The Social Ideal

166. I want to bring about an equalization of status. The working classes have all these centuries been isolated and relegated to a lower status. They have been shudras, and the word has been interpreted to mean and inferior status. I want to allow no differentiation between the son of a weaver, of an agriculturist and of a schoolmaster. –H, 15-1-38, 416.

Political Ideal

167. To me political power is not an end but one of the means of enabling people to better their condition in every department of life. Political power means capacity to regulate national life through national representatives. If national life becomes so perfect as to become self-regulated, no representation becomes necessary. There is then a state of enlightened anarchy. In such a state everyone is his own ruler. He rules himself in such a manner that he is never a hindrance to his neighbours. 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 that government is best which governs the least.*

-YI, 2-7-31, 162.

168. 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 dies the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the root of al progress.

*The statement that I had derived my idea of Civil Disobedience from the writings of Thoreau is wrong. The resistance to authority in South Africa was well advanced before I got the essay of Thoreau on Civil Disobedience. But the movement was then known as Passive Resistance. As it was incomplete I had coined the word Satyagraha for the Gujarati readers. When I saw the title of Thoreau’s great essay, I began to use his phrase to explain our struggle to the English readers. But I found that even Civil Disobedience failed to convey the full meaning of the struggle. I, therefore, adopted the phrase Civil Resistance. Nonviolence was always and integral part of our struggle.

—(Letter to Kodanda Rao, quoted in Incidents in Gandhiji’s Life edited by Chandrashankar Shukla,1949. P. 114-5).

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.

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.

What I would personally prefer, would be, not a centralization of power in the hands of the State but an extension of the sense of trusteeship; as in my opinion, the violence of private ownership is less injurious than the violence of the State. However, if it is unavoidable, I would support a minimum of State-owner-ship.

What I disapprove of is an organization based on force which a State is Voluntary organization there must be. –MR, 1935, 412.