Unto This Last
A Paraphrase
*
by
M. K. Gandhi
Unto This Last by John Ruskin was first published in 1860 as a series of
articles in Cornhill Magazine. In 1908 Gandhi serialized a nine-part
paraphrase of Ruskin’s book into Gujarati in Indian Opinion and later
published it as a pamphlet under the title Sarvodaya (The Welfare of All).
Valji Govind Desai retranslated Gandhi’s paraphrase into English in 1951
under the title Unto This Last: A Paraphrase. It was revised in 1956. The
1956 text is re-issued here.
© The Navajivan Trust
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / iii
Translator’s Note
In a chapter in his Autobiography (Part IV, Chapter XVIII) entitled ‘The
Magic Spell of a Book’ Gandhiji tells us how he read Ruskin’s Unto This
Last on the twenty-four hours’ journey from Johannesburg to Durban.
‘The train reached there in the evening. I could not get any sleep that
night. I determined to change my life in accordance with the ideals of the
book.…I translated it later into Gujarati, entitling it Sarvodaya.’
Sarvodaya is here re-translated into English, Ruskin’s winged words
being retained as far as possible.
At the end of that chapter Gandhiji gives us a summary of the teachings
of Unto This Last as he understood it:
1. The good of the individual is contained in the good of all.
2. A lawyer’s work has the same value as the barber’s, as all have the
same right of earning their livelihood from their work.
3. A life of labour, i.e. the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman
is the life worth living.
Nothing more need be said as regards the paraphrase of Ruskin’s four
chapters, but Gandhiji’s conclusion (pp. 41-44), written as it was in South
Africa long before he returned to India in 1915, is prophetic and fit to be
treasured by India for all time to come. And the last paragraph of the
booklet is a pearl beyond price.
2007, Bhadra vadi 5 V.G.D.
Contents
Translator’s Note page iii
Introduction 1
I The Roots of Truth 3
II The Veins of Wealth 12
III Even-Handed Justice 20
IV Ad Valorem 25
Conclusion 27
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 1
Introduction
People in the West generally hold that the whole duty of man is to
promote the happiness if the majority of mankind, and happiness is
supposed to mean only physical happiness and economic prosperity. If
the laws of morality are broken in the conquest of this happiness, it does
not matter very much. Again, as the object sought to be attained is the
happiness of the majority, Westerners do not think there is any harm if
this is secured by sacrificing a minority. The consequences of this line of
thinking are writ large on the face of Europe.
This exclusive search for physical and economic well-being prosecuted
in disregard of morality is contrary to divine law, as some wise men in
the West have shown. One of these was John Ruskin who contends in
Unto This Last that men can be happy only if they obey the moral law.
We in India are very much given nowadays to an imitation of the
West. It is necessary to imitate the virtues of the West, but there is no
doubt that
Western standards are often bad, and every one will agree that we
should shun all evil things.
The Indians in South Africa are reduced to a sorry plight. We go
abroad in order to make money, and in trying to get rich quick, we lose
sight of morality and forget that God will judge all our acts. Self-interest
absorbs our energies and paralyzes our power of discrimination between
good and evil. The result is that instead of gaining anything, we lose a
great deal by staying in foreign countries; or at least we fail to derive full
benefit from it. Morality is an essential ingredient in all the faiths of the
world, but apart from religion, our commonsense indicates the necessity
of observing the moral law.
Only by observing it can we hope to be happy, as Ruskin shows in the
following pages.
Socrates in Plato’s Apology1
gives us some idea of our duty as men.
2 / M. K. Gandhi
And he was as good as his word. I feel that Ruskin’s Unto This Last is an
expansion of Socrates’ ideas; he tells us how men in various walks of life
should behave if they intend to translate these ideas into action. What
follows is not a translation of Unto This Last but a paraphrase, as a
translation would not be particularly useful to the readers of Indian
Opinion. Even the title has not been translated but paraphrased as
Sarvodaya [the welfare of all], as that was what Ruskin aimed at in
writing this book.
1
Gandhiji had published a summary of The Apology in Indian Opinion
before Sarvodaya was written. V.G.D.
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 3
ESSAY I
The Roots of Truth
Among the delusions which at different periods have afflicted mankind,
perhaps the greatest – certainly the least creditable – is modern economics
based on the idea that an advantageous code of action may be
determined irrespectively of the influence of social affection.
Of course, as in the case of other delusions, political economy has a
plausible idea at the root of it. ‘The social affections,’ says the economist,
‘are accidental and disturbing elements in human nature; but avarice
and the desire for progress are constant elements. Let us eliminate the
inconstants, and considering man merely as a money-making machine,
examine by what laws of labour, purchase and sale, the greatest amount
of wealth can be accumulated. Those laws once determined, it will be
for each individual afterwards to introduce as much of the disturbing
affectionate element as he chooses.’
This would be a logical method of analysis if the accidentals afterwards
to be introduced were of the same nature as the powers first
examined. Supposing a body in motion to be influenced by constant
and inconstant forces, it is the simplest way of examining its course to
trace it first under the persistent conditions and afterwards introduce the
causes of variation. But the disturbing elements in the social problem are
not of the same nature as the constant ones; they alter the essence of the
creature under examination the moment they are added. They operate
not mathematically but chemically, introducing conditions which render
all our previous knowledge unavailable.
I do not doubt the conclusions of the science if its terms are accepted. I
am simply uninterested in them, as I should be in those of a science of
gymnastics which assumed that men had no skeletons. It might be
shown on that supposition that it would be advantageous to roll the
students up into pellets, flatten them into cakes, or stretch them into
cables; and that when these results were effected, the reinsertion of the
4 / M. K. Gandhi
skeleton would be attended with various inconveniences to their constitution.
