6. Prosperity & Equality
‘All are equal to God.’ – says religion but God never treated them equally and in reality no two things, even less two persons, are equal in all respect. A thing can be equal only to that very thing in all respect. That is a reality of nature. As un-equality is expressed by different dimensions in different space, equality arranged in one space creates un-equality immediately on others. Equality in all respect makes two things, ideas or expressions automatically one. Though absolute equality or equality in all respect can not be maintained, people preached and promised partial equality all the time in history. Religion promised equality in heaven and un-visible reality remained dream to all generation of human beings. Rousseau in 17th century raised voice for equality in politics and later in 19th century Karl Marx preached another principle of financial equality.
Human being is dimensionally unequal in physique. Tall, short, thin, obese, bald, hairy, broad, narrow and others are his visible physique. Fast, slow, steady, clumsy etc are his physical characteristics or physical capabilities. They are no where equal to one person to another. There are mental capabilities too in form of logic, ideas, thought etc that dictate and control physical action of human beings. If compared, no two persons are equal mentally as well. Even Siamese twins develop different capabilities physically and mentally. Amidst these unequal capabilities, we can not and should not expect equal output from equal input in them. Thus, we can draw a conclusion that if people act in their full capacities, the outcomes or productions of their action in quantity and quality both are never equal to one another.
More bizarre is consumption pattern. Non-producer like children, sick and old people may need more than adult producers. Investment in children is a saving for their parents or society and that in sick and old adults is liability of their past investment on their children or society. Consumption of adults is too never equal to one another. Thus, we conclude that neither input (consumption) nor output (production) of any two individuals is equal.
There are different options of input and output. The first one is equal input for equal output. Soldiers of one rank in a barrack get equal consumption and they are expected to have equal fighting capacity. So the students of a class in a hostel are expected. Second option is equal input but an unequal out put. Children may demand consumption equal to adults’ or even more but they never are asked for equal output. So may be among adults too. The third option is of unequal input and equal output. Two workers of one profession in two places may have different consumption possibility but they produce equal products. Or in a paid party, each individual pays equal amount even if they consume more or less.
The fourth option is unequal input and unequal output. As human beings are not equal, the consumption can never be equal and can not be equal their production too. ‘They give what they can do and get what they produce’ – says capitalist system. ‘Human being should give what he can and should get what he needs’ is communists and Utopians too. All of them accept unequal output for unequal input in one or other form. While capitalist allows the producer to save the positive extra output (output minus input), communist likes to distribute that extra output among the less fortunate ones who have negative extra output for the sake of just distribution. In other words while capitalism practiced individual freedom, communism stressed on community benefit.
With guaranteed minimum requirements of livelihood, every individual in capitalist structure moved towards self prosperity development and flourished. On the other hand, the protagonist of communist establishment drove hard the hungry enthusiastic mass towards euphoric dream of absolute equality and gained success to provide basic animal requirements of livelihood to all within the system. But hardly had a new generation been matured, the well fed generation could not give them more than what they had, they opted negative prosperity desire i.e. to have the same time value for less work. Lack of individual freedom and development of negative prosperity became the rood cause of the fall of Soviet Union, the father nation of communist establishment. Snooping the pressure of negative prosperity, China, the biggest communist establishment in world, quickly shifted its position and allowed prosperity desire act positively and prospered very much within a quarter of a century.
20th century was a struggle between haves and haves-not or a struggle between more and less prosperous. It also showed that if not provided basic minimums, mass will revolt against the establishment and if positive prosperity is not allowed to work, negative prosperity desire starts automatically.
