Socialism

 

 

Question 3

What do you think of Socialism in France and of The President Mitterand?

 

 

I don't think about politicians at all; they are all of the same breed. Just as you can taste the sea anywhere and it is salty, you can taste the politician -- everywhere he is cunning. It may be more or less, there may be differences of degree, but there are not differences of quality.

 

As for socialism, whether it is French or Indian or Greek or of other countries, socialism is a compromise. Deep down you have started feeling that communism is right, but your whole vested interests are in favor of capitalism. Some compromise is needed, some middle path between capitalism and communism. That's what socialism is; it is half-hearted from both the sides.

 

I would like something better than communism.

 

Socialism is not better than communism; no compromise can be better. It is really our failure that we cannot devise a system which is higher than communism. It is possible, there is no problem about it; we will just have to drop our few vested interests, and our society can be on a higher level than any communist society in the world.

 

For example, the Soviet Union has been trying for seventy years but has utterly failed; people are still poor. Although now poverty is equally distributed, that is not a consolation. Yes, it helps in a way, because now the poor people don't have any comparison. There is nobody rich so they feel equality has come -- but this is the very lowest kind of equality.

 

I would like a society of people who are equally rich, not equally poor. And modern science is capable, modern technology is capable of creating a society which is equally rich. But the problem is, the rich would not like it. If all are equally rich then their egos feel hurt, then they are no longer rich. If all are equally rich, then there are going to be many problems for people who have become accustomed to a poor society -- for example, the church, which depends on the poor people; only the poor go to the church.

 

The rich, the educated, the cultured already know that it is all nonsense. They will not say so -- they are cultured enough, they are sophisticated; they will not say so. And if it is needed just as a formality, they may once in a while visit the church too, but they know it is all nonsense. Their lives prove that it is all nonsense; they are not living according to the principles of any religion.

 

Only the poor are the customers of your churches, synagogues. If the poor disappear, synagogues and churches and temples cannot exist. Only the poor go there in the hope perhaps if in this life they are not comfortable, after death they can enter into paradise, inherit the kingdom of God. Nobody asks them: What is the relationship between poverty and the inheritance of the kingdom of God? What rational relationship is there? It seems more logical that the rich people should inherit the kingdom of God because they have some experience of richness, they are experienced in luxury. The poor people have no experience of comfort, no experience of luxury. They will be in trouble in paradise.

 

I remember, I used to stay in a maharaja's palace in Indore. The maharaja was a very colorful person. He was dethroned while India was under British rule, and the reason was that he was making a palace greater than Buckingham Palace, better than Buckingham Palace. He had beautiful palaces in Indore, and although he was dethroned, his son was enthroned. The maharaja was an old man and he loved me very much.

 

The first time I stayed in his palace, up to the middle of the night I could not sleep for the simple reason that the mattresses were so comfortable that they woke me again and again. Whenever I moved, the whole mattress moved; it was like a water bed. Finally, in the middle of the night I decided that this is not going to help, I am not accustomed to this luxury. It is better to sleep on the floor, and nobody is here to look at me.... So I slept on the floor, because up to the middle of the night I had not slept. I slept late.

 

The maharaja came; he saw me sleeping on the floor, and he said, "What are you doing?"

 

I said, "On that mattress sleep was impossible for me, for the simple reason that I was not accustomed to it."

 

In Mohammedan heaven there are beautiful girls who always remain fixed for eternity at the age of sixteen, and they are especially to serve the people who come into paradise. Now, what are the poor people going to do? In the Mohammedan paradise, rivers are not of water but of wine. The poor people have never tasted wine, and the religion here goes on saying that wine or any alcoholic beverage is not good, is not virtuous. What are these people going to do? They will die of thirst because water is not available at all; either you drink wine or you stay thirsty.

 

I have heard about a saint who lived in austerity, immense self-torture; he was a perfect masochist. He died. He had a great following.

