Beware of Socialism by Osho

Author:Osho
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-05-18T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter title: Gandhiism capitalism and socialism

17 April 1970 pm in Cross Maidan

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code:

7004175

ShortTitle:

SOCIAL05

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Hundreds of questions -- all in the context of what I said in the course of the last four discourses -- have been received. I will try to answer in brief as many of them as is possible.

A friend has asked if in my view socialism call come through Vinobe Bhave's sarvodaya

-- his concept of "the good of all".

Sarvodaya, whether it is Vinoba's or Gandhi's, cannot bring socialism, because the whole concept of sarvodaya is concerned with taking man back to the jungle -- the primitive way of life. The ideal of sarvodaya is opposed to capitalism -- not in the sense of going beyond it, but in the sense of going behind it.

There are two ways of getting rid of capitalism -- either you go beyond it or you go behind. And for some people going back is always easy, and alluring too. But going back to the past is neither possible nor desirable.

We have to go forward willingly or compulsively. Those who go forward compulsively do so listlessly like animals. And those who go voluntarily do so with a song in their hearts and with a rhythm in their walk. They go with a hope and a dream and a thrill to find their future.

The thought of going back to the past has gripped India so firmly that whenever we are faced with difficulties we immediately think of turning back. And the reason is psychological, which we would do well to understand. It would be very useful to investigate the psychological meaning of Vinoba's sarvodaya and of the whole Gandhian thought and outlook.

Firstly, everybody thinks that everything was so good in the past. The village was good and the city is bad just because the village is of the old and the city is new. But it is the people living in the city who think that the countryside is so good. The villagers themselves don't think so. It is one thing to take a day off and go round a village, and quite another to spend a lifetime in the countryside. It is funny that people who lay so much stress on the importance of sarvodaya and the village life and the old system of village government, don't live in the villages themselves, they all live in cities. Living in cities they write books on the beauty and grandeur of the natural life in the village.

These illusions that we nurse are, of course, very beautiful to look at, but they are dangerous nonetheless.

The village has no future; the future belongs to the city. In the coming world there will be no villages; there will be cities and such big cities that we cannot think of. A village in relation to the city is like a straw hut in relation to the skyscraper. Neither the straw hut nor the village is going to exist in the coming world. In fact, the future world will be the world of the cities and their citizens.

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