Not too little, not too much
Wednesday,27 January 2010 by Nishma
Walking through the international development department in Oxford is a rather strange affair. It’s bizarre to think that so many of these people would eventually become some organiser or officer for a big development NGO/government/corporation. It’s even stranger when you think that so many of them come from a strong background in economics and see the world as homogenous mathematical models. I guess that’s my social anthropological bias, where everything economic is so much more complex and subjective…
Money is not a real entity. Its value only comes from the labour and environmental cost of production and the power it holds in our belief; if we see it as something valued then it is valued. So how did it become the language of exchange? How did it begin to sway mass public attention?
After reading a copy of Morality of Money, I felt oddly possessed by this innate fear of the whole idea. How poverty stems from a system of exchange that is embedded in social value but lacking ideological value. Money has become the language of markets, but it remains only a figure – a number that it ultimately meaningless. By losing contact with those who supply us with what we need (and a good/service we supply in return), we have lost our understanding that ‘wanting’ and ‘consuming’ has consequences.
Endless aid campaigns supported by innumerable charities, talking of aid, and funding to cover their costs seems flimsy and shallow. The problem of famine/starvation faced in “Africa” isn’t going to be solved by the IMF filling the pockets of the rich bureaucrats. Massacres in the Congo aren’t going to be helped by funding the government to buy more guns. AIDS in Africa is not going to be helped by those millions of rich people who send their clothes/teddy bears to Oxfam.
What we are facing right now is a problem with the political economy. There are topics that need to be addressed:
- There is no such thing as the free market. The market remains social as long as people are involved in demanding and supplying. We do not work for pure self-interest or moralistically. We work in emotion, passion, relation (community), etc. Thus, what we consume is so much based upon our subjective thought system that rationality plays little part in consumerism.
- Not everyone starts off in the same position, and laws are created to ensure that. This means that when we look at the globalised economy, the average role of the demand in poorer nations will always be less than that of the average American.
- You can’t compensate the dead.
The problem with most charities is that they see the external world as distanced as those who work in business. The resolution to peoples’ problems isn’t going to come through creating money-based economic solutions for the few; it is only going to come by realising what people actually value. It’s true that funding runs very short when you take part in solidarity campaigns, but we can rile the government up.
We can create the change that is necessary. We need to stop worrying so much about the funders and recruitment; we need to show that something can be done.
Will Oxfam & other NGOs ever lead us back to their Nicaragua campaigns? Will money be the only thing that a charity will ever be able to think about?
Copenhagen failed. Now it’s up to us to shake up the foundations. It’s been too little, and I’m not saying too much. It’s time to act, you bigger charities – economic injustice is death, genocide and endless suffering. We need to act now – together.