ABSTRACT
A socialist strategy begins with the assumption that poverty and social exclusion are not secondary faults of the social system but are necessarily produced by capitalism and the social oppressions linked to it. This was also our conclusion from the analysis of Part II. We have also seen that the policies adopted by CI to abolish social exclusion are rendered largely ineffective by the power of capital and privileged social groups and the support given to them by the state; the associationalist strategy, too, fails adequately to address these. Combating social exclusion has therefore to be directed against these forms of domination, and abolishing social exclusion implies their abolition. Seeing the poor as a group with abnormal characteristics who need to be integrated into mainstream society cannot succeed, since it is precisely the mainstream that generates poverty and exclusion. Paolo Freire (1972:48) expresses this succinctly: the poor ‘have always been insideinside the structure which made them “beings for others”’.
