I II I 1 I I 
 
 3 1822024927915 
 
 A DEBATE 
 
 CLARENCE S.DARROW 
 ARTHUR M.LEWIS
 
 UN VtRS TY OF CAL FORN A SAN DIEGO 
 
 31822024927915 
 
 Social Sciences humanities Library 
 
 Un,vers,ty of California, San Di 
 P,ease Note: This i tem is subj ect to 
 
 Date Due
 
 MARX versus TOLSTOY
 
 MARX versus TOLSTOY 
 A DEBATE 
 
 CLARENCE S.JDARROW 
 ARTHUR M. LEWIS 
 
 CHICAGO 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
 
 CO-OPERATIVE
 
 JOHN F. HIGGINS 
 
 PRINTER AND BINDER 
 
 376-382 MONROE STREET 
 CHICAGO. ILLINOIS
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This discussion treats an impor- 
 tant question that has received no 
 specific and thorough examination 
 elsewhere, notwithstanding its grav- 
 ity. Mr. Darrow is probably the 
 foremost of the American represen- 
 tatives of the non-resistance theory, 
 and his case is stated in these pages 
 more pointedly and forcibly than in 
 any of his published works. The 
 arguments launched against Mr. 
 Darrow will, I think, satisfy the op- 
 ponents of the non-resistance phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 ARTHUR M. LEWIS. 
 
 Chicago, Mar. 21, 1911.
 
 DARROW'S FIRST SPEECH
 
 Marx versus Tolstoy: 
 A Debate 
 
 DARROW'S FIRST SPEECH 
 
 As this is a Sunday morning, and 
 a semi-religious question, I take for 
 my text the 38th and 39th verses in 
 the 5th chapter of Matthew. I can- 
 not quote it literally. It is quite a 
 time since I have read it. But I 
 know the import of it. 
 
 "Ye have heard that it hath been 
 said," I am quoting from Matthew, 
 "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a 
 tooth. But I say unto you: Resist 
 not evil. But whosoever shall smite 
 you on the right cheek, turn to him 
 the other also." 
 
 I do not quote this because Mat- 
 thew wrote it. I really do not know
 
 12 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 whether he did or not; and I care a 
 great deal less. I could not find out 
 whether Matthew wrote it, unless I 
 should read Professor Foster's works 
 on religion, and that would take too 
 long. But I quote it because through- 
 out all the Western world this has 
 been the accepted statement of the 
 doctrine of non-resistance. It is, per- 
 haps, as good a statement of that 
 theory as one can find in a few short 
 sentences. Matthew had no patent 
 on it, of course. There are very few 
 thoughts in this world that are pat- 
 ented, and those are not worth it. It 
 was undoubtedly very old before 
 Matthew lived if he lived. And it 
 has been repeated a great manv times 
 since he died if he died. 
 
 The theory of non-resistance is 
 taken, generally, as the opposite to 
 the theory of punishment, or the the-
 
 DARROW'8 FIRST SPEECH 13 
 
 ory of vengeance, which, up to the 
 time of the Christian religion, was 
 the theory of the world and since 
 that time has been doubly the theory 
 of the world. Its announcement, as 
 generally admitted by those who have 
 written and spoken upon the subject, 
 has reference, first, to the treatment 
 of those whom society calls crimi- 
 nals; next, perhaps, to governments 
 in their relations to each other and 
 to their subjects; and then to women 
 and children, insane, prisoners, and 
 the like. It relates to the way those 
 who have the power have generally 
 exercised that power in relation to 
 the rest of the world. 
 
 Now, I might say in the beginning 
 that I am not quite sure of this the- 
 ory, or of any other theory. I used 
 to be a good deal more positive than 
 I am today. And, especially, I am
 
 14 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 not at all sure that there is any 
 theory in philosophy, or morals (or 
 laws), that works out in sociology. 
 The science of society, if there is 
 such a science, is not an exact science. 
 You cannot demonstrate any theory 
 of society the way you can demon- 
 strate the multiplication table, un- 
 less it is Socialism and you cannot 
 demonstrate that in the same way 
 unless you are speaking to an audi- 
 ence of Socialists. You might dem- 
 onstrate Single Tax to a Single 
 Taxer, but you could not do it to 
 anybody else. Exact science has little 
 to do something to do, but little to 
 do with the ways in which man or- 
 ganizes himself on the planet. He 
 does not move in straight lines, or 
 in regular curves, or even in crooked 
 lines, that can be depended upon. 
 When he learns what the crooked
 
 D ARROWS , FIRST SPEECH 15 
 
 line is he goes straight. And no the- 
 ory of life, no theory of society can 
 be worked out as to communal life, 
 in the same way that you can work 
 out the science of mathematics, or of 
 astronomy, or geology, or any sci- 
 ence dealing with anything that 
 keeps still. 
 
 But the question is, whether the 
 theory of punishment, as opposed to 
 the theory of non-resistance, is most 
 in harmony with life, and tends to 
 the progress of the world; whether 
 human life in its slow evolution is 
 going toward the theory of non-re- 
 sistance, or is going toward the the- 
 ory of violence, and force, and pun- 
 ishment. 
 
 If one looks back at the origin 'of 
 the State we do not find that it had 
 the immaculate birth that most peo- 
 ple believe. It was born in force and
 
 16 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 violence. The strong took a club, 
 and made a state for himself. It 
 was a simple state, kept there by the 
 force of the strong man's club and 
 his will. From that it has gone on 
 until it takes a good many strong 
 clubs, together with a good many 
 armies, navies, policemen, lawyers, 
 judges, etc., to keep the state in or- 
 der. But through it all has run the 
 theory of force, and through it all 
 the power has come not from the 
 people who asked it, but from the 
 people who took it because they were 
 the stronger. In the beginning the 
 chief preserved order and the law, 
 by saying what should be the law and 
 enforcing order himself with his 
 club. 
 
 In modern society the controlling 
 forces arrange things as they want 
 them, and provide that certain things
 
 17 
 
 are criminal. Sometimes those things 
 have a semblance of natural crime, 
 and sometimes not. The largest 
 number of crimes are crimes against 
 property. Sometimes you may trace 
 them more or less directly to viola- 
 tion of some law that is in the natural 
 world. But the fact is that the class 
 which rules society come together 
 and say what men must do, and what 
 they must not do. And the man who 
 violates it commits crime. 
 
 There are in society, and always 
 have been, a large number of people, 
 due mainly to conditions of society, 
 who are what we call defectives; 
 who are anti-social in their nature; 
 whose life and conduct tend toward 
 the disintegration of society, instead 
 of the life of society. Very largely 
 the treatment of crime is a question 
 of treatment of these anti-social indi-
 
 18 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 viduals. It is a question of treatment 
 of those who persevere, in one way 
 or another, in violating the rules of 
 the game which society has made. 
 
 Way back under the Mosaic Law 
 and Moses did not have a patent 
 on it either, but under the law of the 
 world, the doctrine of an "Eye for an 
 eye, a tooth for a tooth," prevailed. 
 If a man killed another his life 
 should be taken. If he stole some- 
 thing he should be punished. If he 
 burglarized, then it meant something 
 else, generally death. If he did 
 something, the world would do some- 
 thing to him. And they would do 
 that something that the world at that 
 time thought was the right thing to 
 do to him. In this way, even down to 
 a hundred years ago, there were in 
 England about two hundred crimes 
 punishable by death. Almost every-
 
 DARROWJ8 FIRST SPEECH 19 
 
 thing that could be conceived was 
 punished by death. And the law- 
 yers, and judges, and preachers of 
 that day had no thought that society 
 could hang together if men were not 
 hanged regularly for stealing sheep 
 and anything that happened. The 
 old doctrine of an eye for an eye, and 
 a tooth for a tooth, was the common 
 doctrine of the world, and that doc- 
 trine prevails today. 
 
 All penal codes are really built 
 upon that doctrine. When you trace 
 penal codes back to the beginning, 
 they mean one thing, and only one, 
 i. e., vengeance. A man has done 
 something. He has caused some one 
 to suffer. Therefore society will do 
 something to him. In the early 
 stages, if some one slew another, the 
 members of his tribe had the right to 
 go and take the life of any member
 
 20 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 of the other tribe in return. It did 
 not matter whether he had been 
 guilty or not. It was the law of ven- 
 geance, the law of punishment and 
 punishment and vengeance have al- 
 ways meant the same thing in the 
 world, no matter where it has been. 
 
 Punishments of crimes have al- 
 ways been arbitrary. One man would 
 say that for stealing a horse the some- 
 body stealing it should go to jail for 
 thirty days. Another would say that 
 he should go to the penitentiary for 
 a year; another would say five years; 
 and somebody else would say he 
 should be hanged by the neck until 
 dead. Punishments have never de- 
 pended upon the act done, but upon 
 the man who saw the act done and 
 the mind possessed by the ruling 
 power. Of half a dozen judges given 
 authority to administer punishment
 
 DARROW'S FIRST SPEECH 21 
 
 for a certain act no two judges would 
 administer the same kind of punish- 
 ment. One would say" thirty days, 
 another thirty years; just according 
 to the mind he has. Some judge 
 might give you less after breakfast 
 than he would before. And another 
 judge might give you more if he had 
 attended a banquet through the small 
 hours in the morning preceding, and 
 did not feel well when he adminis- 
 tered the sentence. All those things 
 enter into it, and when you come to 
 sum it all up, the real theory of it is 
 a question of vengeance: The indi- 
 vidual has done something. How 
 much shall we do to him in return? 
 How much will we make him suffer, 
 because he has made some one else 
 suffer? 
 
 Now, the non-resistant says, there 
 is no such thing as crime, i. e., some
 
 22 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOT 
 
 of them say that. And they say that 
 all punishment is bad, not heavy 
 punishment alone but all punish- 
 ment; that man has no right to pun- 
 ish his fellow man, that only evil 
 results from it; that the theory of 
 vengeance and the theory of punish- 
 ment is wrong; that it cures nobody, 
 it does not tend to benefit society, it 
 does not tend to change the defec- 
 tive, it does not tend to build up soci- 
 ety. It is wrong and untrue in its 
 whole theory; and the theory of non- 
 resistance is the true theory as to 
 crime. Whatever you may think of 
 the theory, the world has been stead- 
 ily going that way. It has been abol- 
 ishing the death penalty, until today 
 in most civilized countries there are 
 only one or two crimes punishable 
 by death; and it is very rarely that 
 death is meted out for those.
 
