GENERAL INTRODUCTION

NATARAJA GURU

ECONOMICS deals with wealth as a value in life. Political economics as talked about in our times, whatever it might really be in itself, is confined to such subjects as would tend to make a chancellor of the exchequer act more intelligently than he might have done had he not studied them. The subject of economics has been laughed at by most serious thinkers, and been dubbed a "dismal science." It is based on a chronic desire in man to become richer and richer. In this sense economics is not a science at all, but I reflects the diseased condition of an individual who thinks of the wealth of nations, or of one nation, from the ego-centric standpoint of self-aggrandizement.

The conflict involved in economics is paradoxical: one is to love one's neighbour as oneself, but at the same time Britannia must rule the waves. Between such rival positions, economic textbooks range in endless variety, wherein so-called wise people indulge themselves in notions such as those of supply and demand, production and distribution, or communication, transport and exchange. The token value of a coin should not be mixed up with its precious metallic content, and an unintelligent change in the proportion of silver added to minted coins in a state can make all the coins disappear from the country in the twinkling of an eye. Such are some of the dangers that economics textbooks warn the chancellor of the exchequer about.

The spiralling of prices, increase of rent-value, pressures of population, the efficacy of tariff walls-unjust and immoral in themselves, in which crag baron's rob bag þarons; as Ruskin would put it :- give us an endless variety of textbook subjects as taught in colleges and universities of the present day all over the world. One hears of possible explosions of population, and control of displaced persons to keep them from seeking livelihoods beyond national frontiers. Liberty is flaunted at every step of what passes for good economics.

Go to top

VAGUE THEORIES AND QUESTIONABLE PRACTICES

Subjects like inflation are as vague in the minds of economists as in the most ancient days, when economics was not taught in schools as a science as it is at present. We are told that it is good to have a high standard of life in a country, while at the same time there are economic experts who ascribe the spiralling of prices to too much planning. Quantities of edible products are known to be buried, burned or thrown into the sea so that the height of prices could be maintained, without respect for the hunger of people who might be starving.

Every market woman knows that demand and supply have to balance each other, but the relation between production and exchange is still a mysterious factor. One hears of countries like England going off the gold standard at a given moment - when it is their turn to pay their debts - while they themselves respected it at the time that the standard was favourable to them. Whether this is honest dealing has been questioned by eminent authorities, irrespective of the side they took in economics.

There is a recognition of such factors as sterile and fecund wealth, as also of the possibility of creating credit to help nations in special kinds of economic distress, who could be allowed time to recover by long-term credit adjustments arranged by financial magnates who meet in secret to have questionable dealings. A bank can function with only one-tenth of its capital inside its coffers and carry on ten times the volume of business, without anyone knowing whether the assets are really in the vault or not. It is the "Big Ten" - whether in Wall Street, Lombard Street, La Bourse, or in Bonn or Tokyo - who decide the fate of other people's money without their consent, and without telling them what they are doing in their names.

Insurance companies gain enormous profits by maintaining account books in big buildings like the Empire State Building. Their article of trade is the natural fear or anxiety among the generality of their clients, which they exploit on the basis of their gullibility, promising security from fire or fear, etc. "World Banks" seem to lend money to help borrowers, while actually being primarily interested in promoting their own exports. Dumping of condemned goods from "advanced" to "backward" countries contains a snag which only now people like Chavan (Finance Minister of India) are opening their eyes to. "Hard" and "soft" currencies are discriminated without justice in respect of the membership fees of so-called World Banks.

Scarcity economics has created an impasse which has climaxed into what is now understood as a joke under the name of Parkinsonianism. Maintain the price line; don't let the dollar wobble; keep the pound steady; these are slogans referring to economic malaises which come to evidence in various countries, the remedies for which are equally vague and have to be guessed at from the graphs of such bodies as the Chase Manhatten Bank, whose experts know everything. The "iron law of necessity" regulates the relationship between labour and capital, but there is a more complicated Surplus Value Theory which has come into the picture of economics and for the clarification of which one has to read Engels' Anti-Duhring where he discovers of the subtle relationship between production and exchange - more difficult to understand than the graphs of infinitesimal calculus where parameters cut curves marking ups and downs in the economic progress or regression of a given country.

Lastly, nobody speaks of a World Economics at all. There is no textbook of World Economics, though economics as a science - if it really is a science - should necessarily be most directly concerned with the happiness of humanity as a whole. Instead, economists visualize a world consisting of differently coloured Hitlerish patches of territories, from within which each man is thinking hard economically so as to defeat his neighbour. Such is this dismal or sombre science, which is not a science at all.

Go to top

STATISTICS AND SCARCITY ECONOMICS

The greatest prop of this science is statistics, about which Mark Twain said that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. Statistics can prove anything, and one can easily rob a neighbouring country by using high finance based on false statistics. Statistics about population are the worst of them all. They say that God protects his creation, but there are international agencies at present which kill human progeny before they are even born. All textbooks declare that the Malthusian theory of population is an exploded one, but castration of men and women based on the most garish of inducements rudely violates and circumvents the law of the individual, in a manner that could only be described in mild terms as questionable. Opulence and abundance are not distinguished sufficiently clearly. Creating scarcity can raise the standard of life, but living in plenty is said to be a backward condition, only because such backward countries do not buy transistor radios or refrigerators, and because the women take care of their wealth by keeping some gold ornaments in their boxes. Why they are wrong is not clear to any intelligent man.

Combines and monopolies are a menace to those who have no shares in such concerns, and at whose expense they become rich. A "limited liability company," which is respected in the eyes of the law, amounts to pooling the funds of several capitalists so that the power of the bag could weigh more heavily on the poor people who are not able to pool their resources in the same way. Ruskin stated this truth most pithily in his Crown of Wild Olives, when he said that bags and crags have the same effect on rags.

The same applies to politics when economic blocs are formed between countries, and "common markets" instituted so that their bargaining power against others could be strengthened. Paper money is not always supported by tangible wealth within the vaults of big banks. Even world currencies are being floated by big companies cutting across the currencies of nations in circulation, the moral justification of which is still to be clarified. Indefinite credit can be created by financial experts meeting together now and then, giving them enormous power over the inarticulate masses who are always the sufferers at the hands of the more clever ones in the world. Paper currency cannot be eaten instead of rice or wheat, and its value has to reflect those aspects of wealth which are not just paper but which touch human well-being more directly and actually. The great discrepancy between the two spells grave disasters underneath the visible level, and no power is trying to balance them, and no text book tells us how to make the correspondence between them more compatible, just or even barely honest.

All economists cry hoarse against unemployment. The present writer is unemployed, but has never been sorry for it all his life. Economists sometimes create problems which really don't exist, or at best exist only in their imaginations, propped up by that master lie called statistics.

Go to top

LAISSEZ FAIRE

In short, what we wish to point out is that whatever measure an economic authority might consider applying to a situation in a country, whether advanced or backward, mercantilist or agriculturalist, in an opulencist or abundancist context, whether standards there are high or low, where demand and supply are not balanced, and where inequality is the prevailing given datum in whatever branch of economics, it would be better to leave affairs well alone to let them find a natural balance between the rival prevailing forces. Don't control population, lest the balance of nature should be disturbed. This is a dictum which has been proved with rabbits in Australia. The lopping of a tree makes that part of the tree proliferate all the more. Shaving too often only increases the growth of the beard. Such subtle factors have all to be taken into consideration before a complete theory of economics could be developed, more especially, as we have said in respect of the one world of tomorrow.

The laissez faire policy of Bentham must have been suggested by such a line of thought, but who takes it seriously? Planning, on the other hand, and even over-planning, is the order of the day, in spite of such ideas as Parkinsonianism becoming equally credible side by side with it. One might ask, what is the remedy? The answer is simple, but will surely not receive the approbation of professional economists because it would imply indirectly that they should put themselves cut of commission.

Go to top

AN ABSOLUTIST APPROACH REQUIRED

Relativistic theories of economic happiness must give place to an economics based on norms and constants derived from an absolutist standpoint. Slogans like "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," "The greatest good of the greatest number," laissez faire, "Equality of opportunity for all" and all the varieties of socialistic dicta such as "Dictatorship of the proletariat," "Classless society," etc., have all of them the needle pointing in the same direction towards the need for a normalized form of economic theory based on first principles, rather than one which serves as a basis for further fanning into flames rivalries that lurk within the relativistic set up, however good they might be from utilitarian standards. Lukewarm economics favours the fecund proliferation of injustices which keep creeping up from its hotbed. Such an economics can create more problems than what it can solve.

