Economy of Permanence [A quest for a social order based on non-violence]
//Religion, as practised today, is largely institutional and ritu alistic. It has lost its grip over the everyday actions of men. Hence there are many who have lost faith in it and regard it as a superstition to be shunned. As the natural consequence of excluding religion from life, economics has been divorced from moral considerations on the plea of business being business. In the traditional archives of knowledge, religion, sociology and economy j have all been reserved their separate and exclusive spheres. Man has been divided into various watertight compartments. The left hand is not to know what the right does. Nature does not recognise such divisions. She deals with all life as a whole. Hence, in this' little book an attempt is made to co-ordinate the various principles governing different departments, and to focus them all on, the many problems of everyday life of man as an integral undivided unit.//
//Part II-Man in Gregation-has been added as a separate volume (in Second Edition). This part deals with activities of man as a Member of Society. Taken by itself this part may be considered a plan for the Development of the country on the basis of non-violence. It treats about planning, Agriculture, Village Industries, Exchange, De-mocracy and the State in relation to Key Industries, Monopolies and Natural Resources.//
//The world possesses a certain stock or reservoir of such materials as coal, petroleum, ores or minerals like iron, copper, gold etc. These being available in fixed quantities, may be said to be 'transient' while the current of overflowing water in a river or the constantly growing timber of a forest may be considered 'permanent' as their stock is inexhaustible in the service of man when only the flow or increase is taken advantage of.//
//In this manner, life in nature goes on, and as long as there is no break in this cycle, the work in nature continues endlessly, making nature permanent.//
//Therefore, self-interest and self- preservation demand complete non-violence, co-operation and submission to the ways of nature if we are to maintain permanency by non-interference with and by not short-circuiting the cycle of life.//
//Man-who has the ability either to make or mar the orderly functioning of Nature. Though such interference as it may suffer from him may be but transient, as Nature is mighty enough to hold its own against man and ultimately have its own way, yet, from time to time, he does upset its even working and cause a jar or jolt, like the present global war. By a closer study, we may be able to find ways and means of co-operating more satisfactorily with the order of the day in nature and thus be able to avoid needless violence and contribute to greater happiness by consciously working towards, if not attaining, an Economy of Permanence.//
//The main trouble with man arises out of the fact that he is endowed with a 'Freewill' and possesses a wide field for its play. By exercising this gift in the proper way he can consciously bring about a much greater co-operation and co-ordination of nature's units than any other living being. Conversly, by using it wrongly he can create quite a disturbance in the economy of nature and in the end destroy himself.//
Five Types of Economy
Human Development: Individual and Group
Scale of Valuation
//In fact, we may well say that a man is known by the standard of value he uses.//
//When a man is known to judge correctly always, we hold him to be a man of discernment— that is, he uses appropriate and accurate standards of value. We may group these standards as physical or material, mental or cultural and spiritual standards.//
//Moral values are always attached to every article exposed for sale in the market. We cannot ignore such values and say 'business is business'. Goods produced under conditions of slavery or exploited labour, are stained with the guilt of oppression. Those of us who purchase such goods become parties to the existence of the evil conditions under which those goods were made. Hence, there is a grave responsibility resting on every one who enters into commercial transactions, even though it may be only to the extent of a pice, to see to it that he does not become party to circumstances that he would not consciously advocate nor would care to stand by.//
//The old civilization of Egypt. Babylon, Greece and Rome are no more to tell their tale. They have vanished after a few centuries of brief, glamorous splendour because as the standards on which they were built were predominantly self-centered and transient, their whole organization and system were poisoned by the institution of slavery and extortion of tributes from subject races, as we noted in passing in the last chapter. No doubt, the Greeks and the Romans have left indelible marks of their emotional and self-centred outlook and values in their sculpture, art and literature. These are but heirlooms for their descendents to hug and cherish a dead past. Their civilization is no longer a living force.//
//The prevailing school of economic thought is built on the quicks and of Profit, Price, Purchasing Power and Foreign Trade. There is no thought lost on the deeper things of life that mark our man from the other orders. If anything there is even a dangerous tendency to treat with contempt any mention of human or spiritual values. Hence the need for caution.//
//All these ludicrous situations originate from applying the criteria of one economy to another............misapplies the only standard he is familiar with to one who must be judged by canons that prevail in the Economy of Service...... The universities are used as hotbeds for raising theorists who will rationalize and support the modern industrialist belonging to the first three economies— of Parasitism, of Predation and of Enterprise.//
//A Professor of Economics will say that price mechanism controls supply and demand, the cheaper the article the greater the demand and so on. Is this always true? In the outside world 'the economic man' does not exist. //
Incident at a Floor Mat making Muslaman Family... Reason for Decaying Traditional Domestic Industries??
