A thread on jaati vyavastha in light of Marx, Weber, Bhagavad Gita and Prof Balagangadhara.

Though we all hate Marxism, we must see that there are some things that Marx got right. A core concept of Marx was the idea of alienation. Marx felt that in pre-capitalist mode of production, every worker owned the product of his labour. Whether a shoemaker,a carpenter or a baker

they were all masters of their produce and their craft. On the other hand, in the capitalist mode of production, people were reduced to doing menial jobs in factories, like loading a machine with raw materials etc. There the product becomes the master and the individual a slave.

According to Marx, a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human is to be a master of your craft. Hence the human being was alienated from his own nature in capitalism. How did this Capitalist mode of production come into being? Max Weber theorized that a shift from Catholic

theology to Protestant ( Calvinist) theology produced a fundamental change in psychology. In the latter, there was no hope for anyone, through faith or action to attain salvation, as God has already decided who will make it to heaven (this is known as doctrine of predestination)

This produced an extreme individualism. One may make it to heaven, but one’s own wife or child may not. People stopped doing even funeral rights of their kith and kin. This extreme loneliness was coupled with a question that produced massive emotional trauma–“has God chosen me?”

The way to be sure that one is among the chosen is when one produced immense success. God’s chosen one cannot be ordinary after all. This produced an entrepreneurial zeal that was unparalleled. While the catholic was satisfied with being a farmer, a weaver, a tailor or a trader

(crafts he learnt from his father), the protestant thought that he could do everything from weaving to trading and sell his product at a lower price. It can be seen that this capitalist mode of production was produced&sustained by an immense identity crisis (am I the chose one?).

~75% of India would be in the pre-captialist mode of production. Both Marx and Weber would view pre-capitalist societies as primitive. However, how different is this from umpteen Western thinkers who saw polytheism as primitive and monotheism as a “development” over it?

The identity crisis fueling capitalism carries forward even when this explicit theology takes a back seat. Thus, as Prof Balagangadhara shows in his paper “we shall not cease from exploration”, the fundamental idea of the self in West is remarkably different from the Indian.

In Western culture, “each individual constructs or elaborates a self for her/himself i.e. constructs an identity for one’s person. This process begins at infancy and proceeds in interaction with the natural and social environment. A typically mature adult is one who has built up

such a construct successfully……The folk psychology in the West allows each of us a self : a self waiting to be discovered within each one of us; something which can grow and actualize itself; as that which either realizes its true potential or fails to do so… etc.

To put it succinctly, one does one’s damned best to be oneself under all circumstances…” Thus, we have “self actualization” at the very top in Maslow’s need hierarchy pyramid. An Individual’s actions and achievements are the ultimate goal of human life as they define oneself and

form one’s identity. What else can we expect from a world where an individual’s existence is divorced from larger social groups like jaati, sampradaya etc.
In complete antipode to this conception, the ultimate goal of human life in India is to realize akartritvam

i.e. to stop identifying oneself with doership (refer Bhagavad Gita ch13.32, 18.16, 18.17 etc.). Before that knowledge can take seed in us, we need to develop a calm and mature state of mind through Karma Yoga. One of the key aspects of Karma yoga is to have a profession which

produces minimum mental stress. What can be more stressful than an identity crisis driven search for one’s true “calling” etc? Haven’t we heard of enough stories among both Indian and American youth having these issues, taking to drugs, dropping out of college etc?

How many of us in the corporate world have not complained about facing such problems? Do our reformists even care about what is happening to the youth of today? There are important questions like “Do we know that people in traditional jaati based occupation do not suffer

from such identity crisis? Is identity crisis an essential part of human nature?” That should be the kind of questions directing research. There does seem to be some intuition by thinkers of the past that this is not the case. For ex Weber called the catholic mode of production

as an “eat less, sleep well” vs Protestant as an “eat more sleep less” structure. Similarly, Marx too saw that alienation was only a key property of capitalism. We should also expect to find examples from itihaasa puranas if such a problem existed. However, after centuries of

search for atrocity literature, all our intellectuals have produced is one story about ekalavya and another of Karna, and both clearly not meant to be read as so.
“Is jaati based occupation sustainable in a world which is driven by capitalism and industrial revolution?”

It appears to be not. As Weber showed, the existence of capitalists makes it hard for traditional heredity-based occupations to survive. But rather than raising such kind of hard problems, the reformists are hell bent on making us copy cats of Western conservatives,

stuck in capitalism-marxism dichotomy which is an extremely shallow discourse. They have no place for ideas about happiness, psychology or prushartha. /end