Seizing the moment: crises are a time for tackling inequality
The current Covid-19 pandemic has drawn into sharp focus the disproportionate impact that will be felt by developing countries. From a public health perspective, higher rates of population density especially in urban areas, weaker health systems, weaker enforcement of social distancing and an inability to seek treatment are all likely to see a higher rate of infection and death per capita in developing countries. From an economic perspective, a higher percentage of workers in casual labour, a lack of social security and welfare systems as well as very low rates of personal savings quickly makes any form of quarantine an impending economic emergency for millions of households. This view has been supported by the recent comments by IMF’s Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, who said, “Just three months ago, we expected positive per capita income growth in over 160 of our member countries in 2020. Today, that number has been turned on its head: we now project that over 170 countries will experience negative per capita income growth this year.” While it may prove difficult in times of great uncertainty, hardship and sorrow for millions of people to look beyond the current storm clouds, history does offer us a ray of hope.
We can garner confidence from the clues that history affords us if we come to appreciate time as a cyclical, not a linear, concept. Linear time, by definition, prevents us from engaging in a collective story larger than ourselves and bars us from making meaningful connections with our past. Positioning us at some intermediary point away from the beginning and end of history, linear time underpins an outlook, a way of thinking, that is solitary, fleeting and constantly aiming for a destination on a higher, some would argue unachievable, plain. As linear time continues, a disconnect is created between the present moment and the past which in turn presents challenges for providing informed analysis of how the past relates to the present. A linear approach promotes using the past to extrapolate the future. If however, we adopt a cyclical approach to time, one that appreciates that without some notion of historical recurrence, no meaningful discussion of the past is possible, then we can begin to think about the rise and fall of empires, victories or defeats in battle, the emergence and decline of dynasties, in a way that shows similar trends have occurred before and will ergo appear in some kind of form again. Churchill, drawing on his dexterity of language that only he could muster, aligned himself with this idea of the cyclicality of time by writing “the challenge is to look at the future not along a straight line, but around the inevitable corners. To know how to do that, you have to practice looking at how the past has turned corners.”
Providing a mental framework to support the notion of the cyclicality of time is important because it provides a philosophical and historical construct that enhances any discussion on the current pandemic’s effects on inequality. If we accept this idea of historical recurrence, then we can see the true contextual importance of how over the course of history, a range of societies at various levels of economic development and stability were indeed unequal. Indeed, it has been argued that as soon as humans started farming and then handing down assets to the next generation, the seeds of inequality were sown. The key point here, however, is not whether inequality has existed in previous societal systems, but rather to highlight how a redistribution of resources and a recalibration towards ‘equality’ only occurred during times of extreme violence or disruption. This argument is developed by Walter Schiedel in his 2017 opus The Great Leveller in which he argues that only four violent events, what he terms as The Four Horsemen, have significantly reduced inequality: mass-mobilisation warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues.
A brief observation of 20th century history and the ensuing impact that the two World Wars had on inequality certainly seem to add credence to Schiedel’s notion. Before the First World War, urban folk were crammed into tenement housing, often with close to 100 people in a typical four-story building. After the cessation of hostilities in 1918, Prime Minister Lloyd-George launched a Homes Fit For Heroes campaign in a bid to rehouse some of the 6 million men who had served during the War. The Housing Act of 1919 paved the way for 500,000 properties to be built in three years, with one family per property. While it is true this target was not fully met, it still represented a significant change in direction compared to pre-1914 policy in terms of how the state sought to reallocate resources to the urban working poor. Similarly, Attlee’s post-war Labour government built more than a million homes from 1945 onwards, a trend that continued into the late 1950s. The origins of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom date back to 1942 when, at the height of war, liberal economist William Beveridge in his now famous eponymous report ‘The Beveridge Report’ noted how “a revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.” For over 70 years, the NHS has provided a universal healthcare system free at the point of use for tens of millions of Britons. The trend of inequality reduction during times of crisis can also be observed in the United States when Social Security was created at the height of the Great Depression thereby providing retirement, disability and other benefits to millions of people that hitherto had been non-existent.
The current Covid-19 pandemic bears witness to one of the Four Horsemen penned by Schiedel. Drawing on our appreciation of the cyclicality of history, we will have another opportunity to tackle the perennial disease of inequality. Whether we seize this opportunity with both hands is up to all of us; but crucially we do have the power to shape that destiny. There is no normal on the other side once the pandemic passes; it is just what is left and what we rebuild. If there is one ray of light, one drop of hope amidst a sea of sorrow and fear, it is that when we as a human race do emerge on the other side, it will be up to us to refocus our efforts to restore human dignity at the centre of our economic priorities and to rethink how society works for the majority.
The English playwright Arthur Wing Pinero wrote how “The future is only the past again, entered through another gate.” Out of the sorrow and fear, this is the opportunity that the pandemic has afforded us. If we do not seize it, if we fail to listen to the cyclicality of history, another one of the Four Horsemen will arrive through Pinero’s “gates” when we least expect it and will present us with the same problems we are faced with today.
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11 April 2020
Research of IBMR.io & ARCC
Editors: Eric Tao, Head of Media IBMR.io & Sinjin Jung, Managing Director IBMR.io.
