I am not a Communist; I am a Socialist

Who cares? But anyway here I am.

Some of the articles I have written made many believe I’m a communist. They did brand me a communist. Someone commented on me as a bleeding heart communist in reply to a detailed comment on an article in the social media:

http://www.thenewsminute.com/news_sections/1007#at_pco=cfd-1.0&at_ab=per-2&at_pos=7&at_tot=15&at_si=53f9d20f52059760
 
So I thought let me clarify what I am. I’m a proud Indian. I’m a proud Hindu. I’m a proud Kannadiga. I’m a proud Madhwa Brahmin. I’m a householder. I’m a nationalist. My writings and thoughts are deeply sociology based. Hence I am a socialist.

I’m proud of who I am and all characters stated above. I can defend to a great extent all of it & why I should be proud of it.

All oppositions I do and write also reflects these characters only. Be it opposition to large dams, opposition to industries for personal wealth, opposition to personal transport, opposition to faith conversion through violent, bribery means, opposition to propaganda based education, opposition to capitalism, large conglomerates, Loan based economy. Etc.,

My support for many things also stem from my upbringing through who I’m stated above. Like for example, It is Hindu culture to worship nature & protect it through strong communities who are custodians of nature for many millennia; It is Kannada culture to fight inequality; It is Madhwa Brahmin culture to embrace debate culture and oppose propaganda based education.

What is socialist? Why am I a socialist? We’ll delve in this article. A socialist is not communist. A communist claims to be a socialist.

Do I oppose communism? Yes I do. Clearly. Let’s first see what it is.

What is communism?

It is a failed theory in Russia as well as failing theory in China. Some argue what is followed in China & post Lenin Russia is not communism at all. But the fact is, it failed first & hence it went corrupt. In any case it is rather new theory and is yet to prove itself if at all it gets a chance. My argument is it has inherent problems to succeed. I’m not an expert though in this subject. Not well studied but I had to write as I wanted to veer away my branding.

Inherent problems in communism:

Communism is completely state driven. State drives everything. State determines what is good for the society and imposes upon it. There is little individual rights. Think tank is supposed to be centralized and determines what is good for the state. Communism believes society is not mature, it cannot govern itself. In the name of equality, State owns everything. Individual owns nothing. Every individual works for the state. He needs to work what is determined and directed by the state. So an individual, who wants to explore inner self, spirituality, explore the world, nature’s creation, who created nature etc., will not be supported by the state nor will allow citizens to support him.

Religion is defunct under communism. In fact, Karl Marx says, Religion is like Opium. This will get them into trance and forget the worldly life.

Communism, I believe developed in a context of the Christianity’s domination of state in the European region. So communism only responds to Christianity as Opium.

Christianity dominated European state post the decline of the Roman Empire. Roman Empire declined due to its excessive emperor-slave divide. And raising slave unrest.

Later rulers across Europe conveniently used Christianity as a tool to suppress the salves rising against the state. The rulers through the church preached them to believe in God and forget misery.

For centuries this authoritarian rule bread inherent unrest. As a result, people protested against authoritarian church. Renaissance came. Science & inventions, exploration came. Protestants came. Industrialization happened. Industrialization ushered in new found wealth by excessive exploitation of the earthly resources. Industrialization created wealth in few hands increasing the slavery through organized labor. So it created again big inequality.

Communism rose through Marxism. It said religion is opium. Religion is making laborers compromise on their rights. Marx said all have equal rights and have to claim it. So it devised a state driven equality based Industrialization. So everything that laborer produces belongs to state. And then state will distribute the wealth equally amongst all.

So it created a powerful state. It created “Concentration of wealth for the purpose of Distribution”. Power corrupted the people at the top. People at the bottom became complacent. Their freedom suppressed. Productivity plummeted. State became more authoritarian to push people to produce more. Unrest followed & overthrew the authoritarian communism.

So in China today, there is much authoritarian rule. There is much unrest building up. Tomorrow it might explode. Usually when an internal unrest builds up, authority looks for external aggression to raise patriotism and sacrifice by its citizens. So there is an imminent threat of aggression over India. It might happen in a decade or in few decades. But that threat is imminent and looming large.

Indian politicians are fools to not consider it and be prepared.

What is Socialist? Why am I a Socialist?

Socialist is someone who sees strength in society, unity, and people. Socialist believes empowering society. Society should build up state. It should be bottom up approach. Society in every region should be independent, self-sufficient. It should govern itself through society building and respecting it. It should contribute to national wealth. It should contribute to state machinery like – administration, legislation, police, military, and economy.

Especially economy. Society should determine its own strength, region’s wealth, form cooperative societies, extract earth’s wealth in sustainable manner and contribute to state’s exchequer. Develop entrepreneurial attitude and support it, harness it and control it within exploitation limits.

