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Are Capitalism and Buddhism incompatible?
If our economy is fueled by consumption, then a content Buddhist is contributing very little to stimulating the capital system. I would love to see a society of people who are slaves to relentless cravings and desires, but wouldn't this lead to a crash and chaos in our economic system?
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So I think a buddhist would still make purchases but in the interest of a skillfull (rather than addiction) way of happiness.
If we are only using as much as we need that means we do not need to produce as much or labor as much as well. So for example a buddhist might spend money on making the dharma available and retreats. Instead of collecting something. Or having an expensive car.
By the way I am just thinking outloud. This is not 'the buddhist opinion'. Just one opinion of many.
My teacher has said to think of all the causes and conditions that make your buddhist practice possible. From repair men to infrastructure. Many economic things. So I think that buddhists must be friends with the economy and exchange energy positively.
:tongue2:
But that said, Buddhism is the monastic and the secular.
For secular society, the actual Buddhist teachings are not socialist.
The actual Buddhist teachings promote individual enterprise for laypeople (but not greed).
Buddha was actually quite an economist as I recall. I am sure the more learned suttra scholars here will know?
I think you must mean "who are not slaves"?
Either way, free market capitalism isn't a bad thing in itself, its when governments and corporations use their power to profit from it that the tanha/consuption engulfs us.
May i suggest the Freedomain radio podcast on itunes for this kind of stuff:) Its good:)
mat
that goes to say, if the mind of the majority people are good and pure - any system will turn up effective and good, else if the majority of the people do not cultivate their mind and impure - no among of system could work for them
People can be content and contribute to the economy at the same time. Even if people save more than they spend, that's actually a good thing in the long run. So I'd have to say that there's no real conflict between Buddhism and capitalism.
1) Each according to his ability to the other according to his needs
2) Living in groups helping and supporting each other (I havn't seen him advising seclution for lay folks)
etc.
They are more related to socialism than capitalism where the capitalist system is more oriented on private ownership of lands/equipment where others work for a wage
No, I'm pretty sure this was Karl Marx and not the Buddha.
Well yeah....
But Buddha gave a similar idea to lay folks
wants are created needs but not essentials
Any change to our economic system will be gradual and there will be time for the economy to adjust. For example, look at the free software movement, which has changed the face of the computer industry. New companies have formed and old ones gone out of business, but the computer industry goes on. If new companies start operating according to Buddhist principles, there will be similar adjustments.
I believe Capitalism brings the highest standard of living to the most people possible. It is not perfect and there will always be "have nots" in any society - but the vast majority of people in capitalist societies go to bed with a full belly and clothes on their backs.
The same cannot be said for many communist or socialist societies.
If you are speaking from a personal perspective - what can be more noble and just than making sure people have the freedom to pursue whatever type of right livelihood they choose? And then ensuring those people have the freedom to distribute the fruits of their labor in a way they deem most compassionate? Socialism just creates compulsory compassion - which in my mind is false and not really compassion at all.
While it's true the Buddha encouraged generosity among his lay-followers, and that his monastic community has a relatively egalitarian communal structure, his teachings were also popular with the rising mercantile class in India at that time, and any of his wealthier lay-followers were merchants.
In DN 31, for example, the Buddha advised lay-followers to use a portion of their income for personal use, inluding donating to charity, but he also advised that some should be used for business investments and to be saved for hard times as well. This shows that the Buddha wasn't necessarily against consumption, private property and/or the accumulation of wealth, but there are suttas which seem to suggest that he was at least in favour of some type of welfare-state.
There is the case of DN 5, for example, where the brahmin Kutadanta asks the Buddha for advice on how to best conduct a great sacrifice. Kutadanta, who was evidently wealthy, had been given a village and some land by King Bimbisara, which he ruled as a king himself. On being asked by Kutadanta — who had a legion of animals waiting to be slaughtered — how to perform a great sacrifice, the Buddha answered with a fable about a great king who asked his chaplain a similar question.
Long story short, the king (i.e., the state), who had amassed great personal wealth but whose kingdom was "best by thieves" and "infested with brigands," is told by his chaplain that taxing the people, executing and imprisoning them, or simply banishing them from the land won't solve his kingdom's problems, and is given this advice:
Personally, I don't think the Buddha would object to a more egalitarian, socialist society, but I don't think it can be said that he actively promoted such a thing.
