From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green
Oxfam, £15.95
IT’S TIMELY when governments across the developed – that is, rich – world are cutting taxes and increasing spending to tackle the fall out from the greed of bankers that Oxfam should publish this book. We live in an age of affluence yet side by side are hundreds of millions of our fellow human beings for whom poverty is a way of life. It should not be like this.
Indeed, the more you get into this work from Oxfam GB’s head of research, the more the emotions of anger, frustration and, yes, guilt flow. But there’s also hope. Duncan Green uses numerous case studies to demonstrate this book is not merely an academic textbook but a manual for real, practical and lasting social change. It is a book for politicians of all hues to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest – preferably with the Internationale playing in the background. For this is as stirring as the words, tune and sentiments of that great anthem of the left.
The book’s sub-title about how active citizens and effective states can change the world sums up the approach. Organise to win. Every worker an organiser, as the great Jack Jones of the T&G said and it’s never truer than when taking on vested interests.
There is a clear ambition in this well-written, meticulously researched and informative volume. The 21st century, Oxfam say, “will be defined by the fight against the scourges of poverty, inequality and the threat of environmental collapse – as the fight against slavery or for universal suffrage defined earlier eras.” The call is made for nothing less than “a radical redistribution of power, opportunities and assets to break the cycle of poverty and inequality and to give poor people power over their own destinies.”
Green’s analytical approach to defining inequality in economic, social, political and human terms is the bedrock of his agenda for how citizens become active and, through them, states become effective to deliver change for the common good. He balances the classic theories of political organising with how ordinary men and women – and there are impressive examples of the role women play from Latin America, Africa and India – create and grasp opportunities for justice, decency and dignity.
The recipe is simple. Good education, decent public health and opportunities for work build cohesive, strong and sustainable communities in which there are shared aims and a determination to have a voice. Set against the huge challenges of climate change, and the availability of clean, fresh water, Green argues that while the recipe may be simple, change needs to happen now.
His vision is unapologetic. Critics may say he is naïve, but the message is clear. If we don’t act, we all lose. Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers!
Andrew Dodgshon
About The Author
I guess I should first read the book. However, the reviewer did not once mention, and I suspect, neither did the author, Marx’s observation that the essence of capitalism is commodification–the production of not goods but commodities using labour power itself as a commodity. What this means is that those whose labour power is not useful have no access to the means of life, which are, of course, commodities. The struggle, then, must surely be to end capitalist commodity production, not poverty and inequality.