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Economic Crisis or Nonviolent Opportunity? Gandhi’s Answer to Financial Collapse
On Monday the Dow Jones industrial average fell 634.76 points; the sixth-worst point decline for the Dow in the last 112 years and the worst drop since December 2008. Every stock in the S&P 500 index declined.
It is easy to blame bipartisan bickering for the impasse that led to Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the American debt, and in turn the vertiginous fall of the Dow. This bickering—this substitution of ideology for reason, of egotism for compassion and responsibility on the part of lawmakers—is a national disgrace; but while it failed to fix the problem, we must realize that it did not cause it. The cause—and potential for a significant renewal—lies much deeper. 
Gandhi's image on the Indian rupee is a sign that the world has much to learn about his idea of economics.
So let’s allow ourselves to ask a fundamental question: what’s an economy for?
The real purpose of an economic system is to guarantee to every person in its circle the fundamentals of physical existence (food, clothing, shelter) and the tools of meaningful work so that they can get on with the business of living together and working out our common destiny. This was Gandhi’s vision, among others’. We can no longer afford to ignore him in this sector any more than we can ignore his spectacular contributions to peace and security.
By the time Gandhi’s thinking on the subject matured in his classic treatise, Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule (1909), he saw that our present economic system is being driven by a dangerous motive: the multiplication of wants. Because these wants are artificial—being that they created by advertising—and can never be satisfied, it creates what economist David Korten has called a “phantom economy” of fantastic financial manipulations that of course can never endure.
We will never know real prosperity—where we acknowledge that we are much more than producer/consumers and can only be fulfilled when we discover a higher purpose—until we shift to another basis entirely, the fulfillment of needs. We have physical needs, to be sure, but also and more importantly social and even spiritual ones.
While this takes us beyond the domain of economics proper, a sound economy based on our real needs is the foundation. What, then, are the principles of that which has come to be known as Gandhian economics, and how could we implement them?
Arguably the most revolutionary feature of this system is the concept of trusteeship, which defines the relationship of a person to material goods—or, for that matter, any talents they can deploy. Borrowed from English law, it is the nonviolent equivalent of ownership: people regard themselves as trustees of their possessions for the good of their respective societies, rather than as owners for their own real or symbolic benefit (when you have more than you need, you are trying to impress others or yourself with your own importance).
Wherever an attitude of trusteeship is recognized—and clearly it is first of all a psychological, and only then a legal phenomenon—greed would find it difficult to take hold. We would no longer over-consume, no longer surrender our responsibility to corporations as the most efficient instruments for overconsumption and accumulation, no longer need to fight wars over inessentials, no longer ravish the planet in a vain search for happiness—the prospect is giddying.
The trick, of course, is how to bring about this shift. Reeducation at this depth is not easy, but it is any day easier than trying to stop overconsumption and exploitation while so many people still feel that happiness is something they can buy, and there is not enough to go around. No revolution, however violent, has managed to dispossess the wealthy of their wealth against their will; but extremely wealthy people (think of George Soros and a few others) who have cheerfully redistributed it when the concept of trusteeship took hold.
Trusteeship, like much of Gandhi’s thinking, falls in line with the wisdom delivered by scriptures East and West, that we are really not the owner of anything. Indeed it needs no scripture to tell us this, since the stark fact of life is that all we think we own can be taken away by any number of contingencies — and, let’s face it, will be so taken by the final contingency of death. Trusteeship, however difficult to achieve, liberates us psychologically from the existential insecurity that is driving us into this dead end of competition and greed.
Other features of Gandhi’s scheme are (material) simplicity, localism (svadeshi), the sanctity of “bread labour” (a phrase he got from John Ruskin), and nonviolence towards others and the earth itself. All came into play with his stellar program of spinning homespun cloth (khadi, or khaddar) that gave employment to otherwise idled millions (sound familiar?), united the country in a vast network of growers, spinners, weavers, and buyers, and, almost incidentally it seemed, broke the hold of the British Raj in India.
