Ivan Turgenev
This book is a wonderful story of love, family, and ideas. Turgenev was banned from Russia partially for writing this book. While the story of love and a son venturing out on his own and figuring out his own path are excellently told albeit politically benign, there is a lot of talk among the characters about society, wealth/class, and the newly formed peasant class in Russia which was unpleasant for the gilded elite at the time.
Turgenev’s earlier work, A Sportsman’s Sketches, was a pivotal work in Russia’s history. It made such an impact on society that the autocrats cited it in their decision to liberate the serfs in 1861. While this may sound like a very libertarian thing to do, as the abolition of serfdom in America was one of the most important things to come out of the American Revolution, the implementation was quite problematic. The land owners were able to grab up practically 9/10’s of all the land, and they picked the very best property for themselves. The peasants got stuck with the crumbs, and many of them were extremely poor as a result. Many got stuck with such terrible property where they couldn’t even farm their own land.
In Fathers and Sons, Turgenev points out some of the consequences of this failure in freeing the serfs. The peasants in the story are unable to pay rent, are often shabby and don’t care much for their land or selves, drink too much, etc. This alone might be enough for the autocrats to give Turgenev a hard time for this book.
This book is a fairly short read especially compared to the longer works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, but it packs a mean punch for a little book. Let’s explore some of it.
Contradictions
Turgenev is excellent in this book at pointing out some of the major inconsistencies and contradictions in the ideas of the fervent, zealous youth at the time in Russia, most notably those who believe in Nihilism. Bazarov, one of the major characters in the story, is a self proclaimed Nihilist. He became friends with Arkady, the son of Nikolai, during college. Both young men arrive at Nikolai’s house and almost instantly ideologically clash with the each other. Nikolai, far from Nihilism/Marxism, has been a long time bourgeoisie farmer, who embraced the freeing of the serfs and tried to treat his peasants well.
Bazarov constantly says things like “we advocate nothing”, when he is, in fact, actually advocating something in almost every sentence he speaks in the book. He constantly says “in the future society” things will be like this or like that. It is absurd to claim nihilists advocate nothing; there is usually no end to their proclamations about how things should or should not be.
He also says as Nihilists we reject all authority, yet he constantly presumes himself to be an authority worth listening to about Nihilism/society. Whenever people love his ideas, he treats them well. As soon as they start to question him, he treats them poorly or abandons them. It’s clear from this behavior that he considers himself a leading authority despite his absolute rejection of all authority, and he continually says that everyone else but him are fools implying that they should instead listen to and follow his ideas to become “enlightened” like him.
He claims to reject the use and prescription of medicine as nonsense, yet, when it suits him, he claims to be a doctor and even prescribes medicine. His vice is beautiful girls, so he generally betrays his “principles” and betrays what he claims in other parts of the book when trying to woo them.
Speaking of beautiful girls, he claims things like “all towns are like any other towns” and “every person is like every other person” and goes so far as to say that studying individual people is nonsensical because they are all basically the same with minor variations. Yet, he will only interact with women who are beautiful and is completely obsessed with them. Here, despite his claims of equality among the human species, he clearly makes a distinction and displays his own personal preference between the substance of a homely lady and a beautiful maiden.
Bazarov claims that virtue means what is most beneficial to people which is implied here as the “social good” or what’s good for everyone. He thinks that the negation, or destruction, of all social norms is what’s best for society. When it’s pointed out that most people would not agree and that he is going “against the general will of the people”, he claims that the general public is a bunch of fools who believe in mysticism. They don’t know what’s good for them. This is a common tactic of Marxists: the public is right when they are in favor of Marxist policies and fools who don’t know what’s good for them when they are not.
He often calls all aristocrats or bourgeoisie people snobbish, but he never seems to turn down an opportunity to visit them. This is especially the case when they are offering him and his friends wine, food, and lavish embellishments. A large part of the story is him and Arkady staying at a beautiful woman’s estate free of charge and not really doing much in the way of “pulling their own weight”.