Go to top

VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS

We have to turn away from formulating further economic theories in which relativism is allowed to vitiate our approach even at its very inception. There are no textbooks at present which seem to fulfil this requirement, except in the voices of protest against modern economics raised by such lovers of humanity as Plato, Rousseau, Tolstoy, Ruskin, Carlyle, Quesnay, Compte, St. Simon, Gandhi, Thoreau, Emerson and others. These voices are hardly audible above the clamour contained in other literature, and they are put into the shade by not being taken sufficiently seriously. We have, therefore, to turn our eyes elsewhere for any consolation in such an important question which touches the happiness of humanity intimately.

If we look over the utopian pictures that have been painted in various books describing a perfect state of economy prevailing in any country - which by the very meaning of the term "utopia" as applied to them stand self-condemned - we have only a very thin and negligible quantity of literature left which could be said to describe a normal viewpoint. It is that part of economic theory which stems out of the totality of values in the world that can relate the subject correctly to that very zone of general happiness from which alone an axiologically based subject could derive its origin.

There are starting postulates and premises for every precise science. Literature often tries to portray perfect conditions to serve as a model or basis for further discussions on the subject. It was because such a model was needed that Gandhi often alluded to Ramarajya for expressing his own special ideas. One could substitute this term with another equally good, which we could call Dharmarajya, which would however have a Buddhistic flavour of Asoka's time. Constantine's empire and the days of Akbar and of Asoka have left impressions recorded in literature with economic theories directly or indirectly stated in them. Mahabali and Dilipa were also just rulers in whom absolutist standards of ethics, economies and aesthetics were supposed to have prevailed. Their stories continue to inspire generations of humanity even to the present day. Although in their approach to value-judgements, economics is treated together with other subjects as being only one among many of them, it is not impossible to derive the purest of guiding principles from such writings. There is the whole of Kalidasa's Raghuvamsa which affords us ample ground for searching for normative guidelines in formulating a new theory of economics in the absence of any at present, as we have said, which could be called normalized at all.

Go to top

CANDIDE

Before recommending that we should turn our eyes to the wisdom of the "Golden Period" of Indian history for gleaning guidelines on this subject, which might itself be said to be a product of Western civilization, we have to establish sufficiently clearly that economics in the West has proved itself to be a complete failure so far. It might be suspected that such a sweeping statement could be due to some old-fashioned mode of thinking not at all acceptable to the ways of the Age of Enlightenment of which men of the twentieth century are unquestionably proud. How could backward countries even think of criticizing advanced countries to say that they are wrong?

In such a predicament, one has the unstinting support of a writer and thinker of unquestionable status, who could himself be said to be one of the representatives and fore-runners of what we call the Age of Enlightenment. Between him and Rousseau, we have two great names in the history of modern thought who could be said to be the harbingers of modernism itself, leaving behind the mentality belonging to the so-called Middle Ages. One has only to mention Candide to modern enthusiasts of Western economy with their contempt for anything old or oriental to see how the very name itself succeeds in turning the tables against their stand. "Have you read Candide?" is all that needs to be said to see the retroactive effect on the face of an enthusiast of the economics of the West. Opulencist economics, mercantilism, the "gold rush," the South Sea bubble that burst and Eldorado with the adventurous search for the Golden Fleece are all satirized in this classic by Voltaire.

Go to top

THE NORMATIVE FRAME OF REFERENCE IN KALIDASA

Indian scholars did not compartmentalize disciplines unnecessarily. Thus, valuable theories of ethics, aesthetics and economics find unitive treatment in the vast body of classical Sanskrit literature - particularly in the works of Kalidasa, the uncrowned king among poets of the Indian soil. Vikramaditya's empire must, as scholars think, have been a model of economic success. The theories which contributed to such a success must, have influenced Kalidasa's own theories. There are many precious passages from which the groundwork of economic theorization itself could be collected. Even the verses of the Kumarasambhava, when carefully examined, reveal their own economic theory studied at a point where all human values stem out of the context of the atman or Self. Man is the measure of all things, and the proper study of mankind is man. One must first know oneself, and be true to oneself, and one cannot then be wrong. The normative reference for wisdom was seen to be located and rooted in Self-knowledge, and was fully schematically and structurally analyzed by the Upanishadic seers conforming to a fully scientific and sound methodology, epistemology and axiology.

It is true that Sanskrit literature is clothed in the cryptic ideograms and favourite cliches of its own peculiar lingua mystica. This. does not detract, however, from the fundamental postulates and sound starting premises of the economics envisaged therein. It has to be treated as a study in itself, before the contributions could be analyzed and enumerated so as to reveal their great value in acting as a corrective to modern economic theorization.

Go to top

CLEARING THE GROUND FOR A ONE-WORLD ECONOMICS

CURRAN A. DE BRULER

PRELIMINARIES

ECONOMICS is a science of value-judgements referring to human values both inner and outer relating to the life of man here, as opposed to hereafter. ¹ It thus belongs together with ethics, aesthetics, and even education, all of which are normative disciplines which could be brought together unitively under the general heading of axiology, as referring to those branches of knowledge which imply a human value-content to be conceived in open and dynamic and living terms. All of these disciplines are directly concerned with the happiness of man here, and all ultimately imply a dialectical relationship as between two conjugates or factors such as the Self and the non-Self, or the one and the many, unitively conceived, in which the General Good and the Good of All are to be secured together without contradiction. Economics, ethics, aesthetics and education, when fully abstracted and generalized and treated globally and unitively as referring ultimately to a single frame of reference in terms of a neutral normative notion of the Absolute or the Self in man, could thus be seen to hang together normally or naturally as forming an integral part of a fully normative Science of the Absolute or Science of Sciences. Such a normalized or unitive approach to knowledge, which is admittedly the goal of our Conferences here convened in the name of Unitive Understanding, implies in all cases and in each discipline two sides or aspects which have to be first clearly recognized and distinguished, and finally ultimately resolved in terms of a single neutral normative notion for all philosophy or science.

The problem which faces us in this preliminary paper is, therefore, to recognize and delineate the two sides which are necessarily involved in any total or overall vision of economics which could be said to be complete or scientific. We shall thus be attempting to clear the ground, as it were, for the ultimate formulation of a fully scientific theory of what we could call One-World Economics, which is a goal towards which we shall attempt to proceed in papers presented in future Conferences, although the complete study of such a subject with all its implications and subtleties belongs properly to a full-fledged Gurukula Institute of Higher Studies to do it full justice. We shall thus limit ourselves here to certain fundamental notions basic to any theory of One-World Economics, while serious students or readers who desire a more detailed and complete treatment of the subject are referred to the series of five articles or essays by Nataraja Guru entitled "Towards a One-World Economics." ² The last of these articles, in which the Guru lists in a graded order of his own certain definitive notions or principles essential to the formulation of One-World Economics, is reproduced at the end of this paper.

Go to top

OPULENCE AND ABUNDANCE: THE TWO WORLDS OF ECONOMICS

What can be called Classical Political Economy as a formal branch of knowledge may be said to have originated with Adam Smith, whose book called An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is admittedly the cornerstone on which has been erected the edifice known to us as modern economic theory. The very title itself of this monumental and definitive work should be sufficient to indicate to us the extent to which classical economic theory has been vitiated by a closed and static, unilateral or piecemeal approach, inasmuch as Smith did not even attempt an enquiry into the nature of value or wealth in itself, but only as related to one or another closed or exclusive group, called by him a nation. This "dismal science" of economics as propounded by Adam Smith and his followers - notable among whom are Ricardo, Bentham, Senior, Mill, Jevons and Marshall, to name but a few - based on the notion of scarcity and the law of supply and demand, and tending to secure in terms of financial stability the economic interests of one or another nation or group as against those of humanity taken as a whole, comprises a distinct economic world which we could characterize by the term Opulencist.

Prevailing theories of economics as taught in colleges and universities of the present day, and on the basis of which so-called experts of political economy determine the future of millions of innocent people all over the globe, all belong to this Opulencist world of scarcity-based economics which has held the centre of the economic stage and dominated economic thinking since the time of Adam Smith. Such economics could at best only be conducive to filling the national treasuries of particular nations with what constitutes high financial stability or solvency, unilaterally understood and thus at the expense of other nations or states who might be less aggressive, and would be primarily concerned with what an intelligent finance minister should know in order to make his nation wealthy. These matters, having been clearly brought out by the Guru in his introduction to this subject, do not need to be repeated here. Suffice it to say that what we have called Opulencist economics was not included at all by Auguste Compte in his enumeration of the positive sciences.

