society is to figure out how to make rich people happier. This is a selfish, somewhat repulsive, notion, and one that is familiar to modern treatment of wealth inequality. I would bet many of us have heard people talk about their “eye-opening trip to Africa” or “amazing internship at this clinic in the Philippines”. The tendency of the wealthy to conceptualize the poor as an avenue to spiritually fulfilling works of good is alive and well today, and “What Shall We Do?” gives that tendency some real historical precedent. Tolstoi treats working alongside peasants as a therapy of sorts, and his descriptions of them are perpetually condescending.
However, I think we would be remiss to completely discount Tolstoi’s advice in “What Shall We Do?” As Sam notes, he is writing from a very different time and place, and his thoughts on wealth inequality and sustainable living are quite poignant at times. He is addressing hypocrisies and moral deficiencies in society, but not claiming to be without failings of his own. However, the fact that he acknowledges his own shortcomings does not diminish their compromising effect on his argument.
That’s well-stated, and I think an open-minded evaluation of the work and its ideas. That said, what I notice first of all is the word “condescension,” which is entirely apt, and which reminds me of the conversation we had in class regarding Levin’s assertion that, were he a man without love, his life would be so much easier. This same way of thinking figures in Tolstoi’s conception of the lower classes, as he–not to mention his characters–marvels at their “simplicity” (a word that almost always figures positively in his works, usually functioning as what I see as a backhanded compliment, although he almost certainly connects this word to Christ’s teachings) and wishes to be free of the burden that society and his lot in life have placed upon him. This, to me, is self-laudatory and absurd. To me, it is akin to a rich person envying a poor person because he or she does not have as much to worry about. People have struggles and experience misery and anxiety regarding life, however they express it, and Tolstoi should know this better than most. To attribute simplicity and contentment in life to the working class simply because they are unburdened by property to worry about or the great weight of an active intellect is self-laudatory and absurd. I do not begrudge Tolstoi his firm belief in the importance of living simply, as Christ exhorts, but I think his condescending attitude towards people of less means–whether these means are intellectual, material, or emotional–is problematic and, like Luke says, compromises his argument.
My first impression of Tolstoy’s portrayal of women in “What is to be Done” was similar to Matt’s interpretation of the work, that it was meant to be ironic. As I think back to the movie that we watched on Tolstoy’s life and his relationship with his wife, I think that he truly believes in the undermining of women. He points out that they are useless in regards to farming when there are no men around, that farming would go to ruin if just women were there to take care of the land, and that women seem to be in a “drunken state”, where they “totter about”. Tolstoy also constantly refers to women as “them”, as if women were some sort of object or possession that one might own. I think that Tolstoy’s relationship with his wife justifies these references to women as objects because in his own life, he never sees Sofia as capable of handling money or deciding what is best for their family. Although I strongly disagree with Tolstoy’s extreme masculinity, I agree with Weyland that it is almost “unfair” to say that Tolstoy is deluded in this work as a result of his confused “intellectual nature” and his uncertainty in understanding life and its components.
I agree with Alexandra, whose response suggests that the sexist depiction of women in “What is to be Done?” undermines his work. His sexism reaches almost laughable levels (though I see no irony here), with statements like: “the astounding nonsense which is called ‘woman’s rights’.” There is validity to his sexist attitude towards women only in that it is in keeping with his strictly literal interpretation of the Bible (as evidenced in his earlier work, “What I Believe”). Such is clear when he writes, “As it is said in the Bible, there is a law given unto man and woman,- to man, the law of labour; to woman, the law of child-bearing.” The belief that “woman was made for man” runs throughout “What is to be Done?”, a belief that seems crustily old-fashioned, even for 1886. His attitude towards some of the women mentioned here borders on disgust; gone is the christlike nonjudgemental man self-fashioned in his earlier theological writings. However, it was shocking to me, as I had seen his, albeit unideal, treatment of women in previous works as being relatively sensitive. While the female characters of “Anna Karenina” and “War and Peace” wouldn’t exactly inspire a generation of feminists, they are often as developed and sympathetically portrayed as their male counterparts. With this in mind, Tolstoy seems to have found religion but lost his wits.