There’s a lot of talk in the book about how destruction leads to construction. The only way to create the future Bazarov imagines is by destroying what currently exists. Everything he says is centered on abuse of and criticism of what currently exists in the way of social norms and social structures. But what is to be constructed in it’s stead is never really, truly mentioned. And is it true that destruction could somehow be itself constructive? By destroying the social bonds of society could you therefore strengthen them? Libertarians do espouse the creative destruction of the market as being a marker of the creation of better goods and services, but our use of the word “destruction” is very different than Bazarov’s. He means destruction by fire and force, we mean destruction in the way of consumers choosing to not support organizations that are not in line with their interests. One is voluntary, the other is not.
Emotions are something that Bazarov regards as unnecessary; he continually discourages them in others. He keeps his family at arm’s length and reminds them not to approach him unnecessarily and not to be overjoyed at his coming or sad at his going. His friend, Arkady, is lectured to not be too emotional when they part or when Bazarov says something to annoy him. Yet, Bazarov is constantly angered by the “fools” around him and is whipped into a frenzy in many parts of the book when his ideas are questioned or rebuked. Is his anger justified while the anger of others is not? This particular hypocrisy is part of a general dismissal and even disdain of other people and their feelings/preferences that people of Bazarov’s persuasion often have: it’s much easier to implement your lofty ideas for how society “should” be if society doesn’t have an emotional reaction such as anger or sadness when your ideas ruin their lives or destroy their honor, nobility, and wealth.
Truth is subjective in Bazarov’s world; this is common in general in Marxism. When asked what the truth is, Bazarov replies: Where is truth? What or which truth? He dismisses the idea of an objective truth in society, yet he is constantly insisting that what he says is the truth or at least “his” truth.
One thing that Bazarov is very clear about and has no contradictions about is his means: he intends to change society by force and violence. He has no qualms about threatening Arkady’s life when they become argumentative and because Arkady won’t cave intellectually. The cruelty and lack of compassion he is clearly capable of with those who disagree with him is completely in line with those who wish to alter society by forceful, political means.
Art
Of particular note, the anger and hatred towards the arts such as painting, buildings, statues, poetry, music, etc is very strong in this book. Bazarov is constantly sneering at the arts, calling them dumb and unnecessary. One is left to wonder then what he really has to offer the world in the way of satisfying the desires of others or whether he even cares about other people at all. For if others appreciate these beautiful things, and clearly they do or else they would not go to see them or praise their creators, and he wishes only to destroy them and wipe them out of mankind’s history and culture, then he must be opposed to the preferences of others.
The attack on art by Marxism in general throughout history is very common. In communist Russia, statues and churches were smashed to bits at the demand of the State. Oftentimes, those practicing these softer professions and the intellectual class are shipped away or killed. Books and scientific/philosophical ideas are especially scrutinized and burned or banished for not conforming to Marxist ideas.
Part of the reason for this is jealousy and the desire to seek an extreme version of equality/fraternity. Those who are good at art necessarily are better at it than others. Art springs from individual emotion and intellect; not everyone is well suited for that. Since communism strives for the lowest common denominator of humanity, anyone who is extraordinary must be stamped out.
But more than that is that art inspires thought and emotional response in those who view, hear, and read it. It causes people to consider their circumstance and think that the world could be better. Art is an especially individualistic act of both the creator and the viewer. This is something that could be dangerous to a regime that is already precariously built upon the shifting sands of threats of coercion in the first place.
“Logic”
Bazarov claims that logic is unnecessary; what good is logic if you have no bread so as to not starve to death? His rejection of logic shows how afraid he is of the logical inconsistency of those ideas are to be pointed out; something Turgenev does throughout the entire book. To dispense with logic is to make logic unnecessary as a proof; I don’t need to be rigid and logical in my arguments if I don’t accept logic as a means of pointing out flaws in arguments.
Moreover, ignoring logic does not allow us to discover the important economic truths about something so simple as men having enough bread to eat:
How much bread are we to produce so that people are fed?
What labor should instead be employed towards other tasks such as building houses and other human needs?
Should we build grain mills and use cattle or electricity or wind to power them?
