The problem of modern poverty: significant congruences between Hegel's and George's theoretical conceptions - Special Issue: Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Death of Henry George

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 1997 by Robert Siemens

I

The Problem of Poverty Amid Plenty

Review of the secondary literature discloses that George Hegel's thought was shaped in full consciousness of "the place of labour, industry, and production in human affairs" (Avineri, 1972: 5). Hegel first confronted the aggregate of problems now known as socioeconomics in the System der Sittlichkeit and the Realphilosophie. He returned to give the topic systematic exposition in his Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (1821) some twenty odd years later.(1) His socioeconomics is formulated as a specific and deliberate response to the political economy developed by Adam Smith, J. B. Say, and David Ricardo.(2) Karl Marx, much more than standing Hegel on his head, as he boasted,(3) carried out the study of the genesis of the modem rabble in England, which Hegel recommends as the prime example for such work (1970: [section] 245).

Marx, along with his American contemporary, Henry George, addressed the central problem(4) raised by Hegel's mature text: "the evil that, as the mass (Menge) of production is increased, its overabundance (Uberflusz) is matched by the proportionate increase of want (Mangel) on the part of the self-producing consumers, creating a mutually escalating spiral" (1970: [section] 245). Bourgeois society, "with its supermass (Ubermasz) of wealth, seems to be not rich enough, that is, not possessing sufficient means for, stemming the supermass of poverty and the generation of rabble" (1970: [section] 245). Because "'the emergence of poverty is in general a consequence of civil society from which on the whole it necessarily results', it remains 'a problem to be solved that has no apparent solution'" [Philosophie des Rechts: Die Vorlesung von 1819/20: 193] (Hardimon 1994: 244). And while Hardimon argues that "the question of whether an acceptable solution to the problem of poverty can be found remains for [Hegel] an open one" (1994:245), Avineri finds that Hegel's "failure to find a solution to it within his system seems to justify a gnawing doubt" (109). The same problem surfaces in the Philosophy of Right. Avineri credits "Hegel's intellectual integrity for not trying to suggest an easy solution in place of a real one" (1972:109).

The difficulty of the solution stems from the fact that "the emergence of poverty is in general a consequence of civil society from which on the whole it necessarily results' [Philosophie des Rechts: Die Vorlesung von 1819/20. 193]" (Hardimon, 1994: 246). Furthermore, "[t]he real evil of poverty . . . is that being poor means alienated" (246). "The poor cannot be at home in the social world" because "[t]hey cannot attain reconciliation" (246). This is the case because modem poverty represents, not "a collection of random individuals who, as it happens, cannot be at home in the modem social world [, but] . . . a whole class whose . . . alienation [is] generated by the normal workings of civil society" (248). Hegel, Hardimon concurs with Avineri, "recognizes that poverty constitutes a flaw in the modem social world" (258). The urgency of a solution to the problem of modem escalating poverty amid escalating wealth is underlined by Hardimon's assertion that poverty has no redemptive moment (241), and that "the thought that poverty and the creation of a rabble represent necessary features of civil society . . . provide reasons for regarding this social formation as fundamentally flawed" (242).

The remedy for modem poverty is made difficult because it is precisely through the creation of wealth that civil society creates its rabble. Poverty remains a problem without an apparent solution because, "despite an excess of wealth, civil society is not wealthy enough - that is, its own distinct resources are not sufficient - to prevent an excess of poverty and the formation of a rabble" (Hegel, 1970: [section] 245; Hardimon, 1994: 244). Marx outlined the mechanics of this process of the mutual increase of wealth and poverty in splendid empirical detail and with great historical insight in Das Kapital. We will ignore Marx's contribution to focus on his almost completely neglected American contemporary, Henry George. The title of George's seminal work, Progress and Poverty, arrests our attention because it could almost have been lifted from Hegel's text verbatim, had George not read Hegel only after formulating his own socioeconomic theory. Furthermore, it suggests the promise of a solution to Hegel's - and modern society's - problem of poverty.

The first signs of promise are the significant congruences between Hegel's and George's socioeconomics. The most striking is the attention both thinkers paid to the contradiction that the increase of wealth brings an attendant increase of poverty in modem industrialized bourgeois society.(5) Hegel's solution to this problem was colonization.(6) George's observation of the phenomenon of poverty in the midst of progress in America - one of Hegel's suggested destinations for colonists(7) - and his independent formulation of the problem based on his personal experience, illustrates the depth of Hegel's insight into the problem. It also demonstrates the inadequacy of his solution: if colonization is the solution to the problem of poverty amid progress, it should not appear so quickly as it did in the land of the colonists' destiny, as observed and documented by Henry George.(8)