According to Osho, socialism, sold as a way to provide basic necessities, is unnecessary and self-defeating: science and efficient organization can supply food, shelter, and clothing better without socialism. Socialism mainly equalizes poverty, flattens individuality, and breeds stagnation. The deeper human need is uniqueness and mental growth; inequality energizes creativity and progress, making capitalism a more natural, dynamic order.
Making everyone equal to give them basics keeps people poor and dull; we can meet needs without that and let people stay unique and grow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What about socialism not as a means of creating equality but only as a means of providing everyone with the basic necessities of life?
The less successful capitalist countries and the undeveloped countries, the poor countries that have no capitalism at all, have become more and more socialistic, while America has not become socialistic. According to Marx, socialism is a natural outgrowth of capitalism so America should be the first socialist country. It has not been so. Socialism exploits the jealousy of the poor. To me, it is the greatest exploitation that has happened on earth. Capitalism has exploited the labor of the poor and socialism has exploited their souls. It is through jealousy that socialism steps in. But through jealousy, no revelation, no transformation can be achieved. It can kill, it can destroy, but it cannot create. Socialism is a fiction. It is not scientific. To me, only a capitalist society is a scientific society. I am not saying that capitalism will remain as it is. It will go on growing and changing…
So all that is unnecessary to teach and waste time, should be optional. Or for what libraries exist? People should go -- if they have an interest in geography and history, they look in the library. But more basic things... And whenever you create something, when your rose bush brings beautiful roses, you have a certain happiness that destruction cannot have. So education should be divided. A part we certainly need, but that too will not be a slave. But the major part should be made creative, he should not be dependent on anybody. Students should be supported in making communes, not factories owned by one individual. The commune owns everything and the commune provides everybody's need. This is my conception of an authentic socialism. VEDANT: SINCE YOU MENTION SOCIALISM, I HAVE A QUESTION. IS SOCIALISM VIABLE, AND IS SOCIALISM RELEVANT TO INDIA?
Another friend has asked: Osho, what is the relationship between the method of meditation and jati-smaran (recollection of past lives)?
But the one who becomes skilled in this—who can fully awaken any day’s memory up to the age of five—will find that the memories begin to awaken completely. And you should test it. As today passes, note down some events and lock them up. After two years, try to recall today. Most of it will have been forgotten. Then remember—and after remembering, break the lock and compare whether what you recalled matches what you had written. You will be amazed—astonished—that besides what you wrote, many more details have come back which you did not even note at the time. They will all be there in memory. Buddha called this alaya-vijnana. There is a corner of the human mind he called the storehouse of consciousness. Like a junk room in the house where we keep all the odds and ends, there is a storehouse that collects memories—where everything from birth after…
The philosophy of sarvodaya or Gandhiism is not concerned with man's growth and expansion; it is not future-oriented. Socialism will never come about through this sort of thinking. In order to bring socialism, we need a philosophy of growth and expansion, a philosophy that believes in the infinite expansion of needs. And its beauty is that as man's needs grow and multiply and as he works hard to achieve them, his intelligence and his soul expand and crystallize in the same measure. And the ultimate crystallization that happens is unique and extraordinary. As a result of this crystallization, which comes with the expansion of needs and their fulfillment, one comes to realize that there is yet another dimension of life -- the dimension of the inner, of the soul. And unless this dimension grows and expands, wealth, affluence and palaces are of no advantage.
Osho: in one of your lectures on socialism, answering sarjano's question, you indicated that the proletariat were 'the lowest'. Is this contradictory to christ's teachings on the poor as being the children of god and the rich as being 'the lowest'? During years of rural development work with poor peasants in latin america, I found them to be 'higher' spiritually than the rich landlords.
Half of the Indians eat only once a day, and the whole country is undernourished. Millions of people go to sleep with a hungry stomach. Now, do you think these people can commit suicide? They have not even been able to be alive, how can they commit suicide? First you have to be alive! Even if you want to commit suicide that much has to be fulfilled first. When all your physical needs are fulfilled, then suddenly a question arises, a new challenge: "Why am I trying to survive?" It is philosophical, psychological: one searches for the meaning of life. Then one can go mad one can commit suicide, one can start being creative. Then all the doors open, good and bad. One can be either lower than the animals or can rise higher than the angels. When all psychological needs are fulfilled -- when you have learnt the most…