Should we focus on growing barley or rye or other components?
Who will grow all the components, process the wheat, take care of the yeast, bake the bread, etc?
Who will make the mixing bowls, rolling pins, aprons, baking dishes, and everything else we need?
Who will create the tractors, shovels, and other farm implements we need to make growing things faster?
What farming methods should we employ to gain the most yield for the least amount of work?
How will we transport the bread to people and all these tools that we need to make it to the producers?
What if some people aren’t happy just eating bread and would like all the broccoli, salmon, steak, and other foods the modern world has access to for significantly cheaper than any other time in history?
Logic and specifically the logic of economics is very important to help us to understand these issues. We cannot understand something as seemingly simple as the production of bread but which turns out to be incredibly complex if we do not use logic to deduce certain apodictic truths about reality and about the nature of human action.
“Rejection of subjective value”
A consistent theme throughout the book is that objective value can somehow be ascertained by science and chemistry. Bazarov claims that a piece of meat is objectively better than a piece of bread which he deduces by his knowledge of chemistry.
This is the core of the most crucial arguments in economics: whether value and utility can be determined by some mathematical investigation, or whether value and utility is purely subjective and cannot be determined in any mathematical sense by any means. Ludwig von Mises was of the school supporting the latter argument and has helped in taking these arguments to their logical conclusion.
A student of communism, such as Bazarov, convinced that value is objective is a very dangerous man indeed: he is struck with the fatal conceit of thinking he knows what is best for other people. Moreover, his claims are backed up by science! Not only can he then determine what is most important to build, but how much and in what quality goods should be given out to make everyone happy. He knows that people don’t need art or beautiful buildings; objectively there is no use for such nonsense!
A student of subjective value, however, would recognize that other people need to decide what is best for themselves. It is not objectively true that meat is better than bread; in some cases, people prefer one to the other. Some people would prefer both. Still others would prefer neither. A person lost in the middle of the desert would trade everything he owns for a glass of water, while a person with access to running tap water would consider someone trying to sell them a glass water to be of much lower value than the person in the desert. There is no standard of calculation when it comes to valuation; it is different for each person and dependent on their circumstances, environment, preferences, and knowledge.
Moreover, people don’t think in cardinal valuation; they think in ordinal terms. No one says I prefer cake to pie by an order of 2.357 times. They say simply that I prefer cake to pie. There is no calculation necessary or even available to us. The idea that we can know and determine what other people want and make decisions for them through central planning has caused a massive amount of misery in the world. Austrian economists reject this premise.
“Conclusion”
I try not to reveal too much about the actual storyline in these reviews, but it’s important to look carefully at Bazarov’s death at the end of the book. He attempts to do a autopsy on a local peasant who had typhus fever, and he ends up cutting his finger. The local doctor had no caustic and 4 hours had passed before he told his dad, who, upon hearing it, immediately was very concerned of infection and tried to burn the wound.
Bazarov dies soon after. For most of the book, he cast spite at medicine and doctors. His death is a powerful metaphor to warn us not to ignore science and authority: sometimes other people can help us to better understand the world around us. When we ignore others “reject authority” and think we can discover every truth about reality ourselves, we do so at our own peril.
The history and culture and knowledge accumulated by humanity over the millenia is a great boon to the shared knowledge we have today. Even early thinkers such as Aristotle and Socrates have incredible insight that libertarians have interwoven with more modern theoritists such as John Locke to make the synthesis that is today modern libertarianism. Modern thinkers that ignore the early, classical works of philosophy thinking that this work is “outdated” or “irrelevant” do so at society’s peril.
Logic
Bazarov claims that logic is unnecessary; what good is logic if you have no bread so as to not starve to death? His rejection of logic shows how afraid he is of the logical inconsistency of those ideas are to be pointed out; something Turgenev does throughout the entire book. To dispense with logic is to make logic unnecessary as a proof; I don’t need to be rigid and logical in my arguments if I don’t accept logic as a means of pointing out flaws in arguments.
