Reversing the civilisational slide will require a shift towards a need-based economy, whose cornerstones are just morality and justice
Mahatma Gandhi’s message and the way of living have a special relevance in the world today given the direction in which the dominant global civilisation is unfolding and the impact of its economic infrastructure on values.
The contemporary dominant global civilisation increasingly owes its character, direction and thrust to market capitalism. As its name suggests, this latest phase in the evolution of capitalism derives its surplus for survival and growth from the market through sales. The latter is a result of demand, which since the days of primeval societies, has been the result of existential human activity and the desire to possess. The process was very simple to begin with. The issue was survival, which required, in its most basic form, security (the need to live), food, shelter and clothing. Thus, the perception of the need for better weapons for hunting and warding off attacks by wild animals and other human groups might have led to devising of sharper stone spearheads.
Satisfaction over their use would have led to demands for more of these, and perhaps, also for even better weapons, leading to their invention and production. The search for such and other items led to the emergence of technologies. Jacques Ellul, who uses the words “technique” and “technology” almost synonymously, writes in his classic, Technological Society, that the latter “is nothing more than means and the ensemble of mean.” The technical operation, he adds, “includes every operation carried out in accordance with a certain method in order to attain a particular end. It can be as rudimentary as splintering a flint or as complicated as programming an electronic brain. In every case it is the method which characterises the operation.”
The application of technology on the available resources led to the invention and manufacture of products and the emergence of services that were felt to be necessary. This, shorn of trappings, was the basic process. The growing diversity, complexity and sophistication of economic, societal and political activity through centuries and the concomitant evolution of institutions, weltanschauungs and practices through millennia, has led to the evolution of the primeval barter economy to the present information technology and financial capital-based market economy, which as we have seen, derives the surplus for its survival and growth from sales in the market. Market capitalism does not just respond to demands; it creates these through seductive marketing and sales strategies whose cutting edge is advertising, which has emerged as a major high-profile industry.
Advertising seeks to boost sales through multiple strategies that, in bare essentials, is tantamount to projecting the possession of certain goods and the enjoyment of certain services as an end in themselves and the measure of a person’s worth. For example, X is an outstanding person because he/she wears a certain brand of clothing and a certain make of watch, owns a certain make of car and, if a woman, wears a certain brand of make-up. People consume not only because they want to do so but to show others that they can afford to do so or are superior people who can do so.
The result is competitive and not just conspicuous consumption, causing the alienation of those who cannot indulge in it and social tension and violence. The other result is aggravation of climate change as the increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions are a result of economic activity to cater to spiralling consumer demands. As is increasingly clear, the two processes taken together can mean the extinction of humankind.
Mahatma Gandhi stood for a need-based economy whose cornerstone was morality and justice. The first part of it is encapsulated in his famous, of-quoted statement, “The world has enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.” The ubiquitous conspicuous consumption of our time was absent in his, but the statement underlined his strong disapproval of unnecessary, self-indulgent consumption and was in keeping with his belief that an economy should be guided by principles of universal morality. He wrote in The Veins of Wealth (Selected Works Vol III), “The real value of acquired wealth depends on the moral sign attached to it, just, as sternly as that of a mathematical quantity depends on the algebraical sign attached to it. Any given accumulation of commercial wealth, may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful industries, progressive energies and productive ingenuities; or on the other hand, it may be indicative of mortal luxury, merciless tyranny, ruinous chicanery.”
Inequality, to him, was not condemnable per se. He wrote in The Veins of Wealth, “Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and unjustly directed, injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth, justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence.”
Mahatma Gandhi was against competition, which led to exploitation and low wages and for cooperation. The objective of acquiring wealth was not consumption and self-indulgence. According to him, “The final consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed and happy-hearted human beings.” (Veins of Wealth).
Here the view of the aim of economic growth is very different from what is prevalent. It, however, does provide a counter to the frenetic celebration of consumption latent with disastrous consequences.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
