A Reference Guide to Frederick Lewis Donaldson’s List, Republished by Mohandas K. Gandhi [Updated for 2026]
Note On Attribution
The “Seven Social Sins” (also called “Seven Dangers” or “Seven Blunders”) were originally articulated by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in a sermon at Westminster Abbey in 1925. Gandhi republished this list in his newspaper Young India on October 22, 1925, noting it came from “a fair friend.”
He later gave the list to his grandson Arun Gandhi shortly before his assassination in 1948, calling these imbalances sources of “passive violence” that fuel active violence. The list itself is Donaldson’s; Gandhi’s contribution was recognizing their significance and connecting them to his philosophy of nonviolence.
Seven Social Imbalances: Terms and Applications
- WEALTH WITHOUT WORK
Definition: The accumulation or expectation of material resources disconnected from productive contribution or earned effort.
Gandhi’s Perspective: “Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.” (Collected Works)
Contemporary Manifestations: Inheritance systems that concentrate wealth across generations without merit; passive income structures that extract value without creating it; get-rich-quick schemes and speculative bubbles; financial instruments that profit from market manipulation rather than productivity; lottery and gambling economies; social media income divorced from substantive value creation.
What’s Missing: The dignity of labor, the connection between contribution and reward, understanding wealth as stewardship rather than entitlement.
Related Concepts: Rentier capitalism, unearned income, economic rent-seeking, feudalism.
- PLEASURE WITHOUT CONSCIENCE
Definition: The pursuit of gratification, comfort, or enjoyment disconnected from awareness of consequences or consideration of others.
Gandhi’s Perspective: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” (widely attributed, reflecting principle of manasā, vāchā, karmanā from Sanskrit tradition)
Contemporary Manifestations: Consumption patterns that ignore environmental or social costs; entertainment industries that profit from exploitation; algorithmic addiction and attention capture; substance abuse rationalized as “self-care”; sexual pleasure divorced from relationship and responsibility; comfort pursued through others’ suffering.
What’s Missing: Ethical awareness, empathy, sustainable joy, the connection between personal pleasure and collective wellbeing.
Related Concepts: Hedonism, moral hazard, externalized costs, pleasure principle.
- KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT CHARACTER [noun phrase]
Definition: Intellectual capability, technical skill, or information mastery disconnected from moral development or ethical application.
Gandhi’s Perspective: “I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.” (Autobiography)
Contemporary Manifestations: Corporate fraud executed by brilliant financial minds; scientific knowledge weaponized without ethical constraint; academic credentials used to legitimize harm; technical expertise in service of oppression; information warfare and sophisticated misinformation campaigns; “credentialed cruelty”—educated professionals enabling systemic injustice.
What’s Missing: Wisdom, integrity, the cultivation of virtue alongside intelligence, education as transformation rather than mere training.
Related Concepts: Instrumental rationality, technocracy, expertise without responsibility, clever devils.
- COMMERCE WITHOUT MORALITY
Definition: Economic exchange, business activity, or market transactions conducted without ethical framework or moral constraint.
Gandhi’s Perspective: “I do not regard capital to be the enemy of labour.” (Collected Works)
Contemporary Manifestations: Predatory lending and extractive financial practices; planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity; labor exploitation and wage theft; false advertising and consumer manipulation; monopolistic practices that eliminate competition; businesses that externalize all social and environmental costs.
What’s Missing: Fair exchange, stakeholder consideration, business as mutual benefit, commerce as relationship rather than pure transaction.
Related Concepts: Market fundamentalism, shareholder primacy, caveat emptor, amoral markets.
- SCIENCE WITHOUT HUMANITY
Definition: Scientific inquiry, technological development, or technical capability pursued without consideration of human dignity, ethics, or consequences.
Gandhi’s Perspective: “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” (Young India, May 21, 1925)
Contemporary Manifestations: Weapons development prioritizing destructive capacity over peace; medical research without informed consent; artificial intelligence deployed without impact assessment; genetic modification without precautionary principle; social media experiments treating users as subjects; scientific “progress” measured solely by capability, not wisdom.
What’s Missing: Ethical deliberation, precautionary principle, science in service of human flourishing, recognition of limits.
Related Concepts: Technocracy, instrumental reason, scientism, technological determinism.
- WORSHIP WITHOUT SACRIFICE
Definition: Religious observance, spiritual practice, or allegiance to ideals that costs nothing and demands no change in behavior or priorities.
Gandhi’s Perspective: “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness.” (Selected Writings)
Contemporary Manifestations: Performative activism signaling values without action; religious identity without service or charity; patriotism that demands no personal contribution; corporate “purpose statements” unsupported by practice; social movements that require only hashtags, not sacrifice; belief systems that affirm privilege rather than challenging it.
What’s Missing: Authentic commitment, costly discipleship, integrity between professed values and lived practice, worship as transformation.
Related Concepts: Cheap grace, virtue signaling, civil religion, nominal faith.
- POLITICS WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
Definition: The pursuit, exercise, or organization of collective power disconnected from moral foundation, consistent values, or truth-telling.
Gandhi’s Perspective: On passive violence that fuels active violence: “We could work ’til doomsday to achieve peace and would get nowhere as long as we ignore passive violence in our world.” (as reported by Arun Gandhi)
Contemporary Manifestations: Expediency prioritized over integrity in governance; truth treated as tactical rather than foundational; partisanship valued above problem-solving; corruption normalized as “how things work”; politics as spectacle rather than public service; power pursued as an end rather than a means.
What’s Missing: Principled leadership, truth as north star, politics as moral endeavor, governance as service.
Related Concepts: Realpolitik, Machiavellianism, cynical realism, post-truth politics.
Using This Framework
As Diagnostic Tool: These seven imbalances function as a lens for examining personal choices, organizational practices, and societal structures. Where do you observe these disconnections? What gets lost when these paired concepts are separated?
Gandhi’s Core Insight: These aren’t merely moral failings but sources of “passive violence”—systemic conditions that create suffering and instability, eventually erupting into visible conflict. Each represents a fracture between ends and means, between what we pursue and how we pursue it.
The “With” Matters: Gandhi and Donaldson weren’t calling for the elimination of wealth, pleasure, knowledge, commerce, science, worship, or politics. They were insisting these must be coupled with their ethical counterparts: work, conscience, character, morality, humanity, sacrifice, and principle. The separation is the danger.