Alexandra and Matt, I definitely agree with you guys in Tolstoy’s sexist approach to women. As Tolstoy writes in Chapter XL, “the so-called question of women’s rights arose, and could only arise among men who had deviated from the law of real labour” (234). He objectified women by undermining them and subjecting them to the house domain, in which they may become more successful. Yet, maybe I read this reading incorrectly, but it also seems to me that Tolstoy also believes that women have power in their own right. Only in women can save “the men of our world from the evils which it suffers” (235). Unlike men, women sometimes have the opportunity of child-bearing, which signifies the pain God suffers when we sin. They understand the conditions of true labor, in which men try to ignore by saying that their agrarian work has the same impact. In my opinion, Tolstoy disagrees. Child-bearing symbolizes God’s granting of a new life, so maybe sexism in this context is a good thing. As Tolstoy writes, “However low a lost woman may be, if she consciously devotes herself to bearing children, she does the best and highest work of life in fulfilling the will of God” (237). Thus, I think you are right Matt. Tolstoy interprets the Bible literally. In today’s day-in-age, such statements may not fly, but I think especially for his generation, his writing evidently recalls Russian men to what is most important in life. The answer? Their family, which represents their relationship with their father, God.
I agree with many other posts in the idea the Christ is a model for Tolstoy and he sees himself and everyone else that do not measure up to Christ as sinners. As we see throughout the piece, Tolstoy criticizes everyone around him very harshly, as if he is the one who is going to be judging people. I believe that Tolstoy sees himself as a rich man who thinks that the rich people in the society will become better people if they work the life of a peasant (here I saw a connection with Levin and how he finds himself working in the fields, yet that isn’t really a peasants life because he can easily go back inside and have a nice meal and a comfortable place to sleep). I completely agree with Sam’s comment about this belief being a way for the rich people to not feel guilty about the fact that their lives are so much easier than peasants who are bringing them all of this food. Tolstoy talks about how it will be possible for people to become more equal to one another, rather than the vast inequalities that currently exist within the society. To be honest, I think that Tolstoy is simply “deluding” himself because there is clearly no way that these goals/dreams are attainable in the culture and society that he lives in.
I think that Sam makes a good point by saying that Christ is a ‘model’ while Tolstoy, like all humans, is a ‘sinner.’ It’s not entirely fair to say that Tolstoy is deluded because, as I pointed out in my other blog posts, he makes valuable points by confronting certain assumptions made by society about its own institutions and habits. He does so in an artistically valuable way, through a sort of defamiliarization (the best example perhaps being the bizarrely voyeuristic opera scenes in W&P and AK), and he anticipates real changes to come to society. I think that the irony and skepticism with which it is often tempting to view his moralizing stems in large part from his confused authorial and intellectual nature as interpreted by Isaiah Berlin in “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” I.e., he is an incredibly keen observer and critic of human nature and society, and much of his thought has real independent value, but for some reason he is always interested in tying his ideas into a centripetal system with prescriptive morals. Thus the conclusions he reaches sometimes seem unrealistic or hypocritical, as in his admonishment to the rich to join peasants working the land through a dense and intellectual complex text.
What then shall we do? reminded me of the scene in The Last Station when Lev curses all of his possessions, asking something like, “Who needs all of this?” Sophia responds that he himself enjoys all of their fancy things more than anyone else.
