Dealing with Poverty and Wealth

 

Problem:   Gross inequality exists in distribution of resources. There are severe extremes of poverty and wealth.

 

Proper handling of the distribution of resources between rich and poor is a fundamental part of Gandhi’s strategy for peace and justice. Time and again, Gandhi stressed the link between the issue of poverty, wealth, and resource management, on the one hand, and a peace based on nonviolence, on the other. For example, he pointed out that, “A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf (пропасть) between the rich and hungry millions persists (сохраняется).”

In formulations which are only slightly different from that stark Gandhian statement, an essentially similar point has been made by various contemporaries—e.g., by Pope Paul VI when he stated, “If you want peace, work for justice, ” and by the American Catholic bishops in a recent pastoral letter in which they pointed out that fair and just policies to ensure the economic welfare of all, especially the underprivileged, are crucial to the establishment of peace in the world. Also, there is King’s expression in 1963 of the hopes of America: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal.’” All of this is echoed in a recent statement by the Tanzanian leader Julius Nyerere, “Peace is a product of justice. There is no peace in the world without an effort to deal with poverty and injustice.”

The statements by Gandhi and these recent variations convey a clear message: If injustice prevails, then discontent or hostility (враждебность) ensues, and in discontent (недовольство) and hostility are the seeds of social and political unrest (волнения) or upheaval—and peace cannot prevail.

We have to make a considerable effort in order to perceive clearly the relationship between peace and social justice. In various contexts, that relationship is not always visible to the naked eye. Yet, there is much that lucid scrutiny reveals: All around us, situations exist whereby excessive poverty in the lives of some is triggered and caused by a mathematically proportionate amount of excessive wealth in the hands of others. The superfluous wealth of some is the most important cause of the dire poverty of others. In some contexts, such disparity arises as a result of political systems which allow dominating hereditary concentrations of power, or concentrations due to violence; most   universally, it arises because of the greed and lust for economic domination which so often prevails in human nature. (Economically speaking, there is no reason for us to conclude that greed is a necessary part of human nature; it is a worthwhile assumption that greed is in part the result of centuries of scarcity—but now, for the first time, technology can produce enough for all, and we should expect that greed can abate. Psychologically speaking, within the Buddhist world view greed is one of the three raging fires which consume humans; it needs to be put out for us to attain balance, harmony and true fulfillment.)

Gandhi felt strongly that, mathematically speaking, there is a direct relationship between extremes of poverty on the one hand, and extremes of wealth on the other. (As another twentieth-century thinker put it, “The substance of the rich man’s joy is the poor man’s suffering.”) A direct relationship between extremes of economic oppression and excessive crushing toil on the one hand, and on the other, excessive luxury, superfluity, and idle wastefulness. Between excessive want and excessive surfeit. Similarly, there is a direct relationship between extremes of submission on the one hand, and on the other, extremes of domination. Gandhi felt strongly about this mutual causality and the resulting unfair distribution; he recognized the part that violence plays in it, even the concealed violence of unjust laws.

This is not a viewpoint that is peculiar to Gandhi. Jesus made it plain that having many possessions is a hindrance to spiritual growth, and drastic cutting down is required for any significant advancement or progress to occur. He too was concerned with the contrast between the rich and poor, with the relationship between extremes of wealth and poverty, and the underlying mutual causality. This is driven home by the stark paradox, in the Gospel of Luke, of the logically interrelated outcries, “Blessed are you the poor…” [Мтф. 11: 21] and “Woe to you the rich, for you have received your consolation.” And these statements have deep resonance within the Judaism of the Prophets. The fact that the mainstream Christian tradition has been uncomfortable with that dimension of the Sermon on the Mount, and has tended to gloss over it, accounts for the lack of responsiveness to it of many Christians today. But numerous Christian thinkers over the centuries, such as Fathers of the Christian Church Saint Jerome and Saint John Chrysostom, reverberated such statements from the Gospels.

Thus, Jerome, four centuries after Christ, came up with a quite disturbing rephrasing of the point made by Jesus when he said that no man can be wealthy unless this wealth has come to him either from injustice or from being an heir to injustice. This statement may sound extreme at first, making it terribly uncomfortable for those of us who have been born and raised in the lap of luxury or who have acquired more wealth than we need. At the same time, some feel that the wealth they have accumulated is the legitimate reward for their labor. As a matter of fact, it seems to be the case that certain individuals have gained great wealth who provided needed products or services, while charging non-exploitative rates for these.

In any case, both Gandhi and Jesus conveyed to the well-to-do that enjoyment of the fruits of our labor is legitimate as long as we practice an altitude of stewardship and trusteeship, and acknowledge the responsibility which the possession of these resources places upon us. At the same time, Gandhi (again echoing Jesus) warned that the possession of riches was a potential “hindrance to real growth.”