 DARROW_'S FIRST SPEECH 23 
 
 Punishment has been growing less 
 severe, and the methods of inflict- 
 ing punishment are less severe. Of 
 course, in the old day when men were 
 less squeamish and more honest they 
 had their hangings in broad day- 
 light. Today we do not do it, not 
 because we are better, but because 
 we are squeamish. We have hang- 
 ings in the jail, so that the effects of 
 the punishment will be entirely lost 
 to the community. 
 
 Ou* terms of imprisonment are not 
 so lon^. Our methods of treating the 
 imprisoned are more humane. We 
 sentence a man to prison. Of course, 
 in the old time he used to be put into 
 a vile place, where he would be half 
 clad and half fed, and where he 
 would be covered with rags full of 
 vermin, and where he would suffer 
 all sorts of physical pain. Today we
 
 24 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 send him to jail, and we have the jail 
 steam heated and electric lighted. 
 We have a doctor to take care of him 
 if so, perchance, the penalty is death 
 he won't dies before his time comes ; 
 and if he is to be hanged he gets bet- 
 ter food.than he ever did before. So 
 far as men are entrusted with the 
 power of carrying out these provi- 
 sions they do it as humanely as they 
 can do it. 
 
 In the old times the insane were 
 treated like criminals. They were 
 locked up in cells; they were loaded 
 with chains; they WERE criminals, 
 because the rest of the world did not 
 understand them. We have gotten 
 over that. We have learned to treat 
 them as human beings, and to treat 
 them as those suffering from ailment, 
 whereas once in the history of the 
 world they were visited with the old
 
 DARROW'S FIRST SPEECH 25 
 
 law of vengeance, the law of force. 
 The world some time will learn to 
 treat all of its defectives, and all 
 those who violate the code, the same 
 as they treat the insane and the ill 
 today. And we are learning it, more 
 and more, every day. 
 
 The theory of non-resistance does 
 not, necessarily, say that a man can- 
 not be restrained, although very 
 likely that would not be necessary 
 under any decent law of society. It 
 is possible there are some who are so 
 born, and have been so treated by 
 society, that they would need to be 
 restrained just as those afflicted with 
 small-pox may be restrained in a 
 hospital. But to restrain them and 
 treat them until cured is one thing; 
 to say that men because of some in- 
 herent wickedness deserve punish- 
 ment is another thing. It would be
 
 26 
 
 absurd to restrain men suffering from 
 small-pox and turn them out from a 
 hospital in six weeks, whether cured 
 or not. If hospitals were run in the 
 same way as jails, we would send 
 them up for thirty days ; and if they 
 got well in a week we would keep 
 them there. 
 
 The whole theory of punishment, 
 so far as there is any theory in it 
 and there is not much in it, except 
 the idea of vengeance but the whole 
 theory, so far as there is one, comes 
 from the religious conception; that 
 some people are made inherently 
 bad, that their minds are evil, or 
 their souls for that matter, or what- 
 ever is the intangible thing about 
 them that makes them evil. And 
 they deserve punishment, because 
 they have a "wicked, abandoned and 
 malignant heart." We always have
 
 DARROW'S FIRST SPEECH 27 
 
 to put that "wicked, abandoned and 
 malignant heart" in the indictment; 
 otherwise it is no good. If he has 
 that in his heart he can be punished. 
 When twelve jurors and a judge get 
 together, how can they tell whether 
 his heart is bad or not? You could 
 tell better if you dissect him. It goes 
 upon the theory that man is apart 
 from all the other beings that inhabit 
 the universe; that he is a free moral 
 agent; that he is a sort of a wild train 
 running at large through the uni- 
 verse; that he is not governed by 
 rules and conditions like the rest of 
 the universe about us. But that the 
 Lord created him, put a mind in him, 
 a good heart in some of them; a 
 wicked, abandoned and malignant 
 heart in others; and sent them out to 
 run wild independent of all the uni- 
 verse about them. And whenever
 
 28 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 the good people catch up with these 
 wicked, abandoned and malignant 
 people then we punish the wicked 
 because, intrinsically, they are bad, 
 because they chose the evil instead of 
 the good. They could do better if 
 they wanted to be better, but they did 
 not choose. Society sends them to 
 jail, just as brutal parents whip their 
 children because they are bad instead 
 of good. 
 
 As a matter of fact, science and 
 evolution teach us that man is an ani- 
 mal, a little higher than the other 
 orders of animals; that he is gov- 
 erned by the same natural laws that 
 govern the rest of the universe ; that 
 he is governed by the same laws that 
 govern animal life, aye, and plant 
 life; that free moral agency is a 
 myth, a delusion, and a snare. It 
 teaches us that he is surrounded by
 
 DARROW8 FIRST SPEECH 29 
 
 environment, the product of all the 
 past, the product of all the present; 
 that he is here just like any other 
 subject of natural law; and that it is 
 not goodness, it is not badness, that 
 makes him what he is. It is the con- 
 dition of life in which he lives. And 
 if he lives unwisely, if he is a defec- 
 tive, if he is anti-social, it is not that 
 he chose it; but it is due to a thou- 
 sand conditions over which he has 
 not the slightest control. And the 
 wise society seeks to change his en- 
 vironment, to place him in harmony 
 with life. They know that they can 
 only change the man by changing the 
 conditions under which he lives ; that 
 good and evil, so far as he is con- 
 cerned, do not exist; that right and 
 wrong are religious myths; that it is 
 a question of the adaptability of the 
 individual to social life, and a grad-
 
 30 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 ual change of the environment under 
 which he lives. 
 
 With the state is the same thing. 
 The theory of force and violence ap- 
 plied to the state has drenched the 
 world in blood. It has built great 
 navies, and great armies. One nation 
 builds a great navy and a great army, 
 and destroys the resources of its peo- 
 ple to build armies and navies. And 
 another nation must build a greater 
 navy and a greater army, because of 
 the first. It makes of the nations of 
 the earth armed camps, and the 
 stronger the one arms itself, the 
 stronger must the rest. England 
 builds her wonderful navy out of the 
 toil of the poor, out of what should 
 buy food for the men who produce 
 it. And when she builds it, then 
 Germany must build one as large, 
 and so must France, and so must
 
 DARROW8 FIRST SPEECH 31 
 
 Russia build one, too. And of course 
 patriotic America must build one. 
 We need a navy for fear that a band 
 of Senegambians might send a fleet 
 to devastate Chicago some night. 
 The theory of force and violence as 
 applied to political states has built 
 up the navies and armies of the 
 world, and has caused most of the 
 bloodshed of the human race. Is 
 there any doubt but what nations 
 would be stronger if they burned 
 their battleships instead of building 
 new ones? Can you increase the 
 power of one nation by building 
 ships, when you simply make others 
 build larger? You never change the 
 relative proportion, which alone 
 makes the strength. If instead of 
 adding to the navies the world over, 
 we gradually got rid of them, the
 
 32 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 relative strength would be what it 
 was before. 
 
 In industrial life it is the same 
 thing. The reign of force, and the 
 reign of violence, means competi- 
 tion, means industrial strife; is re- 
 sponsible for the greed and selfish- 
 ness and avarice for the fortunes of 
 the great and the poverty of the 
 poor. It is only in these later days, 
 when the world is looking to some- 
 thing better, when they are learning 
 that force and violence is wrong, that 
 it is wrong that merchants compete 
 and cut each other's throats and 
 workmen compete against each other 
 to show how much less they can work 
 for; and that it is better to organize 
 society on a co-operative basis where 
 each man is to help his fellowman 
 instead of fighting his fellowman.
 
 BARROW'S FIRST SPEECH 33 
 
 The dreams of the world may be 
 far off, and we must fit every dream 
 ito every reality. For the world is 
 imperfect. But if, as society pro- 
 gresses, there shall one day be a civ- 
 ilization better than the world has 
 known, it will be a society where 
 force and violence and bloodshed 
 and cruelty have disappeared. It 
 will be a world of brotherhood. A 
 world not of destruction, of compe- 
 tion, of violence, of hatred, of en- 
 mity; but a world of co-operation, of 
 mutual help, of love, of brotherli- 
 ness; and that alone makes for the 
 progress uf the world.
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 37 
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Mr. Darrow, Ladies 
 
 and Gentlemen: 
 
 You will hear from me a very dif- 
 ferent theory of non-resistance to the 
 one which has just been presented. 
 If I believed that the theory of non- 
 resistance had been properly stated 
 this debate would close at this point, 
 because I have heard next to nothing 
 from the lips of my opponent with 
 which I am not thoroughly in har- 
 mony. Mr. Darrow is probably the 
 first man to treat this subject as if it 
 were a department of modern crim- 
 inology, as if it were a matter of 
 penal codes, a question of the pun- 
 ishment of criminals, their treatment 
 in general, and the treatment of the
 
 38 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 sick, the insane, etc. These are 
 tacked on to the theory by my oppo- 
 nent, but they are only indirectly 
 related to the question. In all that 
 relates to the question of punishment 
 of criminals I am in agreement with 
 Mr. D arrow. 
 
 The subject of this debate is the 
 theory expressed in the words : "Re- 
 sist not evil." What is "evil"? Does 
 it consist chiefly in the deeds per- 
 formed by criminals, as my opponent 
 seems to think? The criminal, ac- 
 cording to Mr. Darrow, is not re- 
 sponsible for what he does; the evil 
 goes further back than the criminal; 
 it does not consist of what the crim- 
 inal does, but of the causes which 
 lead the criminal to do as he does. 
 What are those causes? Let us go 
 back to the causes of crime. 
 
 It will be agreed, I have no doubt,
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 39 
 
 by my opponent, and I shall maintain 
 it whether he agrees or not, that the 
 criminal is the product of society, 
 that is, the product of a society 
 which, through the instrumentality 
 of private property in the means of 
 life, shuts out some men from the 
 opportunity to live honestly and de- 
 cently. This is the prolific cause of 
 criminals. Whatever evil there may 
 be in crime must, in my opinion, be 
 laid not to the criminal, but at the 
 door of society, especially at the door 
 of the ruling class, the existence of 
 which is responsible for the criminal. 
 And the question of "Resist not evil" 
 in this field is not, shall society resist 
 the actions of the criminal whom it 
 has itself produced, but shall men 
 who have been shut off from the 
 meajis of life resist the society which 
 has so shut them off? Shall they re-
 
 40 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 sist the ruling class which has mo- 
 nopolized their means of life, and 
 left them face to face with starva- 
 tion? Shall that ruling class the 
 existence of which is the real evil in 
 the problem be resisted f This is 
 the question of resisting evil in my 
 use of the terms. And I say, yes ; we 
 should resist this evil to the point of 
 its abolition. 
 
