Not Much To Lose And A Whole World To Win
A century and a half ago, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of modern revolutionary thought, wrote that a “spectre” was “haunting Europe”.
This spectre, which inspired hope in millions and hysterical fear in the rich and powerful, was, of course, communism.
Today, several spectres haunt the globe. Some of them, such as poverty, hunger and starvation, have been around since well before the time of Marx and Engels; others, such as global warming and potentially catastrophic climate change, could not have possibly been foreseen, even by the genius of the calibre of the famous duo.
These ills ruin the lives of billions and make mockeries of terms such as development, sustainable growth and economic opportunity.
In the Horn of Africa, the scene of one of the most devastating famines in human history in the 1980s, aid workers have estimated that some 24 million children, women and men are at risk of starvation in the near future.
According to UNICEF, 34,000 children die every day of the week, every week of the year as a result of preventable poverty. That amounts to 10 million children a year.
In their year 2000 Progress of Nations report, UNICEF tried to put this outrageous figure into perspective.
“The continuation of this suffering and loss of life contravenes the natural human instinct to help in times of disaster. Imagine the horror of the world if a major earthquake were to occur and people stood by and watched without assisting the survivors! Yet every day, the equivalent of a major earthquake killing over 30,000 young children occurs to a disturbingly muted response. They die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world.”
The UN has also calculated that 1 billion children are denied at least one essential in life, in contravention of its Convention on the Rights of the Child.
By the year 2050 it has been estimated that 1 billion people will have become homeless, or even stateless, as a result of the devastating impact of climate change. These billion souls will, of course, be the same candidates for child poverty and starvation.
An international economic recession and belatedly named worldwide food crisis can only exacerbate these problems.
Uganda and Sudan are to lose out on a vital source of food after one of the world’s largest humanitarian organisations, World Vision, said it was cutting aid to 1.5 million citizens in the two African countries. Dave Toycen, the president of World Vision Canada, blamed soaring costs and countries failing to live up to aid commitments for the fact that the number of people the charity will be supplying with food is going to fall by almost a quarter.
Even the ‘Developed World’ has not escaped the consequences.
Some of the biggest retailers in the USA have begun rationing rice, while the number of people reliant on government-supplied food tokens to eat has soared in what is supposedly a model of economic equal opportunity.
In the context of this crisis, any promises made by the authorities to tackle inequality and deprivation in our own country will fall by the wayside.
The hundreds of thousands of young people who are existing in our own form of poverty, the under-build of affordable housing, dilapidated schools and underfunded hospitals will remain for the foreseeable future. The great and the good will encourage the rest of us to tighten our belts while they secure the obscene profits made from the years of economic boom by sacking workers and cutting investment.
Property developers in Ireland have reacted to the economic downturn by lambasting requirements to ensure that all new housing developments provide a modest 20 per cent of social or affordable housing. One of the biggest recipients of the economic boom is now threatening unemployment on the scale of thousands if they can’t ditch their responsibility to those who can’t afford an exorbitant price to put a roof over their head.
This situation is mirrored across Europe and north America.
In a jarring comparison for the millions struggling to keep their homes and feed their families, there is at least one man who has made so much from the current economic crisis that he can sleep more than easily at night.
John Paulson, a previously obscure hedge fund manager from New York, took home $3.7 billion (£1.9 billion/2.4 billion Euro) in the last year, after betting on a calamity in the US mortgage market. Among the luxuries Mr Paulson has purchased with his newfound super wealth is a $41 million (£21 million/27 million Euro) mansion.
A glaring disparity of economic injustice if ever there was one.
Slowly but surely, however, people are beginning to fight back.
In the last two weeks alone, hundreds of thousands of workers across Europe have been striking in defence of their, already limited, rights.
In England, 100,000 public sector workers joined that country’s teaching staff on the picket line in protest at British government plans to impose a below-inflation cap on their pay rises.
On Friday (April 25), one-third of North Sea oil production ground to a halt as workers at one of Scotland’s largest oil refineries, Grangemouth, walked off the job to prevent their employers, Ineos, reducing their pension allowances.
In Scandinavia, thousands of hospital staff have went on strike to demand their governments pay them a living wage.
In the Twenty-Six Counties, 30,000 health employees have voted for work to rule and possible strike action in response to a Dublin government recruitment freeze in the notoriously neglected health service.
The trade union Impact said there was overwhelming support for the action in a state-wide ballot, which was the largest of its kind ever undertaken by the union.
The ballot news comes as a report by Dr Una Lynch, a nurse and academic at Queens University Belfast, has found that the Twenty-Six Counties could learn many lessons from the Cuban health service.
“Cuba has in many ways been silenced and all too often we receive negative news from the country. It has managed to create a world-class health system however,” Dr Lynch said.
In the parts of the world where poverty is more pronounced, resistance to unacceptable living conditions is also growing.
As reported on this site, Egypt has witnessed riots and factory occupations in the face of severe bread shortages.
The people of Paraguay have elected Fernando Lugo, a former catholic bishop and proponent of Liberation Theology, on a platform of agrarian reform and wealth redistribution.
Meanwhile, the governments of Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela continue to pioneer alternatives to a corrupt and lethal economic system.
All of the above is confirmation of IRA volunteer Mairéad Farrell’s assertion that “capitalism can offer our people nothing”. Although Mairéad’s life was prematurely ended by representatives of those who continue to rule and rob the world, her ideas are clearly alive in struggles across the world.
This May Day, as working people across the world march in memory of those who gave everything for their class, we would do well to remember that, while Marx and Engels did not foresee all the torments the future would throw at us, their claim that billions of us have not much to lose and a whole world to win remains very, very true.