Page 733 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

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
fomms 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?’

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