(8) Gandhi, Young India, November 17, 1927, October 20, 1927, quoted in Shanti S. Gupta, The Economic Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. Delhi, Ashok Publishing House, no date, p. 170.

(9) Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. New York: Random House, 1937 (first published 1776). p. 14. Amartya Sen comments on this famous passage in his Ethics and Economics. Oxford: Blackwell, 1987, at pages 21-28. Sen points out that all things considered Smith had a balanced view of human nature which recognized the importance of a number of motives other than self-love.

(9A) “A notion of justice oriented towards the needs of the poor is superficially quite similar to the one spelt out in John Rawls’ Theory of Justice [1971]. In contrast to Gandhi’s approach, Rawls’ analysis is not inspired by the spirit of swadeshi or, more particularly, by swadharma.” ** Romesh Diwan and Mark Lutz, “Introduction” to the book they jointly edited, Essays on Gandhian Economics. Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1985. p. 15.

(9B) Adam Smith, An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. New York, Random House, 1937 (1776). p. 14.

(9C) In an address to Christian missionaries in Madras in 1916 Gandhi connected caste with India’s traditional rural villages. “The vast organization of caste answered not only to the religious wants of the community but it answered to its political needs. The villagers managed their internal affairs through the caste system….” He connects caste with Swadeshi, and therefore with the general principle that it is better to reform one’s own tradition than to reject it in favor of foreign ideas. M.K. Gandhi, Economics of Khadi. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1941. p. 6.

(10) Shanti S. Gupta, The Economic Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. Delhi: Ashok Publishing House, no date, p. 176. Gupta cites for this proposition Harijan, August 29, 1936.

(11) See the essays in Nageshwar Prasad (ed.) Hind Swaraj: a fresh look. Delhi: Gandhi Peace Foundation, 1985.

(12) “Gandhi was most dynamic in his outlook. His views on machines, for example, underwent a dramatic change from 1924 onward. A sense of limits grew in him. He was deadly opposed to even the smallest ‘tools’ before 1924 but then he realized his mistake and agreed to use machines.” Shanti S. Gupta, The Economic Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. Delhi: Ashok Publishing House, no date. p. 43. Cf. p. 185. Gandhi made it clear that he opposed not machines as such but their immoral use in an interview published in Young India, November 13, 1924, reprinted in M.K. Gandhi, Economics of Khadi. Ahmedabad, Navajivan Press, 1941. pp. 100-102. The primary problem is not in choice of technology, but in ethics. Factories should be worked, “…not for profit, but for the benefit of humanity, love taking the place of greed as the motive.” Id. p. 101. By the same token, with respect to simple technologies: “The evil does not lie in the use of bullock carts. It lies in our selfishness and want of consideration for our neighbours.” Id. p. 188. (Young India, October 7, 1926). In Gandhi’s attacks on “industrialism” it is not technology as such, but the exploitative system called “industrialism” that is the target. e.g. Id. p. 404.

(13) See Anthony Patel’s introduction to the edition of Hind Swaraj edited by him cited below, note 14.

(14) M.K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. pp. 37-38. In his glossary, the editor, Anthony J. Patel, translates dharma as “duty, natural moral law; religion as ethics and religion as sect.” Gandhi may have gotten the idea that modern civilization will self-destruct from reading one of the books he recommends, which, in turn refers to Morgan’s Ancient Society. “Thus Morgan in his ‘Ancient Society’ points out over and over again that the civilised state rests upon territorial and property marks and qualifications, and not upon a personal basis as did the ancient gens, or the tribe; and that the civilised government correspondingly takes on quite a different character and function from the simple organisation of the gens. He says (p. 124), ‘Monarchy is incompatible with gentilism.’ Also with regard to the relation of Property to Civilisation and Government he makes the following pregnant remarks, (p. 505): ‘It is impossible to over-estimate the influence of property in the civilisation of mankind. It was the power that brought the Aryan and Semitic nations out of barbarism into civilisation. The growth of the idea of property in the human mind commenced in feebleness and ended in becoming its master passion. Governments and Laws are instituted with primary reference to its creation, protection, and enjoyment. It introduced human slavery as an instrument in its production; and after the experience of several thousand years it caused the abolition of slavery upon the discovery that a free-man was a better property-making machine.’ And in another passage on the same subject, ‘The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction.’” Edward Carpenter, Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921 (1889). pp. 37-38. Gandhi’s idea that modern society bears the seeds of its own destruction anticipated Fred Hirsch’s argument that market economies systematically destroy the moral basis without which they cannot function; see his The Social Limits of Growth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976. The first part of John Ruskin’s Unto this Last, which cast a magic spell on Gandhi when he read it in 1904, ends with, “…the economic principles taught to our multitudes….so far as accepted, lead straight to national destruction.” On Ruskin’s influence see Elizabeth McLaughlin, Ruskin and Gandhi. London: Associated Universities Press, 1974.