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Abstract
Human enterprises work on the principle of complementarity. Nothing is possible except through co-operation and co-ordination. This is because man is basically a social animal. All beings are endowed with needs and the fulfilment of these needs requires joint enterprise. But in the endeavour to fulfil human wants, sometimes the components of the endeavour happen to be on opposite sides and therefore there are complications in such co-operative enterprises. Humanity has an instinct for possessions and the instinct for sharing is not equally strong. Thus it happens that social life is enmeshed in hostile interests. Down the ages, the opposed interests have been broadly ranged on the basis of physical strength which gives the power to dominate and the lack of it that leads to submissiveness: the possession of land and the lack of it, the access to capital-cash sources, and the intellectual and practical competence to organise and exploit capital on the one hand, and the lack of it, culminating in the entrepreneurial interests pitted against the interests of the work force or labour. In the ancient days, possibly, there was a sense of justice but in course of time, the opposed interests naturally became mutually exploitative. It was only in much later times that men in general realised the need for compromise between the opposing interests and the realization of the need for co-operation. Thus in the days when capitalism was rampant, a Karl Marx could prophesy that by the very logic of things capitalism would die out and communism would become the pervasive social system of the world. But it has not happened because capitalism has realized the need for co-operation and the enormous capital requirements of industrial enterprise have made an important innovation in the mobilization of capital that has changed the very concept of capitalism confined to a minority and has made it very broad-based: the innovation of the share market. The legendary opposition between capital and labour has given way to at least a grudging realization and conceding of the need for compromise and enlightened self-interest and accommodation of mutual interests. Communism has not been able to thrive equally because it seems to ignore the human instinct for possession and the reluctance to be altruistic at the cost of self-interest.