Economic Justice: Sharing the Collective Wealth
An urban farmer watering lettuce crops in downtown Accra, Ghana.
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 2, JUNE 2008
“What are the cornerstones of economic justice?” This was the question Inter Pares staff member Rachel Gouin asked Tetteh Hormeku when they met to discuss ways of promoting economic justice. Tetteh is Head of Programmes at Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Africa) in Ghana and a visiting scholar at the North-South Institute in Canada.
“When we talk about economic justice, we are talking about the establishment of the principles of social justice in the area of economic affairs, so that social assets and social wealth can be equitably distributed. It is power and power imbalances amongst people in society that are at the heart of social injustice, including economic injustice. In our work at TWN-Africa, we see power imbalances among people in Ghana, among countries in Africa, and between different parts of the world.
“These imbalances of power within and among nations express themselves in different ways. In the international multilateral institutions, in the World Trade Organization negotiations for instance, African countries find themselves at the receiving end of bad behaviour and practices by Northern countries, which have the power to insist on deals that benefit them at the expense of developing countries. But if you look at Canada for instance, you find that there are those that benefit from that inequity and power imbalance more than others. And if you come to Ghana, it is not everybody who is suffering from the global power imbalance: there are transnational corporations, there are elites that are partners of those corporations that are also benefiting. Meanwhile, the villagers living near mining sites, for example, are having their farms and markets destroyed. They don’t have the means to earn a livelihood; they don’t have money for health care. There is inequity.
“In order to achieve economic justice and redress this power imbalance and its expression, it is necessary to find ways in which the wealth that was created by everyone’s collective efforts is distributed in such a way that all members of society have their needs met. Rather than have one person, the Ghanaian managing director of a foreign company, for instance, send his kids abroad to have their medical needs met, you would have a situation where the medical facilities in Ghana are properly stocked. The roads that go to the mining areas were built through the taxes of Ghanaians, collected by the Ghanaian government, from Ghanaian economic activity. They were built by the collective labour of Ghanaians; everyone, whether or not they live in the mining area, should benefit from the mining.
“Achieving equity, and therefore social justice, requires that people who are benefiting today from inequity be prepared to give up some of their benefits for the sake of redistribution. You have to curtail the benefits of some to redistribute widely. But those benefiting from economic injustice will resist, so it is not just something that can simply be legislated. It involves a readiness of people, of those on the receiving end of economic injustice, to be organized, to demand, to struggle for that justice and to bargain for a better social compromise. These people need support, and that support should be seen as solidarity, not charity. When it’s charity, they come to give you something: here is educational material, educate yourselves. No. You need to actually work with them, sit with them. You join their struggles with all your skills, your capacities to help them address their deficits so that they can organize themselves, empower themselves. That is solidarity.”
Inter Pares and TWN-Africa work together to promote a common vision of economic justice and reciprocity. In the pages of this Bulletin, you will read about those who have organized themselves to assert their rights to a more equitable share of the collective wealth they have helped create, and the stories of people and movements who are standing in solidarity with their struggle.
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| Reviewed May 28, 2008 |  |
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