What does Prabhupada want to convey by talking about the conflict of communists and capitalists?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. So when Prabhupada says in the Ishopanishad Purport that the communists and capitalists are fighting and they cannot resolve it either by political maneuvering or just complaining about so and so, what does it actually mean? Prabhupada is using the contemporary political situation of his time to illustrate a universal principle.
Generally in Shastra, I’ll talk about a broad principle before I answer the specifics, that in Shastra whenever we feel anything specific, we need to understand that there is a specific principle, there is a specific statement made over here. So you could say there is a specific application. And then we have to look, okay, what did this specific statement mean in its original context? So now communism-capitalism is only few decades old.
So we may know about it. But long before that something had happened, we may not even know about that history. So what did this, what does this statement mean in its original context? The first question.
The second question is, what is the time independent principle underlying this concept, underlying the statement? This is a time specific example. What is the time independent or context independent principle over here? And third is, how does that context independent, how does the timeless principle apply in today’s context, apply today? So in this context, what Prabhupada is saying is, communism-capitalists are fighting and both want to solve, both want to promote their ideology and they feel that is how they are going to solve problems. They want to do one-upsmanship.
But he is saying it’s not going to work. So he basically, he is saying that capitalists are trying to do political manoeuvring, you know, try to sign a deal with this, do a deal with this and try to move, gain more power. And communists are trying to take the moral high ground.
They say that, actually all the wealthy people have taken the work, the money that is earned by the labour of the poor people and they are becoming wealthy. This is a discrimination. Change it.
So what they are saying is, fighting for stolen bread means, they feel that the bread which is earned by the poor people is simply accumulated in terms of the huge amount of profit by the wealthy people. So the labourers, especially in the industrial revolution, it was that the labourers would work and sometimes in factories, the conditions would be inhuman. And the capitalists would become fabulously wealthy and the people in general would be terribly, in terrible distress.
So he is saying that, just like, oh you have stolen bread, you have stolen bread, that is not going to solve the problem. He says, both of them have to acknowledge that ultimately everything belongs to God. So he is taking a conflict at his time and he is saying, at a material level you cannot solve it unless you acknowledge the proprietorship of God.
So Isha has a principle, how without applying it, we cannot solve problems. That is what he is focusing on over there. So in today’s world, capitalism, communism, that battle is not there so much only.
But there are other battles. There is a battle between two different countries or different issues. And unless they acknowledge God, they are not going to be solved.
So that is the universal principle that we can focus on.