As against this Opulencist mercantilist-oriented economic world, however, we could recognize a humbler yet richer world of Abundance, which is independent of creating that condition of scarcity which alone could bring into operation what is called the Parkinsonian Law of Spiralling Prices along with numerous other "economic ills" well known in the context of modern planned economics. The world of Abundancist economics includes among its spokesmen such great thinkers as Rousseau, Ruskin, Quesnay, St. Simon, Carlyle, Thoreau, Emerson, Tolstoy, Engels, Marx, and Gandhi. All of these men, though they may have differed from one another in many respects, took a more unitive or universal position in respect of economic theorization in terms of absolute values basic to human life itself, emphasizing the importance of the farmer's world of green things that grow from earth, and placing Man and his Happiness at the centre of all economics. The basic starting postulates or principles of Abundancist economics are thus characterized by correctly conceived and essentially dialectical notions such as "From each according to his ability, and to each according to his need," or "All for One and One for All," and could be seen to imply a dialectical methodology and a theory of values which may justifiably be said to be a "secret" even today.

The spokesmen of the Abundancist world of the common man and the peasant have been most eloquent and unequivocal in their demand for an economics which gives sufficient importance to the basic notion of Justice in the abstract, and which is based on considerations of human values in every walk of life. But their voices have again and again been lost in the chaotic clamouring of rival economic slogans or catch-words of particular groups or particularized interests catering to the public mind and appealing to the baser and more selfish instincts or interests in man, belonging more to the context of the market place than to the realm of the nobler sentiments of which man is capable and which are natural and normal to him.

We shall thus refer again and again in the remainder of this paper to these voices from the wilderness pleading for justice and sanity in economics, with a view both to bringing clearly into relief the fundamental distinction between the two worlds of Opulence and Abundance, and to correcting at least to some extent the imbalance or one-sidedness existing at present in economic thinking generally.

Go to top

THE "SCIENCE" OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

Any discipline claiming to be scientific in character in even a limited sense of the term must, at the very least, be clearly defined and have sound starting postulates which are generally agreed upon by its progenitors. Let us here pass quickly in review some of the notions basic to what is called Political Economics, by which we shall see that this so-called science is prejudiced from the very outset by a materialistic, utilitarian and piecemeal approach with the dismal concept of scarcity as its cornerstone, as also that it can in no wise claim for itself any universal applicability at all. There are no universally accepted norms or standards for this "science," and we shall see further that its spokesmen are not even in agreement in respect of its definition, much less with regard to the degree of certitude that it might legitimately claim for itself.

With regard to the definition of political economy according to Adam Smith, about which we have already spoken above, we read the following from H. A. Silverman: "An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations not only served as a title, but as a definition of what Adam Smith considered to be the scope of political economy."³

J. S. Mill defines political economics as that which investigates "the nature of wealth and the laws of its production, including, directly or remotely, the operation of all the causes by which the condition of mankind or of any society of human beings, in respect of this universal object of human desire, is made prosperous or the reverse." ⁴ We might note in passing that, as Ruskin points out in his Unto This Last, Mill never does clearly define exactly what he means by "wealth," which, is a term basic to economic theory in general; while what is of primary importance in the above quotation is that political economy according to Mill is apparently simply the science of getting rich. One might legitimately ask, "At the expense of whom?"

A similar definition is that of Prof. Jevons which, while it differs to some degree from those above, is nonetheless consistent with them to the extent that it presupposes the same mechanistic and partial approach: "Political economy treats of the WEALTH OF NATIONS; it enquires into the causes which make one nation more rich and prosperous than another. It aims at teaching what should be done in order that the poor may be as few as possible, and that everybody may, as a general rule be well paid for his work. . .and treats of WEALTH itself; it enquires what wealth is; how we can best consume it when we have got it; and how we may take advantage of the other sciences to get it." ⁵ Here even the most casual reader cannot but be struck by the emphasis on making "the poor people. . .as few as possible," rather than, say, on securing the happiness of mankind generally through economic well-being.

We have already noted that one of the primary characteristics of Opulencist economics is that it is based on the notion of scarcity as its starting point. It was primarily for this reason that Carlyle referred to economics as a "dismal science," the aptness of which designation is made strikingly evident by Robbins who defines political economy as the "Science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses." ⁶ And in a similar vein, ignoring completely the higher values in life which Ruskin has characterized by the term "social affections" in the context of economics, E. R. A. Seligman writes in his Principles of Economics, "The starting point of all economic activity is the existence of human wants. To satisfy hunger and thirst, to secure shelter and to provide clothing were the chief aims of primitive man and constitute even today the motor force of all society." ⁷ (Italics ours).

The crudeness or callousness of this kind of excessively pragmatic and utilitarian approach to a subject so directly concerning the well-being of Man was not lost at least on Silverman, who writes the following in respect of Ricardo and Senior, two of the "deans" of modern economic theory: "Characteristic of Ricardo and his group was the cold, dogmatic method of treatment which at times tended to become so abstract as almost to ignore the human factor. The materialist and pessimistic doctrines earned for economics the epithet of 'the dismal science.' Economic laws were reduced to bald statements, and N. W. Senior (Political Economy, 1836) was perhaps the most deductive and abstract of the school. He condensed the whole of economic tendency into four premises: (a) that every man desires to obtain additional wealth with as little sacrifice as possible; (b) that the population of the world is limited only by moral or physical evil or by fear of a deficiency of material comforts; (c) that the powers of the agents of production may be definitely increased by using their products for further production; (d) that agriculture is subject to diminishing returns."

Silverman, then, - though certainly an apologist of scarcity economics - is one modern economist who has at least given recognition to the glaring deficiencies of the starting postulates of a classical economic theory which "almost" ignores what he calls the "human factor." Apparently finding some hope in Marshall, he writes on the first page of his work, The Substance of Economics, "The older economists, applying the term 'Wealth' to all those things that are necessary to gratify one's needs, used to say that Economics was a subject concerned with the principles of wealth-getting and wealth-using. This definition however did not satisfy economists who viewed the science as essentially a study of man. Marshall for example re-defined the science in the following terms, which acquired wide acceptance: 'Political Economy or Economics is a study of man's actions in the ordinary business of life; it inquires how he gets his income and how he uses it...Thus it is on the one hand a study of wealth, and on the other, and more important side, a part of the study of man.'" ⁹

While this definition of Marshall's would seem to be encouraging at least to the extent that it recognizes the study of man as constituting the "more important side" of economics, we unfortunately find, in a perusal of economics textbooks generally, whether old or new, that such a human side is almost completely ignored by them, and is in any case most certainly not given the primacy that it deserves. We shall be obliged, rather, to turn our eyes elsewhere, towards those who represent what we have called the Abundancist side of economics, to find an approach in which the emphasis is on economics for man, rather than on man for economics. But we must first dispense with the question of whether or not modern economics could claim for itself scientific validity at all.

Go to top

SCIENCE SEEKS CERTITUDE

"Science seeks certitude." ¹⁰ Any discipline claiming to be a science must have universally recognized and accepted standards or norms on which it bases its findings, which must therefore be universally valid within its own frame of reference. Classical Physics associated with the measurement of objective phenomena such as motion, where great distances and speeds were not involved; accepted as absolute standards or constants both the time-space frame of reference of Euclidean Geometry as also Gravitation with a capital letter. Within this framework, its findings tend to hold good one hundred per cent, whether in terms of calculation or of experiment, and whether carried out by a scientist in America or Russia or anywhere else.

The same thing may be said of what has come to be known as Relativity Physics since the publication of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. Einstein found that Newtonian and Euclidean notions, valid in their own context, had to be revised in the case of astronomical measurements involving much longer space-time factors and much greater speeds. As a consequence, he adopted a revised space-time framework and gave to the velocity of light an absolute status as a constant or norm. Once again, findings based on this norm tended to be one hundred per cent correct, irrespective of time or clime or of the particular scientist concerned. ¹¹

Branches of science could ultimately be integrated round a still more basic normative notion,* as that each of them can legitimately claim scientific validity and universal applicability within its own frame of reference based on norms or standards recognized and accepted by scientists all over the world.

Whether this is the case with modern economic theory may be gathered by a persual of the following three selections from the works of "expert" economists dealing with just these questions of the scope and starting postulates of present day economics.

Concerning the scope of economics, H.Clay, in his Economics for the General Reader, writes, "Economics is not a complete philosophy of society; it does not give a complete account of even that part of human conduct which it studies."¹²
* See Chapter IX of this volume for a discussion on the integration of the sciences.

In the same vein, while also dealing with the question of starting postulates, is the following selection from the preliminary section of a standard textbook on economics by Jathar and Beri, Elementary Principles of Economics: "In economics our primary business is to understand things as they are, to explain the forces actually in operation in the economic sphere. We are not concerned in laying down rules of conduct for the individual or nation....Economic reasoning is based on several assumptions. One of these is that of the Economic Man, supposed to always be moved by the motive of getting the maximum wealth with the minimum of effort, and able and willing to transfer his labour or capital freely as dictated by his motive. These assumptions are not wholly correct but sufficiently correct, so that conclusions drawn from them are sufficiently valid." ¹³ (Italics ours in the last sentence only). We could note here that the authors specify neither for whom nor for what these admittedly incorrect starting postulates or assumptions are "sufficiently valid;" and we would further be justified in concluding that no discipline based on them could yield anything but a very low degree of certitude, or have anything more than a very limited applicability.