//The goods produced by our own neighbours have values which are not represented in the money price. The money value is most often the least important of all considerations, although frequently, it is the sole factor that affects our decision. Such pure monetary considerations may lead to the blasting of the ramifications of our social order and spell ruin and distress all round. Money value blinds the vision to a long range social view, so that the wielder of the axe fells the branch on which he is standing. He is the contributing party to his own destruction and fall.//
Life, Living and Existence
//Life is the means by which man develops himself and it is that which affords him the opportunity to express himself through his creative faculty. Hence the great importance that has to be placed of the way people live or have to live.//
//The two great global wars, that have been visited on this generation, are witnesses to the destructive nature of modern institution and organizations. Even science, which by its very nature ought to be objective and creative, has been prostituted by being turned into an abominable engine of destruction. Instead of standing firm footed on the rock of permanence and non-violence, eminent scientists have been engulfed by the river of violence in spate, which is carrying death and ruin through the fair fields of human progress and civilization. They complacently claim to be on neutral ground. This is self-deception. There is no neutrality. Either we are creative or destructive. By the exercise of their freewill, they have chosen to serve the latter end and hence great is the destruction thereof.//
Types of Economies - Analogy
//Man is so constituted that the less he thinks on problems the less he is fitted for life. Therefore, the all considerate and thoughtful modern manufacturer, who professes to do all the thinking for the consumer, is really crippling him. Even a mother has to let her child attempt to walk and perhaps to fall and hurt itself too. If she strives to take such care of her child that it should never fall, always carries it herself, the child will never develop a sense of balance and will have to go through life a cripple. Such is the service rendered to society by the manufacturers of today.//
//Instead of the House of Creations being a source of strength, the topsy turvy order, in which the manufacturer plays the central role, has made it the weakest link of the chain, as the consumer, who forms the bulk of the population, is mercilessly suppressed and his creative faculty is buried under the debris of modern factories. This method of living does not bring into ex-istence works of art but just produces transient and flimsy transfer pictures which any child can paste in his school books.//
//Then life will be neither pure imitation without any regard for varying circumstances nor will it be one of limited adoptions with just a few variations to suit local needs, nor will it be called to perform the functions of an expanding market in the interests of manufactures of material goods, nor will it be based on sectional needs ignoring the wider range of responsibilities. Life so planned, will not only meet individual and sectional needs, but it will also be set as to lead to the happiness of all and open up wide fields of opportunities for personal development and expressions which will not fall foul of the welfare of one's neighbours.//
Standards of Living
//The suggested norm or standard should relate not only to bodily and material needs but also to all those innumerable items that go to enrich and ennoble life and raise it above the level of mere existence.//
//It is difficult even to understand what people mean when they talk of a standard of living. It is a delightfully vague term. Hence it becomes convenient to bandy these words about without fear of committing oneself to anything definite. Each person may have his own notion of a standard of living and as to what it comprises. To one a radio set and a motor car may fall within the barest minimum. To another two meals a day may be a rare luxury. Therefore, it is necessary to work out an objective standard taking into consideration the conditions obtaining in our land. Should this standard have an economic basis or follow cultural considerations or social needs? What is meant by 'high' or Mow standards? By the former standard is meant full satisfaction of a wide range of material wants and by the latter a very limited enjoyment of worldly goods?//
//Is this an appropriate use of terms 'high' and ‘low’? If the standard or norm must contain a multiplicity of material wants artificially created, then only these terms will have any significance. But if we choose to be perverse and regard as desirable that which calls into play the highest faculties in man, then the Dewan's life follows a higher standard than the British gardener's whose standard now becomes 'low'. For a standard based on material considerations the more suitable terms will be 'complex' and 'simple' rather than 'high' and 'low'. We may then say that the Dewan's standard of life is 'high' but 'simple' and the British gardener's is 'low' but 'complex'. It would appear as though the present terms have been specially devised to convey a psychological preference for the 'complex' standard which is the foundation of a good market for the manufacturers. Who will rationally fall for a standard which is dubbed 'complex'?//
//The interested parties glibly talk of creating leisure for the house-wife by introducing labour-saving devices, but no sooner is a machine allowed to oust human labour than some other invention is brought in to absorb the money and time saved by the former device, leaving the second state of the house-wife worse than the first.//