The reasoning might be admirable, the conclusions true, and the
science deficient only in applicability. Modern political economy stands
on a precisely similar basis. It imagines that man has a body but no soul
to be taken into account and frames its laws accordingly. How can such
laws possibly apply to man in whom the soul is the predominant
element?
Political economy is no science at all. We see how helpless it is when
labourers go on a strike. The masters take one view of the matter, the
operatives another; and no political economy can set them at one.
Disputant after disputant vainly strives to show that the interests of the
masters are not antagonistic to those of the men. In fact it does not
always follow that the persons must be antagonistic because their
interests are. If there is only a crust of bread in the house, and mother
and children are starving, their interests are not the same. If the mother
eats it, the children want it; if the children eat it, the mother must go
hungry to her work. Yet it does not follow that there is antagonism
between them, that they will fight for the crust, and the mother, being
strongest, will get it and eat it. Similarly it cannot be assumed that
because their interests are diverse, persons must regard one another with
hostility and use violence or cunning to obtain the advantage.
Even if we consider men as actuated by no other moral influences
than those which affect rats or swine, it can never be shown generally
either that the interests of master and labourer are alike or that they are
opposed; for according to circumstances they may be either. It is indeed
the interest of both that the work should be rightly done and a just price
obtained for it; but in the division of profits, the gain of the one may or
may not be the loss of the other. It is not the master’s interest to pay
wages so low as to leave the men sickly and depressed, nor the workman’s
interest to be paid high wages if the smallness of the master’s
profit hinders him from conducting it in a safe and liberal way. A stoker
ought not to desire high pay if the company is too poor to keep the
engine-wheels in repair.
All endeavour, therefore, to deduce rules of action from balance of
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 5
expediency is in vain. And it is meant to be in vain. For no human
actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by
balances of expediency but by balances of justice. He has therefore
rendered all endeavours to determine expediency futile for evermore.
No man can know what will be the ultimate result to himself or others
of any given line of conduct. But every man may know and most of us
do know what is a just and unjust act. And all of us may know also that
the consequences of justice will be ultimately the best possible, both to
others and ourselves, though we can neither say what is best, or how it is
likely to come about.
I have meant in the term justice to include affection – such affection as
one man owes to another. All right relations between master and operative
ultimately depend on this.
As an illustration let us consider the position of domestic servants.
We will suppose that the master of a household tries only to get as
much work out of his servants as he can, at the rate of wages he gives.
He never allows them to be idle; feeds them as poorly and lodges them
as ill as they will endure. In doing this, there is no violation on his part of
what is commonly called ‘justice’. He agrees with the domestic for his
whole time and service and takes them, the limits of hardship in treatment
being fixed by the practice of other masters in the neighbourhood.
If the servant can get a better place, he is free to take one.
This is the politico-economical view of the case according to the
doctors of that science who assert that by this procedure the greatest
average of work will be obtained from the servant, and therefore the
greatest benefit to the community, and through the community, to the
servant himself.
That however is not so. It would be so if the servant were an engine of
which the motive power was steam, magnetism or some such agent of
calculable force. But on the contrary he is an engine whose motive power
is the Soul. Soul force enters into all the economist’s equations without
his knowledge and falsifies every one of their results. The largest
quantity of work will not be done by this curious engine for pay or
under pressure. It will be done when the motive force, that is to say, the
6 / M. K. Gandhi
will or spirit of the creature, is brought to its greatest strength by its own
proper fuel, namely by the affections.
It does happen often that if the master is a man of sense and energy,
much material work may be done under pressure; also it does happen
often that if the master is indolent and weak, a small quantity of work,
and that bad, may be produced by his servant. But the universal law of
the matter is that, assuming any given quantity of energy and sense in
master and servant, the greatest material result obtainable by them will
be not through antagonism to each other, but through affection for each
other.
Nor is this one whit less generally true because indulgence will be
frequently abused, and kindness met with ingratitude. For the servant
who, gently treated, is ungrateful, treated ungently, will be revengeful;
and the man who is dishonest to a liberal master will be injurious to an
unjust man.
In any case and with any person, this unselfish treatment will produce
the most effective return. I am here considering the affections wholly as
a motive power; not at all as things in themselves desirable or noble. I
look at them simply as an anomalous force, rendering every one of the
ordinary economist’s calculations nugatory. The affections only become
a true motive power when they ignore every other motive and condition
of economics. Treat the servant kindly with the idea of turning his gratitude
to account, and you will get, as you deserve, no gratitude nor any
value for your kindness; but treat him kindly without any economical
purpose, and all economical purposes will be answered; here as elsewhere
whoever will save his life shall lose it, whoso loses it shall find it.
The next simplest example of relation between master and operative is
that which exists between the commander of a regiment and his men.
Supposing the officer only desires to apply the rules of discipline so as,
with least trouble to himself, to make the regiment most effective, he will
not be able, by any rules, on this selfish principle, to develop the full
strength of his subordinates. But if he has the most direct personal
relations with his men, the most care for their interests, and the most
value for their lives, he will develop their effective strength, through
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 7
their affection for his own person and trust in his character, to a degree
wholly unattainable by other means. This applies more stringently as the
numbers concerned are larger: a charge may often be successful though
the men dislike their officers; a battle has rarely been won, unless they
loved their general.
A body of men associated for the purposes of robbery (as a Highland
clan in ancient times) shall be animated by perfect affection, and every
member of it be ready to lay down his life for the life for the life of his
chief. But a band of men associated for purpose of legal production is
usually animated by no such emotions, and none of them is willing to
give his life for the life of his chief. For a servant or a soldier is engaged
at a definite rate of wages for a definite period; but a workman at a rate
of wages variable according to the demand for labour, and with the risk
of being at any time thrown out of employment by chances of trade.