In many ways, this whole work does come off as the delusional jottings of a guilty rich man. While there is certainly a nice sentiment behind the idea that working in the fields with your peasants can be a nice way to get in touch with the poor, Tolstoy’s arguments concerning the need for the rich to turn over a new leaf seem to fall short of Christ’s message. Tolstoy writes that if the rich work the land a little bit instead of stuffing their mouths with nice food and cigarettes, they will a) become healthier and livelier b) their consciences will cease to suffer and c) they will stop fearing some divine revenge for their gluttony and idleness. To me, these seemed liked selfish ways for rich people to avoid feeling guilty and unhealthy, not Christian goals motivated by some love for the brotherhood of man. Furthermore, in a very ironic manner quite typical of Tolstoy, he writes an incredibly verbose work to justify why manual labor is more noble a pursuit for the rich that vain intellectualism.
Yet I think it’s unfair to judge writers and thinkers entirely out of the context of their time and place. For someone born into the 19th century Russian aristocracy, there is much that is noble and laudable in the philosophy of Tolstoy. By curbing his materialism even in the slightest and attempting to convince his wealthy contemporaries to take up more useful and rewarding pursuits, Tolstoy takes part in a process by which extreme displays of wealth become abhorrent. He envisions a future in which “it will be shameful to dine on five courses served by footmen,” a future that I would argue has in some ways been realized (though that’s an entirely different argument). This work is his attempt to help urge in that future. After all Christ is a model man, and Tolstoy is a self-admitted sinner. His quotation of Luke should not be seen as a delusional justification, but rather as a marker of a goal towards which we as society and individuals should strive.
Sam, it’s funny that you call this work “the delusional jottings of a guilty rich man.” As I was reading it, I couldn’t help but think of Levin’s and Pierre’s turns to the peasants. It seemed in Anna and in War and Peace, we were supposed to see them as a little foolish, thinking that they could escape answering “What is to be done?” by investing their lives into those of the peasants. But here Tolstoy does seem to be deluding himself — as you say, Professor Beyer — in the same exact way as those men. The certainty with which he concludes, “I think all who are not immoral people will agree” that “the vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people,” seems to contradict all the doubt and emptiness he observes in “A Confession.”
Perhaps, then, the work is meant ironically. Are we meant to see Tolstoy’s attempts to help the poor in the same way that we see Pierre’s, and take them as a lesson? Or maybe he genuinely has deluded himself, in which case we see that the author of a piece of literature is often its worst interpreter. Or finally, there might me something different about this kind of devotion. This is written after “A Confession,” and it seems to be motivated by religion. Is Tolstoy saying that to act out of religious conviction is the answer to “What is to be Done?”?
In reply to Matt’s posting, I think that Tolstoy genuinely believes all of what he writes. I also thought of Levin in particular when reading the work and how his mindset (which presumably is a good reflection of Tolstoy’s own a decade prior to the publication of What is to be done?) differs from what Tolstoy writes here. Levin sees himself as a true aristocrat in charge of protecting the land to ensure that it continues to be fruitful for his sons. He is against giving away his money and land to the peasants. Although Levin is a fair master and beneficial to the peasants, he runs his estate to be profitable. In the first part of the work when Tolstoy describes how he mistakenly attempted to distribute his wealth in the city, he is only gratifying his urge to help the unfortunate; he does not cause lasting change. I wonder if Tolstoy is making the same mistake that he acknowledges to have made in What I believe, that is treating his personal problem as universal, suggesting a personal solution for all men. As Weyland comments, his need to fit everything into a concise and central world view (see end of ch. XIII) may be the cause of a solution that we view as ironic and even delusional.
As a brief side note, Tolstoy writes that his problem in the city was that he was giving away money that he hadn’t earned. The implication is that he hasn’t earned the money from physical labor in the country, but isn’t much of his wealth the proceeds of his literary success?
Upon reading chapter IIX, my initial impression was that Tolstoi was appealing on behalf of women, serving as a sort of vanguard for their plight. However, his tone gradually evolves from one of compassion to the moralistic and generalizing voice that emerges in the final chapters of the work.