 

One of his close disciples could not tolerate the separation; he also died the next day. When he reached paradise, of course the first thing was to find the master. And he could not believe... under a beautiful tree the master was sitting and he could not believe his eyes: Marilyn Monroe was naked, hugging the master. He thought, Certainly my master was one of the greatest masters. This is a proof, he is being rewarded.

 

He went, fell on the earth, touched the feet of the master and said, "We were right that you are the greatest master. Now I can see how much you are being rewarded."

 

At that moment Marilyn Monroe said, "You idiot, shut up! I am not his reward; he is my punishment."

 

If everybody is rich, comfortable, happy, educated, cultured, is able to enjoy music, dance, drama, and all different dimensions of higher values, who will care to go to the churches? Who would bother about politicians, because now what more can they promise? All that they used to promise, you have got.

 

The politicians are afraid.

 

They want the world to remain divided into poor and rich.

 

The priests want the world to be divided into classes.

 

They are the powerful people.

 

They are preventing science and technology from changing the face of the earth. Socialism is not the need; the need is for a higher form of communism. And when I say a higher form of communism, I mean a classless society -- equally rich, with equal opportunities, with no dictatorship of the proletariat, with no democracy even but only a meritocracy. People of merit should have the destiny of the country in their hands. Just as you cannot decide truth by voting, you cannot decide merit by voting. If truth was dependent on a democratic way, then no truth would ever win. Lies would win because the majority will not understand the truth.

 

It was said when Albert Einstein was alive that only twelve persons in the whole world understood what exactly the theory of relativity meant. Now, if the theory of relativity had to be decided by majority voting, it was going to lose. People could not even understand it. Even Einstein was incapable of explaining it to people, to laymen.

 

If truth cannot be decided democratically, then merit also cannot be decided by election. Merit should be decided by the acts of the person, his education, his contribution. If a man contributes to education, writes about education, gives new dimensions and new programs for meditation, for education, helps to improve the intelligence of people, then he should be given a chance to manage the education of the country -- not a politician who can manage to get more votes. And we have experts in education, experts in finance, experts in every department -- geniuses, but those geniuses have no power.

 

Power goes to mediocre people. This is strange. Power should be in the hands of the best; only then we can hope something good can come out of it. My own idea is something better than democracy, better than communism: a state of meritocracy. We have so many universities; these universities can supply us with all our needs, all the people we need.

 

Albert Einstein died in great despair because he created the atom bomb, but he could not prevent its use -- and it was used absolutely unnecessarily. The war was going to finish anyway -- at the most in two more weeks -- but President Truman was in a hurry. He was afraid that if the war ended, then how was he going to experiment with the atom bombs? So before the war ended the atom bombs had to be dropped. They killed more than two hundred thousand people, destroyed two beautiful living cities... into graveyards. Immense suffering... Perhaps never before was such suffering seen, and the man who created it was helpless.

 

All the scientists of the world are simply serving the war machine. They should serve humanity; they should serve life -- not war, not death.

 

We have to go through an absolutely radical change.

 

There are many countries which are socialist because the name gives a certain respectability -- that they are not capitalist for one thing, that they are not communist for another -- they are socialist.

 

I also am in favor of the individual: I am not in favor of society, because we have depended on society for centuries, but all our revolutions have failed. This time revolution has to come through the individual, not through the society.

 

Society is nonexistential. Socialism means nothing; the reality is the individual. And the individual can be changed, can be transformed, and if more and more individuals are transformed they are freed from the past conditionings, they are freed from their retardedness which has been imposed on them. If they are freed from complete discontinuity with the past and become open for the future, we can create societies which will not be socialistic, which will be absolutely individualist.

 

Of course those individuals will be able to love, who will be able to be together, who will be able to enhance each other's lives. They will create a togetherness -- but not something of the old society again repeated -- a very loose togetherness which keeps everybody absolutely free; a loose network of individuals where nobody is forced to do something or to be something, but is capable of just being himself as he is -- and is accepted with dignity.

 

-Osho, "Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, #15, Q3"