Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

War And Revolution In Europe /271
mind the nearness of their own past and future relations with the mass of the people,
and the hand which guides them may grow unsteady. Being in great part drawn from
the proletariat, they may become to bourgeois society what the barbarians in the pay
of the Empire became to that of Rome-an element of dissolution. History abounds
in examples of the frenzy which seizes upon those in power. When the miserable and
disinherited of the earth shall unite in their own interest, trade with trade, nation
with nation, race with race; when they shall fully awake to their sufferings and their
purpose, doubt not that an occasion will assuredly present itselffor the employment
of their might in the service of right; and powerful as may be the Master of those
days, he will be weak before the starving masses leagued against him. To the great
evolution now taking place will succeed the long expected, the great revolution.
75. Tolstoy: Compulsory Military Service (1893)
As a consistent pacifist, Tolstoy was opposed to compulsory military service, regarding armed
fo rce as the very basis of state power. The following excerpts are taken Fom The Kingdom of
God is Within You (New York: Cassell Publishing, 1894; originally publis/led in Russian,
1893), translated by Constance Garnett.
ARMIES ... ARE NEEDED BY GOVERNMENTS and by the ruling classes above all to support
the present order, which, far from being the result of the people's needs, is often
in direct antagonism to them, and is only beneficial to the government and ruling
classes.
To keep their subjects in oppression and to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour
the government must have armed forces.
But there is not only one government. There are other governments, exploiting
their subjects by violence in the same way, and always ready to pounce down on any
other government and carry off the fruits ofthe toil of its enslaved subjects. And so
every government needs an army also to protect its booty from its neighbour brigands.
Every government is thus involuntarily reduced to the necessity of emulating
one another in the increase of their armies ...
Every increase in the army of one state, with the aim of self-defence against its
subjects, becomes a source of danger for neighbouring states and calls for a similar
increase in their armies.
The armed fo rces have reached their present number of millions not only
through the menace of danger from neighbouring states, but principally through the
necessity of subduing every effort at revolt on the part of the subjects.