Finally, we refer to the following striking passage from Alexander Gray, Professor of Political Economy at the University of Edinburgh: "It is no accident that Malthus wrote on population at a time when population was rapidly increasing, or that Ricardo explored the intricacies of currency problems when the currency system was disorganized. In short, Political Economy throughout has been in large measure an attempt to explain, within the existing framework and assumptions of society, how and on what theory society is operating... Any body of economic doctrine can have only limited validity... Economic science, therefore, if it be a science, differs from the other sciences in this, that there is no inevitable advance from less to greater certainty; there is no ruthless tracking down of truth which, once unbarred, shall be truth to all times to the complete confusion of contrary doctrine." ¹⁴ (Italics ours).

Prof. Gray's statement speaks for itself, and we can close this section by simply noting that no body of knowledge which seeks neither certitude nor truth could be justifiably called a science in the strict or proper sense of the term, nor could it hope to provide us with a basis from which we could derive correct guiding principles for the regulating of human life, either in terms of common sense or of Absolute Justice.

Go to top

THE ABUNDANCISTS

In our search for guiding principles for One-World Economics, we have rather to turn to a group of thinkers who took their stand on the negative or denominator Abundancist side of the total economic picture, structurally understood - the positive or numerator side of which is the domain of Opulencist economics. Such a negative perspective from the side of Abundance will be seen to differ radically from its positive counterpart in terms of methodology, epistemology and especially axiology. We shall refer in this section to selections from the writings of three outstanding advocates of what we have called the Abundancist side - Engels, Ruskin and Rousseau - all of whom brought to bear on economics an intuitive, unitive or absolutist approach in which a degree of subjectivity and a priorism enters into the picture to smooth off, as it were, the rough edges and sharp corners of the excessively mechanistic and harshly utilitarian approach which we have seen to be characteristic of scarcity economics, and in which universal and absolute human values will be seen to be given the primacy that they legitimately deserve. The keen student should be on the lookout for indications of a dialectical or even structural approach as employed by these writers, whether explicitly or implicitly, while the tragic paradox implied as between Opulence and Abundance hiding at the core of all economics is strikingly brought out in one of the selections from the works of Rousseau given below.

Space will not permit us to attempt more than the very briefest commentary on such features, which in any case warrant a complete study in themselves. We must be satisfied if, by the end of this section, the reader has at least got a clear idea of the distinction between the two mutually exclusive worlds of Opulence and Abundance, which have ultimately to be brought together unitively without contradiction.

Faced each other like misers, each clasping to himself with both arms his precious money-bag, eyeing his neighbours with envy and distrust. Every conceivable means was employed to lure from the nations with whom one had commerce as much ready cash as possible, and to retain snugly within the customs-boundary all which had happily been gathered in....The art of the economists, therefore, consisted in ensuring that at the end of the year exports should show a favourable balance over imports; and for the sake of this ridiculous illusion thousands of men have been slaughtered! Trade, too, has had its crusades and inquisitions." ¹⁶ This statement is clear enough as to require no commentary, and we shall not pause here except to note that the ridiculous illusion with its attendant bloodshed referred to by Engels belongs structurally to a middle zone of indeterminism or uncertainty located between the two worlds of Opulence and Abundance, which is not unlike that in which religious fanaticisms and holy wars could be seen to thrive, resulting from the promiscuous mixing of mutually exclusive elements or factors.

Go to top

JOHN RUSKIN

Let us pass on now in our brief survey of the Abundancist alternative position to a few selections from the writings of the English artist and economist, John Ruskin. In the opening sentences of "The Roots of Honour," the first of four essays ultimately included in one volume called Unto This Last, Ruskin protests against the mechanistic bias of modern political economy: "Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious - certainly the least credible - is the modern soi-disant science of political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be deter mined irrespectively of the influence of the social affections....'The social affections,' says the economist, 'are accidental and disturbing elements in human nature; but avarice and the desire of progress are constant elements. Let us eliminate the inconstants, and, considering the human being merely as a covetous machine, examine by what laws of labour, purchase, and sale, the greatest accumulative result in wealth is obtainable. Those laws once determined, it will be for each individual afterwards to introduce as much of the disturbing affectionate element as he chooses, and to determine for himself the result on the new conditions being supposed'....But the disturbing elements in the social problem are not of the same nature as the constant ones; they alter the essence of the creature under examination the moment they are added; they operate, not mathematically, but chemically, introducing conditions which render all our previous knowledge unavailable. We made learned experiments upon pure nitrogen, and have convinced ourselves that it is a very manageable gas: but behold! the thing which we have practically to deal with is its chloride; and this, the moment we touch it on our established principles, sends us and our apparatus through the ceiling...Observe, I neither impugn nor doubt the conclusions of the science, if its terms are accepted. I am simply uninterested in them, as I should be in those of a science of gymnastics which assumed that men had no skeletons. It might be shown, on that supposition, that it would be advantageous to roll the students up into pellets, flatten them into cakes, or stretch them into cables; and that when these results were effected, the reinsertion of the skeleton would be attended with various inconveniences to their constitution. The reasoning might be admirable, the conclusions true, and the science deficient only in applicability....Modern political economy stands on a precisely similar basis. Assuming, not that the human being has no skeleton, but that it is all skeleton, it founds an ossifiant theory of progress on this negation of a soul; and having shown the utmost that may be made of bones, and constructed a number of interesting geometrical figures with death's-heads and humeri, successfully proves the inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul among these corpuscular structures. I do not deny the truth of this theory: I simply deny its applicability to the present state of the world."¹⁷

Ruskin's objection to what he calls the self-styled science of political economy, which treats of man as a covetous machine while ignoring the influence of the "social affections," is of particular interest to us here inasmuch as it implies a structural frame of reference for economics. The real objection here is that basic or primary structural requirements are violated to the extent that the discipline in question retains only the horizontal or peripheral aspects of the "skeleton" of man, while rejecting the vertical or unitive ones, proceeding from that starting position to found a "theory of progress on this negation of a soul...." It is precisely this approach to economics which we have indicated above as being unscientific, mechanistic, and dangerously one-sided. Only when vertical and horizontal aspects are treated unitively could any One-World Economics emerge.

Further implications of such a structural frame of reference could be seen in the following paragraph from the same work, in which Ruskin discredits the basic notion of necessarily antagonistic economic interests as between man and man, as seen implied in Opulencist starting postulates such as the so-called law of supply and demand, or the "Economic Man" referred to already. What should be specially noted here is that the same elements which are mutually exclusive, antagonistic or contradictory when viewed horizontally could be seen, when viewed vertically, to exist together unitively or harmoniously without conflict or contradiction. We read: "If there is only a crust of bread in the house, and mother and children are starving, their interests are not the same. If the mother eats it, the children want it; if the children eat it, the mother must go hungry to her work. Yet it does not necessarily follow that there will be 'antagonism' between them, that they will fight for the crust, and that the mother, being the strongest, will get it, and eat it. Neither, in any other case, whatever the relations of the persons may be, can it be assumed for certain that, because their interests are diverse, they must necessarily regard each other with hostility, and use violence or cunning to gain the advantage."sup>18

Ruskin goes on to say that the interests of, for example, master and labourer are not antagonistic but reciprocal, and then makes the following point which we here italicize for emphasis: "And the varieties of circumstances which influence these interests are so endless, that all endeavour to deduce rules of action from balance of expediency is in vain. For no human actions ever were intended by the Maker of man to be guided by balance of expediency, but by balances of justice. He has therefore rendered all endeavours to determine expediency futile for evermore.

"No man ever knew, or can know, what will be the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of any given line of conduct. But every man may know, and most of us do know, what is a just and unjust act. And all of us may know also, that the consequences of justice will be ultimately the best possible, both to others and to ourselves, though we can neither say what is best, nor how it is likely to come to pass." ¹⁹ It is thus vertical values of justice which must prevail over horizontal ones of mere expediency in determining all human actions, from which it is clear that no true science of economics could ever come into being independently of ethical judgements. The central normative notion for both of these disciplines will ultimately be seen to be the same. We should take note here in passing of the dialectical relationship implied in the notion of a "reciprocity" of interests, as also of the principle of uncertainty postulated by Ruskin which may be seen to lurk at the core of economic thinking, or of thought generally.

