ABSTRACT
Poverty results as a logical consequence from the way in which capital structures the production of commodity wealth. Forced to live on the edge and excluded from a stable means of subsistence, these economically superfluous individuals lead lives of material and social uncertainty. The dual factors of chronic material need and the social uncertainty it engenders form the crucial benchmarks of modern poverty. The cultural productions of the poor draw heavily upon the various at hand cultural materials and social conventions in which they, as a class, are immersed — the hegemonic customs and practices of the larger community. By constructing social relations that meet their special needs, the poor assemble a cultural superstructure of poverty that assumes different expressive forms in different locales. The Marxist problematic assumes that before industrial capitalism's historical emergence, extremes of wealth and poverty had already existed.
