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September 14, 2006
Tolstoy on the People's Will
Don Boudreaux
My favorite novel is Anna Karenina. And one of my favorite scenes in that novel occurs in Chapter 15 when Levin argues with Sergey Ivanovitch over the merits of sending Russians soldiers off to join with the Serbs in a war against the Turks:
"I tell you that it's not a case of hundreds or of ne'er-do-wells, but the best representatives of the people!" said Sergey Ivanovitch, with as much irritation as if he were defending the last penny of his fortune. "And what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people directly expressing their will."
"That word 'people' is so vague," said Levin. "Parish clerks, teachers, and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it's all about. The rest of the eighty millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing their will, haven't the faintest idea what there is for them to express their will about. What right have we to say that this is the people's will?"
Governments -- especially ones whose officials attain office by garnering a majority (or a plurality) of votes cast in regular elections -- insist that all that they do is at the command of the people, that they carry out 'the people's will.'
There is much more myth than reality in the notion of a people's will. I have a will. You have a will. George Bush has a will, as do Howard Dean and Howard Stern. Society has no will. To suppose that it does is grossly inappropriate anthropomorphism.
Posted by Don Boudreaux in Myths and Fallacies, Politics | Permalink
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Comments
A well-chosen quote for that observation, Don!
I would add, though, that dictators who never even test their popularity at the ballot box are maybe even more likely to invoke "the will of the people" than elected politicians are...
This terminology is so relevant to Anna Karenina because the book was written immediately prior to the major revolt of the narodniki, who were not very welcome among "the people" they purported to support, and was published that very year -- they formed the organized Narodnaya volya (the "People's Will") movement two years later.
Posted by: Pēteris Cedriņš | Sep 15, 2006 10:54:23 AM
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