The scientific and technological inventions that have taken place in the last 50 years have not only strengthened the capitalist order but put enormous destructive power in its hands. It has given it the power to control the international economic system, impose political domination on the Southern Hemisphere and threaten the survival of the human race as a whole. Those committed to socialism are finding it very difficult to combat it. The victory of global capitalism over the Soviet Union and its strong influence over Chinese People’s Republic has been caused, to a large extent, by these inventions. There is no gainsaying that these socialist systems have had certain crucial internal weaknesses and in particular did not succeed in stopping the alienation of the producer from his production or give decision-making power to the people over their destinies. However, it could be argued that the challenge that was mounted against the Soviet Union and China because of the capital’s mastery over these inventions was no less responsible for the distortions that crept in the social orders that they built up. Social democratic systems in Western Europe also suffered greatly as the welfare states that they established, have lately been deteriorating rapidly. In consequence, the working masses in the developing countries as also in the developed ones are experiencing total helplessness in the new situation.

This new technology is powerful enough to manipulate human genes. Alduous Huxley’s prophecy that some human beings will become genetically more equal than the rest is being realised in some strange way. On the other hand, the homogenisation of cultures and value systems of the entire human race in the replica of the wealthiest consumerists in the developed countries is going on so steadily that the extremely diverse and colourfully rich heritage of humanity is in danger of extinction. It is a new challenge that while the aspirations of the poor match those of the very rich, the means of fulfilling them are getting farther away from them every single second. The resulting frustrations are but new fodder to the global powers to incite them to various kinds of frenzies in the name of their fictionalised collective interests in terms of race, religion and ethnicity as these powers have full control over information technology and the satellite media.

The refusal of USA, the leader of global capital, to honour the environment-related treaty arrived in Kyoto is an affirmation of her obstinacy that whatever happens to the eco-system, the pursuit of profits by the MNCs and their economic domination of the Third World and its resources shall remain supreme. Pollution of all the natural resources of the entire world, including the ozone layer, is not of much consequence in this relentless pursuit. And President Bush has decided, against the appeal of over a 100 Nobel Laureates, that the National Missile Defence (NMD) programme will be launched to gain control over space. Militarisation of the space to master it so as to threaten the international community is the objective.

How is it that the social thinkers failed to foresee these inventions of technology and their extremely dangerous nature? Gandhi denounced Western civilisation, but he too had not anticipated this terrible scenario. While ‘Utopian socialists’, as Karl Marx described them, had cautioned against the direction that scientific-technological inventions were taking, Marx and other socialist thinkers of his time accepted that direction as given. They were the intellectual inheritors of the same value-system as Le Comte, father of the theory of positivism and Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution so fascinated Engels. Adaptation by all living species to nature and the survival of the fittest at adaptation to it was the message of Darwin’s theory while positivism sought the adaptation by humanity to the order created by scientific inventions. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels sought to transform the social order by helping the process of the radical alteration of the relations of production. What was, however, common between them on the one hand, and Positivists on the other, was the belief that the means of production were to evolve, as if, autonomously in the same direction of manipulating and exploiting natural resources and the people in subject countries. This assumption caused them to err.

This error was compounded by another: While the Communist Manifesto described the alienation between man and his product, it did not discuss the first-ever alienation that the human race experienced, or brought about upon itself. That alienation of man from nature and other sapiens was a significant development. Two trends emerged then onwards: one was to live in a symbiotic relationship with nature and the other was to manipulate it as much as possible. Similar trends were followed in the relationship with the other species. Some value-systems like Buddhism, Jainism, certain animistic groups and some pre-Judaic-Christian pagans pursued the first option. The teachings of the Upanishads give clear references to this value system.

Homo sapiens have been described in various ways. Adam Smith and Karl Marx employed one description, Smith implicitly and Marx explicitly: it is that of Homo economicus. The Communist Manifesto advocated a form of economic determinism, which Engels sought to correct in later years. Even so, the hypothesis that the basic structure of the means and relations of production largely influences, even if it does not determine, the super-structure has remained quite popular with the socialists. A whole literature on the subject is now available which is a critique of the theory. This uni-dimensional understanding of man has led to more and more wealth seeking, empire-building and exploitation. Political domination to achieve these ends has also been in vogue.

