And So, Become Yourself

While hearing Graham Nash's classic "Teach Your Children" last night, one line stuck - a line that I had not paid attention to ever before:

And so, become yourself...

This morning, conversation turned to someone who graduated from IIT and joined the Indian Revenue Service, from where he recently retired. To me, it seemed the perfect example of "not becoming yourself." Because the economy was State-dominated during the 1950s, 60s and 70s, hordes of graduates in a wide variety of disciplines ended up as State employees. They embraced "collectivism" - and not Individualism, which is how you "become yourself."

Only in an open, free-market economy, where a vast array of opportunities exist, and a wide range of vocational choices offered, can you "become yourself"- you can become an actor, musician, dancer, painter, writer, etc. People like these are strictly individuals, who first find their own "calling" - and then proceed to learn and grow. Such people become themselves.

Thus, choosing your calling and then trying, for years and years on end, to learn and to excel - this is the pathway to "becoming." Interestingly, Ludwig von Mises uses this very word in his discourse on the "division of labour," a concept Adam Smith introduced in the first chapter of the Wealth of Nations. This is how wealth is produced in urban markets - when each specialises. When so many specialists produce such a diverse array of goods and services, society becomes wealthy - as consumers of all these. Mises added that this is not just about producing wealth; it is really about "becoming." In Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Mises writes:

The principle of the division of labour is one of the great basic principles of cosmic becoming and evolutionary change.... 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 labour.

So, there we have it. While Dr. Karl Marx waxed eloquent on how his communist society would lead to the "greatest creative flowering of the human race," nothing really creative emerged from the Soviet Union. Ditto for socialist India. However, in India particularly, things went much worse because of the Gandhian vision of "self-sufficient village economies."

Now, the idea of "self-sufficiency" is the precise opposite of the division of labour and market exchange. It goes against "a universal law determining cosmic becoming." The idea is insane. Villagers cannot survive without links to urban market centres - and it is here that the Gandhian idea was translated into policy, and for 60 years such roads have not been built. Not only that, modern personal transportation has also been denied for much of the time. Even today, when you travel in rural India, you see junk swadeshi vehicles - little phut-phuts and jugaaars on which masses of people are cramped up and bumped around from village to town and back.

Was Gandhi insane? Perhaps. But he was certainly blind to civilisation. Mises makes another point on the division of labour that all Gandhians need to note:

The fundamental facts that brought about cooperation, society and civilisation and transformed the animal man into a human being are the facts that work performed under the division of labour is more productive than isolated work and that man's reason is capable of recognising this truth.

The story of civilisation is of humans clustering together in cities - like Mohenjo-Daro - and not one of opting for self-sufficiency. When Mises says that "man's reason is capable of recognising the truth" that specialisation works to the individual's advantage, he points to our "sense of gain." This, the real "sixth sense," is what everyone employs while seeking out in what capacity he can most gainfully specialise in the urban market economy. One guy open a paan shop, another a chai shop, and so on. No one sits around and spins yarn for himself. Everyone produces for the satisfaction of others - their customers. The motto of the urban market is as in the Dylan song: "May you always do for others, and let others do for you."

It is an added fact that very little division of labour is possible in a small village - because there is no market. In villages, you have very few shops because there are very few people. On the contrary, markets are urban - because of the huge population. So you cannot "become yourself" in a village.

If you want to "become" an actor in Hindi films, for example, you must first move bag and baggage to Bombay - and life will not be easy because the city has been virtually destroyed by those blind to civilisation. Because of Gandhian "rural development" and panchayati raj, Indian cities have been utterly neglected. Villagers in droves have migrated to cities, overcrowding them all - but the authorities continue to dream of a rural utopia, where each will spin his own yarn (and dig ditches for The State). Meanwhile, in the cities, there is zero Liberty. The State does not allow you to become what you want to become - like, say, the owner of a hash cafe.

Anyone for more State education? In any case, the IITs taught "science," not "technology." Nothing remotely technological ever emerged from an IIT. All the technology we now possess to augment our lives is coming from MNCs. Similarly, IIM Bangalore was set up in the bad old days to produce managers for State-owned enterprises.

Liberty and the Free Market - only these can allow each of us to "become" what we want to become. And if you want to become an economist, I suggest Human Action to start off with. Of course, this treatise has never been part of the curriculum anywhere in the world. I discovered it and studied it deeply because I wanted to "become" a thorough Austrian economist. I recommend it to all my readers. You must study Economics yourself because otherwise you will have to depend on "experts" - like Manmohan and montek. That this has been great folly is now a proven fact.