Food for a fairy tale thought ‘Is poverty deserved?’
Human Rights Reader 476
An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of republics (Plutarch)
-Mahatma Gandhi called poverty the greatest form of violence.
1. There are the rich and then there are the poor, the vulnerable*, the haves and the haves-less; a trivial statement, no? As you know, the causes cited to explain this are as abundant as the flowers in spring. Some find this reality as natural as is sexual attraction or the law of gravity. Justifications of poverty include such ridiculous explanations as: a lack of ‘merit’, a lack of initiative, a lack of capacity and initiative for innovation, a lack of competitive motivation… The liberal lot has added further philosophical or pseudo-philosophical justifications for the perennial, historical situation of those rendered rich and those rendered poor among us. Only few critique the situation as an immorality of the haves, a human rights (HR) violation and/or the ‘inefficiency’ of the prevailing economic system. (Daniel Raventos)
*: Correction please: ‘those made/rendered vulnerable’, not ‘the vulnerable’.
2. Mind you: The concentration of wealth in a few hands has its disadvantages: Rich folks must find a solution for the worry giving them sleepless nights, i.e., the protection of their assets they think threatened by the poor folks. (Louis Casado) Therefore, in Adam Smith’s words: Since they have for objective securing-private-property-is-kept-in-place, governments, really do actually defend the rich folks from the poor folks.
Poverty must be seen as the systematic denial of opportunities to fulfill people’s potential thus to fulfill their human rights
-Poverty leads to a chronic sense of ‘ill-being’ (as opposed to well-being).
3. The ideological edge in HR work on poverty arises from the very definition of the problems being addressed and hence the choice of political instruments that will need to be applied. Development work must thus be primarily treated as a political task. It must treat mass mobilization as essential when searching for avenues to implement solutions to HR problems.
4. But think of it: Poverty reduction strategies have perennially been seen as dealing with ‘transitional poverty’, segmenting it as if it were an unfortunate byproduct of an essentially-positive-neoliberal-approach that leads to national development plans that, for instance, conceptualize national health policies and strategies more from an economic than a public health perspective. (Moses Mulumba)
5. Not really being transitional, poverty and unemployment are only bearable when there is hope for improvement in the not so distant future. If this hope is lacking, then violence enters the picture.** (Jan Pronk)
**: The first condition for social peace is that those rendered poor be(come) conscious of their impotence. (Maurice Barrès)
Look at it from the opposite perspective: A testimony from the literature***
6. “We lack the courage to be very poor and, at the same time, very happy. We poor people barely survive; we barely are a receptacle that contains life. But really living is something different. Our life is not at all what a person deserves. As a way to survive, we condescend too much. Instead of resisting, we accept; we are stoic and too willing to enjoy life within our limitations; we turn to alcohol when we reach the limit of a daily overdose of limitations. After living for so long under the spell of these limitations, we begin to sort of looking at them with affection”. (Leonardo Padura)
***: People who know everything about literature have lots of intelligence, but do they have the brains to care about justice in life? (Joseph Heller, Catch 22) Justice is like a snake; it will only bite those barefoot. (Grafitti in Athens) Jean de Lafontaine, of his fables fame, rightfully pointed out that whether you are powerful or miserable, justice makes you innocent or guilty.
7. I think that what we face, is a case of aporofobia, a term coined using the word ‘apora’, the Greek word for ‘poor’. (Adela Cortina)
Is poverty (like) a disease?
