[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are this has aroused your interest. This Reader debunks many of the insincere efforts to eradicate poverty that actually sideline truly addressing what is needed: disparity reduction. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
1. Let me, this time, start with a set of quotes (that actually qualify for my list of iron laws):
- There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor excess wealth for both are productive of great evil. (Plato)
- As always, there is more misery below than brotherhood above. (Victor Hugo, Les Misérables)
- When citizens are only free to be miserable, we find ourselves actually facing the misery of freedom. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
- You want to help the miserable; I want to eliminate misery. (Victor Hugo)
- We simply do not know what it is like for those rendered poor to feel that they are miserable living under pressure with no expiration date per secula seculorum. (Leonardo Padura, Personas Decentes)
- Nothing chains a worker more firmly than the handouts that rich lords occasionally throw at them out of prudence and calculation. (August de Winne 1861-1935, journalist for the socialist newspaper Le Peuple in Belgium)
- Charity is nothing more than an outlet for the guilt complexes that money creates. (Guillermo Cabrera Infante)
- Those-who-have can always argue that tomorrow is the right time for change. For those who-have-not, today is not soon enough. (Mary Robinson)
Poor is poor, just as black is always black. The ultimate function of poverty is exactly this: to keep inequality out of sight (Francine Mestrum)
–Those placed in the category of poor often remain in it for life, even if the material part of poverty can be overcome.
2. It is the market that excludes vulnerable people and populations and makes them poor. In it, at best, it is discrimination that has replaced outright exploitation. Yes, differences exist and they cannot be wished away. It is precisely because there are differences, that we must always take equal rights as an absolute priority.
3. The current discourse preaches that people rendered poor should only be given opportunities, if they do not use them, so be it. So, neoliberalism purports that those rendered poor are no longer to be seen as victims of ill-conceived protection or a failed economic system, but are instead to be considered responsible for their own failure: they have not taken advantage of the opportunities offered to them and must be punished. Hmmm…
4. No wonder people rendered poor become less interested in liberal politics and liberal democracy: They want bread on the table first.
Poverty has become an ethical problem rather than a class problem. This is the ultimate deceitful masterpiece of neoliberalism
—Capitalism has always only pretended to fight poverty, because it costs nothing; and it is politically perfectly safe to pretend.
5. As implemented, poverty alleviation is a framework that no longer corresponds to the needs of the world. How difficult it is to break with the delusion of the day, to fight against the self-appointed gurus of poverty. The only truly lost battle is the one that was never fought in earnest, namely, the battle of disparity reduction.
6. Today, the fight against poverty is becoming a new but, in reality very old, political imperative. Already in 1919, the International Labor Organization (ILO) was founded with the motto: “There is no lasting peace without social justice”. Consequently, the ILO began developing global standards for labor laws. What the ILO established over a century ago is that labor is not a commodity –and this paved the way for collective bargaining agreements and strong unions –keys in the struggle against poverty.
Contempt should thus not be directed at the poor but at poverty
7. Poverty, that indeed exists in the rich world as well, is completely unacceptable. As much in the North as in the South, the poverty issue is often used without any real intention to eradicate it. Why? Because poverty was and is an absolute necessity for industrial Capitalism: it needed(s) a reserve army of labor.
8. Bottom line here: Poverty is increasingly moralized …but finally criminalized. Poverty has always primarily first been linked to morality –and look where this has led us. (all the above adapted from F. Mestrum)
9. A couple additional points are important here
- First, although the Global North has played a role in the perpetuation of poverty and inequality in the Global South, much of our current condition is the creation of the Global South’s own elites. (The difference between a rich person and poor person in the same country is far bigger than the difference between the average person in a rich country and the average person in a poor country). (Global Nation)
- Second, democratic governance at the global level cannot be delinked from democratic governance at the local level.
- It is thus very positive that the hegemony of the North is breaking up and that the multilateral system set up to dominate the Global South is breaking down. (Walden Bello)
- The traditional values of the Enlightenment are being called into question: universalism, equality for all, the importance of the separation of powers and the rule of law, democracy and human rights… Suddenly, all of this has become ‘woke’ in the eyes of its opponents. (F. Mestrum)
Bottom line
10. Because for centuries we have been lied to, we heard we were fighting poverty. Never was it mentioned that, in doing so, we also wanted to spare rich people in particular. That must stop. The poverty factory must be closed. (F. Mestrum)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
#HumanRightsReaders #HumanRights #ClaudioSchuftan
Postscript/Marginalia
–“Regrettably, at the university, we learned about poverty in air-conditioned rooms. Learning on the ground though we realised the real problems and started seeking for the real solutions”. (student of Dr Dzulkifli Abdul Razak in Malaysia)
–The World Bank* is dominated by US concepts, e.g., avoiding government legal instruments, survival of the fittest and loans to ‘poor’ countries. They love poor countries; poverty is their right to existence. (Aviva Ron)
*: Not so facetiously, a banker is someone that loans you an umbrell when it is sunny and asks for it back when the weather turns bad. (Mark Twain)