Theories of Poverty/The Poverty of Theory

Brigham Young University Law Review, 2009 by Stark, Barbara

You never give me your money

You only give me your funny paper

And in the middle of negotiations

You break down.

- PAUL MCCARTNEY1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 382

II. WHY THEORY ........................................................................ 386

A. Why Theory Is Necessary ........................................... 387

B. Why Theory Is Problematic ........................................ 390

III. THEORIES OF POVERTY ........................................................ 391

A. Liberal Theory ........................................................... 391

1. The Moral Duty to the Poor ................................. 395

2. The Rights of the Poor ......................................... 399

3. Poverty and Utility ................................................ 402

4. How Liberal Theories Add Up, and Why They Fall Short .............................................................. 407

B. Liberalism's Discontents ............................................. 411

1. The Theocrats ....................................................... 411

2. The Radicals ......................................................... 413

3. The Skeptics ......................................................... 415

IV. THE POVERTY OF THEORY ................................................... 419

A. Being Creates Consciousness ...................................... 420

B. "All That Is Solid Melts into Air" ............................... 424

V. CONCLUSION ........................................................................ 428

I. INTRODUCTION

The world has never been richer.2 At the same time, the number of people living in poverty has increased by almost 100 million3 and the chasm between the rich and the poor has become unfathomable. In 2004, 969 million people lived on less than a dollar a day.4 As former World Bank President Robert McNamara summed up, these people experience "a condition of life so characterized by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency."5 Yet there are more billionaires than ever before,6 people who have more money than some less developed countries,7 people who, as Barack Obama put it, "make more in [ten] minutes than a worker makes in [ten] months."8 As a recent United Nations University study explained, global wealth is distributed as "if one person in a group of ten takes 99% of the total pie and the other nine share the remaining 1%."9

Few argue that this is inevitable10 or unimportant,11 but there is little consensus on how to proceed. What should be done?12 Who should do it? These questions should not be left entirely to politicians,13 economists,14 and celebrities.15 Rather, theory can illuminate what has become a series of heated but murky arguments.16 It can clarify the possibilities.17

Part II of this Article explains why theory in general is both necessary and problematic in this context. Part III explains how liberal theories in particular dominate post-Cold War poverty law, as shown in three major legal instruments. It then introduces other theories of poverty, those of liberalism's "discontents,"18 conspicuously absent from post-Cold War poverty law. Part IV, explains why theory itself is impoverished in two distinct senses. First, as Marx noted 150 years ago, "being creates consciousness."19 That is, theory is the result of material, historical conditions rather than a force capable of transforming them. Second, because of the particular historical conditions that exist now, including the absence of the discontents, under international law the rich North has no legal obligation to aid the poor South. Rather, the liberal international legal system has neither the legal muscle to effectively address global poverty nor the political will to develop it.

II. WHY THEORY

Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner identifies four types of mental content: concepts, theories, stories, and skills.20 As Gardner explains, "[a] concept, the most elementary unit, is an umbrella term that refers to any set of closely related entities. When we denote all four-legged, furry household pets that bark as dogs, we are revealing our concept of canines."21 We can conceptualize poverty as an objective level of deprivation, such as those living on less than a dollar a day. Or we can conceptualize it as relative deprivation, such as a two-parent American household with two children living on less than $19,806 per year - the official poverty line in the U.S. in 2007.22 While such Americans are certainly poor,23 most have access to clean drinking water and electricity, unlike most of the global poor.

How we conceptualize poverty determines the theories we develop to address it. Theories, according to Gardner,

are relatively formal explanations of processes in the world. A theory takes the form "X has occurred because of A, B, C" or "There are three kinds of Y, and they differ in the following ways or I predict that either Z will happen or Y will happen, depending on condition D."24