Leo Tolstoy. Slavery of our time (№ 456197)

People of sufficient classes are so accustomed to their role as slave owners that when it comes to improving the condition of the workers, they, feeling themselves in the position of landowners, immediately begin to think up all sorts of projects for the arrangement of their slaves, but they have no idea that they do not they have no right to dispose of other people, and that if they definitely wish people well, then the only thing they can and must do is to stop doing the evil that they are now doing. And the evil that they do is very definite and clear. The bad thing they do is not only that they use the forced labor of slaves and do not want to give up this use, but also that they themselves participate in the establishment and maintenance of this forced labor. This is what they need to stop doing. The workers, on the other hand, are so corrupted by their prolonged slavery that most of them think that if their situation is bad, then the employers are to blame for this, paying them too little and owning the instruments of production; it never occurs to them that their bad situation depends only on themselves, and that if they definitely want to improve their situation and that of their brothers, and not each only for their own benefit, then the main thing that they need to do is to stop doing it themselves. bad. And the evil thing they do is that, wishing to improve their material situation by the very means by which they themselves are enslaved, the workers, for the sake of being able to satisfy the habits that they have acquired, sacrificing their human dignity and freedom, act in humiliating, immoral positions or work with unnecessary and harmful items; the main thing is that they support governments, participate in them by taxes and direct service, and thereby enslave themselves.