José Martí

THOUGHTS

Carlos Ripoll

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE

26.- The duty to relieve unnecessary misery is a duty of the State.

27.- Political freedom, which, even in our time, is mistakenly thought to be the ultimate goal and the only prerequisite for the happiness of a nation, is nothing more than an indispensable means for achieving social welfare without strife. But even so, even though life without it has no value, it alone will not suffice to ensure public happiness. Political freedom without a doubt gives rise to and ensures human dignity, but neither its advent nor its development has brought about an economic system that guarantees even an equitable distribution of wealth.

28.- Instead of a state in which a few exceptional individuals are raised above increasingly miserable multitudes, is it not legitimate, through equitable distribution of the natural fruits of association, to seek a state where workers can live from their labor with ease and decorum while respecting free will and the natural incentives of human beings?

29.- All human battles are fought for possessions, even if they are fought in the name of beliefs and doctrines. Some fight, with the complicity of powerful individuals, to keep public property in their hands, one way or another, but human nature will not rest until it changes systems and beliefs so that they no longer cause us to live like wild beasts, in a state of agitation and ambush, with some people on the attack, propelled by the rage of the disinherited, and the others shielding their misbegotten wealth behind pleasant titles in the web of class distinctions.

30.- How can there be a person who lies in a bed of gold while another sleeps in the mud?

31.- Misery is not a private misfortune; it is a public crime.

32.- Where people do not have a safe, honest way of earning a living there is no hope that liberties can be firmly established. The need to survive will always produce plenty of support for those who want to infringe upon public liberties, and the lack of interests to protect will ensure followers for the unruly and the ambitious who want to destroy them.

33.- Let there be justice, and then no one will ask for anything unjust.

34.- How can it be that a person who inherits wealth should be thought more noble than one who creates it? How can one who lives with his back turned on his own, or under the protection of a privileged class, deserve more respect than the individual who struggles to make his own way on this difficult earth, weighed down by human scorn and left to his own resources? For me, these belittlers of the poor are worms; if we raised up their chest muscles and looked underneath, without a doubt we would see the worms.

35.- Excessive desire for material wealth, disdain for those who do not have it, undignified reverence for those who acquire it even at the expense of honor or through crime, brutalizes and corrupts republics. Those who practice or favor the worship of wealth should be denied respect and be looked upon as disguised enemies of the country, as filth and as Iagos. The rich, like thoroughbred horses, should have the pedigree of their fortunes open to public view.

36.- And we do not owe forgiveness to those who are incapable of overcoming the hatred and disgust that crime provokes and who pass judgment on crimes against society without knowing and weighing their historic causes, or the generous impulses that can bring them about.

37.- Crime is born where there is no work. Where misery is the only reward for submission, patriotism becomes blind and crazy.

38.- Social equality is no more than acknowledgment of nature's visible equity.

39.- Wealth that belongs to an exclusive few is unjust. It should belong to many; not to the parvenus, who are new dead hands, but to those who have earned it through honesty and work. A nation with a few rich people is not wealthy; wealthy is a nation in which every person has some wealth. In political economy and good government, to distribute is to produce happiness.

40.- The purpose of social charity and social concern is to reform nature herself, for people can do that much; to give long arms to those whose arms are short; to even the chances for those who have few gifts; to compensate for lack of genius with education.