In Praise of Gandhi
Technology And The Ordering Of Human Relations
by Mulford Q. Sibley
Editor's Introduction
This essay, like two previous pieces by Mulford Q.
Sibley that have been published as QUF pamphlets, is a lecture
left among his papers. As stated more fully in the introduction
to Quaker Mysticism: Its Context and Implications
(QUF. June, 2000) Sibley was among the founding members of the
Twin Cities Friends Meeting and a long-time and greatly
revered teacher at the University of Minnesota. He delivered this
paper before the annual meeting of the American Political
Science Association at Chicago in 1976. Since he never revised it
for publication, I have abridged it somewhat, taking out
passages that were clearly intended for oral presentation to an
academic audience. Not having access to all the sources he used, I
have simply given the citations as he left them.
During the 20th century, Friends were deeply
influenced by Gandhi's concept of nonviolent resistance as a tool for
social and political change. They have been less sympathetic to
his ideas on technology, although as Sibley makes clear, those
ideas were rooted in Gandhi's religious beliefs and in a testimony
of simplicity not unlike that of traditional Quakers. Today,
nearly thirty years after Sibley wrote this piece and more than
seventy years after Gandhi put his arguments forward, they seem
more relevant than ever. Since Gandhi's ideas were
never implemented in India or elsewhere, one cannot say that
history has upheld them, but the contrasting views of Nehru and
other advocates of modern industrialism have been thrown into
deep question by the devastating effects of industrial technology
on agricultural and village economies worldwide. And as
Quaker Earthcare Witness and other environmental groups are
telling Friends, Gandhi's urging that we restrain consumption,
live more simply, and make greater use of plentiful human labor
as a source of energy is worth a fresh look.
Rhoda R. Gilman
In Praise Of Gandhi
Technology And The Ordering Of Human Relations
The debate about technology, economy, and politics
was already an old one in the West when Mohandas Gandhi
was born in 1869. In the Bible, for example, two major
attitudes stand out: In the one, there is a tremendous awe of
humankind's possible achievements, and this is reflected in the
divine command to the first man to have dominion over all
living things.1 Great admiration for cities, the mythological
technology associated with Tubal Cain, the powers exemplified in
the construction of the Tower of Babel, and Egyptian
technological achievements stud the pages of the Old Testament.
Humans, it was assumed on this side of the Biblical tradition, were
placed on this earth to subdue it and to go beyond, indeed to
conquer, nature.2
But, as in most things, the Bible also reveals a
contrasting attitude which is just as important. Human beings have
a tendency, it maintains, to grow so enamored of their
own capacity for techne, art or skill, that they leave the worship
of Nature only to substitute for it the worship of
technique, whether mechanical or social. Thus they attempt to
reach heaven with the tower of Babel, only to be punished by a
jealous God. Or they establish cities that become the seed-beds
of crime. Complex economic and technological orders engage
so much human energy that the purpose of life is forgotten
and people become slaves to their own
creations.3
In the classical Greek and Roman traditions, too,
the debate reflects the two sides of technology and politics.
There is tremendous admiration of such technological
achievements as the Seven Wonders of the World and those celebrated
in the myth of the semi-divine Prometheus. At the same time,
as in the Hebraic tradition, technological progress is seen as
filled with danger, for it casts a kind of spell on human beings
and thus leads them to become the prey of forces that they
cannot control. The fearsome punishment of Prometheus may be
seen to symbolize the gods' wrath at the tendency of humans
to overreach themselves technologically.
The classical view was echoed throughout much of
the history of Western political philosophy down to the
17th century. With the development of the idea of progress,
however, particularly after the time of Francis Bacon, cautions in
the classical view of technology tended to fade and it came to
be assumed very widely that technological progress meant
progress in all realms of human
existence.4 There were voices of
dissent that included Jonathan Swift, many of the
19th-century Utopian socialists, Mary Shelley, and Samuel Butler; but
in such predominant political philosophies as those of
liberalism and Marxism, it seemed to be assumed that
complex technology, while perhaps creating havoc in its
earliest industrial phase would ultimately be reconciled with a just
social order, either, as with liberalism, through a kind of
automatic adjustment process, or, as with Marxism, through the
inevitable development of socialism and then of communism.
It is against this background of Western thought that
we turn to Mohandas Gandhi's reflections on technology
and politics. He stands half-way between Western and
Eastern traditions, drawing heavily on both for his ideas, yet in
some respects being atypical of the predominant tendencies that
led to the Indian independence movement. He has been
known chiefly for his notions of satyagraha and
ahimsa and many in the West have supported his argument for nonviolence in
politics. But there was always a side of his teaching which led many
in both East and West to deplore its co-existence with
the conceptions of satyagraha and ahimsa. This side had to do
with his economic, technological, and sexual views.
