Pe­dro Ope­ka is a liv­ing saint. His cathe­dral is a gran­ite stone pit from which he mines pre­cious stones. They are not as beau­ti­ful as Laven­tille blue lime­stone once quar­ried to build the Gov­er­nor's House, the Bal­moral home of Stollmey­er, Po­lice Head­quar­ters, St James Bar­racks, the Roy­al Gaol, the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion and the San Fer­nan­do Cour­t­house. But from Ope­ka's cathe­dral quar­ry, he says Mass three times and his hand hewn stones cut from the pit have been used to con­struct hous­es for 25,000 slum dwellers, 100 schools, six clin­ics and two foot­ball sta­di­ums and plans are afoot to build a col­lege to ed­u­cate para­medics. From the hill­side, Ope­ka saw or­di­nary peo­ple rum­mag­ing through garbage for food and sleep­ing in hemp shanties bol­stered be­tween el­e­va­tions of waste.

Ope­ka is a mem­ber of the “Con­gre­ga­tion of the Mis­sion”—a vowed Ro­man Catholic so­ci­ety of apos­tolic life found­ed by St Vin­cent de Paul. The Holy Fa­ther Pope Fran­cis taught Fa­ther Ope­ka the­ol­o­gy at the Cole­gio Máx­i­mo de San Miguel in Buenos Aires while Fran­cis him­self was com­plet­ing his own stud­ies for the priest­hood. The Holy Fa­ther re­cent­ly de­fend­ed the poor in a homi­ly dur­ing an open-air Mass in Aka­ma­soa, a vil­lage of can­dy-coloured hous­es built by Ope­ka on the hills above Mada­gas­car's cap­i­tal, An­tana­nari­vo. Aka­ma­soa was once a place of de­spair. Now, “Every cor­ner of these neigh­bour­hoods, every school or dis­pen­sary, is a song of hope that re­futes and si­lences any sug­ges­tion that some things are 'in­evitable',” Pope Fran­cis said. But all si­lences are not the same.

Fol­low­ing the Pon­tiff who once tu­tored him, Fa­ther Ope­ka said, “pover­ty is not an in­evitable des­tiny but some­thing that stems from the lack of so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of politi­cians who have for­got­ten and turned their backs on the peo­ple who have elect­ed them.” Andry Ni­ri­na Ra­joeli­na, the Pres­i­dent of Mada­gas­car, stood silent as Fa­ther Ope­ka spoke. But his si­lence is not the same as the si­lence of the dwellers of the mu­nic­i­pal dump. Nor is it the same as the si­lence that now dum­founds every doubt­ing Thomas who wit­nessed this de­pri­va­tion and did noth­ing. The Chilean No­bel Lau­re­ate po­et, Gabriela Mis­tral in “The Plea­sures of Ser­vice” writes: “Do not lim­it your­self to the easy tasks. It is so beau­ti­ful to do what oth­ers dodge. But don't fall prey to the er­ror that on­ly great tasks done can be count­ed as ac­com­plish­ments. There are small acts of ser­vice that are good ones.”

Ope­ka was pen­ni­less. He bor­rowed 900€ to ini­ti­ate his min­istry. For 30 years, this Lazar­i­an Saint lived in the mu­nic­i­pal dump, side by side with the shan­ty­town dwellers. Well-be­ing and free­dom to live a de­cent hu­man life must be the ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive of the econ­o­my. Un­equal so­cial re­la­tions cre­ate a “cul­ture of si­lence” that in­stil a harm­ful, in­ac­tive and re­pressed self-im­age amongst the op­pressed un­til they them­selves de­vel­op the crit­i­cal con­scious­ness to recog­nise that a cul­ture of si­lence is cre­at­ed to op­press.

The abil­i­ty to rea­son well and the dis­po­si­tion to do so are not on­ly con­sti­tu­tive of de­vel­op­ment but are at the core of any de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy that en­vi­sions the cre­ation of in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal as the ba­sis for eco­nom­ic ad­van­tage. With­in the new ge­o­gra­phies of pow­er, ad­van­tage may be judged in terms of the abil­i­ties and dis­po­si­tions which the state serves to fos­ter and to nur­ture among its cit­i­zens; in par­tic­u­lar the abil­i­ty to eval­u­ate the pro­ba­tive strength of judg­ments and the dis­po­si­tion to do so. The dis­po­si­tion to rea­son well in­volves: valu­ing good rea­sons, seek­ing good rea­sons, as­sess­ing rea­sons, and gov­ern­ing ac­tions and be­liefs on the ba­sis of such as­sess­ments.

This re­sults in: an in­quir­ing at­ti­tude, nu­anced judge­ment, the abil­i­ty to analyse com­plex frames from mul­ti­ple points of view and shift­ing cri­te­ria, the ex­plo­ration of so­lu­tions for which pos­si­ble paths are not speci­fi­able in ad­vance, and the abil­i­ty to use a host of tools to con­struct mean­ing and im­pose struc­ture on sit­u­a­tions rather than to find them al­ready ap­par­ent. It will erase si­lence.

Plan­ta­tion school­ing nev­er aimed to make the en­slaved, the eman­ci­pat­ed, or the in­den­tured the land­lords of prof­its. Thomas Piket­ty shows that Eu­ro­pean so­ci­ety was once high­ly un­equal and pri­vate wealth dwarfed na­tion­al in­come as rich fam­i­lies sat atop a rigid class struc­ture. This sys­tem per­sist­ed even as in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion con­tributed to ris­ing wages. Piket­ty's the­o­ry of cap­i­tal and in­equal­i­ty shows that, as a gen­er­al rule, wealth grows faster than eco­nom­ic out­put.

He cap­tures this idea in the ex­pres­sion r > g (where r is the rate of re­turn to wealth and g is the eco­nom­ic growth rate). Oth­er things be­ing equal, faster eco­nom­ic growth will di­min­ish the im­por­tance of wealth in a so­ci­ety, where­as slow­er growth will in­crease it. But there are no nat­ur­al forces push­ing against the steady con­cen­tra­tion of wealth. On­ly a burst of rapid growth stem­ming from tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment or gov­ern­ment in­tru­sion can be count­ed on to keep economies from re­turn­ing to the “pat­ri­mo­ni­al cap­i­tal­ism” that dis­tressed Marx. So­cial, race and class dy­nam­ics are tight­ly in­ter­laced in be­queathed ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems that prop­a­gate a cul­ture of si­lence be­cause they elim­i­nate paths of thought that lead to a lan­guage of cri­tique.