Why is Karl Marx against capitalism ?

Why is Karl Marx against capitalism? 

Osho said 
  he is a poor Jew and is full of jealousy against those who are rich.
   That is a Jewish trend, very characteristic.

In India I was surprised -- because I was looking for a parallel. Jainas are the Jews in India as far as riches are concerned. You cannot find a single Jaina beggar. The Jainas are super-rich, or upper middle class; at the worst, middle class. Once in a while you will find a poor Jaina -- not a beggar, but poor. These poor Jainas were the first to be attracted to communism.
  I was surprised to find this fact.

One of my far away relatives is a very famous communist leader, Comrade Bhagchand. I asked him, "Have you considered the fact that it is not that you want to destroy capitalism, it is simply that you are a poor Jaina and you have so much jealousy in you against the rich Jainas?" But man is so clever in making philosophies of things.

Three generations in Marx's family had been poor. He himself remained unemployed and poor his whole life. It is very strange: he was dependent on a rich friend, but writing against capitalism. The rich friend, Friedrich Engels, was a capitalist who owned factories. He had been feeding Karl Marx and his family his whole life, and Marx never worked for a single day; he earned not a single cent.

Engels must have been a man of great compassion. He could see the man had genius and needed support.

Although he was writing against capitalism, Marx was a great logician: he convinced Engels also that capitalism is the whole cause of all the problems in the world: "If we can destroy capitalism and distribute the wealth equally to people, all problems will disappear."

Karl Marx is basically a jealous Jew rationalizing his jealousy into beautiful jargon. The remedy that he proposes is fallacious. Firstly, if you distribute the wealth of those who are rich to the poor, what will be the result? The poor will not become rich, the rich will only become poor: you will be distributing poverty. Yes, people will not feel jealous any more because they will all be equally poor. I am against poverty, hence I am against communism.

I want people to be equally rich, not equally poor.

But for that a totally different approach is needed. It is not a question of distribution of wealth -- because there is not much wealth to distribute. How many people are there who are rich? -- two percent in India.

Now, the wealth of two percent distributed to ninety-eight percent poor people is just like a spoonful of sugar thrown into the ocean to make it sweet. You are simply losing one spoonful of sugar unnecessarily. At least it could have given one man one cup of tea -- even that is gone. Not that others are gaining anything, but they will all enjoy the idea: "Now nobody is drinking tea, we are all equal." Otherwise this man was drinking tea and everybody was jealous.

The people who have created wealth have a certain talent for creating it. You should use their talent; you should make it an art to be taught to everybody. They are not to be punished because they have created wealth.

In an aboriginal society, a primitive society, of which a few fragments are still alive here and there on the earth, nobody is poor and nobody is rich; of course there is no jealousy. Everybody owns nothing, everybody equally owns nothing; but nobody is producing wealth.

In fact the people who are producing wealth are creating an urge in others also to create wealth. Don't destroy these people -- use these people as symbols. They have a certain art of creating wealth -- make that art available to everybody, educate everybody. You teach economics in the universities; it would be far better if you taught the art of becoming rich -- because by teaching economics you don't help them to know the art of becoming rich. They win gold medals in the universities and then they disappear.

When I was a professor I asked one of my vice-chancellors, "Have you ever thought about what happens to your gold medallists? They should shine in the society everywhere. What is the purpose of your gold medal? A man who stood first in the whole university disappears and is never heard about again. What happens to him? That shows simply the poverty of your gold medal and the poverty of all your education. Even if he topped your whole educational system, what has he gained?"

I have asked professors of economics, "You have been teaching economics for twenty or thirty years -- how rich have you become?"

They said, "But what has that to do with teaching economics?"

I said, "Economics should be the science of becoming rich. You are just a poor professor, and if in thirty years of teaching you have not been able to find some secret of creating riches, what about your students? Have any of them become rich?" No, economics is not concerned about that; it is concerned about absolutely theoretical questions which have nothing to do with practical life.

Marx's idea is the distribution of wealth. Why? The reason he proposes is psychologically wrong, absolutely wrong.

His reason is that every man is equal. That is psychologically absurd.

What to say about all men, the whole humanity -- not even two individuals are equal. Each individual is so unique, he cannot be equal to any other individual. By saying that all human beings are equal Karl Marx is destroying the uniqueness of the individual.

That's why I am against him and his whole philosophy -- because I stand for the uniqueness of the individual.

I am not saying that somebody is superior to you and somebody is inferior to you. Remember it! I am simply saying that you are not comparable to anybody:

You are you and the other is the other.

You don't compare a rose with a lotus, you simply say that they are two different things. Two different individuals, although they are both human beings, are unique individuals -- incomparable.

Marx gives this idiotic idea -- and it has been purchased by everybody all over the world: communists, anti-communists, everybody has purchased it; even the capitalists have purchased the idea that all men are equal. Why has nobody criticized it and fought it? -- for the simple reason that it looks very humanitarian. My God! Has something to be true or untrue -- does its validity have to be judged by logic or by humanitarianism? Then any lie which appears to be humanistic has to be accepted. And upon that lie -- that all men are equal -- the whole structure of communism has been raised.

