A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE (Part 15). This blog is a continuation of review of The Creation of World Poverty by Teresa Hayter, published in 1990.
By consuming meat we ate the children of the Sahel, Ethiopia and Bangladesh
Feeding grain to animals is a wasteful way of producing proteins for humans to eat. A quotation from Rene Dumont is one possible epitaph on the population argument: “The rich white man, with his overconsumption of meat and his lack of generosity for poor people, behaves like a veritable cannibal – an indirect cannibal. By consuming meat, which wastes the grain that could have saved them, last year we ate the children of the Sahel, Ethiopia and Bangladesh. And we continue to eat them this year with undiminished appetite.” Rather than saying that the poor should be blamed for their poverty, it might be truer to say that the problems lie with the rich, those who expropriate the fruits of the labor of the poor.
Chapter 4: The past is not Irrelevant
It is very hard to understand the present situation of underdeveloped countries without some reference to their past. The accumulation of wealth in Europe and North America, and their industrial and technological advance, are relatively recent phenomena. It was in the 19th century, with the Industrial Revolution, that the huge advances in first British and then other European, North American and later Japanese wealth and productive capacity took place. Even so, during most of the 19th century the situation of working people in Europe was in its own way as bad as anything anywhere. Children were removed from the cities to the mills at the age of seven or eight; they worked in factories for up to 12 or 15 hours, standing throughout. ‘They always strapped us if we fell asleep,’ testified an eleven-year-old boy, who is quoted in Leo Hyberman’s book, Man’s Worldly Goods. Even today there are places within industrialized countries where poverty is severe, including the United States where the principles of free enterprise are most resolutely upheld: in 1972 the US Bureau of Census stated that ‘at least 10 to 12 Americans are starving or sick because they have too little to eat.’
European traders and adventurers began their expansion overseas
The change in the relative position of Europe can be said to have begun about five centuries ago when European traders and adventurers began their expansion overseas. Empires and civilizations have risen and declined and the European empire, though long-lasting, was only the latest of many. Earlier empires were oppressive and of course hierarchical and much of what they did was no doubt as brutal as what their peoples subsequently suffered under the Europeans. Slavery was practiced on a large scale by the Arabs. The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice. The Europeans burned witches. The Europeans did not, at that time, possess anything that might be termed superior civilization, or even superior techniques, on a world scale. The latter developed later, in ways that have to be explained.
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
The earliest empires were in China, India, what are now North Africa and the Middle East, later in Greece and Rome. Northern Europe began to emerge from its backwardness in the Middle Ages. In the 13th century Marco Polo went to China and was staggered by the richness of the civilization he found there. Throughout the world there were civilizations whose level of organization and degree of wealth was highly advanced: in Egypt, Persia, Benin, the Maghreb, Ethiopia, Java, Angkor. In Africa there were comparable developments; Walter Rodney, a Guyanese historian who was recently murdered for his political activities in Guyana, gives many examples in his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.