Finding the Cure for Today's Social Ills
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the European scholars trace back history five thousand years? Can they go back forty million years? We have evidence that this  varṇāśrama  system has been current at least five thousand years. The  varṇāśrama  system is also mentioned in the  Viṣṇu Purāṇa  [3.8.9].  Varṇāśramācāravatā puruṣeṇa paraḥ pumān . That is stated in the  Viṣṇu Purāṇa .  Varṇāśrama-dharma  is not a phenomenon of a historical period calculated in the modern age. It is natural. In the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  the comparison is given that just as in the body there are four divisions—the brain division, the arms division, the belly division, and the leg division—so by nature's way these four divisions are existing in the social body. There exist a class of men who are considered the brain, a class of men who are considered the arms of the state, a class of men who are called the productive class, and so on. There is no need of tracing history; it is naturally existing from the day of creation.
Prof. Kotovsky:  You have said that in any society there are four divisions, but they are not so easy to distinguish. For instance, one can group together different social classes and professional groups into four divisions in any society; there is no difficulty. The only difficulty is, for instance, in the socialistic society—in our country and other socialist societies—how you can distinguish the productive group from the workers.
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  For example, we belong to the intellectual class of men. This is a division.
Prof. Kotovsky:  Intelligent class,  brāhmaṇas . And you can also put together all the intelligents in that department.
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  Yes.
Prof. Kotovsky:  And then the administrative class.
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  Yes.
Prof. Kotovsky:  But who are the  vaiśyas  and  śūdras ? That is the difficulty. Because all others are workers—factory workers, collective farm workers, and so on. So from this point of view there is a great distinction, in my opinion, between socialist society and all societies preceding socialism because in modern Western society you can group all social and professional classes in these particular class divisions— brāhmaṇas ,  kṣatriyas ,  vaiśyas , and  śūdras : intellectuals, productive class, owners of the productive system (factory owners, for instance), and menial workers. But here you have no  vaiśyas  because you have administrative staffs in factories, and you can call them  kṣatriyas , and then there are the  śūdras , the workers themselves, but no intermediate class.
Śrīla Prabhupāda:  That is stated.  Kalau śūdra-sambhavaḥ . In this age