 I am going to give you another ex- 
 position of the origin of the theory, 
 or doctrine, of "Resist not evil." This 
 theory, like all other theories, has 
 what the philosophers would call a 
 sufficient reason, or, as the scientists 
 would term it, an efficient cause. 
 Sufficient reason and efficient cause 
 are back of all things. This is true 
 of all theories, without regard to 
 whether they are true or false. In 
 fact, we can only judge the merit of
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 41 
 
 a theory when we know its cause. 
 Theories do not drop out of the 
 clouds. They are not communicated 
 to men by divine persons who live 
 outside the universe. They cannot 
 be accounted for on the ground of 
 spontaneous generation. Theories 
 grow out of the world of material 
 reality, and social theories grow out 
 of social phenomena. 
 
 The causes for the theory, put for- 
 ward by Mr. Darrow, are hazy and 
 indistinct and lack historical preci- 
 sion. They do not go back to the 
 origin of the theory itself. This 
 omission on the part of my opponent 
 I shall proceed to remedy. He has 
 given us the names of the men who 
 are responsible for this theory 
 Jesus Christ and His disciples, etc. 
 I shall endeavor to give you the 
 forces and conditions which caused
 
 42 MARX VER8U8 TOLSTOY 
 
 the theory to be impressed upon the 
 minds of the men who taught it. 
 
 It is generally supposed that prog- 
 ress is universal. So far from this 
 being the case, the majority of the 
 human race do not even understand 
 the idea of progress. If it is ex- 
 plained 'to them they treat it with 
 contempt. This is the mental atti- 
 tude of all the people of the Orient. 
 And this attitude the Orientals held 
 in common with the ancients and 
 with savages. Herbert Spencer, in 
 his "Principles of Sociology," says: 
 
 "Primitive man is conservative to a de- 
 gree. Even on contrasting the higher races 
 with one another, and even on contrasting 
 different classes in the same society, it is 
 observable that the least developed are the 
 most averse to change." 
 
 Walter Bagehot, in his brilliant
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 43 
 
 little book, "Physics and Politics," 
 maintains: 
 
 "Our habitual instructors, our ordinary 
 conversation, our inevitable and ineradicable 
 prejudices, tend to make us think that 'prog- 
 ress* is the normal fact in human society, 
 the fact which we should all expect to see, 
 the fact which we should all be surprised 
 if we did not see. But history refutes this. 
 The ancients had no conception of prog- 
 ress ; they did not even so much as reject 
 the idea, they did not even entertain the 
 idea. Oriental nations are just the same 
 now. Since history began they have always 
 been what they are." 
 
 And the greatest of all authorities 
 on this question, Sir Henry Sumner 
 Maine, says: 
 
 "Vast populations, some of them with a 
 civilization considerable but peculiar, detest 
 that which in the language of the West 
 would be called Reform. The entire Mo-
 
 44 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 hammedan world detests it. The multi- 
 tudes of colored men who swarm the great 
 continent of Africa detest it, and it is de- 
 tested by that large part of mankind which 
 we are accustomed to leave on one side as 
 barbarous and savage. The millions and 
 millions of men who fill the Chinese Em- 
 pire loathe it (and what is more) despise 
 it. * * * The enormous mass of the 
 Indian population dreads change. * * * 
 To the fact that enthusiasm for change is 
 comparatively rare must be added the fact 
 that it is extremely modern. It is known 
 but to a small part of mankind, and to that 
 part but for a short period during a history 
 of incalculable length." 
 
 This opposition to change, which 
 is dominant in the Oriental world, is 
 responsible for the stagnation of the 
 East. 
 
 Now, this stagnation is not with- 
 out a cause, and the cause is not far 
 to seek. We have only to read their 
 literature and to examine their re-
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 45 
 
 ligions. These two are really one 
 the great bulk of their literature is 
 religious. The greatest and most 
 widespread of these religions is that 
 of Prince Gautama Buddha Bud- 
 dhism. Today this faith rules the 
 minds of five hundred million men, 
 or one-third of the entire human 
 race. It has enough in common with 
 all the other Oriental religions to 
 typify them all. 
 
 The first and most fundamental of 
 the truths of Buddhism is one called 
 the "First of Four Noble Truths." 
 Four truths make up the system. 
 That first truth is, that "everything 
 is Misery." The ruling principle of 
 the universe is evil. You cannot be 
 protected and guarded from evil. 
 It is inherent in all things. It cannot 
 be escaped, it cannot be eradicated, it 
 cannot be changed. It is the absolute
 
 46 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 and supreme law of the universe. 
 This is the first great dogma of the 
 Buddhist religion. 
 
 The logical consequence of this 
 belief in the supremacy of evil is that 
 the word "sorrow" is a great word in 
 the Buddhist faith. In fact, the faith 
 itself is summed up in the word 
 
 "sorrow." 
 
 The second of these noble truths 
 is "Sorrow's Cause," or the "Cause 
 of Sorrow." What is this thing that 
 is the Cause of Sorrow? In the esti- 
 mation of the Orientals it is the thing 
 modern sociologists call "desire" 
 the desire to escape and to overcome 
 oppression; the desire to conquer 
 evil, and to put in its place happiness 
 and joy. The desire to do this is the 
 one damnable thing in the estimation 
 of the Oriental. He believes that 
 evil is so supreme that any attempt
 
 LEWIS' F1R8T SPEECH 47 
 
 to resist it is a waste of energy, and 
 only leads to greater evils ; therefore 
 we should stamp out and exterminate 
 all desire, all ambition, all enter- 
 prise, all hope of defeating evil; we 
 should crush all our yearnings and 
 longings and wants and submit, prac- 
 tice resignation, renunciation, meek- 
 ness and submission, bow to fate 
 "Resist not evil." Evil is so omni- 
 potent that resistance is madness. Ex- 
 istence is so ruled by evil that the 
 only salvation lies in escaping from 
 life back into the peaceful realm of 
 death. Edwin Arnold, in "The Light 
 of Asia," expresses it thus: 
 
 "The aching craze to live ends, and life 
 
 glides 
 Lifeless, to Nameless quiet, Nameless 
 
 peace : 
 Blessed Nirvana, sinless, stirless rest 
 
 The change that never changes."
 
 48 MARX VERSUS TOL8TO? 
 
 And yet, this desire, which is the 
 thing condemned by the Orientals, is 
 regarded by Lester F. Ward, and all 
 other great sociologists, as the main- 
 spring of social progress. Without 
 it no progress is possible. But, ac- 
 cording to the religion of the Orien- 
 tals, there is no triumph of religion 
 until every possible tendency, every 
 possible impulse, that could lead to 
 progress, stimulating human ad- 
 vancement and the march of mind in 
 the conquest of matter, has been 
 stamped out, until progress cannot 
 be possible in any direction; not 
 until then have we reached the third 
 truth: "Sorrow's Ceasing." The con- 
 clusion is: Life is not worth living; 
 evil is triumphant; we must submit 
 while we are here, and hope to get 
 out of it as soon as possible. 
 
 This is the origin of the doctrine
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 49 
 
 of non-resistance of evil. No matter 
 what evil may attack us we must bow 
 in our helplessness and say with the 
 Mohammedan, "It is Kismet" it is 
 fate. 
 
 The Christian religion, of which 
 the mythical Matthew is an alleged 
 exponent, is an Oriental religion. 
 Some of us may have forgotten that, 
 but it is none the less true. We have 
 corrupted it with Western ideas ; that 
 it to say, we have improved it by 
 injecting some civilization into it. 
 But it is none the less Oriental in all 
 its leading features. Its petrified 
 sacred books are just as much op- 
 posed to change as are all sacred 
 books and all things Oriental. What 
 horrible hells have been prepared 
 and threatened to those who ventured 
 to make any addition to the knowl- 
 edge contained in the Scriptures.
 
 50 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 And the Hypatias, Bacons, Brunos 
 and Ferrers who have dared to make 
 any addition, and who have sought 
 by the process of education to make 
 their additions common property, 
 have always found their Christian 
 brothers ready to anticipate the so- 
 called wishes of the Almighty and 
 pay them installments of hell in ad- 
 vance. 
 
 The theory of non-resistance of 
 evil is based on theological religion. 
 It flies in the face of all modern sci- 
 ence. Back of it stands the dogma 
 that the Maker of All Things must 
 be all-wise. If evil exists in the 
 world it can only be by His permis- 
 sion. Not a sparrow can fall to the 
 ground without His knowledge; not 
 a hair on a human head be hurt with- 
 out His consent. Therefore, if cities 
 are decimated by the plague it can
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 51 
 
 only be because He is willing it 
 should be so. The plague is evil. 
 Nobody disputes that. But shall it 
 be resisted? Not according to the 
 doctrine of "Resist not evil," Ac- 
 cording to that theory, sanitation, 
 drains, whitewash, and chloride of 
 lime are inventions of the devil. The 
 plague cannot be there unless the 
 powers that rule the universe desire 
 it. Any sanitation is an attempt to 
 thwart the desire of these powers. 
 If the theory of non-resistance had 
 not been set aside, and if men of sci- 
 ence had not set themselves to resist 
 the evil of the plague, the black 
 plague, like the white plague, would 
 be still among our visitors. Lightning 
 which struck public buildings and 
 laid them waste could not do so un- 
 less the Maker of the Universe con- 
 sented. Benjamin Franklin, who at-
 
 52 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 tempted to resist with the lightning 
 rod, was regarded as one of the ad- 
 vance agents of his Satanic Majesty. 
 The evils of disease and pain, sup- 
 posed to have come into the world by 
 the will of God, take various forms. 
 Take the pain of women in child- 
 birth, especially in extreme cases. 
 That pain is evil. Shall we resist it? 
 Or shall we, because it is a creation 
 of the Almighty, allow it to go unre- 
 sisted? Some men said: Resist! 
 They tried anaesthetics for women in 
 child-birth. And the theologians 
 said it was another attempt to thwart 
 the Almighty, and under no circum- 
 stances should it be permitted until 
 Dr. Arthur Simpson Young pre- 
 sented the preachers an argument 
 they could not answer. Dr. Young 
 said: "You forget I am only imitat- 
 ing the Almighty Himself, who be-
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 53 
 
 fore He took the rib from Adam put 
 him into a deep sleep." 
 
