E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi's 'Theory of Trusteeship… 212non- violence or truth could uphold such a social or economicorder or tolerate its continuance. 64 He had to work for arevolutionary change. Gandhi claimed that he himself wasleading such a revolution on behalf of the dispossessed, thepeasants and workers, the victims of the Capitalist system. Buthis revolution was a nonviolent revolution.As has been pointed out, Gandhi did not believe that thesolution of the problem of exploitation lay in the violentdispossession of the owning class and the abolition of privateproperty; nor did he believe that the transfer of ownership tothe society or the State would automatically lead to theelimination of classes, the ushering in of equality andhumanism, and the emergence of a non-exploitative society.We have had an opportunity to watch the success ofthose who attempted to launch a new society on the basis ofthese beliefs. Private property was abolished and wastransferred from the individual to society. Society was equatedwith the State, and the State was equated with the Party. TheState became the only employer, the only owner of theinstruments of production. The bureaucracy of the State, theParty, inherited the powers and prerogative of the owner, andused them to entrench itself and totally disarm the worker. Theworker became a wage-earner with no right to bargain; no rightto function in a flee trade union, no right to free participation inthe management; no right to influence decisions on the sharingof profit, or the surplus value that he created; and no equality ofincomes. Every abridgment of basic human rights was justifiedin the name of the millennium. The promise of freedom andequality remained to mock, while the basic rights that areessential for the emergence of equality or freedom or truehumanism wore extinguished. In the capitalist system economicpower was interlocked with political power. In the communistsystem the two were merged, and became one, and the State