There have been great admirers of Gandhi who
have accepted neither his principled nonviolence nor his
conception of the economic-technological order. Thus Jawaharlal
Nehru, who followed Gandhi's nonviolence for strategic reasons
only during the struggle for independence, has this to say about
his own attitude to the man he so much respected in general:
For him progress and civilization consist not
in the multiplication of wants, of higher standards
of living, but "in the deliberate and voluntary
restriction of wants, which promises real happiness." . . .
. Personally I dislike the praise of poverty and suffering. . . . Nor do I appreciate the ascetic life as
a social ideal. . . . This desire to get away from
the mind of man to primitive conditions where mind
does not count, seems to me quite
incomprehensible.5
Nehru may be said to epitomize the many critics
of Gandhi's conceptions of economy and technology,
which include most liberals and socialists. Were Nehru and
other critics right? Did they correctly report Gandhi? How should
we assess his position on the technological-economic
problem? How can we relate Gandhi's conceptions to the main
currents of Western political thought? What is his relevance, if any,
for the problems confronted by both "developing" and
"developed" societies in the declining years of the 20th century?
As is well known, Gandhi spent the formative years of
his professional life in South Africa, where, in excruciatingly
severe struggle, both social and intellectual, he worked out the
main conceptions which were to guide him in later
life.6 On technological and economic issues, he arrived in South
Africa holding many typical end-of-century views on progress.
Then he began to read and to correspond with
Tolstoy, and, above all, to study John Ruskin's
Unto This Last. Ruskin and men like William Morris were among the leading critics
of the idea of technological progress and espoused a view of
the world in radical conflict with the liberal-Marxist
perspective. Gradually Gandhi came to question much of what passed
for social progress and to criticize what he saw as a
misplaced confidence in complex technology. This attitude to
the technological issue is closely interwoven with his
general political philosophy.
Throughout his analysis of the latter, Gandhi is
so concerned with the means that, as in the case of Marx
although for quite different reasons the end is often left
rather vague. In general, he holds that if the means shape the end
and the means are nonviolent, the end will be a society in
which nonviolence characterizes all aspects of political and
social relations. Despite his general vagueness about ends, it is
possible to become somewhat more explicit if we comb his
writings carefully.
The goals that he has in mind for the world exist at
two levels, the remote and the intermediate. The remote end in
his doctrine would seem to be a "stateless" world: a kind of
freely cooperating association of villages and functional groups
in which rights arise out of widely recognized duties,
and centralized power structures are things of the past.
Central-ization begets violence, stifles the personality, and tends
to reduce individuals to mere instruments of the "state." The
state as an organ of history is "unnatural" a contrivance which,
to be sure, may have to be tolerated for many years, but
which ought not to be regarded as a permanent fixture of
human relations. 7
There is an obvious affinity between Gandhian
anarchism and the goals of communism. Both exalt freedom and
equality; both define the state as organized violence; both envision
a withering away of the bureaucracy and the police; and
both think of private property as a factor in perpetuating
inequality. But while there is little doubt as to Gandhi's ultimate
objective, he does not dwell on it. Just as the problem of immediate
means concerns him more than neatly stated political goals, so he
is far more interested in what might be termed intermediate
as over against remote ends. These intermediate
objectives connect the means, his central concern, with the ultimate
and rather vague remote goal.
That Gandhi is quite aware of the distinction
between remote and intermediate objectives is shown in his
comment on a pamphlet circulated by the Western India National
Liberal Association, a political opponent. The pamphlet
characterized Gandhi's objectives as "No Railways. No Hospitals.
No Technology. No army and navy will be wanted, because
Gandhi will assure other nations that India would not interfere
with them, and so they will not interfere with India! No
laws necessary, no courts necessary, because every one will be
law unto himself. Everybody will be free to do what he likes."
Gandhi admits that this "Gandhi-Raj" is "an
ideal condition" in which "all the five negatives" of the
pamphlet "will represent a true picture." However, he also observes
that in terms of intermediate goals the picture is a false one.
In reply to the pamphlet, he pictures these immediate
objectives as including railways, without their being used for military
and economic exploitation; hospitals, but employed "more for
those who suffer from accidents than from self-indulgence";
machinery in limited degree, but now the servant of the people. He
foresees an "army" of sorts, not composed of "hirelings to be utilized
for keeping India under subjection," but rather to police
India; and law courts that will no longer be used as "instruments
in the hands of a bureaucracy" but rather as "custodians of
the people's liberty."8
In the peculiar combination of deeply held
religious beliefs and constant experimentation which constitutes
the foundation for his politics, he is always emphasizing that
"we must not repeat history but make new history." Although
rather sharply aware of what some have called the recalcitrancies
of human nature and history, he still asks, "If we may make
new discoveries and inventions in the phenomenal world, must
we declare our bankruptcy in the spiritual
domain?"9
Thus Gandhi's perspective on technology cannot
be understood without some reference to his religious
conceptions. According to a long tradition in Indian thought, the
ordinary condition of humanity is not its real or ultimate being.
