And I realized how ridiculous this premise was, and how self-serving. Elites of the left and right all invoke the image of scarcity as the justification for the existence of poverty -- there simply isn't enough to go around. If there were, there would be no poverty.
But the barest familiarity with the evidence at hand shows that there is no scarcity -- rather, there is continued and ample abundance in this century, just as there is nearly unfathomable waste. Take world hunger, for example. The bourgeois argument is that overpopulation is the cause of world hunger -- there are simply too many people to be fed. Of course, you can see that this is simply the scarcity argument again.
However, based on global production levels, world food supplies indicate that if food resources were equitably distributed, every person on this planet would have a 3,600 calorie diet a day. For reference, you need about 2,000 calories a day for a healthy diet. A glaring example is the reality that 50% of the world's grain supply goes to the feeding of beef cattle. In other words, the "scarcity" is artificially produced, to meet the demand for beef by the West, at the expense of the poorer people and nations.
Clearly, there is ample food out there, it's just not getting to the people who need it. If you wish to read up on this yourself, look into any of Frances Moore Lappe's books, including 10 Myths About World Hunger -- she's spent decades studying this topic, and has reached valuable insights that are apparently lost on the elites who control our society.
Now, if you look at the nature of poverty, you find that it is a human rights issue. Why? I maintain that poverty reduces a person to a sub-human, even a sub-animal state. Anything which does this qualifies as a violation of human rights, which amounts to a denial of another's humanity.
Before going further, if you have no concept of rights -- which I consider reciprocal human social conventions, what I say below won't have any meaning to you.
What would you say defines "human" versus "animal"? At its simplest, you could say higher reason is what allows humans to seemingly transcend the natural world and produce civilization. It is the human capacity to reason, build tools, and organize socially toward common ends that allow us to escape the bonds of nature.
Nature is a neutral party -- contrary to the Puritanical view of the world, Nature isn't an evil force out to stomp mankind into oblivion. Rather, it's simply there, completely devoid of morality, which is yet another human invention. The bonds of Nature are framed in terms of survival -- you live or you die, and it depends on the availability of food and water. Animals in the wild spend their days in an endless cycle of obtaining food and eventually reproducing. On and on and on.
Human civilization arose when humans were able to escape the narrow confines of Nature -- when we were able to get beyond merely eating and breeding, and moved on to what we would consider bigger and better things.
It is the indulgence of human reason, and the ability to act on it, which constitutes one of the principal pleasures of human life. Where this is denied, you find frustration, depression, anxiety, and misery in human beings. Denial of reason is, at its root, denial of humanity.
And here you find where it comes back to poverty. Poverty reduces human beings to a sub-animal level of existence. I say "sub-animal" because animals in the wild, despite being entirely confined in the bonds of Nature by way of instinct and subsistence living, are, when healthy, able to meet their needs. Wild animals are capable of fending for themselves.
But a person saddled with poverty isn't able to provide for their own needs the way even a wild animal can -- it is for this reason that I say it is a sub-animal existence, to say nothing of a sub-human existence.
Before I go further, I'm not saying the impoverished are subhuman, and therefore not deserving, in the style of Victorian Social Darwinists. Conversely, I'm saying that the reduction of these people to this sub-human existence violates what should be a human birthright -- the right to reason and therefore be fully human.
The impoverished in our society are in a limbo of misery and deprivation which cannot ultimately be resolved in the confines of capitalist society. And that's the criminality of it all -- human society was one of our earliest innovations, which was designed to protect the individuals through the efforts of the multitude. By working together, we were better able to ensure our survival -- the goal of all that lives.
But the poor, while held in the confines of society, aren't permitted to reap the benefits of the association. In fact, their very life is drained from them in this unjust social arrangement.
The poor are caught in a trap of forever having to wonder where their next meal is coming from, or whether they'll be evicted and exposed to the elements. And because they're reduced to a biological level of existence, they are unable to devote much (if any) of their higher reason to other things -- the very things which bring joy to human existence, represented in active leisure.
Leisure is the social surplus from human society -- it is the product of a well-functioning society -- when a person has the time to indulge their higher reason in pursuits of their own design. If you're kept at a biological level of existence, focusing on food and shelter, you can't enjoy the life you live.
The elites of our society blame the poor for their condition -- they look at this sub-human existence and pass judgment that the poor are subhuman, just as they consider themselves superhuman -- they myth of the meritocracy, created by the rulers to justify their unwarranted position at the top of our social hierarchy.
The anarchist looks at the poor as human beings held in thrall by property relations, and deprived of their right to something better. For this view, we are considered heretics and terrorists, but when you pause to examine why poverty is wrong, whose view is more reasonable?
Poverty is a condition of chronic deprivation and need, and is, therefore, a denial of humanity imposed not by objective social circumstances, but by property relations themselves. While there is no scarcity in this world, there is finite resources, and when an elite takes more than their fair share, you will inevitably have deprivation on a massive scale.
The most glaring example is that of the United States itself -- while possessing only 5% of the world's population, we consume over 40% of the world's resources. It doesn't take much skill at math to realize that when 95% of the world's population are forced to make due with the remaining 60% of the world's resources, poverty will be widespread and severe.
The only scarcity I see is in the compassion of the elites who run our society.
Dave Neal
3/15/98