Knowledge And Decisions

Victimhood as an explanation of intergroup differences extends internationally to the Third World — typically countries that were poor before Western nations arrived, remained poor while they were there, and have continued poor after they left. The explanation of their poverty? Western exploitation! An economist who treats this as a testable hypothesis notes that “throughout the underdeveloped world the most prosperous areas are those with which the West has established closest contact” and contrasts this with “the extreme backwardness of societies and regions without external contacts.”²¹⁰ But like other victimhood approaches, Third-Worldism is not really an hypothesis but an axiom, not so much argued explicitly as insinuated by the words chosen (“the web of capitalism,”²¹¹ “the imperialist network”²¹²) and established by reiteration.

What is the function of victimhood for intellectuals? It hardly derives from rigorous application of intellectual processes. It does, however, greatly enhance the role of intellectuals as a social class — as consultants, advisors, planners, experimenters, authorities, etc. At a minimum, the victimhood approach presents intellectuals with psychic gratifications²¹³ (including denouncing rival elites). Beyond that are influence, power, visibility, and money — ample incentives for most people in most times. The victimhood concept is at least a rational approach, and perhaps an optimal approach, to social questions from the standpoint of intellectuals as a social class, however little it does for anyone else and however counterproductive it may be for society at large. The victimhood approach is also consonant with a more general, intellectual approach to human beings, abstracting from tangible natural or cultural differences — and being left highly suspicious of intergroup differences in socioeconomic results, which are indeed inexplicable, once major variables have been assumed away.

Behind this questionable cognitive procedure may lie a desire to establish the equality of man and perhaps a sense of “there but for the grace of God go I.” This may be a laudable objective as a counterpoise to the egoistic ideology of individual or group “merit.” But both approaches confuse causation with morality. If individual A has characteristic X, and individual B does not, then it is important for both to know whether X is an advantage or a disadvantage, even if neither “deserves” it and even if both are completely creatures of circumstances beyond their control as regards that characteristic. Nothing is gained by pretending that it doesn’t matter when it does, or by leaving it out of account in explaining differences between them. That only opens the way to concocting mythical reasons for their differences.

The victimhood axiom is based on little more than a minute scrutiny of rival elites and a reporting of their numerous sins and shortcomings — such as could be found in equally close scrutiny of any other group of human beings — elite or otherwise. That multinational corporations have cheated here and bribed there is neither startling as information nor a causal explanation of Third World poverty, however morally deplorable or legally actionable it may be. If prosperity could come only from the united efforts of upright and noble-minded people, all of mankind would still be sunk in poverty. It is always true, at least in the short run, that those poorly fed would be better fed if the well-fed shared some of their food. That is wholly different from saying that people are starving in India because overfed Americans somehow took their food.