In the second of his series of four essays, Ruskin replies to the defence likely to be made by men of business in respect of their science, that it is simply the science of getting rich and that, "So far from being a fallacious or visionary one, it is found by experience to be practically effective.... It is vain to bring forward tricks of logic, against the force of accomplished facts. Every man of business knows by experience how money is made, and how it is lost." To this Ruskin responds that such men of business have indeed been playing a long-practised game, and are familiar with the chances of the cards with which they play so that they can rightly explain their losses and gains. "But," he emphasizes, "they neither know who keeps the bank of the gambling-house, nor what other games may be played with the same cards, nor what other losses and gains, far away among the dark streets, are essentially, though invisibly, dependent on theirs in the lighted rooms. They have learned a few, and only a few, of the laws of mercantile economy; but not one of those of political economy."²⁰

Now by mercantile economy, Ruskin means that world of scarcity economics based on horizontal considerations of expediency, while by the term political economy we are to understand its counterpart affiliated to values that are vertical. Such structural references should be kept in mind by the reader in the following discussion, which is intended to bring into clear relief the distinction between Opulencist and Abundancist notions of wealth:

"Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word 'rich.' At least if they know, they do not in their reasonings allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite 'poor' as positively as the word 'north' implies its opposite 'south'.

"Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it - and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantilist economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor.

"I would not contend in this matter (and rarely in any matter), for the acceptance of terms. But I wish the reader clearly and deeply to understand the difference between the two economies to which the terms 'Political' and 'Mercantile' might not unadvisably be attached.

"Political economy (the economy of a State, or of citizens) consists simply in the production, preservation, and distribution, at the fittest time and place, of useful or pleasurable things. The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time; the shipwright who drives his bolts well home in sound wood; the builder who lays good bricks in well tempered mortar; the housewife who takes care of her furniture in the parlour, and guards against all waste in her kitchen; and the singer who rightly disciplines, and never overstrains, her voice: all are political economists in the true and final sense; adding continually to the riches and well-being of the nation to which they belong.

"But mercantile economy, the economy of 'merces' or of 'pay', signifies the accumulation, in the hands of individuals, of legal or moral claims upon, or power over, the labour of others; every such claim implying precisely as much poverty or debt on one side, as it implies riches or right on the other. It does not therefore necessarily involve addition to the actual property or well-being of the State in which it exists. But since this commercial wealth, or power over labour, is nearly always convertible at once into real property, while real property is not always convertible at once into power over labour, the idea of riches among active men in civilized nations, generally refers to commercial wealth; and in estimating their possessions, they rather calculate the value, of their horses and fields by the number of guineas they could get for them, than the value of their guineas by the number of horses and fields they could buy with them."²¹

If we now press into service the structural frame of reference which we have kept in mind throughout this paper, we will be able to see clearly that by the terms "mercantile economy" and "political economy" Ruskin means to distinguish between the two contrasting economic worlds of Opulence and Abundance respectively. A schematic representation of these categories would consist of a circle or an ellipse representing the entire sphere of economic activity, divided in half by a horizontal line drawn at the diameter; two further lines, parallel to this horizontal axis - one (AB) just above it, and the other (CD) just below it - are also indicated; the vertical axis (Alpha Omega) will cut across all of these at right angles. (See diagram on page 171).

Such a schematic picture of economics could thus be seen to consist of Opulence or scarcity, on the numerator side and Abundance or plenty on the denominator side, with a horizontal band separating them and indicating a zone of indeterminism or uncertainty with its tragic import constituting a kind of economic "third world" in which, as we have indicated already, it could be possible for all kinds of monopolists, opportunists, adventurers and other such to thrive; this is the zone of economic charlatanry, and fanaticism. In times of crises, one could see the evidence of such a zone as in television or newsreel accounts of the "fluctuation of the dollar" or the "wobbling of the pound," inflation or devaluation of "unstable" currencies, business repressions or depressions, spiralling of prices, or even "rolling readjustment" - all of which are terms for economic malaises which we can recognize as recurring periodically at regular intervals.


The upper limit of the world of Abundance on the negative or denominator side, as indicated by the line CD, represents such items of natural wealth as agricultural products, farm animals, natural resources, etc.; these constitute the characteristic wealth of what are often called "underdeveloped" or "backward" countries.

The world, of Opulence on the positive or numerator side has its lower limit represented by the line AB, which could be called the "iron line of necessity," marking the turning point between such notions as supply and demand, wages and prices, and production and exchange. This domain of scarcity is characterized by sterile wealth in the form of currency notes and cheque-books, international brokerage firms, insurance companies or banks with their account books, large scale industrial concerns, etc. All of these suggest a certain hardness or harshness, an inexorable unbending mechanistic outlook or approach, as could be inferred from the words of the maxim "Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest."

If we should realize by an exercise of the imagination that the worlds of Opulence and Abundance correspond by extrapolation to the primary philosophical categories of essence and existence respectively, we could easily see that the way to avoid characteristic errors leading to a promiscuous mixing or confusion of economic values is, as suggested by Ruskin above, to take our stand on the side of existence rather than essence: to travel from the known to the unknown. In language familiar on the Indian soil, Ruskin opts for satkaranavada rather than satkaryavada, thus giving primacy to cause over effect. It is in this sense that he emphasizes the importance of understanding clearly that the value of money depends on, and is a mere reflection of, items of natural wealth such as horses and fields, as opposed to the notion of horses and fields depending for their value on money. Opulence depends on Abundance just as effect depends on cause, and to reason in any other way is to stand economics on its head. No acceptable methodology for One-World Economics could ever be envisaged without an understanding of this basic point.

The notions of value and wealth as seen from both the sides of Opulence and Abundance deserve a special study in themselves. But we could mention here that, in order to visualize the participation of economic values as between these two worlds, we have to imagine a correlating principle as operating between them. Such a principle is represented by the vertical axis (Alpha-Omega) having the status of a thin logical parameter cutting across the horizontal frontiers which separate one world from another. It is along this axis that we should imagine as taking place the meeting of trust ascending from the denominator side and credit descending from the numerator side, by the meeting of which alone economic interaction between Opulence and Abundance could take place. It is only by keeping such a vertical correlating principle in mind that we could begin to visualize the delicate and elusive process of circulation by which values of the denominator side could be transferred into numerator ones and vice-versa. The dynamics of such a circulation could best be expressed in terms of the intersection at a centrally and neutrally located structural point (point O) of two figures-of-eight, one vertical and the other horizontal, as shown in the diagram above. Such structural details demand a close and careful study of protolinguistics or structuralism, which is outside the scope of the present paper. The interested student is again referred to the series of essays on economics by Nataraja Guru, as also to Quesnay's Tableau Economique which deals with just this circulation of wealth.

Before leaving Ruskin, however, let us read the following passages from "The Veins of Wealth," in which he holds that the notion of wealth - and thus of economics - is inextricably bound up with that of justice, and in which vertical values and downright common sense will be seen to be brought so closely together as to be almost indistinguishable from one another: "That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of far-reaching ruin; a wrecker's handfull of coin gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an argosy; a camp-follower's bundle of rags unwrapped from the breasts of goodly soldiers dead; the purchase-pieces of potter's fields, wherein shall be buried together the citizen and the stranger.

"And therefore, the idea that directions can be given for the gaining of wealth, irrespectively of the consideration of its moral sources, or that any general and technical law of purchase and gain can be set down for natural practice, is perhaps the most insolently futile of all that ever beguiled men through their vices. So far as I know, there is not in history record of anything so disgracefull to the human intellect as the modern idea that the commercial text, 'Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest,' represents, or under any circumstances could represent, an available principle of national economy.

"Buy in the cheapest market? - yes; but what made your market cheap? Charcoal may be cheap among your roof timber after a fire, and bricks may be cheap in your streets after an earthquake: but fire and earthquake may not therefore be national benefits. Sell in the dearest? - yes, truely; but what made your market dear? You sold your bread well today; was it to a dying man who gave his last coin for it, and will never need bread more, or to a rich man who tomorrow will buy your farm over your head; or to a soldier on his way to pillage the bank in which you have put your fortune?

"None of these things you can know. One thing only you can know, namely, whether this dealing of yours is a just and faithfull one, which is all you need concern yourself about respecting it; sure thus to have done your own part in bringing about ultimately in the world a state of things which will not issue in pillage or in death. And thus every question concerning these things merges itself ultimately in the great question of justice...."

