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understand and appreciate if you suggest that I should have a house of my own with a beautiful garden in the front, but tell me to work for the prosperity and well-being of the nation, to turn it into a great garden, and the thing gets lost in smoke.
The circle of man's consciousness is very small; it is like an earthen lamp shedding its light on a limited area of five square feet around itself. Such is man's consciousness; its scope is very limited. The family is that small circle of man's consciousness. He has largely been confined to his family so far, and he has not yet grown enough to go beyond its limit. As he tries to raise his sights beyond the family -- society, nation and humanity are the beyonds -- he begins to lose his interest, his incentive, his drive. Society, nation and humanity -- these are such vast spaces that they do not mean a thing to him, they do not affect his consciousness. They simply don't inspire him.
Capitalism launched a drive for production of wealth on this very basis -- on the basis of man's limited interests, individual incentives. It made him work and earn for himself and his family. And the drive succeeded immensely. Capitalism created both knowledge and wealth. The knowledge we gained in the hundred and fifty years of capitalism equals the knowledge of the world gained over a period of eighteen hundred years after Christ. And again, mankind has gained as much knowledge in the last fifteen years as it had gained in the first hundred and fifty years of capitalism. And the amount of knowledge gained in the last five years again equals the previous gains. What the old world had taken eighteen hundred years to achieve, the world of capitalism has done in just five years. A miracle indeed!
And still we go on condemning capitalism without realizing what it has done for us. It has prepared the way for every man and woman to participate in the production of wealth. It has created that space where wealth will rain like water. It has laid the groundwork for the coming of immense affluence, for an abundance of wealth. And the day we have that abundance of wealth the child of capitalism will be born. That will be true
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