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Gandhi's economic thought?
Gandhi praised ancient Indian civilization and strongly criticized and opposed modern western civilization. Gandhi basically held a completely negative attitude towards western modern civilization in his early days. He believes that the development of modern civilization is the general source of all the disadvantages of modern western society, a hotbed of world turmoil, aggression, oppression and war, an evil civilization against religion based on materialism, a devil's civilization and a dark age. He wrote that capitalist cities are traps and concentrated places for thieves, bandits, hooligans and prostitution; The production of large machines makes workers slaves of machines. [1] He angrily condemned western civilization for making India poor, thinking that it smashed India's spinning wheel with dumped textiles and "snatched the last bowl of rice from the hungry Indian population" [2], but he did not completely reject western civilization. He believes that western civilization is undoubtedly suitable for Europeans, but India will definitely decline if it is copied. Therefore, Gandhi strongly advocated and advocated the ancient Indian civilization, which he believed included three elements: plows cultivated by farmers, spinning wheels woven by craftsmen and Hindu philosophy. In fact, he advocated restoring the guild-style industrial organization with spinning wheel as the "center" and the patriarchal agricultural combination, [3] self-sufficient rural commune, because from the economic point of view, the most important thing should be spinning wheel. Generally speaking, Gandhi's thoughts are retro. (1) In terms of industry, Gandhi strongly opposed capitalist industrialization and advocated the revival of rural industries in India (small industries represented by handicrafts and textiles). In fact, Gandhi's criticism of modern western civilization mainly focuses on the criticism of capitalist industrialization. He believes that industrialization, an exotic product, came to India with colonial aggression and economic exploitation [7]; Industrialization transplanted the inherent disasters in the West (slums, scandals and exploitation) to India. He announced bitterly that British industrialization was based on the bankruptcy of Indian handicraft workers. He believes that big industry makes India as poor as western material civilization as a whole; The destruction of rural industries, the rise of big cities, the development of railways and large industries, and the emergence of a large number of unemployment have turned India into a sad imitation of western modern civilization. Therefore, India must not take the old road of western industrialization. He wrote: "If you develop a factory in India, you might as well send the money to Manchester." With Manchester cloth, we just lost money, but if a Manchester is also produced in India, we will keep the money out, but we will exchange our flesh and blood because the moral foundation of our existence will be destroyed. "[8]" Poor India can still be free, but it will be very difficult to make an immoral India free again. " [9] So Gandhi declared that he was "concerned about destroying industrialism at all costs" [10], and he believed that "India's salvation lies in abandoning what it has learned in the past 50 years. Railways, telegrams, lawyers, doctors, etc. We must abandon "[1 1], and advocate the restoration of rural industries marked by hand-spinning wheels to counter western industrial civilization. In fact, from the perspective of economics, spinning is the most important of the three elements of Indian civilization that Gandhi said. He regarded the spinning wheel not only as a material weapon, but also as a "spiritual weapon" against western civilization. He pointed out that the spinning wheel can best reflect the moral "cooperative spirit" of ancient Indian rural communes [12], "Every time the spinning wheel rotates, it is spinning peace, kindness and kindness. "[13] Only the rural industry marked by spinning wheel can replace the centralized urban big industry, so as to avoid competition and exploitation, eliminate unemployment and the gap between the rich and the poor, live a simple and quiet life, and thus realize the social ideal of non-violence. [14] Therefore, he strongly advocated "returning to the spinning wheel" and developing the home textile movement. Therefore, "going back to the spinning wheel" became the central slogan of his economic thought; Vigorously developing the home textile movement has become the main content of his economic autonomy movement. " Autonomy is a great system. ..... But the center is always a spinning wheel, and all activities should revolve around it. "[15] In short, in Gandhi's view, the key to revitalizing the rural economy and building Xinxiang village is to use homespun against foreign cloth, and hand-weaving is also a way to realize real spiritual self-help; The recovery of spinning wheel marks the recovery of rural industry. Revitalize rural economy