Swarajya, March 24, 1962
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.
In spite of the complications of modern progress and the political institutions of governance that come into being consequent on that progress, the freedom of the individual should be maintained and preserved against being mortgaged away, sold or coerced out of existence. This is the creed of the Swatantra Party— not a going back to feudalism or the exploitation of the many by a few as Interpreted maliciously by the Congress Party in its anxiety to remain in power.
Marx’s own ideal is a society in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. But what he taught has led to such means being adopted in current communist practice as to yield the opposite result—the complete and ruthless destruction of the sense of the value of the individual by the party and the State and their officials.
Construction approximates to design in engineering. But where the complications of the human mind enter, and not only brick and stone and steel, the resulting construction is far from, and often the opposite of, the preceding design. The condition of the communist countries bears no likeness to what Marx had designed.
Hindu society is not what the caste system and the division of labour, and the coordinated social service it represented, ought to have produced. The religious marks worn on the face by men and women among Hindus were designed for a daily renewal of faith and surrender to the will of God, and open expression of it for mutual encouragement among those who followed the teachings of the same faith. But, in course of time, these marks became symbols not of humility, but of aggression and mutual isolation of denominations. So also do communist States totally differ from what had been designed by Marx. We often get the very opposite of what we made designs for. We may find explanations for it but that does not alter the position.
Whether they are communists or non-communists, socialists claim to work against capitalism in order to prevent what Marx called self-alienation. Where men are not free to follow their own nature but are compelled to labour for subsistence, and not as means to self-fulfilment, the condition is described by Marx as self-alienation, i.e., men selling their selves away. Socialist dogma following Marx is that market economy should be substituted by State control and State regulation. But the abolition of market economy does not guarantee the abolition of human self-alienation. The record and current spectacle of communist countries in operation show that the working man may be more alienated in a highly planned socialized economy than in an unplanned, mixed economy in which political democracy is duly maintained as in Great Britain and America.
When self-alienation takes place in favour of the State with absolute power, the alienation is an unredeemable alienation which puts the individual in a totally helpless condition. When the State is, further, in the complete grip of a political party that utilizes the State resources for perpetuation of its regime, the position becomes tantamount to slavery.
There are no rights in the socialist countries, except for those who agree with the dictatorial rule of a minority in control. These countries are much farther removed from the Marxian ideal of a society of ‘unalienated’ men and women than even the imperfectly developed countries of the East where the psychology of Dharma is alive, It is not the mode of economic production but the mechanism of political decision which is of importance on the question of human freedom.
Every citizen who helps the State-socialist fanatics to hold power, on the ground that economics are more important than politics, is an accomplice in the crime of human self-alienation. Every citizen who remains silent or passive, when he might have lodged his protest, acts as an accomplice. The flame of individual freedom, which Gandhiji wanted to be kept burning in democracy, is as sacred as life itself. The State Socialists of the Congress Party are planning, knowingly or unknowingly, to put out this sacred flame. The unconscious accomplices, the voters, will get weaker and weaker as the process goes on. They will automatically become more and more passive and unresisting accomplices and hasten the destruction of freedom.
The movement of Swatantra should, therefore, be kept up with vigour, and not allowed to die out with the excitement of the elections. We have initiated a great and patriotic national endeavour. The enemies of freedom are in power, and resistance to their march requires the vigilance and patriotism of devoted lovers of true human freedom. The election that is over was only the Preliminary skirmish of a battle that must go on until State power is flung back to its proper boundaries.
