MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - Make Poverty History?

Money, which has hitherto been the root, if not of all evil, of great injustice, oppression, and misery to the human race, making some slavish producers of wealth, and others its wasteful consumers or destroyers, will be no longer required to carry on the business of life: for as wealth of all kinds will be so delightfully created in greater abundance than will ever be required, no money price will be known, for happiness will not be purchasable, except by a reciprocity of good actions and kind feelings.

At least half a million protesters are expected to march in the streets of Edinburgh on July 2nd, demanding that world leaders gathering for their G8 summit meeting there comply with demands raised by global movement Make Poverty History. Demonstrations will continue through the week.

The UK lobby group, comprising a wide cross section of nearly 400 charities, campaigns, trade unions, faith groups and celebrities, are demanding debt cancellation to poor (mostly African) nations, the doubling of aid, and trade justice.

Speaking at a rally in London's Trafalgar Square earlier this year, Nelson Mandela said: "The G8 leaders, when they meet in Scotland in July, have already promised to focus on the issue of poverty, especially in Africa. I say to all those leaders: do not look the other way; do not hesitate. Recognize that the world is hungry for action, not words. Act with courage and vision.

"Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.

"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom. Of course, the task will not be easy. But not to do this would be a crime against humanity, against which I ask all humanity now to rise up."

He also said, "Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings."

Because even Make Poverty History admits it's not going to make poverty history - at least not for a very long time into the future if they continue to be so feeble in their demands. At present they are simple putting pressure on nations (every member of the UN) who endorsed the Millennium Development goal to cut by half the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day by 2015 - ten years from now. In addition, that, if achieved, would still leave hundreds of millions of people living below the one-dollar threshold. Far from 'being history', poverty will still be rampant.

Make Poverty History, along with Bob Geldof's coinciding pop music concert extravaganza, G8, is merely reminding world powers to do what they had already promised to do - gradually wipe away only the worst instances of poverty and starvation in the world today, and to simply 'halve' poverty by giving the afflicted the bare essentials of life and just enough food to stop them from dying - hardly making poverty history. They should be putting forward new challenging arguments for change.

The gulf between the rich and the poor in this world is almost unimaginable. In the 1960s, the richest fifth of the world population had 30 times the wealth of the poorest fifth. The gap is now 74 times that.

The continued exploitation by the west of third world countries has resigned millions to a life of extreme poverty and premature death.

Every year more than 10 million children die of preventable illnesses - 30,000 a day. More than 500,000 women a year die in pregnancy and childbirth, with such deaths 100 times more likely in Sub-Saharan Africa than in high-income OECD countries. Around the world, 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, 39 million of them in developing countries. Tuberculosis remains (along with AIDS) the leading infectious killer of adults, causing up to 2 million deaths a year. Malaria deaths, now 1 million a year, could double in the next 20 years.

More than 1.0 billion people in developing countries - one-person in five - lack access to safe water. Basic dehydration kits cost very little and could save the lives of thousands of children around the world. Yet, instead of saving lives, the British and American governments spend millions a month on the illegal occupation of Iraq, a fiasco that has caused the deaths of countless thousands.

Capitalism, based on bigger is better competition and ever-increasing growth, represents a system of inequality and injustice. It is a system that breeds division and hatred, and our governments are dominated by financial powers.

Money is the omnipotent god of the Americanized world; enabling one person's dreams to be realized while lack of it frustrates the realization of another's ideas and plans; economics an opiate more potent than religion nowadays, and every day countless victims are slain upon its altar in the vain attempt to appease the unquenchable thirst for profit. For we know from bitter experience that it's not only our fellows from the third world who suffer under its tyrannous suzerainty. We of the other two don't get off lightly either. It's a kind of syphilis that infects all it comes in contact with. (What's with this third world stuff anyway? We all share this single planet earth, and we'd better start thinking globally, or the human race is doomed!)

Innocent we're born into this world; sweet trusting babes, slowly soured as we grow up indoctrinated by the same shit catechism our parents were fed with. Join the system! Make money! Get a job!

