Page 769 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘That, anyway,’ said Nikolay Levin, with an ironical
smile, his eyes flashing malignantly, ‘has the charm of—
what’s one to call it?—geometrical symmetry, of clearness,
of definiteness. It may be a Utopia. But if once one allows

the possibility of making of all the past a tabula rasa—no
property, no family— then labor would organize itself.
But you gain nothing..’
‘Why do you mix things up? I’ve never been a
communist.’
‘But I have, and I consider it’s premature, but rational,
and it has a future, just like Christianity in its first ages.’
‘All that I maintain is that the labor force ought to be
investigated from the point of view of natural science; that
is to say, it ought to be studied, its qualities ascertained..’
‘But that’s utter waste of time. That force finds a
certain form of activity of itself, according to the stage of
its development. There have been slaves first everywhere,
then metayers; and we have the half-crop system, rent, and
day laborers. What are you trying to find?’
Levin suddenly lost his temper at these words, because
at the bottom of his heart he was afraid that it was true—
true that he was trying to hold the balance even between
communism and the familiar forms, and that this was
hardly possible.

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