A political economy of the Poor People’s Campaign: From MLK and Polanyi to Trump

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 441-451
Author(s):  
Ralph Callebert ◽  
Raji Singh Soni
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor People's Campaign

Immiserizing Growth

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Household Survey ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poverty Measures ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Country Analysis ◽  
Cross Country

Immiserizing Growth occurs when growth fails to benefit, or harms, those at the bottom. It is not a new concept, appearing such figures as Malthus, Ricardo and Marx. It is also not empirically insignificant, occurring in between 10% and 35% of cases, depending on the data set and the growth and poverty measures used. In spite of this, it has not received its due attention in the academic literature, dominated by the prevailing narrative that ‘growth is good for the poor’. The chapters in this volume aim to arrive at a better understanding of when, why and how growth fails the poor. They combine discussion of mechanisms of Immiserizing Growth with empirical data on trends in growth, poverty and related welfare indicators. In terms of mechanisms, politics and political economy are chosen as useful entry points to explain IG episodes. The disciplinary focus is diverse, drawing on economics, political economy, applied social anthropology, and development studies. A number of methodological approaches are represented including statistical analysis of household survey and cross-country data, detailed ethnographic work and case study analysis drawing on secondary data. Geographical coverage is wide including Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, the People’s Republic of China, Singapore, and South Korea, in addition to cross-country analysis. As the first book-length treatment of Immiserizing Growth in the literature, we believe that this volume constitutes an important step in redirecting attention to this issue.

scholarly journals THE PROTECTION OF THE RICH AGAINST THE POOR: THE POLITICS OF ADAM SMITH’S POLITICAL ECONOMY

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-158
Author(s):  
James A. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
General Attitude ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Natural Forms ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Point Of Departure

AbstractMy point of departure in this essay is Smith’s definition of government. “Civil government,” he writes, “so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” First I unpack Smith’s definition of government as the protection of the rich against the poor. I argue that, on Smith’s view, this is always part of what government is for. I then turn to the question of what, according to Smith, our governors can do to protect the wealth of the rich from the resentment of the poor. I consider, and reject, the idea that Smith might conceive of education as a means of alleviating the resentment of the poor at their poverty. I then describe how, in his lectures on jurisprudence, Smith refines and develops Hume’s taxonomy of the opinions upon which all government rests. The sense of allegiance to government, according to Smith, is shaped by instinctive deference to natural forms of authority as well as by rational, Whiggish considerations of utility. I argue that it is the principle of authority that provides the feelings of loyalty upon which government chiefly rests. It follows, I suggest, that to the extent that Smith looked to government to protect the property of the rich against the poor, and thereby to maintain the peace and stability of society at large, he cannot have sought to lessen the hold on ordinary people of natural sentiments of deference. In addition, I consider the implications of Smith’s theory of government for the question of his general attitude toward poverty. I argue against the view that Smith has recognizably “liberal,” progressive views of how the poor should be treated. Instead, I locate Smith in the political culture of the Whiggism of his day.

Richard Whately and political economy in school books, 1833-80

1966 ◽  
Vol 15 (58) ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.M. Goldstrom
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Hours ◽  
Richard Whately ◽  
School Books

Throughout the nineteenth century, books, pamphlets and periodicals offered widely-ranging advice to the working class. One theme, appearing about 1820, was political economy: ‘Next to religion’, a royal commission reported, ‘the knowledge most important to a labouring man is that of the causes which regulate the amount of his wages, the hours of his work, the regularity of his employment, and the prices of what he consumes’. And Richard Whately, former Drummond Professor of political economy at Oxford, now archbishop of Dublin, urged similarly the need to teach political economy to the poor : ‘The lower orders’, he said, ‘would not … be, as now, liable to the misleading of every designing demagogue … If they were well grounded in the outlines of the science, it would go further towards rendering them provident, than any other scheme that could be devised.’

