Swarajya, August 17, 1963
Between ourselves, honest voter, these private monopolies created by the pernicious system of permits, licences, quotas and controls (to be extended now even to foreign capital which voluntarily comes into the private sector) make the Congress Party's rich friends richer, and the poor poorer. It is a close conspiracy; we have a battle between money and liberty, between dharma and atheism, between freedom and communism clothed in Congress robes.
“The individual is the ultimate source of energy.” A great truth is put in these eight words in a recent book by the eminent Professor of Political Philosophy, Bertrand de Jouvenel.* This truth is ignored by the present Government of India. Hence all the disappointments and failures and controversies. “We are accustomed to contrast the might of large social bodies with the weakness of the individual; this is partly a delusion,” says this eminent author.
“It is no doubt true,” continues the professor, “that even a rich individual’s income is paltry compared to that of a giant corporation; but’ it is also true that the corporation’s income depends upon the securing of a great many individual decisions to spend portions of individual incomes upon the wares offered by the corporation. It is even more true ‘that any social’ might results from the spending of many individual energies in its service, and that the greatest human authority, if it ceases to obtain response, goes out like a candle.”
What is the best means of obtaining the response of these ‘many individual energies’ to the corporation or the State, which response failing, the plans of the greatest human authorities must ‘go out like a candle’? Here enter the ‘isms’ over which politicians differ. The means of obtaining the response of individuals in State-compulsion, the socialists believe in. A significant share in the profits and the incentive born of it, say the politicians of the freedom school. Patriotism and honesty, no doubt go a long way in both the plans, but the issue that has to be answered is: which is better, compulsion and the fear of penalties issuing out of disobedience of the law or the motive of a share in the reward if the energy is well spent? The answer is easy enough unless we allow ourselves to be deflected from clear vision by irrelevant prejudices and dogmas. It is difficult to give up sweet and large dreams of giant performances and to realize that big results must be broken down into what will produce them, namely, individual energies willingly put into action under the effective pressure of individual incentive.
It is a well established fact that when men play for small stakes, they Play honourably and their manners are good. When the stakes are high, there is an increasing tendency to resort to sharp practice. Prof. Jouvenel Proceeds to show how this truth governs politics also. Politics is a game. Manners and methods in political contests, like other matters, are governed by the national culture, religion and the moral sense. But the restraints of culture and conscience break down when the stakes are high. When the game assumes the severe shape of fighting to be saved from victimizations as a result of defeat, conscience and culture are overwhelmed. No means is lost sight of in order to win, Where government not enter into private economy as in nineteenth century England, it did not much matter who won or who lost. Res privatae were safe from the vagaries of politics. No one greatly suffered by the fall of a government or by the advent of another. Not so now, in India, when the State owns and manages, or controls everything, public as well as private. There is great and wide-extending hope involved in success; worse still, there is terrible fear involved in defeat The stakes are great and so the growing violence, fraud and corruption in election. Reduce State-power, if we want the game of political contests to be played like cricket, without fraud or bad manners.
Certain problems are insoluble by reason of the conflicting terms of the problem itself. We cannot find a solution for the Kashmir problem such as will keep that area in the Indian Republic and also satisfy the Pakistan people. Geometrical and other problems of the class-room are soluble because a right answer when given by a student or teacher can fully satisfy all that is wanted in the problem. This is not however the case with political problems. As Bertrand de Jouvenel points out, they are more like, for instance, finding out a prime number larger than 13 and smaller than 17. The professor quotes the case of the British mandate over Palestine. The problem was to find a solution by which Palestine should form an Arab national State and at the same time a large part of it should form an Israeli national State, which was as impossible as finding a prime number such as postulated above. The clash of the terms composing a political problem renders a solution impossible in the proper sense of the term. Indeed, says Prof. Jouvenel, problems become political for precisely this very reason. Otherwise they are fairly speedily solved by those in authority and no problem remains.
As the professors says, it is no use saying the passions of the parties concerned make the problem insoluble and that otherwise it could be easily solved. The passions are the very data of politics. Political problems can only be settled, as the professor says, not solved. The settlement can only be like the settlement of a bankrupt’s debts. It cannot satisfy all; it can only partially satisfy. The demands must suffer paring down so that a settlement may be possible.
* The Pure Theory of Politics, by Bertrand de Jouvenel, Cambridge University Press, 1963, 221 pp 255.