8. Over the past decades, we have learned that the stresses associated with poverty have the potential to change our biology in ways we had not imagined. It can reduce the surface area of your brain, shorten your chromosomes’ telomeres and your lifespan, increase your chances of obesity, and make you more likely to take outsized risks. Now, new evidence is emerging suggesting the changes can go even deeper to how our bodies assemble themselves, shifting the types of cells that they are made from, and maybe even how our genetic code is expressed. If this science holds up, it means that poverty is more than just a socioeconomic condition. It is a collection of related signs and symptoms that are preventable, treatable and inheritable (…?). In other words, the effects of poverty begin to look very much like the symptoms of a disease. Learn more at Nautilus (10 minutes). Caveat: To cure the disease, we must first diagnose and act upon its root causes! (Gustavo Adler)
9. I feel uncomfortable with the new evidence above, so here is some more information from another source: When a person lives in poverty, a growing body of research suggests the limbic system is constantly sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex, which overloads its ability to solve problems, set goals, and complete tasks in the most efficient ways. People in poverty, have the burden of ever-present stress. They are constantly struggling to make ends meet and often bracing themselves against class bias that adds extra strain or even trauma to their daily lives. People in poverty tend to get stuck in vicious cycles where stress leads to bad decision-making, compounding other problems and reinforcing the idea that they cannot improve their own lives. Children who grow up in and remain in poverty are doubly affected. (Tara Garcia Mathewson) Sounds more plausible to me…
Now, to tell a poverty-reductive, self-aggrandizing story of progress in the era of globalization, as Bill Gates does, is not optimism, it is deception
10. It is false to think that we can get lasting change by only speaking of what alleviates some of the worst suffering and HR violations while ignoring almost everything that causes it. It is also disingenuous to claim that poverty can be eradicated**** with more charity and foreign aid.***** Yes, the world needs good news, but not at the expense of overlooking real change (or lack thereof). (Martin Kirk, Jason Hickel)
****: Over and over, this Reader calls for moving away from the concept of poverty eradication replacing it with disparity reduction. Disparity reduction contextualizes poverty in the process of exploitation, domination and power imbalances. Yes, redistribution is the first step, but the first step only; then, the challenge is to make the redistribution permanent.
*****: Charity, even if commendable, does not address the HR roots and lasts only as long as the giver wants it to last or funding is available. Charity actually is about thinking that he or she (the recipient) ‘could be me’; and this is one of the reasons that motivate the gift giver. Is thus engaging in charity doing more good to oneself than to the others? (Ann Zammit)
Bottom line
Poverty is rooted in power (Chris Jochnick) (poverty is rooted in power;)
-We have long known that poverty is rooted in power, yet do not traditional power-blind approaches to poverty remain predominant?
11. An economic, social and cultural rights lens using the traditional tools of the HR movement, i.e., courts and activists, can and does address the underlying issues of power and makes a real difference on poverty. But mainstream HR have for long turned a blind-eye to poverty, because they have focused primarily on a small group of narrowly conceived civil and political rights, often with marginal relevance to the poor.
12. The sad irony is that HR seen as indivisible can and do offer an honest promise to those rendered poor. Yet traditional isolated civil and political approaches to HR work have failed to get traction on issues that challenge the reigning economic-political-legal order at the root of poverty …and, dispassionately speaking, these traditional power-blind approaches to poverty remain predominant.
13. Well-meaning advocates for (and not with) those rendered poor more often than not end up reinforcing a sense of victimhood and dependency, and legitimizing the broader responsibilities of ‘the system’. Somewhere between these two approaches lies a sweet spot that deceptively uses HR language liberally, but legally binding approaches selectively.
14. This embeds any legal actions within existing movements as one more set of instruments of potential empowerment –not empowerment as an end (!) This calls for the deployment of lawyers as both ‘legal technicians’ and ‘activists’ that are capable of recognizing the power dynamics reinforcing poverty at local, national and international levels –and are able to connect those dots.
15. Can transnational HR advocates find a way to work closely and collaboratively enough with those rendered marginalized,****** while retaining a strategic focus on broader structural issues? The rise of stronger HR groups in the Global South, connected to social movements and networked to international platforms represents a promising, if fragile step in this direction. (C. Jochnick)
******: This Reader keeps using rendered poor/rendered marginal. Why? Because it immediately leads to the question: Why are some people kept in poverty/kept marginalized? Join us in using this terminology. Therefore,
16. “Stop the war against th(os)e (rendered) poor; engage in wars to eradicate poverty!” (Eduardo Galeano, Apuntes para Fin de Siglo)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All previous 470+ Readers can be found in www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-In countries rendered poor the issue is not bread and butter; it is simply a matter of bread. The people cannot afford the butter. (El Tiempo, Bogota)
-The poor have to be poor, make an effort not to be such, but continue to be poor… This is how our contemporary (and past) society marches(d) on. (Arturo Alejandro Muñoz)
-As the lyrics of ‘Hood Robbin’ from famous rapper Ice Cube put it, “Ain’t that a bitch, when you got to steal from the poor, and give to the rich?”