QuestionsMust we always obey the law?To rule is to do to others what we would not have done to us: refuse to take part rather than overthrow
Must we always obey the law?No master

To rule is to do to others what we would not have done to us: refuse to take part rather than overthrow

The Kingdom of God Is Within You; non-resistance to evil by violence

Léon Tolstoï 1828 · 1910At fifty he saw no meaning in anything; he found it again in the faith of simple people.
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What it claims

Christianity, rightly understood, puts an end to government: no government has legitimate authority over us, and the way out is for each person to refuse to take part in state violence.

Why

To rule is to use force, so to do to others what we would not want done to us: the only remedy is to refuse to take part.

The same idea through history
Henry David Thoreau1849Thoreau refuses to be the agent of an injustice and accepts prison. Tolstoy extends the refusal: he does not limit it to an unjust law, he refuses to take part in the very organisation of state violence.Pierre-Joseph Proudhon1851Proudhon seeks to replace government with free contract among equals. Tolstoy starts from the Gospel and refuses any recourse to force, including to change the existing order.Mikhaïl Bakounine1871Bakunin accepts the authority of competence freely chosen and refuses imposed authority. Tolstoy also refuses violence as a means, revolutionary violence included.
Léon Tolstoï1893The version presented here. Written between 1890 and 1893, the book was banned in Russia and circulated in translation. Tolstoy draws from the Sermon on the Mount (do not resist evil by violence) a critique of the state, the army and justice.
In short

"To rule is to do to others what we would not have done to us: refuse to take part rather than overthrow" is an argument by Léon Tolstoï (Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, 1893 (chs. 7 and 10), 1893) on the question "Must we always obey the law?" (answer: no master). Its claim: Christianity, rightly understood, puts an end to government: no government has legitimate authority over us, and the way out is for each person to refuse to take part in state violence. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, 1893 (chs. 7 and 10)
Valid with an implicit premise

Can a state have legitimate authority over us if it rests on coercion? Tolstoy starts from a simple rule, the golden rule of the Gospel: do not do to others what we would not have done to us. To rule is to use force, therefore to do to others what one would not want for oneself. He adds two observations: force does not protect society, which holds together in spite of it, and the state is no longer needed for people to cooperate. He does not conclude with revolution: for him, the revolutions of history only replace one power with another. His path is refusal to take part (in the army, the courts, the administration), each according to his conscience. He says himself that one cannot prove in general that the state is useless: he speaks for the one who can no longer support it.

P1To rule is to use force. To use force is to do to the person it is used on what he does not like and what the one using it would certainly not like done to himself. To rule is therefore to do to others what we would not have done to us, that is to do wrong.
P2Violence does not support the social organisation: it keeps it from being what it might be. Society is as good as it is not as a result of force, but in spite of it.
P3The state is no longer needed for people to cooperate. The means of communication enable them to form societies, associations and congresses for scientific, economic and political aims on their own. Government is more often an obstacle than an assistance.
P4The need or the harm of governments in general cannot be proved. Each person knows only what he needs and what he can or cannot do. Whoever has no need to divide himself off from other nations cannot admit that he belongs to a state or owes allegiance to a government: the way out is this personal refusal to take part.
P5 · implicit premiseAn institution that rests on a wrong (coercion of others), that does not protect through that coercion and that can be done without, has no legitimate authority over those it coerces.
So Christianity, rightly understood, puts an end to government: no government has legitimate authority over us, and the way out is for each person to refuse to take part in state violence.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where ruling is a wrong, force does not protect and the state is dispensable, and yet the state keeps legitimate authority: an authority can remain legitimate while using a questionable means if that means is the least bad.
Without the hidden premise P5, the premises say that ruling is a wrong, that force does not protect, that the state is dispensable and that the way out is refusal. One must add that this is enough to strip it of all legitimate authority. Tolstoy asserts it from the Sermon on the Mount. His opponents may accept the first premises without accepting this step.
Analogy. A man refuses to serve as a guard in a prison where he judges that innocents are shut up. He does not lead a riot, he does not claim to prove that all prisons are useless. He says: "I cannot do this." Tolstoy proposes that everyone make this gesture toward war, the court and the tax, until the state finds no one left to serve it.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Thomas Hobbes 1651 · attacks premise 3

Hobbes describes what happens where there is no common power: there is no place for industry, because its fruit is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth. Without a power to keep everyone in awe, everyone fears everyone. The cooperation Tolstoy thinks possible without the state presupposes an order that only the state guarantees.

Tolstoï replies
L
Leo Tolstoy 1893 · Tolstoy, in advance
Tolstoy quotes the argument: without the power of government, the more wicked would oppress the less wicked. He answers with history: when the Egyptians conquered the Jews, the Romans the Greeks, the Barbarians the Romans, were the conquerors always better? And when power passes, within a state, from one person to another, does it always pass from a worse one to a better?
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Tolstoy answers the objection in its "the wicked would rule" form, which is slightly different from Hobbes's (everyone's fear of everyone). Hobbes and Tolstoy do not start from the same human nature. Tolstoy says elsewhere that the need or the harm of governments in general cannot be proved.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hobbes: without a common power, fear and insecurity prevent any lasting cooperation. Tolstoy: power is not held by the best, and state violence is not what holds society together. The basic disagreement remains: does social cooperation hold because of coercion or in spite of it?
Max Weber 1919 · attacks premise 1

Weber distinguishes the ethic of conviction, which judges an act by its conformity to a principle, and the ethic of responsibility, which answers for foreseeable consequences. For him the Gospel rule of not resisting evil by violence is an absolute ethic suited to a saint. As soon as one must answer for the consequences of refusing force, including for other people, politics sometimes requires using it.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1919, after the author's death (1910).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Weber writes nine years after Tolstoy's death, so Tolstoy could not answer. Tolstoy already assumes that his position is that of a conscience that says not "everyone must do this" but "I cannot". He also maintains that force does not protect and that the consequences attributed to it are open to discussion. The two oppose each other on one of the premises: is the use of force an evil to be avoided at any price?
Where the debate stands (our summary)Weber: one cannot renounce force without answering for the consequences for others. Tolstoy: force itself does the evil it claims to prevent, and does not protect. The basic disagreement remains: who is to judge whether force is necessary, and on which consequences?
John Rawls 1971 · attacks premise 5

Rawls holds that we have a natural duty of justice: to support and comply with just institutions that exist and apply to us. And those who benefit from fair arrangements must in turn do their part. A state whose institutions are just therefore has legitimate authority, even though it uses coercion.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1971, after the author's death (1910).
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: Rawls writes nearly eighty years after Tolstoy. He accepts that the state coerces; he says coercion is legitimate if the institutions are just. Tolstoy precisely refuses that a duty to obey can be deduced from the justice of institutions, since coercion is what he judges bad in itself.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Rawls: the justice of institutions grounds a duty to obey them. Tolstoy: coercion is an evil in itself, and no duty makes it legitimate. The basic disagreement remains: can coercion be just if it serves a just institution?