July 2005 #3

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Having the opportunity to lie in bed and relax recently I turned on the bedside radio. Within moments the Tracy Chapman classic, “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” came on. Part of the lyric is, “While they're standing in the welfare lines, Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation, Wasting time in unemployment lines, Sitting around waiting for a promotion. Don't you know you're talking about a revolution, It sounds like a whisper.” I think it’s an OK song. But that wasn’t what made me notice it. 

What this song followed was an advert for the Victorian Relief Winter Blanket Appeal. The voice over man tells us that this is the 71st year the appeal has been run. Seventy one years! Just imagine your gran having spent 71 of her 80 years living without the resources to heat her house properly. Just imagine a third generation child, waking to poverty, with little access to resources that would alleviate his or her distress. Just imagine a revolution taking place.

Since 1934, when the first Winter Blanket Appeal was held, a revolution has been taking place … but it’s not bringing the social changes longed for by the poor and dispossessed. It’s happening in the same halls of power that inaugurated the Winter Blanket appeal. Not only there but also in the Boardrooms and backrooms of the corporations. The revolution, so long predicted by Marxian philosophers, did come but not in the form predicted.

Instead of the “people” rising up and reclaiming the “commons”, the wealthy, being better educated and resourced, realised that unless they found ways of convincing the vast majority that what they had was about as good as it gets, then that vast majority might well rise up and turn the whisper into a shout.

In 1930 ALP premier of Victoria, Edmond Hogan, signed into being the “State Relief Committee” as a means of assisting people “in distress through an efficient and economical way of collecting and distributing surplus food, clothing and other domestic commodities”.  The Great Depression was in full swing and the concept of ‘noblesse oblige’ was still strong, if only out of a healthy dose of self interest, so the idea of those with excess assisting those with less was not such a strange idea. One of the downsides to this concept is that it, potentially, reveals the real wealth of individuals.

Back in olden times, wealth was relatively easy to spot. If someone had more sheep, cows, horses, pumpkins, leeks or tomatoes than you it was fairly easy to see. The livestock or crops were obvious. As society developed a more ‘privatised’ view of individual wealth evolved and wealth itself became much less on public display. While castles and fortresses were built to protect ‘commodities’, forms of currency were developed and banks and investment houses set up and the subjugation of the social to capital began. However, public displays of wealth did continue but were much less about demonstrating ‘power’ over people and more about showing off your wealth in front of other wealthy people.

As more complex economic and resource distribution methods were developed these displays of wealth were turned into public events. When the Emperor came to town, kids would be shuffled out of skools to line the roads. Prisoners would be washed and given new rags to clothe themselves and then were forced to wave flags and cheer. Workers would be given a day off. Not to relax but to turn up and rally, cheer and hurrah the emperor during his speeches. In short, the pomp and ceremony and lavish display was not about liberation or social change or redistributing the ‘commonwealth’, but about this emperor showing off the power of his regime to other emperors in neighbouring states. The poor and destitute would be forced from the city streets so they didn’t disrupt the procession. They were to have no part nor derive any benefit from the Emperors largesse because that was to be the sole domain of his satraps.

Not much has changed really. What has accelerated since the 1930’s are the ways in which the rich and powerful have subverted the revolution for their own ends. Sure, we can give a few blankets to the cold and destitute, but what makes the headlines are the “stars” of the fundraising events. How many CEO’s and other luminaries will join in the ‘Winter Sleep Out’ this year and spend less than one night in a park? We should not forget that this is not done to try and empathise with the real poor and cold but is done to foster good public relations between their corporation and the public they ostensibly serve. The act of giving is thus transformed, revolutionised if you like, into an act of selfishness where the bottom line is the first consideration. While the noble intention of the Winter Blanket Appeal remains, the fanfare and hype has been ramped up to such an extent that the focus is now on rock stars and celebrities rather than the moral and ethical concerns surrounding the question of why there should be poverty at all.

Tracy Chapman sang “Poor people are gonna rise up, And get their share. Poor people are gonna rise up, And take what's theirs”. Yet after 71 years the Victorian Relief Winter Blanket appeal still needs 10,000 blankets to keep the cold from the bones of the poor. Why is it that we haven’t found a solution to this social concern? Why isn’t this, the need for 10,000 blankets, the front page story? If we extrapolate this number out to all of Australia, we would need about 45,000 blankets to keep the winter chills from the elderly, the poor and the destitute. Instead we find headlines about how the rich are lauded by each other. We find that the news bulletins begin with the ruling classes praising each other and celebrating their own self importance. The pomp and ceremony of ‘state visits’ revolve around media and photo opportunities. The ‘people’, you will note, play as supporting actors to the celebrities and powerful.

I’m still trying to reconcile the fact that even though we are collectively richer, healthier and better organised than at any time in our past, the words of Marx, written a little more than 150 years ago, still resonate so strongly when applied today. Marx wrote, “… every form of society has been based … on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. … The modern labourer … instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.”

The question we must grapple with and find an answer for, is, will we, in 70 years time, still allow the poor to suffer in such a state as to need blankets supplied to them? Or will we, as Chapman and Marx hopefully wrote, find a place in the people’s revolution over those who would deny us basic human needs? After all if we can find billions to fund a war on terror, why can’t we find a billion to warm the feet and hands of the children among us who are terrorised by the revolution that causes their poverty?