Now, you know, it is such a simple thing to understand -- that every individual has different degrees of intelligence and different dimensions of creativity. Everybody cannot be a poet, everybody cannot be a scientist, everybody cannot be a painter; and it is good that everybody cannot be, otherwise life would lose all joy. The joy is in the uniqueness of the individual -- that he is so unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable, that once he is gone his place is going to remain empty forever. Nobody can fulfill his place; the way he was fulfilling it, only he could do it.

Marx takes away, in a very cunning way, the whole dignity of the individual. And I call it really cunning because he gives the idea of equality of all human beings. In such a beautiful idea of equality you will not be able to detect what he has taken away from you. He has made you just a cog in the wheel, replaceable. He has put you on the assembly line in a factory that produces cars: just the same car goes on being assembled on an automatic assembly line.

Ford produces one car every minute. Every minute, for twenty-four hours, a similar car goes on coming out of the assembly line. But man is not an assembled mechanism; you cannot take him apart and assemble him again. It would have been very helpful in a way if we could take a man apart -- clean his insides and everything, replace a few bulbs here and there, a few fuses which have gone out, a few nuts and bolts which have got loose or too tight -- and then assemble him again with a new battery.

It would have been really good; but it would also be the greatest calamity that can happen. Then man disappears; then he is only a robot running on a battery. It is simple: if he breaks his hand there is no trouble, spare parts are always available. He just goes to any workshop, and his hand is changed; he gets a brand-new hand -- no problem. Only once in a while he may have a problem when he is telling some woman, "I love you," and then he goes "Grrrr, grrr, grrrr... my battery is running out... just call the mechanic...." Only once in a while will he go "Grrrr, grrrr" -- he won't be able to speak, the battery is running out.

Or you may be supplied with a small meter which goes on showing you on your wrist what is going down, what is going up, what is needed now: if you need a little more petrol, or water, or the oil has to be changed. It will be simpler -- but you will not be human, you will be robots.

Marx, by making you equal, is proposing a philosophy which ultimately is bound to make you robots -- that is the Marxist philosophy's logical conclusion.

Only robots can be equal. Man's dignity is in his uniqueness.

But let me repeat -- because there is every possibility that I will be misunderstood -- l am not saying that somebody is superior to you and somebody is inferior to you. I am simply saying that the very idea of comparison is invalid; you are just yourself. I cannot call you unequal, I cannot call you equal. Do you follow me? I cannot call you unequal.

That is the criticism communists have been throwing upon me -- that I am telling people that people are unequal. That is absolutely unjust to me. I am not saying people are unequal, I am saying they are not equal; that implies they are not unequal either. The very idea of comparison is invalid. Man is unique. Man is not just a member of the society, a part of the society. He is an individual, an independent whole in himself and it is not right....

Just think of it in this way and you will see it completely clearly: if somebody says that everybody has to be writing poetry, then even if some people are writing better poetry than you, their poetry has to be distributed on an equal basis with yours. Everybody has to be equally a poet, equally a musician.

You can see the absurdity, that if Yehudi Menuhin has to be made equal to you, you won't gain anything, and that poor fellow will lose everything. You cannot be Yehudi Menuhin. He has a certain genius that is born with him, that is in his very chemistry, in his very physiology, in his very being. You don't have that chemistry, that physiology, that being. His parents were different, his parents' parents were different.

You cannot have his quality distributed, that is impossible. And that will destroy all the beautiful flowers in human life. But you don't think that way. You think Yehudi Menuhin is just himself; there is no question of somebody else taking his qualities, dividing and distributing them. But you don't understand that in exactly the same way there are people who have a certain talent to be rich.

Everybody is not Henry Ford, cannot be; and there is no need. One Henry Ford has created enough traffic No need for more! If there are many Henry Fords then do you know what will be the result? The result will be that walking will be faster than driving. It is already becoming so. In cities like New York, Bombay, Tokyo and Calcutta, a distance you can cover by walking within ten minutes to fifteen minutes will take you one-and-a-half hours in a car.

I used to stay in Calcutta with one of the most significant, talented, rich men -- Sahu Shantiprasad. Now he is dead. The auditorium where I used to give my talks and his house were only a ten-minute walk apart, but in his limousine it was unpredictable. If my lecture was going to be from seven-thirty, he would start panicking from five, telling me to get ready.

I said, "You are just mad! The lecture will start at seven-thirty and it is only a ten-minute walk. If we walk it will take ten minutes."

But he said, "We are not going to walk. And traffic in Calcutta is so chaotic that you never know.... We have to leave here at least one and a half hours before."

And sometimes it used to happen that we were still late, but sometimes we were too early and then we would just sit in the car. I said, "This is so stupid, Sahu Shantiprasad."

But he said, "I cannot allow you to walk -- you are my guest."

I said, "That's true, I am your guest, but I have to sit in your car for four hours coming and going. This is strange, because in four hours I can reach Bombay or Delhi, but I only reach this poor auditorium!"

If there are many Henry Fords it will become a more difficult world than it is right now. No, nature produces enough people for any particular purpose.

Santoshkumar B Pandey at 6.45 PM.