The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy. - book reviews

National Review, June 3, 1996 by Allan Carlson

AT first look, it would be as easy to dismiss Herbert Gans's The War against the Poor as tired liberal foolishness, while praising Marvin Olasky's Renewing American Compassion as inspired.

Himself an aging Poverty Warrior, Gans argues that Lyndon Johnson's Great Society campaign failed primarily through a lack of resources. To his mind, the ''War on Poverty'' was a mere ''skirmish.'' He denies the existence of a ''culture of poverty,'' attributing the difficulties of the poor to ''labeling'' (particularly by the words ''underclass'' and ''unworthy'') and to an unspecified ''lack of money.''

Unmarried teenage mothers are a consequence, not a cause, of poverty, he maintains, and their behavior may even be positive: babies born to teen moms are healthier, Gans claims.

Indeed, this author is a stereotypical liberal. He argues for massive new federal intrusion into labor and capital markets and a huge increase in taxation, so that government can ''offer more of those goods and services that it can truly supply more cheaply than private enterprise.'' Even where he avoids this blatant socialism, his economic thought is a jumble: at one point, he demands that private corporations increase their productivity; on nearby pages, he condemns the use of computers and automation and calls for a return to a labor-intensive economy. And money, of course, grows on trees.

Olasky offers a virtual point-by-point rebuttal. He describes the War on Poverty and its echoes as an enormous waste of tax dollars and energy. Where Gans indicted any labeling of the poor, Olasky deems it critical: particularly the distinction between ''worthy'' and ''unworthy.'' Where Gans decries the lack of jobs in the American economy, Olasky points to the abundance of opportunities: ''attitude,'' alcoholism, and drug dependency are the real sources of failure to work. Where the Poverty Warrior calls for a new round of welfare programs, the senior fellow from the Progress and Freedom Foundation demands that the whole welfare system be scrapped. Where Gans dismisses as self-serving the ''salvation industries'' which try to save souls and alter behaviors, Olasky sees them as the only hope for improvement. Indeed, he provides numerous positive examples of religiously driven charities that actually make a difference in the lives of the poor, usually through one-on-one human connections.

Yet a deeper look into both volumes introduces some ambiguity. For example, Gans's investigation into the origins of the term ''underclass'' leads him to the 1963 book Challenge to Affluence, in which the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal adapted an old Swedish word to identify persons being driven out of the economy by deindustrialization. While the term lost that connotation in the policy debates of the 1980s, Gans urges with some merit a return to the original meaning, in the new context of the ''globalizing'' economy. He also identifies the perverse social utilities of the concept of ''the undeserving poor,'' some of which ring true. Gans notes that ''the larger the number of people who are declared undeserving, the larger also the number of people needed to modify, police, control, or guard them''; and he describes how the failed War on Drugs has ''aided the continuation of addiction, street crime, and prison building.''

Meanwhile, Olasky's argument reveals certain flaws. To begin with, his enthusiastic embrace of the nineteenth-century's Charity Organization Society (COS) movement as a worthy model masks its dark side: an intellectual rooting in Social Darwinism (giving an extra bite to terminology such as ''deserving'' and ''undeserving'') and in a ''moderate'' feminism focused on ''child saving.'' Concerning the former, COS theorists acknowledged both ''the law of the survival of the fittest'' and the Christian's obligation to save the unfit from death. Scientific charity, they believed, allowed them to combat the evils arising from this ''breach'' of the law of nature, by calculating need in order to aid only the ''degree of unfitness.''

At the same time, middle-class, mostly Protestant housewives with few or no children of their own and too much time on their hands used the COS machinery to extend their ''housekeeping functions'' into the community at large. Not by coincidence, the common objects of their interventions were the large, immigrant Catholic families pouring into the Northeast. Enjoying ''police powers'' in most states after 1865, these so-called Visitors often took children into their own possession in order to ''save'' them from the ''shiftless habits'' of their natural parents. Mary Richmond, whom Olasky quotes with favor a number of times, was a leader in this construction of an intrusive new ''woman's profession,'' one still wreaking havoc in immigrant and blue-collar homes.

At the same time, Olasky backs away from the logical anti-statist implications of his own argument. As he shows, the COS movement was strongly opposed to any governmental involvement in charity, wisely recognizing the corrupting effects of state money and regulations. However, when he turns to policy solutions, his central recommendation is a $2,500 tax credit for taxpayers giving $3,000 or more (in money or time) to ''groups that provide direct social services to the poor.''