People have within themselves a consciousness beyond reason
and intellect which in the terminology of Hinduism is called
the atman. It is the principle in us that is not to be identified
with mind, body, or even "life," at least as we usually
understand that word. To be fully aware of this higher level is to
attain moksha, or salvation. And this awareness is associated with
that of pure freedom and love. Gandhi accepts this teaching
and attempts to relate it to his concerns in the political and
social world.
To become filled with the atman's transcendent being
is to experience God. It is not incorrect to suggest that this
God-consciousness for Gandhi becomes the source of all virtue
and of all insight into the realm of practical existence. God is
not the discovery of or an intellectual affirmation about
something beyond. Rather is God the fruit of growing knowledge of
the universal soul or spirit within each man and woman
which reflects the "true self." Gandhi came to identify God with
Truth; and the center of his outlook tends to be his search for
Truth and its implementation, particularly in the moral realm. It
is Truth which unites us and before which a wide variety
of religions admittedly bow. The quest for it brings atheist
and theist together. In politics, it is "truth power"
(satyagraha) which Gandhi thinks of as most compatible with the attainment
of atman consciousness. "Truth force" is set over against
"brute force" in his ethical teaching, and progress will be defined
in part as the gradual triumph of the former over the latter.
Atman consciousness makes us identify with all of life;
and this leads Gandhi to embrace many viewpoints which to
others seem absurd or "reactionary." Protection of cows, for
example, he identifies as one of the central distinguishing marks of
the Hindu faith. The cow symbolizes all the sub-human world;
and its protection is designed to reflect our awareness that
the human species is closely connected with all life and
should have a kind of empathy for all living
beings.10
But just as atman consciousness makes us identify with
all life, so it leads us to a realization of our unity with Nature
in general and this in turn paves the way for Gandhi's view
of technology. Nature is opposed to human creations.
Gandhi does not deny the worth of the latter, but he suggests that
at best the artifacts and structures created by humans must
be seen in the light of the revelations of natural creation. At
worst, human creations may be ugly and inhibit sensitivity to
the atman. Natural symbols of beauty, for example, are
generally to be preferred. Like Tolstoy, who so profoundly
influenced him, Gandhi holds that too great a separation from
Nature leads us not only to be alienated from God but also, in the
long run, to be estranged from other humans. This strong
tendency in Gandhi and Tolstoy to be suspicious of a departure
from nature (defined in its "primitivist" sense) is important for
the political philosophies of both.
A recent analysis of Gandhi's position on the
aesthetic values in nature and human creations points out that
"the `panoramic scenes' of nature, `the starry heavens
overhead stretching in an unending expanse,' and the like are for
Gandhi more beautiful than human artistic products. . . . They are
not beautiful as such, but as symbolizing God, the original
beauty." An inferior sort of beauty could also be reflected in fruits
of human labor, of course, but only if their production has
not involved exploitation and has served a good purpose.
By contrast, human creations that are the result of exploitation
or that dissolve family life are almost ipso facto
lacking in aesthetic value, whatever may be their superficial appeal. Beauty is
thus strongly linked to goodness. Given this attitude to nature and to nature as related
to God, it is not surprising that Gandhi should be highly
critical of the cult of modern technological progress. Not only
will human inventions probably be inferior aesthetically to
the products of nature, the very existence of complex
technology tends to encourage us to believe that the products
constitute the road to moksha. We take our eyes off inner
spiritual development and tend to worship gross national product,
which, in modern times, is largely the fruit of complex
machine technology. We value economic growth as an end in itself
and forget that materials goods, beyond a very bare
minimum, constitute a burden on spiritual evolution and the
achievement of moksha.
Replying to Rabindranath Tagore, who criticized him
for rejecting machinery with all of its potentialities for
alleviating the hard economic lot of people, Gandhi maintains:
I do want growth, I do want self-determination, I do want freedom, but I want all these for the
soul. I doubt if the steel age is an advance upon the
flint age. I am indifferent. It is the evolution of the
soul to which the intellect and all our faculties have
to be devoted.11
And on another occasion, he asks:
Does economic progress clash with real
progress? By economic progress, I take it, we mean
material advancement without limit and by real progress
we mean moral progress which again is the same
thing as progress of the permanent element within
us.12
In answering his own query, he suggests a sharp
conflict between the two kinds of progress:
I hold that economic progress in the sense I
have put it is antagonistic to real progress. Hence
the ancient ideal has been the limitation of
activities promoting wealth. This does not put an end to
all material ambition. We should still have, as we
have always had, in our midst people who make the
pursuit of wealth their aim in life. But we have
always recognized that it is a fall from the ideal. . . . I
have heard many of our countrymen say that we will
gain American wealth but avoid its methods. I
venture to suggest that such an attempt, if it were made,
is foredoomed to failure. We cannot be "wise, temperate and furious" in a
moment.13
People are put under a spell by complex technology,
he maintains, even when it deprives them of work.
