Social Justice as a Mirage word

After its initial conception of 1840, and its immergence as a secular concept at international level in the 20^th C, social justice created confusion in its adoption as a political tool. Despite its holy word coined in it, the practice got non linear application as it is supposed to do so. As a result many scholars started to doubt in its core values and started to question the unquestionable of its inner spheres.

One of the prominent scholars who coined an anticipated meaning of social justice is Friedrich A. von Hayek, in his book 1976 titled by “Law, Legislation, and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy.”  Hayek came with a new words coined to the idea of social justice and he called it a “mirage.” a “will-o-the-wisp“, an “empty formula,”  “strictly,” “necessarily,” and “entirely” “empty and meaningless” ; a phrase that “meant nothing at all” , that “has no meaning whatsoever,” a vacuous concept; “a quasi-religious belief with no content whatsoever” , a “primitive anthropomorphism” , or “atavism,” a “superstition”, like believing in witches or the philosopher’s stone, or a “hollow incantation”, like “open sesame”.

What Hayek clearly stated was the tendency of social justice as a dream word just kept in sub-conscious level and expecting something good to happen. There, the fault is quite clear and the probability of attaining what it was said so matters on how much the dream can be memorized during the conscious way of life. This is quite clear as we see regarding Eritrean case. PDFJ dreamt, in fact, a good and holly dream; as it could have upgraded the life of every individual across the Eritrean society with all necessities installed and exercised by every born Eritrean.

Measuring Social Justice

If Social Justice is such a big opportunity for positive and negative sides, how then PFDJ is living by painting the hollow word (as Hayke said it)? This is quite simple advantage that PFDJ got a chance to hide within. First; the masses societal structure and basic needs and second, at international level, especially like the United Nations, where they put justice as their core mission and visions in the whole world.

In this article, I will give you the major components of Social Justice Index parameters and based on this, I will put my analysis by comparing of the realities that exist and what it is reported. Fortunately, PFDJ got a safe haven to hide his dirty works under the umbrella of millennium goals and got an appreciation of achievements for most of the goals proposed by the end of 2015. Though, the reality is different, what at least PFDJ tried to fool the people and world community worked till recently. And this is what it makes the Eritrean case more secret and unexplored.

OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and development) has six criteria for measuring social Justice Index. These indexes are grouped as; poverty, education, labor, social cohesion and non descrimination, health and inter-generation. These parameters are the mothers for the millenium development goals (8 goals and to be achieved in 2015). But here, the list is for general indicator not a specific project and what the country under test is indexed based on certain criterias given. As we can see in the table, each one is also having its won parameter.

Table 1: Social Justice Index

Social Justice Index Parameters in the eyes of PFDJ

Then to start the analysis, let’s start the macro-economic policy of PFDJ, The Macro-Policy (1994) underscores the overall importance of human capital development to national development by making broad provisions for the development of lifelong and life wide educational strategies which will bring about widespread learning in the Eritrean society at large. In respect of education, the following objectives are set out in this national document: To produce a population equipped with the necessary skills, knowledge and culture for self-reliance and a modern economy; To develop in the population: self-consciousness and self-motivation, to fight poverty, disease and all the attendant causes of backwardness and ignorance; To make basic education available to all.

Even though human resource development was put as the major priority, its educational policy was only drafted for the first time in 2003. The national policy which was drafted 10 years after independence contains two fundamental guiding principles for the provision of education in Eritrea. Firstly, the policy shows a clear commitment to lifelong learning as stipulated in the following points: Education is a fundamental human right and a lifelong process by which all individuals are given opportunities to attain their potential as all rounded citizens. Secondly, the policy shows full commitment to the development of human capital thus: Eritrea’s greatest asset is its people: revitalizing citizens with relevant education and training is the only means by which the overall socio-economic development of the country can be achieved.

And in the contrary, the land which was owned by 80% of the entire population was declared as state property. According to the proclamation no. 58/1994, its main objective was to reform the system of land tenure in Eritrea, to determine the manner of expropriating land for purposes of development and national reconstruction, and to determine the powers and duties of land commission. Does it look great idea to have such people’s property, but not having a policy on how to develop the human capital? Is it really a justice, a justice of taking the means of survival and not allowing them to open their eyes?

Anyway, let’s come with analysis of land proclamation 58/1994 and its implication under the PFDJ era. According to PFDJ, social justice is material possession and just not allowing one to die without reaching any near-bye clinic. The first thing, regarding material prosperity, it is as if every person has the right to have a piece of land. And to fulfill this plan, they proclaimed a land policy in 1994 which states, “All land belongs to the state.” Under this property snatch, the land became under the state. The society became officially under the mercy of the big land lords. And the new land lords got an entire powerful tool to manipulate and use as their way of exercising as big missionaries in distributing the property to the people. Hence, people changed from owners of land to receivers of land.

