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.

When Russian and Chinese leaders went ahead with their scheduled summit meetings with the United States, despite Richard Nixon's decision to mine and bomb North Vietnamese ports and cities, it became clear to the world that the Communist giants were willing to sacrifice the Vietnamese people for a piece of the action in a new partnership of the super-powers to dominate the world. Scenes of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger wining and dining with Leonid Bresnev, Chou En Lai and Mao Tse Tung have generated great fear among the poor of the world and show that the desires for wealth and power are still greater motivating factors than ideology. NBC news recently did a report on American businessmen in the Soviet Union. CBS reports that David Rockefeller has opened branches of the Chase Manhattan Bank in Peking and, most ironically, at #1 Karl Marx Square in Moscow. And, as a final insult, Pepsi-Cola will soon be served to the Russian public. The violent rhetoric of cold war confrontation has subsided as the huge, capitalist and socialist bureaucracies find they have much in common in a new oligopoly of world power. A shared desire for economic and military domination have even resulted in growing political and structural similarities between the most powerful nations. One fact from this remains clear: the position of the poor and powerless is further diminished.

Eighty percent of the world is underfed while the other 20 percent of the world's population (primarily in North America and Europe) receive 80 percent of the world's income. A survey of poverty in Asia conducted by The New York Times summarized its findings as follows: "There are more poor people than ever . . . and more of them than ever are born into malnutrition and disease. Physically and mentally stunted, they live wretchedly foreclosed lives in which the future means little more than tomorrow's struggle to survive. They die young and hopeless" (Quoted in Social Policy, May/June '71).

Hunger and disease due to hunger is responsible for over two-thirds of the deaths in the world each year. And it has been estimated that a child born in the United States today will consume during his lifetime at least twenty times as much as a child born in India, and contribute about fifty times as much pollution to the environment (UNESCO).

Third World peoples are engaged in the development of consciousness of their situation and are seeking to throw off the oppressive conditions of their lives that have relegated them to poverty and powerlessness, and to establish a better quality of life for themselves and their children. While those in the rich nations worry about the potential for violence in the rebellion of the poor against the status quo, they fail to recognize the violence inherent in established structures that maintain and perpetuate injustice. Jorge Lara-Braud, Director of the Hispanic-American Institute in Austin, Texas, puts it like this:

"Is it not violence that (in Latin America today) a man should die of old age at 28, that a women should not feed the weakest of four children because there is just enough for the three who may survive, that 500 out of 1000 children should die in the country before the age of two, that a maimed mine worker and his family should starve on the pittance of their indemnity, that student protesters should be tortured, that political prisoners should be shot, that half the children of school age should have no school to attend, that millions should be landless while one family owns acres by the millions, that more than half of the adult population should be illiterate, that one third of the national budget should be spent for Tate-model weaponry, that 80 percent should live on a yearly per capita income of $80?"

Rich nations, by exercising their power in direct ways or more indirectly through the maintenance of dependent, repressive regimes in Third World countries, seek to protect and expand their privileged position. The United States being the richest and most powerful nation in the world becomes, as Martin Luther King described, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world." This happens by virtue, of necessity--the necessity of protecting American wealth and power in the midst of the world's poor and powerless masses. A dependence on violence, in its many forms, is inherent in being "number one."

Even at home, in the heart of American affluence, the brutal disparities between rich and poor is clearly seen. The concentration of wealth in America is increasing. Today, the richest one percent of the population own 40% of our national wealth, which is double their percentage in 1949. Income distribution has not changed for a generation: the bottom fifth of American families get 6% of the national income while the top fifth gets 40% of the national income, owns 77°/o of the wealth and 97% of the corporate stock. (The Cambridge Institute). A central factor in these disparities (abroad as well as at home) is the growing power and economic concentration of a relatively small number of large privately owned corporations. The 200 biggest hold 2/3 of the wealth of manufacturing corporations, a greater share than the top 1,000 had held in 1941. In fact, the biggest 1% of American corporations control 86% of the assets and 88% of the net profits of all manufacturing corporations. The profits go to the shareholders and the shareholders are the rich. About l/6th of the adult population owns 82% of the publicly held corporate stock; and the control of the decision making of large corporations is in the hands of the very few and the very rich. To think that corporate decisions are subject either to public accountability or to the forces of the so-called "free market" is to engage in illusion. These multinational corporations have gained great power and are increasingly able to act quite unilaterally in national and international affairs when their interests are involved. Of the 100 richest entities in the world today, 49 are countries and 51 are corporations.

