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~ Natural Capitalism and Enlightenment: Part Two of Two ~
Bagwan Shree Rajneesh: Beware of Socialism!: Five Discourses Given at Cross Maidan, Bombay, India, April 13 to 17, 1970.
Part Two: Discourses 4 and 5 (paraphrased excerpts)
Democratic socialism is a contradiction in terms; it is combination of two words that contradict each other.
The first principle, the foundational principle of democracy
is that it gives every individual person the freedom to live, to work, to earn, to produce
and to own, use and amass his production, his property. It is one of his basic rights.
The next fundamental principle of democracy ordains that there should be no injustice to anyone.
And another basic principle of democracy says that the majority cannot subject the minority to any injustices.
A handful of people have created wealth, but after it has been created,
all those who have had no hand in its creation are claimants for a share in its ownership.
But this is not what democracy means. Democracy means that the producer should own his produce.
And if he distributes it, shares it with others, it is his pleasure. But the so-called claimants have no right to it.
Socialism, however, approves of many such injustices,
because it is easy to win the majority in support of injustices.
But injustice will not become justice and a lie will not become truth just because the majority supports them.
Freedom to own private property is one of the fundamental human rights,
and democracy accepts this right of the individual.
So when someone says that socialism with democracy is possible, he is saying an outright lie.
Socialism violates the basic principle of democracy. Democracy and socialism cannot go together.
Freedom is perhaps the greatest value in man's life.
There is no greater value than this, because freedom is foundational to the whole development of man.
That is why bondage or slavery is the worst state of human existence and freedom is best and most beautiful.
And socialism cannot be established without fighting and finishing freedom.
Freedom of thought is the very life of democracy: it is its very soul.
But socialism cannot stand freedom of thought,
because freedom of thought includes the freedom to support capitalism.
Let it be clearly understood that democracy is a value that goes with capitalism, and not with socialism.
And if democracy has to live, it can only live with capitalism; it cannot live with socialism.
Democracy is an inalienable part of the capitalist way of life, and as such it can only go with capitalism.
The individual has the ultimate value.
But in the eyes of socialism it is not the individual but the collective, the crowd, that has value.
And socialism accepts that the individual can be sacrificed for the collective, the society.
If man has to learn anything from his history, the one lesson that is worth learning is this:
The individual cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Even the greatest of nations does not have the right to ask for the sacrifice of a single individual.
Even the greatest of humanity does not have the right to sacrifice the individual for its sake -
because the individual is a living consciousness,
and it is dangerous to sacrifice this living consciousness at the altar of a system or an organization,
however great it be; because the system is a lifeless arrangement, a dead entity,
and it is not proper to sacrifice a living man for the sake of a dead system.
Socialism is not democratic. The socialism that is sought to be forced on us can never be democratic.
In only one way can socialism come without sacrificing freedom
and that is when it comes effortlessly, naturally and by itself.
Otherwise it is not possible for socialism to be democratic.
Abundant wealth and scant population make for socialism.
Someday we may have socialism on the whole earth.
It is necessary, and it will come, if the socialists are not in haste.
Labor has a hand in the creation of wealth,
but it has not been the central factor, the basic factor of production.
It does not play a pivotal role.
The basic factor, the pivotal factor is the mind of man - his intelligence, his talent.
It is man's intelligence that has discovered new dimensions of creating wealth.
Capitalism, for the first time, found ways and means to preserve labor.
It made labor, a perishable commodity, preservable in the form of wages in money;
that is, capital was created out of it. So it is again capitalism that made it possible.
The key to production is incentive.
It is very interesting to note that a great majority of mankind is wholly uncreative.
This majority is contented with eating and producing children. It has done nothing else.
Only a very small fraction of humanity has engaged itself in creativity and produced great results.
This wealth has not come through exploitation; it has been created with great intelligence and hard work.
It has been created through the adventure of the mind in many dimensions.
But we give no thought to it and we are determined to destroy those who create wealth and prosperity.
This is our strange logic all the way down.
Capitalism is an instrument for converting labor into wealth.
And if capitalism is allowed to grow unimpeded
it can find ways to convert the entire labor of the country into wealth.
But the socialists say that they will hand over everything -
the means of production and labor - to the state.
The irony is that the politicians are, and have always been,
the most inefficient and worthless class of people in the world.
There is a reason for this. It is that merit is valued in every walk of human life except in politics.
In politics alone merit has no value at all.
In fact, politics is the refuge, and the only refuge of the misfits and the nincompoops.