 The essential difference between 
 science and religion gathers around 
 this theory. Science believes in try- 
 ing to conquer and abolish evil of 
 all kinds. This is the supreme aim 
 of science. It is the very breath of 
 life of modern civilization. Reli- 
 gion, theological religion, on the 
 contrary, with its cringing submis- 
 sion to evil, meets with defeat just 
 in proportion as science advances 
 and knowledge spreads. All through 
 the centuries the attitude of non- 
 resistance to existing evils has re- 
 strained the progress of the race. 
 Science has been successful in the 
 Occident; it has conquered, and it is 
 pressing Christian theories to such 
 an extent that the modern Christian 
 cannot now even understand or com-
 
 54 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 prehend his own doctrines. Where 
 is the Christian who can see any 
 sense, if he is smitten on one cheek, 
 in turning the other to his assailant? 
 Can you imagine a Christian in a 
 restaurant running after a man who 
 has taken his hat, to give him his 
 coat? 
 
 Oriental ideas have become obso- 
 lete, the doctrine of non-resistance 
 along with them. Only here and 
 there do we find a really clever man, 
 like Darrow, ready to inflict an Ori- 
 ental quietism on the pulsing, throb- 
 bing life of the modern world. 
 
 Christianity is largely derived 
 from Buddhism. The Christianity 
 of the New Testament just as surely 
 took its doctrine of "Resist not evil" 
 from Buddhism as it took its personal 
 devil from the superstition of Per- 
 sia. This theory of non-resistance
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 55 
 
 has passed from Buddha to Christ, 
 from Christ to Tolstoy, and from 
 Tolstoy to Darrow. 
 
 Sometimes a theory, born in one 
 society under given social and mate- 
 rial conditions, if transplanted to an- 
 other country and a different mate- 
 rial environment, will die out. But 
 if there happens to be something in 
 that environment which lends color 
 to it, it may live on indefinitely. This 
 is why the non-resistance theory of 
 Christ reappears in the writings of 
 Tolstoy. All Orientals have absolute 
 monarchies. The monarch is all- 
 powerful, and resistance to the evils 
 of government is only another name 
 for sudden death. The Jews of the 
 time of Christ were so ruled by the 
 Roman broadsword that resistance 
 spelled extermination. And Christ 
 gave the people the best advice he
 
 56 
 
 could have given them under the cir- 
 cumstances when he tried to per- 
 suade them not to resist. This condi- 
 tion is repeated in Russia, and it is 
 chiefly for this reason that the theory 
 reappears in Russia. The Russian 
 autocracy is so supreme and power- 
 ful that to resist it is only a way to a 
 sudden grave. So the theory of non- 
 resistance keeps alive in Russia, be- 
 cause it happens to harmonize with 
 social conditions there. 
 
 The great problem of America, 
 and of Western Europe generally, is 
 the problem of Capital versus Labor. 
 We take our side with labor. Capital 
 robs labor; and that robbery is evil. 
 It is the crowning evil of the mod- 
 ern world. Shall we resist that evil? 
 I say, yes. Darrow says, yes and no; 
 practically, yes; theoretically, no. 
 The truth of the matter is, there arc
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 57 
 
 two Darrows: A Mr. Hyde, of non- 
 resistance; and a Dr. Jekyll, full of 
 fight. These have both gone into 
 print. Darrow, the Oriental poet 
 and dreamer, wrote a book, entitled, 
 "Resist not Evil." Darrow, the 
 American citissen, ready at all times 
 to help the laboring class resist any 
 and all forms of evil that the ruling 
 class may try to heap upon it, wrote 
 a pamphlet: "The Open Shop." 
 The motto of the pamphlet is : "The 
 cause combatted for is yours. The 
 efforts and sacrifices made to win it 
 should therefore be yours." Darrow, 
 the Darrow who wrote the pamphlet, 
 is always engaged when the unions 
 get into a tight corner. Why do you 
 suppose they engage him? Because 
 he is a non-resistant, and does not be- 
 lieve in resisting evils? No. They 
 engage him, because they know that
 
 58 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 in spite of his acceptance of a 
 dreamy, poetic theory he is as full of 
 fight as a mountain lion, and will not 
 give up until every weapon has been 
 tried and the last possible blow is 
 struck. I will read one or two pas- 
 sages from "The Open Shop." He 
 says, speaking of unionism, that: 
 
 "Individually the man is helpless, the 
 trade union has furnished the common 
 workman the one institution to which he 
 can look for friendship and protection; the 
 one body on which he can rely for the re- 
 dress of his grievances, and the protection 
 of his rights, and if society were to remove 
 that protection and safeguard, and cut the 
 workman off from his fellows and leave 
 him to fight his individual battles against 
 the great combination of capital for which 
 he works, it would leave the laborer stripped 
 and naked to commence his long and pain- 
 ful journey back to serfdom once again, and 
 when he starts out upon this road, the great
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 59 
 
 mass of men whose independence has been 
 won along with the workman's struggles, 
 the great middle class, must go back with 
 him." 
 
 If you resist not evil, or even if 
 the unorganized worker resists alone, 
 that means back to serfdom. This is 
 the Darrow of the twentieth century. 
 Again he says : 
 
 "The history f trade unionism as, in 
 fact, the history of the rise of the common 
 people toward the measure of independence 
 they now enjoy is one long tale of strug- 
 gles, defeats, and victories, and every sin- 
 gle step in their progress has been against 
 the most stubborn opposition and at the 
 greatest cost." 
 
 There is little non-resistance here. 
 He has the following to say about 
 the "scab": 
 
 "The very reason that keeps men from
 
 60 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 joining the unions of their craft makes them 
 more servile and cringing to their employ- 
 ers ; makes them ever subservient to his de- 
 mands. They have learned well the lesson 
 of the masters that to thrive you need only 
 work hard and do all in your power to get 
 the good opinion of your boss. So this class 
 is ever ready to submit to encroachments; 
 to take longer hours; to consent to poorer 
 conditions ; to make no trouble over unsafe 
 tools, and to even let their wages be re- 
 duced." 
 
 According to this, non-resistance 
 leads to disaster. These are the views 
 of the fighting Darrow. Darrow, the 
 non-resistant, has no say in this 
 pamphlet. 
 
 In this debate you have your 
 choice of two opposing philosophies. 
 Mr. Darrow offers you the philos- 
 ophy of the Orient; the philosophy 
 of non-resistance; the philosophy of 
 resignation, renunciation, helpless-
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 61 
 
 ness, submission and despair the 
 philosophy of eternal stagnation. 
 This philosophy of stagnation is the 
 mental reflection of the stagnant life 
 of Asia, and, in its turn, it acts as a 
 preservative of the stagnation which 
 gave it birth. Japan alone, of all the 
 Asiatic nations, has broken this long 
 trance and thrown off the paralyzing 
 stupor; and this because she has re- 
 sponded to the example of those en- 
 ergetic, innovating, evil-resisting 
 Westerners, who are still regarded 
 by China as "foreign devils." 
 
 On the other hand, I offer you the 
 philosophy of the Occident; a philos- 
 ophy of the resistance of evil in all 
 its forms. The offer is somewhat be- 
 lated, as you have already accepted 
 this philosophy. By it you regulate 
 your daily lives. If you did not, civ- 
 ilization would drive you to the open
 
 62 MARX VERSUS TOLSTi Y 
 
 sky and a diet of roots and acorns. 
 My opponent himself has accepted 
 this philosophy of progress and ac- 
 tion with all that part of his brain 
 which enables him to live and 
 breathe and maintain his being in the 
 metropolis of the Western world. 
 In the interior of his skull the theory 
 
 of non-resistance occupies only that 
 isolated corner where the convolu- 
 tions are less deep and more rudi- 
 mentary, the corner which is respon- 
 sible for some of his literary produc- 
 tions. 
 
 In the days when we had not as 
 yet grasped the real significance of 
 the awakening of Japan we were 
 greatly alarmed by the "Yellow 
 Peril." Our alarm had its basis in 
 the fear that the East would overrun 
 the West; that the world would be 
 conquered by a race which would
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 63 
 
 offer no resistance to the evils of op- 
 pression and exploitation, a race that 
 would slave from sunrise to sunset 
 for a handful of rice. 
 
 In vain will my opponent en- 
 deavor to shake off this antithesis of 
 Occident and Orient. You cannot 
 travel backward upon the path that 
 marks the genesis of his theory with- 
 out discovering its Eastern birth. 
 Darrow is a self-confessed disciple 
 of Tolstoy. Tolstoy's country is on 
 the borders of Cathay. Russia finds 
 herself caught between white and 
 yellow; and her perpetual problem 
 is : Shall she stay back with the East 
 or go forward with the West. Tol- 
 stoy and Darrow are, again, both dis- 
 ciples of an Oriental mystic, himself 
 a mythical character, for whom the 
 scenes are set at the eastern end of the 
 Mediterranean, northeast of Egypt,
 
 64 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 southeast of Turkey further east 
 than either. The teachings, parables, 
 miracles and legends attributed to 
 him, and recorded in the New Testa- 
 ment, are an integral part of the in- 
 tellectual baggage of the dreamy, 
 credulous and uncritical East. 
 
 America, of all the Western coun- 
 tries, is the farthest removed from 
 the soporific influences and submit- 
 to-evil attitude of the Oriental, and 
 rny opponent should have learned 
 long before this that his theory of 
 non-resistance to evil has no present, 
 nor any future, in this country. The 
 English poet, Tennyson, in "Locks- 
 ley Hall," contrasts these two posi- 
 tions, and like a true Westerner de- 
 cides for a progressive, evil-resisting 
 civilization, and against the intellec- 
 tual paralysis of Orientalism and sav-
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 65 
 
 agery. He begins by painting Orien- 
 tal life in glowing colors and extol- 
 ling its apparent advantages: 
 
 * * * "Ah, for some retreat 
 Deep in yonder shining Orient where my 
 life began to beat. 
 
 "There, methinks, would be enjoyment more 
 
 than in this march of mind, 
 In the steamship, in the railway, in the 
 
 thoughts that shake mankind. 
 