What I object to is the craze for machinery. . .
. Men go on "saving labour" till thousands are
without work and thrown on the streets to die of
starvation. I want to save time and labour, not for a fraction
of mankind, but for all. . . . Today machinery helps
a few ride on the backs of millions.14
Labor intensive, not capital intensive production, we
might interpret him as saying, would often be the best way to
show respect for human personality.
One might think, given this view, that he would
accept all types of technology provided that the element
of exploitation could be eliminated and people displaced
by machines were supported until they were reabsorbed into
the economic system. After all, Western economists tell us that
in the "long run" machines greatly increase production and
that hardship technological unemployment, for instance
is only a matter for the "short run." Moreover, while the
industrial revolution has undoubtedly provided an opportunity
for exploitation of the many by the few, it has also greatly
increased the absolute material well-being of the many.
But Gandhi seems to hold that complex technology
in itself sets up so many imperatives forcing us to be
unvirtuous that even its admitted economic benefits cannot
always outweigh its negative effects. Thus complex machinery
always requires a great measure of centralization of control
and coordination. But centralization, by moving the
coordinators from direct relations with those being coordinated, sets
up conditions which breed violence. Centralization also
destroys community ties and substitutes the artificial contrivances
of contracts with a corresponding proliferation of the
legal profession for the natural and personal relations
characteristic of the small group. Human beings are less than human
under these circumstances. Politically, the central controls which
seem to be inevitable concomitants of machinery and
industrialism make genuine democracy and popular regulation of
power-holders difficult if not impossible.
Nor does Gandhi believe that "socialism," as
widely understood in Western culture, can be the answer. There
are limits fixed by industrialism and complex
technology themselves on the degree to which changes in the
property system can make technology the servant rather than the
master. The spirit of complex technology must itself be
questioned before we proceed to move in a "socialist" direction.
But does this mean that Gandhi is simply a
machine-smasher, a kind of 20th-century Luddite? Offhand, it
would seem so. Yet in several statements that have become
near-classic, he denies that he opposes the introduction of
all machinery. In one interview, for example:
Replying to a question whether he was against
all machinery, Gandhiji said, "How can I be when
I know that even this body is a most delicate piece
of machinery? The spinning wheel is a machine; a
little toothpick is a machine. What I object to is the
craze for machinery, not machinery as such. . . .
The supreme consideration is man. I would make intelligent exceptions. Take the case of the
Singer's sewing machine. It is one of the few useful
things ever invented."
"But," said the questioner, "if you make
an exception of the Singer's sewing machine and
your spindle, where would these exceptions end?"
"Just where they cease to help the individual
and encroach upon his individuality. The machine
should not be allowed to cripple the limbs of
man."15
Passages of this kind suggest that Gandhi's principle is
just the reverse of that prevalent in Western culture and the
Soviet Union. Instead of assuming that technological innovation
must and will take place unless, in rare instances, some is
rejected, Gandhi would assume that no technological innovation
would take place unless relatively infrequent exceptions
were deliberately made. The burden of proof, so to speak, would
be on those proposing the innovation.
Gandhi's economic goal is one which embraces the
ideal of thousands of small communities that can be largely
self-sufficient for the essentials of life. This will be accomplished
by inculcating an ethic of limited wants and at the same
time introducing relatively simple mechanical contrivances
which can be administered and repaired largely on a local level.
There will have to be some larger factories, he recognizes, and
where these involve large numbers of persons, they will be under
state ownership. Where factories are today owned by
wealthy capitalists, Gandhi would invite "their cooperation in
the process of conversion to state
ownership."16
He distinguishes his position from that of most
socialists in that he questions not merely the virtues of industrialism
but also, beyond a very ascetic level, the value of material
things. All material objects belong to God and individuals possess
them only as "trustees" for humankind a view strikingly similar
to that of many Western medieval thinkers. While a given
person is morally entitled to utilize the material goods that he
needs, given the principle of very limited wants, he has no
"absolute right." Any "right" of private property, as usually
understood, must be rejected. As a student of Gandhi's political ideas
puts it:
He would like to dispossess every person of all kinds of belongings. If he tolerates the institution
of private property, it is not because he loves it,
but because he has yet to discover a truthful and nonviolent method of abolishing that
institution.17
His attitude to complex technology and highly
developed economy must also be seen in the context of his defense of
the caste system as he thinks it was intended to be. From the
Rig Veda and other traditional Hindu writings, he takes over
the notion that the universe is an organic whole and society a
kind of organism composed of different limbs. The limbs of the
social organism are represented by the several castes
intellectuals, soldiers, traders, farmers and sub-castes. The basic notion
of the caste scheme of things he identifies with something
very similar to Plato's principle that each shall do that which
nature best equips him or her to do. The individual is related to
the whole social cosmos through the intimate relations
developed in his or her particular caste. Gandhi would
presumably transform the role of "soldier" into that of nonviolent resister.