Capitalism is a humanistic system which gives full freedom to all kinds of people,
and in all directions of life, to grow and be themselves.
If it is not giving full freedom right now, then efforts should be made that it does.
If there are any impediments, they should be removed.
Discourse 5
There are two ways of getting rid of capitalism - either you go beyond it or you go behind.
And for some people going back is always easy, and alluring too.
But going back to the past is neither possible nor desirable.
Until man frees himself from this dependence on the land,
his poverty and degradation are not going to disappear completely,
because the amount of land available is small and the population is increasingly large.
We have reduced our deathrate, but it seems as if it is impossible to reduce the birthrate.
Life is ever-expanding; it is an expansion of necessities.
And the greater the expansion of necessities, the greater the production.
The greater the necessities, the more man invents.
The greater the necessities, the more latent parts of man's mind are activated.
The greater the needs, the more man is freed from his animality.
In order to bring socialism, we need a philosophy that believes in the infinite expansion of needs.
And its beauty is that as man's needs grow and multiply and as he works hard to achieve them,
his intelligence and his soul expand and crystallize in the same measure.
And the ultimate crystallization that happens is unique and extraordinary.
As a result of this crystallization, which comes with the expansion of needs and their fulfillment,
one comes to realize that there is yet another dimension of life - the dimension of the inner, the soul.
And unless this dimension grows and expands, wealth, affluence and palaces are of no advantage.
Only a wealthy man can realize the futility of wealth.
The last use of wealth is that is gives you the capacity to free yourself of wealth, to go beyond wealth.
He alone becomes aware of the inner needs for the first time,
who has gone through the whole gamut of outer needs.
Only they can go in pursuit of spiritual fulfillment who have their bellies full.
For empty bellies the question simply does not exist.
Socialism can only come after the full development of capitalism.
Socialism will be like a fruit on the tree of capitalism.
And if socialism develops rightly,
then a social condition may arise in which equality and the good of all will happen.
It is because we have no idea of what human nature is.
The philosophy and vision of life should be in full accord with man's nature.
In my understanding, capitalism is a philosophy of life that is in absolute accord with man and his nature.
It is not only an economic system, it is a philosophy of life, a way of life as well.
It is not a question of being brought about through some agency.
As there are natural stages of life, so there are natural stages of social growth.
If capitalism develops, it turns into socialism on its own; nobody works as a medium.
And when you talk of the medium, it means that capitalism is not ripe enough
and so the question of the medium arises.
A medium is thought to be necessary only when capitalism has not developed well
and therefore socialism has to be brought about.
But this will be an imposed socialism and not a natural one.
It will, however, come of its own if we just let it come. Socialism can come only if we don't force it.
The transformation of a social system happens by itself - as youth turns into old age.
The growth of life is so silent, so subtle a phenomenon,
that no demarcation lines can be drawn between different stages of its growth.
Yet we are trying to guess as to when capitalism will change itself into socialism.
In my view two conditions have to be fulfilled for this change to happen.
First, it will change when there will be an abundance of wealth, not before.
All attempts to change it prematurely will fail.
Only that can last forever which is in harmony with human nature.
Socialism lies in abundance of wealth - excessive wealth. This is one thing.
But the question is how this abundance of wealth will happen.
Abundance of wealth cannot be created by man's labor;
labor will have to be replaced by technology to achieve this aim.
It is worthwhile, therefore, to give up the mad attempt to replace capitalism with socialism,
and engage ourselves instead in replacing man's labor with technology.
Life goes by natural laws. And for man, one of those natural laws lies in capitalism.
That is why I say that socialism is not a creative ambition;
it only believes in grabbing and looting and distribution of the ***.
The have-nots are out to plunder the haves.
But the tragedy is that we don't have enough wealth to distribute.
It is impossible to build character without building prosperity first.
If we have to have character, let us begin by having prosperity; let us begin from the beginning.
We have now to turn our eyes to the centers of creativity.
If we turn our backs on the politician, in twenty years we will have all: technology, wealth and character.
And when the country is affluent then alone we will be able to thank God.
But true religion is thanksgiving. True religion is a feeling of gratefulness. And who is grateful?
Grateful is he who has everything in life, and he truly says to God, "Thank you!"
The poor man cannot be religious.
It is only the man of riches, who has riches of all kinds, who has peace, happiness and bliss,
who thanks God heartily.
To experience gratitude, go within, beyond the mind, to the innermost center of being.