By MIKI TASSENI:
IT is becoming routine to hear that the greatest threat to world
economy is the growing gap between the rich and the poor, which
largely refers to such phenomenon in western countries, where it
appears panic gathering pace, if one pays close attention to profound
social disruption in Greece, and possibly various other areas. In some
quarters of the western world there has always been some profound
differences between the rich and the poor, but often on account of
psychic barriers where ‘the poor’ constitute a social class or
quasi-caste that doesn’t want to join ‘the society of the rich,’ for
instance the nomadic Roma traditionalists camping in some trailer
vehicles wherever they go. They shun ordinary employment in favor of
casual jobs and then move on.
The most telling case in the legacy of the struggle between the rich
and the poor is probably Australia, where in the past decade the
government (of the day) was engaged in official and solemn regrets and
apologies that for most of the past century children of Aborigines
were being removed from them for foster care. The reason was that
Aboriginal society tended excessively towards drunkenness and low
disposition for productive labor, more or less like the Roma, that
they may put up some casual work for some marginal needs, but they are
at home using unemployment benefits for cheap foods (municipal
hospices) and cheap beer. The funny thing about those effusive
apologies is when the government admitted removing the children was
racist in nature!
In the United States as well as in South America a mixture of
heritages arises, for instance a portion of older societies in the
forests of Amazonia are not interested in leaving the forests for
urban or semi-urban existence as farmers or laborers. The defense of
their way of life has become as topical an issue as the preservation
of species, where however it is a few mammalian or reptilian and
amphibious creatures like the rare toads of Kihansi which seem to be
getting all attention. Experts say that the number of undocumented
species in high seas or deep oceans, especially for insects, goes into
millions, even billions; what preservation could one figure?
At the time that colonial incursion was starting in South America, it
became necessary to import slave labor from Africa to work plantations
and mines because natives could not be tamed, while the same thing
took place when colonial companies were building railway networks in
Africa. Local people could hardly be put to such work, capable merely
of casual labor for a time in order to pay tax, and then go back to
the village drinking sprees, until there is disruption by natural
cycles of the hunt, grazing cattle, rustling for cattle and even for
women, etc. Indian ‘indentured labor’ took up the task, just as 70
years later Chinese labor that accompanied managers and technicians to
build the Tazara railway, coming without families and taking none.
In that case, there isn’t much need to through literature reviews at
REPOA to find out that poverty is in the first place an attitude of
mind, with nature largely the one to blame for each and everything,
that on the basis of a genetic and psychic ‘origin of species,’ it has
divided the world into two contending camps. There is an enterprising
world that dreams – like Yusuf – of moving from rags to riches, while
another world is neatly dressed before it, that of perennial
under-achievers, those whose evening and night habits are predictable
as being at the communal watering joint, and later at home, for
whatever reason, viciously pound their wives. Plenty of the complaints
about ‘growing gap between the rich and poor’ often come from these
quarters too…
In current global economy, ‘the gap between the rich and poor’ shows
itself to have deepened, while at the same time the gadgets that were
being sold to millionaires not so far back as 16 years ago are now
being sold literally to children, in which case the whole world can
afford mobile phones. Yet Greek parents leave their kindergarten
children at school and leave town, sending a note to the teacher that
she (or they) have no money to feed the child, as they have no roof to
stay, etc. The loss of a job, despite that one receives social
security, is reason enough to abandon a baby or school going child,
because one has no cash to feed her too!
This shocking revelation of what is happening in a country where the
most massive demonstrations have taken place to oppose ‘the growing
gap between the rich and the poor,’ shows profound ethical vacuity or
aridness underlying the protest movement. The deep selfishness that
accompanies abandoning a child instead of sharing poverty and
retaining parental or filial warmth is part of what is embedded in
complaints about ‘gaps’ of poor and rich, that in the final analysis
they are gaps of productivity and disposition, before being in
objective terms also gaps of global economic performance. If one can
deliberately abandon a child, can it be figured out what sort of
opportunities such a person would have messed up in life up to that
point, with such motivation?
It is not entirely clear, on the basis of the topic, what Marx has to
do with all this, and indeed, in what way does it stand out as a
contradiction in Marx himself, since a good number of the
demonstrators seem to be trying to rediscover Marxism as the solution
to the predicament of absence of ‘decent jobs.’ Marx can be enlisted
by either camp, but firstly the camp of those who are driving the
economy and widening the gap, in his famous assertion in The Communist
Manifesto, that ‘at the pain of extinction, the native accepts the
ways of the foreigner,’ which obviously applies to the Aborigines.
They would need to come to near practical reality where ‘extinction’
beckons in order to accept ways of the foreigner, that is, labor,
wages, school and savings.
Yet, what Marx may not have discovered – despite trying to find other
formulae to fit social structures and modes of existence, motion or
lack of it that did not correspond to an apparently dynamic model of
European feudalism moving into capitalism – is that this underlying
rationality is often inoperative. Why do certain social segments or
entire populations seek to achieve and others do not? Could this in a
way be corrected, changed?
Without the benefit of an experiment fit for a Robert Owen and other
utopian socialists it is difficult to say just under what conditions
the non-achievers could be brought to start wishing to achieve. But a
hazardous guess would be that settler-colonial authorities often
removed indigenous people (potential non-achievers) from land to
allocate it to large farmers, and then placed them as an urban
proletariat, where they sulk instead of laboring. Were they placed on
smaller pieces of land with flowing water and a small zone for
gardening or woodwork, as well as potential for sale of such plot or
house for redevelopment, most of indigenous society would start being
brought into the sphere of petty land owners and commodity producers.
So it is entirely possible that ‘at the pain of extinction the native
accepts the ways of the foreigner,’ but it is far harder to adapt to
being a proletariat than to snuggle to colonial or post-colonial
society as a petty owner, producer.
At the same time Marx became the founder of the global anti-capitalist
movement by claiming that the more labor is replaced by machines, the
worse or poorer the proletariat becomes, thus inviting social
revolution. This is probably what many now believe is taking place,
whereas it is also true that commodities have in history never been
cheaper, the case of universal mobile phone accessibility being a case
in point, while the low level of assurance of bread supply or shelter
isn’t a problem of prices, of the low productivity of labor but rather
of structure of expenditure. Cheap municipal housing or loans for
private houses for lowly employed came unstuck – while some abandon
children while trying to stick to their cars; others can’t get their
favorite type of beer.
Just as Somali migrants find South Africa a land of opportunity
because there is a way they would use cash in savings or contributing
to build up the capital of each new migrant, accept long hours of work
and sell at rock bottom prices like WalMart, another nemesis of ‘the
rich are getting richer’ diatribes, only those capable of stretching
their disposition to work can achieve in a price-cutting environment.
Global under-achievers or indigenous populations want to be protected
against the market, so that they are warmly left where they are
traditionally used to be, with Maasai cattle herders the typical
example, used to driving cattle in the wind with loose clothing
permitting air, and scarcely have to bend to do anything while selling
cattle and getting cash. When cheap commodities and rising oil prices
bring ‘land grabbers’ to take over their grazing lands, so that they
are confronted with having to actually labor, Aboriginal type of
situations arise, and vast protests as well.
mtasseni13@gmail.com
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