7 - Gandhi’s moral economics: The sins of wealth without work and commerce without morality

Summary

Soon after Gandhi arrived back in India after almost two decades in South Africa, he gave a lecture titled ‘Does economic progress clash with real progress?’ to the Muir College Economic Society in Allahabad. In his presentation, he admitted that he knew little of economics the way his audience understood the term. However, he told the listeners that choices had to be made, as God and Mammon could not be served concurrently and because the monster of materialism was crushing society. He pleaded for an economy where there was more truth than gold, where there was more charity than self-love. He added that the United States may be the envy of other nations, and while some may say that American wealth may be obtained while its methods avoided, such an attempt is foredoomed to failure:

This land of ours was once, we are told, the abode of the gods. It is not possible to conceive gods inhabiting a land which is made hideous by the smoke and the din of null chimneys and factories and whose roadways are traversed by rushing engines dragging numerous cars crowded with men mostly who know not what they are after, who are often absent-minded, and whose tempers do not improve by being uncomfortably packed like sardines in boxes and finding themselves in the midst of utter strangers who would oust them if they could and whom they would in their turn oust similarly. I refer to these things because they are held to be symbolical of material progress. But they add not an atom to our happiness.