DHAMMIC SOCIALISM Political Thought of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu

Abstract

Socialism is an idea that arose in reaction to the idea of democracy according to Locke and the liberal capitalist economic thought of Adam Smith. There were three schools of thought that arose as a reaction to political liberalism or democracy and economic liberalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They are: romanticism, socialism, and fascism. Romanticism was a reaction to the rationalism and science that led to the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, which, instead of making the people happier and more comfortable, pushed the majority of people, who were already poor, into desolation and misery. The rich treated the poor like slaves or animals and destroyed their human dignity. The romantics did not propose a comprehensive solution for improving society, and sometimes merely dreamed of the good societies of the past. However, both doctrines aimed to release humanity from enslavement to material things and escape the troubles caused by material things.