A classless world in the offing?
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Maswood Alam Khan
SLAVERY in its traditional sense is almost non-existent today though sounds of emancipation of slaves are still heard from closed societies at different corners of the world. Slavery has been around since ancient times and it has gradually been abolished with voices of human rightists growing louder. Discriminations on the grounds of race, gender, age, colour etc., are on the wane for some time since the later part of the last century though today the weak are still discriminated against the strong, the frail against the burly.
Slavery and discriminations are still there, only in different garbs. Financial institutions, for example, are still holding us to slavery. One in need of money today capitulates to any demand from one who holds money, much more abjectly than the way a slave in the 18th century used to supplicate to his master.
Machines have taken over the slavery and the moneyed have taken over the machineries. Men have been dependent on machines and have thus become slaves to machineries. The student who left his calculator at home and failed a test in math when he was asked about the sum of 2+2 is also a slave. His slavery ironically is to an electronic calculator.
Today, the humanity is divided by a line between the haves, the masters and have-nots, the slaves. The globe, too, is demarcated by a clear line between the north, the richer and the south, the poorer. The world was also categorised into three parts: 'First World', 'Second World' and 'Third World'. The First World belongs to the rich, the United States and its allies who proclaimed themselves democratic, the Second World, the Soviet Union and its allies, to the proletariat who fought against the bourgeoisie to establish communism and the Third World, the non-aligned and neutral countries, to mainly the poor countries who were sidelined as developing democracies or despicable autocracies.
Some people disparage the term Third World and fancy to call the group of the poor 'Developing World', 'Global South' or 'Majority World'. The growing use of the term Developing World led to a growing sense of solidarity among the nations blessed with lesser fortunes to unite against the dominance of the wealthier and the more powerful. Our Bangladesh is deemed a member of the 'Majority World' or -- a decent metaphor for the term, 'Third World'.
Perhaps for the first time in history Robert B. Zoellick, the World Bank Group president, last Wednesday has gone on record to dismiss the term "Third World" publicly, stating that the global economic crisis of 2009 vis-a-vis the rise of developing countries in the global economy, was the "death-knell" of the old concept of Third World. The World Bank has thus finally acknowledged, what it should have done 60 years ago when it was founded, that the term "Third World" was a wrong, and perhaps an immoral term smelling something like slavery in reference to developing countries in the world. "If 1989 saw the end of the 'Second World' with Communism's demise," said Zoellick in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C., "then 2009 saw the end of what was known as the 'Third World'.
It's refreshing for us to hear that from now on we won't have to bear anymore the stigma attached to being a man or a woman of the Third World. It's a victory for the 'Majority World', a pleasant outcome of team spirit among the developing countries who of late have been doggedly determined not only to remain non-aligned but also to run in competition with the West. In triumph we should recall what in 1955 the First Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru said in the Bandung Conference of 29 countries from Asia and Africa: "I propose to belong to neither the First nor the Second World, whatever happens. If we have to stand alone, we will stand by ourselves, whatever happens.
We do not agree with the communist teachings, neither do we agree with the anti-communist teachings, because they are both based on wrong principles". With the end of the Second World in 1989 and with the concept of Third World declared outdated by the World Bank, Nehru is today proven right in his assertion that teachings espoused by the First and the Second Worlds were based on wrong doctrine.
Countries of the 'Majority World' have shown in the recent global recession how to remain stable and maintain growth, in spite of their poverty and fragility. It is the countries of the so-called Third World who are now capturing an ever increasing share of global economy. Not only in China and India, but also in South East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, the economies are vibrating with vigour and zeal. The day is not perhaps far away when China, once a country belonging to the Second or the Third World, will be the strongest locomotive to pull the world economy ahead. And the day is not perhaps very distant either when a country like Bangladesh in Asia or Cameroon in Africa will become a very powerful engine to help world economy grow if only the world, instead of remaining divided between poles belonging to the haves and the have-nots, rather turns into a unipolar world for homogenous growth of the global economy.
Will the world ever be unipolar or classless? Will slavery in its present disguised form disappear from this planet? Will the strong leave space for the weak? Will the rich empathise for the poor? Will the technical know-how be transferred from the North to the South? Will the stark digital divide blur in near future?
Will the humanity be unleashed from the dependency on machines? "No" is the answer to all these temporal questions. Still, that we can raise these questions is itself a victory of the masses of the world. That the slaves are no more flogged by their masters is an outstanding feat achieved by the humanists. That we are afraid of only God, not of the super powers is a triumph of the universalism. That we are fighting for the greener environment is an accomplishment of the power of the nature over the artificiality of the machines.
An idea of a classless world should not be conjured up as a communist world. A classless society is a culture ordained by divinity and a concept that is capable of defeating the atheism of communism, if applied with courage and vision. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or for that matter any other religion or Gnostic philosophy teaches us that there should not be classes among people, that there should not be a divide between the strong and the weak.
The planet Earth which was originally designed to be the land of the free has tragically been fragmented into millions of blocks and homes constituting acquisitive societies full of greed and 'lust for money', ultimately determining a singular course for the rich and the strong on how to exploit the poor and the weak.
Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere. Unless the affluent in one section of the world endeavour to alleviate the poverty in another section, unless we work for a one-world family and a one-world government, classes among people will prevail only to disturb the delicate equilibrium of the humanity.
