Editing SG31SBE-T (section)

=== Free Competition and Cooperative Harmony ===
'''B:''' But competitiveness is also part of human nature. Wouldn’t such an ideal society ultimately be nothing more than a fantasy? And if we impose a strong order upon society, might the result not instead be the mass production of idlers?

'''A:''' That is a concern one commonly hears. But just as human beings possess a capacity for competition, they also clearly possess a capacity for harmony. Indeed, it is precisely this capacity for harmony—this sociality—that is characteristic of human beings. Unfortunately, we have not yet attained a form of organized life in which it can be sufficiently cultivated and developed.

Consider the early stages of human evolution. Human beings did not possess the sharp and powerful weapons found naturally in other animals—fangs, claws, and the like. In the natural struggle for survival, therefore, they were at an extreme disadvantage. ''Why, despite this, were they able to become masters of the earth? Was it not because they possessed reason and creative power, and because they lived lives of cooperation and solidarity? If that is so, individual free competition cannot be the primary principle of human society; the primary principle must instead be the sociality of cooperation and harmony. Only within such a conscious society can individual freedom itself be guaranteed and established. This rational mode of existence, I believe, is both the distinctive characteristic and the destiny of humanity. ''

We can understand this quite well simply by considering the course of an individual human life.

From infancy through childhood we may be innocent, but we are virtually self-interest embodied as instinct. At no other stage do we wield the instinct of self-interest so unrestrainedly. Yet as the sphere of life expands from the family to school, and from school to society, self-control increases, we become more social, and as we enter old age we grow increasingly mature. Looking at the facts, I believe that the history of human society will probably develop in much the same way: with the development of reason, it will advance toward an ideal society. Unfortunately, however, present society is still entangled in the net of a capitalist economic system woven by instinctive free competition. It may therefore seem that if economic competition were abolished, life itself would lose its purpose. ''But competition need not be confined to economics. On the contrary, scientific…''

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''…artistic, moral, and other forms of competition will surely bring about an age of true competition worthy of humanity. ''At present, however, all the diverse capacities of human beings have been driven down the single path of economic competition and, grotesquely, have themselves been turned into commodities. We have become so accustomed to this that we have even constructed the conceptual formula “human life = economic life.” Consequently, even if people’s livelihoods were guaranteed, we imagine that without economic free competition they would lose all capacity for activity—like a morphine addict deprived of morphine. But I don’t believe that. On the contrary, I believe that it is precisely when we are liberated from economic competition that the true stage of human life will finally open before us. Take manual labor, for example. If it were socially planned and distributed equally, workers and farmers who have traditionally suffered from overwork would of course be relieved of that burden. At the same time, appropriate work could be assigned to those members of society who had previously passed their days in idleness, allowing both groups to enjoy healthy lives in body and mind.

Yet today, while ordinary people have no rice for tomorrow and go hungry, the government has some four million koku of surplus rice piled up in warehouses and does not know what to do with it. In such a merciless and uncoordinated capitalist society, those who work must labor night and day simply to survive. Labor itself therefore comes generally to be hated. But appropriate labor ought, on the contrary, to be a source of joy. ''If appropriate work were available to everyone within a planned society, no one would simply want to be idle. People would come to spend a certain number of hours working less as a social duty than as an enjoyable right.''

Look, for example, at the lives of the people of Ittōen. They obtain only enough food for the day, yet are content with that and work happily throughout the day. Isn’t this evidence that human beings can live contentedly and work without necessarily accumulating private property?