Of Rich and Poor

"Don't forget, there are two hundred million of us in a world of three billion, they want what we've got--and we're not going to give it to them." --Lyndon B. Johnson

"The Question which is looming on the horizon is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity must reply to this question, or be shaken to pieces by it." --Frantz Fanon

These two quotations from two central figures of contemporary world history dramatize the growing conflict brought about by the disparity between the rich and poor of the world. The scenario is one of polarized extremes of rich and poor classes, of rich and poor nations. In the arenas where struggles for social justice are occurring, increasingly, the central questions concern the need for fundamental redistribution of wealth and power on a global scale.

The détente between the United States and its principle Cold War adversaries, the Soviet Union and China, in the 1970s demonstrated that the visions in the world were less along ideological lines as they are along the lines of the powerful and the powerless. The dramatic struggle between East and West was replaced by the struggle between the rich nations of the northern hemisphere and the poor nations of the southern hemisphere.