Recent statistics indicate that there has
been some progress in eliminating poverty. Statistics in the early 1980s
indicated that 50% of those who were living in the developing world were poor
(Chandy & Gertz, 2011). That figure had dropped to 15% towards the end of
2005. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) intend to
eliminate world poverty by 2015. Some of the key items that were to be
completed still remain unattended even with only two years to the set deadline
of 2015. But poverty has never been a recent phenomenon. It has always been an
issue since men started living in societies.
Like most other social problems, society has
often tried to seek an understanding of poverty. The rationale has been that a
proper understanding of the phenomenon would lead to an eventual solution.
Class struggle and survival of the fittest are just examples of the numerous
attempts to understand and explain poverty. In dialectical materialism, Karl Marx
sees social reality in the form of class struggles. In that struggle, those
owning the means of production want to continue holding own to them. This is at
the backdrop of the other class of society who are poor. It is a state of
affairs that continues until one class topples the other through a revolution.
For Marx, the poor can only do this if they come together and revolt against
the oppressing classes eventually establishing a socialist government. In
contrast, Social Darwinist’s like Spencer see poverty and inequality as the
natural consequences of the different abilities between the rich and the poor.
It is survival of the fittest.
Neither of the two approaches adequately
explains the real causes of poverty and inequality in the current world. Karl
Marx starts from position where poverty and inequality already exists in the
society. It is an assumption that does not explain the source of that original
inequality. Even experience has shown that socialism was not going to be the
solution to poverty and inequality. Most of the countries that followed communism
reverted to free market economies at the turn of 1990. There is no evidence
that these countries were able to eliminate poverty and inequality around the
time when they followed communism. Cuba is still a communist country but no one
can say that Cubans are out of poverty. China officially identifies as a
communist country but overtly practices capitalism. Thus, Marx’s theory can
only be relevant in explaining existing poverty and inequality. For instance,
countries in the industrial north have persistently shaped the rules of
international trade in their favor. All this has been happening at the expense
of the industrial south.
Similarly, Spencer’s survival of the fittest
ignores the natural conditions found in the different parts of the world in explaining
poverty. For instance, it would be unfair to condemn people from a resource
scarce African or Asian country as unfit to survive while knowing that the
people in some oil rich Middle East country are held out as fit only by dint of
residing in that geographical location. Spencer’s theory, like Marx’s is only
useful to the extent that it is an observation of what is taking place as
opposed to the causes.
From the foregoing, it seems that tackling
poverty will only proceed when underlying theories succeeds in appropriately
diagnosing the causes. Both Marx and Spencer were not very successful in this
area. They can be seen as points of departure.
Reference
Chandy, L., &Gertz, G. (2011).Poverty
in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty From 2005 to 2015.Washington, DC: The Brookings
Institution.
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