The Pauper

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-138
Author(s):  
Sylvie Laurent
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
Welfare Rights ◽  
New Class ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Poor People's Campaign

This chapter questions the implications of King’s new class-based coalition. It casts the Poor People’s Campaign as a crucial hinge in creating a possible link between the civil rights movement, the labor movement, black nationalists who endorsed Marxism, the Chicano movements, the Welfare Rights movements (in which women played a critical role), poor whites organizations and the peace movement.

Immiserizing Growth: An Overview

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Shaffer
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Good For ◽  
Historical Antecedents

This chapter provides a survey of theoretical and empirical issues related to immiserizing growth (IG). It reviews historical antecedents, including the towering figures of classical political economy—Malthus, Ricardo, and Marx—who held different versions of the IG idea. A number of the causal mechanisms generating IG outcomes are then reviewed, drawing on diverse traditions of scholarship, with a focus on political economy, politics, and the policy process. Finally, the empirical literature is examined drawing on cross-country and country case information. The chapter concludes that IG is not an insignificant empirical phenomenon, which has been somewhat overlooked in light of the prevailing narrative that ‘growth is good for the poor’.

The Political Economy of Land Reform in China's “Newly Liberated Areas”: Evidence from Wuxi County

2008 ◽  
Vol 195 ◽  
pp. 675-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Kai-Sing Kung
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Land Inequality ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Farm Survey ◽  
Class Status ◽  
The Rich

AbstractA farm survey conducted in Wuxi county in the 1950s found that the Chinese Communist Party had successfully “preserved the rich peasant economy” in the “newly liberated areas”: the landlords were indeed the only social class whose properties had been redistributed, yet without compromising on the magnitude of benefits received by the poor peasants. A higher land inequality in that region, coupled with an inter-village transfer of land, allowed these dual goals to be achieved. Our study further reveals that class status was determined both by the amount of land a household owned and whether it had committed certain “exploitative acts,” which explains why some landlords did not own a vast amount of land. Conversely, it was the amount of land owned, not class status, that determined redistributive entitlements, which was why 15 per cent of the poor peasants and half of the middle peasants were not redistributed any land.

Humane Markets

2019 ◽  
pp. 293-315
Author(s):  
James R. Otteson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Moral Concern ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Political Economic

Markets are often criticized for being amoral, if not immoral. The core of the “political economy” that arose in the eighteenth century, however, envisioned the exchanges that take place in commercial society as neither amoral nor immoral but indeed deeply humane. The claim of the early political economists was that transactions in markets fulfilled two separate but related moral mandates: they lead to increasing prosperity, which addressed their primary “economic” concern of raising the estates of the poor; and they model proper relations among people, which addressed their primary “moral” concern of granting a respect to all, including the least among us. They attempted to capture a vision of human dignity within political-economic institutions that enabled people to improve their stations. Their arguments thus did not bracket out judgments of value: they integrated judgments of value into their foundations and built their political economy on that basis.

William Fremantle, Samuel Barnett and the Broad Church Origins of Toynbee Hall

1982 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 564-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. E. Nettleship
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
The Poor ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

Contemporaries and historians alike have regarded the 1880s as a watershed in Victorian thought. They have argued that before the 1880s the well-to-do held firmly to a belief in Political Economy and attributed economic success to the high moral character and hard work of the individual. By the 1880s these beliefs had begun to waver, and many who had themselves prospered from the new economic system began to question its assumptions and develop a sense of responsibility toward those beneath them in the social order. One institution which seems to represent this change is Toynbee Hall, the first English settlement house, founded in 1884. Headed by a middle-class clergyman, Samuel Barnett, staffed by well-educated and well-to-do volunteers and dedicated to bringing education and culture to the poor, it seems to be an example, par excellence, of the newly heightened middle-class social conscience typical of the 1880s.2 But close examination reveals that the origins of Toynbee Hall date back to the 1870s, to the broad church orientation and parish practices of Samuel Barnett. Rooted in his modest day-to-day pastoral work rather than in new concepts of social justice, Toynbee Hall raises the question of whether in fact the 1880s constitute a great divide in Victorian thought or a period of continuation, expansion and institutionalisation of earlier ideas and practices.

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