Śyāmasundara: So his statement that progress comes through conflict is true, but in the conflict you should take the right side.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is real progress. Right side means on which side Kṛṣṇa is. That is the instruction on the battlefield of Kurukṣetra.
Kīrtanānanda: But what is it that we can make progress on? He is simply thinking in terms of material advancement.
Śyāmasundara: Ethical advancement, he says that there's an ethical element...
Prabhupāda: He has no ethical principle. He does not know what is ethics. Otherwise he would not have supported that animal killing. He does not know what is ethics. He speaks something (indistinct) only. That's all. There is no practical application.
Śyāmasundara: What about the statement that "Peace is stagnation"?
Prabhupāda: Well, nobody is in stagnation, everyone is working. Stagnation means, just like a stagnant water, it has no flow. That is stagnation. But who is, he is not, everyone is acting.
Śyāmasundara: So there is no peace anywhere.
Prabhupāda: No, no, it is not stagnation. Just like we, we have taken to Kṛṣṇa, it is not stagnant. We was going on. We are sending preachers, so we are not stagnant. So the question of stagnation does not come anywhere.
Kīrtanānanda: In the Vedic culture, the thing that keeps it from becoming stagnant is the presence of the brāhmaṇa. The brāhmaṇa community, they give purpose so that all of the other orders, they can remain just as much involved as if they were involved in war because this kind of society that Hegel is describing where there is no brāhmaṇa, there is simply this materialism. So they require war or else they become stagnant. Our answer is that they require the brāhmaṇa community directions so that everyone can work with full energy in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
Prabhupāda: Yes.