 "There the passions, cramp'd no longer, 
 shall have scope and breathing space, 
 
 I will take some savage woman, she shall 
 rear my dusky race. 
 
 "Iron-jointed, supple-sine\\ed, they shall 
 
 dive, and they shall run, 
 Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl 
 
 their lances in the sun ; 
 
 "Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the 
 rainbows of the brooks, 
 
 Not with blinded eye-sight poring over mis- 
 erable books."
 
 66 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 Then our poet shakes himself out 
 of his day-dream and swings back to 
 the world of modern, progressive, 
 social reality: 
 
 "Fool, again the dream, the fancy, but T 
 
 KNOW my words are wild, 
 But I count the gray barbarian lower than 
 
 the Christian child. 
 
 "I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant 
 
 of our glorious gains, 
 Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a 
 
 beast with lower pains! 
 
 "Mated with a squalid savage what to me 
 
 were sun and clime? 
 I, the heir of all the ages, in the foremost 
 
 files of time. 
 
 "I, that rather held it better men should 
 
 perish one by one, 
 Than that the earth should stand at gaze 
 
 like Joshua's moon in Ajalon! 
 
 "Not in vain the distance beacons ; forward, 
 forward, let us range.
 
 LEWIS' FIRST SPEECH 67 
 
 Let the great world spin forever down the 
 ringing grooves of change. 
 
 "Men, my brothers ; men, the workers, ever 
 
 reaping something new, 
 That which they have done but earnest of 
 
 the things which they shall do. 
 
 "Through the shadow of the globe we sweep 
 
 into a younger day: 
 
 Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of 
 Cathay."
 
 DARROW'S SECOND SPEECH
 
 D ARROW 8 SECOND SPEECH 71 
 
 DARROW'S SECOND SPEECH 
 
 As near as I can find out, the ques- 
 tion with my opponent seems to hinge 
 on a pedigree. I have seen some 
 mighty poor things have good pedi- 
 grees. I never looked up the pedi- 
 gree of non-resistance, and I do not 
 care. It may have come from Asia, 
 or from Africa, or from Europe. I 
 do not know where it came from. I 
 have an idea, though, that almost 
 every prophet, and seer, and humani- 
 tarian the world over have always 
 had a glimmering of this truth, and 
 have taught it more or less in their 
 philosophy, though they may not 
 have practiced it. For it is one thing 
 to believe a thing, and another to 
 work at it. But they have seen this
 
 72 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 vision, believed it, and wanted to 
 help it along, and looked forward to 
 the time when it shall be the rule, 
 I have no doubt whether in Europe 
 or in Asia. The real teachings of all 
 the great men in the world have not 
 been so much different, because after 
 all men's thoughts come from their 
 own conservativeness, what is inside 
 of them not what is outside of 
 them. Two men see the same things, 
 and yet they think different thoughts. 
 That is due to the character of the 
 mind. Prophets the world over have 
 had rather similar thoughts, the 
 teachings of Buddha, Confucius, 
 Christ and the really great teachers 
 of the world have been wonderfully 
 alike, and where the doctrine came 
 from has nothing whatever to do 
 with it. 
 
 My friend tells you in one breath
 
 DARROW'S SECOND SPEECH 73 
 
 that there is a small corner in my 
 brain where I believe in non-resist- 
 ance and from that I have written 
 this book. In the other he tells you 
 that he agrees with everything I have 
 said. Now, if he agrees with all I 
 have said on the subject of non-re- 
 sistance, and all its inferences, then 
 all there is left is a question of defi- 
 nition. I do not care anything about 
 his definition, nor my definition. 
 And yet I think all men who have 
 claimed to believe in it have given it 
 the same definition. I have never 
 read that it meant that one could not 
 take a bath, or that one could not 
 cure himself of a disease, or could 
 not wear clean clothes. That has 
 nothing to do with non-resistance. 
 
 The doctrine of non-resistance is, 
 as a doctrine, opposed to force, vio- 
 lence, and punishment; and is a doc-
 
 74 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 trine which teaches that the law of 
 love is the right law of human action 
 rather than the law of hatred, ven- 
 geance and punishment. You may 
 say that you can carry this theory 
 into plant and into animal life. But 
 all this is largely in the realm of 
 speculation. A man believes many 
 things as to society, and as to human 
 life that he cannot demonstrate, and 
 that he can only see as visions before 
 him of what he thinks a regenerated 
 race will do, or some time become. 
 You cannot apply it to all animal 
 life, to all plant life, and to all hu- 
 man life, and say that if one individ- 
 ual should drop down into a society 
 filled with strife and discord and 
 combat he can live an ideal life and 
 be governed by the rules which will 
 one day govern the world. This fact 
 in no way shows that this is the true
 
 BARROWS SECOND SPEECH 75 
 
 rule of life, and in no way shows that 
 the theory is the wrong theory. 
 
 Society today, as ever, is a mixture 
 of the life of individual men. It is 
 a mixture of the good and the bad, 
 broadly speaking. It is a mixture of 
 co-operation and competition; it is 
 a mixture of hatred and fear; it is a 
 mixture of war and peace. The 
 world has evolved from the lowest 
 order. It is still evolving. Is there 
 any doubt with anybody who believes 
 in evolution that as the human race 
 evolves it will leave war, murder and 
 bloodshed out; and that it will cling 
 to co-operation, peace, and harmony, 
 and love? If it does not do this, it 
 will not evolve. That is what evolu- 
 tion means. Neither man individ- 
 ually, nor man mixed up in society, 
 is able to demonstrate or exemplify 
 this. All he can do is to go toward
 
 78 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 it, and be as sure as possible that he 
 is on the right road, and that so far 
 as in him lies he is helping the world 
 to go the right road. 
 
 Maybe there are inconsistencies in 
 this philosophy. It may be there are 
 inconsistencies in those who preach 
 it and talk it. Perhaps you can take 
 some of my writings and find some 
 that are inconsistent. I have talked 
 too much to make it all consistent. 
 But if you can find some inconsistent 
 thing that I said you would have no 
 more right to say that makes the the- 
 ory wrong than to say Benjamin 
 Franklin was a lunatic because he 
 thought that he could keep off light- 
 ning with a lightning rod. That was 
 a part of the witchcraft of science. 
 
 The theory is scarcely disputed by 
 my friend the theory, in all that it 
 implies, is scarcely disputed. The
 
 DARROW'S SECOND SPEECH 77 
 
 theory has been promulgated as 
 against the cruelty of society, as 
 against the doctrine of "an eye for an 
 eye, and a tooth for a tooth," which 
 is prevalent. 
 
 He tells you this is the Christian 
 doctrine that I am teaching. I wish 
 it was. That is, I wish the Christian 
 doctrine was this doctrine. Did you 
 ever hear a preacher who preached 
 it? Did you ever hear of an ortho- 
 dox preacher who would not let go 
 of the church before the jail? Would 
 they give up punishment? Would 
 they give up force? Don't they love 
 the penitentiary more than the 
 chapel? Did you ever know of one 
 praying that a man should not be 
 punished; or forgiving him his 
 faults, or not criticising him for what 
 they considered his errors? It is not 
 the doctrine of the Christian church
 
 78 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 at all. It is the opposite. But if it 
 is not the doctrine of the Christian 
 church, neither is it the doctrine of 
 China or Japan, except of a few of 
 the wise, and great, and good, who 
 there, as everywhere, saw what the 
 rulers of the world have never seen, 
 who felt what the cruel have never 
 felt, whose minds had the imagina- 
 tion to feel the sufferings of their 
 fellow men, whose hearts were so 
 tender as to make them feel the heart 
 throbs of the weak and poor and the 
 suffering. But China, Japan, India, 
 and the whole world have been ruled 
 by hatred. They cut men's heads off 
 in China. They send men to prison 
 as punishment. The great religious 
 teachers may have believed one 
 thing, but their religious rulers have 
 ever practiced another thing. Force 
 is the essence of government. Every
 
 DARROW'S SECOND SPEECH 79 
 
 government upon the face of the 
 earth has been over the protest of the 
 weak and of the poor. 
 
 Almost all men in jail believe in 
 non-resistance. In a way they are, 
 generally, not wise and great. They 
 have not had the time and the money 
 to be wise and great. But all of them 
 have an instinctive feeling as they 
 look back at their lives that they have 
 had to do just as they have done. 
 They might look at the acts that 
 placed them where they are, and into 
 every one of the devious places that 
 they have trod down from their cra- 
 dles to the present, and they can see 
 thousands of circumstances which 
 held them in the grasp and made 
 them what they are. And they know 
 they are not to blame for their posi- 
 tion. They know in their hearts that 
 the whole theory of punishment is
 
 80 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 wrong, the whole theory, though it is 
 the theory upon which the world 
 goes today. 
 
 If Brother Lewis has been con- 
 verted to the theory of non-resist- 
 ance, in the penal code, I wish he 
 would go to work and convert the 
 rest of the world, for it needs it. 
 There are only a few who have been 
 converted to it. All the governments 
 have been built upon it. 
 
 What is true of jails and peniten- 
 tiaries is true of the state. Men have 
 practiced force. They seem to for- 
 get that in the thousand activities of 
 human life we go about our affairs 
 automatically; that men turn to the 
 right when they meet on the street, 
 and that they go around each other 
 the proper way. They live together 
 automatically in most of the affairs 
 of life. But they still seem to thifik
 
 D ARROW 8 SECOND SPEECH 81 
 
 that the great weight of the club, and 
 the great power of the jail and 
 prison, must be used or the state must 
 fall to pieces. And so we build our 
 armies and our navies, and make our 
 penal statutes, and our cruel punish- 
 ments, and the whole world believes 
 in them and the whole world prac- 
 tices them. 
 
 I believe with my friend that the 
 great problem today is the problem 
 of capital and labor. But how is that 
 affected by the theory of non-resist- 
 ance? 
 
