When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fail. Think of it — always.
Please share widely!
The world holds enough for everyone’s NEED, but not enough for everyone’s GREED.
A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians; they are so unlike your Christ.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
I’ve been trying to find out why MLKJr and the USAmerican Civil Rights movement never seemed to pick up on the economic aspects of Gandhi’s thinking, why they never adopted or adapted swadeshi into their tactics or strategy. I’ve asked Bob Moses, Rev James Lawson, Rep John Lewis if they ever studied Gandhian economics, nonviolent economics, as well as Gandhi’s political nonviolence. The answer has always been “No.” I even asked Gene Sharp, the great scholar of nonviolence, about Gandhian economics and he had very, very little to add. None of the historians of the civil rights movement I’ve asked about this seems to be interested in this question at all.
If anybody has any references that might help me find an answer to this question, please let me know.
All my notes on the readings I’ve done on Gandhian economics can be found through http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2014/04/sarvodaya-swaraj-and-swadeshi.html
As you may guess, I believe that the economic aspects of Gandhi’s approach have been woefully ignored and, in addition, affordable renewable energy is by definition “local production,” swadeshi, and can mean something powerfully different in economics, work, and life from what we have now.
I know this is heresy, but I have to say this anyway. My late parents were each contemporaries of Gandhi. They each had the same comment: had there not been SOMEBODY willing to fight the Axis powers in WWII, the outcome for both India and the world would have been very different.
I’m not sure that the non-violent “good-cop” philosophy of Gandhi works in the absence of some other “bad-cop” force on the same playing field. I’m similarly not sure about “Gandhian economics”. Has it been tried anywhere? Has it been studied or analyzed by objective economists?
I’m very reluctant to canonize anybody — I remember MLK, and I remember that he is MUCH more popular after his death then while he was alive, especially among Republicans. I think the jury is still very much out as to what happens in our current political environment, and I’m not at all sure that the pre-Reagan America that some of us remember will survive.
From my reading, Gandhi believed he could negotiate with Hitler and even wrote him. I also recall that he suggested, as a last resort, mass public suicide in the public square which is extremely extreme but does make it impossible for anyone left alive to say, “I didn’t know.”
I know of at least two instances of what I’d call satyagraha in the death camps, one I relate here https://youtu.be/XAio8jsAoRE and another recorded by Lawrence Langer, a Boston based scholar of the Holocaust, in which a man on the death march away from the death camps at the end of the war fell out from the rest and did not continue. This was something usually punished by death, the exhausted would be shot. A Nazi soldier came up to the man and they looked each other in the eyes. This recognition of their common humanity, or so I interpret it, allowed the soldier to lower his rifle and let the man live.
I would like to have known how Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Badshah Khan, the “Frontier Gandhi,” a Pashtun leader who founded the world’s first nonviolent army, the Khudai Khidmatgar or Servants of God, in the area which is now Pakistan and Afghanistan how he would have dealt with Hitler and Nazism.
You can access my notes on the books I’ve read about Abdul Ghaffar Khan at https://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2016/01/my-life-and-struggle-by-badshah-khan.html if you’re interested.
All my notes from my readings on Gandhian economics are available at http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2014/04/sarvodaya-swaraj-and-swadeshi.html One aspect of Gandhian economics, often the most criticized as unrealistic, is the concept of trusteeship, where the owner of an enterprise treats it as a public trust for the workers, the suppliers, the customers, and the general community. A recent, local example of such is the remarkable “strike” to reinstate Arthur T DeMoulas at Market Basket Supermarkets where all these interest groups brought pressure to bear to keep someone who treats the business as a trusteeship in control.
Maybe not Gandhian, but King was definitely interested in economic rights too. I’m pretty sure the reason he was in Memphis when he was shot was economic.
King was definitely interested in economic rights but all the veterans of the USAmerican civil rights movement I’ve asked have said (or implied) that they never studied Gandhi’s economic ideas the way they studied his ideas on political nonviolence.
Gandhi called swadeshi, local production, “the soul of satyagraha,” soul force, his term for his political nonviolence. For Gandhi, that meant an hour a day spinning thread for home-made or khadi cloth. He saw it as part of his Constructive Programme, a way to provide a second income for small landholders in the villages which he believed should be the source of development for India.
King and others promoted local, Afro-American businesses, economic self-reliance, and economic justice, as in the garbage collectors’ strike in Memphis where King was killed. However, they never adopted or adapted the daily practice of economic production as an integral part and foundational discipline for political nonviolence nor did they develop their own version of Gandhi’s Constructive Programme. In fact, it is difficult to find any mentions of “swadeshi” in relation to King or the USAmerical civil rights movement. It seems to me it was overlooked, ignored, and almost completely forgotten as a possibility.
All my notes from my readings on Gandhian economics are available at http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2014/04/sarvodaya-swaraj-and-swadeshi.html if anyone is interested.
Since I believe that renewable energy is the very definition of swadeshi or local production and that the removal of the cost of fuel in a 100% renewably powered economy will have sweeping effects on that economy, I have been exploring and practicing my own kind of “solar swadeshi,” the practical use of small-scale solar in my daily life. Emergency or entry level electricity – light, radio or cell phone communications, small battery charging – can be purchased for about $10 retail now through mass produced commodity products. What would it be like if people began to practice this kind of solar swadeshi and disengage, even just a little, from the legacy system? What would be possible if the billion or so who don’t now have access to minimal electricity could have it with a little more than a week’s income ($1 or $2 a day) that would provide 3 -5 years worth of basic power?
I’ve seen this possibility for over 20 years now but, based upon experience, doubt that almost anyone else does.
I very intentionally use the passive heat already generated by the electronics I use for work to reduce or eliminate the load on my space heating system during the heating system.
I work in a very well-insulated east-facing enclosed porch with windows on three sides. There are no baseboards (from our central heating system) out here. I use an oil-filled electric radiator and keep it on a thermostatically-controlled outlet. I keep it set at 65 during the day and 50 at night. On a sunny day, the solar gain of the windows keeps the space at or above 65 deg f on all but the coldest days outside. I don’t know the power consumption of my equipment, but I do know that with the heater turned off, the room is noticeably cooler when the computer is also turned off (it’s a tower with four HD drives and a large monitor).
I’ve contemplated adding solar panels to our roof, but haven’t yet moved past the staring-at-the-roof phase.