Cooperative members should form a board of directors for each cooperative. The board should decide the amount of profit to be divided among the members; that is, the dividend to be paid to each shareholder. However, the total profit should not be distributed in the form of dividends - some should be kept for reinvestment or purchasing items such as tractors, manure, etc.; some should also be used for increasing authorized capital; and some should be deposited in the reserve fund. The reserve fund should be used to increase the value of the dividend in the years when production is low. If this system is followed the authorized capital will not be affected. The board of directors should be elected from among the cooperative members - their positions should not be honorary. Care should be taken to ensure that not a single immoral person is elected to the board. All directors must be moralists. To stop black-marketeering strong steps need to be taken by the government. For example, to protect the clothing industry, the government should pass a law that prevents the sale of any clothing without the trademark of the producers cooperative where it is made. Thus, if black-marketeers try to sell any clothing without trademarks, they can be easily caught. Many intelligent people know this simple but effective remedy, but still they do nothing. This is because they are the agents of capitalists who need money from these black-marketeers and hoarders to fight their election campaigns. This kind of corruption in the electoral system is part of democracy, so we can say that democracy is not the best form of government. Hoarding, profiteering and black-marketeering cannot be stopped in the democratic system because those who try to stop it will be thrown out of power. In the high point of the ks'attriya (warriors) Era smuggling and hoarding were controlled, but as soon as the influence of the intellectuals (vipras) or capitalists (vaeshyas) emerged, the control over these corrupt practices slackened.
Freedom: April 2006 Archives
"Pragatishiila upayogatattvamidam' sarvajanahita' rtham' sarvajanasukha' rtham praca'ritam"
[This is the Progressive Utilization Theory, propounded for the happiness and all-round welfare of all.]
A developed economy should consist of four parts - people's economy, psycho-economy, commercial economy and general economy. This quadri-dimension of economy is a vast ex¬pansion on the contemporary and co-contemporary conceptions of economic activity.
Most economists today understand only a little of the principles of general economy and something of commercial economy; but both of these parts are still in an undeveloped stage. People's economy and psycho-economy are totally over-looked by modern economists, and as such could find no place in the present mode of economic thinking.
America's first African American billionaire, Robert Johnson, has recently purchased a small Florida bank that he plans to move to Washington, D.C., one of the United States' strongest banking markets, in order to serve the African American community. Johnson has said he thinks the bank, to be renamed Urban Trust, could become "the preeminent African-American owned bank in the country." 1 How much that will benefit working and middle class blacks or mainly himself and other bank stockholders is unclear.
It is not proper that one person will snatch away the morsels of food from the mouths of others. So there has been a need to introduce a system where all human beings would distribute the entire wealth among the collective body in a collective way. Unfortunately, no great person ever did this in the past, nor did even Ta'raka Brahma [the advent of the Supreme Liberator] do it. It was not done, therefore the problems and difficulties in collective life have continued. Because of these shortcomings, human life is full of pain and misery.
The word prama' is derived as pra-ma' + d'a + t'a. The meaning of the root-verb ma' is to measure, to fathom. So the etymological meaning of prama is balance. In English the two words equilibrium and equipoise are used in this sense. But there is some practical difference between these two words. Equilibrium is used in the sense of balance in physical strength and equipoise is used in the sense of balance in weight. Suppose there is a tug-of-war between two parties. If both the parties are equally strong, no party is able to pull the other party towards itself, i.e. there is a physical equilibrium between the two parties. Take another case. Suppose there is a one-kilo weight on one side of a scale and on the other side there is one kilo of eggplant. As there is equality of weight on both sides, the scale is evenly balanced. This balanced state in weight is called equipoise. Equilibrium and equipoise are collectively known as prama'.
Shrii Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar propounded the Progressive Utilization Theory (Prout) in 1959 as an alternative to capitalism and communism. All his ideas are enunciated in Prout in a Nutshell, Neo-Humanism in a Nutshell, Human Society - Parts 1 and 2 and A Few Problems Solved. In this article, I elaborate on his contribution to humanity in the area of political theory.
The experience of contemporary history has exposed the fallacies of cherished social, political and economic ideas, classical as well as revolutionary. The world is full of opportunities - material, mental and spiritual - and so to build a better and freer society is a practical possibility. Yet we are observing a process of social decadence, moral degeneration and the collapse of values which is corroding the springs of human action and corrupting the ideals of a civilized life. Failure and disappointment are bound to follow from attempts to solve the problems of our time with the ideas of previous centuries. These ideas emphasized material progress and scientific development.
However, the mental makeup and moral standard of the civilized community have not matched the level of material progress. In other words, the development of civilization - refined cultural progress - has proven far slower than scientific development.
The civilized world in this century has been confronted with new problems that seem to baffle human intelligence, which is probably inevitable if solutions are defined on the basis of old ideas and theories. Communism, which promised material well-being and security in a socially regimented and spiritually enslaved life, has collapsed, creating disillusionment about revolutionary ideals.