The writer can be reached at e-mail: maswood@hotmail.com
SLAVERY in its traditional sense is almost non-existent today though sounds of emancipation of slaves are still heard from closed societies at different corners of the world. Slavery has been around since ancient times and it has gradually been abolished with voices of human rightists growing louder. Discriminations on the grounds of race, gender, age, colour etc., are on the wane for some time since the later part of the last century though today the weak are still discriminated against the strong, the frail against the burly.
Slavery and discriminations are still there, only in different garbs. Financial institutions, for example, are still holding us to slavery. One in need of money today capitulates to any demand from one who holds money, much more abjectly than the way a slave in the 18th century used to supplicate to his master.
Machines have taken over the slavery and the moneyed have taken over the machineries. Men have been dependent on machines and have thus become slaves to machineries. The student who left his calculator at home and failed a test in math when he was asked about the sum of 2+2 is also a slave. His slavery ironically is to an electronic calculator.
Today, the humanity is divided by a line between the haves, the masters and have-nots, the slaves. The globe, too, is demarcated by a clear line between the north, the richer and the south, the poorer. The world was also categorised into three parts: 'First World', 'Second World' and 'Third World'. The First World belongs to the rich, the United States and its allies who proclaimed themselves democratic, the Second World, the Soviet Union and its allies, to the proletariat who fought against the bourgeoisie to establish communism and the Third World, the non-aligned and neutral countries, to mainly the poor countries who were sidelined as developing democracies or despicable autocracies.
Some people disparage the term Third World and fancy to call the group of the poor 'Developing World', 'Global South' or 'Majority World'. The growing use of the term Developing World led to a growing sense of solidarity among the nations blessed with lesser fortunes to unite against the dominance of the wealthier and the more powerful. Our Bangladesh is deemed a member of the 'Majority World' or -- a decent metaphor for the term, 'Third World'.
Perhaps for the first time in history Robert B. Zoellick, the World Bank Group president, last Wednesday has gone on record to dismiss the term "Third World" publicly, stating that the global economic crisis of 2009 vis-a-vis the rise of developing countries in the global economy, was the "death-knell" of the old concept of Third World. The World Bank has thus finally acknowledged, what it should have done 60 years ago when it was founded, that the term "Third World" was a wrong, and perhaps an immoral term smelling something like slavery in reference to developing countries in the world. "If 1989 saw the end of the 'Second World' with Communism's demise," said Zoellick in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C., "then 2009 saw the end of what was known as the 'Third World'.
It's refreshing for us to hear that from now on we won't have to bear anymore the stigma attached to being a man or a woman of the Third World. It's a victory for the 'Majority World', a pleasant outcome of team spirit among the developing countries who of late have been doggedly determined not only to remain non-aligned but also to run in competition with the West. In triumph we should recall what in 1955 the First Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru said in the Bandung Conference of 29 countries from Asia and Africa: "I propose to belong to neither the First nor the Second World, whatever happens. If we have to stand alone, we will stand by ourselves, whatever happens.
We do not agree with the communist teachings, neither do we agree with the anti-communist teachings, because they are both based on wrong principles". With the end of the Second World in 1989 and with the concept of Third World declared outdated by the World Bank, Nehru is today proven right in his assertion that teachings espoused by the First and the Second Worlds were based on wrong doctrine.
Countries of the 'Majority World' have shown in the recent global recession how to remain stable and maintain growth, in spite of their poverty and fragility. It is the countries of the so-called Third World who are now capturing an ever increasing share of global economy. Not only in China and India, but also in South East Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, the economies are vibrating with vigour and zeal. The day is not perhaps far away when China, once a country belonging to the Second or the Third World, will be the strongest locomotive to pull the world economy ahead. And the day is not perhaps very distant either when a country like Bangladesh in Asia or Cameroon in Africa will become a very powerful engine to help world economy grow if only the world, instead of remaining divided between poles belonging to the haves and the have-nots, rather turns into a unipolar world for homogenous growth of the global economy.
Will the world ever be unipolar or classless? Will slavery in its present disguised form disappear from this planet? Will the strong leave space for the weak? Will the rich empathise for the poor? Will the technical know-how be transferred from the North to the South? Will the stark digital divide blur in near future?
Will the humanity be unleashed from the dependency on machines? "No" is the answer to all these temporal questions. Still, that we can raise these questions is itself a victory of the masses of the world. That the slaves are no more flogged by their masters is an outstanding feat achieved by the humanists. That we are afraid of only God, not of the super powers is a triumph of the universalism. That we are fighting for the greener environment is an accomplishment of the power of the nature over the artificiality of the machines.
An idea of a classless world should not be conjured up as a communist world. A classless society is a culture ordained by divinity and a concept that is capable of defeating the atheism of communism, if applied with courage and vision. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or for that matter any other religion or Gnostic philosophy teaches us that there should not be classes among people, that there should not be a divide between the strong and the weak.
The planet Earth which was originally designed to be the land of the free has tragically been fragmented into millions of blocks and homes constituting acquisitive societies full of greed and 'lust for money', ultimately determining a singular course for the rich and the strong on how to exploit the poor and the weak.
Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere. Unless the affluent in one section of the world endeavour to alleviate the poverty in another section, unless we work for a one-world family and a one-world government, classes among people will prevail only to disturb the delicate equilibrium of the humanity.
The writer can be reached at e-mail: maswood@hotmail.com