Wealth and Poverty

This week I have been investigating some capitalist 'solutions' to economic development and poverty. Within these 'revisionist' approaches to development, there are three predominant postulated responses to poverty;
- The non-opposed exterior (Those 'passively' in poverty);
- The antagonistic exterior ( Socialism);
- The antagonistic interior (World Bank's perspective of the IMF).

Capitalism is considered to be the only possible economic system. Formalist logic suggests that capitalism has been more successful at producing economic growth than any other alternative, therefore capitalism= wealth. Under this ideology, poverty exists because of a lack of capitalism.

Paradoxically, a parallax is produced between wealth (as identity, abstract universal) and poverty (non-identity, concrete universal). No relationship is conceived between the production of wealth and the production of poverty. Nonetheless, the gap between the two is reproduced as a possible object; that poverty can be eliminated by becoming wealth.

Capitalist development ideology suggests that for poverty to be eliminated capitalism must be globalised and the conditions of capitalisation reproduced in this non-opposed exterior. No possibility is given to an incommensurability between wealth and poverty. This is the true parallax (poverty as the disavowed foundation of wealth) and the aim of psychoanalytic ideological critique; not to reveal something new, but a disturbing underside to what is already known.

Nonetheless, texts which take poverty seriously cannot deny its continued existence, despite the rapid globalisation of capitalism. Cause must be found. It is located in two areas of anterior, either exterior or interior. Both forms of antagonism are credited with causing, either initially or contemporarily, the existence of poverty. We shall first deal with the former.

Exterior antagonism is what would be dialectically considered a constitutive outside; an exterior which affirms interior identity. Within the operation of formalist ideology exterior antagonisms work in much the same manner, giving cause to that which is excessive to identity. There are numerous modalities of exterior antagonisms. Three forms are predominant within capitalist development discourse; natural/historical, internal and external.

External exterior antagonisms are elements that are discursively presented as the cause of poverty, which are exterior to capitalist identity, but also external to the victims of poverty. Marxist ideology, as an illustration, is posited as a external exterior antagonism, enforced onto those in poverty.In contrast, an internal exterior antagonism is a cause of poverty (exterior to capitalism) which has been produced by those in poverty e.g. poor work ethic or corrupt governance.

Natural/historical antagonisms are perhaps the most powerful explanatory force in that they are perceived to be beyond politics. Jared Diamond's text 'Guns, Germs and Steel' is an element of this modality of discourse. Here, Diamond suggests that global distribution of wealth has been caused by various historical/geographical factors. This sort of antagonism removes the political tension from the discourse. Poverty then becomes a matter of the super-ego; a paternal responsibility.

The final salient factor in development discourse is interior antagonisms. Interior antagonisms are discourses that battle for the hegemonic space within the empty signifier 'development'. A prime example is Joseph Stiglitz's 'Globalisation's and its discontents'. Here Stiglitz's attributes the continued existence of poverty to poor policies by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as opposed to Stiglitz's World Bank.

The collective effect of these antagonisms is to give contingent cause to poverty. This is the role of ideology; to reproduce the gap between symptom and abstract universality in a more palpable manner. The role of ideological critique than becomes not to uncover something new, but the disturbing hidden underside of what is already known. In my next piece I will investigate the work of leftist/anti-capitalists’ on the relationship between poverty and wealth.