2.8bn people, approximately half the population of the world, live on less than $1.20 per day.
The world's three richest people control more wealth than all 600 million people in the world's poorest countries. ⁽¹⁾

As far as bourgeois propaganda campaigns go, “Make Poverty History” ranks among the more sophisticated. Who but the most callous misanthropist would disagree with its sentiments? Communists also aim to make poverty history but they also understand that the leaders of capitalism in the shape of the G8, are quite incapable of doing this no matter what tunes their court minstrels Geldorf, Bono and the rest of them play. Capitalism is, in reality an economic system of production which depends on poverty and reproduces it. As the statistics above show capitalism is, in fact, making poverty worldwide and must continue to do so.

Why capitalism cannot make poverty history

Every class society in history has devised a system whereby the wealth produced by the subject class is transferred to the ruling class and the consumption of the subject class is kept to a minimum. Capitalism is no different from earlier class societies in this respect. The only difference is that the method by which this transfer takes place is disguised. Whereas in slave and feudal society the labour of the slave or serf was taken by means of force and the process could be easily understood, in capitalist society it is taken by the system of wage labour. What workers sell to the capitalist in return for their wages is their ability to work, or their labour power. This labour power is able to produce more value than the value required to reproduce it.

This is the key to exploitation under capitalism. Workers are given only a small proportion of the value their labour power produces while the rest is taken by the capitalist. A worker spends only a small part of the working day producing the value of his/her wages and the rest he/she works free for the capitalist, that is to say the work is unpaid. In general, the wage workers are paid covers the cost of their subsistence, that is, what is necessary for their reproduction as a class.

The dynamic of capitalism is determined by the tendency for rates of profit to fall which in turn causes the capitalist class to continually attempt to either increase the productivity of labour or to reduce the labour time necessary for the reproduction of the working class. This is the reason capital has scoured the world to find workers who will work the longest hours for the least wages. This is the reason wages in the core capitalist countries are under continual attack and social benefits such as pensions and health are being reduced. Capitalism cannot increase the wages of the working class without facing its ruin as a system. Capitalism, therefore, simply cannot make poverty history. Its very existence depends on reproducing poverty on an ever wider scale.

As capitalism developed in the 19th century this led to the formation of monopolies at a national level and ultimately to modern imperialism where the powerful multinational corporations and financial institutions of the West, backed by the military might of the state, dominate the world economy by ensuring that the smaller economies of the so called “Third World” remain in a state of subjugation. The G8 leaders are the political custodians of this order and have no option but to act in accordance with its economic imperatives. To imagine the leaders of the system are able to alter the essentials of this system is absolutely crazy.

The G8 leaders are not, of course, crazy. When they see a campaign such as Make Poverty History, which has not the slightest understanding of why capitalism needs to keep the working class in poverty, and is supported by celebrity musicians they happily cast themselves as its leaders. By doing this they aim to camouflage the crimes which international capital is committing globally.

The three principal demands of the Make Poverty History campaign, fair trade, debt relief and increased aid are considered from a general perspective below. The issue of African debt relief is considered in more detail in a separate article in this edition.

The Make Poverty History Campaign would have us believe that the imperialist gangsters who make up the G8 can change their policies on trade, aid and debt relief in order to give the economies of the Third World a fighting chance. But these policies are themselves part of the web of imperialism which maintain the hegemony of Western capital through such international institutions as the World Bank, IMF and the World Trade Organisation.

Fair trade?

Unfair terms of trade are as old as capitalism itself. In the world market, the dominant players will obviously use their powerful influence to advance their position and prevent the emergence of rivals. Moreover, the laws of capital dictate that capital concentrates around existing capital. Make Poverty History call for the end of such practices as export subsidies and the dumping of cheap agricultural products in poor countries, as well as forcing these countries to give up the tariff barriers which offer some protection to their domestic industries. By their own admission, few, if any, concessions were made at the G8 meeting on these issues. Yet the argument that the Third World should enjoy trade parity with the capitalist heartlands is essentially an argument which favours the Third World bourgeoisie. For the workers in the Third World, capitalism means exploitation and poverty irrespective of whether the boss is a multinational corporation or a home grown enterprise.