Now as under these conditions no action of the affections can take place,
but only an explosive action of disaffections, two points offer themselves
for consideration in the matter:
1. How far the rate of wages may be so regulated as not to vary with
the demand for labour;
2. How far it is possible that bodies of workmen may be engaged and
maintained at such fixed rate of wages (whatever the state of trade may
be), without enlarging or diminishing their number, so as to give them
permanent interest in the establishment with which they are connected,
like that of the domestic servants in an old family, or an esprit de corps,
like that of the soldiers in a crack regiment.
1. A curious fact in the history of human error is the denial by the
economist of the possibility of so regulating wages as not to vary with
the demand for labour.
We do not sell our prime-minister by Dutch auction. Sick, we do not
inquire for a physician who takes less than a guinea; litigious, we never
think of reducing six-and-eightpence to four-and-sixpence; caught in a
shower we do not canvass the cabmen to find one who value his driving
at less than sixpence a mile.
The best labour always has been, and is, as all labour ought to be, paid
8 / M. K. Gandhi
by an invariable standard.
‘What!’ the reader perhaps answers amazedly: ‘to pay good and bad
workman alike?’
Certainly. You pay with equal fee, contentedly, the good and bad
preachers (workmen upon your soul) and the good and bad physicians
(workmen upon your body); much more may you pay, contentedly, with
equal fees, the good and bad workmen upon your house.
‘Nay, but I choose my physician, thus indicating my sense of the
quality of their work.’ By all means choose your bricklayer; that is the
proper reward of the good workman, to be ‘chosen’. The right system
respecting all labour is, that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good
workman employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The false
system is when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at halfprice,
and either take the place of the good or to force him by his competition
to work for an inadequate sum.
2. This equality of wages, then, being the first object towards which we
have to discover the road, the second is that of maintaining constant
numbers of workmen in employment, whatever may be the accidental
demand for the article they produce.
The wages which enable any workman to live are necessarily higher if
his work is liable to intermission, than if it is assured and continuous. In
the latter case he will take low wages in the form of a fixed salary. The
provision of regular labour for the workman is good for him as well as
for his master in the long run, although he cannot then make large
profits or take big risks or indulge in gambling.
The soldier is ready to lay down his life for his chief and therefore he is
held in greater honour than an ordinary workman. Really speaking, the
soldier’s trade is not slaying, but being slain in the defence of others. The
reason the world honours the soldier is, because he holds his life at the
service of the State.
Not less is the respect we pay to the lawyer, physician and clergyman,
founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice. Set in a judge’s seat, the lawyer
will strive to judge justly, come of it what may. The physician will treat
his patients with care, no matter under what difficulties. The clergyman
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 9
will similarly instruct his congregation and direct it to the right path.
All the efficient members of these so-called learned professions are in
public estimate of honour preferred before the head of a commercial
firm, as the merchant is presumed to act always selfishly. His work may
be very necessary to the community; but the motive of it is understood to
be wholly personal. The merchant’s first object in all his dealings must be
(the public believe) to get as much for himself and leave as little to his
customer as possible. Enforcing this upon him, by political statute, as the
necessary principle of his action; recommending it to him, and themselves
reciprocally adopting it, proclaiming for law of the universe that a
buyer’s function is to cheapen, and a seller’s to cheat, – the public, nevertheless,
involuntarily condemn the man of commerce for his compliance
with their own statement, and stamp him for ever as belonging to an
inferior grade of human personality.
This they must give up doing. They will have to discover a kind of
commerce which is not exclusively selfish. Or rather they must discover
that there never was or can be any other kind of commerce; and that this
which they have called commerce was not commerce at all but cozening.
In true commerce, as in true preaching or true fighting, it is necessary to
admit the idea of occasional voluntary loss; – that sixpences have to be
lost, as well as lives, under a sense of duty; that the market may have its
martyrdoms as well as the pulpit; and trade its heroism as well as war.
Five great intellectual professions exist in every civilized nation:
The Soldier’s profession is to defend it.
The Pastor’s to teach it.
The Physician’s to keep it in health.
The Lawyer’s to enforce justice in it.
The Merchant’s to provide for it.
And the duty of all these men is on due occasion to die for it. For truly
the man who does not know when to die does not know how to live.
Observe, the merchant’s function is to provide for the nation. It is no
more his function to get profit for himself out of that provision than it is
a clergyman’s function to get his stipend. This stipend is a necessary
adjunct but not the object of his life if he be a true clergyman, any more
10 / M. K. Gandhi
than his fee (or honorarium) is the object of life to a true physician.
Neither is his fee the object of life to a true merchant. All three, if true
men, have a work to be done irrespective of fee – to be done even at any
cost, or for quite the contrary of fee; the pastor’s function being to teach,
the physician’s to heal and the merchant’s to provide. That is to say, he
has to apply all his sagacity and energy to the producing the thing he
deals in in perfect state and distributing it at the cheapest possible price
where it is most needed.
And because the production of any commodity involves the agency of
many lives and hands, the merchant becomes in the course of his business
the master and governor of large masses of men in a more direct
way than a military officer or pastor, so that on him falls, in great part,
the responsibility for the kind of life they lead; and it becomes his duty
not only to produce goods in the purest and cheapest forms, but also
to make the various employments involved in the production most
beneficial to the men employed.
And as into these two functions, requiring for their right exercise the
highest intelligence as well as patience, kindness and tact, the merchant
is bound to put all his energy, so for their just discharge he is bound, as
soldier or physician is to give up, if need be, his life, in such way as it
may be demanded of him.