Complex technology, the ideology of economic
growth, and their related phenomena break up "organic" ways
of structuring society such as the caste system and destroy
the basis for genuine human community. While welcoming
selective and well-considered change, Gandhi values the social
stability that accompanies the traditional way of life, once the
notion of an "out-caste" group is discarded. By promoting
mobility and uprootedness, complex technology undercuts social
stability and creates a bad environment for the nourishment of the soul.
Like Tolstoy, Gandhi exalts manual labor. The law
of "bread labor," he holds, requires that every person,
whatever his particular vocation, should engage in hard manual
work, particularly in agriculture. Manual work is essential to
maintain health of the body. More than that, it is the kind of labor
most compatible with nonviolence and love; for those who are
close to nature can grasp the notion of nonviolence almost
intuitively. Random and widespread introduction of complex
technology deprives human beings of the opportunity to do
significant manual work; and while material goods may multiply, the
soul shrinks in this process. And Gandhi also observes that
manual work "will serve to improve . . . the quality of . . .
intellectual output."18
The law of bread labor is one dimension of what
Gandhi thinks of as equality. Another aspect is that "each man
shall have the wherewithal to supply his natural needs and no
more." The ideal of a nonviolent society requires this, and
Gandhi proposes to implement it through the "trusteeship"
principle. But if the rich refuse to dispossess themselves of those
goods they do not need, then the poor have the right and
the obligation to turn to nonviolent noncooperation and
civil disobedience, for the rich cannot accumulate wealth
without the cooperation of the poor in society. Here Gandhi
reminds one of St. Thomas Aquinas and his principle that the
needy have the right to take from the rich openly or by stealth
any food they may require to keep body and soul
together.19
Gandhi is careful to stress that the norm of
economic equality does not mean that everyone would literally have
the same. "It simply means that everybody should have enough
for his or her needs. . . . The elephant needs a thousand
times more food than the ant, but that is not an indication
of inequality. So the real meaning of economic equality was
`To each according to his need.'"20
"Democracy" for Gandhi means primarily a spirit in
which human beings voluntarily limit their wants and ambitions,
thus paving the way for the ultimate statelessness. J. P. Suda
thus comments on this aspect of his thought:
The spirit of democracy is far more important than its mechanism or external framework. . . .
No member of such a community would want anything for himself or herself which he or she would not
like others to have also. There would thus be a
voluntary check on material needs. . . . What needs to
be equalized is not wealth or income but the
ambitions of men. If the ambitions of men are not
equalized, any equality of distribution of national wealth
which may be established at one time is bound to be
upset at a later date.21
It is perhaps because Gandhi conceives democracy
as primarily "spirit" that it is so difficult to pin him down as
to specific structures. Generally speaking, however, he
envisions a federation of largely autonomous villages, each of which
will be governed by a panchayat of five persons. The
panchayat will be chosen annually by the general assembly of all adult
villagers, both male and female, and will combine legislative,
executive, and judicial functions. With such a structure, and against
a background of very limited scale technology, Gandhi
believes that it will be possible to conduct a largely
nonviolent government responsible to the genuine needs of men
and women at the "grass roots."22
While he does not repudiate government at the
center, he hopes to reduce its prerogatives through limitations
on technology and industrialism and encouragement of near
self-sufficiency of the individual communities. Higher organs
of state authority (those beyond village and town level)
would be chosen indirectly. A formal police system would still
exist but would experiment with nonviolent techniques and
stress preventive work.23
But he is never happy with the central state. Not
only does it tend to violence, but state institutions often
freeze situations that ought to remain fluid. Patterns of
conduct developed by the state become as if eternal; rigidities set
in; legal systems resist necessary change; experimentalism
is discouraged. While Gandhi values the social stability
present in organic relations of human beings under strictly
limited division of labor, the state's tendencies to rigidity and
violence undermine the "natural" rootedness of organic society.
Hence comes his emphasis on initiatives from below, his principle
of annual elections in the village, his insistence that the
basic unit of society must be the small relatively stable
community which is not constantly being undermined through
technological innovation. Throughout his thinking, Gandhi has a kind
of horror of bigness.
Although an Indian nationalist, Gandhi seeks to
sever nationalism from its military connections and to see the
nation as simply one link from individual through the basic
small community to a kind of world confederation of
small communities. His criticisms of runaway industrialism
and complex technology, as well as his distrust of highly
complex organization, would apply to the whole world.