 Those who think that non-resist- 
 ance is a milk-and-water theory have 
 got another guess. It is not. I was 
 talking the other day with a man 
 who had been a colonel in the war. 
 I said: "I do not know how you 
 could get up courage to go up in the 
 face of cannons and bayonets and
 
 82 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 take your life in your hands." He 
 says: "1 did it, because I was too 
 big a coward to run away." And 
 that is why most all men go to war. 
 They are too big cowards to stay at 
 home. That is why men fight. They 
 are too big cowards not to fight. Do 
 you think it is a brave man who 
 fights; or is it the brave man who 
 does not fight? I will show you ten 
 thousand men who are willing to go 
 up in the face of hostile cannon, 
 where you cannot find one man who 
 will take one stick of criticism in a 
 daily newspaper. There is not any- 
 thing on earth so cheap as physical 
 courage. Why even a bulldog can 
 fight, but it has not got much brain. 
 Fighting has nothing to do with the 
 labor question, or with the question 
 of capital and labor. How is it ap-
 
 DARROW'S SECOND SPEECH 83 
 
 plied to the question as it exists 
 today? 
 
 In order to change social condi- 
 tions you say you must get rid of the 
 ruling class, by force or some other 
 way one way or the other. Now, 
 the weak are the poorest ones in the 
 world to fight. They have no guns ; 
 the other fellow has them all. They 
 have no organization. They have no 
 chance in a fight. But they can fight. 
 Workingmen of today can fight. If 
 all of them would refuse to work or 
 the great majority would refuse to 
 work and enter into passive resist- 
 ance non-resistance quit feeding 
 the race; that is all you need to do. 
 You cannot, of course. Wait until 
 you can. You can get a small mi- 
 nority to arm themselves with brick- 
 bats and guns. What happens? You
 
 84 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 are sending a small force, poorly 
 armed and equipped, against all the 
 power of the state, and you cannot 
 succeed, and you never have suc- 
 ceeded. 
 
 The only force that can win is de- 
 termination, non-resistance, peace- 
 able force. There is such a thing as 
 peaceable force that is more forcible 
 than forcible force. 
 
 Let me give you a few illustra- 
 tions. What makes life? The cold, 
 hard, stern winter; or the sunshine 
 and the warm rain of the summer 
 and the spring? The one means 
 death, and the other means life. Re- 
 pression and death go together. Love 
 and sunshine and life are born to- 
 gether. Do you want to change the 
 conduct of men, whether grown indi- 
 viduals or children; take a child and 
 whip the child, can you change his
 
 D ARROW'S SECOND SPEECH 85 
 
 conduct? You may change his con- 
 duct, but can you change his heart? 
 Conduct is only the outward mani- 
 festation of the inward individual. 
 To change the individual you must 
 change the heart, and then the con- 
 duct must be free. Can you cure 
 hatred with hatred? Everybody 
 knows it in their own life. You may 
 force men against their will to do 
 certain things, but their hearts are a 
 seething mass waiting for a time 
 when they may accomplish other 
 things by violence. Do you think 
 you can do something for a man by 
 sending him to the penitentiary? 
 Gentleness is the law that makes life. 
 Cruelty and hatred and coldness is 
 the law that makes death. The ques- 
 tion of non-resistance or resistance 
 means a choice between those two 
 laws.
 
 LEWIS' SECOND SPEECH
 
 LEWIS' SECOND SPEECH 89 
 
 LEWIS' SECOND SPEECH 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Mr. Darrow, Ladies 
 
 and Gentlemen: 
 
 I wish it to be clearly understood 
 that so far I have said nothing in- 
 tended to express any agreement with 
 Mr. Darrow as to the merits of the 
 theory of non-resistance; but I reas- 
 sert that I have no fundamental dis- 
 pute with my opponent on the sub- 
 ject of criminology. 
 
 The scientific method of treating 
 anything or any theory is the histor- 
 ical method. Many things which 
 remained mysteries for centuries be- 
 came amazingly simple once their 
 origin became known. The question 
 of origin is now generally regarded 
 as the first and most important ques-
 
 90 MARX VERSUS TOL8TOT 
 
 tion in the treatment of any scientific 
 subject. And my friend Darrow 
 proposes to sweep it away by a jibe 
 about pedigrees. Scientific students 
 will form their own estimate of his 
 astonishing assertion that: "where 
 the doctrine came from has nothing 
 to do with it." 
 
 Mr. Darrow evidently believes 
 that nobody ever supposed that 
 Christianity, with its theory of non- 
 resistance, meant the non-resistance 
 of that form of evil called disease. 
 The modern Christian will agree 
 Darrow. He is a believer in baths 
 and sanitation; but it was not always 
 so. The founders of his religion re- 
 garded disease as due to the posses- 
 sion of devils as the New Testament 
 amply shows. With them medical 
 science counted for nothing and was 
 discouraged. Their only cure for
 
 LEWIS' SECOND SPEECH 91 
 
 disease was an appeal to a being who 
 had power to compel the devils to 
 vacate human and other bodies. 
 Medical science has only reached 
 even its present unsatisfactory posi- 
 tion in the teeth of theological oppo- 
 sition and the modern Christian has 
 only accepted scientific theories of 
 disease because they have been thrust 
 upon him b}^ the progress of knowl- 
 edge a progress that was bitterly 
 fought by his historic church. Reli- 
 gious opposition to cleanliness and 
 sanitation furnishes an instructive 
 chapter in history a chapter which 
 my opponent has evidently left un- 
 read. 
 
 One of the chief arguments in Mr. 
 Darrow's last speech, as in his first, 
 is his assumption that the theory of 
 non-resistance is a modern product 
 a crown and flower of recent thought.
 
 92 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 The exact opposite is the truth. This 
 theory belongs essentially to the an- 
 cient and primitive world. It has 
 wide acceptance where evolution is 
 unknown. It is as widely rejected in 
 the modern Western world where 
 the theory of evolution is solidly es- 
 tablished. 
 
 Force, in the estimation of my 
 opponent is always bad, and here I 
 think he is wide of the truth. I will 
 freely concede, and, if need be, main- 
 tain that the force used by a ruling 
 class to oppress and rob a subject 
 class, is evil. Such oppression and 
 exploitation is very properly de- 
 scribed as evil. This may be well 
 described as aggression, and this 
 class aggression is not a supposition ; 
 it is the central fact of present civil- 
 ization. The question is: Should 
 this evil be resisted? I say, yes. Such
 
 LEWIS' SECOND SPEECH 93 
 
 resistance is the life-breath of human 
 progress, and non-resistance, as I 
 have already shown by my oppo- 
 nent's own pamphlet, would lead us 
 back to the dark ages. I am, as a 
 Socialist, unalterably opposed to the 
 aggression of a class, and a whole- 
 hearted believer in resistance to that 
 aggression. If a despotic nation 
 seeks to tyrannize over a neighboring 
 people because the neighbor is giv- 
 ing dangerous examples of the ad- 
 vantages of free institutions, while I 
 would condemn the force so em- 
 ployed, I would applaud the force 
 used by said neighbor if it should 
 resist the tyranny. I am a believer 
 in non-aggression, but opposed to the 
 non-resistance of aggression. There 
 is an important difference between 
 non-aggression and non-resistance 
 a difference, however, which has
 
 94 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 played no part in the thinking of my 
 opponent. 
 
 One of the points in my opponent's 
 position seems to him to defy any 
 contradiction. This is that whatever 
 may be the practical shortcomings 
 of his theory as remedy for present 
 evils, at least it is ideally correct and 
 will be the governing principle in the 
 more enlightened society of the fu- 
 ture. 1 regret being obliged to dis- 
 appoint any expectations he may 
 have of my acquiescence in this prop- 
 osition. It is highly probable that 
 society will not for some time rid 
 itself of all forms of evil and of 
 course the statement of the theory of 
 non-resistance of evil implies exist- 
 ence of evil which is, or is not, to be 
 resisted. I cannot conceive of a so- 
 ciety in the future adopting as a 
 working principle so suicidal a
 
 LEWIS' SECOND SPEECH 95 
 
 theory as the non-resistance of evil. 
 Any society persisting in such a pol- 
 icy would eventually disappear in 
 the struggle for existence. Unceas- 
 ing resistance to evil in all its forms 
 is the first condition of human prog- 
 ress. 
 
 A long and profound acquaintance 
 with the practice of law has taught 
 my opponent certain rather clever 
 methods of getting out of tight 
 places. And so we are calmly in- 
 formed that there is a kind of force 
 that is not forcible, and certain forms 
 of resistance that do not resist. Pas- 
 sive resistance, for example, is not 
 resistance at all, despite its being 
 called such. It seems to my non-legal 
 intellect that force which is not 
 forcible cannot properly be called 
 force, and the quality of resisting 
 must be present in all forms of resist-
 
 ance whether it be called active or 
 passive. Contradictions of terms 
 may serve as argument in the courts 
 but not in this debate. 
 
 It is a very excellent command- 
 ment which says: "Thou shalt not 
 steal." Stealing is a form of ag- 
 gression, especially when it is prac- 
 ticed by the strong against the weak; 
 and the great bulk of real stealing is 
 of this order. Darrow will admit 
 that the stealing by the ruling class 
 of the wealth produced by the work- 
 ing class is real stealing, and he is 
 no doubt as willing as I am to say 
 to that ruling class: "Thou shalt not 
 steal." But suppose they ignore the 
 injunction. What shall we do? 
 Shall we allow their stealing to go 
 unresisted? Our only course, it 
 seems to me, is to fall back on the 
 principle enunciated by Carlyle:
 
 LEWIS' SECOND SPEECH 97 
 
 There are two guilty parties in any 
 theft, the thief and the victim. If 
 the robber pays no heed to our 
 protest we must turn to the robbed 
 worker and say: Thou shalt not be 
 stolen from. People who allow 
 themselves to be robbed when they 
 could prevent it by resisting, have 
 small claims to sympathy. 
 
 One of the aspects of non-resist- 
 ance which damns the theory in my 
 estimation is that it is so thoroughly 
 in harmony with the desires of the 
 ruling class. I cannot conceive that 
 tyrants of any kind could wish any- 
 thing better than that the evil of 
 their oppression should go unresist- 
 ed. It hardly seems probable that 
 the existing possessing class will give 
 up without a bitter struggle and a 
 non-resistant working class would be 
 doomed to perpetual slavery.
 
 98 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 Mr. Darrow seems to regard the 
 state as having existed almost from 
 all eternity. He regards it as a prod- 
 uct of savagery. In this he is alto- 
 gether mistaken. If the anthropol- 
 ogists are to be believed, the state is 
 onlv about five thousand years old, 
 while primitive communism, which 
 had no state, endured for approxi- 
 mately one hundred thousand years. 
 