Two main points he has to maintain; first his engagement; and secondly
the perfectness and purity of the thing provided by him; so that
rather than fail in any engagement or consent to any deterioration,
adulteration, or unjust or exorbitant price of that which he provides, he
is bound to meet fearlessly any form of distress, poverty or labour which
may through maintenance of these points come upon him.
Again in his office as governor of the men employed by him, the
merchant is invested with a paternal authority and responsibility. In
most cases a youth entering a commercial establishment is withdrawn
altogether from home influence; his master must become his father; else
he has, for practical and constant help, no father at hand. So that the only
means which the master has of doing justice to the men employed by
him is to ask himself sternly whether he is dealing with such subordinate
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 11
as he would with his own son, if compelled by circumstances to take
such a position.
Supposing the captain of a frigate were obliged to place his own son in
the position of a common sailor; as he would then treat his son, he is
bound always to treat every one of the men under him. So also supposing
the master of a factory were obliged to place his own son in the
position of an ordinary workman; as he would then treat his son, he is
bound always to treat every one of his men. This is the only effective,
true or practical Rule which can be given in this point of economics.
And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the last man to leave his
ship in case of wreck and to share his last crust with the sailors in case of
famine, so the manufacturer, in any commercial crisis, is bound to take
the suffering of it with his men, and even to take more of it for himself
than he allows his men to feel; as a father would in a famine, shipwreck
or battle, sacrifice himself for his son.
All this sounds very strange; the only real strangeness in the matter
being, nevertheless, that it should so sound. For all this is true everlastingly
and practically; all other doctrine than this being impossible in
practice, consistently with any progressive state of national life; all the
life which we now possess as a nation showing itself in the denial by a
few strong minds and faithful hearts of the economic principles taught to
our multitudes, which principles, so far as accepted, lead straight to
national destruction. Respecting the modes and forms of destruction to
which they lead I hope to reason farther in a following paper.
12 / M. K. Gandhi
ESSAY II
The Veins of Wealth
The answer which would be made by any ordinary economist to the
statement in the preceding papers, is in a few words as follows:
“It is true that certain advantages of a general nature may be obtained
by the development of social affections. But economists never take such
advantages into consideration. Our science is simply the science of
getting rich. So far from being fallacious, it is found by experience to be
practically effective. Persons who follow its precepts do become rich, and
persons who disobey them become poor. Every capitalist of Europe has
acquired his fortune by following the laws of our science. It is vain to
bring forward tricks of logic against the force of accomplished facts.
Every man of business knows by experience how money is made and
how it is lost.”
Pardon me. Men of business do indeed make money, but they do not
know if they make it by fair means or if their money-making contributes
to national welfare.
They rarely know the meaning of the word ‘rich’. At least if they
know, they do not allow for the fact that it is a relative word, implying
its opposite ‘poor’ as positively as the word ‘north’ implies its opposite
‘south’. Men write as if it were possible, by following certain scientific
precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that
of electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The
force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the
default of a guinea in your neighbour’s pocket. If he did not want it, it
would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends
accurately upon the need he has for it, and the art of making yourself
rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist’s sense, is therefore equally
and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor.
I wish the reader clearly to understand the difference between the two
economies, to which the terms, ‘political’ and ‘mercantile’ might be
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 13
attached.
Political economy consists in simply the production, preservation and
distribution, at fittest time and place, of useful or pleasurable things. The
farmer who cuts his hay at the right time; the builder who lays good
bricks in well-tempered mortar; the housewife who takes care of her
furniture in the parlour and guards against all waste in her kitchen are
all political economists in the true and final sense, adding continually to
the riches and well-being of the nation to which they belong.
But mercantile economy signifies the accumulation in the hands of
individuals, of legal claim upon, or power over, the labour of others;
every such claim implying precisely as much poverty or debt on one side
as it implies riches or right on the other.
The idea of riches among active men in civilized nations generally
refers to such commercial wealth; and in estimating their possessions,
they rather calculate the value of their horses and fields by the number of
guineas they could get for them, than the value of their guineas by the
number of horses and fields they could buy with them.
Real property is of little use to its owner, unless together with it he has
commercial power over labour. Thus suppose a man has a large estate of
fruitful land with rich beds of gold in its gravel; countless herds of cattle;
houses, and gardens and storehouses; but suppose, after all, that he
could get no servants? In order that he may be able to have servants,
some one in his neighbourhood must be poor and in want of his gold or
his corn. Assume that no one is in want of either, and that no servants
are to be had. He must therefore bake his own bread, make his own
clothes, plough his own ground and shepherd his own flocks. His gold
will be as useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on his estate. His
stores must rot, for he cannot consume them. He can eat no more than
another man could eat, and wear no more than another man could wear.
He must lead a life of severe and common labour to procure even
ordinary comforts.
The most covetous of mankind would, with small exultation, I presume,
accept riches of this kind on these terms. What is really desired,
under the name of riches is, essentially, power over men; in its simplest
14 / M. K. Gandhi
sense, the power of obtaining for our own advantage the labour of
servant, tradesman and artist. And this power of wealth of course is
greater or less in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom
it is exercised and in inverse proportion to the number of persons who
are as rich as ourselves, and who are ready to give the same price for an
article of which the supply is limited. If the musician is poor, he will sing
for small pay, as long as there is only one person who can pay him; but if
there be two or three, he will sing for the one who offers him most. So
that the art of becoming ‘rich’ in the common sense is not only the art of
accumulating much money for ourselves but also of contriving that our
neighbours shall have less. In accurate terms it is ‘the art of establishing
the maximum inequality in our own favour’.