Debt relief

The idea that the G8 have agreed to debt relief is a complete fraud. ⁽²⁾

When Geldorf pronounced that:

tomorrow 280 million Africans will wake up for the first time in their lives without owing you and me a penny.

This was nothing but a downright lie. Irrespective of the stupidity of the notion that 280 million Africans owe “you and me” anything at all, the so-called agreement on debt relief is essentially meaningless. Just consider the small number of countries included in the “deal” and that that it applies only to debt owed to multilateral institutions which covers only 10% of the debt owed in the poorest countries. Furthermore, for every one pound of debt relief provided to a particular country, one pound of aid will be withheld; net gain, zero.

Aid

“Aid” is another misnomer when it comes to alleviating poverty. It is naïve to assume that even the tiny sums given in aid by the richest countries to the poorest have any significant impact in the desperate lives of the world's poorest people. Aid never comes without strings attached. In the interests of "neo-liberalism", the price of aid is often the opening up of new opportunities for Western capital in the Third World. Whilst Blair was making bogus claims to be championing the cause of the worlds poor, it has been revealed that the British government's “Department for International Development” was forcing Ghana to privatise its water supply for the benefit of British investors. ⁽³⁾

It is also a myth that the largest aid flows go to the most needy areas. In fact, aid is used as a lever to advance the strategic imperialist interests of the donor countries. It is therefore no surprise to learn that some of the largest aid recipients are not in sub-Saharan Africa but countries of crucial strategic significance to the US, such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Egypt. Aid often means credits for arms purchases to enable corrupt and ruthless Third World regimes to crush all dissent. Despite the rhetoric even Make Poverty History admit that virtually nothing has been achieved at Gleneagles:

For most of the 50 million children who will die of poverty over the next five years, the G8 leaders have offered too little, too late. By 2010, we will see the awful inequity whereby a child dies every 3.5 seconds, just because they are poor. ⁽⁴⁾

Only communism can make poverty history

We should not be distracted by the moralism of campaigns such as Make Poverty History. These campaigns are part of the ideological weaponry of imperialism, fostering the illusion that capitalism can be transformed into a caring and compassionate system. Further, MPH and its ilk are not against poverty per se. They demand action against the absolute desperate poverty of sub-Saharan Africa where millions of people are pushed to the very brink of survival. Poverty is defined as being an income of less than $1.00 per day, yet there are millions of workers who earn more than this whilst still living in poverty. Chinese workers, for example, may earn $3 per day but for them life is a precarious struggle for existence. Even in the so-called developed world, wealth inequality is growing year on year and millions exist in desperate circumstances on the margins of society. Yet this type of poverty, i.e., the normality of existence for the majority of the world's proletariat, and the direct consequence of capitalist exploitation is not condemned by MPH as to do so would call into question capitalism itself.

We have shown above how capitalism produces poverty and cannot possibly alleviate it without negating itself as a system of production. However, it is true that the world has the ability to make poverty history. The productive forces of global capitalism are sufficient to feed and clothe everyone, provide decent housing and clean water, eliminate diseases, provide education, etc. However, these things simply cannot be done under capitalism since production is for profit not need. Only when we stop producing for profit and start producing for human need can this be done. Today production is for the accumulation of capital. The labour of men and women is taken from them for purpose of increasing capital values. The system only satisfies human needs indirectly since this is not the purpose of production. To change this system is an historic task which will take more than a few pop concerts. Yet this is what must be done.

As internationalists we understand that the only way to rid the world of poverty is destroy the roots of poverty which are integral to capitalism and the imperialist domination of capital across the globe. The class struggle of the working class is the only means that contains the potential to end this nightmare and create a socialist world in which poverty really will be history.

(1) Independent, 1st June 2005

(2) See "The Great African Charade" in this edition

(3) John Pilger, New Statesman, 24th June 2005

(4) MPH Response to G8 Communique - makepovertyhistory.org