acknowledging the land to be common property; not going as soldiers, and not paying taxes (except such as you voluntarily give for public works) and peacefully settling your disagreements through your village Communes—and other nations, seeing your good life, will not come and conquer you; or, if they come, on getting to know your good life they will adopt it and, instead of fighting you, will unite with you. For all the nations, like you yourselves, have suffered and now suffer from Governments; from the strife (in war, trade, and industry) of different Governments against one another, and from the strife of classes, and of different parties. Among all Christian nations an inner labour is going on, the chief aim of which is emancipation from Governments; but this emancipation is particularly difficult for nations in which the majority have abandoned agricultural life, and live an industrial town life employing the labour of other races. Among such nations emancipation is being prepared by socialism. But for you Russian labourers, living mainly an agricultural life, and supplying your own needs, this emancipation is particularly easy. Government for you has long ceased to be a necessity or even a convenience, and has become a great and uncompensated burden and misfortune.
The Government, only the Government, by its power deprives you of land. Only the Government collects from you in taxes and customs-dues a great part of what you obtain by your labour. It alone, deprives you of the labour of your sons, taking them for soldiers and sending them to be killed.
But Government is not some essential condition of human life, which will exist as long as mankind lasts, like the cultivation of the soil, marriage, the family, or human intercourse—Government is a human institution, and like all human institutions, is set up when it is needed and abolished when it becomes unnecessary.
Of old, human sacrifices, the worship of idols, divinations tortures, slavery, and many other things, were instituted. But they were all abolished when people were so far enlightened that these institutions became superfluous burdens and evils. So also with