I hate to be pedantic, but there are no communist or socialist societies.
Who said he "actively promoted it"? He actively promoted the four nobel truths. However, in almost all the places where he has given advice for lay people on a better livelihood, he has given advice which is more related to a socialist system.
You already have one
We have sons raping their own mothers, fathers raping their own daughters/sons, there is a rape incident happening every second, people spend all their time working for a better house, better cars, better jobs, better looks ... Business people exploit the minds of others with advertisements of better commodities so you can work even harder to get that. We have drugs, porn and all kinds of things in the market for sensory pleasures... Capitalism is wonderful ... What more can you ask for
Um, you did when you said:
1) Each according to his ability to the other according to his needs
2) Living in groups helping and supporting each other.
However, I have seen no evidence in the suttas that the Buddha promoted anything like the first, which is a quote taken from Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme, nor anything like the second besides encouraging harmlessness and generosity. The Buddha's advice to the lay-community regarding livelihood sounds more like enlightened entrepreneurialism than socialism to me.
As for the four noble truths, and Buddhism in general, I agree with Richard Gombrich that, "The Buddha's Dhamma represents a strong form of what has been called 'religious individualism'" (Theravada Buddhism, 72), and is not explicitly socialistic in structure. I say this because the teachings on kamma focus on individual actions, and not so much collective or societal actions.
Also, there's nothing in the suttas to suggest that the Buddha was either for or against private ownership of the means of production, especially in the modern industrial sense.
T: If our economy is fueled by consumption, then a content Buddhist is contributing very little to stimulating the capital system.
S9: I believe that Capitalism is very much misunderstood by the average man on the street. It is not necessarily synonymous with mindless consumerism.
Fundamentally, it is based upon the concept that there is need for large amounts of capital (wealth) to accomplish any large enterprise. This would include hospitals, the manufacturing of many necessary goods, charities of every kind, and even universities, to mention abut a few things that we pretty much take for granted in our present abundance. People often tend to demonize (or worship) what they don’t really understand.
I don’t see Buddhism as being incompatible to Capitalism, or any economic system for that matter. Buddhism teaches us how to live with any system, which is present, in a wise way. Of course this may mean changing it, or even scrapping it for a better system. Yet, at the same time, Buddhism doesn’t require either change, or a great/perfect economic system to do its magic in our lives.
It is my assumption that craving and desire have existed in every possible economic system throughout history, and has very little to do with economics. It has more to do with a lack of satisfaction in one's personal life.
Respectfully,
S9
That's certainly open to debate (and I'm sympathetic to this view), but first one must define what is meant by "exploitation" and prove that it exists. This is actually a lot harder to do than it seems, especially when it comes the various labour theories of value vs. the marginal utility theory.
Also, there's nothing in the suttas to suggest that the Buddha was either for or against private ownership of the means of production, especially in the modern industrial sense.
Prove that exploitation exists? Are you talking text books here or the real world?:)
Isn't it ultimately about consent?
I'm talking about exploitation in the Marxist sense, which is derived from Marx's labour theory of value.
Good point. This is essentially my view as well.
I believe a lot of peoples' selfish desires are reinforced and encouraged by companies eager for profit. This system requires money to repeatedly be pumped back in, but i suppose the money could be spend on more significant things
I suggest you all look into the Venus Project, which proposes a resource based economy where resources and not worthless sheets of paper money are significant.
That doesn't answer my question, but no matter, I think I get what you are saying:)
R: It's the cult of consumerism that is. Cant square that.
S9: It is unfortunate that some people are under the illusion that buying lots of material possessions will fill up the emptiness that they feel in their lives, and somehow make them happy.
Most of the time this does not seem to pan out, even if people somehow are able to dwell in the shallowest part of their life almost continually. I don’t believe, ultimately, that it ever works out in the long run. Buddha’s ‘3 Warning Signs’ (Sickness/Old Age/Death) are bound to show up somewhere along the line and bring a little suffering into their Disney Land existence.
That is why I so often say that many people are sleepwalking through the majority of their lives.
However, if it weren’t for consumerism, it would probably be some other misguided attempts at happiness. We all start out confused, and only slowly come to see what doesn’t works at all.
