The Economy of Permanence: A Quest for a Social Order Based on Non-violence (स्थायी अर्थतन्त्र)

Economy of Permanence
If we are to derive full benefit from work as designed by nature we have to
keep as close as we can to the simple original form of work without dividing it
up into its ineffective parts.
Wages: We saw that nature rewarded work in a wholesome manner by
conferring benefits on the worker. Such benefits derived from work are the
natural wages.
As life became more and more complex, division of labour was brought into
being by man with a dole in the form of a money wage representing a share of
the natural benefit derived on the whole. But such complications need not
carry us off our track if we constantly keep the true function of work before us.
Unfortunately, since the appearance of the wage system, the emphasis had
shifted from the function of work to the product of work, so much so that today
the product holds the field to the exclusion of the function. An employer thinks
of the product he can sell with the greatest profit in the open market. He pro-
ceeds to obtain such products with the least cost. He offers a wage for making
it. The overcrowded labour force volunteers in keen competition to produce
the articles for a wage whatever may be the moral outcome, conditions of
work, the methods adopted and their consequences. No scale of values other
than money enters into the equation. In this manner, work has been
commercialised and labour has been degraded into a commodity at the disposal
of the highest bidder. The employer seeks to obtain his labour at the cheapest
rate possible.
A slave trader wants sailors to man his ships to transport slaves captured in the
West Coast of Africa to the plantations of the U. S. A. or a poppy planter wants
labour on his estate for producing opium to be forced down on China. The
required labour should be forthcoming regardless of any social or moral
consideration, other than money wages. Thus moral values etc. are sought to
be sterilised.
When a mother nurses her baby or cooks food for her children she functions in
the way intended by nature in the 'Economy of Service'. All the return she gets
is the joy of seeing her children well fed and happy-that is her wage'.
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