ABSTRACT
In its heyday, Marxism appealed to the wretched of the earth, the poor and poorly skilled desperate for any form of work to survive another day. Wherever the contrast between the haves and have-nots was particularly stark, wherever a corrupt elite rode on the backs of the poor, Marxism had widespread appeal. It then disappeared, not because the conditions that nourished it disappeared as well, but because the revolutions carried out in its name subordinated individual freedom to the dictates of an elite, or turned economically and politically moribund. However, while capitalism now thrives on an ideologically uncontested field, the dimensions of poverty have broadened dramatically, in their volume, complexity and, perhaps most of all, their geographical scope. Our new global awareness fueled by 24-hour news coverage and an industry of academic surveys, working papers, and monographs on every imaginable form of poverty-whether the hazards of coal mining in Russia, shoe manufacturing in Vietnam, or flood damage in Bangladesh-militates against any kind of insular complacency. And yet now, when close to three billion people, or half the world’s population, lives on two dollars or less a day,1 we are confronted with an embarrassing contradiction. Though we, as a global society, have both the financial resources and the know-how available to mitigate poverty, for one reason or another, we have not applied them. In short, the persistence of poverty represents a dismal failure of human self-governance.