The rash and absurd assumption that such inequalities are necessarily
advantageous lies at the root of most of the popular fallacies on the
subject of economics. For the beneficialness of the inequality depends
first, on the methods by which it was accomplished and secondly, on the
purposes to which it is applied. Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established,
have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their
establishment; and unjustly directed, injure it yet more during their
existence. But inequalities of wealth, justly established, benefit the nation
in the course of their establishment; and nobly used, aid it yet more by
their existence.
Thus the circulation of wealth in nation resembles that of the blood in
the natural body. There is one quickness of the current which comes of
cheerful emotion or wholesome exercise; and another which comes of
shame or of fever. There is a flush of the body which is full of warmth
and life; and another which will pass into putrefaction.
Again even as diseased local determination of the blood involves
depression of the general health of the system, all morbid local action of
riches will be found ultimately to involve weakening of the resources of
the body politic.
Suppose two sailors cast away on an uninhabited coast and obliged to
maintain themselves there by their own labour for a series of years.
If they both kept their health, and worked steadily and in amity with
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 15
each other, they might build themselves a house and in time to come
possess some cultivated land together with various stores laid up for
future use. All these things would be real riches or property; and
supposing the men both to have worked equally hard, they would each
have right to equal share or use of it. Their political economy would
consist merely in the careful preservation and just division on these
possessions.
Perhaps however after some time one or other might be dissatisfied
with the results of their common farming; and they might in consequence
agree to divide the land into equal shares, so that each might
thenceforward work in his own field and live by it. Suppose that after
this arrangement had been made, one of them were to fall ill, and be
unable to work on his land at a critical time – say of sowing or harvest.
He would naturally ask the other to sow or reap for him.
Then his companion might say, with perfect justice, ‘I will do this
additional work for you; but if I do it, you must promise to do as much
for me at another time. I will count how many hours I spend on your
ground, and you shall give me a written promise to work for the same
number of hours on mine, whenever I need your help, and you are able
to give it.’
Suppose the disabled man’s sickness to continue, and that under various
circumstances, for several years, requiring the help of the other, he
on each occasion gave a written pledge to work, as soon as he was able,
at his companion’s orders, for the same number of hours as the other had
given up to him.
What will the positions of the two men be when the invalid is able to
resume work?
Considered as ‘polis’ or state, they will be poorer than they would
have been otherwise; poorer by the withdrawal of what the sick man’s
labour would have produced in the interval. His friend may perhaps
have toiled with an energy quickened by the enlarged need, but in the
end his own land must have suffered by the withdrawal of so much of
his time from it; and the united property of the two men will be less than
it would have been if both had remained in health and activity.
16 / M. K. Gandhi
But the relations in which they stand to each other are also widely
altered. The sick man has not only pledged his labour for some years, but
will have exhausted his share of the stores, and will be in consequence
for some time dependent on the other for food, for which he can only
‘pay’ him by yet more deeply pledging his own labour.
Supposing the written promises to be held entirely valid, the person
who had hitherto worked for both might now, if he chose, rest altogether,
and pass his time in idleness, not only forcing his companion to
redeem all his pervious pledges but exacting from him pledges for
further labour, to an arbitrary amount, for what food he had to advance
to him.
There might not be the least illegality (in the ordinary sense of the
word) in the arrangement; but if a stranger arrived on the coast at this
advanced stage of their political economy, he would find one man
commercially Rich; the other commercially Poor. He would see, with no
small surprise, one passing his days in idleness; the other labouring for
both and living sparely, in the hope of recovering his independence at
some distant period.
What I want the reader to note especially is the fact that the establishment
of the mercantile wealth which consists in a claim upon labour
signifies a political diminution of the real wealth which consists in substantial
possessions.
Take another example, more consistent with the ordinary course of
affairs of trade. Suppose that three men, instead of two, formed the little
isolated republic, and were obliged to separate, in order to farm different
pieces of land at some distance from each other: each estate furnishing a
distinct kind of produce and each in need of the material raised on the
other. Suppose that the third man, in order to save the time of all three,
simply superintends the transference of commodities from one farm to
the other, on condition of receiving a share of every parcel of goods
conveyed.
If this carrier always brings to each estate, from the other, what is
chiefly wanted, at the right time, the operations of the two farmers will
prosper, and the largest possible result in produce or wealth will be
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 17
attained by the little community. But suppose no intercourse between
the landowners is possible, except through the travelling agent; and
that after a time, this agent keeps back the articles with which he has
been entrusted until there comes a period of extreme necessity for them,
on one side or other, and then exacts in exchange for them all that the
distressed farmer can share other kinds of produce; it is easy to see that
by ingeniously watching his opportunities, he might possess himself of
the greater part of the surplus produce of the two estates, and at last, in a
year of scarcity, purchase both for himself and maintain the former
proprietors thenceforward as his labourers or servants.
This would be a case of commercial wealth acquired on the exactest
principles of modern political economy. But it is clear in this instance
also that the wealth of the State or of the three men considered as a
society, is collectively less than it would have been if the merchant had
been content with juster profit. The operations of the two farmers have
been cramped to the utmost; the limitations of the supply of things they
wanted at critical times, together with the failure of courage consequent
on the prolongation of a struggle for mere existence, must have diminished
the effective results of their labour; and the stores accumulated by
the merchant will not be of equivalent value to those which, had he been
honest, would have filled the granaries of the farmers and his own.
The question, therefore, respecting not only the advantage but even the
quantity of national wealth, resolves itself finally into one of abstract
justice. The real value of acquired wealth depends on the moral sign
attached to it, just as sternly as that of a mathematical quantity depends
on the algebraical sign attached to it. Any given accumulation of commercial
wealth may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful industries,
progressive energies and productive ingenuities; or on the other hand, it
may be indicative of mortal luxury, merciless tyranny, ruinous chicanery.
