Welcome to episode 9 of Prout Consciousness where we will be considering Prout’s concept of utilisation. A modern consumer, who chooses from selections of commodities on physical and online shelfs, would not think too much about the nature of utilisation. You pick, consume and dispose, all by established means. Still, you can be sure that the people behind the production, delivery and management of those products themselves think a lot about what utilisation, non-utilisation and even misutilisation may be and how they may evolve in the near future. In fact, if you were able to look into their minds you would find that you are a commodity consumed by them—your use of whatever they offer you is essentially of utility value to them in their process of tightening their grip on capital and markets.

The term utilization owes its origin to the word utility, the state of being useful. In economics, utility means the capacity of a commodity to satisfy human wants. We quench our thirst by water. The capacity of water to quench thirst is its utility. Everything has got some utility, and a thing may have utility in more than one way. We drink water, for instance, we produce electricity out of it, utilize it for irrigation purposes and can turn it expedient to navigation purposes. Thus the term utilization connotes that objects having utility should be made fit for human use and consumption.

Here we understand that utility has to do with relationship. It links up us as consumers with the commodities under our consideration and even with their background. For instance, if a stone consists of particular minerals—how and where did those minerals get in there and would it be possible to retrieve them and use them for some other purpose than just being stone? In other words, utilisation has environmental and ecological aspects, it has to do with recirculation, belonging and the greater web of life. Commodities and their utility is not only something limited and isolated that suddenly appears before us. Prout, being a theory of full expansion of all human resources and universal potentialities, raises fundamental questions regarding the scope of utilisation, what utilisation should serve, and how we may enable ourselves to use things most properly. In this episode we will delve into these aspects one by one.

There is a difference between utilisation and utility. We obtain certain things for the satisfaction of our needs but we do not obtain unlimited satisfaction from any available objects. The resultant dissatisfaction goads us towards discovering new objects, and thus human economic activity rolls on. To realize potentiality, to satiate our need in little-known objects is the real spirit of utilisation. So far, economists have given importance to utility but not to utilisation. Prout stands for utilisation that includes both pre-production and post-production stages, and give full freedom to human beings at any point to liberate themselves from bondages of limitations by way of proper utilization.

Human effort is pin-pointed on a single idea: liberation from bondages of limitations and attainment of boundless happiness. Scientific and technological invention and product development are based on this psychology. A proper interpretation of human history will substantiate this fact. We humans invented fire because we did not like darkness and cold. We invented the wheel because we wanted to reach places with less physical trouble and to conquer the bondage of time. We constantly struggle against the physical bondages of time, space and personal limitations. A systematic study of history reveals that all economic, social, political, scientific and technological efforts revolve around the attempt to break through these three-dimensional bondages.

In this perspective, the significance of a scientific approach to the utilisation of mundane and supra-mundane properties becomes clear. The world is a mystery to us, one that needs to be explored and realised. We need to evolve ourselves in order to be able to use the world for our further liberation from bondages of limitations. Therefore, we explore to identify useful objects which we may consume. We detect and even invent usefulness. We reject objects in which we do not find any utility. So, utility and consumption are basically interlinked. Likewise, need and utility are reciprocal. When we feel the need of a particular object, we may even invent utility in it. We see something attractive, develop a craving for it and say to ourselves and others: I could use that jacket, I could wear it at the festival, and so on.

In light of this, it becomes apparent that the one who controls utility controls need and consumption, production and the entire market. According to capitalist economy, profit is the vital consideration, and to make profit surplus value is a must. In classical capitalism, human labour is the primary means of generating economic surplus: you get someone to work for you and you give them less than their share of the gain, and take the remaining surplus yourself. This centralization of wealth in the hands of a few is called taking the profit. The system of unlimited private ownership makes such a system possible. As a result, in the capitalist system human labour becomes a commodity. Utility itself becomes a commodity. They sell lifestyle, craving and even nobility, don’t they?

On the other hand, materialist socialist economic principles are based on labour value theory, that the amount of labor that goes into producing an economic good is the source of that good’s value, and socialist systems views that the labourer is the rightful recipient of that value and not any other agency. Both these economic schools neglect the basic principles of economics and the motive-force of economic activities, namely striving for a higher good.

Prout’s economy is a consumers’ economy. It does not belong to private owners, neither to society but to those who consume the goods and services they produce themselves. Neither labour nor profit but consumption is the guideline. Capitalist economy is a stumbling block to the principle of consumption. When wealth is assigned to a particular person the wealth loses its universal character. Private property can mitigate the need of a particular person but it checks collective progress. On the other hand, socialist command or planned economy, which includes extensive or total governmental control of wages and pricing, miniscule property rights, government ownership of key businesses and industries, and consequently robust black markets, vitiates the possibility of utility of wealth by the masses. Both these systems are forms of capitalism—private and state capitalism—that do not work for people first.

