The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #78659 Message #1417190
Posted By: Piers
22-Feb-05 - 04:57 AM
Thread Name: BS: Why do we need poverty?
Subject: RE: BS: Why do we need poverty?
[i]'Much more useful a question than "why do we need money" because it is self-evident that we do need something to fulfill the role that money holds so well.'[/i]
Is it self-evident that we need money [to trade goods and services]? It is certainly evident that as long as the capitalist/market/money system has existed there has been poverty. People have been trying for hundreds of years to eradicate poverty within the capitalist system, it doesn't work. Unfashionable as it is to say so the world is still divided into those who own the means of producing things and those that don't. Those that don't possess the means of living are forced to sell their labour to those that do. This is the basis of poverty. Labour is a commodity, if there is no buyer it goes unsold with disasterous consequences for the seller, or if - because the basis of labour consumption in capitalism is the ability to return a profit - the value of that labour doesn't buy a decent standard of living.
No matter how much fair pay, fairtrade, welfare state and charity we get we are only treating the symptoms of the disease. The cure is for the means of living to be in the possession of all and used in the interests of all through democratic control. Production for use, not production for profit.