Who should control the riches of the world? The people, or the parasites?
by Hector Dauphin-Gloire
One of the drawbacks of my job is that I live in a small and isolated corner of Africa and rarely get the opportunity to talk to people about politics. Still, when I get the chance, I do like to chat with people about world events -- especially in view of the fact that most of the people I work with have never enjoyed the opportunity to have much formal education, and are consequently hungry for whatever I can tell them about the world outside their region.
It is a lie, though a popular one among the chattering classes of the liberal West and particularly the paid propagandists of capitalism, that education is synonymous with intelligence.
On the contrary, some of the minimally-educated peasants I work with are more creative, intellectually curious, willing to experiment and hungry for knowledge (truly the salt of the earth, to use the expression of Our Lord) than any number of overeducated New York elites who, taking provincialism to a new degree, cannot imagine life outside Manhattan.
One day, I was taking a break from my work with one peasant family and reading a book about Chavez written by the British scholar Richard Gott. I found the book interesting and informative, although I found Gott sometimes too eager to be even-handed; for some reason he talks respectfully about men like the traitor Teodoro Petkoff, who betrayed his cause and his comrades to become a cringing lackey of bourgeois imperialism.
The lady of the household is truly salt of the earth; a migrant from the overpopulated central mountain regions, she is always eager to work hard and to try new farming practices, to make the decision to use birth control in a society where huge families are valued, to share the little food that she has with her neighbors, and to learn about other parts of the world; of course, thanks to the economic order of our world, such a hard working and progressive woman faces every day the challenges of finding food for her family and keeping her children safe from malaria and amebiasis.
She wanted to know what I was reading, and I gave her the basic rundown.
A large chunk of land near my village is owned by a Frenchman whose family bought it in colonial times, and the villagers sharecrop on his land. "Imagine that Y---'s land was taken and shared out among all of you," I said. After my long explanation, this barely literate woman nodded her head. "A good soul," she said.
Looking at the picture of Chavez in his glorious military regalia, she wondered at the idea that a man could have attained this much power -- unlimited authority over an oil rich regional power -- and yet would use his power not for his own aggrandizement, but selflessly for the poorest and weakest, the "least of My brethren," as Christ said.
"We need men like Chavez in this country..."
This for me was an epiphany ... it sums up for me the reason why ever since the Rome of the Gracchi, men of good will, the lovers of justice and the 'good souls' of which this woman spoke, have been fighting against Dives and for Lazarus.
It sums up in its most basic form the heart of the debate between socialism and capitalism.
Should the riches of the world be in the hands of those who work them, those who infuse them every day with their blood, their sweat, their effort, who suffer day by day to put bread on their table, who seek not wealth or power but only a little amelioration of their suffering?
Or should they be monopolized by those who do not work, who live by usury and the manipulation of money and of symbols, who hoard the world's land, its nitrates, its oil, its gold, its copper, its forests, its water, who parasitize the labor and lives of others, who seek to accumulate, accumulate, forever and ever without limit and are never satisfied with their gross and obscene profits?
These are ... as President Chavez has said ... the spiritual descendants of the killers of Christ, of the powers of Rome and Babylon, of the godless merchants and moneylenders of old who now suck the lifeblood out of the world's oppressed masses.
Who should control the riches of the world? The people, or the parasites?
Whatever our disagreements about the form of socialism, whatever our ideas about the form of the economy and the role of the market and of ownership patterns, whatever our feelings about modernity vs. tradition, religion. vs. laicism, authority vs. freedom, all men who love justice should be able to agree on this.
People like the woman I described deserve a chance to use the common property of us all, the natural resources of this world, to world for their betterment and the betterment of others.
* And a system that denies them the chance to do so is an unjust system that deserves to be overthrown -- if not by the ballot then by the bullet.
Yet in spite of the simplicity of this basic issue, people still debate about whether the Bolivarian Revolution is a good thing.
Let us remember that of all the world's leaders, only a handful right now are fighting for the redistribution of land and wealth -- a mere handful, and foremost among them the great and glorious Leader of the Revolution, President Hugo Chavez.
Yet I received also another epiphany in the aftermath of my conversation with Mrs. H---- ... it was about the emphasis of the Bolivarian Revolution on the countryside and the rural peasantry, too often ignored by revolutionaries in the last century who were seduced by the false promise of the Marxist ideology.
Chavez is doing something which goes radically against the grain of the spirit of the times; he is attempting to repopulate the countryside, to build his revolution by empowering the peasantry, by turning the desperate and starving men and women of the shantytowns into self sufficient rural pioneers.
Many of us don't realize how truly revolutionary this is ... a reversal of several hundred years of urbanization. Conventional wisdom in the West identifies progress with urbanization, with getting machines to do our work for us, with ever increasing consumption and comfort, with the accumulation of wealth, with our mastery over nature.
The vision of Chavez goes in opposition to all that, and to the decadent liberal society it has led to -- one where all too many people are flabby, lazy, greedy, unable to sacrifice, to fight for justice, or to be faithful to those they love.
In Venezuela today, and among his allies throughout Latin America -- the MST in Brazil, the peasant movements in Bolivia -- we see the attempt to create a new rural civilization, one that values hard work, pioneering toughness, reverence for nature and Nature's God and closeness to the land.
One based on the quest to live a simple, basic and dignified life and to work for the betterment of society, not the mindless pursuit of pleasure and indolence.
Implicit in the agrarian revolution of President Chavez is a moral revolution, a drive to change human society and human nature, and ... in the decadence of our time, this may just be the moral revolution that will save the soul of mankind.