Today many experiments that could potentially provide one or another piece of this program are doing very well, thank you, around the world: community farms, local currencies, “transition towns” and so forth. One thing that would certainly help them coalesce into a real movement, making them a visible alternative to the “multiplication of wants” economy that’s collapsing around our ears, is a voluntary shift to trusteeship carried out by individuals at their own pace in their own applications. And what’s not doable about that—provided we stay clear of television long enough to repossess our minds?
Korten has advanced a brilliant three-part strategy: change the defining stories of the mainstream culture, create a new economic reality from the bottom up, and change the rules to support the values and institutions of the emergent new reality. Gandhian economics in general, and trusteeship in particular, would be a major enabling condition, working as it does within consciousness itself, for these great changes.
Monday’s debacle points out once again that forward-thinking people need to provide a “safe haven” – a plausible, attractive alternative – for every sector of the current system that’s showing signs of potentially terrifying collapse: security, education, healthcare, and of course the economy. Gandhi had eye-opening experiments we can learn from in all these areas, and what we’ve just sketched out would be a great place to start.
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18 Comments so far
Show AllWe must view nonviolent economics as an ongoing experiment. We test our ideas, they fail in certain ways, but then we get better next time.
Overall we want a political and economic system that works permanently, that is understandable by many people, that is not susceptible to flim-flam from existing governments or from independent grafters, and that is pretty democratic in nature.
We want and need to hold wealth in trusteeship. We need to hold farmland, factories and houses. Unfortunately, that's wealth. Wealth attracts rats.
We want to make widespread, wise, fairly democratic decisions with this wealth. We want to be innovators, to invent new solar products, to destroy the petroleum and coal mining industries by underpricing them (although they should also be banned and shunned). To make good decisions we need mechanisms set up to develop the products. We need wise executive boards to sort the good ideas from the bad. We need first customers brave enough to invest and wise enough not to at times.
Gandhi's views just don't apply in today's political climate. If the British had had the communication capabilities that the right-wing have today in this country Gandhi would not have been effective. He would have been just a blip in history. The political and economic systems in this country need to change from Capitalism to Socialism. People need to understand that Capitalism is a form of wage and debt slavery. It benefits the very few while exploiting the very many. As long as Capitalism is allowed to continue to exist we will see the same thing that we've seen for the last 100 years - boom and bust and major inequality.
Its been that way for more than the past 100 years.
And likewise..if Gandhi had a Professional Left pulling the strings we have today, he'd have been a footnote in history–if that.
The Seven Blunders of the World is a list that Mahatma Gandhi gave to his grandson Arun Gandhi, written on a piece of paper, on their final day together, not too long before his assassination.[1] The seven blunders are:
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Knowledge without character
Commerce without morality
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice
Politics without principle
This list grew from Gandhi's search for the roots of violence. He called these acts of passive violence. Preventing these is the best way to prevent oneself or one's society from reaching a point of violence.
To this list, Arun Gandhi added an eighth blunder, Rights without responsibilities.
Ghandi's views did not apply in his own political climate. Unfortunately, he did more harm than good in seeing a true political shift to socialism in his home country. He did not stand by the working class and instead supported the capitalist structure to the extent of pushing workers back into their repressed slave wages to keep the machine turning.
FYI, Ghandi was opposed to gun control. He thought that if India had guns the British wouldn't have been able to conquer India as they did.
Someone on this site keeps offering us the URL for Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, the third film of the Zeitgeist series by Peter Joseph that came out this year. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
It’s an interesting film, and much of it is worth listening to, particularly the contention that a society makes a certain type of person who will act in react in certain ways: if you are born into a society built upon peaceful coexistence, people will tend to frown on war; if you’re born into a warrior society, you’ll tend to glorify war, and so forth. If, as Nagler’s article says, you have a profit-driven society rather than a needs-driven society, all spurred on by the TeeVee and all the other messages to buy that we see all around us, the population will be profit-driven and always looking for happiness in stuff, and all but forget about the needs of others or the ramifications of getting that next thing you’ve been conned into wanting.
