Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 11
“Oh, by what work? Do you call it work to get hold of concessions and speculate
with them?”
“Of course it’s work. Work in this sense, that if it were not for him and others like
him, there would have been no railways.”
“But that’s not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned profession.”
“Granted, but it’s work in the sense that his activity produces a result–the railways.
But of course you think the railways useless.”
“No, that’s another question; I am prepared to admit that they’re useful. But all
profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest.”
“But who is to define what is proportionate?”
“Making profit by dishonest means, by trickery,” said Levin, conscious that he
could not draw a distinct line between honesty and dishonesty. “Such as banking,
for instance,” he went on. “It’s an evil–the amassing of huge fortunes without labor,
just the same thing as with the spirit monopolies, it’s only the form that’s changed.
Le roi est mort, vive le roi. No sooner were the spirit monopolies abolished than the
railways came up, and banking companies; that, too, is profit without work.”
“Yes, that may all be very true and clever.... Lie down, Krak!” Stepan Arkadyevitch
called to his dog, who was scratching and turning over all the hay. He was
obviously convinced of the correctness of his position, and so talked serenely and
without haste. “But you have not drawn the line between honest and dishonest
work. That I receive a bigger salary than my chief clerk, though he knows more
about the work than I do–that’s dishonest, I suppose?”
“I can’t say.”
“Well, but I can tell you: your receiving some five thousand, let’s say, for your
work on the land, while our host, the peasant here, however hard he works, can
never get more than fifty roubles, is just as dishonest as my earning more than my
chief clerk, and Malthus getting more than a station-master. No, quite the contrary;
I see that society takes up a sort of antagonistic attitude to these people, which is
utterly baseless, and I fancy there’s envy at the bottom of it....”
“No, that’s unfair,” said Veslovsky; “how could envy come in? There is something
not nice about that sort of business.”
“You say,” Levin went on, “that it’s unjust for me to receive five thousand, while
the peasant has fifty; that’s true. It is unfair, and I feel it, but...”
“It really is. Why is it we spend our time riding, drinking, shooting, doing nothing,
while they are forever at work?” said Vassenka Veslovsky, obviously for the first time
in his life reflecting on the question, and consequently considering it with perfect
sincerity.
“Yes, you feel it, but you don’t give him your property,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch,
intentionally, as it seemed, provoking Levin.
There had arisen of late something like a secret antagonism between the two
brothers-in-law; as though, since they had married sisters, a kind of rivalry had
sprung up between them as to which was ordering his life best, and now this hostility
showed itself in the conversation, as it began to take a personal note.
542