Justice Vs Power

Can the ideal of justice, where all people are afforded the same justice, to live under the same laws and societal standards be achieved when the is existing order empowers some but denies equality at just about every level of existence?

In having this thought, this conundrum, rattling around where my brain should be, I wondered when, if ever, the struggle between an equality of justice has co-existed where power is equally shared.

The question is particularly pertinent today, where we are seeing an increasing disparity between the haves and the have nots, between the wealthy and the others. Between different ethnicities, faiths and other markers of difference.

There are a variety of debates which highlight the issues of difference, cost of living, housing crisis, rise of hate, antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-immigration, feminism, gender definition and many other hot-button issue that causes concern, and the seeming inability of governments to find solutions to the myriad of problems faced. Surely there must be something the government/s can do to resolve these issues.

And so many of these issues are really deflections away from what is really happening, that control of economies, no, that should be singular, control of the GLOBAL economy is in the hands of very small elite, the wealthiest people on the planet, and what we are seeing is a winding back of the distribution of wealth to the way it was in previous times, when feudal landlords owned and controlled those who lived on their lands, in essence, owned those people, controlled where they lived, how they lived, who they married. Power blocs are asserting their power over vulnerable populations, the call to address the issues confronted by a wall of privilege.

Throughout history there have been shifts in the way a power dynamic has played out, from a time of supposed equality in hunter/gatherer societies to the more rigid hierarchical structures as agriculture sees a more settled life-style and the emergence of village communities, rules and laws, divisions of labour and so forth developed to ensure safety and conformity to standards, including the distinctions between a leadership and the rest of the community, to the colonial plantation economies, industrialisation and into the global economy where the ownership of the means of production and the supply chains which get commodities markets and are owned and controlled by an ever decreasing elite.

European colonialism and the period of Empire building saw the taking of land as a resource, not a source for life, but a resource to be exploited, whether for the mineral wealth that may be buried there, gold, silver, or as a resource to feed the changing tastes of Europeans, exotic foods, sugar, chocolate, tobacco, and the labour for those commodities… no white person could work there, so import Africans to do the tough work.

As times changed, with agricultural changes in Britain particularly, with the enclosures, peasants who were part of the estates were pushed aside, their common lands used to graze livestock and grow their crops were denied them, so the under-class were sent off to seek work in the growing towns and cities. The produce of colonialism, raw cotton was brought in from India to be spun and woven in the newly built factories, subsistence wages were paid and working conditions were not all that good. Those who could not find work, but took fish from the King’s streams or stole a rabbit from the King’s forest were sent off to the colonies, the Virginias to work off their sentences on the tobacco plantations, until the War of Independence, after which these ‘criminals’ were kept in old hulks of ships until New South Wales was chosen as a suitable outdoor prison to accommodate the superfluous people, the unwanted, those too poor to fend for themselves.

The primary objective of colonising was to make lots of money, to become filthy rich. But only for the select few. The VOC in Holland, the Dutch East Indies Company was an investor driven corporation which built ships to sail to the far flung colonies to bring back spices and other oriental exotica, exploiting the labour of indigenous workers and the sailors, many of whom were press-ganged into service, and if lucky returned home a few years later. The west coast of Australia is littered with wrecked ships which did not make it back home with the promised wealth.

In his book ‘Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World’, Niall Ferguson defends the benefits of colonialism, and especially the British Imperial model, acknowledging that, yes, there were some bad things, like slavery, exploitation but on balance the British Empire as a good thing. He cites mainly the economic benefits and cultural legacies such as religion through the work of Christian missionaries and the ideals of liberty and responsible governance, the building of rail networks. Ferguson is a professor of Financial History, and defends colonialism on the basis of economic benefits which were mainly accrued by the colonisers.  

It is interesting to read from an ethicist covering the same grounds of colonialism and again, an emphasis on the British Imperial model. Nigel Biggar is a Christian ethicist and published ‘Colonialism: a moral reckoning,’ a different take on colonialism and British Imperialism. He writes from an ethical and moral stance, questioning the motivations of colonising and the benefits that gave to the colonised, but both Ferguson and Biggar promote the positives of colonialism, as it being a good thing for the indigenous peoples who were not productive enough in the use of the land and resources, or how intertribal conflict was reduced through the promotion of Christianity, or how the use of land and the environment as a resource, rather than a source for life created so many more opportunities for the indigenous peoples.

Both writers rationalise colonialism from the coloniser’s perspective, in much the same way, the latest colonial project, the establishment of the State of Israel to replace Palestine, the same rationalisations have been used.

Indigenous people were not the Palestinians were not included in negotiations when the colonising plans were first promoted, and secondly, the land was not being used efficiently. Repeating the patterns and excuses for taking over the lands. As in previous colonising projects, the indigenous peoples were moved aside as land was taken.