Having described Gandhi's position, let us again turn
to Nehru as a critic of this primitivism, asceticism, and
anti-technology perspective. Said the first prime minister
of independent India:
Nor do I appreciate in the least the
idealization of the "simple peasant life." I have almost a horror
of it, and instead of submitting to it myself I want
to drag out even the peasantry from it, not to urbanization, but to the spread of urban
cultural facilities to rural areas. . . .
[In Gandhi's thought] the very thing that is
the glory and triumph of man is decried and
discouraged, and a physical environment which will oppress
the mind and prevent its growth is considered
desirable. Present-day civilization is full of evils, but it is
also full of good; and it has the capacity in it to rid
itself of those evils. To destroy it root and branch is
to remove that capacity from it and to revert to a
dull, sunless, and miserable existence. But even if
that were desirable it is an impossible undertaking.
We cannot stop the river of change or cut ourselves
adrift from it, and psychologically we who have eaten
of the apple of Eden cannot forget that taste and
go back to primitiveness.24
In passages of this kind Nehru represents what might
be called the politics of modernity. Gandhi, by contrast,
stands for a generally unpopular politics which would
seemingly undermine the modern spirit. Nehru in some measure
distorts Gandhi's views. But if Gandhi's position is legitimately
subject to considerable criticism, still its core makes an
important contribution to the politics of both "developing"
and "developed" segments of the world.
While Gandhi does tend to exalt nature as
against complex civilization, and thus may be said to give every
benefit of the doubt to nature, it is also true that he would
accept much simple to intermediate technology. Moreover, some
of his statements appear to be deliberate hyperbole, after
the manner of many teachers of morality, to stress a point. He
is not always to be taken in a completely literal sense. The
key concept in Gandhi's view seems to be "discrimination,"
with preference to be given to the simple, uncomplicated, and
that which can be effectively administered on a small scale.
Even here, as we have seen, there is room for some
centrally administered enterprises, although they would be the
exception rather than the rule.
Thus interpreted, the main thrust (although not
necessarily all the details) of Gandhi's position can be defended along
a number of lines. He had a much better insight than Nehru
into the serious issues faced by those millions of rural-based
human beings who constitute the majority not only of India's
population but also of many portions of Latin America, Africa, and
other parts of the world. Emphasis on heavy industry, on
the introduction of complex machinery into the countryside,
and on expensive fertilizers, which has characterized so
much national policy in "undeveloped" nations since the death
of Gandhi, is highly questionable, to say the least. Policies of
this kind have actually meant a vast movement of country
people into the cities, which have been ill equipped to handle
the problems involved.
This is better recognized today, but Gandhi with
his "reactionary" views was one of the first to anticipate these
results. Perhaps two or three generations of human beings will
have suffered because of a kind of blind faith in complex
technology and industrialization; whereas an effort to keep many
peasants on their land, with only simple technological innovation
(such as improvements on wooden plows or sinking of new
wells), while it might not have produced vast material
improvement, would have made life more bearable than in the past and
much less chaotic and alienating than the existence represented
by vast urban shantytowns, disintegrating family structures,
and life and death in shelterless streets. Here again Gandhi was
far more prescient than most Marxists and liberals.
The core of his position is relevant not only for the
so-called underdeveloped nations but also for the world as a
whole, including the ostensibly progressive industrialized West. A
part of the mystique connected with the ideology of
industrialism and complex technology has been the dubious proposition
that large-scale technology always tends to reduce the cost
of production per unit. Gandhi attacked this notion and in
fact contended that at least sometimes it was not true.
Much depends, naturally, on how we define "cost." Do we
include, for example, the long-run wear and tear on the
industrial worker? Do we embrace the cost of pollution, of living in
the noxious atmosphere of a Gary, Indiana, or a Newark,
New Jersey? And what if we include both the economic and
social costs of unemployment? Even if we define "cost" rather
narrowly according to orthodox modes, there is reason to believe that
at times simple or intermediate technology may be more
efficient than more complex types. Such at least has been the
argument, often supported by considerable evidence, of many
decentralists. While this is more likely to be true where labor is plentiful,
it may also be the case under other circumstances.
Pin-pointing more exactly what the defender of
Gandhi might well argue, one writer contends that there are
many instances of manufacturing units in which "men have
discovered for themselves that low-cost indigenous and often
hand-operated equipment and machines are a better proposition than
costly, sophisticated machinery." As an example he cites a study
carried out by the Small Industry Training Institute of Hyderabad.