//The high salaries paid to public servants under a foreign government are of this nature. Many a patriot has been drawn away from his path of duty by such baits and has been so caught in the meshes as to deaden his conscience into adopting strong measures against his own people which he would never have consented to in his untramelled and detached state. Such persons have their sense of values distorted and their will to act has been paralysed by the lure of colourful and comfortable existence.//
//Again, looking at it from the point of view of the bargaining power of capital and labour, if any dispute should arise between the employer and the workers, the former, having greater financial reserves, can bide his time and wait till the power of resistance of the workers is broken. The workers who live on their wages cannot hold out long before they are faced with dire need and starvation. But workers, whose method of living is simple and, therefore, inexpensive, can resist longer than those whose living is complex and expensive. Hence also is the employer interested in advocating a complex standard of living for his workers so that his workers may not be in a position to bargain with him long. Apart from these reasons concerning his workers, we have already seen how the complex modes of living afford good markets for the manufacturers as in the case of the British gardener's household. So both on the side of production and that of sales, the complex standard is a profitable one for the manufacturers.//
//The staple of raw cotton taken by itself is flimsy and weak. But when thousands are spun together and the strands are twisted into a cabled rope it will be strong enough to tow an ocean liner. Such should be the result produced by a satisfactory standard of living. It should be designed to bring together the consumer and the producer into such intimate relationship as to solidify society into a consolidated mass which alone can lay claim to permanence.//
//Thus is work broken up into the component parts into routine and play, and some people are relegated for all time to do the hard routine, and a few appropriate to themselves the play part of it. When work is so divided without the balancing factor, the routine becomes drudgery and the play part becomes indulgence. Both are equally detrimental to human progress and well being. The slave dies of privations and the lord of over-indulgence. These efforts, which have been made repeatedly through the ages, have adequately demonstrated over and over again their impotency to lead man to his maturity. In our own generation, this attempt to secure the pleasures apart from the discipline has let loose on humanity the wolves of war, pestilence, famine and death. Are we not to cry 'halt' and take note?//
//While the manufacturers thus attempt to avoid for themselves drudgery and appropriate only the play and pleasure of work our socialist friends dream of scooping out leisure from work. Properly understood work of the right sort contains leisure or period of rest within itself. Leisure is an integral part of work just as rest is an essential component of a musical note. The two cannot be taken apart. Leisure is not a complete cessation of all activities. That will be death. Neither is leisure idle time. Idleness leads to deterioration. Beneficial leisure provides rest to one faculty, while other parts of our personality are being exercised. A mental worker at his desk needs an active hobby like gardening to form a complement to the nervous strain caused by desk work. Any work to fulfill proper function as ordained by nature, and not mutilated by man, must contain these complementary parts in itself.//
Part Two of the Book
//In the gregarious stage, as we have seen, there can be two kinds, the pack-type which represents the right-centred economy and the herd-type which repesents the duty-centred economy. As man evolves, his consciousness of duties enlarges and he becomes more and more aware, not of the benefits he gets by being a member of society, but of the duties he is to perform towards the well-being of that society. In the final stage he reaches the service economy in which he realizes himself in the service of others.//
//We shall first take up planning for the group, then we shall consider how economic activity is carried on by individuals in conjunction with their fellow-being. Then we shall look at the various functions that can be done by co-operative effort, and finally we shall study how the State can work and what the State can do to accomplish the ends for which the people are striving. In all of these we have to keep before us the various principles we have studied in the first part, as these will also govern the actions of men when they act in gregation.//
//Apart from the mere satisfaction of the physical needs of the people we should aim at inculcating the spirit of self-help, mutual aid, and a consciousness of social solidarity. When we achieve this and we shall have travelled a long way on the road to Swaraj through self-sufficiency.//
//The storage problem is both an urgent and a permanent one and should be tackled in all earnestness and seriousness. In any case, holding stocks in ill-protected godowns, as at present, should be stopped. Big towns and cities, where proportionately larger stocks of grain are to be held, can build pucca cement godowns. These can be built either by the Municipality or by private people to be rented out for grain storage, or better still, by Co-operative Societies.. These godowns should be licensed and subjected to periodical inspection, like the boilers, as at present.//
Democracy
