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. |
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... rich and, if successful, to advertise his newfound status by procuring 'mere trinkets of frivolous utility'. After a disquisition on the impossibility of translating wealth into happiness, Smith concluded: Power and riches appear then ...
... rich were reminded that their hegemony was provisional and contingent . Politically , the effect of the American and French Revolutions was to dislodge or undermine early modern commonplaces about the place of the poor in the social ...
... rich and poor reminiscent of what had once supposedly pertained in the feudal world? Should people attempt to create a new sense of spiritual community? Should chance be eliminated altogether through the establishment of 'villages of ...
... rich and poor was an inescapable part of ' civilisation ' , Condorcet argued that inequality was largely to be ascribed to ' the present imperfections of the social art ' . ' The final end of the social art ' would be ' real equality ...
... rich and powerful individuals or by corporations . It extended equally to government . For that reason , public education instituted by government must be limited to instruction . The teaching of the constitution of each nation should ...
Contents
1734 | |
1747 | |
The Reaction in Britain | 1790 |
The Reaction in France | |
the Proletariat and the Industrial | |
The Wealth of Midas | |
Resolving The Social Problem | |
Conclusion | |
Notes | |