Go to top

JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

By way of rounding off this presentation of the Abundancist position in economics, we turn now to the following paragraphs by Jean-Jacques Rousseau from his famous treatise called "Considerations on the Government of Poland and Her Reformation," which was written in 1772 at the request of the Polish monarch. The extracts included here are from the section entitled "Economic Systems," and are of particular interest to us here for the clear distinction drawn in them as between the two worlds of Opulence and Abundance. Rousseau's views on the effects of each of these systems on the people of a state, in terms of human happiness both individually and collectively, may be seen to be quite timely by the modern reader. The question under consideration here is that of the system of economics which a new Poland should adopt for herself: "The choice of the economic system that Poland has to adopt depends on the goal that she proposes for herself....If you only wish to become brilliant, redoubtable, glamorous, and to influence other European peoples, then you have their example before you: apply yourselves to their imitation. Cultivate sciences, arts, commerce, industry, have regular armies, fortified places, academies, and, above all, a good financial system that makes for the circulation of money-and thereby its increase - which will bring you more; work to render it necessary, therefore to maintain the people in a great state of dependence; and for that, encourage material luxuries and luxuries of the intellect, which are inseparable from one another. In such a manner you will form people intriguing, ardent, avid, ambitious, servile, and tricky like the others, always without a middle course between the two extremes of misery or opulence, freedom or slavery: but you will be counted among the great powers of Europe; you will play a part in all the political systems; in all negotiations they will look for your alliance, and they will bind you with treaties; there will be no war in Europe in which you have not the honour to meddle; and, if luck is on your side, you will be able to reclaim your own possessions, perhaps to conquer new ones, and then to say, like Pyrrhus or like the Russians -- that is, like children; 'When the whole world belongs to me, then shall I truly eat sugar.'

"But if by chance you prefer to form a free nation, quiet and wise, which neither fears nor needs anyone, which is sufficient unto itself and happy, then you have to adopt an entirely different method: maintain, re-establish in your country, simple morals, sane tastes, a martial spirit without ambition; form souls courageous and disinterested; apply your people to agriculture and to the arts necessary to life: render money contemptible and, if possible, useless; look for, find - to effect great things - resources more potent and more sure. I assure you that by following this way you will not fill the newspapers with the noise of your festivals, of your negotiations, of your exploits; that the philosophers will not flatter you; that the poets will not sing of you, and that in Europe they will speak of you very little; perhaps they will feign to disdain you: but you will live in veritable abundance, in justice, and in liberty. And they won't look for quarrels with you: they will fear you without showing it; and I answer you that neither the Russians nor any others will come again to master you; or if they should, to their misfortune, come, that they will be in a much greater hurry to leave.

"Above all, don't try to put these two projects together, they are too contradictory; and willing to go to both of them by a composite step is willing to miss them both. Now make your choice, and, if you prefer the first scheme, stop here reading me; for of all that is left to propose, there is nothing but that relates to the second."²²

The distinction between the two worlds is thus clearly brought out by Rousseau, and we should note that, in warning against any promiscuous mixing of them in terms of a planned economy which attempts to serve the interests of both of them at one and the same time, he puts his finger on just that paradox which has not only to be squarely faced but ultimately transcended if we are ever to arrive at a correctly conceived One-World Economics. We can only say here that there is a method for transcending such a paradox by bringing the two sides together unitively without contradiction, which is known to the ancient wisdom tradition of India as found in the writings of poet-seers like Kalidasa and in the methodology of Advaita Vedanta. The reader is referred to the Guru's General Introduction to this chapter in this connection, while all we wish to indicate here is the direction which a future study of the problem must ultimately take.

Finally, by way of concluding this section, let us refer to the following selection from the same work in which Rousseau discusses the role of money in human society. The correct stand taken by him here accurately summarizes the Abundancist economic position which we have been attempting to present in this paper, and the interested student is referred to Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus which contains in germinal form the ideas presented here by Rousseau and which was undoubtedly a source of inspiration to him. We read: "There are without doubt excellent economic viewpoints in the papers which have been communicated to me. The fault that I see in them is that they favour more riches than prosperity. In respect of new establishments, one shouldn't content oneself with the immediate effects thereof; one needs must well foresee those consequences which, though distant, are necessary. The project, for example, for the sale of starostes and for the manner of utilizing the products thereof seems to agree well with me and is of easy execution within the system existing throughout Europe of doing everything with money. But this system, is it good in itself, and does it go straight to its goal? Is it sure that money is the backbone (le nerf) of war? The rich peoples have always been beaten and conquered by the poor peoples. Is it sure that money should be the strength of good government? The financial systems are modern. I see neither anything good nor any thing great emerging out of them....Money is at best the supplement of man, and the supplement will never attain to the thing. Poles, I implore you, leave all this money to others, or content yourselves with those who are willing to give it to you: for they have more need of your grains than you of their gold. It is better, believe me, to live in Abundance than in Opulence. Be better than pecuniary, be rich: cultivate well your fields, without troubling yourselves with the rest; in good time you will reap a harvest of gold, and more than enough to procure for yourselves the oil and wine which you don't have, since besides these two Poland abounds, or can abound, in everything. In order to maintain yourselves happy and free, it is heads, hearts, and arms that you need; it is therein that the strength of the state is made, and the prosperity of the people. The systems of finance breed corrupt souls; and from the moment that one wants but gain, his gain consists in becoming a knave rather than an honest man. That which is done with money is both devious and hidden: it is destined for one thing and used for another. Those who manipulate it quickly learn to embezzle it; and what are all the inspectors that one places over them, but only other rogues that one sends in order to partake with them? If there weren't but public and inconspicuous riches, if the rush for gold left behind an ostensible mark that couldn't hide itself, there would be no more convenient expedient for buying services than courage, truthfulness, and virtue; but with a view to the secret circulation of money, it is even more convenient to make thieves and traitors for putting onto the auction-block the good public and freedom. In one word, the strength of money is at the same time the most feeble and the most vain means that I know of to impel the political apparatus to its goal, and the most sure and most strong means to turn it aside from it.

"One cannot make men act but in accord with their own interests, I know; but the pecuniary interest is the worst of all, the most vile, the most proper to corruption, and even - I repeat it with confidence and will sustain it forever - the most inferior and the most feeble in the eyes of he who knows well the human heart. It is natural that in all hearts there are great passions in reserve; but when there remains but that of money, that means that one has weakened and stifled all the others which one should excite or develop....Try to encourage and to gratify these without this recourse (to money); in good time it will lose all its importance."²⁴

Go to top

DESIDERATA OF ONE-WORLD ECONOMICS

By way of punctuating this preliminary study which, as indicated at the outset, is only intended to clear the ground for the establishment of a foundation or basis for the eventual formulation of a truly scientific One-World Economics, we here present the last of the series of essays by Nataraja Guru entitled "Towards a One-World Economics" (see footnote 1). We shall refrain from the use of inverted commas in the presentation of this quotation, so as not to complicate the system of classification employed by the Guru. The Guru writes:

We propose in this last of this series of contributions on One-World Economics, to try and arrive at indicating, though in a preliminary fashion only, the principles, laws and definite notions that must underlie economics if it is to be recognized as a science. We shall adopt a decimal system of numbers for the systematic taxonomy of the items, examined in a graded fashion.

1. Economics is a branch of axiology. It refers to human values both inner and outer.

1.1. Economics is a science of value wisdom as it refers to life here as opposed to life hereafter, where we are more properly in the domain of religion.

1.2. A Utopia or a heaven, as referring to ideal conditions of life here or hereafter, are envisaged respectively by rival enthusiasts who propose to better the lot of human beings here or hereafter.

1.3. The danger of tenaciously adhering to favourite items of programmes of values is common to both these branches. Superstitious creeds and dogmatic or doctrinal orthodoxies could vitiate both fields, except when looked upon with a living human aloofness and dispassion without selfish axes to grind. Both these fields offer equal opportunity for charlatans.

1.4. Good economics, as it applies to a given unit, could yield either Opulence or Abundance, but not both-except by very rare coincidence.

1.5. Like a mirror and its original, is the difference between these two economic worlds. They form complex value-systems, both at the pole of Opulence as well as at that of Abundance.

1.6. Prices can be artificially raised or lowered by economic planning, but the One Value that spells human happiness is to be understood as a state of balance, equilibrium, stability or harmony between the forces of satisfaction or want that operate within a unit economic situation.

1.7. In the absence of a normative unit notion of value, the idea of raising the standard of life can have no meaning. Raising the standard might be at the expense of Abundance and in favour of Opulence, which must spell economic insecurity, instability or lopsided progress which is only progress in appearance.

1.8. Price value depends on exchangeability in the market, and use value is intrinsic significance for single individuals; the former may be called horizontal, while the latter is vertical. Values that yield short-term benefits to an individual or group are horizontal, and those which give long-term benefits may be broadly distinguished initially as vertical.

1.9. Inner and outer values in life meet from opposite poles in the Self, which is the Absolute Value that each human being represents in himself.

