Reflections on Wealth, Power, and Social Justice
May 23, 2024 - Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
James 5:1-6
One of the statements of Adam Smith (1723-1790), the author of "The Wealth of Nations," often quoted by others, is this: "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." Now, the question arises: who were those "masters of mankind" in Great Britain during Adam Smith's time? Some think he referred to the nobility and landowners, while others to the "merchants and manufacturers" influencing government policy for their sole benefit, without taking into consideration the needs of ordinary citizens. To whom would it refer today?
In today's fragment of the letter of James, we find a scathing criticism of the rich. Scholars cannot agree on whom the apostle had in mind, but the class of rich people in James' world was very small. Among them would be the family of the High Priest, the Sadducees, the Herod family, and all those associated with them. Most people were subsistence farmers, skilled workers, fishermen, shepherds, and unskilled day laborers.
James' criticism includes four charges: hoarding wealth (vv. 2–3), withholding wages (v. 4), living in luxury and pleasure (v. 5), and condemning and murdering the righteous (v. 6). The righteous one that James mentions brings to mind Jesus, condemned by the priestly aristocracy and handed over to the representative of the imperial administrators of the Roman Empire for crucifixion. Jesus indeed did not offer any resistance.
The apostle, like the ancient prophets of Israel, predicts disaster to befall those rich people. The phrase "the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts" (James 5:4) reminds me of Israel enslaved in Egypt and crying out to the Lord for help. When the Lord heard the groaning of Israel, He began to act and brought judgment upon Egypt and its rulers.
The letter of James is traditionally dated between AD 55-60, and according to the Jewish historian Josephus (died AD 100), James was put to death in AD 62 under the high priest Ananus II, a Sadducee. A few years later, in AD 66, the first Roman-Jewish war broke out, which, with the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem in AD 70, brought an end to the priestly aristocracy and the rule of Herod's family.
In its 2024 report on inequality and global corporate power, Oxfam states that "The world's five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes from $405 billion to $869 billion since 2020 — at a rate of $14 million per hour — while nearly five billion people have been made poorer." Today for many the "masters of mankind" are the international corporations and financial instititions. Oxfam writes in a language that resembles James: "Through squeezing workers, dodging tax, privatizing the state and spurring climate breakdown, corporations are driving inequality and acting in the service of delivering ever-greater wealth to their rich owners" (Inequality Inc. Executive Summary). I wonder what Apostle James would think about this finding and what his response would be.