The investigation involved the manufacture of high-quality
cycle gear cases. There are two methods of manufacture
one depending on a very elaborate and expensive power press,
the other on a hand-run press. A detailed study was made of
the costs of operating the two systems. The study showed that
from an economic viewpoint the advantage lay with the
hand-operated technologically simple press. Capital cost of
equipment was not even half that of the complex machinery;
men employed were about one-third more; distribution of wages
was about 100 percent greater and investment return 50
percent. More recently, of course, E. F. Schumacher, the
British economist, has also challenged the widespread assumption
that large-scale and complex technology necessarily lowers per
unit cost.25
But Gandhi's position can be vindicated on much
broader grounds than this. He was keenly aware that
complex technology entails certain social and political
consequences which may be undesirable. Even if it were true that all
the economic consequences of complexity and large-scale
are favorable, complex technology might still be
legitimately criticized and possibly repudiated on noneconomic grounds.
In light of his religious philosophy, Gandhi calls
attention to such high-ranking values as simplicity and personalism;
and he stresses community. Yet simplicity, personalism,
and community appear to be eroded in complex
technological societies, particularly where the machines are introduced
with little or no public debate (as in most instances). The
tendency to reduce human personality to thinghood and
numberhood seems to be directly related to technological imperatives,
as Jacques Ellul and many others have suggested, long after
Gandhi called attention to the same phenomena.
By contrast with the main thrusts of liberalism
and Marxism, Gandhi sees runaway complex
technological industrialism as a sort of sickness to which people
submit themselves as if in a kind of stupor. Here he has much in him
of the spirit of Western classical political philosophy. But
while Plato and Aristotle lived in an age long before the
modern technological and industrialist explosion and hence dealt
with blind economic forces only against the background
of commercialism, Gandhi defied in an intelligent way the
whole idolatry associated with a century and a half of
technological and industrial complexity.
Like the classical writers, he had many doubts about
a money economy, here, too, showing an understanding but
rarely reflected in the economic thinking of modernity.
Money valuations, he contends, have no necessary connection
with the needs of humanity and may run counter to them. In
a capitalist society prices are regulated by the vagaries of a
market profoundly affected by oligopolies and gross disparities
in income; while in a state capitalist society like that of the
Soviet Union they are controlled by a state bureaucracy in part,
at least, for its own ends and for the greater power of the
state. Gandhi is keenly aware, too, of the dishonesty of the
money system. Money as a store of value is capricious and
unreliable, for inflation takes the savings of the poor and middle
classes with utter irrationality and in deflationary periods (and, as
recent experience shows, even under inflation), thousands or
millions may be thrown out of work. Economies of large-scale
technology seem to operate, to borrow an expression from Schumacher,
as if "people did not matter."
Some critics of Gandhi may admit all of this and yet
reject Gandhi's simple and intermediate technology and his
severe strictures on industrialism. The critics say that the answer
lies not in the "retrogression" implied in an emphasis on
less complicated technology and deliberately restricted wants
but rather in social reorganization and perhaps, even more,
adoption of new technology which might enable us to use and
distribute the products of a machine age. Instead of severe limits
on technological innovation and an accent on
deliberately restricted material wants, these critics would seem to
advocate merely a new system of economic organization plus computers.
Many socialists, whether Marxist or non-Marxist,
appear to move in this direction. Gandhi's probable reply should
carry great weight: beyond a certain point human beings
cannot control complexity and subject it to the only worthwhile
end the development of atman consciousness. Instead,
the complexity dominates them and in wrestling with it they
inhibit the progress of the soul by burdening it with
external nonessentials. Moreover, where is the evidence, the
defender of Gandhi might ask, for a contrary position?
Part of the debate, of course, turns on how one
conceives the development of "mind." Nehru says: "The desire to
get away from the mind of man to primitive conditions where
the mind does not count seems to me quite
incomprehensible." The assumption is that "civilization" and
technological development both reflect the evolution of mind and lead to
its further desirable growth. Gandhi legitimately questions
this, even though he perhaps overly romanticizes nature in
the process. As we have said, he would accept a modicum
of technological development beyond the "primitive" but it
would be a highly selective technology and would be of such a
nature that it could be controlled by relatively small
communities. With reference to Nehru's "mind," he would say that
some economic and technological development are indeed
essential for mental and spiritual growth, but only up to a point;
beyond that point they become hindrances.
Gandhi would identify the point as much closer to
the primitive than would classical political philosophy, but
the thrust of the two is in the same direction. Both reject the
cult of bigness and the notion of indefinite economic
and technological growth. Many in the Western tradition
would move in the same direction Thomas More, for
example, and the Jean Jacques Rousseau of the Social Contract
although differing among themselves as to where the line
should be drawn. It is only quite recently that we have believed
that we could somehow have unlimited technological
development, a complex economy, large societies, a high degree
of centralization, and, at the same time, a genuine polity
one that rests on rationality and deliberation.
One of the weaknesses of the tradition of small
community and limited technological innovation is that it is vague as
to how to combine the emphasis on smallness with
ecumencial ordering, or the organization of humankind as a whole. If
we reject the idolization of the sovereign nation-state, how
are small communities perhaps built on what Schumacher
calls "intermediate" technology to be related to one another?