2. A happy human being is the normative goal of economic endeavour. Collective happiness is only the resultant of individual happiness.

2.1. The individual is only happy when he makes another happy or works for the general happiness of mankind.

2.2. Unilateral economic transactions bringing benefit to one party while making another a looser, violate the most fundamental of all economic laws, viz, that all economics is for both parties in any transaction.

2.3. Aggrandizement, selfishness, domination, exploitation and in justice are various attributes signifying the absurdity involved in one sided or dualistically conceived economics. Charlatanism, cheating and robbery are also applicable in such dealings, in actual or figurative language.

2.4. Absolute Value has no limbs; it refers to a state of felicity when all concerned are, and each concerned is, happy at once and forever.

2.5. Wealth has four limbs: production and consumption, and trust and credit. The former pair represent the plus and minus sides of the horizontal, and the latter the negative and the positive aspects of the vertical.

2.6. Normal, perfect and economically healthy circulation of wealth is when all the above four aspects alternate as successive phases of the economic cycle of activity.

2.7. Sterile circulation tends to be wholly horizontal, while productive circulation passes through vertical levels.

2.8. Surplus value is an abstraction which gains its meaning with reference to an absolutist or verticalized notion of wealth.

3. Pure values are those that have unity in both ends and means: when means and ends are divorced, wealth becomes pillage or booty.

3.1. Wealth is best when it is self-sufficient. The resulting value is human happiness.

3.2. Capital is credit ready to support economic undertakings.

3.3. Trust is what ensures endurance and security to wealth.

3.4. Price, money, currency, exchange-value and token-value are aspects of wealth as it moves or circulates horizontally.

3.5. Bank rates have their plus and minus aspects, tending to come to balance or equilibrium as between interest and discount.

3.6. Short-term and long-term economic transactions compensate or contradict each other by virtue of the principle of double gain or double loss.

4. The dialectics of the one and the many is involved in all economics; this is most evident in insurance, which involves no visible goods in the transactions. Advertising is for broadening the basis of the one and the many dialectics, implicitly. The business counter is the point where the limbs of business involving one and the many relations of long-term or short-term duration have their locus, both abstract and concrete. Time compensates for space, and quality for quantity, etc., at this locus.

4.1. A normative notion in economics is like a monad or a monad of all monads conceivable or possible as units in economic life. We have to distinguish between monads in which the horizontal aspects dominate over the vertical, and the positive over the negative, in each of the axes of reference. Those monads might be supposed to exist in vectorial space in terms of tensor theory, giving room to absolute or relative monads or the monads of all monads. For the sake of simplicity, we have to conceive them as belonging to a flat surface consisting of two correlates, time or interval being the absolute element involved. The elaboration of this kind of economic monadology based on the four limbs of economic activity is mostly the work of future experts who accept the basis of the above.

4.2. In the Wealth of Nations of Adam Smith and in the Tableau Economique of Quesnay, some unit country is kept in mind which is mostly arbitrary. The Quesnay unit is more natural and normal than the Nation vaguely considered by Adam Smith, which would more really apply to the mercantilist units in economic life of such places as London, Hague or Rotterdam and regions round it only. The so-called economically underdeveloped units have wealth only for exploitation by the so-called developed nations, according to such nations. To the extent this notion of wealth is not normalized, it is not right to think in terms of it.

4.3. The number of happy individuals that a state can produce is the real measure of its economic well-being.

4.4. Happiness has to be judged with its natural human counterparts. No mother could be considered wealthy if the child is poor, no king without subjects, no master without servant, no husband without wife, etc. Unilaterally conceived riches, wealth, money or happiness as an overall value has no sense. It is absurd:

4.5. If food that is grown in a country is not available to the mouths that feed on it, in a normal and natural way, an economic absurdity of the lack of living correlation of value takes place. Human intelligence often causes more trouble by mechanistic arrangements of production and distribution for money-profit, making the human lot worse than before. A fishwife on a coral island cannot get the coconut that grows near her hut, because of its money and exchange value which makes it beyond her economic reach. Horizontal forces cut across the peace and self-sufficiency that would have naturally prevailed when vertical forces are left alone. The laissez faire policy has herein its justification.

4.6. The outcome of horizontal economic endeavour is competition, and that of vertical is co-operation. When two farmers resort to litigation, both lose what each should have gained vertically by agriculture. A double loss or gain is implied, which is dialectical in its implications. The children of both might starve, instead of both having abundance.

4.7. A State Reserve Bank employee gets a higher standard of living conditions when in service; but his children become homeless on the day he retires, and there are scenes of weeping on that day. Long-term security is not always implied in a higher standard of life.

4.8. A constant insecurity or fear of being fired or laid-off at short notice often stares in the faces of people who enjoy a very high standard of life. This is poverty entering by the back door, when the life of getting and spending gets a horizontal accentuation. Such a life is full of tension, and exacting on the nerves.

4.9. Working women in cold countries are often thrown out of city tenements for not being able to pay winter heating expenses in advance by a certain date in autumn. Long-term insecurity is a keen form of poverty, hidden under high standards of day to day individual living.

5. The one and the many dialectics, when it acts in conjunction with the principle of economic intervals of short term or long-term changes of value, gives us the normative notion of what constitutes the core of economic life.

5.1. To decide controversial questions like the one that has been engaging rival schools of expert economists in London recently on whether the European Common Market would improve the economics of each country involved or not, they have first to be viewed in the perspective of the vertico-horizontal complex involved. Broadly based, the perspective of the one and the many relations would spell gain; but individual nations might lose much during transition.

5.2. Advertising is a supreme example of how, by broadening the basis of the one and the many and by intensifying by repetition the value of some good or goods, monopolistic economic domains are built up. Here no goods need be involved, but only ideas...(which) shows how economics can thrive on airy nothing.

5.3. Banking and insurance thrive on mere book-keeping, and that with other people's money. It is strange to hear, in spite of this, that religious mendicants who take after the example of a Christ or a Buddha preaching the Kingdom of God or the Dharma for all humanity, without any return gain, are considered even in India by modern plan-economists as economic liabilities rather than assets. There is a strange irony here.

5.4. Some holy cities of the East, and some civilized ones of the West, thrive on exaggerations of sacredness or of sin as their main article in trade. Prostitution as well as holiness could both be flourishing industries of a questionable character.

5.5. Mere lewdness or obscenity could sometimes take the place of an article of trade. It breeds sterility or immoral prosperity without true economic goods.

5.6. A man of good repute anywhere is an economic asset. A woman is more so.

5.7. The correct way of getting and spending is represented by the model economic man of parsimony, right abstinence and wholehearted love of general welfare and the welfare of all, with only added gain or life more abundant to himself in every way.

5.8. Gandhi and Tolstoy and all leading saints of all climes and times have had great economic forces implied in them, linking the one with the many broad-basedly for enduring time spans.

5.9. Economics is as much for man as man is for economics. Economic ends and means have their meeting point in him.

6. Credit and trust accrue round persons or corporations with the value called "good will," which is a great economic good. Goods are only secondary in importance. Production and distribution take place when credit meets trust.

6.1. Prodigals and fortune-hunters belong to the credit side, while misers and hoarders belong to the trust side.

6.2 Trust could be lost as with the sterling now, and credit could be dishonestly created as attempted through the EEC. World opinion can effect the combined structure and make it burst like a bubble.

6.3. A carefree life in natural abundance is worth more than the life of a multi-millionaire ready to commit suicide from his sky scraper window.

6.4. Grains and eatables hidden under bamboo beds make more real wealth than empty refrigerators containing sometimes only half a bottle of Coco-Cola.

6.5. Winter in the West represents an accumulated weight of poverty unknown in climes that make the land filled with mud huts and people in rags. A good climate is for all, and is not to be measured in money value.

6.6. Market fluctuations are either due to spatial or temporal scarcity of wanted goods. Both these factors could exist together with their four limbs, so that inflation becomes an economic mystery. Conscious remedies often make the patient die earlier due to "experts."

6.7. The Lloyd's Bank represents merely the reflected glory of the sheep that graze in the pastures of Australia. The labour is on the part of the grazing sheep.

6.8. Abstract labour as well as surplus value are metaphysical abstractions used by writers on economic theory. Mathematically, there is vertical and horizontal labour. These produce positive or negative values of price or of use.

6.9. A woman conceiving and giving birth involves negative vertical labour. A man at digging is in travail of a positive kind in the horizontal. When treated as recreation, they become interchangeable and cancel out naturally in the joy of living. Work becomes no work when it becomes natural and enjoyable.

7. The iron law of subsistence-wage level marks the horizontal line of separation between the world of Opulence and that of Abundance. Economically advanced countries tend to be poor abundancistically, and under-developed countries tend to be poor in opulence that can only express itself by its streamlined bursting balloon glory of emptiness.