And these are not merely moral attributes of riches, which the seeker
of riches may, if he chooses, despise; they are literally material attributes
of riches, depreciating or exalting the monetary signification of the sum
in question. One mass of money is the outcome of action which has
created, – another, of action which has annihilated, – ten times as much
18 / M. K. Gandhi
in the gathering of it.
Therefore the idea that directions can be given for the gaining of
wealth, irrespectively of the consideration of its moral sources is perhaps
the most insolently futile of all that ever beguiled men through their
vices. So far as I know, there is not in history record of anything so disgraceful
to the human intellect as the modern idea that the commercial
text ‘Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest’ represents an
available principle of national economy. Buy in the cheapest market? –
yes; but what made your market cheap? Charcoal may be cheap among
your roof timbers after a fire and bricks may be cheap in your streets
after an earthquake; but fire and earthquake may not therefore be
national benefits. Sell in the dearest? – yes, truly; but what made your
market dear? You sold your bread well today; was it to a dying man who
gave his last coin for it and will never bread more; or to a rich man who
tomorrow will buy your farm over your head; or to a soldier on his way
to pillage the bank in which you have put your fortune?
None of these things you can know. One thing only you can know;
namely whether this dealing of yours is a just and faithful one, which is
all you need concern yourself about respecting it; sure thus to have done
your part in bringing about ultimately in the world a state of things
which will not issue in pillage or in death.
It has been shown that the chief value of money consists in its having
power over human beings; that without this power large material possessions
are useless, and to a person possessing such power, comparatively
unnecessary. But power over human beings is attainable by other
means than by money.
In this moral power there is a monetary value as real as that represented
by more ponderous currencies. A man’s hand may be full of
invisible gold, and the wave of it or the grasp shall do more than
another’s with a shower of bullion.
But farther. Since the essence of wealth consists in its authority over
men, if the apparent wealth fail in this power, it ceases to be wealth at
all. It does not appear lately in England that our authority over men is
absolute.
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 19
Finally since the essence of wealth consists in power over men, will it
not follow that the nobler and the more in number the persons are over
whom it has power, the greater the wealth? Perhaps it may even appear
after some consideration that the persons themselves are the wealth; not
gold and silver. The true veins of wealth are purple – and not in Rock
but in Flesh. The final consummation of all wealth is in the producing as
many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed and happy-hearted human
beings. In some far-away and yet undreamt-of hour I can even imagine
that instead of adorning the turbans of her slaves with diamonds from
Golkonda and thus showing off her material wealth, England, as a
Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a
non-Christian one and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying,
“These are MY Jewels.”
20 / M. K. Gandhi
ESSAY III
Even-Handed Justice
Some centuries before the Christian era, a Jew merchant, reported to
have made one of the largest fortunes of his time (held also in repute for
much practical sagacity), left among his ledgers some general maxims
which have been preserved even to our own days. They were held in
respect by the Venetians who placed a statue of the old Jew on the angle
of one of their principal buildings. Of late years these writings have
fallen into disrepute, being opposed to the spirit of modern commerce.
He says for instance in one place: ‘The getting of treasures by a lying
tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death’; adding
in another, with the same meaning: ‘Treasures of wickedness profit
nothing; but truth delivers from death.’ Both these passages are notable
for their assertions of death as the only real issue and sum of attainment
by any unjust scheme of wealth. If we read instead of ‘lying tongue’,
‘lying label, title, pretence or advertisement,’ we shall more clearly
perceive the bearing of these words on modern business.
Again the wiseman says: ‘He that oppresseth the poor to increase his
riches shall surely come to want.’ And again more strongly: ‘Rob not the
poor because he is poor; neither oppress the afflicted in the place of
business. For God shall spoil the soul of those that spoiled them.’
This ‘robbing the poor because he is poor’ is especially the mercantile
form of theft, consisting in taking advantage of a man’s necessities in
order to obtain his labour or property at a reduced price. The ordinary
highwayman robs the rich, but the trader robs the poor.
But the two most remarkable passages are the following:
‘The rich and the poor have met.
God is their maker.’
‘The rich and the poor have met.
God is their light.’
They ‘have met.’ That is to say, as long as the world lasts the action
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 21
and counteraction of wealth and poverty is just as appointed a law of the
world as the flow of stream to sea: ‘God is their maker.’ But also this
action may be either gentle and just, or convulsive and destructive; it
may be by rage of devouring flood or by lapse of serviceable wave. And
which of these it shall be, depends on both rich and poor knowing that
God is their light.
The flowing of streams is in one respect a perfect image of the action of
wealth. Where the land falls, the water flows. So wealth must go where
it is required. But the disposition and administration of rivers can be
altered by human forethought. Whether the stream shall be a curse or a
blessing depends upon man’s labour and administrating intelligence.
For centuries districts of the world, rich in soil and favoured in climate,
have lain desert under the rage of their own rivers; not only desert, but
plague-struck. The stream which, rightly directed, would have flowed in
soft irrigation from field to field – would have purified the air, given
food to man and beast, and carried their burdens for them on its boson –
now overwhelms the plain and poisons the wind: its breath pestilence,
and its work famine. In like manner human laws can guide the flow of
wealth. This the leading trench and limiting mound can do so thoroughly
that it shall become water of life – the riches of the hand of
wisdom; or on the contrary, by leaving it to its own lawless flow, they
may make it the last and deadliest of national plagues: water of Marah –
the water which feeds the roots of all evil.
The necessity of these laws of distribution or restraint is curiously
overlooked in the ordinary economist’s definition of his own ‘science’.
He calls it the ‘science of getting rich’. But there are many sciences as
well as many arts of getting rich.
Poisoning people of large estates was one employed largely in the
middle ages; adulteration of food of people of small estates is one
employed largely now. All these come under the general head of
sciences or arts of getting rich.
