(Harijan, 9.10.1937)

According to me the economic constitution of India and, for that matter of the world should be such that no one under it should suffer from want of food and clothing. In other words, everybody should be able to get sufficient work to enable him to make the two ends meet.

And this ideal can be universally realised only if the means of production of the elementary necessaries of life remain in the control of the masses. These should be freely available to all as God's air and water are or ought to be; they should not be made a vehicle of traffic for the exploitation of others. This monopolisation by any country, nation or group of persons would be unjust. The neglect of this simple principle is the cause of destitution that we witness today not only in this unhappy land but other parts of the world too.

(Young India, 15.11.1928)

Economic equality of my conception does not mean that everyone will literally have the same amount. It simply means that everybody should have enough for his or her needs.

The real meaning of economic equality is "To each according to his need." That is the definition of Marx. If a single man demands as much as a man with wife and four children, that will be violation of economic equality.

Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more. That will be idle sophistry and a travesty of my argument.

The contrast between the rich and the poor today is a painful sight. The poor villagers are exploited by their own countrymen - the city-dwellers. They produce the food and go hungry. They produce milk and their children have to go without it. It is disgraceful.

Everyone must have a balanced diet, a decent house to live in, facilities for the education of one's children and adequate medical relief.

(Harijan, 31.3.1946)

Swadeshi

Swadeshi is that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote. Thus, as for religion, in order to satisfy the requirements of the definition, I must restrict myself to my ancestral religion. That is, the use of my immediate religious surrounding. If I find it defective, I should serve it by purging it of its defects.

In the domain of politics, I should make use of the indigenous institutions and serve them by curing them of their proved defects. In that of economics, I should use only things that are produced by my immediate neighbours and serve those industries by making them efficient and complete where they might be found wanting. It is suggested that such Swadeshi, if reduced to practice, will lead to the millennium.....

(Speech, 14.2.1916)

Much of the deep poverty of the masses is due to the ruinous departure from Swadeshi in the economic and industrial life. If not a single article of commerce had been brought from outside India, she would be today land flowing with milk and honey. But that was not to be. We were greedy and so was England.

If we follow the Swadeshi doctrine, it would be your duty and mine to find our neighbours who can supply our wants and to teach them to supply them where they do not know how to proceed, assuming that there are neighbours who are in want of healthy occupation. Then every village of India will almost be a self-supporting and self-contained unit, exchanging only such necessary commodities with other villages as are not locally produceable.

(Speech, 14.2. 1916)

Even Swadeshi, like any other good thing, can be ridden to death if it is made a fetish. That is a danger that must be guarded against. To reject foreign manufactures, merely because they are foreign and to go on wasting national time and money in the promotion in one's country of manufactures for which it is not suited would be criminal folly and a negation of the Swadeshi spirit.

A true votary of Swadeshi will never harbour ill-will towards the foreigner; he will not be actuated by antagonism towards anybody on earth. Swadeshism is not a cult of hatred. It is a doctrine of selfless service that has its roots in the purest ahimsa, i.e., love.

(From Yervada Mandir)

Message of the Charkha

I claim for the Charkha the honour of being able to solve the problem of economic distress in a most natural, simple, inexpensive and businesslike manner. It is the symbol of the nation's prosperity and, therefore, freedom. It is a symbol not of commercial war but of commercial peace.

(Young India, 8.12.1921)

The message of the spinning-wheel is much wider than its circumference. Its message is one of simplicity, service of mankind, living so as not to hurt others, creating an indissoluble bond between the rich and the poor, capital and labour, the prince and the peasant. That larger message is naturally for all.

(Young India, 17.9.1925)

The message of the spinning-wheel is, really to replace the spirit of exploitation by the spirit of service. The dominant note in the West is the note of exploitation. I have no desire that our country should copy that spirit or that note.

(Young India, 2.2.1928)

Do I seek to destroy the mill-industry, I have often been asked. If I did, I should not have pressed for the abolition of the excise duty. I want the mill-industry to prosper - only I do not want it to prosper at the expense of the country. On the contrary, if the interests of the country demand that the industry should go, I should let it go without the slightest compunction.

(Young India, 24.2.1927)

The law, that to live man must work, first came home to me upon reading Tolstoy's writing on bread labour. In my view, the same principle has been set forth in the third chapter of the Gita where we are told that he who eats without offering sacrifice eats stolen food. Sacrifice here can only mean bread labour.

(From Yervada Mandir)

Every man has an equal right to the necessaries of life even as birds and beasts have. And since every right carries with it a corresponding duty and the corresponding remedy for resisting any attack upon it, it is merely a matter of finding out the corresponding duties and remedies to vindicate the elementary fundamental equality. The corresponding duty is to labour with my limbs and the corresponding remedy is to non-co-operate with him who deprives me of the fruit of my labour.

(Young India, 26.3.1932)

Division of Labour

I believe in the division of labour or work. But I do insist on equality of wages. The lawyer, the doctor or the teacher is entitled to no more than the bhangi. Then only will division of work uplift the nation or the earth. There is no other royal road to true civilisation or happiness.

(Harijan, 23.3.1947)

If everybody lives by the sweat of his brow, the earth will become a paradise. The question of the use of special talents hardly needs separate consideration, If everyone labours physically for his bread, it follows that poets, doctors, lawyers, etc., will regard it their duty to use those talents gratis for the service of humanity. Their output will be all the better and richer for their selfless devotion to duty.

(Harijan, 2.3.1947)

We should be ashamed of resting, or having a square meal, so long as there is one able-bodied man or woman without work or food.

(Young India, 6.10.1921)

It is surely the duty of a Government to ensure bread labour for all unemployed men and women, no matter how many there are.

(Harijan, 11.1.1948)

Intellectual Labour

I do not discount the value of intellectual labour, but no amount of it is any compensation for bodily labour which everyone of us is born to give for the common good of all. It may be, often is, infinitely superior to bodily labour, but it never is or can be a substitute for it, even as intellectual food, though far superior to the grains we eat, never can be a substitute for them. Indeed, without the products of the earth, those of the intellect would be an impossibility.

(Young India, 15.10.1925)

Exploitation of the poor can be extinguished not by effecting the destruction of a few millionaires, but by removing the ignorance of the poor and teaching them to non-co-operate with their exploiters. That will convert the exploiters also. I have even suggested that ultimately it will lead to both being equal partners. Capital as such is not evil; it is the wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or the other will always be needed.