Socialism calling, part two

I should clarify at the outset that I am not even trying to persuade those who will simply not listen: who, even if they agree (sometimes only inwardly) that much is wrong with the capitalist order, will never admit that there could be a possibility of improving things. This could be because they have benefitted too richly from the current system; they hope to benefit, even if the hope is very tenuous (so many engineer-drudges dreaming of becoming overnight startup-zillionaires, so many stockbrokers hoping to hit the pot of gold); they have been brainwashed into being brain dead (every ideology banks on a huge number of such people) or they are simply too frightened of any kind of serious change.

Secondly, I shall admit at the very start that much of the initial promises were very cruelly and hideously betrayed by the big and small experiments with socialism that were tried between the mid-19^th century and the mid-20^th, be it Robert Owen’s voluntary commune or Tolstoy’s farms or the USSR and PRC, leave alone tinpot regimes as in Vietnam, Cuba, Korea, Cambodia and so on. The reasons are too many, but I think the most important were a) the early leaders were too romantic, had too poor a grasp of basic human nature (or thought it was much more malleable than it really was), quarreled too much, and tried to change too many things too soon; b) later leaders (often the same ones as they grew older) invariably became mere despots, with little to distinguish them from dictators of the far right except in the rhetoric, whose fundamental aim was simply to hang on to power regardless of the social cost, and c) they all became straddled by slothful, apathetic, self-serving bureaucracies. It will not do to forget, either, that the entire capitalist world ganged up to ensure that they never got a chance to develop their own way in peace. I am not going to write a history lesson here, but do read up on the subject. If the US and Britain, then the dominant world powers, had helped rather than hindered (which is putting it mildly – ‘tried everything possible to destroy’ would be much closer to the truth) Lenin and Sun Yat Sen and later the young Mao, the world would have been a very different and, I dare say, much nicer place today. But of course that would be wishful thinking: how could they not do their utmost to destroy a system that was so great a challenge to their own legitimacy, so great a threat to their own survival?

Thirdly, about real world models. Yes, there are, and not a few. My vote goes to all those social-democracies which consistently rank not only among countries with the highest per capita incomes and human development index ranks, but are also among the highest achievers in terms of clean environments, low crime rates, affirmation of women’s rights, religious tolerance, comprehensive social security and attention to non-material needs. Whether it is Germany or France or Switzerland or Japan, whether it is the Scandinavian countries or Singapore or New Zealand (I should like to include Israel in this list, thanks to the legacy of the kibbutz movement), whether they formally call themselves socialist or not, they have managed to steer between the Scylla and Charybdis of the US model and the Soviet model and attain the best possible standards of living as well as quality of life for the vast majority of their citizens. They are also relatively peaceful, ‘unexciting’, not-happening countries (at least they used to be until Islamic terrorism recently began to become a serious problem) – so you read much less about them than about what is happening in the US or India. Their super-rich pay very high taxes, they are not yet so crazed about the pop or techie cultures, but they also have virtually no beggars nor millions scrounging lifelong just to keep their heads above water – and their public facilities, be they sanitation or transport or libraries or child care, are way ahead of US standards, leave alone India’s. And yes, to my mind, that is as close to paradise as we have yet gotten anywhere. And they have achieved all this more or less democratically and with very little violence. They still have scope for improvement, but for the rest of us, why don’t we first get there? One thing is certain: it won’t happen by letting brazen capitalism rule. That is why I worry about India and China, which between them account for almost 40% of humanity: if they take the wrong way, as they seem to be doing, mankind is doomed.

So what is the kind of socialism that I envisage and look forward to? Well, if you have been reading closely, you have a fair idea of it already. It does not deny civil liberties, but keeps strict control over anti-social abuse of such liberties. It does not try to do away with capitalism, because it accepts that capitalism generates wealth – but it sternly guides capitalist urges (‘animal spirits’ in Keynes’ unforgettable words) in the direction of greater and broader social welfare, refusing to put wealth generation permanently over and above all other priorities: ‘the public use of private interests’, to quote the title of an essay once written by a prominent American economist. It will be a system where great private wealth and great inequality will be regarded, just like poverty, as crimes. It will be a state (yes, a state: I have never had any sympathy for anarchists) where the Constitution will spell out clear goals and limitations of government, and the political class will be a class of trained professionals, respected, well-paid, stringently monitored and assessed for performance, the way we expect, say, pilots and doctors to be: opportunists, mad ideologues, narrow-minded selfseekers and plain incompetents will be barred or quickly detected and weeded out. It would be a dispensation where education and policing alike will be oriented primarily towards making reasonable, decent, civic-minded citizens, those who have gradually become convinced that caring and sharing and non-violence make for a far better world than blind, compulsive, lifelong pursuit of self-interest and hedonism. It would be a society where bureaucracy really serves the public as the best private companies do, because their careers depend on that. It would be a society where children grow up persuaded that cultivating the four cardinal principles urged by the Buddha long ago – karuna, maitri, upeksha and mudita – would help all of us far more to live better than cramming a lot of physics, chemistry, math and ‘managerial techniques’, or shopping and partying as if there would be no tomorrow simply because they have never learnt of better things to do. Above all, it will be a society which does away with the false egalitarianism of both the traditional right and left, and distinguishes between the common and the great on the basis not of wealth and muscle and looks and notoriety but in terms of mental attributes alone – remembering that being a mathematical wizard is not the same thing as being a great mind (Bertrand Russell was both, and knew the vital difference) – distinguishes not to humiliate the common, but to prevent them from trying all the time to pull the great down to their own level instead of respecting them and trying to better themselves. As to what I mean by great, look up the relevant chapter in To My Daughter.

