Harry Targ
Establishing
causal connections between “variables” and violence is a form of mystification.
The reality of this world is that of grotesque inequalities in wealth, power,
respect for humankind and the environment, a world awash in instrumentalities
of death, and a global culture that celebrates it. Recent reports from the
World Bank and the World Economic Forum (of all places) document the continuing
and growing inequalities in wealth and income on a worldwide basis. Could it be
a surprise that seemingly indiscriminate acts of violence occur all across the
globe? Only a humane global movement for fundamental change can radically transform
the world we live in but movements of protest can make constructive changes
along the way (Harry Targ, Facebook, April 23, 2013).
Each violent tragedy in
the United States brings an outpouring of wrenching and “expert” analyses of
what was behind the acts that led to so much pain and suffering. Most of the
soul-searching about tragedies from Arizona, to Colorado, to Connecticut, to
Boston is about domestic events (the repeated killings of Iraqis, Afghan
peoples, Pakistanis, Yemenis and others generate much less empathy).
Explanations usually involve deranged “others,” usually poor “others,” “others”
of color, and “others with fundamentalist religious beliefs.” Their crimes are described
as perpetrated against victims who are the “normal” people. Make no mistake
about it, violence against any individuals, communities, and nations must be
opposed, even among those, who in the end are the root cause of it. But we need
to be clear about the economic, social, political, cultural and military/police
context in which violence occurs. And, in no small measure, violence itself is
celebrated in the societies where it is most prevalent.
Peace researchers have
written about “direct,” “cultural,” and “structural” violence for years. While
each of these is seen as having its own characteristics and causes for the most
part analysts regard the three as inextricably interconnected. Direct violence
refers to physical assault, shooting, bombing, gassing, and torture. It is
about killing people. Cultural violence
refers to dominant cultures whose apparatuses, such as the media and laws, portray their own institutions and values as
superior to others and rituals that seek to honor the violence engaged in by
one’s own country or group while demeaning other countries or groups. What is
most vicious about cultural violence is its effort to make the victimized
groups hate themselves.
Structural violence
occurs when economic, political, cultural and military institutions create
relationships in which some human beings gain disproportionately from the
labor, the talents, and the pain and suffering of others. Structural violence
is institutionalized violence most often organized around class exploitation,
racism, and patterns of gendered forms of domination and subordination. The key concepts that shape efforts to
understand the causes and effects of structural violence are class, race, and
gender.
Ironically reports
issued this year, between the Newtown and Boston massacres, by the World Bank
and the World Economic Forum tell us much about the fundamentals of structural
violence on a worldwide basis. These reports clearly describe why we do not
live in a better world, why people do not treat each other with more respect,
and why vast majorities of humanity and their natural habitats are in danger of
extinction. And they imply that violence engendered by the rich and powerful
and responses from the poor and powerless are embedded in the system of
structural violence.
The World Bank Report
The World Bank issued a
press release on April 17, 2013 summarizing “The State of the Poor: Where are
the Poor and Where are the Poorest?” It reported that the number of the world’s
citizens living on less than $1.25 a day has declined markedly between 1981 and
2010 from half the world’s population to 21 percent. But still, they say, 1.2
billion people live in extreme poverty (below $1.25 per day). Sub-Saharan
Africa accounts for more than one-third of those who live in such poverty
worldwide. A World Bank spokesperson noted that “We have made strides in
cutting down poverty, but with nearly one-fifth of the world population still
below the poverty line, not enough.” (This particular World Bank report does
not include data on those living just above the poverty line. For example,
another twenty percent live on $2 per day).
Oxfam Reports on the
World Economic Forum’s “Global Risk Report”
In an Oxfam Media
Briefing (January 18, 2013), the authors site a recent World Economic Forum warning
that rising global inequality constitutes one of the top “global risks of
2013.” Oxfam points out that lifting masses of people out of absolute poverty
has been the goal of economic elites over the last decade but “inequality and
the extreme wealth that contributes to it were seen as either not relevant, or
a prerequisite for the growth that would also help the poorest, as the wealth
created trickled down to the benefit of everyone.”
The Oxfam Media
Briefing suggests reasons why the WEF might correctly regard growing global
inequality as a “risk.” They highlight the following:
Extreme wealth and inequality are reaching levels never before seen in
history and are getting worse. Inequality is growing in the industrial
developed countries such as the United States and Great Britain, rapidly
developing economies such as China and South Africa, and many of the poorest
countries in the world. The incomes of the top 1 percent have increased by 60
percent over the last twenty years. The top 100 billionaires added $240 billion
to their wealth in 2012. “The IMF has said that inequality is dangerous and
divisive and could lead to civil unrest.”
Extreme
Wealth and Inequality is Politically Corrosive.
Oxfam makes the obvious but important point that growing inequality in wealth
and income relate to growing inequality in political power. They quote economist
Joseph Stiglitz who contends that financial deregulation in the largest
capitalist countries led to greater economic inequality and further
consolidation of political power by financial elites.
Extreme
Wealth and Inequality is Socially Divisive. For Oxfam, the
consolidation of wealth and power reduce the life chances and even human
sustainability of the vast majority of populations. People work harder for less
and suffer more. “If rich elites use their money to buy services, whether it is
private schooling or private healthcare, they have less interest in public
services or paying taxes to support them.” And, as Oxfam reminds us, inequality
is linked to growing alienation, mental disorders, crime, anomic violence, and
shear desperation.
Extreme
Wealth and Inequality is Environmentally Destructive.
Oxfam reiterates the fact that rising inequality increases demands by the rich
for access to and consumption of scarce resources that the earth can no longer
provide. “Those in the 1 percent have been estimated to use as much as 10,000
times more carbon than the average US citizen.”
So if you grow up in
urban American or rural Africa, the Middle East or almost anywhere else and you
are young, intelligent, and experience the world through the globalization of a
racist, sexist, violent media, does your view of the world look bright? No job,
no respect, hungry, alienated and imbued with the cultural values about
violence and racism that are used to define you, you may act in the same ways
the rich and powerful act against you and your people.
The conversation that
should come out of Newtown, Boston, and West, Texas or Baghdad, Kabul, and Gaza or almost anyplace else is
how to change the structural violence that gave rise to direct and cultural
violence. This discussion should lead to the mobilization of progressives to
create a just society, one in which people will not want to kill each other.