Imagine now, according to FAO 2014 statistics, 77.77 % of the entire population lives in the rural areas (out of 6.33 million total populations). Then for the sake of social justice, about 78% of the entire population became direct victims of redistribution of property policy. And according to FAO country profile, the arable land and land under permanent crops availability per person is 0.4 ha. This area is only meant for those people who are actively engaged in agriculture for their daily life. Having this as a background and assuming normal climatic conditions, the total food produced during good rainy season is only 60% of the total country demand. From then we can easily leant that the land distribution system or the material share of country exposes the people to famine unless importation is done to balance the shortage.

Parallel to this, PFDJ has self-reliance in its economical philosophy. And this concept blocks any trade that tries to minimize the gap of the food shortages. This is what the country experienced for the last 14 years. I am counting 13 years, to be more lenient and to count from 2001, as a year of official birth of totalitarian system. I did not forget the poor and traditional system of agriculture practiced by the farmers in their small agricultural land, nor did I mention the shortage of agri-inputs. If we count all these, then what Hayek said is even less harsh. Farmers were not able to get primary materials and equipments. In the PFDJ hardware structure, there is Ministry of Agriculture, which is supposed to assistant farmers in all aspects. But, instead of assisting the farmers, at least in the extension service, the office was changed into tax-collector and fuel distribution center, fuel for those who produce vegetables and fruits. Not only this, the office also served as a spy in collecting information on the amount of products harvested by each farmer during the harvesting time. You may wonder why this spying is needed. It is quite clear; those farmers who produce more than what the regime decided as personal consumption per year, the rest will be taken at a lower price, usually at half price; the rest will be collected and redistributed to the people. In fact, it never reached to the people; rather, it was given to the military.

To make it short, first land was taken by the state, the state distributes to the people in small plots of land, and the farmers composing of 78% of the entire population try to produce food [usually a luck], and then again a quota is dictated for the annual demand by each person and the excess is collected. This system which mainly focuses on material distribution created dependency and LORD of the LAND, called Men’Gsti, all capable, that can give and take what it wants. For this then, as Hayek called it, a dangerous superstition.

1. Eqbal Ahmed

It is no doubt that Eqbal Ahmed was such a highly caliber scholar of modern politics. He moved from Pakistan to USA, fought in Algeria and thought in many universities and lectures throughout his academic career. He was a political visionary deeply rooted from historical and developmental perspective. But why PFDJ took him as a celebrate scholar in their political propaganda?

I remember his book titled, “Confronting Empire” written in 2000. That book was re-printed in PFDJ printing press and was distributed for free in every corner of the country. I read that book in 2008 and discussed with fellow colleagues. What I read and learned from that book was quite different from what we were supposed to understand. The objective was quite clear at that time. PFDJ was attacking US day and night, in all his propaganda spheres and for that, a tool was required and people need some proofs for accepting what it is said. From this point of view, college students were the primary target to have and debate about such books which speak about imperialism.

But, what is the message inside the book? Was it what the cover only tells? How deep was Iqbal Ahmed against injustice in his critical writings? Was he a consciousness opener, or a propagandist, just based on hate? These are my simple questions to explore Iqbal Ahmed after 6 years.

Iqbal was against injustice, exploitation, war, oppression and above all peace and prosperity. His critic to US was not for the sake of political consumption, it was a call to awareness to the world. But, PFDJ tried to exploit his book against USA propaganda, as imperialist. They did not understand what Iqbal was saying to them, they did not understand that they are worst than any on this earth oppressors and racists. I recommend them to re-read the whole entire content what message it has. Actually, now it is too late to do that. They are gone, GONE FOR EVER from the political life of Eritrea.

Here is a biography of Iqbal Ahmad written By Edward W Said on The Guardian, Friday 14 May 1999 (http://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/may/14/guardianobituaries1).

Eqbal Ahmad, perhaps the shrewdest and most original anti-imperialist analyst of Asia and Africa, has died, aged 66, in Islamabad following an operation for colon cancer. A man of enormous charisma and incorruptible ideals, he was a prodigious talker and lecturer.

He had an almost instinctive attraction to movements of the oppressed and the persecuted, whether in Europe, America, Bosnia, Chechnya, South Lebanon, Vietnam, Iraq or the Indian sub-continent. He had a formidable knowledge of history, always measuring the promise of religion and nationalism against their depredations and abuse as their proponents descended into fundamentalism, chauvinism and provincialism.

Ahmad was a fierce, often angry, combatant against what he perceived as human cruelty and perversity. During his last years, he dedicated himself – quixotically it would sometimes appear – to the creation of an alternative university in Pakistan, named Khalduniyah after the great Arab polymath and historian whose comprehensive view of the human adventure Ahmad sought to embody in a curriculum solidly based in the modern humanities, social and natural sciences.

Born in the Indian state of Bihar, he and his siblings left for Pakistan in 1948; before that, his father was murdered in bed over a land dispute, as the boy lay next to him, a traumatic event Eqbal would cite when he attacked material acquisitiveness.

In Lahore, he attended Foreman Christian College, became briefly an army officer, then went to the United States in the mid-1950s as a Rotary fellow in American history at Occidental College, California. He entered Princeton in 1958 with a double major in political science and Middle Eastern studies. He got his PhD in 1965 and, during his Princeton years, went to Algeria, joined the FLN, was arrested in France and established a cultural centre in Tunis.