Which brings me to a most important point: I do not regard socialism as a purely economic ideal. It must be able to give people a spiritual meaning to life – something that both traditional capitalist and socialist societies fail to do. People in the mass need gods: always done, always will do unless they mutate genetically. In the absence of a true God, they will worship baser and often sick things, such as fuehrer and nation and dialectical materialism, the free market or movie icons or football stars or beer. In this matter, I believe, most capitalist societies, being at least nominally democratic, have done better by practising secularism, meaning that they have tolerated if not encouraged all kinds of faiths, including faithlessness, as long as they do not violently quarrel with one another or otherwise break the laws seriously. But religion sits uncomfortably with a worldview that insists that money-making and self-aggrandizement, even if that calls for turning one’s eyes ruthlessly away from all kinds of suffering and cultivating contempt for all human activity that cannot be turned to commercial profit, are the only real ideals. To quote Tagore again, in most western countries (and now in all countries which have been blindly aping the west, such as ours), it has been church on Sundays, and business as usual the rest of the week. That leads to warped, confused and discontented lives. We need to do better.

Mind you, when I think of a spiritually oriented life, I am neither keen nor insistent that people have to subscribe to some kind of formal organized religion at all, leave alone believe in a traditional God. I don’t myself (some of the religions I have very great respect for, like Jainism and Buddhism, either explicitly deny God or discourage any discourse on the subject among laymen, and the kind of ‘religion of Man’ that Tagore aspired to visualize and practise lifelong, inspired by the sufi and baul traditions, does not insist on any formal God beyond the jeevan devata or moner manush). By spiritual, I mean living as if I have non-material needs too – and that, beyond a certain point (getting adequate air, water, food, shelter, rest and medical care when I am ill), they are far and away the more important needs. Living a good life means having something great and good to live for, not just endlessly indulging my animal appetites to ‘have fun’ – it is a very sick world where people are constantly trying to have fun because they are empty inside, and whole industries are devoted to it. Living for love and not just for sex (without being frigid or puritanical, of course), to cite one example; studying to understand, enjoy and reflect, not just to get a job, to cite another; preferring a good quiet conversation with one or two good friends to partying with a crowd of noisy, silly, half-drunk near-strangers; doing charity with the conviction that it is good for my own soul; pursuing hobbies like art and music and rearing pets and nurturing gardens because they keep you fit in body and mind and make you feel good in relatively inexpensive, socially harmless ways; avoiding all excess in thought, word and deed because one knows it is BAD for everyone including oneself. A spiritual person will not lie or steal or gossip; he will not regard dressing up as an important daily activity; he will not fake emotions; he will not take up an essentially bad job merely because it pays well, whether that means burglary or conning people into buying things they don’t need or cooking news. A spiritual person will always try very hard not to use other human beings merely as instruments to further his personal well-being, but instead deal with everyone – however large the number he has to deal with – as if each of them individually matters, counts for something (it goes without saying that – I am thinking of teachers and doctors here, but this applies to many others – he will try to limit that number to what he can sanely deal with, day in, day out). A spiritual person must live for an ideal – and it goes without saying that something like merely building up a big business organization, however useful a pursuit in many ways, cannot be regarded as an ideal in the sense that building a monastic order could be. A spiritual person habitually tries to make a difference for the better (in non-trivial ways, not merely telling jokes, though I have great regard for good comedians) wherever he goes. He is someone who cultivates courtesy to all because it is good, not just because it helps to attract customers or helps to stay in the boss’ good books, and expects the same from all who deal with him. He is someone who cares for the future, because he cares (really cares, as few of us do) for his children and grandchildren.

What has all this got to do with socialism? Aren’t these all very personal things? Yes and no. These are all very personal attributes, true, but they flourish or wither given the kind of social ambience in which a man has to live and function, and I dream of a social order where all these personal attributes will be publicly lauded and encouraged, their opposites held up to contempt, ridicule and institutionalized discouragement. It will help a very great deal to construct such a society where most men do not feel compelled to run after money to the exclusion of everything else most of the time, where consumption beyond essential needs is no longer regarded as either necessary or admirable, and where both poverty and extreme material inequality have been done away with. In such a world a lot of people will feel more inclined to live good lives, and those who are naturally inclined that way will find it easier to live.

Do I have some hope that the world will evolve towards such a happy situation? A little, yes. Firstly because the best people I have known, in person and through books, have dreamt such a dream. Secondly because some countries have gone very far in that direction already, and many others are tentatively following in their footsteps (despite all the rhetoric against it, government expenditure as a proportion of GDP, to use just one crude measure of social control, has grown relentlessly over almost the entire postwar era even in the US, supposedly the Mecca of capitalism). Thirdly because a lot of people, even if they are not very erudite or deep thinkers, are feeling that all is not well with the world, that it needs a big change. Fourthly because I have some faith in the herd instinct: as soon as a small but influential minority of leaders (in politics, education, business, social work and art of diverse kinds) start determinedly showing the way, the rest follow, and very soon they develop new habits, and then start believing that things were always that way (few Europeans these days can imagine how unclean or how violent their ancestors were just a few generations ago; few middle class Indians today can imagine how their ancestors could live happily yet so much more frugally just forty years ago). Fifthly because things as they are can’t go on for much longer: something is bound to give, by way of war or environmental disaster or something we cannot yet imagine. And lastly because if I cannot hold on to a dream of a better world, what is the point of living any more? I have seen life as it is, and people as they are, and it has left me deeply disappointed, even disgusted. Yet I shall not commit the ultimate sin of losing faith in Man… children keep being born, and surely they cannot be deluded and misguided forever?

P.S., April 22: A newspaper as shallow and as brazenly committed to neo-capitalism as The Telegraph of Kolkata published this editorial on April 10, two days after I wrote the previous blogpost. Sheer meaningless coincidence, this bhooter mukhey raam naam?