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward makes the point that planned obsolescence is creating tremendous waste, huge waste dumps and pollution, and driving us to plunder the earth for ever new resources, and that money is absurd and its defense is based on Adam Smith’s magic hand, which he correctly identifies as a religious concept (Providence will make everything work out in the market as people work toward maximizing their returns). The film’s solution is to turn to a purpose motive rather than profit motive, learn how to manage resources most efficiently, and get on with our lives doing things for the good of all and with the least harm to the environment. In other words, a need based economy that is environmentally sustainable. And without the profit motive, of course, the advertising of useless junk would disappear, and with the end of planned obsolescence, things would be produced to last and fixed when they break.
Lots of other interesting stuff in it.
The solution offered has many extremely strong points as well, but when I looked at the end result—communities based on optimal effeciencies in all matters of design and production, production which is operated by machines themselves, which reproduce themselves—it reaches the conclusion that in such a society only about three percent of the population would actually be needed to run the whole shebang.
At that point, I balk, because I don’t know what a society would do without the vast majority of people having to spend a lot of time doing things in order to survive. Yes, I realize that if you stop coercing people to do things because they have to for a reward (whether that be a bonus or the ability to survive), they become much more creative and productive—a good synopsis of this is offered in an RSA Animate called Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, adapted from a talk by Dan Pink (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc). I realize that there have been communities, and even ARE communities, that are motivated by community rather than competition, that are egalitarian, that are peaceful, but I don’t think there’s ever been a society where needs were fulfilled without necessary effort. In other words, The Zeitgeist Movement is imagining a world where you needn’t worry about working to provide for needs. He is giving us a vision of the world that I question whether the human being can adapt to. What would all that unleashed creativity of millions of people produce?
The one societal group that the film points to that has grown out of Western culture are the Anabaptists, out of which the Amish have arisen, and it provides many parallels to what the Zeitgeist Movement is going for: efficiency in the use of resources, building things to last, heavy emphasis on communal responsibility, refusal to wage war, etc. Yet it also provides some essential contrasts, not least of which is the culture’s insistence on hard work, without the aid of most modern technologies, in order to survive and prosper. In such a world one must be resourceful, must know many things to maintain a household and farm, but creativity is very contained. Creativity is put into things necessary and utilitarian: their furniture, their amazing quilts, etc., but it stops very quickly at technological innovations that would alter the essential way of life, imaginations that would alter the appearance of people and their things to any appreciable extent, or God forbid, new ideas about how to relate to one another—in short, anything that would alter this society that is based very much on tradition. And the tradition requires that everyone work hard.
Now again, in a society where most people wouldn’t have to work, which has no real tradition, what would people be up to? This is a question, not a condemnation of Zeitgeist.
I, too, am convinced (by R. Buckminster Fuller), that our future wiil require little work for its' maintainence. We can only imagine what that would be like, being such utilitarian "animals" as we are at present. I imagine high culture, arts & crafts, festive celebrations, sacred rituals, journeys & "walk-abouts", serious explorations of "inner space", and such like things, will make up a large part of daily life in this future world. More "doing", than having & utilitarian "thing-making". But I'm just an electrician. What I do can lead to that advanced technology that liberates the human from its' bondage to the animal status.
Yes, technology is amazing. There was a lecture on TED where the presenter said solving our energy problems is only about 10 years away. But he added the caveat that the new technology would also allow one terrorist to take out a city. Our Utopian dreams are dependent on changing human nature, if we can "stay clear of television long enough to repossess our minds". Good luck.
And changing human nature is dependent, in large degree, upon freeing the human from the 24/7 struggle for sheer, animal survival. The leisured elite of past aristocracies enjoyed many opportunities for self-development, because they had armies of servants and/or slaves to do all the work. This leisure opportunity will be the common inheritance of all people. This was the ENTIRE point of technological progress, and STILL IS. The advocates of "chop wood/hall water" don't realize what it ultimately is that they are advocating (or maybe they do...which would be a damning self-indictment, essentially equating humans to ants and bees. The soul can incarnate in those bodies for that experience. Humans are meant for entirely different experiences).
There's nothing damning about comparing humans to ants or bees ( lifeforms that actually contribute to the planet). I feel that Homo Sapiens is an exceptional species,with a responsibility to improve the planet with our talents. But we haven't, and our actions have made us more like fleas and ticks rather than a force for improvement.
