Acharya Mahaprajna
Question:
What are the ideas of Mahavira, Gandhi, Marx and Keynes with regard to earning and disposal of wealth? What form should the transfer take?
Answer:
Mahavira's entire thinking proceeds on the transfer of wealth. Mahavira does not give any method of earning. He starts his thinking with disposal. Earning wealth is in the nature of man, it is his necessity, and he cannot escape from it. That man would have to do in any case. The real issue is, after earning, how should the disposal of wealth be accomplished. Mahavira starts from here. Gandhiji, while being a spiritual personality, was also a political personality. He talks about disposal of wealth through the medium of trusteeship and about earning in the form of a system for upliftment of all. These are his two concepts.
The thinking of Marx is all about disposal of wealth. There is no earning under his system. All property belongs to the state. In this sense, it would seem that there is much similarity between him and Mahavira's thinking. In Keynes view, there is nothing like disposal; it is earning and earning alone in his scheme of things. He prescribed thought based on earning, We should take earning in the form of cooperative endeavour. Earning and disposal of wealth have to be relative to each other.
