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I mean when I warn you against socialism? I ask you to let the time of pregnancy be complete. Capitalism is that time of pregnancy -- let it complete nine months. Even Marx had not imagined that capitalism would first be liquidated in Russia, because Russia was not capitalist. Marx had not dreamed that China would turn communist, because that country was then terribly backward and poor. Marx had thought that capitalism would break down first in America or Germany. But it broke down in Russia and China. And now the effort in India is to liquidate it. These are all poor and backward countries without any capital, without any assets. But they have one thing in abundance: they have large masses of the poor. And the envy of the masses can be easily aroused.
Marx's thinking was very scientific. He rightly said that capitalism would be abolished in the most developed countries, where it would have attained its full growth. Because when wealth is abundant, private property becomes meaningless. Marx did not know that revolutions would be made, not on the measure of capitalistic development and affluence, but by exciting the jealousy of the pool. The countries that became socialist are all very poor countries. Socialism should have first come to America, but it did not. In a way, socialism is entering America, but very silently. Whatever is significant in life comes very silently; it does not come with drums and trumpets. No one knows when a seed bursts into a sprout; no announcement is made when the sun rises. Whatever is meaningful in life walks on silent feet. and one comes to know of its coming only after it has already come. What comes with drums and trumpets, know it is trying to come before its time.
Socialism wants to come drumming and shouting, and without knowing that it cannot come until capitalism is completed. What will happen in India if we destroy its nascent, developing capitalistic system, and embark on distributing its scanty wealth? This will, of course, gratify the poor man's jealousy, but he does not know that this will also bring still more poverty and misery for him.
The system of capital-building in India today needs every cooperation.
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