Biblical and Modern Perspectives

When we begin to examine the question of social justice from a biblical perspective, we are inevitably led to the division of the world into rich and poor. While Americans praise and reward wealth and power, the biblical message is biased on behalf of the poor and oppressed. It is clear from an examination of the prophets, the apostles, and Christ himself, that true faith necessarily revolutionizes the conditions of life into which it comes. The Law of Moses contains special provisions for redistributing wealth and providing for the poor. Read Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, Jeremiah and find a rebuke of oppressive affluence and exploitative power and a demand for social justice and righteousness more radical and exacting than can be found in all humanist social theory. The psalmist sees God as vindicating the cause of the poor and triumphing over the rich. The Baptist's call to repentance involved divesting and sharing of wealth. The promise of the gospel to Mary announces personal and social revolution in its call for a whole new order in human affairs. Jesus talked more about economic questions than he did about heaven and hell, sexual immorality, or violence. He tells us that our profession of love for God will be concretely tested by whether our actions serve to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the homeless, and minister to the needs of the afflicted. "As you have done to the least of these you have done to me." John says that if we say we love God and do not demonstrate our love for others, and close our heart to those in need, we are liars. A major focus of Paul's third missionary journey was a collection for the poor of Jerusalem. James says that faith without works is dead, that pure religion comforts the afflicted, that the rich should beware for the judgment that is coming upon them. Scripture serves to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The gospel means change--fundamental, costly change in personal, political, spiritual, economic values and relationships. The personal and social dimensions of the gospel are inseparable. The gospel message pronounces the judgment of God upon the present order of injustice and holds the promise of a new order and a new people.

What does the story of the rich young ruler have to say to us as Americans, living in the richest nation on earth? Those who live in the rich nations must confront the fact that we are the upper class of a world economic system. We comfortably forget that the many are poor because the few are rich, that the poverty and misery people experience is not accidental or due to the failures of the poor. The fundamental causes lie in political and economic power structures and the lifestyle of the affluent that makes such structures possible and even necessary. The prophets spoke out angrily against the politics of oppressive affluence.

"The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of Hosts" (Isaiah 3:14-15).

Jesus said, "You cannot serve God and Mammon." Clarence Jordan comments: "Notice that he doesn't say that you shouldn't serve two masters, but that you can't. This isn't advice--it's law, as inexorable as the law of gravity. Its like stating that you can't follow a road that forks. It is based on the assumption that the mind of God and the minds of the secular world are in direct contradiction to each other. They give two conflicting standards of measurement. Loyalty must be given to one or the other; it cannot be given to both. It won't work, either, to hire out to Mammon and give a tenth of your wages to God. Not even if you raise God's cut to a fifth, or a half" ("Sermon on the Mount" p. 88).

Justice demands fundamental changes in present economic and political institutions. Justice demands redistribution of wealth and power on a global scale. Justice demands that the affluent give up their positions of dominance and privilege. The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern stated: "We recognize that as a nation we play a crucial role in the imbalance and injustice of international trade and development. Before God and a billion hungry neighbors, we must rethink our values regarding our present standard of living and promote more just acquisition and distribution of the world's resources." Art Gish comments on the need for simplicity in our lives: "A simple life will begin to make us more sensitive to the injustices around us. Affluence has blinded us to oppression and suffering. Unless we are willing to identify and stand with the poor and the oppressed of the world, all our talk about justice is sheer hypocrisy. No longer may our words identify us with the oppressed and our lifestyle with the oppressors ... There can be no justice for all as long as anyone consumes more than one needs. Overconsumption is theft. We privileged people are the major source of the world's problems and they will not be solved before we give up our privileged position." And finally an admonition from Pope Paul VI: "Let each one examine himself, to see what he has done up to now, and what he ought to do. It is not enough to recall principles, state intentions, point to crying injustices, and utter prophetic denunciations; these words will lack real weight unless they are accompanied for each individual by a livelier awareness of personal responsibility and by effective action. It is too easy to throw back on others the responsibility for injustice, if at the same time one does not realize how each one shares in it personally.''

Herman Kahn, the nuclear strategist, said: "The American people would rather be dead than poor." Contemporary events and attitudes in American society lend support to Kahn's thesis. Could the statement be applied with truth also to the church? The biblical mandate is clear in instructing the people of God to identify with, and support the cause of the poor and the oppressed. All abusive systems and arrangements of wealth and power must be resisted and worked against by those who take the gospel seriously. The church's identification with affluence and privilege has led to spiritual impoverishment. The church can no longer say, "silver and gold have I none" but neither can it say "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth walk."

Jim Wallis was editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.