Bust of Aristotle. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC. Wikicommons/ Jastrow. Some rights reserved.This week, Oxfam released its annual briefing paper on the state of inequality in the world. The conclusions are as per usual: inequality continues to skyrocket (eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world) while the incomes of the world’s poorest remain either stagnant or have decreased. The reasons (again, as per usual) include a blend of crony capitalism, tax dodging and corporate/financial lobbying of governments for favourable treatment. And, of course, the entire process is driven by the innate necessity of capitalist organisations and their managers to maximise profits, no matter what the negative effects on populations and planet.
It brings to mind the eighteenth century dictum of Adam Smith, the man regarded as the father of modern economics. He wrote: ‘All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind’ (The Wealth of Nations, 1776, Books I - III). Exploring the unequal economic relationship between Britain and its colonies, he observed how the ‘merchants and manufacturers’ (not the ‘natives’ and ‘savages’ being exploited) were the ‘principle architects’ of the system and thus ensured their interests were ‘most peculiarly attended to’, however ‘grievous’ the effects on others (Books IV – V).
While many aspects of life have obviously improved since Smith was writing, it warrants stressing that despite a brief period of rising economic equality in the post-war period (known affectionately as the ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’), we've now reverted back to levels of inequality resembling the pre-WWI era (I’ve written about this reversion here). As the Oxfam report stresses: ‘we are living in the age of the super-rich, a second ‘gilded age’ in which a glittering surface masks social problems and corruption’. So what can we expect in the future? Quite worryingly, the answer is probably a lot more social and political disorder.
