How might George Orwell (p. 508) respond to Karman's insistence on peaceful revolution? Is it always possible to confront the forces of oppression and tyranny without using violence?
How does Karman's understanding of revolutionary political change compare with Vandana Shiva's understanding of "Earth Justice" (p. 374)? Can there be environmental justice without the kind of political revolution that Karman describes?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Examine Karman's statement that "the peace of submission to tyranny and corruption . . . impoverishes people and kills their hope for a better future." Why does she call this a "peace of graves?" Do you agree?
Compare the ways that Tawakkol Karman, Wangari Maathai (p. 363), and Vandana Shiva (p. 374) frame the role of women in social action. How do each of these figures believe that positive social change requires the participation of both men and women?
Conduct research into the uprisings collectively referred to as the "Arab Spring." Determine whether or not these uprisings have been consistent with the five principles that Karman outlines (p. 531).
WEALTH, POVERTY, AND SOCIAL CLASS
What Are the Ethical Implications of Socioeconomic Inequality?
Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
—Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13
the frequent condemnations of wealth in the New Testament (one of which is quoted above) are reinforced in nearly all of the world's great religious texts. The major religious figures—including Confucius, the Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed, to name only a few—have consistently taught their followers that focusing on "mammon" (i.e., material things) is spiritually destructive and that allowing fellow human beings to live in poverty is evil. For thousands of years, poverty has been officially condemned by the belief systems that most people in the world subscribe to—yet it persists, and, in many areas of the world, seems worse than ever.
It is difficult to see why the problem of poverty has never been solved, even by societies that clearly have the resources to do so. Understanding this phenomenon means considering how the social mechanisms for distributing wealth are built into a society at a very basic level. The uneven distribution of wealth and the social stratification that accompanies it seem "normal" to most people because they flow directly from cultural assumptions that can be very difficult to question. The Hindu notion of karma, for example, functions as part of an elaborate caste system in which social stratification plays a crucial role in religious duty. Until very recent times, the Christian nations of Europe have viewed members of the aristocratic classes as naturally superior human beings whose right to control vast resources was ordained by God. And in China and other Asian nations, the cardinal Confucian virtue of li, which roughly translates as "respect," is manifest when one consistently acts in a way that is appropriate to one's economic and social station in life. The same religions and philosophies that discourage materialism and encourage charity, therefore, can also contribute to social forces that support the unequal distribution of wealth.
Moreover, religious and philosophical teachings tend to focus much more on poverty as it affects individuals than on the large-scale implications of economic policy. Political economics, which emerged in Western Europe in the eighteenth century, was one of the first great intellectual movements in the world to attempt to deal with issues of wealth and poverty on a large scale. Using all of the tools of modern philosophy, science, and mathematics, the great political economists—figures such as John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill—studied the same set of problems and came to completely different, mutually exclusive conclusions about the causes of, characteristics of, and cures for poverty. In the end, a macro-level, scientific approach has had as little success in eliminating poverty as a micro-level, religious approach has had.
The readings in this chapter, following the historical arc of the approach to wealth and poverty, move from mainly religious and philosophical texts to works of specialized political economics. The readings begin with a brief selection by Epictetus, a member of the ancient Roman school of philosophy known as Stoicism. He argues that it is not poverty that makes people miserable, but the desire for wealth. Epictetus is followed by a selection from the New Testament's Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus tells two parables that deal directly with wealth and poverty and with the Christian duty to take care of the poor.
Three creative works follow these ancient texts. The first is a poem by one of China's greatest Confucian poets, Po-Chu-i. In "The Flower Market," Po extolls the beauty of flowers being sold to the rich while lamenting the societal cost of such luxuries. The second work is an engraving by the eighteenth-century painter William Hogarth. This engraving, entitled Gin Lane, shows a dilapidated London neighborhood whose inhabitants have allowed gin and despair to govern every aspect of their lives. The chapter's other image, Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother, tells a very different story of poverty. This iconic photograph, taken during the Great Depression, depicts a migrant farm worker in Nipomo, California, surrounded by three of her seven children.
The first major economist surveyed in this chapter is Thomas Malthus, who introduced the concept of "overpopulation." Malthus theorized that in any society, population will increase faster than the available food supply, unless it is kept in check by natural catastrophes or by civic regulations. Thus, unchecked population growth will always condemn large segments of a population to live at or below the level of bare subsistence. Malthus's ideas form the basis of Garrett Hardin's twentieth-century critique of food assistance to underdeveloped nations. Such assistance, Hardin argues, is ultimately immoral because it allows a population to grow at an artificially high rate, thus increasing human misery in a severely overpopulated region and guaranteeing the population's collapse. For Hardin, as for Malthus, the most moral institutional response to poverty is to allow nature to take its course when populations exceed the resources of the lands that they inhabit.
A direct contrast to Malthus is given in a speech by Mohandas K. ("Mahatma") Gandhi to a group of British-trained economists in India in 1916. Rather than using his invitation to speak on his plans for "economic progress," as expected, Gandhi questions the very concept of economic progress. He argues that economic progress is inimical to "real" progress, which he defines as moral or spiritual progress. Nearly two thousand years after Jesus first uttered them, Gandhi once again invokes the words quoted at the beginning of this chapter: "Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
Three other selections from the twentieth century portray very different responses to poverty. In the first, French philosopher Simone Weil explans the different kinds of equality that can exist in a society and emphasizes the need for social and economic equality. In "The Day of the Dead," Mexican novelist and philosopher Octavio Paz argues that the Mexican custom of the fiesta—with all of the drunkenness, violence, and transgressive excess associated with it—serves as a crucial counterpoint to the solitary, poor lives that most Mexicans live. In "Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal Society," Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explores both the causes and the consequences of a society where most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few of its members.
epictetus
To Those Who Fear Want
[CIRCA 100 CE]
ADHERENTS OF THE ancient philosophy of Stoicism took great pride in the fact that the two most famous stoics in history were an emperor and a slave. The emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 ce) ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180, during the height of its power. He was born into great wealth and influence and, for much of his life, commanded the richest and strongest empire that the world had ever known. The slave, Epictetus (55-135 ce), lived a life of poverty and simplicity. His name means simply "one who was acquired," and we know very little about his life other than that he gained his freedom and was banished from Rome in 93 ce. He spent the rest of his life teaching students and living modestly in his native Greece.