//All activities in human society present two points of view, the long range view and the short range view. Many of us are not capable of taking a long term view because it means working for years before the fruit of one's labours can be seen or obtained and men do not like to wait. We are all inclined to take a short term view, we want to eat, drink and be merry. Ninety-nine out of hundred people take this short term view. But these are certain matters which have got to be done for the benefit of the whole society and which call for a long range view. This is what a democracy arranges for. We require men with long range view to be at the head of Government if Government is to succeed and the well being of the majority is to be achieved. People who take a short range view are a danger to society, if they be at the head of Government. They will promote wars by their short sighted policy.//
//Government Opposition: Democratic government based on representatives requires an opposition to direct its working. The water in a river is kept to its course by the banks. If the banks are of rock it is best. If not the banks get eroded and the river silts and shifts its course. Hence there can be no competition between the banks and the water for the bed of the river. Similarly the director and the directed cannot be competitors. There should be co-operation and not competition.//
//Government Functions: As has been observed all activities in human society present two view-points- the long range view and the short range view. 'The individual is generally obsessed with the immediate benefit he gets. He is not much interested in a programme of work what will bear fruit after his time. He would be prepared to be satisfied with lower return in the near future than to work for an end that will fructify much later. Therefore it becomes necessary, in the interests of the whole social group, to detail out certain individuals to attend to the dictates of the long range interests. This is the function of a National Government.//
//Education with a Purpose: In most countries, at present, education has a definite purpose or goal. In capitalistic countries, the captains of industry look upon it as a nursery for their future executives and administrators. In socialist countries, they harness-it to increase material production. In militaristic nations, education means a creation of a narrow patriotism.
The Oriental Method: In our own country, the system of education followed in the past was a training ground for life. A student chose his master and lived his everyday life under his master's watchful eye and imbibed the spirit of his guru. This was the case, not merely with spiritual training, but, in every walk of life.//
//Varied aspects of life: Man is a complex being; we cannot divide him up into water-tight compartments and develop him in stages. Education, which attends only to the intellectual development leaving aside the physical, moral and spiritual aspects, is directed towards the production of monstrocities. If our aim is a true education we have to attend to all faculties at one and the same time. We have to develop a person physically, socially, mentally and spiritually. He has to learn an occupation, he has to learn how to live as a member of community, he has to know how to evaluate man and matters. Unless all these are attempted we can have no education worth the name.//
//We need not place too much emphasis on the organization to be brought into existence. When we pin our faith on organization, however important they may be in themselves, we often lose sight of the personal influence, and the organization tends to become expensive and wooden. Centralization of education, as in other spheres, leads to too much control from those at a distance. Centralization of education will lead to hide-bound methods and standardization which are fatal to true education. It is much better for the village teacher to work under the eyes of his neighbours. Therefore, it would seem better if each village can be made to finance its own education by the old method of endowing lands to a Mandir dedicated to education. If such a system can have the advantage of inspection and advice from the centre, It ought to answer our purpose well, as the management itself will be amenable to local public opinion. As it is, the teacher has to satisfy the inspector once a year or so and, after such inspection is over, he relaxes. This does not make for progress, much less for steady work. Every village school should be the centre of culture and the point of contact with the outside world.//
//In a competitive economy the executive part of government is checked and directed by the opposition; but in an economy, as contemplated by us, based on non-violence and truth, there can be no such opposition. Our effort should be to attract government attention to our method of work and make them imitate our schemes in the measures they undertake. This organization, in the first instance, will be formed in various centres. These will ultimately join together or be united to form the Lok Sevak Sangh. This will be a formidable force and the government cannot ignore it. The policy of the Sangh will therefore have considerable weight in the councils of the nation.//
//Until the country is prepared to take up this type of organization and whole heartedly take to a society based on nonviolence and truth there can be no hope of any permanence in our economic, social or political life. The present type of organization based on competition and centralized industries lands us periodically into terrific upheavals. These have to be avoided if nations are to progress steadily towards a set goal, which will bring peace amongst nations and prosperity to the citizen.//
