Ive been thinking about the principle of Communism seriously for the first time, and have, to my great surprise, found several anomalies in my views on the subject. ill set out my initial views as a background to this thought process.
Till recently, Communism appeared to me, a romantic impossibility, a convenient precept that glorified mediocrity and a callous violation of the individuality of humans. I believed it to be an escapist’s utopia, a place where ironically, everyone ended up being another brick in the wall. Ironic, because that’s the exact same charge levied against capitalism by the red shirts. While capitalism merges people into an indistinguishable mass termed the proletariat, there are still the bourgeoisie who wield the power and stand out from the masses. But communism simply refuses to see men as individuals at all, and in the name of equality violates the basic human right to be an individual, seeing things entirely as a collective society. Capitalism sees Man as the central entity and society as a conglomeration of men, with some characteristics of its own, but none that override the fundamental characteristics of the men that make it up. Communism on the other hand focuses on the society as a basic entity and denies the atoms that constitute it any separate identity.
Coming to the basic premise that natural resources belong to all and hence should be shared equally among all men, communism upholds this tenet and capitalism is ostensibly at odds with this, leading to a unfair distribution of resources. This premise of communism is based on the assumption that all men are equally productive and only the allocation of the proceeds is a matter in question. But, this assumption is grossly invalid as the faculty of reasoning and creating wealth is not the same with all men, and there are some who invent and some who imitate. So, the separation of the mass into a bourgeoisie and the proletariat is a natural process. And since the proceeds of the production are shared between those involved depending on their contribution to the actual production, there is no imbalance in the process.
Ayn Rand , I thought, had the right angle on the issue when she said it was not only the most “practical” but also the only “moral” system in history. Capitalism embodied for me, the principle of natural selection, applied to economics. The survival of the fittest is the most fundamental theory of evolution and, in the process of human evolution, capitalism is its natural extension.
Recent conversations and thought trains, however, have brought forth hitherto unthought of angles to the matter at hand.
A study of the evolutionary stages of man would help elucidate some of the forces that shape the changes in philosophies that prevailed at different timelines. We could be looking at the evolution of an individual and his intellectual and spiritual quest or we could focus on the evolution of society as a whole. I will take up the latter first.
Initially, man was self-sufficient. Then, he saw the advantages of barter and exchange and improved his standard of living with trade. Now self-sufficiency became a concept applied at the level of certain defined geographical limits- villages, townships etc. So far, the production had been on a small scale and the resources were limited to locally available raw material and labour.
Then emerged modern industry, where the restrictions on the source of resources was removed due to several advancements in navigation, communication and general global awareness and this along with the industrial revolution created he perfect atmosphere for the genesis and growing dominance (could this be replaced with ascendant ascendancy?) of Capitalism. Over this evolutionary period, the class structure of society altered constantly and at the stage of capitalism was simplified to the two-class divide the manufacturers and the workers. This divide has at its heart, ideally, the dichotomy of the inventor and the imitator. And in this “age of reason” this divide is perfectly valid and it is in keeping with the zeitgeist. Now I shift focus to the individual.
Man begins with a dependence on his predecessors, as a child, then learns to think independently and slowly breaks free of all bonds and illusions and reaches a state of consciousness where all is one. This is what is conveyed succinctly as “Mata Pita Guru Deivam”. Man’s definition of identity is initially defined through the people whom he is associated with, his family, as a son, daughter, brother, sister. Here he is limited to only those who share a blood relationship wit him. Then, he expands his relation base by voluntarily choosing those whom he feels would add to the definition of his identity.
(Going down this path of thoughts, there comes a natural dissolution of all familial ties. But that doesn’t mean the end of relationships or the definition of man’s identity being limited by his physical corpus alone. This rather means that relations are not limited to predecessors and progeny but extend to include anyone who adds to the person’s identity.) The expansion of the definition of his identity broadens his perspective and leads him to reassess his opinions that he took for granted earlier. Thus his Mata, Pita, Bandhu, Sakha, and Guru help him along the path to Oneness. Initially, he sets reference points for himself and draws circles with radii of tolerance limits for every matter of principle, demarcating what’s acceptable and what isn’t. But when he transcends these self imposed limits, he gains a wider perspective which, when all reference points are given up, becomes a view of the whole universe as a single, continuous entity and then he truly sees himself to be the One. Then he sees no divide between him and others and his ego is annihilated.
(There is a strong tributary thought train here of how man seems to start along the path of the Karma Yoga and yet at some point of learning, gets into the path of the Gnana Yoga, but that will have to be dealt with separately.)
Communism sees society as a structure where man loves all his fellow men equally. So, it becomes natural for man to obey the tenet ‘from each according to his capacity to each according to his need’. When it reaches that stage of evolution, helping our fellow men wouldn’t be “helping” anymore, but rather as natural an action as providing for our family is today. The definition of the family is in itself extended to include everyone.
So, when man as an individual evolves to the point where there is no more “individual” identity and all become absorbed in one stream of consciousness, then, communism will be the natural structure of society.
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