in an all-round way. Although the recovery of handicraft industry is the center, he saw that if other industries are not revived, the goal of basically self-sufficiency in rural areas will still be impossible to achieve, because in addition to cotton cloth, more and more other industrial products are needed in rural areas, all of which depend on market supply. [16] However, the rural industries he advocated for revival, such as rice milling, milling, oil extraction, sugar making, paper making, leather making, printing and dyeing, are obviously small industries, all of which use small machinery and implement non-capitalist industrial production. Because Gandhi fundamentally opposed the use of big machines, he believed that the western capitalist industrial civilization symbolized by big machines was the root cause of India's decline and poverty. Later, Gandhi's attitude towards industrialization gradually changed. He wrote to Nehru and told him not to rule out the use of large machines or modern communication tools. "Railways, posts and telecommunications can be envisaged. "But Gandhi never gave up his criticism of capitalist industrialization, and still devoted himself to reviving India's rural industry centered on handmade textiles. At the low tide of the national liberation movement, although he stopped the civil disobedience movement, he still asked people to engage in promoting the manual textile movement. [17] (2) Agriculture Gandhi advocated restoring the agricultural combination of feudal patriarchal clan system, combining it with the guild industrial organization he advocated, reviving the self-sufficient natural economy combining agriculture and handicrafts, and attempting to pull India back to the era of self-sufficient rural communes. Therefore, Gandhi advocated agricultural production and management in a self-sufficient way, and cooperated with the closed non-industrialized industrial production mode to revive India's rural economy. In this mode of production advocated by him, the decisive factor of production-production tools is one of the three elements of ancient Indian civilization advocated by him-"farmer plow (ancient Indian wooden plow)" is the main symbol. Just as he opposes the use of large machinery in industry, he also opposes the use of large machinery for mechanized agricultural production in agriculture. The production process he advocated mainly stayed in the feudal natural economic operation process of "men plowing and women weaving" In other words, in this production process, the traditional wooden plow is mainly used for simple agricultural farming. The Phoenix Village and Tolstoy Farm he established during his stay in South Africa were actually the practice of his agricultural thought. No matter in Phoenix Village or Tolstoy's farm, everyone must work and "earn their own living" [22]. Farms and villages have orchards, vegetable gardens, valleys, wells and springs, as well as cottage industries or factories. Generally speaking, they can produce their own means of subsistence and production, such as grains, vegetables, fruits and homespun needed by farmers and farm craftsmen. It is indeed an idyllic scenery of "men plowing and women weaving". Contrary to Gandhi, Kemal advocated equipping agriculture with new technologies and new machines, adopting capitalist mode of production and developing capitalist agriculture. As early as March 1922, Kemal said in parliament:' We should provide them (farmers in Turkey here) with modern production technologies and tools. In order to help them achieve the highest production efficiency, we should eliminate traffic jams and insufficient transportation, and abolish the commodity circulation system that is harmful to the agricultural population, … "[23]. In order to popularize the capitalist agricultural production mode, Kemal once set up a model farm near Ankara and demonstrated it to everyone with the latest technology and new machine tools. The government has also established financial institutions such as agricultural banks and credit cooperatives to provide loans to farmers to buy new farm tools and livestock, and vigorously develop the individual economy in rural areas. At the same time, Kemal encouraged and supported landlords to adopt capitalist mode of production. From 65438 to 0939, Kemal gave preferential treatment to the big landlords at the agricultural conference held in Ankara, and decided to give them loans to buy tractors, harvesters and other modern agricultural machinery. In addition, in order to provide favorable conditions for farmers to develop capitalist agricultural production, the state invested in the construction of a number of agricultural farmland water conservancy projects. In this way, it promoted the development of capitalist agriculture in Turkey to some extent. As can be seen from the above, the modes of production advocated by Gandhi and Kemal in agriculture are essentially different: the former is basically a feudal mode of production under the premise of natural economy, while the latter is capitalist. & lt/p & gt;