7.1. Ascending of wealth into the domain of symbolic credit, and its descent to meet necessities and exist again stored in the form of potential trust, have to be imagined imaginatively before a programme of peace and prosperity could be spelled by finance ministers of any economic unit of a country or community.

7.2. Roads and communications could, by themselves, be good as well as evil at the same time. Bandits as well as benefactors could enter protected areas by their means. Why should there be fortifications, if easy communication is all for good?

7.3. Taxation, tariff walls, trusts and monopolies imply barriers of dubious value in world economics. Indirect taxation shares in profit unjustly, resulting in a state compromising its own prosperity, or units within another unit countering the interests of each other.

7.4. World Bank might be a name for an illegitimate monopoly of credit.

7.5. Contraband traffic, cartels and created credit are signs of the times indicating a world economic crisis.

7.6. Unemployment and leisure refer to the same state of affairs. One is hardly recognizable from the other. When unitively treated, both are good. Dualistically treated, both become separate problems, one accentuating the evil of the other.

7.7. The honesty of limited liability is questionable.

7.8. A simple breach of trust can be implied in coming off the gold standard when that was not understood in the beginning.

7.9. Hard currency, key currency and other terms which are given consideration often affect settlements of international debts unfairly by bringing in artificial considerations or concessions that bring advantage to some and disadvantage to others.

8. Economic theories like that of population control end in dogmatisms that refuse to die when proved to be superstitions.

8.1. Celibacy is held up as a virtue or sign of holiness like "immaculate conception" within certain types of religious belief; the same aversion to procreation persists as "family planning," as refracted through the orthodoxy of some Protestant sects whose priests are allowed to marry. Even scientists do not escape this influence, and talk with quasi-religious fervour when they speak of normal sex in men or women and the need for its control.

8.2. Every decent text book of economics devotes at least a paragraph to say that Malthusian ideas which originated with priests have long remained disproved scientifically; but the idea persists and continues to haunt the minds of people who want to save nations. The facts that other intelligent nations like China and Russia pay mothers, for adding to population shows how opinion is based on mere false prudery, or sense of guilt in sex or sin merely. When Hitler employed this method of population control to exterminate races that he hated personally, as known through the Eichman evidence, why should it be over suspicious to think that foreigners could use this against their enemies, actual or potential?

8.3. Birds migrate, plants distribute their seeds far and wide to survive; but man is at his wit's end about living space for his progeny when half the surface of the green earth is still vacant. Experts would make the common man believe that there is no standing space in the earth. Hundreds of thousands of acres are said, at the same time, to be available in the same newspapers to be given to the poor to cultivate, even in states like Kerala which is supposed to suffer from over-population according to expert opinion. To think of killing future progeny to solve this problem that does not really exist can only be called suicidal madness.

8.4. There is no good so precious as a young and growing human being, male or female. Let anyone challenge this statement.

8.5. When there is too much fish it is used as manure but when too many humans are born they say no use could be found for them. No wonder sensitive persons have called economics a dismal science.

8.6. Tariff walls, curtains, barriers, impediments by permits needed, licenses and papers of all kinds, make of the world a prison house instead of a place for the common man to live and seek his normal happiness as a human being, freely. The world is tending to resemble a big concentration camp. All wrong impediments must go. Slavery is not yet abolished. It persists in other forms, more keenly.

8.7. Bread and freedom must be guaranteed for happiness, both general and individual....Bread without freedom and freedom without bread defeat the purpose of both and either. Economics has to be approached dialectically, not with unilateral aim.

8.8. Pure factors like credit and trust must translate themselves into actual benefits in everyday life by the contract of All for One and One for All. The quantitative slogan of the greatest good of the greatest number would then be seen to be meaningless. Everybody should be considered his brother's keeper.

8.9. A sum of money could be spent in two different ways for the benefit of others: by fractional benefit to many or by full benefit to a few. The calculation should be based on life-unit's needs rather than on mechanistic considerations, as illustrated in the parable of the talents in the Bible. Funds of public bodies often spent neither for individuals nor for humanity at large tend to become absurd waste. The kingdom of God could be economically interpreted as the regions here, instead of relativism prevailing in respect of benefits in life... by introducing barriers of both time and space.

9. The highest form of co-operation is unlimited liability between the one and the many, understood dialectically. This will yield double gain where double loss (otherwise) prevails.

9.1. Money-centred scarcity economics cannot escape the nickname of mammon worship that has been applied to it. The dismal science becomes lighted up with hope when one human being's good is kept in mind.

9.2. Topsy-turvy economics, by placing wrong accent on human values, is to be avoided. The goal of economics determines its character, as a tree is known by its fruit.

9.3. "From each according to his ability and to each according to his need" is a dialectical verity to be applied to economic theory more and more. Mechanistic and statistical approaches cannot accommodate this verity.

9.4. The quadrants involved in economic life tend to make the science full of possibilities, probabilities and incertitudes. The science of economics must be restated dialectically, normatively and absolutely, with the four-fold aspects of value cohering together in living terms.

9.5. The hunger of one man, woman or child, at the remotest corner of the world must concern all men at all times, and all human resources be applied to it at any time and place. Such is the desideratum of One-World Economics.

9.6. Putting economic barriers against fellow men is a crime against humanity.

9.7. Class distinctions spell sterility of wealth and its stagnation within stratifications in human society which must be kept mixed and homogeneous for economic health. Caste or race notions create complicated economic boxes, one within another.

9.8. The honey in a bee-hive represents the surplus value coming from an agreement between one bee and the whole hive.

9.9. Man and Humanity must be treated as dialectical counter parts if One-World Economics is to be a science, referring to the General-Good and the Good of All at one and the same time.

[END] ²⁵

Go to top

UNTO THIS LAST AS UNTO THEE

In conclusion, we refer to the closing sentences of Ruskin's "Ad Valorem," the last of the essays comprising Unto This Last:

"And if, on due and honest thought over these things, it seems that the kind of existence to which men are now summoned by every plea of pity and claim of right, may, for some time at least, not be a luxurious one; consider whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering which accompanies it in the world. Luxury is indeed - possible in the future - innocent and exquisite; luxury for all, and by the help of all; but luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant; the cruellest man living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfold.

"Raise the veil boldly; face the light; and if, as yet, the light of the eye can only be through tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time comes, and the kingdom, when Christ's gift of bread and bequest of peace shall be unto this last as unto thee...."²⁶

Go to top

REFERENCES

1. Cf. Nataraja Guru, "Towards a One-World Economics," (Values Magazine, Bangalore, 1961), Vol. VII, No.7p. 191.1

2. Cf. ibid., Vol. VI, No. 12, and Vol. VII, Nos, 1-7.

3. Silverman, The Substance of Economics, (Pitman, London, 1946), p. 347.

4. Mill, J. S., Principles of Political Economy, (Ed. in 2 vols., Parker, 1948) p.l.

5. Jevons, Political Economy, (London), p. l.

6. Robbins, L., Nature and Significance of Political Economy, p. 16.

7. Seligman, E.R.A., Principles of Economics, p. 31.

8. Silverman, op. cit., p. 350.

9. Ibid., p. l.

10. Nataraja Guru, An Integrated Science of the Absolute, (unpublished), p. I.

11. Cf. Nataraja Guru, "The Absolute and the Relative," in Wisdom's Frame of Reference and Other Essays, (Narayana Gurukula, Varkala, Kerala, 1973), pp. 49-50.

12. Clay, H., Economics for the General Reader, p. 16.

13. Jather & Beri, Elementary Principles of Economics, p. 19.

14. Gray, A.M.A., The Development of Economic Doctrine, (Longman, London, 1951), pp. 12-13.

15. Engels, F., Herr Duhring's Revolution in Science, (Moscow, 1947), p. 224.

16. Engels, F., "Outline of a Critique of Political Economy," in Marx, K., Political and Philosophical Essays of 1884, (Moscow), pp. 161-2.

17. Ruskin, J., Unto This Last, (University Tutorial, Cambridge), pp, 7-8.

18. Ibid., p. 9.

19. Ibid., p. 10.

20. Ibid., p. 25.

21. Ibid., pp. 25-7.

22. Ibid., pp. 35-6.;

23. Rousseau, J. J., "Considerations sur Le Government de Poigne et sur Sa Reformation Projetee en Avril 1772," in Ch. Il of Contrat Social, (Garier, Paris), pp. 384-5. (Our translation).

24. Ibid., pp. 385-6.

25. Nataraja Guru, "Towards a One-World Economics," (Values Magazine, Bangalore, 1961), Vol. VII, No. 7, pp. 191 ad fin.

26. Ruskin, op. cit., pp. 91-2

Go to top