In view of the quite explicit threats that humanity has adopted in the direction, it is time that an alternative vision is adopted with a determined will of all those that care for its future. That vision has to look at the entire man. MN Roy was probably correct in saying that human beings are potentially rational and moral. Behaviourism rejects such a vision while people like Gandhi does not. Nor did the religious teachers of yore, even if they sought the source of humans’ potential morality in the divinity in them and not in their biology which Roy draws upon to argue in favour of a ‘materialist’-humanist rational morality.

Apart from practical point of view about the threats to the physical environment the limits of growth of natural resources and the dangers to which humanity is exposed by genetically produced foods, socialists need to reconstruct the theory itself. Man does not live by bread alone. He wants bread but he also wants roses. The poor have come together to fight both for bread and roses, and generations of socialists have helped them in this endeavour. Marxist vision provided the inspiration, and as Erich Fromm has pointed out, the socialist movement was the greatest ethical movement of the 19th Century. But, then, ethics was not an essential and autonomous part of its philosophical tools. This deficiency has to be made up in the manner in which Jai Prakash Narayan had asked for non-material incentives to goodness.

The addition of the alienation between Homo sapiens and nature and other species to our theoretical tools is equally relevant. The future of all is inter-linked. This is the first lesson of modern biology: and Baba Amte lovingly remembered a book that he, SM Joshi and Achyut Patwardhan had once read together in their youth: Is Biology God? The struggle to protect the eco-system, the persistent fight against the destruction of forests or the displacement of millions because of the large dams, the revulsion that the butchery of millions of animals creates and the hunger which stalks the Third World, must sensitise us to that prime alienation. However, a really symbiotic relationship of this nature can only be built at the level of primary communities. These communities are also the location where human beings, living together, can fashion appropriate norms of conduct.

This, then, is the point of departure from the centralisation of all powers and resource mobilisation, the consequent suppression of human freedoms and pursuit of endless exploitation of man by man, and nation by nation to a humane society which the socialists of all hues have aspired to build. Large, sophisticated technology cannot help but increase unemployment, centralise wealth and power, and create disparities, even after every measure of social security has been adopted. A technology which makes man dependent on it, gradually overwhelms him and is the preserve of the specialists only, is to be discarded in favour of a genuinely human-centred one. This would have to be a technology that enables human race to transcend its limitations of consumerism and greed.

The social system based on devolution of political and economic power to rural communities, town committees and urban neighbourhoods will greatly benefit the system. The essence has to be the control of primary, local, self-governing communities over their local resources, technology and planning for development for the satisfaction of their needs. These communities will decide as to how much power has to be conceded to the so-called higher levels like the state and the central governments. The financial arrangements shall also correspond with this transformed political arrangement. Revenue collection will also be in the realm of the rural and urban communities and they according to the powers would agree and decide to transfer to the States and the Centre, the quantum that the latter have to be given. The administrative structure, with its top- down and hierarchical character, will also undergo similar transformation.

The question of elections to the legislatures at State and central levels is quite relevant. JP proposed a solution in his picture of communitarian society with expanding concentric circles with the rural and urban communities at the centre. According to it, the delegates selected by the ‘lower’ ones through consensus shall constitute each ascending tier. It is this idea which the present Union Government is using to subvert the present Panchayati Raj system, but without distributing its powers to the States and, what is really the crux of the problem, to self governing local communities. Its motivations are patently centralist. According to its scheme, the present system of direct elections may continue up to district levels. At this level the delegates from the districts may then form the State legislatures and also elect representatives to the Union legislature. Yet, the real and effective power will remain with the latter. In our scheme, while economic activity will be run on decentralistic and, to the extent possible, co-operative basis with a very large network of cottage and small industries working on the formula of production of mass consumption goods by the masses themselves, some large industrial units will be unavoidable, although they can have work done through ancillary units. Even so, the question of managing them will arise. Management for them will be appointed by the respective district committees, in consultation with the workers’ and consumers’ co-operatives that might have shares in invest-ment. These should include enterprises for defence production and factories with sophisticated technology and research and development or for fabrication of machines and tools. Production will not have profit making but necessity as the goal.