Pseudo–Socialism

It is remarkable how fundamental truths are lost sight of in the confusion of daily affairs imposed on the people by a mulish government. What a small community can accomplish by planned and concerted action cannot be expected to be done by a heterogeneous nation of 450 millions spread over more than a million square miles. The notion that production and distribution could be organized in India on the basis of a rigid official scheme of central planning is patently absurd.

     The answer to the objections raised on this ground has been that socialism, as enforced by the Congress Government in India, is a mixed economy and not a pure socialist economy. The private sector which is permitted in this mixed economy is, however, so cribbed and cabined with all sorts of curbs and restraints and government regulations, that it is very much in the condition of a semi-strangulated and fettered person allowed to move about and work and manage to live. That men can be expected to work, without either feeling free or seeing any prospect of saving for reinvestment and for providing for themselves and their children, by earning substantial profit after paying taxes, is so contrary to the laws of human nature that it is patently futile. What discipline and forced labour could possibly accomplish in an island of shipwrecked people, or in any small community comparable to it, cannot work when the number of people involved and the area of operations are both so large that the situation becomes entirely different in kind. The profit motive which works automatically on human nature cannot, in this case, be substituted by force and fear and State-compulsion, to cover a continental area and a huge population. Unless this truth is realized and policies are basically revised, tinkering with things here and there, or relieving pain on an allopathic basis, will not set the national economy right.

     Faith in panaceas must be substituted by faith in the individual and in human nature. Man’s most important characteristic and that which bestows on him his special quality is his freedom of choice. Take that away and you dehumanize him. This huge fallacy of socialist economy, confused with what is legitimate, viz., the welfare of the general population, must be discarded as having been tried and failed. This regime of permits, licences, quotas and controls must disappear like an ugly dream and we must get back to the old free economy which the Government gave up in favour of the slogan of socialism. The recovery of this recent past is the most effective way to assure our future.

     “Control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the blackmarket, and to artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative. It undoes the teaching of self-help. This is a tragedy next only, if indeed not equal to fratricide on a vast scale”. Sri Masani quoted these words from a prayer speech of Gandhiji, when he was replying to the debate on the no-confidence motion on August 26. Sri Masani pointed out that even while Gandhiji was fighting against fratricide, he looked upon this evil of controls as a tragedy comparable to the great evil of fratricide which he was fighting against and which ended up with his assassination.

     Mahatma Gandhi, obsessed as he always was by the spiritual consequences of any policy, laid great stress on these evil results of the control-permit-licence regime. Our planners and Finance Ministers, however, look upon the spirit of the individual as unimportant and as something that can be commandeered by the State and bent to its will. They are determined on doing great material good to the people in record time and do not care what happens to the spirit. And so they have ruined our country in record time!

     A one-party Government which has assumed a totalitarian hold over an unresisting people who are afraid to change the Government, will find no difficulty in running its regime however expensive it may be until the breaking-point is reached. It can tax the people up to the maximum and then turn to the printing press. The State can buy all that it wants, labour, office-work, and commodities, so far as these can be had in our own country, for mere paper as long as the currency is practically free from any tieup with anything more intrinsically precious than paper with the Reserve Bank Governor’s signature printed on it. Indeed, in order to meet protests and to gain favour with ignorant people, it could even announce a tax-cut, and throw the difference on to prices, and those who Protested might be under the illusion that they had secured an advantage. Of course it would add to public distress owing to a rise in prices of commodities, but this would be attributed to war and Pakistan, or China or the wicked traders.

     The trouble would be about securing foreign purchases and paying for what has already been got on credit from abroad. But people can be ordered to be content with swadeshi substitutes of all kinds and some of the ambitious Plans linked to foreign exchange can be suspended owing to the Emergency. The State can do many things with an uninformed and credulous people up to a point war helps governments to escape blame.

     Mr. A. D. Gorwala and Mr. Lobo Prabhu have time and again pointed out the not-too-well-known truth that all taxes ultimately go to inflate prices. The process of running the administration on paper money will reach a point which currency depreciation is bound to reach ultimately. Then there will be a collapse, but let us hope even this Government will see, much before that, that the rake’s course must stop and its face must be saved by calling in a national government free from ideological fetters.