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"According to PROUT, economic exploitation involves the unrestricted plunder of the physical and psychic labour of a particular community together with the natural resources in their local area. In PROUT’s view, exploitation is not confined to only economic exploitation, but includes psychic and spiritual exploitation as well. The final and most dangerous form of economic exploitation is fascist exploitation. In order to canvass national support to justify their exploitation, the imperialists popularize the theory of nationalism. They portray their exploitation as rational and constitutional and based on the national interest. The British imperialists, in order to legitimize their exploitation, embraced nationalist theory. Following the example of the British, Mussolini of Italy and Hitler of Germany moved along the same path.

When communist imperialism was established after the Second World War, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin propagated the concept of the Slavic supremacy. Likewise, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong built up Chinese superiority. As soon as an imperialist power is transformed into a fascist power, it spreads out its tentacles to psychically and culturally oppress a vanquished people. To perpetuate unhindered economic exploitation, psychic exploitation starts almost simultaneously. Where psychic exploitation is used to further economic exploitation, it is called “psycho-economic exploitation”.

At the very outset, the fascist exploiters select a weak community which inhabits a region rich in natural resources. The fascists socially and culturally uproot the victimized community by imposing a foreign language and culture on them. Because the local people cannot easily express their individual and collective feelings and sentiments in a foreign language, they develop a defeatist psychology and inferiority complex with respect to the exploiters. This defeatist psychology destroys the natural spiritedness and will to fight of the local people, and the fascists skillfully utilize this golden opportunity.

The primary interest of the fascist exploiters is to gradually suck the vitality of the local community so that they can pillage and plunder their natural resources, but if necessary they will even obliterate the local community from the face of the earth." ~ Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar

The task for this paper is to locate the works of Shrii P. R. Sarkar in a range of classification schemes and at the same time to make these schemes themselves problematic. In general, we find Sarkar's works exemplary for the following reasons. In terms of economy, his work is strong on both growth and distribution dimensions. Sarkar is also eclectic in his theory of political-economy drawing on market and regulatory mechanisms. Alienation is a result not of private property but of the concentration of wealth and of the location of the self in a materialistic paradigm. Sarkar's Prout manages to satisfy survival, wellbeing, identity and freedom needs. Market models are strong on freedom but weak on wellbeing (especially at the periphery). Local "small is beautiful" models are strong on survival, wellbeing and identity but weak on the freedom dimension. Sarkar also takes an eclectic model of epistemology having a range of ways of knowing the world. He also takes a layered "deep and shallow" view of the nature of reality. Finally, and this is the centerpiece of the argument, Sarkar's social theory combines linear, cyclical and transcendental dimensions, thus avoiding cultural exploitation and fatalism, and accentuating ancient, modern and postmodern constructions of the social and the economic.

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.

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.

In this fight for independence, the Indian leaders committed a blunder. they should have engaged themselves in an economic fight instead of starting a political movement. The British took advantage of this blunder of the Indian leaders. They got the opportunity to divide India into two parts. They infused in the Muslims the idea that the Hindus formed the majority, and that therefore if the British quit India the government would naturally go into the hands of the Hindus, and the Muslims of the whole of India would remain as their subjects.

This shrewd policy yielded good results. A Hindu phobia grew among the Muslims. The Muslim leaders began to propagate this Hindu phobia at the top of their voices, and as a result of this anti-Hindu sentiment created out of Hindu phobia, a Muslim nation was again born in India in this twentieth century. Directed by this Hindu phobia, they demanded a separate homeland for the Muslim nation. It was not possible for the Hindus to resist this demand for a separate homeland, because at that time no nation which could be termed a Hindu nation was formed in India.

The next image of the future which is increasingly gaining adherents is that of global collapse. This image is constituted in various discourses. The first is the economic. In this perspective, the world economic system's inability to deal with increasing levels of inequity (within nations and between nations), the international debt load, and rising speculation in the global stock markets will lead to a global collapse of epic proportions. Areas integrated into the world capitalist system will be particularly hard hit; those areas that are self-reliant will manage, though. This image is also constituted in the language of the return of the Vengeful God. Because Man has tampered with nature (through technological development--genetic engineering, space exploration, overindustrialization), nature is now striking back--we can't escape our collective karma. What will result is environmental catastrophes such as the Greenhouse effect, earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, water shortages, and other wonderful things one can ponder while one falls asleep at night. Religious groups, in particular, are eagerly awaiting this event, or series of events. For many it is the Armageddon, the return of Christ, the Madhi, or Amita Buddha. It is the collapse of the hope and promise of the science and technology revolution, of the rationality of the enlightenment, and of liberal democracy. While some imagine this collapse as leading to the arrival of heaven on earth, most see this world as that of the rise of the worst of humans, a post-nuclear society ruled by the mighty.

In attempting to unravel the mysteries of history in imputing order to the seemingly disorderly currents in the human past, in reaching out to the future, Sarkar has joined the august company of Toynbee, Marx, Hegel, Spengler, Wells, among many others; and in erudition and breadth of vision, he is not excelled by any. Quite a few scholars have endeavored to detect in the chaos of history a certain rhythm, and imperceptible harmony that complies with certain natural laws, but their peers, suspicious of anything conferring rigor on past trends, have criticized and scoffed at them. Sarkar's contribution, however, belongs to a different genus. It is immune at least to those strictures to which other theories of historical determinism have been subjected.

While the vision above presents Sarkar's thinking, it does not place it in the context of other images of the future. By placing Sarkar's vision in the context of other images we will better be able compare his thought. We use as our points of comparison, the images developed by futurist James Dator.³²

There are numerous divergent views regarding the exact interpretation of the term "nation". Some are of the opinion that the inhabitants of a particular state form a nation. Even if the terms "state" and "country" are taken to be synonymous, the controversy over "nation" does not end. Some people hold the view that the structure of a nation depends on language. Others are of the opinion that the foundation of a nation depends on one or more than one factor from among the following: similar manners and customs, similar mode of living, similar traditions, racial similarity, religious similarity, etc. But practical experience does not indicate that these factors are especially important.

Shrii Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar is well known as a social philosopher, political revolutionary, poet, and linguist. He has also been described as the complete renaissance man.¹ These descriptions come as a result of his numerous books and articles in the fields of natural sciences, world history, art, health, and political-economy, his creation of the Progressive Utilization Theory (PROUT) and his role as spiritual teacher of the social service, spiritual movement Ananda Marga.²