So the economist in calling his science the science of getting rich must
attach some ideas of limitation to its character. Let us assume that he
means his science to be the science of ‘getting rich by legal or just means’.
22 / M. K. Gandhi
In this definition is the word ‘just’ or ‘legal’ finally to stand? For it is
possible that proceedings may be legal which are by no means just. If
therefore we leave at last only the word ‘just’ in that place of our definition,
it follows that in order to grow rich scientifically, we must grow
rich justly; and therefore know what is just. It is the privilege of the
fishes, as it is of rats and wolves, to live by the laws of demand and
supply; but it is the distinction of humanity to live by those of right.
We have to examine then what are the laws of justice respecting payment
of labour.
Money payment, as stated in my last paper, consists redically in a
promise to some person working for us, that for the time and labour he
spends in our service today we will give or procure equivalent time and
labour in his service at any future time when he may demand it.
If we promise to give him less labour than he has given us, we underpay
him.
If we promise to give him more labour than he has given us, we
overpay him.
In practice, when two men are ready to do the work and only one man
wants to have it done, the two men underbid each other for it; and the
one who gets it to do is under-paid. But when two men want the work
done and there is only one man ready to do it, the two men who want it
done overbid each other, and the workman is over-paid. The central
principle of right or just payment lies between these two points of
injustice.
Inasmuch as labour rightly directed is fruitful just as seed is, the fruit
(or ‘interest’ as it is called) of the labour first given, or ‘advanced’, ought
to be taken into account and balanced by an additional quantity of
labour in the subsequent repayment. Therefore the typical form of
bargain will be: if you give me an hour today, I will give you an hour
and five minutes on demand. If you give me a pound of bread today, I
will give you seventeen ounces on demand and so on.
Now if two men are ready to do the work and if I employ one who
offers to work at half price he will be half-starved while the other man
will be left out of employment. Even if I pay due wages to the workman
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 23
chosen by me, the other man will be unemployed. But then my workman
will not have to starve, and I shall have made a just use of my money.
If I pay due wages to my man, I shall not be able to amass unnecessary
riches, to waste money on luxuries and to add to the mass of poverty in
the world. The workman who receives due wages from me will act justly
to his subordinates. Thus the stream of justice will not dry up, but gather
strength as it flows onward. And the nation with such a sense of justice
will be happy and prosperous.
We thus find that the economists are wrong in thinking that competition
is good for a nation. Competition only enables the purchaser to
obtain his labour unjustly cheap, with the result that the rich grow richer
and the poor poorer. In the long run it can only lead the nation to ruin.
A workman should receive a just wage according to his ability. Even
then there will be competition of a sort, but the people will be happy
and skilful, because they will not have to underbid one another, but to
acquire new skills in order to secure employment. This is the secret of
the attractiveness of government services in which salaries are fixed
according to the gradation of posts. The candidate for it does not offer
to work with a lower salary but only claims that he is abler than his
competitors. The same is the case in the army and in the navy, where
there is little corruption. But in trade and manufacture there is oppressive
competition, which results in fraud, chicanery and theft. Rotten
goods are manufactured. The manufacturer, the labourer, the consumer,
– each is mindful of his own interest. This poisons all human intercourse.
Labourers starve and go on strike. Manufacturers become rogues and
consumers too neglect the ethical aspect of their own conduct. One
injustice leads to may others, and in the end the employer, the operative
and the customer are all unhappy and go to rack and ruin. The very
wealth of the people acts among them as a curse.
Nothing in history has been so disgraceful to human intellect as the
acceptance among us of the common doctrines of economics as a science.
I know no previous instance in history of a nation’s establishing a systematic
disobedience to the first principle of its professed religion.
The writings which we (verbally) esteem as divine not only denounce
24 / M. K. Gandhi
the love of money as the source of all evil, and as an idolatry abhorred of
the deity, but declare mammon service to be the accurate and irreconcilable
opposite of God’s service; and whenever they speak of riches
absolute and poverty absolute, declare woe to the rich and blessing to
the poor.
True economics is the economics of justice.
People will be happy in so far as they learn to do justice and be righteous.
All else is not only vain but leads straight to destruction. To teach
the people to get rich by hook or by crook is to do them an immense
disservice.
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 25
ESSAY IV
Ad Valorem
We have seen how the ideas upon which political economy is based are
misleading. Translated into action they can only make the individual and
the nation unhappy. They make the poor poorer and the rich richer and
none are any the happier for it.
Economics do not take the conduct of men into account but hold that
the accumulation of wealth is the sign of prosperity, and that the happiness
of nations depends upon their wealth alone. The more factories, the
merrier. Thus men leave village farms with their spring winds and
coming to cities, live diminished lives in the midst of noise, of darkness,
and of deadly exhalation. This leads to deterioration of the national
physique, and to increasing avarice and immorality. If some one talks of
steps to be taken to eradicate vice, so-called wise men will say that it is of
no use at all that the poor should receive education and that it is best to
let things alone. They however forget that the rich are responsible for the
immorality of the poor, who work like slaves in order to supply them
with their luxuries, and have not a moment which they can call their
own for self-betterment. Envying the rich, the poor also try to be rich,
and when they fail in this effort, they are angry. They then lose their
senses, and try to make money by force of fraud. Thus both wealth and
labour are barren of all fruit or else are utilized for chicanery.
Labour in the real sense of the term is that which produces useful
articles.
Useful articles are those which support human life, such as food,
clothes or houses, and enable men to perfect the functions of their own
lives to the utmost and also to exercise a helpful influence over the lives
of others. The establishment of big factories with a view to getting rich
may lead a person into sin. Many people amass riches but few make a
good use of it. Accumulated wealth which leads to the destruction of a
nation is of no earthly use. The capitalists of modern times are respon-
26 / M. K. Gandhi
sible for wide spread and unjust wars which originate from the covetousness
of mankind.
