Life or Scripted Drama?

Capitalism has never been an ideology. It has been, to use a phrase which its very opponent used to define freedom, the recognition of necessity. People recognised what was evolving and useful and articulated it; that, in turn, evolved as humanism, with liberalism as its cognitive script, constituted by democracy in the political sphere and capitalism in the economic domain.

Capitalism does not seek to extract particular human traits from human beings, nor does it question their innate humanity. It rests on the belief, or rather the truism, that human beings are free-willed, autonomous entities and are not meant to act according to a scripted drama. On this basis, they seek harmony of interests.

The irony, and indeed the ontological crisis, afflicting humanity despite its having discovered itself, that is to say, despite its coming to humanism, is that it fancies collectivism as a solution to the crises it often faces. For any problem, it seeks a reversal to the form from which it has evolved. The DNA often works against accumulated knowledge. The educated need to recognise that.

Niraj Kumar Jha