Kind Regards,
S9
I worked with the exceedingly wealthy at one time during my life. Let me tell you a little known secret. They live pretty much like everyone else. They put their pants on one leg at a time.
The things that really matter in this life, love, happiness, health, friendship, beauty, peace of mind, etc. have very little to do with extreme wealth.
Oh sure, you need a roof over your head, and food in your belly. But those, for the most part, are things that we all have already in the first world countries.
Often money can bring as much trouble into your life, as it ever did comfort. No one would ever think to rob me, or kidnap my kids to get at my bankroll. He/He/He
The thing about money is that it is often more of a burden, or a responsibility, at some point, than it is a luxury. Money needs to keep moving constantly or it falls away. It will melt like snow in the tropics.
Inflation will eat it up, not to mention taxes. If money is not gaining continuously, you are losing your money, because money doesn’t just stand still in this economy. Even commodities like gold cannot be relied upon to hold their value.
This in itself keeps many men up at night worrying, and fearful of what will happen next in that old devil market on Wall Street, and running to the doctor because of all of the added stress.
: ^ (
Warm Regards,
S9
I read just recently, about how Google runs its business. It is interesting that their business philosophy includes both creativity, and productivity, along with idealism of the highest kind.
It is a work environment that can be run for the good of the workingman, as well as the public in general. It may IMO serve as a template for the future of both the good works and capitalism in general.
They have even recently, introduced meditation and mindfulness for their workers.
Cross your fingers,
S9
T: I suggest you all look into the Venus Project, which proposes a resource based economy where resources and not worthless sheets of paper money are significant.
S9: This may have been true some years ago when paper money made finance fluid. Now however most wealth is more of an electric blip, more of an idea than anything real, or a shadow of promises made and kept, moving effortlessly. It is supported by absolutely nothing. Yet somehow magically it keeps food on the table and clothes on our back.
We better be very careful about changing drastically or quickly, something that we aren’t even close to understanding. It would be a little like grabbing a butcher’s kitchen knife and operating on your wife on the kitchen table in order to save money.
Warm Regards,
S9
I'm sorry, I thought I did. But then again, my answer assumes you're familiar with Marx's theory of exploitation, so allow me to elaborate. The initial point I was trying to make was that the burden of proof generally falls upon the person making a claim, so if you claim that "private ownership ultimately ends in exploitation of the majority by a privileged minority," as Deshy did, you need to show how.
Now there are many different kinds of exploitation, and some (read "the most blatant") are easy to prove (e.g., a company exploiting the human and natural resources of a foreign country, such as in the case of United Fruit in Guatemala). When it comes to showing how the average wage worker is exploited, however, that's a little more difficult. This is where Marx comes in.
Although I'm not a Marxist, I think Marxism offers one of the most salient critiques of capitalism, mainly because Marx was one of the first and most perceptive critics of the system itself, much of which was aimed at the works of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. (While many of their ideas are outdated, including Marx's, I think they prove an excellent starting point to capitalist economics.)
In the Marxist sense, exploitation is an inherent part of the capitalist mode of production, which in turn, ties into Marx's theory of alienation. It's rather complicated, but in short, exploitation is the idea that the capitalist profits far more from your labour than you do, and it doesn't really matter whether it's voluntary or not.
Smith et al. assumed that labour creates wealth (surplus value). But according to Marx, in a capitalist system, labour itself becomes a commodity, an object that's bought and sold on the market. Moreover, due to private ownership of the means of production, the product of your labour doesn’t legally belong to you (alienation), nor does the surplus value your labour creates (unpaid labour), which is kept by the capitalist.
Proving this kind of exploitation is rather difficult, however, especially when it comes to the various labour theories of value (the idea that commodities have an objective value that's relative to the amount of socially necessary labour-time involved in their production) vs. the marginal utility theory (the idea that the value of commodities are determined by their marginal utility).
Marx's theory of exploitation was derived from his labour theory of value (which was itself a critique of both Smith's and Ricardo's labour theories of value), but the labour theory of value itself has since been challenged by the marginal utility theory. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about either to declare a winner in this particular debate, although I will say that I think even if Marx's theory proves to be incorrect, his dialectic method of analysis has a great deal to offer our modern understanding of economics.