Many decades ago, this quote from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was prescient and perspicacious to say the least: " America is the most industrialized country in the world and yet it has not banished poverty and degradation. That is because it neglected the universal manpower and concentrated power in the hands of the few who amassed fortunes at the expense of the many. The result is that its industrialization has become a menace to its own poor and to the rest of the world ".
The basis of Gandhi's understanding is fundamentally spiritual in nature. Oddly enough, as we have evolved or devolved into societies that substitute an understanding of truth and our true nature with the empty pursuit of material things, we threaten the very existence of the system that embraces this false reality. The end of this system would not be tragic if it occurred as a series of natural transitions. Unfortunately, it's death promises to cause much unnecessary suffering. We are at an historic juncture in the world's history, where our very existence depends on spiritual transformation. In this sense, this is the most pivotL time in human history to be alive- If we embrace this understanding and learn how to practice genuine compassion for all beings, life. I do not believe their is one necessary belief system- one philosophy or teaching that magically will deliver us. Rather the answers are within us if we have the strength, courage and love to acknowledge it.
Materialism fosters attachment to things, every "thing" is impermanent with has the illusion of permanence.This illusion is Maya.This attachment results in mental slavery, the pursuit of "things" creates envy, greed, just to mention a few of the 7 deadly sins. This attachment binds those who make their god, things, which is mental slavery.. Bob Marley's song, the "Redemption Song" has a refrain "emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but yourself can free you mind". USAn's need to "emancipate themselves from mental slavery which has created a society of narcissistic, consumerist, gluttons instilled with mindlessness propaganda by the government, business and pretend christians which institutionalizes mindlessness giving it legitimacy with peer pressure.
A possibility: It will be declared that the poor people of this world own everything. The rich and the powerful will know nothing, say nothing, have nothing. It will be agreed that every poor and unrich person has ten million stars (new money) and is earning ten stars an hour in time, not by labor. Only necessary products will be manufactured. People exhausted from overwork or because they are being worked to death will rest. Possessives will unappear from language. The prices of all things will go down daily or weekly. The power of generosity will be practiced worldwide. Eventually, there will be no money. The primary business will be that of saving lives. There will be peace.
Mr. Nagler notes,
"Other features of Gandhi’s scheme are (material) simplicity, localism (svadeshi), the sanctity of “bread labour” (a phrase he got from John Ruskin), and nonviolence towards others and the earth itself. All came into play with his stellar program of spinning homespun cloth (khadi, or khaddar) that gave employment to otherwise idled millions (sound familiar?),"
Quite familiar. The ideas expressed here (especially stewardship and providing for others) are a central theme of William Law's "A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life" (1729), and had been around for thousands of years before that.
I'm not at all optimistic about such ideals ever being practiced by society as a whole. But so what? By living in any other way, we harm others. So let's do our best to live out these ideals, and persuade as many other people as will listen. One observation: few people listen very long to circular firing-squads.
It's good to see Professor Nagler published in CD with this essay, Economic Crisis or Nonviolent Opportunity.
Professor Nagler authored a landmark compendium on peace, justice, and nonviolence, "The Search for a Nonviolent Future" (2004). A friend recommended it to me several years ago, and it's a treasure. I recommend it to CD readers.
Best wishes to Professor Michael Nagler.
Bill in Dubuque
"We will never know real prosperity—where we acknowledge that we are much more than producer/consumers and can only be fulfilled when we discover a higher purpose—until we shift to another basis entirely, the fulfillment of needs. We have physical needs, to be sure, but also and more importantly social and even spiritual ones."
I think a shift in fundamental purpose to one of fulfillment of needs offers the paradigm shift necessary to resolve many of the converging problems of environmental destruction, poverty, greed and war. How would this shift occur? Maybe it starts with people no longer believing in the current system and simply being open to abandoning it much like happened with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Much of the stress today comes with people either trying to buttress the existing system or, seeing the problems, trying to change the system to fit some other preexisting mental model. Maybe the first step, which is occurring now, is a falling away in belief in the system as it is.