Is it justice, to remove people from their homelands? One of the benefits of colonialism was that the concept of land ownership, having ‘title’ to the land, documentation which will stand up under legal scrutiny was seen as a benefit. Traditional ownership did not offer such security, and even though during the period of European colonialism, a code of conduct was established which meant that before hoisting a flag and declaring the lands as property of the king or other royal person, agreement had to be reached with the ‘natives’. Captain Cook chose an uninhabited island in the Torres Strait, Possession Island, as the site for that declaration. His writings, the daily recordings he made in his logs clearly stated that the Great South Land was inhabited, but fortunately, Possession Island was not, and so was used to declare half of the continent as property of the British King.

No matter how it is framed, colonialism is inevitably a quest for wealth, usually conducted by the already wealthy, looking to exploit lands for their resources, to fill market opportunities, whether with sugar, tobacco or oil, and as with the growth of colonies and empires, the riches have gone to the wealthiest who have exploited the labour force, whether indigenous or enslaved.

Laws were written to allow that exploitation, and when we consider the issues which face our world today we see that the oligarchs, the wealthiest people own the means production, the capital to invest in just about everything, with the creed of ‘Greed is Good’ motivating every decision, and having that power, a major contributors to the various political parties in democratic countries, lobbying to ensure that the rich get richer. The 500 richest people on the planet have seen their worth increase by $2.2 trillion in the last year, and have the power to avoid paying taxes on that obscene enrichment. Laws today are written to allow that exploitation to continue, to allow the richest to get richer, to allow the avoidance of taxation obligations, to insist that governments are for their benefit.

The question of Justice or Power has seen Power win time and again in post colonial nations. Indigenous peoples in North America, both USA and Canada remain marginalised, have not been able to reclaim their lands in any meaningful way, and the laws of the colonisers are written to protect the coloniser rather than seriously redress any injustices seen or perceived, similarly in South Africa during the period of colonisations, from the time the Dutch settled and Britain muscled its way in to the time of Apartheid, the rights of the indigenous were denied, the only use that could be made was to enslave them in the pursuit of wealth, mining of diamonds and gold.

In Australia too, the land grabs of the colonisers included mass murder, enslavement, poisoning water holes, arsenic laced flour for making damper, smallpox infected blankets, any means of eradication, even the imprisonment of natives who ‘stole’ a sheep when settlers killed kangaroos which the natives hunted. And the marginalisation of our First Nations people continues. They represent the most imprisoned, poorest people which make up our population.

Power trumps Justice every time. We see it in the ways rationalisations are used to justify taking lands and cancelling ancient cultures, judging those actions as beneficial, more likely because those lands and peoples are transformed to reflect the values of the coloniser. We see it in the way the divide between the haves and have nots grows exponentially, where the 2.2 trillion dollars the billionaires added to their wealth in 2025 does nothing to ease the pains of poverty.

This is blatantly obvious in the colonising of Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank and Golan Heights, the land is being transformed, to make it uninhabitable for the people who have lived there for generations, the dehumanising of the population, the dual sets of laws, one for Israelis and another for ‘the rest’. This is causing a backlash, protests at the treatment of Palestinians are responses to the ethnic cleansing and genocide being conducted, and the suppression of those voices, seen as being ‘antisemitic’, ramp up the hate to supporters of that ethnic cleansing and genocide, and that in turn ramps up hate speech directed at Islam, and promotes the sort of intimidation and violence we have witnessed over the past couple of years.

The call for a Royal Commission is legitimate. There appears to be a deep seated industry of hatred, but to limit the terms of reference to antisemitism misses the point that the promotion of hate speech, the anti-immigration rhetoric, the Islamophobia posts which litter public discourse need to be addressed, need to be included as an over-arching  investigation into the causes of violence in Australia. To limit the terms of reference denies a thorough, deep investigation into lobbying and the ability to silence voices, as we saw in the pressure leading to the unlawful dismissal of Antionette Lattouf for having a political opinion which she had expressed on social media.

‘Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic’, by Ilan Pappe, published in 2024 outlines the power of the Zionist cause and the influence it has on both the public discourse and the influence over politicians and that is very evident in the rhetoric used as the calls for Royal Commission becomes more strident, the criticism of the government and Prime Minister increases from firstly the right leaning press, then amplification in social media and the enlisting of other respected people. A well-oiled machine to garner sympathy and support, but the absence of ‘balance’, the absence of allowing objective examinations hate speech limits the enquiry’s scope, effectively silencing other hatred than the antisemitism which motivated the attack.

The call for a Royal Commission to focus on Bondi and the causes of that attack, and to focus on antisemitism limits the investigation and will not serve the need to ensure that justice, and new law which promote justice for all, rather than to bend the knee to powerful interests which seek to serve the interests of only one section of our population.

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