Thursday 29 November 2012

The Poverty of the Anti-Poverty Movement


Posted 29 November 2012

It is an error to consider that the anti-poverty movement is opposed to wealth or economic inequality. It is highly doubtful that the movement even desires the end of poverty.
The word anti-poverty in itself does not suggest that wealth or inequality is wrong; it only intimates that income below a certain level is a problem and implies that poverty is the injustice or the evil in need of elimination. Those who refer to themselves as anti-poverty neglect to note that there is a lengthy tradition that posits for a variety of political, psychological, philosophical, moral and religious reasons that poverty is a virtue and a desired state. The conception of poverty as a good usually, although not invariably, distinguishes between poverty and destitution and makes no claim that the latter is laudable. The goodness of poverty could obviously be employed as an argument by those who reject the redistribution of income and wealth and therefore for the remainder of this article poverty refers to those who are involuntarily poor.

Anti-poverty activists and countless other Canadians, including many who are on the political left, say that they would like to see the termination of poverty but the depressing reality is that many Canadians want poverty to continue because poverty is beneficial for many persons. Many people, particularly on the left, declare that only corporations benefit from poverty and these individuals note that the presence of a pool of poor or unwaged persons tempers worker militancy and acts as a mechanism to keep wages stable. However, it is more accurate and honest to state that everyone who is not poor benefits indirectly or directly from the existence and continuation of poverty.
A famous sociological article (Herbert J. Gans, “The Positive Functions of Poverty,” American Journal of Sociology, September 1972) listed 15 positive economic, social, political and cultural functions of poverty. The contention that the non-poor may actually desire the poor to remain poor often meets with denial or incredulity, and therefore some of poverty’s functions listed by that author bear repeating. The poor ensure that there is a supply of people to perform low-paid, dangerous or menial work; the poor help produce jobs in numerous professions and institutions that serve the poor or protect the non-poor from the poor (including religious and philanthropic bodies devoted to the poor, pawnshops, used clothing stores and the police); the low wages of the poor often subsidize the lifestyles of the affluent; the poor help maintain the legitimacy of the dominant societal norms by their behavior (often stereotyped as lazy, spendthrift and dishonest); the poor guarantee the status of the non-poor (the middle and upper classes would not be aware of their higher status without the existence of the poor); the poor play a disproportionately minor part in politics which results in a skewed participation by the non-poor. The poor also provide the material for endless studies by academics, research institutions, advocacy groups and health care professionals; the poor help the affluent to feel altruistic and righteous by evoking pity, charity, and compassion.

It is necessary, as a counter to the above, to mention some of the negative consequences arising from the existence of poverty. The poor result in many non-poor feeling guilt and shame. The poor are often unused or underutilized economic resources; the poor suffer greatly from prolonged poverty; the poor are more likely than the non-poor to acquire serious ailments and are thus a disproportionate burden on the health-care system; the poor are a painful reminder of what may befall the non-poor if they are afflicted by long-term unemployment or illness; the poor result in higher expenditures for police and security measures; the desperation of the poor invokes fear and dread among the non-poor; the poor raise the specter of social unrest and political violence.
In Canadian society, the poor constitute between 15 and 20 per cent of the population and most Canadians who are non-poor consider that the advantages (to themselves) of the maintenance of poverty outweigh the drawbacks. Further, the non-poor recognize that the poor are too few, too disorganized and too demoralized to pose a serious threat to the social order.     

The phenomenon that many persons who benefit directly or indirectly from the continuation of poverty also state that they are anti-poverty suggests that such individuals may actually be ambivalent towards the extirpation of poverty. On the one hand, they state that they are against the negative aspects of poverty but is it not in their interests to maintain poverty because of its positive functions? The equivocation is revealed by their attitude towards the two types of poverty, absolute and relative. Absolute poverty, the form of poverty usually opposed by the anti-poverty movement, is income below the threshold of the absolute poverty level and often results in an inability to provide for basic needs. Relative poverty is a more a subjective condition and is the manner in which people evaluate their wealth in relation to that of others. It is often relative poverty, not absolute poverty, that tears societies asunder.
The wealth redistribution that would have to be effected in order to eliminate absolute poverty in Canada is insubstantial, although if it were done, it would barely lessen, if at all, relative poverty; if the poor were given more money to bring their incomes up to the absolute poverty line, the incomes of the middle and upper classes would undoubtedly be simultaneously increasing, and the gap between the poor and the non-poor would thus be essentially unaltered. In order to substantially decrease relative poverty, it would be vital to impose rigorous limits on the amount of wealth and income that people would be able to possess.

Those individuals who say they are opposed to poverty but who are not opposed to wealth do not want to significantly reduce relative poverty. It is only those who are anti-wealth who want to dramatically lessen or even eradicate relative poverty. Those who say that they are anti-poverty, by which they normally mean absolute poverty, usually confine themselves to advocating higher welfare rates and wages, greater respect or social inclusion. It would be wrong to completely belittle these proposals and to state that their attainment would be of no benefit whatsoever for the poor. But the funds often proposed to be given to the poor are seldom sufficient to raise their income to that of the absolute poverty level, and those recommendations basically ignore relative poverty.
Any attempt to eradicate poverty and to prevent its reoccurrence has to have some explanation as to the cause of the poverty. The view of the early left was that the primary reason for poverty was wealth; some people had too little because some others had too much. This explanation was complemented, and often supplanted, by that of capitalism as the culprit. However, the blaming of capitalism fails to explain the existence of poverty before the advent of capitalism and the persistence of poverty in post-capitalist societies. Today’s left and the anti-poverty movement rarely assert that wealth is responsible for poverty, and instead more often attribute it to a lack of opportunity, inadequate education, abdication of personal responsibilities and meager income. But most poverty is caused by wealth, and to be against poverty but not wealth is analogous to being against slavery but believing in the right to own slaves. Canada does not have a problem of poverty; Canada has a problem of wealth. Many Canadians possess more income or wealth than they need. A meaningful redistribution of wealth and income within Canada, and between Canada and the poorer nations, requires separating these persons from their superfluous income and wealth. It necessitates making many Canadians poorer, not richer.

The poverty of the anti-poverty movement is that it regards poverty as the affliction to be uprooted, but poverty is only the symptom of the real problem. The anti-poverty movement often states that it wants to make poverty history but what it really wants to do is make wealth eternal.

             

 

 

 

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