World Policy Journal
Volume XXIII, No 1, Spring 2006

 

Capitalism and Poverty
By Sheri Berman

 

An End to Poverty? A Historical Debate
Gareth Stedman Jones
New York: Columbia University Press, 2005

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
Jeffrey D. Sachs
New York: Penguin Press, 2005

By historical standards, the notion that poverty can be ended is new and rather odd. "The poor ye have always with you," noted the Bible, and until quite recently such pessimism would not have been controversial. For most of human history life has been lived at or near the subsistence level, with individuals and communities struggling to get by from year to year and often failing. In such a world, poverty was inevitable: a society without it was about as conceivable as a sky without moon or stars. If poverty was considered natural, however, so was the notion that it was society's responsibility to care for the poor. Religious institutions, public authorities, and private charity all generally contributed something. The precapitalist world, in other words, had the will to help the poor, but not always the means to do so.

This world came to an end in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as capitalism began its extraordinary march across Europe and beyond, reshaping economies and the societies around them. From the perspective of the poor, the new order was marked by a terrible irony: just as the material surpluses were emerging that for the first time held out hope of eliminating poverty, the religious beliefs and social norms that had ensured a commitment to the poor were melting into air. In the capitalist world, in other words, there was the means to help the poor, but not always the will to do so.

The reason for this is that capitalism has proven compatible with a wide range of views toward poverty. Gertrude Himmelfarb's classic, The Idea of Poverty, made this point over 20 years ago. As she noted, ever since the Industrial Revolution the treatment of the poor has resembled "a pendulum oscillating between extremes of regression and progression, of punitive, repressive policies and generous, melioratory ones." Two interesting new books on "the end of poverty" now allow us to revisit the theme. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University, makes his title a simple declaration; he harbors no doubts about either the viability or necessity of the task at hand. Basing his arguments on the vast material wealth of the advanced industrial world today and a belief that relatively small amounts of it could make a huge difference to developing countries, Sachs believes that all that is needed to get the ball rolling is will and a practical strategy. But Gareth Stedman Jones, professor of political science and director of the Centre for History and Economics at Cambridge University, tacks on a question mark at the end. Like Himmelfarb, he reminds us how common pleas and plans like Sachs's have been over the last two centuries, and how little, unfortunately, has become of them.

Endnotes

* Sheri Berman is an associate professor of politics at Barnard College. She is the author of The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).