One of the drawbacks of my job is that I live in a small and isolated corner of Africa and rarely get the opportunity to talk to people about politics. Still, when I get the chance, I do like to chat with people about world events -- especially in view of the fact that most of the people I work with have never enjoyed the opportunity to have much formal education, and are consequently hungry for whatever I can tell them about the world outside their region.
It is a lie, though a popular one among the chattering classes of the liberal West and particularly the paid propagandists of capitalism, that education is synonymous with intelligence.
On the contrary, some of the minimally-educated peasants I work with are more creative, intellectually curious, willing to experiment and hungry for knowledge (truly the salt of the earth, to use the expression of Our Lord) than any number of overeducated New York elites who, taking provincialism to a new degree, cannot imagine life outside Manhattan.
One day, I was taking a break from my work with one peasant family and reading a book about Chavez written by the British scholar Richard Gott. I found the book interesting and informative, although I found Gott sometimes too eager to be even-handed; for some reason he talks respectfully about men like the traitor Teodoro Petkoff, who betrayed his cause and his comrades to become a cringing lackey of bourgeois imperialism.
The lady of the household is truly salt of the earth; a migrant from the overpopulated central mountain regions, she is always eager to work hard and to try new farming practices, to make the decision to use birth control in a society where huge families are valued, to share the little food that she has with her neighbors, and to learn about other parts of the world; of course, thanks to the economic order of our world, such a hard working and progressive woman faces every day the challenges of finding food for her family and keeping her children safe from malaria and amebiasis.
She wanted to know what I was reading, and I gave her the basic rundown.
A large chunk of land near my village is owned by a Frenchman whose family bought it in colonial times, and the villagers sharecrop on his land. "Imagine that Y---'s land was taken and shared out among all of you," I said. After my long explanation, this barely literate woman nodded her head. "A good soul," she said.
Looking at the picture of Chavez in his glorious military regalia, she wondered at the idea that a man could have attained this much power -- unlimited authority over an oil rich regional power -- and yet would use his power not for his own aggrandizement, but selflessly for the poorest and weakest, the "least of My brethren," as Christ said.
"We need men like Chavez in this country..."
This for me was an epiphany ... it sums up for me the reason why ever since the Rome of the Gracchi, men of good will, the lovers of justice and the 'good souls' of which this woman spoke, have been fighting against Dives and for Lazarus.
It sums up in its most basic form the heart of the debate between socialism and capitalism.
Should the riches of the world be in the hands of those who work them, those who infuse them every day with their blood, their sweat, their effort, who suffer day by day to put bread on their table, who seek not wealth or power but only a little amelioration of their suffering?
Or should they be monopolized by those who do not work, who live by usury and the manipulation of money and of symbols, who hoard the world's land, its nitrates, its oil, its gold, its copper, its forests, its water, who parasitize the labor and lives of others, who seek to accumulate, accumulate, forever and ever without limit and are never satisfied with their gross and obscene profits?
These are ... as President Chavez has said ... the spiritual descendants of the killers of Christ, of the powers of Rome and Babylon, of the godless merchants and moneylenders of old who now suck the lifeblood out of the world's oppressed masses.
Who should control the riches of the world? The people, or the parasites?
Whatever our disagreements about the form of socialism, whatever our ideas about the form of the economy and the role of the market and of ownership patterns, whatever our feelings about modernity vs. tradition, religion. vs. laicism, authority vs. freedom, all men who love justice should be able to agree on this.
People like the woman I described deserve a chance to use the common property of us all, the natural resources of this world, to world for their betterment and the betterment of others.
* And a system that denies them the chance to do so is an unjust system that deserves to be overthrown -- if not by the ballot then by the bullet.
Yet in spite of the simplicity of this basic issue, people still debate about whether the Bolivarian Revolution is a good thing.
Let us remember that of all the world's leaders, only a handful right now are fighting for the redistribution of land and wealth -- a mere handful, and foremost among them the great and glorious Leader of the Revolution, President Hugo Chavez.
Yet I received also another epiphany in the aftermath of my conversation with Mrs. H---- ... it was about the emphasis of the Bolivarian Revolution on the countryside and the rural peasantry, too often ignored by revolutionaries in the last century who were seduced by the false promise of the Marxist ideology.
Chavez is doing something which goes radically against the grain of the spirit of the times; he is attempting to repopulate the countryside, to build his revolution by empowering the peasantry, by turning the desperate and starving men and women of the shantytowns into self sufficient rural pioneers.
Many of us don't realize how truly revolutionary this is ... a reversal of several hundred years of urbanization. Conventional wisdom in the West identifies progress with urbanization, with getting machines to do our work for us, with ever increasing consumption and comfort, with the accumulation of wealth, with our mastery over nature.
The vision of Chavez goes in opposition to all that, and to the decadent liberal society it has led to -- one where all too many people are flabby, lazy, greedy, unable to sacrifice, to fight for justice, or to be faithful to those they love.
In Venezuela today, and among his allies throughout Latin America -- the MST in Brazil, the peasant movements in Bolivia -- we see the attempt to create a new rural civilization, one that values hard work, pioneering toughness, reverence for nature and Nature's God and closeness to the land.
One based on the quest to live a simple, basic and dignified life and to work for the betterment of society, not the mindless pursuit of pleasure and indolence.
Implicit in the agrarian revolution of President Chavez is a moral revolution, a drive to change human society and human nature, and ... in the decadence of our time, this may just be the moral revolution that will save the soul of mankind.
posted by Alice at
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
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