what has the gandhi ji told in capilist's society
Answers
Answer:
Sign In
Jul 28, 2011,05:43pm EDT
What Were Gandhi's Views On Capitalism?

Kyle Smith
Contributor
Arts & Letters
I write about economics, politics, media, business and film.
This article is more than 9 years old.

Image by AFP via @daylife
Joseph Lelyveld’s biography, Great Soul: Mahatama Gandhi and His Struggle with India, has been praised as “scrupulous” by Christopher Hitchens in The Atlantic, as “judicious and thoughtful” by Hari Kunzru in The New York Times and as a “seamless, impartial account” by Christine Armario of Associated Press. For all of its scrupulousness, though, the book is shy when it comes to its subject’s views on the economy.
Yet an understanding of Mahatmanomics is critical to understanding Gandhi and the catastrophically impoverished post-imperial India his legend helped to create.
A word that does not appear in Gandhi’s book is autarky. But autarky — an economic system closed to outside trading partners — was a central principle of Indian economics until the reforms that began in the 1990s began to liberate Indians from poverty by the millions and build a large and growing middle class.
Gandhi was the embodiment of Indian autarky, and while Lelyveld’s book is not as sycophantic and one-dimensional as previous accounts, the author is reticent to deal with the ramifications of Gandhi’s personal eccentricities.
Mohandas Gandhi essentially created a spiritual/political cult with himself at the center, his peculiar obsessions taking on the category of national directives. Reading Tolstoy and Ruskin during his many years living in South Africa, he assembled (based on “an epiphany every two years or so,” as Lelyveld drily notes) a vague idea of utopian communes ruled by an “austere, vegetarian, sexually abstemious, prayerful, back-to-the-earth, self-sustaining way of life,” says Lelyveld. The young lawyer’s principal plan for aiding the poor was to become a poverty tourist, complete with costume (homespun loincloth) and laden with a sentimental attitude toward the nobility of simple ways.
Answer:
Mahatama Gandhi was not a proponent of capitalism, especially European capitalism. His economic and political views were different and cannot be grouped under either capitalism or socialism. Gandhi was averse to any system that is harmful to the individual or society in any form, without consent.
Gandhi believed that the mass producing British factories churned out foreign goods that put Indians out of work and led to poverty and suffering. He was not against modern machinery. In fact, for dangerous and tedious tasks, he espoused machines. But this debilitating effect of mass production and uninhibited accumulation of wealth through greed was what drove him against capitalism.
Gandhi held the ideals of an egalitarian society, non violence and truth. So he rejected any form of violent class struggles or revolutions. This put him at loggerheads with the communism of his time.
Gandhi's economic ideals could be seen through his ashrams, like the Tolstoy farm in South Africa. The ashram was like a commune. All of its inhabitants were involved in all kinds of work, like farming, cloth production, cleaning and teaching. It was a self sufficient community. They produced and consumed for themselves. Gandhi believed in this kind of self sufficiency to achieve personal, social and spiritual development.
He wanted India to locally produce goods for itself and consume them to become self sufficient. Everyone must work and be employed. Small self sufficient communes, in his opinion, would be enough to employ everyone.
He was not against accumulation of wealth per se. He believed that people were free to produce more and generate more income than their needs. But he wanted them to be trustees of their community and use the extra wealth towards the development of society in some way. In short, you are allowed the comforts of life but it must be combined with some sort of social welfare or charity.
He wanted a society where individuals rule themselves and are self reliant. Live for yourself but also for the greater good of the community.
There is enough for everyone's need, but not for anyone's greed.