During the 1960s, he taught at Cornell and Chicago, and was among the first fellows of the anti-war Washington Institute of Policy Studies (IPS). In 1969 he married Julie Diamond, a teacher and writer from New York, and between 1973 and 1975 he established and headed the IPS’s offshoot in Amsterdam, the Transnational Institute.

Ahmad was an early and prominent opponent of the Vietnam war, and in 1970 was tried with the Berrigan brothers on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger – on which he and his alleged co-conspirators were acquitted. In addition to his outspoken support of unpopular causes (especially Palestinian rights), Ahmad’s uncompromising politics kept him an untenured professor at various universities until 1982, when Hampshire College, Massachusetts, made him a professor. He taught there until he became emeritus professor in 1998, dividing his time between New England and Pakistan.

During these years he travelled all over the world. Arabs, for example, learned more from him about the failures of Arab nationalism than from anyone else. In 1980, in Beirut, he was the first to predict the exact outlines of the 1982 Israeli invasion; in a memo to Yasir Arafat and Abu Jihad he also sadly forecast the quick defeat of PLO forces in South Lebanon. He was a relentless opponent of militarism, bureaucracy, ideological rigidity and what he called ‘the pathology of power’. He was consulted by journalists and international civil servants about abstruse currents in contemporary Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, India, Pakistan, Angola, Cuba, Sri Lanka and he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the US.

No one who saw him sitting bare-foot and cross-legged on a living-room floor, conversing genially until the early hours, with a glass in his hand, will ever forget the sight or the sound of his voice as he announced ‘four major points’ – but never got past two or three. He loved literature, especially poetry, and the sensitive and precise use of language, whether it was Urdu, English, French, Arabic or Farsi.

Ahmad was that rare thing, an intellectual unintimidated by power or authority, a companion in arms to such diverse figures as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Tariq Ali, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Richard Falk, Fred Jameson, Alexander Cockburn and Daniel Berrigan.

Immaculate in dress and expression, faultlessly kind, an unpretentious connoisseur of food and wine, he saw himself as a man of the 18th century, modern because of enlightenment and breadth of outlook, not because of technological or quasi-scientific ‘progress’. Somehow he managed to preserve his native Muslim tradition without succumbing either to the frozen exclusivism or to the jealousy that has often gone with it. Humanity and secularism had no finer champion. He is survived by Julie, and their daughter Dohra, a graduate student at Columbia.

Eqbal Ahmad, political scientist and peace activist, born 1933; died May 11, 1999

More reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eqbal_Ahmad

2. Noam Chomsky

Chomsky came in the attention of PFDJ political life as a libertarian socialist, Sometimes called social anarchism or left libertarianism is a group of that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic society without private property in the means of production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism). This is a good propaganda tool for their one-man centered philosophy of dictatorship in putting all properties under their control. Similar to Eqbal Ahmad’s works, Chomsky’s specific works were of major source information in PFDJ propaganda. As Libertarian socialism is a perfect tool in removing capitalist system of economics, private freedom, waged labor, social gathering and by controlling means of production.

In addition, Chomsky is known for his anti-American hegemonial dream, which made him known to public during Vietnam war and his connection with many revolutionaries of 1960s and 70s. His inclination to arachist communism is also an advantage for the self claimed ideology of the PFDJ, the social justice. One thing that the Eritreans are not allowed to know about Chomsky is his work on science and technology. Just the ill-intentioned information that fullfills their mission was provided to their readers.

Here is a short biography of Noam Chomsky compiled from wikipedia.
(For more information read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky)

His full name, Avram Noam Chomsky was in born December 7, 1928 froma middle-class Ashkenazi family in US Philadelphia, is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. Sometimes described as the “father of modern linguistics”, Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy. He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is currently Professor of Emeritus, and has authored over 100 books. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the “world’s top public intellectual” in a 2005 poll.

Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from relatives in New York City. He later undertook studies in linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained his BA, MA, and PhD, while from 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard University’s Society of Fellows. In 1955 he began work at MIT, soon becoming a significant figure in the field of linguistics for his publications and lectures on the subject. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky-Schützenberger theorem. In 1967 he gained public attention for his vocal opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, in part through his essay The Responsibility of Intellectuals, and came to be associated with the New Left while being arrested on multiple occasions for his anti-war activism. While expanding his work in linguistics over subsequent decades, he also developed the propaganda model of media criticism with Edward S.Herman. Following his retirement from active teaching, he has continued his vocal public activism, praising the Occupy movement for example.

Chomsky has been a highly influential academic figure throughout his career, and was cited within the field of Arts and Humanities more often than any other living scholar between 1980 and 1992. He was also the eighth most cited scholar overall within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index during the same period. His work has influenced fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music theory and analysis, political science, programming language theory and psychology. Chomsky continues to be well known as a political activist, and a leading critic of US foreign policy, state capitalism, and the mainstream news media. Ideologically, he aligns himself with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.