Chacha Is Devoid Of Reason

There is this nonsensical news report in Mint today on how Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is “preventing villagers’ exodus to cities.” Now, tell me, which reasonable man would try to prevent such a natural occurrence. And by “reasonable man” I mean a man equipped with human reason.

Why do villagers living in isolation prefer to migrate to teeming cities? The answer: Because they possess reason. Their reason prompts them to realize that their needs are better satisfied under the division of labour than by isolated production. What is the “division of labour”?

The division of labour is nothing but specialization. An isolated villager is not specialized. He must build his own house, look after and milk his own cows, work his fields, spin his yarn, weave his cloth and so on. Thus, he can satisfy his needs only to a limited extent. As Time is limited, as is Energy, there isn’t much isolated labour can accomplish. So the villager gives up his Robinson Crusoe existence and migrates to the Big City. What happens?

Take the case of Guru who runs a small tea-shop where he also sells some snacks. This is all he does all day. He makes profits. He uses these profits to buy clothes, shoes, food and drink, charas and ganja, and what not. When I mention his village, he shudders. No more farming and buffalo-herding for him, he says. Life in the tea-shop, in the Big City, is just fine.

Note that this is "society': Guru serves others, and yet others serve him. Further, all he serves others is cups of tea, while society serves him with everything else. He is now planning to buy a Honda scooter. Lakhs of Honda employees will collaborate to sell him one, all for some pretty ordinary tea. Thus, Reason shows us all how we benefit from the division of labour and specialization.

But then, why can’t Guru set up his tea-shop in the village? Obviously because there are much fewer customers in the village. In the Big City, Guru sells thousands of cups of tea every day. In the village, he might never sell more than a dozen at most.

As Adam Smith pointed out in the VERY FIRST CHAPTER of the Wealth of Nations:

“The division of labour is limited by the size of the market.”

To be an electrician, plumber, security guard, receptionist, taxi driver, chef, bartender, waiter… indeed, to be anything, the isolated villager must physically migrate to where The Market exists – which is the Big City. Indeed, millions of isolated villagers are already doing so, prompted by Reason, something they possess.

It is fitting that the NREGA is now named after Mahatmaji Gandhiji. This man was not “reasonable” as defined above. His vision was of an India of “self-sufficient village economies”: no division of labour; each man spinning his own yarn. Such a vision is actually “anti-social” – for the division of labour is where human society and social co-operation spring from. As Mises says, “society is division of labour and combination of labour.” Nothing else.

But Mises says more, much more, about this great principle by which isolated men form society and co-operate. This extract is from Chapter VIII of Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, from the section “Human Co-operation,” PDF here (see page 144):

[The] Principle of the division of labor is one of the great basic principles of cosmic becoming and evolutionary change. The biologists were right in borrowing the concept of the division of labor from social philosophy and in adapting it to their field of investigation. There is division of labor between the various parts of any living organism. There are, furthermore, organic entities composed of collaborating animal individuals; it is customary to call metaphorically such aggregations of the ants and bees “animal societies.” But one must never forget that the characteristic feature of human society is purposeful cooperation; society is an outcome of human action, i.e., of a conscious aiming at the attainment of ends. No such element is present, as far as we can ascertain, in the processes which have resulted in the emergence of the structure-function systems of plant and animal bodies and in the operation of the societies of ants, bees, and hornets. Human society is an intellectual and spiritual phenomenon. It is the outcome of a purposeful utilization of a universal law determining cosmic becoming, viz., the higher productivity of the division of labor. As with every instance of action, the recognition of the laws of nature is put into the service of man’s efforts to improve his conditions.

Earlier, Mises says why society and civilization came about:

The fundamental facts that brought about cooperation, society, and civilization and transformed the animal man into a human being are the facts that work performed under the division of labor is more productive than isolated work and that man’s reason is capable of recognizing this truth. But for these facts men would have forever remained deadly foes of one another, irreconcilable rivals in their endeavors to secure a portion of the scarce supply of means of sustenance provided by nature. Each man would have been forced to view all other men as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have brought him into an implacable conflict with all his neighbors. No sympathy could possibly develop under such a state of affairs.

Thus, the conclusions are clear. Mahatmaji Gandhiji was devoid of reason. Ditto for Chacha Manmohan – who is only furthering the processes of “de-civilization” by destroying cities and “preventing villagers’ exodus to cities” with his Mahatma Gandhi NREGA. For our villagers, for society, human co-operation and civilization, we need more and more cities. We need aggressive urbanization.