Indeed, Toltoi’s depiction of women is blatantly sexist. But before we let this characteristic undermine its validity, it is important to distinguish between the two types of women that Tolstoi depicts. Earlier in What Is to Be Done?, Tolstoi provides a rather poignant account of the women who inhabit the Rzhanoff house and the inn. Rather than chastise them for resorting to prostitution, Tolstoi instead defends and pities their position. He asserts that they have been “educated to live without work”, a socialization that perpetuates a life of prostitution and explains why such women have “no wish to reform their lives”. Moreover, Tolstoi acknowledges that people (like himself) live sumptuous and idle lives that demand disproportionate, impossible labor from overworked and undernourished women. Therefore, the suffering he sees among impoverished and “depraved” women is largely due to the workings (or lack of working) of Tolstoi’s class.
He continues on this vein of thought later when speaking of young girls in higher society, who flaunt “their bosoms” and “artificial protuberances” in order to gratify the expectations of base high society men. Again, instead of criticizing this coquetry, he condemns the society that feeds it, claiming that it is unright to judge them for the way they were educated and raised. However, this acknowledging tone gradually disintegrates into something sermonizing and almost confrontational. Addressing high society women as “You”, he accuses some of them as prostitutes and claims that they have failed to fulfill their narrowly defined purpose—the duty of womankind is to save mankind from all his vices. However, if one looks past his broad, sweeping generalizations and occasional devaluations, Tolstoi does assert a few valid claims concerning the role and plight—which he does seek to improve—of women in society.
I do think Tolstoy is a “precursor of today’s ‘sustainability’,” but not exactly following the definition of sustainability, and instead, touching upon themes that are associated with sustainability. Sustainability is an overarching umbrella with its three main sections being the “Triple E:” environment, equity, and economy, and how these three things can function to meet the need of the present without compromising the needs of the future. Tolstoy definitely talks about equity and economy, and not even each topic individually, but how one is so intertwined with the other.
In Chapter XVI, Tolstoy writes: “I see that the lives of nine-tenths of the working people essentially require exertion and labour, like every other natural mode of living; but that, in consequence of the devices by which the necessaries of life are taken away from these people, their lives become every year more difficult…,” and this describes the equity issues Tolstoy sees with the economy.
This passage also reminds me of Garrett Hardin’s sustainability article The Tragedy of the Commons. The takeaway message of this paper in that if everybody has equal right to a commodity, then the commodity will, without doubt, deteriorate because humans are inherently selfish and are not conscious of the future. Hardin uses an example of herders putting cows on a field, and each herder wants to keep adding more cows. The cows will eventually overexploit the grass on the field, and then all the cows die because there is no more grass to eat. This reminded me of Tolstoy’s example of the greediness of the “millionaires,” who are taking all of the wealth (much like today).
Sustainability has become a diluted and hackneyed term. Originally used to describe health and balance form a holistic perspective is now considered something measurable in an enclosed system. It has become an environmental buzzword and hashtag. The sustainability that we think of now emerged in the second half of the 20th century on the backs of environmental organizations to demonstrate how life could be lived beside the environment without infringing upon it for generations to come.
When Tolstoy wrote, the word ‘sustainable’ held different meanings. Something sustainable in the 19th century was “capable of being upheld or defended as valid, correct, or true” or “capable of being endured or borne; bearable” (OED). Tolstoy writes, “I am a weak, good-for-nothing parasite who can only exist under very peculiar conditions, can live only when thousands of people labour to support this life.” In his time of intense self-reflection and philosophical discovery, Tolstoy confronts ideas of sustainability (obviously without using the term) mostly in the criticism of both Russian social structure and himself. He saw this structure very much in the sense of the sustainability as defined both in the 19th century as well as the 20th. Russian society survived on the backs of peasants. To him this was both morally reprehensible and demonstrated an upside-down distribution of wealth (with the most laborious having the smallest share) that had potential for collapse. Coming at sustainability from these two perspective, Tolstoy is able to capture more of the essence of the term without saying it then environmentalists can today.