 The state dates from the break-up 
 of communal property and the be- 
 ginning of private property in land. 
 The principle of private property 
 was extended to all means and modes 
 of production as they developed and 
 the state grew in power and impor- 
 tance as a consequence. Back of the 
 state stands private property in the 
 means of life. Capitalist property 
 is the root from which the army, navy 
 and police systems come forth. The
 
 LEWIS' SECOND SPEECH 99 
 
 state is a citadel built around capital- 
 ist property. The state is the grand 
 weapon wielded against the workers 
 whenever they grow restless under 
 their heavy burdens. 
 
 Resistance to capitalist exploita- 
 tion must begin at the state. The 
 state, as a class instrument, must be 
 wrested from the hands of its users, 
 not to be used by its new owners to 
 oppress others, but in order that it 
 may be abolished. The abolition of 
 the state is the historic task of the 
 working class. This task can never 
 be achieved by quiescence and non- 
 resistance. It can only come as the 
 result of long, hard struggle. This 
 sense of the necessity for resistance 
 is already part of the worker's men- 
 tal processes. He cannot compre- 
 hend the meaning of non-resistance. 
 The thing looks futile on the face of
 
 100 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOT 
 
 it. He must fight back at all costs. 
 The unions are founded on this idea. 
 The future of the working class de- 
 pends upon its ability to successfully 
 resist oppression. Liberty and strug- 
 gle are inseparably linked together. 
 A struggling, evil-resisting working 
 class is indispensable to future prog- 
 ress of the human race.
 
 DARROW'S THIRD SPEECH
 
 BARROW'S THIRD SPEECH 103 
 
 DARROW'S THIRD SPEECH 
 
 I am not in the least interested in 
 winning. It will make no difference 
 to me who has the last speech, or 
 who wins. 
 
 Now, it is very evident that my 
 friend's definition of non-resistance 
 and mine are not the same. Perhaps 
 this will prevent this audience from 
 getting its money's worth. I do not 
 know. But if you get any ideas it 
 does not make any difference. 
 
 I do not understand non-resistance 
 to mean that you cannot fight disease, 
 or destroy bedbugs, or take baths, or 
 indulge in passive resistance. I do 
 not think that anybody who has ever 
 preached or taught non-resistance 
 understood such a thing. Now, if
 
 104 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 non-resistance does include it, then I 
 do not fully believe in non-resistance. 
 I do not propose to run a theory 
 down a blind alley just to hang on to 
 something. 
 
 I think a man is not obliged to 
 keep on working in order to practice 
 non-resistance. He can sit down and 
 rest if he wants to. And if all work- 
 ingmen chose to sit down and rest, 
 instead of working to satisfy the 
 needs of the race, I would consider 
 that was passive resistance, non-re- 
 sistance. I am not in the least re- 
 quired to work. 
 
 Neither will I admit that non- 
 resistance is a religious doctrine, ex- 
 cept as the word "religion" might 
 mean something it has never meant 
 in practice. It might mean an aspi- 
 ration for a higher form of collective 
 life, which it has never meant. It
 
 D ARROW'S THIRD SPEECH 105 
 
 has always meant, a scheme for sav- 
 ing man's soul. But in that sense 
 non-resistance has had nothing to do 
 with it. Certainly these monks were 
 not non-resistants. Because when the 
 world was covered with the Dark 
 Ages of religious belief and lack of 
 intelligence, we had plenty of 
 wars and plenty of Christianity. 
 And the greatest wars the world has 
 known have been fought on account 
 of religious beliefs. Upon one side 
 were the non-resistant Christians, 
 and upon the other were the Moham- 
 medans and other religious sects. It 
 has never been any substantial part 
 of the Christian religion. Now, of 
 course, here and there great souls 
 have been illumined with this 
 thought and have taught it. But a 
 religion is one thing, and a religious 
 machine is quite another thing. And
 
 106 MARX VXM3V6 TOL8T07 
 
 the religious machine has not only 
 believed in resistance in this world 
 but in the other, too; neither of 
 which I believe in. 
 
 Whether non-resistance leads to 
 pessimism does not interest me in the 
 least. At least it is an open ques- 
 tion. I believe the world is divided 
 into two classes: the pessimists and 
 the weak-minded. I am inclined to 
 the pessimist side. But what that has 
 to do with non-resistance I do not 
 know. 
 
 My friend says he believes in non- 
 aggression, but not in non-resistance. 
 My friend is not a lawyer, but he acts 
 like one. 
 
 When a couple of lawyers, twelve 
 jurors, a judge, a bailiff, a lot of 
 newspapers, and a religious public 
 opinion send some poor devil to jail 
 because he has stolen something so-
 
 DARRQW'S THIRD SPEECH 107 
 
 ciety says they are practicing resist- 
 ance to evil, because the man is a 
 thief. My friend says that society is 
 practicing aggression. From socie- 
 ty's standpoint it is resistance to evil. 
 It is dependent on the standpoint. I 
 believe that is aggression. Society is 
 engaged in what it believes resisting 
 evil. They say, here is a man that 
 has stolen something violated some 
 rule of the game and we resist it by 
 force, and we punish it. They call it 
 resisting evil, and say it is wrong. It 
 is wrong to commit aggression upon 
 that man. If he stole, society is re- 
 sponsible, because under the arrang- 
 ments of society that is the best pro- 
 fession he can get. Or else you might 
 say with Mr. Lewis that evolution is 
 responsible for it, on account of the 
 way it shaped the skull, and the 
 shape of the skull made the brain di-
 
 108 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 rect what he did. In any event, to 
 harm a hair on his head, to inflict 
 any pain or suffering upon the man, 
 is wrong, and not conducing to the 
 highest moral and physical develop- 
 ment of the human race. The theory 
 of resistance, and the practice of 
 resistance of visiting force and vio- 
 lence and suffering upon your fel- 
 low man, is an evil theory, and can 
 only produce evil results, near and 
 remote, wherever you may find it. 
 
 He says the commandment "thou 
 shalt not steal" is no more sacred 
 than the commandment "Thou shalt 
 resist stealing." It is just as incum- 
 bent on us not to permit stealing. 
 True, under the moral code it is. 
 But what are you going to do? Of 
 course, nobody knows what stealing 
 is. It is purely arbitrary. For a 
 few men to fence off the earth and
 
 HARROW'S THIRD SPEECH 109 
 
 for another man to go over inside 
 the fence and take something away 
 is stealing, under the rules of the 
 game. It is stealing from one man's 
 standpoint, but not from that of an- 
 other. The men who fence off the 
 earth, they say the man who comes 
 over is the thief. Mr. Lewis says 
 the fellow who goes there should re- 
 sist the other man. And society says, 
 the man who fenced off the earth 
 should resist the other man. It is 
 a question of standpoint. If you ad- 
 mit either philosophy, then both 
 have the right to resist, and it is a 
 question of force, and violence, and 
 punishment; and the question re- 
 solves down to this: under which 
 way can justice be the best and easi- 
 est obtained? 
 
 He says he believes in force for 
 the working class. It has always
 
 110 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 been the same story since the world 
 began, and will be so long as the 
 world lasts. Who will win? Will 
 it be the rulers, fitted and equipped 
 with guns, ships, policemen, and 
 with jails; always equipped for war? 
 Or will it be the poor, the weak, and 
 the disinherited, who have nothing 
 to fight with? 
 
 I would not be so much opposed 
 to force if I thought it would win. 
 But I have seen that game tried so 
 often that I know better. I think 
 I know that you cannot get justice 
 that way. And suppose you could. 
 Suppose the working class could 
 turn society over, which they can- 
 not but suppose they could and 
 that they got the guns and cannons 
 and swords, and they were the state, 
 then what? Do you think they 
 would do any better? I know them
 
 DARROW'S THIRD SPEECH 111 
 
 too well. Let me tell you. While 
 the Socialist Party I have nothing 
 against that, except there are not 
 enough of them vote the ticket 
 while they cannot muster a corpo- 
 ral's guard every fellow wants to 
 be the boss, and every fellow wants 
 to make charges against every other 
 fellow, and talk about him, lie about 
 him, and gossip about him worse 
 than a lot of women in a sewing so- 
 ciety, and use all kinds of tactics to 
 defeat him, and if they were run- 
 ning society they would not last as 
 long as a snowball, not until they 
 learn something. They would be 
 just like the rest. They have got to 
 learn that the whole campaign is 
 wrong. They have got to learn that 
 punishment is wrong; that resisting 
 evil is wrong. They have got to 
 learn the fundamental things, char-
 
 112 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 ity, humanity, brotherly love, which 
 is the basis of all of it. 
 
 Do you think all the trades-union- 
 ists are angels? If you do, think it 
 over again. They are not. There is 
 a lot of them that are ignorant; some 
 of them are brutal, and some of them 
 are grafters. 
 
 Do you think if you stood society 
 on its head, and gave them the guns, 
 that all would be peace and harmony 
 and loveliness; and that we would 
 then practice non-aggression, if not 
 non-resistance? No, you would be 
 just where you were in the French 
 revolution, where as soon as they got 
 rid of the heads of the nobility they 
 commenced cutting off each other's 
 heads. It is what the whole thing 
 leads to. It is in the theory of life 
 as applied to the practice of man; to
 
 DARROWS THIRD SPEECH 113 
 
 the doctrine they believe, and the 
 life they live. 
 
 Do you believe in cruelty, in pun- 
 ishment? Do you use your tongue 
 to condemn men and women? Do 
 you use your efforts to get them in 
 jail? Do you believe in punish- 
 ment? If so, do you think your life 
 and conduct conduces so well to 
 civilization as the life and conduct 
 of him who does not use his tongue 
 and pen in that way? Or is the 
 other theory right? Is the theory 
 of love or hatred right? 
 
 My friend is wrong when he says 
 that all strife comes from capitalism- 
 It lurks in the human heart. It is 
 part of the savage. It is in the beast, 
 from there to man. You may go 
 back to Egypt in the early scrolls and 
 in their tombs and find the man with
 
 114 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 the spear, and the savage fights as 
 much as the civilized. War comes 
 from the brute, and if civilization 
 means anything it means getting the 
 brute out by teaching something 
 higher. 
 
