Is It Immoral To Be Rich? Yes. Absolutely. Next Question.
while people are starving, wealth
is a crime. I am not willing to argue.
if you are hungry, no laws apply.
glass breaks easily. weapons
can be made from anything.
crime should not go unpunished.
the meaning of royalty
it too can be killed
Sean Bonney - Confession 2 [abandonedbuildings]
Last week I binge-watched Netflix’s new version of Snowpiercer, the graphic novel which was first adapted into a film by Parasite director Bong Joon-Ho. The premise is simple and brilliant: the world has frozen over due to climate change, and the ingenious entrepreneur Mr. Wilford has invented a forever-running train, 1,001 cars long, which can save a select few humans from certain death by ice. Billionaires bought up the tickets; a few key workers were added to the equation to provide labour; but on the day of boarding, a mob of regular folk rushed the train in a last-ditch attempt to escape death, and were banished to live in the tail end of the train in squalor forever. One man, former homicide detective Andre Layton, has lived in ‘The Tail’ for six years - until he is hauled out of the slums into First Class, where he is demanded to solve a murder up-train. They ply him with food and sunlight, buttering him up to get his help; he holds his nerve and continues planning his revolution, for the dirty, cramped, sick human beings in the back of the train.
The premise of this show is a perfect allegory for our times: the residents live strictly within class borders, and while they can all technically participate in the democracy of their society, the reins of democracy are held by the rich. The key workers - the doctors, teachers, factory workers, cleaners, police officers - are kept ticking over with the bare minimum. They’re useful, but not lucrative enough for luxury. Those who didn’t buy a ticket, the ‘Tailies’, sit in the back of the train, eating nutritional jelly and wilting away in the dark, told that they have had kindness bestowed upon them by Mr Wilford who chose not to throw them out into the freeze. Even at the end of the world, on a train that cannot be alighted, does capitalism hold steady. The train rattles around the earth forever, feeding off its own energy. Nobody getting on, no way off except to death.
It’s pretty clear by now that every facet of our existence is inextricably linked to capitalism. Race, class, gender, housing, climate change, happiness, sex, pain, life, death. Capitalism is designed this way; it is a work of pure genius. Capitalism is, as I have previously written, a process of osmosis; capitalism does not present itself as monstrous, but as freedom. But whether you are a free market capitalist or a hard left socialist, you cannot realistically deny that capitalism is no longer the choice-option it sells itself to be - like it or not, you participate, or are left to face the consequences. These consequences are usually starvation, homelessness, or death. We are all aboard Snowpiercer now, and have been for quite some time. ‘Money is the end and aim of my mercenary existence,’ wrote Little Women author Louisa May Alcott, all the way back in 1868, three years after the abolition of slavery, and only forty years after scientists realised that dinosaurs had once walked the earth. People say that novel is about women and sisterhood - I think it is about the ways capitalism forces us into a ranked subjugation based on our monetary value. How apt, Ms. Alcott. How apt indeed.
In order to become rich, capitalism must work in your favour. It’s one sprawling, dragged out game of Russian Roulette. But what does ‘rich’ mean? It all depends on where you sit, doesn’t it? There’s the ultra-rich, the billionaire class who own islands in the Caribbean and whose money multiplies on its own, like bacteria in a damp fridge. There are the inordinately-rich-but-not-quite-billionaires - movie stars, venture capitalists, hedge fund managers. There are the upper-middle-class high earners, the ones who work day and night for a high price; CEOs, bankers, kingpin drug dealers. All these players are inarguably rich - although the latter might argue that they’re still working class because I grew up in a small house and I work more hours than most people don’t you get it? (They’re rich.) Wealth intersects with quality of life on different levels in different countries, and of course, not all rich people are as rich as each other. But what about those in the middle?
Here’s where it gets muddy. Where’s the line of wealth, really? There’s never going to be one; richness is quantifiable by so many factors. Money is an elusive concept, something we feel is concrete and quantifiable, but in fact is a fairy-story that hides in homes, in clothing, in liquified shares, in fluctuating stocks, in family ties, in marriages, in the irrigated oil of countries you’ve never been to. Money dances in and out of the world without detection. It is a concept, not a thing. Like consciousness, you either have it, or you do not. So no, I’m not going to quote a number that defines you as ‘rich’. I’m only going to say this: you know if you are. And you know if you’re not.
Back to the question at hand: is it immoral to be rich? Sure. Of course it is. I don’t really see why it’s a hard question. It’s also not the right question to be asking. By this point, most people would admit that the wealth divide in our world is pushing our societies, and our planet, into the brink of collapse. You know, the fact we produce enough food for ten billion people per year, but 815 million people per year are defined as chronically malnourished globally. The disconnect happens when we attempt self-reflection, an action at which we as a species have never been particularly deft. It’s not difficult to wrap your head around the fact that the world is falling apart due to hoarded wealth. Yet when you’re sitting in First Class, comfortable and well-fed, it’s hard to look at the stowaways down-train and realise that yes, it was you who put them there. It’s easy to blame The System for those who die in poverty and are stamped on every second of their downward spiral to death - but what is a system without those who uphold it? Nothing. It is nothing.
So the question should not be, ‘Is it immoral to be rich?’, the question should be, ‘How can we fix our immoral wealth divide?’ Billionaires are not necessarily the problem, but rather the outcome of a problematic system which accommodates such vast wealth in the hands of the few. So at whose door can we lay the blame? One could say fascism, which is ruling the USA and the UK in an ever-deteriorating disguise. Our “democracy” has let loose the hounds of hell on social care and the vulnerable in society - and what use is a democracy, when every option is about as revolutionary as a yoga mum in Sweaty Betty leggings? Sir Keir Starmer the clever, flannel-shaped womble can surely not be our greatest opposition to fascism, yet it appears, sadly, that is the case. But liberals love him, don’t they? Yes indeed, the keys to the kingdom of capitalism are held by the liberals, too. Liberals are the kind of people that attend Black Lives Matter protests but wouldn’t quit their job over racism. They see the glaring problems in society, but they’re too far up-train to compromise their position. But truly, whether it’s the fascists, the flannels or the liberals, the blame is at the door of no party exclusively. The way to fix the evil of richness is to abolish our ability to become super-rich.
To abolish wealth would mean to lose out on wealth. That’s the crux of the matter that stops the middle class from heading to revolution. Because there is nothing wrong with living well, not at all, and in fact, that is literally the core principal of socialism - for everyone to have the chance to live well, and to be provided with the foundations to achieve wellness. The criminal aspect of wealth, as Sean Bonney aptly puts, is that ‘while people are starving, wealth is a crime.’ Does your ribeye steak taste like abused, pain-ridden terror? Does your new-build in Hackney Wick smell like gentrification and class borders? Does your Guardian newspaper feel like an anvil made of spineless centrist drivel when you pick it up off your welcome mat? Good. That means you’re in tune, even if you aren’t ready to admit it yet. Abolishing wealth means abolishing all hoarded wealth. Until we are ready to make personal sacrifices, we shouldn’t even be having this conversation. While we can stare at the immorality of hoarded wealth until we’re blue in the face, until we renounce our own participation in it, we will get nowhere.
Written by Madeleine Goode
Madeleine Goode is a writer, tutor and barista from Manchester. She can be found cute-wrestling any dog she sees, watering her houseplant collection or making cheap jokes on Twitter. She likes to write about current affairs, neoliberalism and feminism, as well as poetry and journal entries. You can find her personal site at www.seizeyourlife.blog; on Instagram and Twitter she is @goodegracious.