Anna Karenina - Part 3

And in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walked

off, apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the

very point when to Levin it seemed that it was only just

beginning.

Having lost his antagonist, Levin continued the conversation with

the gray-whiskered landowner, trying to prove to him that all the

difficulty arises from the fact that we don't find out the

peculiarities and habits of our laborer; but the landowner, like

all men who think independently and in isolation, was slow in

taking in any other person's idea, and particularly partial to

his own. He stuck to it that the Russian peasant is a swine and

likes swinishness, and that to get him out of his swinishness one

must have authority, and there is none; one must have the stick,

and we have become so liberal that we have all of a sudden

replaced the stick that served us for a thousand years by lawyers

and model prisons, where the worthless, stinking peasant is fed

on good soup and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of air.

"What makes you think," said Levin, trying to get back to the

question, "that it's impossible to find some relation to the

laborer in which the labor would become productive?"

"That never could be so with the Russian peasantry; we've no

power over them," answered the landowner.

"How can new conditions be found?" said Sviazhsky. Having eaten

some junket and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the

discussion. "All possible relations to the labor force have been

defined and studied," he said. "The relic of barbarism, the

primitive commune with each guarantee for all, will disappear of

itself; serfdom has been abolished--there remains nothing but

free labor, and its forms are fixed and ready made, and must be

adopted. Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers--you can't get

out of those forms."

"But Europe is dissatisfied with these forms."

"Dissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all

probability."

"That's just what I was meaning," answered Levin. "Why

shouldn't we seek them for ourselves?"

"Because it would be just like inventing afresh the means for

constructing railways. They are ready, invented."

"But if they don't do for us, if they're stupid?" said Levin.

And again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of

Sviazhsky.

"Oh, yes; we'll bury the world under our caps! We've found the

secret Europe was seeking for! I've heard all that; but, excuse

me, do you know all that's been done in Europe on the question of

the organization of labor?"