 My friend talks much about evo- 
 lution. Of course I believe in evo- 
 lution. Everybody does nowadays 
 who has any sense, and that is not 
 so very many. Is evolution war, or 
 is it peace? Is the tendency toward 
 war or peace? Why, the higher the 
 race goes upwards, the more it co- 
 operates. There is little co-opera- 
 tion in plant life; there is none, ex- 
 cept one to feed upon another. 
 There is little co-operation in ani- 
 mal life; little in the lower orders 
 of man. And what men of vision 
 and insight and inspiration are hop- 
 ing for is the time when the human
 
 D ARROW'S THIRD SPEECH 115 
 
 race will thoroughly co-operate, 
 when each person will not be seek- 
 ing only his own good, but the good 
 of every other man. Evolution will 
 not be complete until war and strife 
 and competition are banished, and 
 co-operation and love, and fellow- 
 ship shall take its place.
 
 CLOSING SPEECH BY LEWIS
 
 CLOSING SPEECH BY LEWIS 119 
 
 CLOSING SPEECH BY LEWIS 
 
 Mr. Chairman, Mr. Darrow, La- 
 dies and Gentlemen: 
 
 We are now informed that non- 
 resistance is not a religious theory. 
 Perhaps Mr. Darrow does not re- 
 gard the New Testament, from 
 which he took his text this morning, 
 as a religious book, or Jesus Christ, 
 the chief advocate of the theory, as 
 a religious character, or Christianity 
 as a religion. Whatever I may or 
 may not have done I have clearly 
 shown this theory to be an integral 
 part of the religious systems of the 
 Orient. 
 
 When workingmen are not satis- 
 fied with the terms offered by their 
 employers they must decide what is
 
 120 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOf 
 
 to be done. If they decide to stop 
 working their act is described by 
 Darrow as an instance of non-resist- 
 ance. Darrow's claim cannot be sus- 
 tained. If the men decide not to 
 resist their employers they go on 
 working. They only strike when 
 they are determined on resistance 
 and, in their estimation, the strike is 
 a weapon used in a battle. My op- 
 ponent can gain nothing by calling 
 this "passive resistance." So long 
 as it is resistance of any kind it be- 
 longs to my side of this argument. 
 Mr. Darrow freely admits that 
 society is the real aggressor in the 
 case of the criminal, and the real 
 evil is to be found in the behavior of 
 society. The question of non-resist- 
 ance here is: Should the individual 
 who is denied an opportunity to live 
 honestly by vicious social laws re-
 
 CLOSING SPEECH BY LEWIS 121 
 
 spect those laws and die without pro- 
 test; or should he, claiming that life 
 is above law, break through the 
 meshwork and try to live despite the 
 laws? According to the theory of 
 non-resistance the individual in ques- 
 tion should die quietly. Even Catho- 
 lic theology is superior to this; the 
 Catholic Church has always held 
 that a starving person should steal 
 both as a right and a duty. True, 
 Catholics have perhaps never en- 
 couraged the practice of this pre- 
 cept except in the case of Cardinal 
 Manning in the London dock strike. 
 Darrow would be willing for the 
 working class to adopt force if he 
 thought it would succeed. This is 
 a frank admission of the validity of 
 the argument I presented in my 
 opening speech. Christ believed in 
 non-resistance because He saw the
 
 122 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 strength of Rome. Tolstoy took the 
 same theory because the Russian 
 autocracy seemed impregnable. Dar- 
 row follows them in theory because 
 he believes that in a trial of strength 
 the workers would inevitably be 
 worsted by their masters. Once 
 more we see, this time by Darrow's 
 confession, that the philosophy of 
 non-resistance is the philosophy of 
 despair. 
 
 I believe in resistance. To me the 
 hope of the workers lies in the suc- 
 cessful issue of the class struggle. 
 Not the despairing Tolstoy but the 
 courageous Marx has grasped the 
 principles which will carry the 
 workers to their desired goal. 
 
 The weakness of the working class 
 is apparent rather than real. What 
 the workers lack is not strength but 
 intelligence. The worker builds the
 
 CLOSING SPEECH BY LE\YI8 123 
 
 cities, runs the locomotive and the 
 steamship, maintains industry and 
 thereby feeds, clothes and houses the 
 inhabitants of the globe. Like At- 
 las, he carries the world on his shoul- 
 ders. His strength is moreover 
 steadily increasing. The capitalist 
 class on the other hand is degenerat- 
 ing. The great capitalists were in 
 many respects great men ; but when 
 their sons realize that they are be- 
 yond economic want by reason of 
 papa's millions any strength or char- 
 acter that might have been forming 
 oozes away and they become "stage- 
 door Johnnies." The workers in the 
 final struggle will not measure 
 blades with the real organizers of 
 industry but with their purely para- 
 sitic, hare-brained and nerveless 
 descendants. 
 
 Social evolution is paving the way
 
 124 MARX VERSUS TOLSTOY 
 
 for a new social order, an order in 
 which there shall be no state be- 
 cause there will be no subject class 
 to be kept down. That new order 
 will owe its birth to the long travail 
 of the working class; it will mark 
 the culmination of a long story of re- 
 sistance to the evils of class oppres- 
 sion. Then shall we close the first 
 book of the history of the human 
 race, a book saturated with the blood 
 and tears of the workers of a thou- 
 sand generations; we shall open a 
 new volume and begin to write the 
 first chapter of human liberty.
 
 Books by Karl Marx 
 
 Marx is the greatest of Socialist writers; study him 
 for yourself if you want to understand the principles 
 of Socialism and qualify yourself to explain them to 
 others. His most important books may now be had 
 in English at the following prices, postage included: 
 
 Capital, Volume I. The Process of 
 Capitalist Production. Cloth, $2.00. 
 
 Capital, Volume II. The Process of 
 Circulation of Capital. Cloth, $2.00. 
 
 Capital, Volume III. The Process oi 
 Capitalist Production as a Whole. Cloth, 
 $2.00. 
 
 A Contribution to the Critique of 
 Political Economy. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 The Poverty of Philosophy, a reply to 
 Proudhon. Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 Revolution and Counter-Revolution, or 
 Germany in 1848. Cloth, 50c. 
 
 Value, Price and Profit. Cloth, 50c.; 
 paper, lOc. 
 
 The Communist Manifesto, by Marx 
 and Engels. Cloth, 50c. ; paper, lOc. 
 
 The Civil War in France, with an In- 
 troduction by Frederick Engels. Paper, 
 25 cents. 
 
 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis 
 Bonaparte. Paper, 25c. 
 
 Wage-Labor and Capital. Paper, 5c. 
 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
 
 118 West Kinzie Street, Chicago
 
 PURITANISM 
 
 What is the economic basis for the demand, 
 which we see occasionally cropping out even 
 now, to limit the length of a girl's bathing 
 suit by law? 
 
 Perhaps you have never thought of it, but 
 the pious horror of a short bathing suit is 
 closely related to early rising, political reform, 
 Sunday baseball games, religous revivals, the 
 "double standard of morality," the nude in 
 art, woman suffrage, and the consumption of 
 
 MINCE PIE 
 
 If such a statement seems to you far- 
 fetched, then you will derive instruction as 
 well as enjoyment from a close reading of 
 Clarence Meily's new book, "Puritanism," 
 which is just off the press. 
 
 This little book _ will enable the American 
 people, and the British as well, to understand 
 themselves as they never have before, because 
 we have inherited a large share of our ideas 
 from our Puritan ancestors. It presents a 
 fascinating study in that theory which has 
 done so much to make clear to Socialists the 
 meaning of life the theory, nay, the fact, 
 that the way people make their living largely 
 determines their notions of what is right and 
 moral and proper. No American should fail 
 to read this book. It will enable him to 
 understand the history of this country better 
 than a library full of ordinary text books. 
 It will clean out of his brain any remaining 
 infection left there by past teachings and will 
 enable him to see clearly through problems 
 out of which our capitalist-minded lawmakers, 
 preachers, professors, and editors are making 
 a mess. A reading of this book will forever 
 prevent any Socialist legislator from meddling 
 with middle class "moral reforms." Attrac- 
 tively bound in cloth and well printed. Price, 
 60 -ents postpaid. 
 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY, 
 118 West Kinzie St., Chicago
 
 THE MILITANT PROLETARIAT 
 
 Austin Lewis, already long recognized 
 as one of the foremost Socialist writers 
 in America, has now made what time 
 will prove to be the most valuable 
 American contribution to the literature 
 of Socialism thus far produced. His new 
 book, The Militant Proletariat, applies 
 the fundamental principles of Socialism 
 to the most recent economic and social 
 developments. The great Socialist 
 classics were written a generation or 
 more ago. Marx prophesied the Ameri- 
 can trust. Now in all its fullness it is 
 here. How is it to be met by the politi- 
 cal and industrial organizations of the 
 working class? For five years heated 
 discussions have centered around this 
 question. In The Militant Proletariat 
 Austin Lewis presents the most valuable 
 results of this discussion. No wide- 
 awake Socialist will fail to read it. Cloth, 
 50 cents. 
 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY, 
 118 West Kinzie Street, Chicago.
 
 ANCIENT SOCIETY 
 
 OR 
 
 Researches in the Lines of Human 
 
 Progress : From Savagery 
 
 Through Barbarism to 
 
 Civilization 
 
 One American and only one is recog- 
 nized by the universities of Europe as 
 one of the world's great scientists. That 
 American is Lewis H. Morgan, the author 
 of this book. He was the pioneer writer 
 on the subject. His conclusions have beep 
 \\ly sustained by later investigators. 
 
 fhis work contains a full and clear explanation 
 of many vitally important facts, without which no 
 intelligent discussion of the "Woman Question" 
 is possible. It showa that the successive marriage 
 customs that have arisen have corresponded to 
 certain definite industrial conditions. The author 
 shows that it is industrial changes that alter the 
 relations of the sexes, and that these changes are 
 still going on. He shows the historical reason for 
 the "double standard of morals" for men and 
 women, over which reformers have wailed in vain. 
 And he points the way to a cleaner, freer, happier 
 life for women in the future, through the triumph 
 of the working class. All this is shown indirectly 
 through historical facts; the reader is left to draw 
 his own conclusions. 
 
 Cloth, 586 large pages, gold stamping. Until 
 lately this book could not be bought for less than 
 $4.00. Our price is $1.50, and we will mail the 
 book to YOU for 50c, provided you send $1.00 at 
 the ime time for a year's subscription to the 
 International Socialist Review. Address 
 
 Charles H. Kerr & Company 
 
 118 West Rinzie Street, Chicago
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed. 
 
 
 
 REC'D C.L JUI 
 
 29*95
 
 DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000715578 1