It was an issue with which Rousseau wrestled and one that
Gandhi recognized, albeit in only a vague way. Is it possible to
combine the intimacy so essential for a genuine polity with
the ecumenicity seemingly essential to reflect the
common attributes of the human race? Or to put it in other terms,
can we combine the essence of the polis idea with the
cosmopolis or mundus of the ancient Stoic and Cynic? Perhaps we can
pardon Gandhi for not providing a clear answer to this question.
Few others have provided one either.
All things considered, Gandhi's teaching on
technology and particularly his effort to relate religious experience
to the subject may be as significant and as relevant as his
political application of nonviolence. Hyperbolical as he may
sometimes be in his statements, the core of his conception is as
relevant for the politics of "developed" as of "developing" nations.
For the former, it provides a much-needed perspective on
ecological and energy problems, and it warns us that we cannot go
on indefinitely increasing per capita consumption and
wasting resources without threatening human existence. It also
reminds us that technological progress does not necessarily lead to
moral progress and, in fact, may well be antagonistic to it. For the
so-called developing world, it warns against emulating the
foolish fever heat technological and economic development of
the West. It rightly attacks the notion, still so widespread, that
the industrialized and technologized West should be the model
for the rest of the world.
Whether we can in fact subordinate
technological development to the growth of the soul is highly
problematical. In the developing world the extent of involuntary poverty is
so great that it is tempting to resort to a rather
indiscriminate utilization of complex technology whatever its long-run or
short-run social consequences. As for the developed world, it has
so long been under the technological spell that it will be
extremely difficult to cast it off, particularly since this would entail a
radical redistribution of income and power and a drastic change in
the operative value system. Despite these difficulties, however,
the questions raised by Gandhi will not disappear. The
coming generation will probably find, in fact, that they are
more significant than ever.
Notes
1. Genesis 1:28.
2. Hence the admonitions in the Bible against the worship
of nature. The obverse of the worship of nature is the
worship of technology and socio-political structures. Both
are reprehensible.
3. Perhaps it is significant that Cain, who murdered
Abel (Genesis 4:8) also founded a city. He symbolizes the
revolt against nature.
4. Bacon's New Atlantis may be said to inaugurate the
new spirit of extreme confidence in technological progress.
5. Jawaharlal Nehru, Toward
Freedom, 314, 315 (John Day, N.Y., 1941).
6. See Gandhi's Satyagraha in South
Africa.
7. See Biman Bihari Majumdar, ed., The Gandhian Concept
of the State (M. C. Sarkar and Sons. Calcutta, 1957);
Gandhi, Toward Non-Violent Socialism (Navajivan Publishing
House. Ahmedabad, 1951); K. G. Mashruwala, Gandhi and
Marx (Navajivan. Ahmedabad, 1951).
8. Young India, March 9, 1922.
9. Young India, May 6, 1926.
10. Young India, October 12, 1921.
11. Young India, October 13, 1921.
12. Lecture at the meeting of Muir Central College
Economic Society, Allahabad, December 22, 1916, in
Speeches and Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 349 (G. A. Natesan
and Co., 4th edition. Madras, n.d.).
13. Speeches and Writings of Mahatma
Gandhi, p. 353.
14. D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma, v.2: p. 212 (Vulhalbhai
K. Jhavari and D. G. Tendulkar. Bombay, 1952).
15. From an article by Shri Mahadev Desai in
Harijan. This article was subsequently reprinted as a preface to the
new edition of Gandhi's Hind Swaraj in 1938.
16. Harijan, September 4, 1946.
In Praise of Gandhi
17. Mashruwala, Gandhi and Marx, p. 78.
18. Gandhi, Toward Non-Violent
Socialism, p. 15; Harijan, February 23, 1947 (quotation).
19. Harijan, August 25, 1940.
20. Harijan, March 31, 1946.
21. J. P. Suda, "The Gandhian Concept of Democracy
and Freedom," in Majumdar, ed., Gandhian Concept of the
State, p. 115.
22. N. K. Bose, ed., Selections from
Gandhi, p. 73 (Third revised edition. Calcutta, 1962).
23. Questions of this type are examined in H. C.
Bhattacharyse, "Is a Non Violent State Possible?" and Suda, "The
Gandhian Concept of Democracy and Freedom," in Majumdar,
ed., Gandhian Concept of the State. See also Vishwanath
Prasad Verma, The Political Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi
and Sarvodaya (Lakshmi Nayain Agawal. Agra, 1959).
24. Nehru, Toward Freedom, p. 315, 316.
25. George McRobie, "Intermediate Technology: The
Indian Town," in Frontier, Spring, 1968, p. 36; E. F.
Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (Harper Perennial Books. New York, 1975).