Buddha and
Marx
Yuvraj
Saharan| 03
January, 2016 The Statesman
A few days ago I read BR Ambedkar’s essay, ‘Buddha
or Karl Marx. Ambedkar writes that the basic tenets of Marxism
involve violence, as the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be
established without. The second objection was on the duration of
dictatorship. He writes that it is unclear even amongst Marxists
how long shall the dictatorship last. Later in his life Ambedkar
advocated the path of Buddha to bring about transformation in
society. He writes that most Marxists may have a natural aversion
to anything closely resembling religion, but it is important to
keep one’s prejudices aside (for a while) and critically examine
the social tenets of Buddha’s teachings. Buddhist social tenets are
not meant to create a utopian socialism but are directed towards
increasing happiness and welfare of citizens.
Buddha and Marx are two personalities with a time
interval of more than two thousand years. Both in their own ways,
wanted to bring about change in society. One had a firm faith in
non-violence; the other could not foresee the path to future
without violence. Joseph Conrad in the Heart of Darkness writes
that man lives like he dreams, he dreams alone and hence lives
alone. I wonder to what degree this precondition of human living
goes into Buddha and Marx’s ways of understanding the world. Buddha
said that suffering is a part of existence; whether that suffering
is individual or social is not fully clear. Does the social
suffering comprise the sum-total of individual sufferings or is it
something extraneous to the sum-total of individuals and therefore
more, perhaps different? Buddha said every man suffers; there is no
escape from suffering. On inquiry by one of his disciples on what
is suffering, Buddha replied suffering encompasses all the
disappointments, confusion, anxieties that afflict a human
being.
In comparison Marx divides the world into two
classes, one is the ruler and therefore must exploit to maintain
its hegemony, the other ruled and thus by its nature subservient
and exploited. Marx has not written much on the individual.
Individuality, according to Marx, is shaped and made up by
historical forces beyond an individual’s comprehension and
therefore unseen and absent. And thus Marx writes, that on founding
of Communism exploitation would cease, ushering in some form of
unexploitative society. Marx was writing in mid-nineteenth century,
living in exile, in London, using the resources available at what
is now called the British Museum library.
Buddha lived four hundred years before the beginning
of the Common Era. Living at that time he was disenchanted by
distortion of thought and spread of ritualistic practices. A time
that is so distant that it seems unimaginable to comprehend its
social conditions and ordinary men and women. Buddha codified his
thoughts into an eight-fold path. He did not write a book as
detailed as Das Kapital, based on analysis of social and economic
conditions and the two classes, indeed the idea that has come to be
called Marxism. There is a sharp difference between Marxian and
Marxist. Marxian can be called an analytic concept that uses Marx’s
writings, whereas Marxist refers to an adherent of a political
ideology. Thus one can be a Marxian and simultaneously not
necessarily be a Marxist.
Buddha’s concept of impermanence is enlightening.
Buddha said, all that we have in the world is marked by change and
therefore impermanent. Human nature seeks a certainty amidst that
change, but these attempts are futile and permanency elusive.
Acceptance of the natural order brings about a conscious
transformation in our minds and thereby we begin to understand
ourselves and others. According to Buddha, seeking permanence in
human life is not accepting life. Buddha’s impermanence does not
mean an unsteady mind; steadiness of mind is a pre-requisite to
understand the suffering that afflicts life. Many even in the time
of Buddha were confounded by his idea of impermanence. After a
little thinking it can be realized that impermanence of natural
phenomena and paraphernalia associated with conventional life is
not a vision of negation but of knowledge and understanding. Marx
described all tools of living as intrinsically exploitative as
their foundation was built on unfair economic relations.
To mark a distinction between Buddha and Marx’s
thoughts; Buddha’s thoughts eventually formed a religion and Marx’s
an ideology. Religion is not only concerned with explaining the
world but also with personal conduct. Ideology is seeing the way
the world functions and in defining its parts. Ideology is not
concerned with birth and death as religions are. Although Buddha
was different, he did not seek an irrational explanation to
understand the world. Buddha has been called the greatest spiritual
teacher of India. His ideas were not limited to the realm of spirit
and had and perhaps still have social and material consequences.
Marx was a scholar and a revolutionary. Some argue that Marx
ignored human nature and the role natural resources play in
creating and sustaining relations. His ideas eventually penetrated
the psyche of many culminating in twentieth century revolutions.
During Marx’s lifetime a commune was founded in Paris but did not
last long and crumbled as soon as it had begun. Buddha stresses the
importance of understanding, empathy and decency in our conduct,
Marx warns us on the fractures that are inevitable in a market
economy and its consequences on the general population.
Marx’s theory of alienation describes the way in
which a man becomes alienated from the society he functions in. In
the capitalist mode of production, alienation refers to workers
becoming alienated from the output and losing control over their
product and life. This eventually produces a sense of estrangement
from the self and is not limited to the individual but spreads
across social classes. Umberto Eco in his essay on literature
writes that most writings can be classified as either
autobiographical or autocritical. Marx’s writings were not always
literary, as they intended to reflect his revolutionary fervour,
but when he wrote without he exemplified being autocritical. Self
was not left alone but was constantly under different forms of
criticism, at times social, political, economic or
psychological.
Text has a special significance in Marx’s writings.
He wrote not with the aim of adding onto the world of literary
output, which in itself is a worthy desire and a legitimate aim,
but to create conditions for revolution. Buddha was much closer to
poetic sensibility. He wanted to understand human passions, and
poetry is often described as an essay to congeal human passions.
Buddha didn’t leave any texts behind but left an unfathomable
insight into the human mind. His insights were so complete that
they almost touched physical reality. Buddha’s poetic way of seeing
the world led him to discover human passions, their origin and end.
Besides the immediate and direct, do Buddha and Marx have anything
to say to thinking and inquisitive minds? Marx depicts the world
and ways it can be made; Buddha tells us to understand the causes
of our disenchantment.