In a world which sends up astronauts to offer unconscious thanks to our lucky stars for an average per capita food, clothing and temporary shelter and postponement of an imminent nuclear war, it should appear highly unpractical to propose an interpretation of aesthetic philosophy into political economy and social behaviour.
Yet, in our daily human contact we expect and receive a high standard of politeness and unselfishness. Man in the present age is far more sensitive and tolerant than he ever was in the past. It follows, therefore, that cruelty and fear operate mechanically. It is my intention here to point out that peace is easily obtainable when we abolish the mechanical or arithmetical values of cruelty and fear continued in a system of political arithmetic originally designed for cruelty and extortion. The continued result of this system has been a world conflict between highly refined aesthetic values and mechanically operating values of cruelty and selfishness which leads civilization to an almost inevitable destiny of disaster.
The history of Indian culture is of great importance from this point of view. No government, observed Plato, is unjustly condemned by its own subjects. India has passed through various changes in the ruling class, through ages of foreign domination but there has never been one instance of rebellion from below till the present age. The reason, as we shall further see, could only be that change of government was of no importance to the people so long as the traditional mechanism of taxation was not altered. This meant that the ruling class had no power to penetrate deeply into the life of the people, hence those who could not be ruled from above had no reason to revolt from below. This atmosphere of peaceful work based entirely on individual and family enterprise, free from wage earning or imposed routine work was not brought about by any special kind of temperament but by a political philosophy that recognised free labour or art as the centre of value. Writers on Indian culture have not noticed this central principle in our culture and its peculiar system of taxation that created and maintained free art labour inspite of monarchic rule and on occasion, severe despotism.
This idea develops into the thesis that methods of taxation create and change social orientation in every detail. It is the source of all values, material, moral and spiritual. The relationship between Taxation and Culture has to be very clearly understood in a world which faces the greatest cultural crisis in history. Aesthetic refinement is in universal revolt against ancient fetters on cultural freedom. Cultural values cannot be retrieved by extraneous efforts after they are destroyed at their source. Whether a culture should be characterised by factories or cottage crafts, parricide, homicide and secret societies or by ancestor worship, refined etiquette and indifference to material possession is decided by the method of taxation. Historical review and logical understanding of Taxation justifies this view.
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