Socialism Undefined

In a speech of the usual length and comprehensive character on Nov. 11, at Dewas, after dealing with China and announcing his praiseworthy resolves that our territories shall be defended without external assistance or alliance, and after condemning the communists of India and all communal parties, Hindu, Muslim and others, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru touched on socialism and expressed his adherence thereto. He qualified his socialism as 'socialism without compulsion' and gave no further description of it in its positive aspects. So far as the poor people of India are concerned this is probably enough to make them believe, for the time being, that without compulsion they will be made rich and happy by the mantra of socialism. But as for thinking men who wish to know more about it, it is socialism without definition. We have to understand it only by what is being attempted by the present ruling party to be done under that name.

     So far, it has been heavy taxation, large borrowings, talk about co-operative farming, and State interference in trade with permits and favours to particular traders in important lines of general consumption. There is of course some transport service run by the State, the management of a few big industrial concerns with State capital, and the famous L.I.C. These indications and experiments are enough to show that the poor will not benefit by the socialism that has become the creed of the Congress and therefore of the Government. The recent admissions of the Prime Minister as to Rs.900 crores sunk in agriculture with no results proportionate to the money put in it, and the unpreparedness for State trading in grains which, therefore, must quietly be given up, are enough to demonstrate the intrinsic mischief in officials taking up (on behalf of Government) such work as they were never trained for and are never going to be trained for. Co-operative societies absorbing a small (if not wholly insignificant) fraction of those engaged in any particular productive or distributing activity, upon which the Government must pour financial help from the general exchequer, do not prove that such societies would normally produce or do business better than the individual doing it in his own interest. Society is served well where the individual engaged in his own individual interest and aspiration serves society also. Forgetting this and assuming that mathematics can be worked without taking human nature into account, the socialists seek to rearrange things in a big continent and make matters worse than they were. The general welfare is not going to be served by the socialist dogma which means that the State owns everything and the citizens are duly wage-earners.

     To talk about co-operative farming is easy, but in practice it must lead to compulsory collective farming under State direction. Physical compulsion can be substituted by the temptation of funds given out of the public till, to be spent in certain favoured pockets. It is easy to grant subsidies and cheap loans out of the treasury and tempt into existence 'voluntary' co-operative societies: but it is a false and expensive way of seeking to prove a dogma. Weighted scales cannot measure out truth. Such experiments are of no value.

     Socialism can mean nothing if there is not State compulsion attached to it. It resolves itself then into mere claptrap. The country is not in a position, the problems are too serious for us, to let politicians get away with claptrap. The question must be asked "How will you find wealth enough to distribute among the poor through the socialism you talk about? Have you not admitted that even if all the wealth of all the rich is confiscated, not minding the ruining of industries that would be involved in it, you will not find enough to go round? You will distribute poverty, not wealth." If then the problem is production of wealth and not its present distribution, what is the best way of producing wealth? Does not experience show that management by paid officials of the State is a complete failure? Is not owner-management and fair competition the best means of production? Has this not been demonstrated in all countries where compulsion is not used? If all this be admitted, the talk about socialism must not be allowed to deceive anyone. This claptrap must be given up and an earnest effort made to utilise experience, capital and personal interest to produce more wealth and give employment on fair terms to an increasing number of people, and thereby help the raising of the general standard of life. The promise to make poor people rich by means of socialism is deception.

     The Swatantra Party objects to such deception. It does not object to the poor becoming richer. It objects to plans that favour selected and favoured groups for the sake of votes. Socialist plans and expenditure cause prices to rise and increase the cost of administration and add to the army of officials, who find their sport in teasing citizens. The poor can be helped only by greater and wider employment, and this can be done only by the expansion of private industry and private enterprise all over the country. By crippling investment potentiality, socialist taxation prevents this.

     In a poor country like ours, there is greater need for the fostering of private enterprise and individual initiative, and for avoiding what cripples all this, than even in a country like England which has rejected its Socialist Party, by a large vote. Socialism is not an end but a means and its worth as a means has been weighed and found wanting.