Capitalism and Poverty

Margaret Bourke-White

I will summarize at least 5 ways that capitalism creates/contributes to poverty:

1) The preconditions needed for capitalist modes of production create poverty

The process whereby wage labourers are appropriated for use in industrial environments necessarily means the destruction of non-wage modes of production, i.e. the guilds and craft associations, which in turn leads to a severing of the connection between land and labour. This has happened and is continuing to happen in Africa and Asia in large numbers where poverty is additionally created by the fundamental necessity for labour to move, i.e. rural to urban, leading to the breakdown of traditional social configurations and often causing living conditions to considerably deteriorate.

2) Commodification increases poverty

As commodification becomes ever more pervasive, cultural norms are modified to reflect “general standards of private consumption.” Wages are the basic precondition of realizing these modified norms. As others have pointed out, the inability to realize these basic norms means relative poverty.

3) Capitalistic production of waste produces poverty

This may be seen clearly in the case of the production of weapons, tobacco and other socially harmful substances for mass consumption. In addition the by-products of pesticides and nuclear power in the form of nuclear waste often contaminate the water table and thus crops and human health. Rather than allocate funds for health victims of capitalistic modes of production and commodities, researchers have argued that governments in the 20th century used surpluses for military purposes, further endangering and pauperizing global citizens.

4) Capitalistic environmental destruction has caused and will cause further poverty

This is related to the previous point but at a much greater level. While some believe capital will be able to appropriate clean technologies for production, the reality is this process is moving much too slowly to prevent global environmental catastrophe. This is partly because capitalistic modes of production are always pushing towards more and more productivity which require more energy and produce more waste. Researchers believe that due to increasing global warming and climate change, there have already been large migrations of victims, in excess of those migrations caused by global conflict. These mass migrations (sometimes numbering in the hundreds of millions) have the inevitable consequence of causing extreme poverty, even as aid organizations and governments strain to meet the need. Unfortunately these migrations are only likely to increase, especially from coastal regions.

5) Capitalism creates poverty through the mechanism of accelerated technological change

Capitalism seeks to increase profit and productivity through the use of technological innovation. As the pace of productivity increases, the ability of labour to adapt to these changes decreases, as is evidenced by developments in India and elsewhere. Technology which allows greater productivity leads particularly to the reduction of the requirement of unskilled labour, which also allows for the fragmentation of the production process itself, leading to greater outsourcing. This process is also evident here in the West.

A Brief Response

The preacher in me will sometimes utter that age old dictum: “Don’t take my word for it, look it up!” There are at least two reasons ministers do this: 1) It establishes their authority as one who is “in the know”, whose opinions are in fact the opinions of Scripture and scholars, etc; and 2) It encourages the flock to read more Bible, to open their books once and a while and engage in their religious beliefs. Even though I no longer speak from that blessed podium, I still have recourse to the dictum for just these two reasons: a) While I do engage in theoretical exercises I begin from a foundation built upon scientific research, study, and academic opinion; and b) I encourage anyone who engages my thinking to at least show the courtesy of doing the same, even at some minimal level before making unfortunate statements or ad hominem attacks.

It would be simple to dismiss such things out of hand, but I’ve customarily responded to comments on my blog out of respect and the principle of mutual engagement (unless of course the comment be a hearty “amen!” or something similar). Needless to say, I will respond to comments made by a friend regarding the role capital plays in global poverty. I will be brief, however, as there are many, many good books one might turn to for an explication of this well-documented phenomenon, and my time has become very precious lately. Please see the next blog post for a brief summary of my position.

