Peter Espeut | Down by the riverside

On Monday, September 21, on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly, US Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont) delivered a major foreign policy address at the historic Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York City.

In April 1967, from the same pulpit, Martin Luther King Jr. took on the entire US political establishment by vigorously opposing the war in Vietnam; and, in June 1990, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, just five months after he was released from 27 years of unjust imprisonment, spoke in the same church thanking the people of the US for standing up for justice and against the evils of apartheid in South Africa.

His speech is on YouTube; you can see it for yourself.

About 10 years ago, I had occasion to comment on another of Bernie Sanders’ speeches. This Jewish democratic socialist made a good run to become the nominee of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the rabidly capitalist US. And he almost did it! At the time, I said that, if a black man with a Muslim middle name can be elected US president for two consecutive terms in racist US, then a democratic socialist can become US president.

Well, the backlash against Barack Hussein Obama was just beginning, and Donald Trump entered the White House for the first time a few months later.

But Bernie Sanders broke his campaign schedule, flew to Rome and, on April 15, delivered a lecture at the Vatican to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Titled ‘A Return to Fairness’, Sanders, whose wife is Roman Catholic, showed his familiarity with and support for the well-developed and systematic social doctrine of the Catholic Church, which begins with the 1891 encyclical of Pope Leo XIII entitled Rerum Novarum (Latin for “New Things”).

The starting point of Catholic Social Teaching is the scandal of inequality, caused by a system which causes the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. Ten years ago, Sanders said:

“Over a century ago, Pope Leo XIII highlighted economic issues and challenges in Rerum Novarum that continue to haunt us today, such as what he called ‘the enormous wealth of a few as opposed to the poverty of the many’.

“And let us be clear. That situation is worse today. In the year 2016, the top one per cent of the people on this planet own more wealth than the bottom 99 per cent, while the wealthiest 60 people, 60 people, own more than the bottom half, 3½ billion people. At a time when so few have so much, and so many have so little, we must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable.”

I have always liked Bernie Sanders.

Brother Bernie delivered a similar message at the Riverside Church last Monday night. He said, inter alia:

“We are living in an unprecedented and dangerous moment in world history and the challenges we face are enormous. What do I mean?

“Never before in human history have so few owned so much.

“Never before in human history has there been such extreme levels of income and wealth inequality.

“Never before in human history have we had such enormous concentrations of ownership.

“Never before in human history have we seen a billionaire class with so much political power.

“And never before have we seen such an unprecedented level of greed, arrogance and irresponsibility on the part of the ruling class.

“We are seeing it in the United States, we are seeing it in South Africa, we are seeing it in virtually every country on Earth.”

I leave it for you to decide whether we are seeing it in Jamaica.

Senator Sanders continued:

“One man, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive worth $954 billion, now owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households.

“CEOs of large, profitable corporations are making 350 times more than the average worker.

“Last year alone, after receiving the largest tax break in history, less than a thousand billionaires in America became $1.5 trillion richer.

“Over the last 50 years, according to the Rand Corporation, $79 trillion in US wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.

“Meanwhile, despite an explosion in technology and massive increases in worker productivity, the average American worker is making nearly $25 a week less today than he or she did over 53 years ago after adjusting for inflation.

“While the billionaire class and the 1% have never had it so good, over 60% of Americans live paycheque to paycheque, nearly 800,000 are homeless and tens of millions struggle to put food on the table, and pay for the outrageously high price of housing, healthcare, prescription drugs, childcare, education, gas and the basic necessities of life.”

Brother Bernie could be talking about Jamaica.

The system we have is not working out for the people, but the data shows that it works quite well for the few who control the system. As he said 10 years ago in the Vatican, “We must reject the foundations of this contemporary economy as immoral and unsustainable.”

Senator Sanders did not refer to Catholic Social Teaching on Monday night, but he knows that the condemnation by the Church of capitalism is just as strong as its condemnation of communism. Both are materialistic, and fundamentally atheistic and amoral. There is no “law of supply and demand” that guides the market. When goods are scarce and vendors increase prices, that is rapacious opportunism and greed.

Further quotes from Monday night will break my word limit. I do encourage you to listen to Brother Bernie’s speech, coming from the belly of the beast.

All aspects of human livity, including what we call “economics”, are subject to appraisal by the science of ethics. Here, I do not mean any religious moralising; I refer to philosophical ethics, going back to Aristotle and Plato, an objective assessment of right and wrong.

Go Bernie!

The Rev Peter Espeut is dean of studies at St Michael’s Theological College. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com