How To End Poverty

How To End Poverty

76. HOW TO END POVERTY*

Dean Russell


Our political leaders have recently declared war against poverty in the United States. And they are now in the process of mobilizing the nation’s man¬power and resources for the coming battle.
The general philosophy behind these recurring governmental campaigns to stop poverty is famil¬iar indeed to students of economic history. As merely one of countless possible examples on the same general theme, let us first look briefly at the so-called Industrial Revolution in the England of 150 years or so ago.
Perhaps the two most famous of the reformers of that era were the classical economist, Karl Marx, and the successful businessman who became his collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Those two men were the intellectual leaders of the war against poverty in their time. And as is still the case with most of our own intellectual and political leaders today, the only solution that Marx and Engels ever offered to end poverty was to have the government increase its compulsions and prohibitions over the people in their economic activities.
It is not necessary here to question the accuracy of those reports by Karl Marx in which he de-scribed the degrading living conditions of the peo¬
ple who worked in those early factory towns of industrial Britain. While his research was confined to extensive reading in the British Museum, I will here assume that his statements on the harsh work¬ing conditions of that time were essentially true in a reportorial sense. But most unfortunately for poor people everywhere, Marx completely missed both the reality and the portent behind what he was reporting. And thus he offered a totally errone¬ous solution to the problems of poverty and how to raise the level of living of the general population.

The Socialist Theory

The famous theory endorsed by Karl Marx to im¬prove the well-being of mankind was based firmly on governmental ownership and operation of the means of producing and...