Pastor Terry Jones

Photo Credit: Chip Litherland for The New York Times

What Dove Outreach Ministries’ (Pentecostal) Pastor Terry Jones fails to do is quite frankly what a lot of people fail to do: think deeper about the complexity of the social fields in which Muslims live. I say “Muslims” here because obviously we’re dealing specifically with the claims Jones is making about Islam, but it could just as easily apply to any religion or people. When asked for Jones' response to the deaths and injuries sparked in Afghanistan by his plans to burn the Qur’an he said: "We're pointing the finger at the wrong person. I haven't even done anything. I think it reveals ... the violence in Islam” (1). This kind of surface thinking utterly fails to understand the more fundamental social and economic complexities involved. This isn’t the first time Jones has gotten into trouble for his radical behaviour. In 2009 he was expelled from a church in Germany where he had demanded complete obedience from church members, preached a radical form of demonology (not that uncommon in the Pentecostal assemblies I would argue), and resulted in a number of members having to seek out therapy for the psychological damage he caused (2).

What would a Leftist critique of Jones’ statements be? Quite obviously this doesn’t come down to a matter of religion, but economics. I will not comment on the other important aspects of the social field, of which economics is a part, or on the ethnic and political aspects, which are also fundamentally important. I merely want to highlight the irony involved in Jones’ understanding of Islam. The Pentecostal church has always been known as the church of the poor. It is growing like wildfire in the global South, and churches in Africa, Asia, and South America are increasingly sending missionaries to Europe and North America to preach the gospel. What Jones has failed to analyze is the connection between poverty and violence in what he has called “Muslim” violence. In almost every instance of so-called “Muslim” violence, it has in fact been a violence of the oppressed. For example, just today “Islamic” insurgents carried out a suicide attack in Russia’s Caucasus region, killing at least 18 people. Was it politically motivated? Absolutely. What Denis Dyomkin at Reuter’s news agency astutely observes is that “The blast was a new blow to the Kremlin, which is struggling to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, a strip of impoverished, ethnically mixed provinces along predominantly Orthodox Christian Russia's southern border” (3). Jones’ own politically Rightist orientation reflects the very angst so often found to characterize other right-oriented commentators and their counterparts abroad: the fundamental opposition between rich and poor. Religion is a smokescreen Jones. Properly speaking, Islam is not "of the devil": Poverty and its self-deluded big brother, Capitalism, deserve that distinction.

Plotinus (An attempt at translation)

Τίς οὖν ὁ στόλος καὶ ἡ φυγή; Οὐ ποσὶ δεῖ διανύσαι· πανταχοῦ γὰρ φέρουσι πόδες ἐπὶ γῆν ἄλλην ἀπ´ ἄλλης· οὐδέ σε δεῖ ἵππων ὄχημα ἤ τι θαλάττιον παρασκευάσαι, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα πάντα ἀφεῖναι δεῖ καὶ μὴ βλέπειν, ἀλλ´ οἷον μύσαντα ὄψιν ἄλλην ἀλλάξασθαι καὶ ἀνεγεῖραι, ἣν ἔχει μὲν πᾶς, χρῶνται δὲ ὀλίγοι.

Enneads, I.6

What then is the voyage, what is the way of our flight? It is not a journey for feet; for our feet only bear us to distant lands on earth. Nor prepare yourself a horse, or make preparations to travel by sea; all these similar things you must let go and not consider. Close your eyes and wake another way of seeing, which everyone indeed has but few use.

Odysseus (An attempt at translation)

οὐ γὰρ ἐγώ γέ τί φημι τέλος χαριέστερον εἶναι

ἢ ὅτ᾽ ἐυφροσύνη μὲν ἔχῃ κάτα δῆμον ἅπαντα,

δαιτυμόνες δ᾽ ἀνὰ δώματ᾽ ἀκουάζωνται ἀοιδοῦ

ἥμενοι ἑξείης, παρὰ δὲ πλήθωσι τράπεζαι

σίτου καὶ κρειῶν, μέθυ δ᾽ ἐκ κρητῆρος ἀφύσσων

οἰνοχόος φορέῃσι καὶ ἐγχείῃ δεπάεσσι:

τοῦτό τί μοι κάλλιστον ἐνὶ φρεσὶν εἴδεται εἶναι.

Homer, The Odyssey, 9.5-11

No, for me, there is nothing so gracious than when countrymen make merry, sitting together as guests in the home, listening one after another to the bard, and by them on the table, whole-bread and meat, and a wine-bearer drawing wine into the cups: This seems to me such a fair thing.