Some people say that it is not possible to impart knowledge so as to
ameliorate the condition of the masses; let us therefore live as seems fit
and amass riches. But this is an immoral attitude. For the good man who
observes ethical rules and does not give way to greed has a disciplined
mind, does not stray from the right path, and influences others by his
acts. If the individuals who constitute a nation are immoral, so is the
nation too. If we behave as we choose and at the same time take our
neighbours to task for their wrongdoing, the results can only be disappointing.
We thus see that money is only an instrument which makes for misery
as well as happiness. In the hands of a good man it helps in the cultivation
of land and the harvesting of crops. Cultivators work in innocent
contentment and the nation is happy. But in the hands of a bad man,
money helps to produce say gunpowder which works havoc among its
manufacturers as well as among its victims. Therefore THERE IS NO
WEALTH BUT LIFE. That country is the richest which nourishes the
greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest
who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has
also the widest helpful influence, both personal and by means of his
possessions, over the lives of others.
This is not a time for self-indulgence but for each of us to labour
according to our capacity. If one man lives in idleness, another has to put
in a double amount of work. This is at the root of the distress of the poor
in England. Some so-called work is nugatory as in jewel-cutting and
even destructive as in war. It brings about a diminution in the national
capital, and is not beneficial to the worker himself. It seems as if men are
employed, but really they are idle. The rich oppress the poor by misuse
of riches. Employers and employees are at daggers drawn with one
another, and men are reduced to the level of beasts.
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 27
Conclusion
Ruskin’s book thus paraphrased has a lesson for Indians no less than for
the Englishmen to whom it was primarily addressed. New ideas are in
the air in India. Our young men who have received Western education
are full of spirit. This spirit should be directed into the right channels, as
otherwise it can only do us harm. ‘Let us have Swaraj’ is one slogan; ‘Let
us industrialize the country’ is another.
But we hardly understand what Swaraj is. Natal for instance enjoys
Swaraj but her Swaraj stinks in our nostrils, for she crushes the negroes,
and oppresses the Indians. If by some chance the negroes and the
Indians left Natal, its white men would fight among themselves and
bring about their own destruction.
If not like Natal’s will we have Swaraj as in the Transvaal one of whose
leaders, General Smuts, breaks his promises, says one thing and does
another? He has dispensed with the services of English policemen and
employed Afrikanders instead. I do not think that this is going to help
any of the nationalities in the long run. Selfish men will loot their own
people, when there are no more ‘outsiders’ left to be looted.
Thus Swaraj is not enough to make a nation happy. What would be the
result of Swaraj being conferred on a band of robbers? They would be
happy only if they were placed under the control of a good man who
was not a robber himself. The United States, England and France for
instance are powerful States, but there is no reason to think that they are
really happy.
Swaraj really means self-control. Only he is capable of self-control who
observes the rules of morality, does not cheat or give up truth, and does
his duty to his parents, wife and children, servants and neighbours. Such
a man is in enjoyment of Swaraj, no matter where he lives. A state enjoys
Swaraj if it can boast of a large number of such good citizens.
It is not right that one people should rule another. British rule in India
28 / M. K. Gandhi
is an evil, but let us not run away with the idea that all will be well when
the British quit India.
The existence of British rule in the country is due to our disunity,
immorality and ignorance. If these national defects were overcome, not
only would the British leave India without a shot being fired but we
would be enjoying real Swaraj.
Some foolish Indians rejoice in bomb-throwing, but if all the Britishers
in the country were thus killed, the killers would become the rulers of
India who would only have a change of masters. The bomb now thrown
at Englishmen will be aimed at Indians after the English are there no
longer. It was a Frenchman who murdered the President of the French
Republic. It was an American who murdered President Cleveland. Let us
not blindly imitate Western people.
If Swaraj cannot be attained by the sin of killing Englishmen, it cannot
be attained either by the erection of huge factories. Gold and silver may
be accumulated but they will not lead to the establishment of Swaraj.
Ruskin has proved this to the hilt. Western civilization is a mere baby, a
hundred or only fifty years old. And yet it has reduced Europe to a sorry
plight. Let us pray that India is saved from the fate that has overtaken
Europe, where the nations are poised for an attack on one another, and
are silent only because of the stockpiling of armaments. Some day there
will be an explosion, and then Europe will be a veritable hell on earth.
Non-white races are looked upon as legitimate prey by every European
state. What else can we expect where covetousness is the ruling passion
in the breasts of men? Europeans pounce upon new territories like crows
upon a piece of meat. I am inclined to think that this is due to their massproduction
factories.
India must indeed have Swaraj but she must have it by righteous
methods. Our Swaraj must be real Swaraj, which cannot be attained by
either violence or industrialization. India was once a golden land,
because Indians then had hearts of gold. The land is still the same but it
is a desert because we are corrupt. It can become a land of gold again
only if the base metal of our present national character is transmuted
into gold. The philosopher’s stone which can effect this1
transformation
Unto This Last: A Paraphrase / 29
is a little word of two syllables – Satya (Truth). If every Indian sticks to
truth, Swaraj will come to us of its own accord.
1
‘Institutions,’ says Herbert Spencer, ‘are dependent on character; and
however changed in their superficial aspects, cannot be changed in their
essential natures faster than character changes.’ V.G.D.
At James Madison University
Project Gandhiana
An initiative to put online the writings of Mahatma Gandhi
MSC 2604, Cardinal House • 500 Cardinal Drive • Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807, USA
540.568.4060 • 540.568.7251 fax • GandhiCenter@jmu.edu
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