Ode to Almighty Mammon
Saturday, 25 April 2009
Nerun Yakub
In 'Imagine: A Socialist Vision for the 21st Century', a passionate and powerful book on what is really wrong with a world that serves only Mammon, the god of wealth ----- for Mammon's sake, and nothing else ------- one finds a rather ego-busting paragraph for the powers- that-be in beloved Bangladesh. Writing about the condition of the neglected poor and powerless in Scotland, the authors, Messrs Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes, quote a fellow Scot in one of Glasgow's run-down housing schemes: ' The flats here are damp, the curtains meet in the middle of the room because of the draughts, and every kid has an asthma inhaler. This is the Third World. Some people call it Bangladesh.'
So! Even in Europe's worst slums, Bangladesh has become a symbol of stark poverty! Although everybody here knows that the many poverties we face cannot compare with the deprivations of the rich world's poor, everywhere, be it Bangladesh or Britain, the source of the gaping inequities and maldistribution of resources lies in the same Mammon-worshipping mindset of the conspicuous consumers, greedy grabbers and hoarders inc. There is obviously very little trickling down as most of the generators of wealth do not wish to share the surplus proportionately for the development of the have-nots. Note that of all the rich countries, only one or two of the Scandanavians pay up the 0.07 per cent of their wealth in international development, as promised.
In 1969, Gunther Stent, the pioneer of biotechnology, wrote 'The Coming of the Golden Age: A view of the end of Progress', in which he had a vision of a world without hunger, disease and war. Forty years on, the world has seen great leaps in science and technology, but are we anywhere near solving the pressing problems of society in today's world ? Social inequality, ethnic and national antagonisms, have not diminished, the manufacture and sale of deadly weapons go on with a vengeance, living standards have not gone up commensurate with the wealth in the hands of states, institutions and individuals.
Today, the World Bank declares that half the global population lives on less than a dollar a day, and 63 of the poorest countries, which have 57 per cent of the earth's population, receive just six per cent of all income. This gap is getting wider and wider, between people and between states. The Human Development Report 2000 says that global inequalities increased in the course of the 20th century by ' a magnitude out of proportion to anything ever experienced before.' The lifespan in the poorest African countries is now half that of the richest countries. Whereas in 1820, the gap between the richest and poorest countries was three to one, by 1950 it had risen to 35 to one. Today it is 74 to one.
Nobody can seriously claim that the poverty in New York or Belfast is comparable with starvation in Darfur or Ethiopia. One community worker, describing her visit to the poor community in Glasgow in the New Internationalist, says, ' We were told that the Easterhouse housing estate in Glasgow was considered Europe's worst slum. We thought this was ridiculous. These people had assured housing, electricity, hot and cold water, refrigerators and cookers. By Indian standards this was middle class luxury. But then it hit us. Most of the men … hadn't had a job in 20 years … felt far more hopeless than people in India who scrabbled in garbage heaps to feed their kids, though both groups were at the bottom of society.'
D H Lawrence, whose heart was always on the left, so to say, couldn't have put it more beautifully. He hits the nail on the head with his 'Modern Man's Prayer,' which goes something like this in verse: ' Almighty Mammon, make me rich, make me rich quickly, and kick those in the ditch who come in the way of my Great Prosperity, Almighty Mammon, you great son-of-a-bitch !'
Isn't this the same mindset, the same casino capitalism, that's been at work in the global financial sector, and is even now permitting 'fat cats' everywhere to be 'bailed out' by governments while the bottom heap despair over skewed food prices, lost jobs and unrelieved desperation ? Our own far cats are scrambling to catch larks when the sky falls, nagging for so-called stimulus packages which critics claim go towards feathering their nests !
In 'Imagine: A Socialist Vision for the 21st Century', a passionate and powerful book on what is really wrong with a world that serves only Mammon, the god of wealth ----- for Mammon's sake, and nothing else ------- one finds a rather ego-busting paragraph for the powers- that-be in beloved Bangladesh. Writing about the condition of the neglected poor and powerless in Scotland, the authors, Messrs Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes, quote a fellow Scot in one of Glasgow's run-down housing schemes: ' The flats here are damp, the curtains meet in the middle of the room because of the draughts, and every kid has an asthma inhaler. This is the Third World. Some people call it Bangladesh.'
So! Even in Europe's worst slums, Bangladesh has become a symbol of stark poverty! Although everybody here knows that the many poverties we face cannot compare with the deprivations of the rich world's poor, everywhere, be it Bangladesh or Britain, the source of the gaping inequities and maldistribution of resources lies in the same Mammon-worshipping mindset of the conspicuous consumers, greedy grabbers and hoarders inc. There is obviously very little trickling down as most of the generators of wealth do not wish to share the surplus proportionately for the development of the have-nots. Note that of all the rich countries, only one or two of the Scandanavians pay up the 0.07 per cent of their wealth in international development, as promised.
In 1969, Gunther Stent, the pioneer of biotechnology, wrote 'The Coming of the Golden Age: A view of the end of Progress', in which he had a vision of a world without hunger, disease and war. Forty years on, the world has seen great leaps in science and technology, but are we anywhere near solving the pressing problems of society in today's world ? Social inequality, ethnic and national antagonisms, have not diminished, the manufacture and sale of deadly weapons go on with a vengeance, living standards have not gone up commensurate with the wealth in the hands of states, institutions and individuals.
Today, the World Bank declares that half the global population lives on less than a dollar a day, and 63 of the poorest countries, which have 57 per cent of the earth's population, receive just six per cent of all income. This gap is getting wider and wider, between people and between states. The Human Development Report 2000 says that global inequalities increased in the course of the 20th century by ' a magnitude out of proportion to anything ever experienced before.' The lifespan in the poorest African countries is now half that of the richest countries. Whereas in 1820, the gap between the richest and poorest countries was three to one, by 1950 it had risen to 35 to one. Today it is 74 to one.
Nobody can seriously claim that the poverty in New York or Belfast is comparable with starvation in Darfur or Ethiopia. One community worker, describing her visit to the poor community in Glasgow in the New Internationalist, says, ' We were told that the Easterhouse housing estate in Glasgow was considered Europe's worst slum. We thought this was ridiculous. These people had assured housing, electricity, hot and cold water, refrigerators and cookers. By Indian standards this was middle class luxury. But then it hit us. Most of the men … hadn't had a job in 20 years … felt far more hopeless than people in India who scrabbled in garbage heaps to feed their kids, though both groups were at the bottom of society.'
D H Lawrence, whose heart was always on the left, so to say, couldn't have put it more beautifully. He hits the nail on the head with his 'Modern Man's Prayer,' which goes something like this in verse: ' Almighty Mammon, make me rich, make me rich quickly, and kick those in the ditch who come in the way of my Great Prosperity, Almighty Mammon, you great son-of-a-bitch !'
Isn't this the same mindset, the same casino capitalism, that's been at work in the global financial sector, and is even now permitting 'fat cats' everywhere to be 'bailed out' by governments while the bottom heap despair over skewed food prices, lost jobs and unrelieved desperation ? Our own far cats are scrambling to catch larks when the sky falls, nagging for so-called stimulus packages which critics claim go towards feathering their nests !