The other day my wife was pounced on in the street by a robed figure. She put up a brave fight, but was left standing with a piece of literature called “Back to Godhead”, the magazine of the Hare Krishna movement. Actually it was worth the couple of bob for an insight into the way religious organizations such as Hare Krishna are hard at work maintaining all the evils they wish to eradicate, or say they do.
The Statement of Principles in the magazine tells us “we can be free of anxiety and come to a state of blissful consciousness in this lifetime”, and “we are all brothers”. Fine. So how is this to be done? The main article takes the form of a conversation between His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanti Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, and his personal secretary. It sets out to show that Marx was entirely wrong and that God must be “the centre of a truly classless society”.
The article warrants attention, despite much inaccuracy and plain silliness, because it is a good specimen of the thinking and teaching of several organizations which have attracted many idealistic but politically disillusioned young people in the past few years. It churns out many of the familiar cliches of misunderstanding and confusion common in a far wider section of society—cliches upon which capitalism relies greatly for support.
The main plank of the article is a series of pronouncements by His Divine Grace, presumably tipped- off by God: “Men naturally fall into different classes”; “There must be one class who are the enjoyers and another class who are the workers. This system is natural.” We discover how conveniently this fits in with his own circumstances: “In our organization, I am sitting in a chair and you are offering me garlands and the best food because you see a perfect man to follow. Everyone is able to say, here is a perfect man. Let him sit in a chair and let us all bow down and work like menials.”
Of course, Russia is dragged in as proof that Socialism cannot work. Indeed, the Master’s opinions on Russia, taken without regard to what they are supposed to prove, cannot be disputed: “The Russians have not created a classless society. There is no real difference between Russian Communism and other systems in operation. There is as much exploitation there as in other countries. They are creating slaves—the working class.” But this is all precisely because they do not have Socialism in Russia!
Prabhupada asserts that, though we must have leaders and “enjoyers”, we shall not work willingly and contentedly nor be free of problems unless we think of the work we do as being for God rather than for the people who really benefit from it (the enjoyers). The article comes to the nonsensical conclusion that the classless society is only possible when all classes, “high and low”, stop worrying about their inevitable natural exploitation, with all its inevitable natural injustices, and work for God. A plain enough summary of the teaching of all religions through the ages.
Socialists are not hoodwinked by statements that classes and exploitation are “natural”. The ploy of setting worker against worker by propagating the myth of many social classes traps many of those who begin to get fed up with the enjoyer-worker set-up. Not quite knowing which of the mythical classes to accuse of being the actual “enjoyers”, they are sidetracked into assuming that Socialism is all about a fairer distribution of money. Whereas Socialism means replacing the whole system of capitalism with a system in which everybody owns in common, and democratically controls, the means of producing and distributing wealth. “Wealth”, in this case, does not mean money: in Socialism, everyone will have free access to what he needs.
What will happen to “inevitable” exploitation then? Classes are the relationships of groups of people to the means of living. With common ownership, there is only one relationship: different classes cease to exist. So therefore does exploitation, which is only possible when one class owns the means of living and another doesn’t. It will open up for humanity a new world in which achievement and happiness have clear roads instead of a jungle of obstacles. It will mean an end to starvation, war, homelessness, and being trained to accept the shoddy and artless. What have our over-fed, over-accommodated spiritual superiors got against that?
Would there not be more “good” in that state of affairs than in all the disgusting hypocrisy and viciousness and waste of human potential that religious leaders now defend? Prabhupada says “material improvement isn’t everything”—but what else can capitalism offer, except God? Prabhupada has already said that even then, envy and exploitation are inevitable: just try to think about God and your troubles will not seem so bad. Surely it is better to find the way to get rid of those troubles. Saying this is impossible, he points to Russia which was never Socialist.
To anyone who may be in danger of succumbing to the Oxford-Street tinkling of Hare Krishna, or to the double-talk of any religious organization: why seek blissful unawareness of the cause of the condition of humanity, or try to rationalize it with the irrational? That is not consciousness, but oblivion.
Vic Stevens
No comments:
Post a Comment