- Moreover, ignoring logic does not allow us to discover the important economic truths about something so simple as men having enough bread to eat:
- How much bread are we to produce so that people are fed?
- What labor should instead be employed towards other tasks such as building houses and other human needs?
- Should we build grain mills and use cattle or electricity or wind to power them?
- Should we focus on growing barley or rye or other components?
- Who will grow all the components, process the wheat, take care of the yeast, bake the bread, etc?
- Who will make the mixing bowls, rolling pins, aprons, baking dishes, and everything else we need?
- Who will create the tractors, shovels, and other farm implements we need to make growing things faster?
- What farming methods should we employ to gain the most yield for the least amount of work?
- How will we transport the bread to people and all these tools that we need to make it to the producers?
- What if some people aren’t happy just eating bread and would like all the broccoli, salmon, steak, and other foods the modern world has access to for significantly cheaper than any other time in history?
Logic and specifically the logic of economics is very important to help us to understand these issues. We cannot understand something as seemingly simple as the production of bread but which turns out to be incredibly complex if we do not use logic to deduce certain apodictic truths about reality and about the nature of human action.
Rejection of subjective value
A consistent theme throughout the book is that objective value can somehow be ascertained by science and chemistry. Bazarov claims that a piece of meat is objectively better than a piece of bread which he deduces by his knowledge of chemistry.
This is the core of the most crucial arguments in economics: whether value and utility can be determined by some mathematical investigation, or whether value and utility is purely subjective and cannot be determined in any mathematical sense by any means. Ludwig von Mises was of the school supporting the latter argument and has helped in taking these arguments to their logical conclusion.
A student of communism, such as Bazarov, convinced that value is objective is a very dangerous man indeed: he is struck with the fatal conceit of thinking he knows what is best for other people. Moreover, his claims are backed up by science! Not only can he then determine what is most important to build, but how much and in what quality goods should be given out to make everyone happy. He knows that people don’t need art or beautiful buildings; objectively there is no use for such nonsense!
A student of subjective value, however, would recognize that other people need to decide what is best for themselves. It is not objectively true that meat is better than bread; in some cases, people prefer one to the other. Some people would prefer both. Still others would prefer neither. A person lost in the middle of the desert would trade everything he owns for a glass of water, while a person with access to running tap water would consider someone trying to sell them a glass water to be of much lower value than the person in the desert. There is no standard of calculation when it comes to valuation; it is different for each person and dependent on their circumstances, environment, preferences, and knowledge.
Moreover, people don’t think in cardinal valuation; they think in ordinal terms. No one says I prefer cake to pie by an order of 2.357 times. They say simply that I prefer cake to pie. There is no calculation necessary or even available to us. The idea that we can know and determine what other people want and make decisions for them through central planning has caused a massive amount of misery in the world. Austrian economists reject this premise.
Conclusion
I try not to reveal too much about the actual story line in these reviews, but it’s important to look carefully at Bazarov’s death at the end of the book. He attempts to do a autopsy on a local peasant who had typhus fever, and he ends up cutting his finger. The local doctor had no caustic and 4 hours had passed before he told his dad, who, upon hearing it, immediately was very concerned of infection and tried to burn the wound.
Bazarov dies soon after. For most of the book, he cast spite at medicine and doctors. His death is a powerful metaphor to warn us not to ignore science and authority: sometimes other people can help us to better understand the world around us. When we ignore others “reject authority” and think we can discover every truth about reality ourselves, we do so at our own peril.
The history and culture and knowledge accumulated by humanity over the millennia is a great boon to the shared knowledge we have today. Even early thinkers such as Aristotle and Socrates have incredible insight that libertarians have interwoven with more modern theorists such as John Locke to make the synthesis that is today modern libertarianism. Modern thinkers that ignore the early, classical works of philosophy thinking that this work is “outdated” or “irrelevant” do so at society’s peril.
It is telling that some of the final words that Bazarov speaks is to criticize mankind’s use of words; that our belief in words fails us even as he speaks these words with the intention to convince others. It is a beautiful scene in all of it’s immense tragedy.