An estimated 900 million people around the world do not have enough to eat. The simple truth is that at a time of unprecedented technological progress, the disparity between rich and poor is increasing.
That anyone should be doomed to abject poverty and deprivation in an age of plenty is an unacceptable aberration. Today, thanks to the giant leaps in science and technology, man has access to resources and wealth as never before in history. Thus the conditions for the eradication of poverty from the face of the earth are present. What is lacking is the will to distribute wealth equitably.
A handful of great powers enriched themselves at the expense of colonized peoples subjected to poverty, hardship and deprivation, allowed wealth to be accumulated in the hands of a few while poverty remained the lot of the majority. But now that globalization has become the frame of reference, there is no justification for an ever smaller minority to become richer while the majority poor become even poorer.
Grinding poverty should no longer be an inescapable fact of anybody’s life. In a globalized world order, there must be alternatives to poverty, exploitation and dependency. To establish a new world order which would bring an end to the enrichment of a few at the expense of the many and provide abundance for all would require a fundamental shift in perception toward a world view that considers man, not capital, to be the core element. This means transcending the profit motive as the main world order.
The global population is divided into two categories: those for whom living is perpetual suffering and those who benefit from the suffering of the latter; the haves and the have-nots, the dispossessed and the privileged. Not surprising is the tension this disparity has produced. The discrepancy between rich and poor is now at the forefront of global concerns, and the fight against poverty is high on the agenda of developed countries. Terrorism feeds on anger and despair, and it is now universally recognized that the war on terror is inextricably linked to the fight against poverty. Moreover, a situation in which one segment of the global population lives in opulence while most of the rest live in dire poverty is morally reprehensible.
Ironically, the two are now inextricably bound together in what has rightfully come to be called a global village. The barriers which once kept rich societies comfortably separated from poor ones have fallen.
A World Bank report in 1990 put the total number of extreme poor at 1.25 billion; thus there has been a drop in abject poverty. But the truth is that while the world is awash with capital, the incidence of poverty remains — on a global scale — overwhelming. To make the world safe for capitalism, the wretched of the earth — the hundreds of millions who die miserable deaths for less than a dollar a day — pay the ultimate price.
