How best can economic justice and equality be won?

By Mutumwa Mawere

Civil rights were won in colonial Africa through struggles often taking the form of armed conflict to allow many to believe that the same tactics that may have assisted in delivering the promise of universal suffrage could work in respect of economic rights.

Unfortunately, there exists no example that has seen economic justice and equality won through slogans and political rhetoric let alone through the open and transparent intermediation of the state and its actors.

What do we mean by economic justice?

Economic justice is essentially a component of social justice referring to a set of moral principles required in the building of sustainable economic institutions whose ultimate goal is the creation of an opportunity-based eco-system in which each person can create a foundation upon which a dignified, productive, and creative life can be experienced.

All human beings are endowed with certain inalienable rights including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In any human society, it is natural that diverse views on an issue can exist. The liberation movements of Africa take credit for delivering the promise of political independence and no second is spared reminding all who care to listen that were it not for the struggle for independence, freedom would be just an expensive idea.

Who then should deliver economic freedom?

It is argued, even by the seemingly enlightened, that economic freedom is and should be an idea located in the minds of state actors and can best be delivered when the state is used to facilitate the transfer of presumed economic power i.e. shares from those who hold them, as a consequence of market forces, to those who do not have them.

The “haves” in the language of empowerment and distributive justice tend to be white human beings who, because of the race-based colonial system, are blamed for their relationship with money as being solely derived from the colonial dispensation. Even the white people, whose relationship with Africa started after the end of colonialism or apartheid, are not spared of attacks.

The attacks against whites are not accidental as they fit into a model that locates whites as the cause of the lingering injustice and social inequalities that have crystallised the shape and personality of Africa as a dualistic one with whites continuing to experience the business of life differently from the majority black people.

The irony is that there is nothing that makes white people more human than black people let alone more intellectually gifted or business savvy. With respect to the cure for the obvious unacceptable economic standing of blacks, the history of post-colonial Africa has produced many social engineers who have sought to redress the presumed ills of the inherited system through non-market instruments.

Indeed, in doing so the role of the state and its actors has been sufficiently distorted to allow many to naively think that all it takes is to identify suitable persons to hold state positions and the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality would be eradicated.

Regrettably, no human being is capable of delivering the promise of economic justice and equality as it is self-evident that the greatest treasure in the world we live in lies in the personality of human beings.

Each living human being has a life to live and, unfortunately, it is the use of time that allows one individual to better access the fruits of life than another. It is the case that a rich person is given the same amount of time in day as is the case for poor people.

The promise of a good life has to be counter-balanced with not only hard work but luck. It could not have been God’s purpose that one hardworking person’s fruits end up being a grant of life communicated through government or any other agent to another.

We are all accountable for our lives and the choices we make. I am a founding member of the 1873 Network, a non-state actor, where the issue of economic justice and equality is heavily contested with some members believing that justice and equality can best be won through state interventions and the creativity of state actors and others holding a strong view that only freemen and women through a market system can deliver the promise.

Some argue that if the market system failed to deliver the promise of political independence, how then can it be relied upon to deliver the promise of economic freedom? It is true that only freemen have control over the time granted by the creator. They can choose to use the time to create value or to be useful and in so doing expect other human beings whose lives are positively impacted on the use of time to pay for it.

To expect another hardworking person to give up value earned in a market system in the name of humanity or patriotism is absurd and irrational. Democracy allows or should allow all citizens to use their skills and abilities to the limit in creating exchangeable value in respect of their personal economies.

Environments that open the possibilities of the greatest personal economic improvement attract the opportunity seekers who dare to dream and allow the minds to drive the dreams. The history of human civilisation has shown that free humans are able to follow their dreams of making personal fortunes by doing something unique or by innovation.

It is the individual that drives the change and it doesn’t take a lot of words to capture the human spirit. It is the market system that can best allocate scarce resources including labour. A humanly administered system will not be able to protect the interests of all market participants in a rational and fair manner.

The conclusion that economic justice and equality can best be won by freemen through a market system is not only apt but respects the reality and purpose of life. In the beginning of time, there was no government but people had to convert the materials created by a non-human system into products and services whose conversion could not happen out of themselves but required human effort.

The effort so expended in the production of goods and services is what the buyers through the market system have to generate separately and convert into cash and, in turn, be able to tender the cash in exchange of goods. The system works well and efficiently. It has worked before and will continue to do so without too much interference.

I am the first one to admit that the market is not a perfect system but it has no substitute. Economic freedom has necessarily to be understood at the personal level and not at the macro level.

It does not take a genius to know that freedom and prosperity are friends and that nation-states that are founded upon the idea that the individual is the true driver of economic and social change will inspire hope.