Gandhi's views on the state

http://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil6.htm ^ | 3/15/2010 | psamtani

[psamtani]

Unfortunately, many people have the wrong idea about Gandhi, and believe that he was, in modern terms, a Statist. This could not be further from the truth. It is true that he held racist views in the beginning of his law career, which he discarded as he grew older and gained a deepened understanding of the world.

Here are some quotes illuminating his real view of the state:

It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and fail to develop nonviolence at any time. The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. Hence I prefer the doctrine of trusteeship.

I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality, which lies at the root of the progress.

In the ideal State, therefore, there is no political power because there is no State. But the ideal is never fully realized in life. Hence the classical statement of Thoreau that Government is best which governs the least.

[Spok]

Maybe that’s why he never got the Nobel Prize-wrong politics.

[thackney]

In his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth:

‘Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.’

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark.

[psamtani]

Yes, that quote about the arms was informative of his views. Gandhi believed that true self-rule was only possible in the absence of a state. Otherwise you are only independent in name, exchanging one tyrant ruler for another.

Even Orwell, who was a socialist all his life, did not believe in socialism through force:

That rifle on the wall of the laborer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there! — George Orwell

Something a lot of people don't know, however, is that Orwell was a dedicated social democrat. It's quite amusing, Orwell, writer of 1984, maybe the book conservatives cite the most, is a socialist. Gandhi, the leftist's wet dream, is a libertarian, almost an anarchist. Quite ironic, eh.