Prout’s consumption-motivated economic system is based on the principle of maximum utilisation. When an object can mitigate the need of the maximum number of people in the minimum duration of time, it can be claimed that the object is utilised to its maximum limit. Maximum utilisation is based on rational distribution. In the absence of rational distribution, maximum utilisation remains a theory only. Prout states that the control over utility should be distributed and not centralized. Only economic democracy based on a system of economic decentralization can make for proper utilisation of universal potentialities. Later in the episode we will discuss the main human potentialities that are available for the establishment of such economic democracy.

The Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, in his Manual of Political Economy, realised the significance of maximum utilisation. As a mark of departure from other classical economists, even from his teacher Leon Walras who was the first to formulate an economic doctrine based on theory of utility, Pareto used the term ophelimity, marginal utility, as a measure of purely economic satisfaction, so he could use the already well-established term utility as a measure of a more broadly based satisfaction encompassing other dimensions as well, such as the ethical, moral, religious, and political, by which he meant “desirability of a commodity or its power to satisfy a human want”. To Pareto, “maximum utility could not be obtained only when one moves from a given position in such a way that the utility of other individuals remained unaltered.” Pareto also defined that in the absence of optimum distribution, maximum utility is impossible. But Pareto was not free from the influence of classical capitalist utility theory. He believed in free trade and in the doctrine of maximum satisfaction resulting from free competition. According to Prout, competition should be supported at the production stage, that is among workers, but free trade may only be introduced among economic units that are self-reliant as far as basic commodities are concerned. Pareto contradicted his own theory of optimum distribution by supporting universal free trade.

Academic utilisation theory reaches back at least to the medieval pre-Renaissance philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He thought that the value of an action lies in its aim. If, for instance, we decide to help a person in need our action may have some utility value. However, if we decide to aid that person so that he or she never will be at our mercy again our action has still greater utility value. Another early propounder of utility theory was friar Francisco García of Valencia who developed the idea of “subjective utility” meaning that the utility of an object is always relative; it varies from person to person, from place to place and over time. This seems plausible enough; today most of us hardly see horses anymore although in certain places some people do keep horses still. Of particular significance to García was, however, the personal factor, that utility is subject to variations in particular supply and demand. This commercial concept of consumerist utility came to be accepted as a main factor in the fixing of prices. According to García, utility value arises not from the object or its intended use but from how useful others think it is.

British utilitarian philosophers taught that all that exists are various physical sensations. Concepts such as God, morality, human rights and the soul were argued to be unprovable and abstract. The British philosophy of exploitative materialism was developed further to include a particular political philosophy stating that decisions about the utility of an object or person was to be decided by politicians. At the time, the poor did not have the right to vote, the middle-class had, the aristocrats were all powerful, and the industrial capitalists were rising. In practice, this new philosophy meant that only the wealthy would judge the utility of the people and the country’s resources and that they would do so on the basis of material utility value exclusively, and not out of general human concern. Following the British wave of utilitarianism, further thoughts about utilisation were developing throughout in Europe. Some offered that utility value is purely objective, such as is found in numbers and in inanimate matter. Others emphasised subjective significance with relevance to the needs and sentiments of prospective consumers. No one took into account further needs and longings of human beings beyond the physical, or examined consequences to other living beings and to the environment. On the whole, the emerging self-serving materialist European utilitarianism fitted hand in glove with the needs of the emerging colonial powers of the time, paving the way for political imperialism and economic fascism.

Following in the footsteps of Adam Smith and his ideas of universal self-service, stock market millionaire and star philosopher of global capitalism David Ricardo justified the rule of industrial capitalists and in the process demonstrated that class conflict is essential for economic growth. Ricardo came up with the doctrine of laissez faire that allows capitalists full freedom to exploit without government interference. Utilisation was made an exclusive private affair. Any measure of government welfare policy was opposed because it would interfere with the “liberty” of the capitalists and the sacrosanct dynamics of capitalist markets. Under the auspices of James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill, racism and cultural bigotry were included in utilitarianism, in keeping with the spirit of those days embodied in Rudyard Kipling’s ballad about “the white man’s burden” as a civilising mission. The rest is history, as they say.

