Poverty is not an unfortunate side effect of civilisation. Indeed, economic gradient is the fundamental _basis_ of civilisation.
I've been reading a lot about World Systems Theory (inspired almost entirely by books from r/AskHistorians). Particularly at the moment, Ian Morris' "Why the West Rules, for Now". It's abundantly clear that at least on the macro level, classes, countries and civilisations escape poverty all the time. See civil wars, revolutions and the beneficiaries of collapsed empires for example. The simple fact is that poverty is escaped by sheer brute force, not by virtue.
In the archetypical confrontation between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, I side with X. The idea that poverty can be managed from within society's formal power structures is an eternal carrot of carefully calibrated false hope. The idea that we can fix poverty is itself what perpetuates it. The idea of the possibility of overcoming poverty serves more as a means to ignore the fact that civilisation is fundamentally dependent on economic gradients.
The West embraced economic gradient and lifted itself out of poverty with the brute forces of colonialism. China is now doing the same and will most likely overtake the West. We all know this hard truth about escaping poverty, let's not pretend otherwise.
I've been reading a lot about World Systems Theory (inspired almost entirely by books from r/AskHistorians). Particularly at the moment, Ian Morris' "Why the West Rules, for Now". It's abundantly clear that at least on the macro level, classes, countries and civilisations escape poverty all the time. See civil wars, revolutions and the beneficiaries of collapsed empires for example. The simple fact is that poverty is escaped by sheer brute force, not by virtue.
In the archetypical confrontation between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, I side with X. The idea that poverty can be managed from within society's formal power structures is an eternal carrot of carefully calibrated false hope. The idea that we can fix poverty is itself what perpetuates it. The idea of the possibility of overcoming poverty serves more as a means to ignore the fact that civilisation is fundamentally dependent on economic gradients.
The West embraced economic gradient and lifted itself out of poverty with the brute forces of colonialism. China is now doing the same and will most likely overtake the West. We all know this hard truth about escaping poverty, let's not pretend otherwise.