An End to Poverty?: A Historical DebateIn the 1790s, for the first time, reformers proposed bringing poverty to an end. Inspired by scientific progress, the promise of an international economy, and the revolutions in France and the United States, political thinkers such as Thomas Paine and Antoine-Nicolas Condorcet argued that all citizens could be protected against the hazards of economic insecurity. In An End to Poverty? Gareth Stedman Jones revisits this founding moment in the history of social democracy and examines how it was derailed by conservative as well as leftist thinkers. By tracing the historical evolution of debates concerning poverty, Stedman Jones revives an important, but forgotten strain of progressive thought. He also demonstrates that current discussions about economic issues--downsizing, globalization, and financial regulation--were shaped by the ideological conflicts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Paine and Condorcet believed that republicanism combined with universal pensions, grants to support education, and other social programs could alleviate poverty. In tracing the inspiration for their beliefs, Stedman Jones locates an unlikely source-Adam Smith. Paine and Condorcet believed that Smith's vision of a dynamic commercial society laid the groundwork for creating economic security and a more equal society. But these early visions of social democracy were deemed too threatening to a Europe still reeling from the traumatic aftermath of the French Revolution and increasingly anxious about a changing global economy. Paine and Condorcet were demonized by Christian and conservative thinkers such as Burke and Malthus, who used Smith's ideas to support a harsher vision of society based on individualism and laissez-faire economics. Meanwhile, as the nineteenth century wore on, thinkers on the left developed more firmly anticapitalist views and criticized Paine and Condorcet for being too "bourgeois" in their thinking. Stedman Jones however, argues that contemporary social democracy should take up the mantle of these earlier thinkers, and he suggests that the elimination of poverty need not be a utopian dream but may once again be profitably made the subject of practical, political, and social-policy debates. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 84
... poor man's son ' to strive to become rich and , if successful , to advertise his newfound status by procuring ' mere trinkets of frivolous utility ' . After disquisition on the impossibility of translating wealth into happiness , Smith ...
... poor ' which the reaction against the Revolution had already done so much to intensify . For conservatives , the Revolution was almost from the beginning a demonstration of the fallacy of ignoring the primacy 5 Introduction.
... Poor Law reform . Old left histo- riography minimises its significance because it is still fixated upon the ' bourgeois ' limitations of such programmes . Post- Marxist parlance , on the other hand , condemns it for its supposed ...
... poor had begun to become dislodged . As far back as the end of the seventeenth century , the dif- ference in prosperity between the English economy and any other in the world had been noted by John Locke . Modern nations , even if poor ...
A Historical Debate Gareth Stedman Jones. nations , even if poor in resources , could feed their popula- tions without resort to conquest , thanks to the increasing productivity of the land . According to Locke : ' There cannot be a ...