Slaves and prostitutes - that's what we all are under the current system. For in the wonderful world of capitalism, everything--and everyone--has a price, and that price is all that matters. This poem sums up the situation admirably: Money is our madness, our vast collective madness. In addition, of course, if the multitude is mad the individual carries his own grain of insanity around with him. I doubt if any man living hands out a pound note without a pang; and a real tremor, if he hands out a ten pound note. We quail, money makes us quail,. It has got us down; we grovel before it in strange terror. In addition, no wonder, for money has a fearful cruel power among men. However, it is not money we are so terrified of, it is the collective money-madness of mankind. For mankind says with one voice: How much is he worth? Has he no money? Then let him eat dirt, and go cold. --And if I have no money, they will give me a little bread so I do not die, but they will make me eat dirt with it. I shall have to eat dirt, I shall have to eat dirt if I have no money. It is that that I am frightened of. Moreover, that fear can become a delirium. It is fear of my money-mad fellow men. We must have some money to save us from eating dirt. And this is all wrong. Bread should be free, shelter should be free, fire should be free to all and anybody, all and anybody, all over the world. We must regain our sanity about money before we start killing one another about it. It’s one thing or the other. - D. H. Lawrence, Pansies, 1929 Money problems?

Time to get rid of them, and those of everyone else in the world. Poverty, misery, and corruption will not cease as long as we remain addicted to the filthy lucre. It's time to abolish money! Let's make a list of all those occupations that millions of people are enslaved by, for or because of money at the moment, performing unnecessary paper-pushing jobs, which would be unnecessary in Money less World, jobs that are entirely useless from a human point of view and not the slightest bit of good to anybody. We might include: Bankers, bookkeepers, accountants, cashiers, salesmen, customs officers, security guards, locksmiths, wages clerks, tax assessors, advertising men, stockbrokers, insurance agents, ticket punchers, slot machine emptier, industrial spies, and that's only a beginning .

These are merely the jobs, which are wholly and utterly useless. Nearly all occupations involve something to do with costing or selling.

"Abolition of Money" means immense, sweeping, root and branch changes in society. The abolition of money means the abolition of wages and profits, nations and frontiers, armies and prisons. It means that all work will be entirely voluntary, creating a society geared to producing wealth directly to satisfy human needs. Wealth will be produced and distributed in its natural form of useful things, of objects that can serve to satisfy some human need or other, not just being produced for sale on a market.

Money's been around for millenniums, but not since the beginning of time. Let's not forget that, like language, it's a man made invention, but unlike the latter, history has proven it a bad one. The ancient Babylonians called gold 'the shit of hell'. It's pretty, but it brings out the devil in us.

We must find a new way of organizing our productive activities that will build community instead of destroying, will empower us rather than enslaving us and reducing us to cogs in an incomprehensible and uncontrollable machine. In a money less world, with our new and developing technology it should be possible to end world hunger, poverty, illiteracy - even crime, terrorism, and war!

Everything should be free, everybody should work for free, and when someone needs something, he should be able to get it, or if he needs some service just ask.

He is working what he is willing to do, according to his talent or will or because of any other reason, not important, or he is not working at all, if he chooses so.

But there will be plenty to do. Voluntary armies of men and women (military forces no longer necessary) will be out constructing, landscaping, reforesting, irrigating and farming former deserts, creating at last the heaven on earth, caring for and sharing the planet. .

The environmental crisis, which hangs like a shadow over the entire world today and threatens our future has resulted from capitalist activities and will only become more complicated and worse if we continue with that system. Finding a new fair one is of paramount importance.

How are we going to do it? Talk, discuss, plan. This ought to be the burning topic of the day, the month, the year, in pubs, cafes, clubs; even at work! Make poverty history for certain. Abolish money!

And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They Are!

MICHAEL DICKINSON is a writer and artist who works as an English teacher in Istanbul, Turkey. He designed the cover art for two CounterPunch books, Serpents in the Garden and Dime's Worth of Difference, as well as Grand Theft Pentagon, forthcoming from Common Courage Press. He can be contacted at www.stuckism.com , where collages from his recently banned website can be seen

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