Prout’s theory of utilisation cannot be likened to Jeremy Bentham’s theory of pleasure-pain psychology. According to Bentham, utility is associated with ethical problems causing pain or pleasure. Bentham, often referred to as the founder of utilitarianism, described utility as properties in objects that “tend to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness” and “prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.” You may be guessing what I think of this particular statement, especially if you already listened to episode 10 on theory. What is good and bad to one or some people can never be the universal yardstick of proper utilisation. There is always the universal beyond, which may require each one of us to chose a bit of pain or discomfort every now and then in order to generate a greater good, such as when we decide to struggle instead of giving in to passiveness and irresponsibility. There is something deeply immoral to Bentham’s narrow-minded, sectarian utilitarianism that allowed for most brutal exploitation of people and their environments both at home and abroad.

John Stuart Mill, the father of classical economics, in his book Principles of Political Economy defined utility with reference to productive and unproductive labour. According to him, productive labour is that which is employed in creating permanent utility, whether embodied in human beings or animate or inanimate objects. Mill divided the utilities in three broad categories based on the nature of labour employed or embodied. Prout also agrees that in the embodiment of utility, human labour—physical, intellectual or spiritual—is an essential factor.

Recent work on utilisation has provided us with volumes of analyses and data from around the world resulting in complex mathematical theories and models of utility and utility maximisation. Still, they do not deal with the subjective reality and further progress of humanity. Neither do they bell the cat as far as global poverty and widening disparities are concerned. As Proutist thinker Taraka Ghista points out, politically and economically there is no effort to address for instance the World Bank’s structural adjustment programmes as a continuation of western exploitation of poorer countries. Through these adjustment programmes, governments are forced to practice “austerity”. Now, how can people hope to progress of the are forced to labour under the burden of imposed austerity? How are they to fit their dreams and visions of a better world for their near and dear ones into the framework of hostile foreign agency? The story of the last 400 years of global economics is the story of the dominance of western empires and recently China. These empires have practised economic and military imperialism and environmental destruction, something Ghista names as the elephant in the room of current development theory.

Human need is endless. Need multiplies as human nutrition undergoes changes. Human needs change their character, quantity and quality in relation to changes in human behaviour owing to new inventions in science and technology, to our changing mentalities, sentiments, mental scope and spiritual realization. Human nutrition is becoming more and more subtle. Mere mundane objects can no longer satisfy us. We are searching for still subtler properties to satisfy our thirst for richer and more meaningful nourishment. Today, many are no longer satisfied with getting a mundane job only but want more and more education and possibilities to surge forward in life towards more subtle and sublime achievements.

In view of this fact, Prout has augmented the scope of economics to the field of the supramundane and spirituality. To the highly complex, delicate and developed human structure, the nature of pabulum will be supramundane and spiritual. The main import of utilisation lies in this very fact. As discussed in episode 2, Prout’s world-view is rooted in the experience of consciousness. Socioeconomic theory based on such experience brings about the realisation that even so-called crude material objects are subtle and sublime, not to speak of living beings such as plants, animals and human beings. Every amoeba and even every cell has its own mind that science has not yet paid attention to. There is still much to learn and Prout prepares for it.

Earlier we learnt that the idea of utilisation is quite ancient. Even the great Buddha included proper occupation and proper work in his eight observations on proper living. Why do we need a theory of progressive utilisation? The propounder of Prout, Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, commented that “the physical body is imperfect and impermanent because it is under the bondage of time, space and person. Human beings have an incessant and indomitable desire to liberate themselves from the bondage of relativity. If there were no such longing, there would be no intellectual development. Those who are struggling hard all the time for physical existence get little time for mental development. The problem of bread and butter will stagger the development of mind. The guarantee of equal opportunity and minimum requirements of life to all is an essentiality for the well-integrated elevation and evolution of the human personality.”

In order to guarantee equal opportunity and minimum requirements to all Prout promotes maximum utilisation of all sorts of environmental, individual and collective potentialities. Now, when we think of utilisation we think of resources, generally defined as physical and material capital in such forms as labor, land, mineral wealth, education, knowledge, technology, flexibility, availability, etc. If we look closer, resources are found both in the form of manifest capacities and latent potentialities. A capacity is actualised potential—an effective skill and strength. It should be used at a maximum in the service of progress. A potentiality, on the other hand, needs to be identified and harnessed. An active capacity may also have further potentiality that may be detected in the process of its conscious use. Just think of it, every time our consciousness expands, our world changes a bit because things look different, isn’t it? Therefore, Prout uses the term potentiality in general, not resources, and advocates the maximum utilisation of all sorts of potentialities—physical, psychic and spiritual. There is in fact fresh potential in everything there is, and its utilisation depends on the further evolution of both our external and internal environments. So, Prout is the theory of maximum utilisation of potentialities, a theory of continuous inner and outer development.

In capitalist society everything including human beings are given commercial value and is reduced to mere commodities. You, me and everybody have economic value and no other value under capitalism. This certainly degenerates the human standard and the ways people get to look at themselves and their opportunities in life. Rather, human beings are converted into consumerist robots, and subtle and sublime human aspirations and sentiments are neglected.

