Poverty and Post-Developmentalism: Class and Ethical Dimensions of Poverty Eradication1

Marxism and poverty has always lived a contradictory existence. In the South, Marxists were in the forefront of many colonial struggles for political independence. Such struggles were often caught in the cross fire of trying to simultaneously fulfil two objectives: build a socialist state on the basis of the Marxian ethical imperative and, at the same time, eradicate poverty. While socialism/communism’s ethical imperative aspires to create a non-exploitative society, poverty eradication has to do with overcoming a state of situation of people whose biological needs are threatened. An exploitative free world does not mean the eradication of poverty while the eradication of poverty does not mean the erasure of exploitative relations. Poverty and poverty eradication were never central to the Marxian imagination and politics over poverty conceived as relatively unimportant in the larger game of history. Thus the real problem lies with the hitherto Marxist imagination that has never been able to fashion and integrate a discourse of poverty within its framework, which would make it possible for Marxists to treat poverty as a distinct problem and engage in its politics. Using a class focused Marxist theory we produce such a discourse here