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As we find ourselves in jobless economies, societies in which small minorities consume while the masses starve, we find ourselves forced to rethink the rationale of our current globalization and to ponder the Gandhian alternative. At a time when Freud was liberating sex, Gandhi was reining it in; when Marx was pitting worker against capitalist, Gandhi was reconciling them; when the dominant European thought had dropped God and soul out of the social reckoning, he was centralizing society in God and soul; at a time when the colonized had ceased to think and control, he dared to think and control; and when the ideologies of the colonized had virtually disappeared, he revived them and empowered them with a potency that liberated and redeemed.

Nelson Mandela#81

JusticeGandhiEconomyGlobalization

About this quote

What does it mean?
Mandela calls for rethinking globalization by highlighting Gandhi's approach to reconciling class divisions and empowering the colonized through moral leadership.
In plain terms
We should look to Gandhi's ideas to fix global economic inequality.
What can you take from it?
Moral leadership can reconcile opposing social forces.

Where it applies

  • economic policy
  • decolonization
  • activism

Putting it to work

  • policy reform
  • ethical economics

Questions to consider

  • Can spiritual ethics guide economic policy?
  • How do we balance growth and equity?

Another view

Gandhi's methods may not scale to modern complex economies.

More from Nelson Mandela

  1. He stepped down from his comfortable life to join the masses on their level to seek equality with them. 'I can't hope to bring about economic equality... I hav…

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  2. If I am asked, by credible organizations, to mediate, I will consider that very seriously. But a situation of this nature does not need an individual, it needs…

    Permalink to quote #82
  3. Gandhi rejects the Adam Smith notion of human nature as motivated by self-interest and brute needs and returns us to our spiritual dimension with its impulses …

    Permalink to quote #79

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