Gandhi time and again talked about the “wide gulf” separating the very rich from the hungry millions. He felt that such a situation contained the germs of a revolutionary scenario. A blueprint for revolution. Feeling that much violence is constantly being perpetrated towards the poor, Gandhi actually described poverty as a state of violence that we have allowed to come into being. In practice, public opinion focuses so much on specific ads of violence, such as acts of terrorism, that we overlook the existence of persistent, institutionalized states of violence— another significant manifestation of violence in everyday life.

Gandhi’s perception of, the workings of that poverty/wealth interconnectedness has been corroborated by the feelings of a number of enlightened minds in the West. Thus, one of the greatest American Christian activists, Dorothy Day, talked about the cold war being waged between the rich and the poor; and King was very vocal in denouncing that war, and highlighting “the tenacious poverty which so paradoxically exists in the midst of plenty.”

In this day and age when statistics are readily available, we have a general idea of the figures and proportions underlying that tension or “war” between poverty and plenty. We know that about one-quarter of humankind functions in a self-accelerating cycle of affluence, while the remaining three-quarters are plunged in a quagmire of poverty, of misery, from which they cannot extricate themselves. We know that about 20% of the world’s population, in the wealthiest countries, use about 80 % of the resources. We know that, as Pope John Paul II recently recalled, the gap between the “rich north” (the Northern Hemisphere) and the “poor south” (the Southern Hemisphere) is constantly growing. Gandhi holds before us the direct, necessary causal relationship between the extremes. (The fact that the gap between rich and poor is constantly widening—as is well documented by economists, and was mentioned by the Pope in the same statement—should not surprise us, if we consider that the violence of the system is a self-accelerating mechanism.)

What do we do when faced with such a situation? Gandhi suggested four solutions, four lines of endeavor:

 

1. Simplify our lifestyles and practice intentional frugality (бережливость). Basically, what Gandhi calls upon us to do is to simplify for both economic and moral reasons. To change our lifestyle in the direction of frugality (which is akin to the “poverty” mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount) and intentional simplification in terms of energy and resource usage, the “natural way” of doing things, and more contact with the people around us. In the past fifteen or twenty years a number of authors have stressed the intentional practice of frugality, as both the morally and economically appropriate course of action. Among the most significant of these advocates of frugality are Duane Elgin, the author of Voluntary Simplicity, and David E. Shi, who recently published the book, The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture.

Gandhi stated: “… some people accumulate wealth, regarding their greed as their religion.... In proportion as we make our outer life more and more elaborate, we harm our moral progress, and we injure true religion.” (According to Gandhi, true religion consists in direct “service of the helpless” and in whatever fosters that aim.) He felt that in proportion as we make our external life more elaborate, more consumption-oriented, we alter for the worse the distribution of resources in the world, and cut ourselves off from our brothers and sisters who have to get by with the minimum.

 

2. Practice Trusteeship/Stewardship. Gandhi said we should consider ourselves as trustees. That is, we should consider ourselves responsible as trustees for all the goods and the riches, the facilities and the good things that have been given or entrusted to us by a greater Cosmic Will or Providence. These resources are not really ours but everyone’s. They are gifts that we have been entrusted with to share with others in need. Gandhi’s notion of trusteeship is grounded in law, from his training as a lawyer in London and his subsequent legal practice for decades. His conception of trusteeship is also closely related to the “stewardship” of the Gospels (a text which influenced him directly); there, in numerous parables, Jesus called on his listeners to be good stewards.

Gandhian-style trusteeship means practicing a community approach to property and joint ownership of resources. (It might be mentioned that Gandhi himself, from middle life on, was no longer content with the mere practice of trusteeship, but went beyond, to the practice of dispossession and renunciation of most of his earthly belongings, and experienced considerable joy and liberation in so doing. His essential motivation in taking this step was the desire to achieve fuller identification with the destitute (нуждающимися), and to experience a bond of authentic brotherhood with them; such a motivation had been that of St. Francis of Assisi before him.)

 

3. Give the underprivileged (неимущим) the right to work — and to a kind of work which allows for reasonable fulfillment. As opposed to practicing philanthropy, as opposed to giving out alms and nurturing the illusion that we are practicing generosity, Gandhi advocated the practice of basic justice — that is, the extent of justice we, the overprivileged, need to practice before we can think of going one step further to generosity. Although he acknowledged there was an urgent need to help the destitute, he believed that in due time philanthropy should disappear. Basic justice demands that we, the overprivileged, provide the poor and helpless with better job training and/or better work opportunities — such is the Gandhian conception of fostering self-sufficiency or self-help (swadeshi). In other words, helping the underprivileged to help themselves is the greatest gift we can give them.

 

4. Generally, learn to share and give. Practice sharing and giving as a form of selfless service, (for more specific suggestions, see “What Can I Do? ”, numbers 37-40.)

 

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