In the world today there is tremendous loss of human power due to the most defective scheming of decadent capitalism. As we will learn in episode 11 from our discussion of the first fundamental principle of Prout, most of what passes as capitalism today is really not capitalism but pseudo-capitalism where there is little interest in the production of goods and service of actual value to ordinary people. The vultures of pseudo-capitalism are themselves consumed with depraved ideas of enriching themselves by financial instruments far removed from the reality and interest of the actual society of human beings. Those fantasy-fuelled speculators live in an abstract heaven heading for the very concrete hell of total financial implosion.

Mental resources include human mind and intellect. Their expression in education and skills is generally termed “human capital”. These mental resources are subtler than physical resources. Anything conceivable only as psychic is subtle, and that which is conceivable as ideas as well as something physical may be defined as crude. It is in this sense that human capital is subtler than physical resources. Care should be taken that these potentialities do not get exhausted in the pursuit of consumer goods only. If the accumulated subtle wealth of developed human beings, the educated people, is not used for human liberation we may as well call it intellectual capitalism, self-serving and antisocial.

Our capacity for work and enjoyment actually depends on our mental strength, stamina and intelligence. These are matters of fresh attainment and not just of relaxation and recreation. More specifically, mental resources bring about new ideas and technological inventions, that is, the whole range of intellectual expression. There should be proper opportunities for intellectual development through educational institutions, mass media, cultural institutions, etc. Education and communication should not be commercial first but service through and through. The real purpose of education is to enlighten the mind towards freedom, to create a consciousness towards real values of life, and to enhance moral and spiritual values in society in general. And the real value of communication lies in its ability to convey a growing sense of common purpose. Many persons are endowed with higher intellectual potentialities. These potentialities should be utilised to promote human progress for all and not only some success for a few in face of a passive majority. No wealth, be it intellectual, physical or spiritual, should be the monopoly of a single person, family or group.

The third potentiality possessed by a person and by society is the spiritual. Spiritual resources include knowledge and techniques—philosophy and practice—useful for broadening and expanding the mind. These lead to the development of higher qualities such as honesty, integrity and self-sacrifice. Spiritual potentialities are the subtlest of the three types of potentialities possessed by an individual, and for this reason they are a bit harder to acquire. Unfortunately, the classical utilitarians as well as modern economists failed to recognise the spiritual. Like so many western philosophers and scientists they failed to do so because spiritual practice disappeared with the onset of dogmatic ritualistic religion. Now dogmatic religion has waned and even disappeared from the life of many but the vacuum of the absence of spiritual practice still linger on. The wisdom of Prout is that its theory promotes spiritual practice and calls for maximum utilisation of spiritual potentialities and not only of the physical and psychic. Utilisation of all three types of individual and collective potentialities will provide for maximum and proper utilisation of all potentialities available in the external universe, as promoted by Prout’s fundamental principles featured in episodes eleven to fifhteen of this series.

One thing more should be mentioned with regards to Prout’s concept of proper utilisation. Side by side with the exploration of nature’s latent resources the worth and value of all living beings and even inanimate matter should be recognised. Everything and everybody have utility value and they also have existential value. The existential value is universal and the same to all. All of creation is the expression of pure consciousness and therefore has the same existential value. This common factor of extraordinary value neds to be properly communicated to one and all. It is the only value of sentimental worth to all that will enable true unity to grow among us all irrespective of our diverse backgrounds and aspirations. Narrow-minded interests give priority to utility value over existential value. People dominated by ideas of utility value think nothing of disturbing or even destroying ecological balance, which is but a vague existential phenomena to them as it does not really concern their limited sense of utility. Most, if not all, of the so-called green consciousness of modern corporations is the result of government and public pressure and not the expression of a genuine concern for the welfare of all. Only an impartial concept of proper utilisation can give all living beings their existential due and secure fair use of all natural, individual and collective resources.

Maximum utilisation does not mean excessive production that destroys the environment such as in capitalism or state capitalism. Nor does it refer to one nation overproducing a product so as to control global prices and then take over markets in other countries. Such misutilisation arises from a lack of sense of universal existential value. Economic or industrial growth is not the goal of human life but a mean for further and subtler and more sublime development. This is what is meant by progressive utilisation.

In this episode we have examined Prout’s concept of utilisation. Some material by Taraka Ghista has been of particular value for this episode. Shrii Sarkar did not publish himself on the subject of utilisation in particular. Taraka’s rendering of published notes from Shrii Sarkar’s informal sharing about utilisation in the late 1960s made my job of this episode easier. My sincere thanks to him.

That is all for this episode, thank you and goodbye for now.