The Grapes of Wrath: "The changing economy was ignored ... and only means to destroy revolt were considered"

And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmurings of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.

~John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

Replace "land" with what it has always stood for, "wealth", and Steinbeck's reading of history is spot-on in describing the repression, and the great investment in the instruments to repress further, which is happening the world over, but of particular note in the US, the UK and continental Europe, evident in these countries' fast-growing acts of repression abroad and against their own at home.

I recently read The Grapes of Wrath for the first time. I am not one for bests and favorites, as those who know me well well know, but this is perhaps the best book I have read, of any genre, a statement I don't make lightly, nor was it expected.

Steinbeck seems to have captured everything within this novel: a gripping story; deep humaneness on every page; simultaneously heroic and humble characters; philosophizing and theologizing; a reverberating political narrative which led to book burnings and bannings, death threats and Congressional hearings, a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize; pure literary greatness, with descriptive passages made of gold; and universalizing chapters interwoven with the stark particulars of the Joad family's trials and tribulations, and their rising above these deliberately cast afflictions to achieve human heights toward which we may, ourselves, aspire.

Additional resources follow which concern my linking, as I do above, The Grapes of Wrath to the present-day situation:

"Gap between rich, poor seen growing: Income disparity reaches highest since 1920s, paper reports, with recent Wall Street boom partly to blame" (CNN Money, October 12, 2007)

"Inequality Gap Grows in Asia, United States" (World Watch Institute, August 31, 2007)

"Rich-Poor Gap Widening" (World Watch Institute, November 12, 2003)

An excerpt:

Of all high-income nations, the United States has the most unequal distribution of income, with over 30 percent of income in the hands of the richest 10 percent and only 1.8 percent going to the poorest 10 percent.

"‘Non-Lethal Weapons’ Tackle Protests Against Globalization" (Inter Press Service, via Common Dreams, October 26, 2007)

An excerpt (bold-facing is mine, for emphasis):

Rainer Wendt, director at the German Police Officers Union, says “the police need weapons that do not kill, but which hurt and cause wounds, in order to control demonstrations. Otherwise, we are declaring open season on our police officers in battles against violent demonstrators.”

A rationale for non-lethal weapons was presented by Kay Nehm, former German attorney general, in July 2006 at a conference on ‘Future Security’ in Karlsruhe city, some 550 km southwest of Berlin.

“The necessary assessment (on home security) begins with the changing social underlying circumstances, namely the economic upheavals associated with globalization, and the smaller financial possibilities of governments and municipalities to meet the growing prosperity discrepancies between the have and have-nots in our society,” Nehm said at that conference.

According to Nehm, these social and economic upheavals, which others associate with imposition of neo-liberal economic policies, “will surely lead to more social sacrifices and difficulties, which represent new risks of fractures within society, and are the natural hotbed for radical, extremist, terrorist challenges.”

Such challenges can only be mastered by security forces with non-lethal weapons, which do not cause a blood bath at demonstrations, Nehm said.

Thomas Gebauer, of the German non-governmental organization Medico International, interprets these justifications for non-lethal weapons as a symbol of the growing repressive character of European and North American governments, and of their readiness to violently suppress protests against the spreading social injustice.

“The development of such weapons aims at securing the growing social inequality, at ensuring that the poor do not have a chance of showing their discontent against the rich,” Gebauer told IPS. “The aim of these weapons is to guarantee social borders, to install perennial control of movements, to restrict democracy.”