Dostoyevsky: The Anti-Socialist

Did you know Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a fierce anti-socialist? The Russian author, often considered one of history’s greatest writers, warned against the disasters of socialism and communism in his novels Crime and Punishment and The Possessed almost 40 years before they would take place. 

Dostoyevsky ultimately believed that socialist economies were corrupt and dangerous because they sacrificed freedom in exchange for material goods. Moreover, he understood that although socialism may be attractive in theory, it would eventually render a despotic government in practice. 

For Dostoyevsky, man is inherently a spiritual being that values freedom, above all else. As Dostoyevsky wrote in The Possessed:

“A man is offered full security, promised food and drink, and found work, and as against this he is merely required to give up a tiny grain of his personal freedom for the sake of the common good--just a tiny, tiny grain. But man does not want to live on these conditions, he finds even the tiny grain too irksome. . . .”

What makes economic socialism wrong, Dostoyevsky thought, was that it gets human nature wrong: man will suffer if he rejects his freedom in exchange for material comfort. People naturally prefer making choices and experiencing the consequences – even if it brings about one’s physical ruin – than being coddled and safe but left without agency. 

Entire socialist economies give man bread and a bed, but a prisoner’s cell in exchange. 

This happens because a pure socialist economy demands a clinical and artificial regimentation of human life, which is infinitely complex and beyond rational categorization. Dostoyevsky knew that striving for economic equality through academic redistribution and government control turns individuals into sub-human stepping-stones in the name of a utopia. 

Dostoyevsky also believed that socialism would lead to despotism. In The Possessed, he foresaw that forcing humans into a rationalized and calculated system would divide society in two parts: the planners and the herd. The calculating ‘planners’ would enjoy absolute “liberty and unbounded power…[while] the others must give up all individuality…to be, a herd." 

The final result may be economic equality, but one where, “all are slaves and equal in their slavery.”

Dostoyevsky also knew that even if a materialist Utopia could ever be achieved as socialists propose, “mankind would go insane with boredom” and instantly destroy such a system. It would be like living at a summer camp for children in your adult life. He writes:

“Man has always and everywhere--whoever he may be--preferred to do as he chose, and not in the least as his reason or advantage dictated.”

One only has to look 20th century history to see Dostoyevsky was right. He accurately predicted the cost of implementing an entire socialist economy in his own country, which would experience countless famines, mass imprisonments, and war as a result of dogmatic ideology. 

Educators teaching Dostoyevsky in their classrooms ought to pay special attention to his political aspects of his writing. Given the growing popularity of socialism today, we would be wise to considered Dostoyevsky’s perspective and heed his warnings.

Paul Shields (St Edmund’s Hall) is a masters student in his second year of reading Politics.