Yes it is all possible. For that we have to read Mahabharatha, Kautilya’s arthashastra and various other our own ancient texts. On local economy & its strengths, how to harness and how it is better than global economy I had written 2 blogs earlier posted here.

Only in military & external affairs, the decision should be top down. State should determine what is right. For security purpose industrialization & transportation should be planned. Those plans require sacrifices from regions and societies. State should reason with the locals and rehabilitate first before opening up their factories, highways and railways.

Education

Most importantly society should educate children. State should very minimally intervene in education. Local society should build education curriculum & infrastructure. We have to evolve ‘Gurukula’ system to modern day needs. Pass, fail, exam, certification should all come beyond 10^th standard. Let there be universities like Nalanda, Takshashila for higher education to explore the world with passion for learning. Not education through propaganda & factories like colleges producing certificates without knowledge, exploration, questioning, analytics.

But before that in primary education, we should educate children on sociology, community strength, regional strength, regional diversity, importance of keeping diversity towards strengthening unity, regional heroes, regional culture, weather, contours, regional wildlife, flora-fauna, its specialties, regional grains, vegetables, its importance for health. There is whole lot in each region in India. We don’t even know our own lakes, who built them, what rivers flow in our taluk, what grains we produce, what birds thrive here, who are our heroes? Why are they regional heroes? Education in local language, its strengths, beauty, diversity, dialects are important. Let the child open up its brain to innumerable variety around its vista.

For my son, 4^th standard exam question was: Where was Jesus born? I had asked my son to write Jerusalem for anything to do with Christianity, Judaism, Islam. So he got Zero. Our kids don’t know who is Purnaiah, Madakari Nayaka, DVG, Visweshwaraya. But those are unimportant for Indian educationists.

5^th standard social studies text book says Chicago is the largest Cow Slaughter Industrial hub. And that must be mugged up for important questions in the summative exams.

How important is all this? What patriotism are we building in them? Why are we so obsessed with global culture? International languages? People ask why should we learn Kannada at all. People chose Spanish/Japanese for kid’s third language. Why? Because it gives job opportunities. 

We are so afraid of jobs. Everything we learn has to be to earn living. Stomach filling is the only aim in life. Once we get a job, nothing else is important. We stop reading, studying, knowing, teaching, wondering about the world, construct of the world, societies etc.,.

Our current education is to soften our pride, by pass, ignore teaching children on the richness of local culture. Once they realize our education did not give a shit to our culture, tradition, scriptures, heroes, they grow up to become indifferent to all of it. They become indifferent to protect their heritage. Once they become tomorrow’s educationists, administrators, politicians only through mugged up knowledge and certifications, they look at money & their personal living as ultimate goal. Society concept is broken. Individualism becomes important. They will be ready to sell anything for money & living. That’s the culture we are cultivating through our current education.

We also studied like that only. That’s why we don’t know what DVG wrote, what Bendre wrote, what is Kautilya’s arthashastra, Vidura Neethi? We are ready to sell our society, nature, wealth at the altar of foreign traders, companies & countries.

Our Current Jobs

One generation back, take any of your parents, uncles, aunts etc., They used to work for something connected to our society. Either in Government offices, teaching, public sector, insurance, bank, farming, trade etc., They knew their customer, their vendor. They knew exactly why they are working, who gets benefited and how.

Today, take for example export oriented industries, the biggest employment industries. We produce largest software services & sanitary napkins. Who uses it? The world uses it. In India it is least used. We don’t produce for ourselves what is necessary. Or we don’t use what we produce. We have created a huge divide between India and Bharath. India is producing big things for all countries and taking cash. The middleclass who get that cash, keep it for personal luxury – cars, bikes, houses, multiplexes etc.,

Our luxuries are costing earthly exploitation, forest destruction, and river drying forcing people to migrate to urban slums. Do we care? We have become indifferent. We lost our connect with our society.

For getting a job in these personal money earning industries do we use the education we did? For example, to become a software engineer I cracked Shakuntala Devi maths puzzles. That’s it. Not engineering studies. After that since last 15 years I have never used all that engineering subjects I studied nor primary school subjects. I have used some basic arithmetic, basic analytical, logical skills. Apart from that it is majorly commonsense that is utilized. English language conversation I picked up after joining job.

Lets say, if you were from a Gurukula system studied upto 10^th standard, got around some basic maths, English language, and you cracked the entrance test for your job and interview as per their current evaluation and requirement, would you not have been as effective today?

Similarly in textile industries, the largest employment generation industry, none of what they studied in school is used. So why study Global culture in primary education?

Isn’t Our Society important? Should we not study society, our life style, life style effect on society? Individualism is detrimental for the country. But is somebody listening?

With all this writing still, I live like an individualist, typical urban middleclass, with an indifferent lifestyle. But I do think at least & I write. May be it will lead me somewhere or make others think and change their stance. But thinking is important. It will change things ultimately.  

So anyway if you have reached till here, I hope you know by now, what is socialist and why am I a socialist.