Values, Wealth, and Poverty: Tracing a Spatial-Temporal Metamorphosis

Abstract

A renewed value system in indeed a possibility. It can be created based on a process of examination, deconstruction, and reconstruction of norms, definitions, and perceptions that constitute previous and current social contracts. This chapter initiates such a process. It draws on literary works, paintings, music, religious texts and teachings, philosophies, socio-economic realities, and social movements. to delineate the history of value systems and their social construction across and within different spatial-temporal settings. To best understand values and the power dynamics that define them, the main focus of this chapter is on perception and signification of economic wealth and poverty. From a social constructionist perspective, economic poverty and wealth, as social constructs, are closely related to power and knowledge. They are certainly shaped by dominant groups but are also defined by positioning and position taking dynamics in social institutions of education and culture and the society at large. This chapter is hence a stroll in history from the Middle Ages to the 1970s depicting contextualised conceptualisations of poverty and wealth as well as the role of knowledge and arts within the value systems of each period discussed.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind

John Maynard Keynes

2.1 Introduction

Wealth and poverty are inciting topics attracting research and debate across different fields of study. As concepts, they transcend the analogy of time and space. They persist, that is certain. Their perceptions, though, shift and evolve from one period or space to the other. They can hence be revealing snapshots of how power relations and value systems are constructed, dismantled, and reconstructed as humans negotiate their agency in collaborative or non-collaborative ways.

Two viewpoints are relevant in explaining the complexity and the evolution of persistent social phenomenon such as economic poverty and wealth. These are the ideas of Richard Taylor and of Carlo Rovelli. In The Order of Time, Rovelli (2018) explains the non-linear continuity of history by stating “we conventionally think of time as something simple and fundamental that flows uniformly” (ibid: 8) until we begin to see “we are time…. we are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia, we are longing for a future that will not come” (ibid: 120). In Spatial and Temporal Analogies and the Concept of Identity (1955:599), Richard Taylor states that “temporal and spatial relations, contrary to much traditional thought, are radically alike” and therefore, distance is both temporal and spatial. For instance, “New York and Boston are spatially distant from each other and from other things, while Plato and Kant are temporally so”.

These views can be appropriated within a social constructionist lens to explain continuity, complexity, distances, and contextualised perceptions of poverty and wealth as value systems evolve. Rovelli’s idea alludes to the continuous, yet non-linear trajectory of social realities as lived by individuals or societies. Distanced, unique, and non-linear each trajectory is indeed − as Taylor asserted; yet there is also continuity in the construction of social phenomenon. Failure to grasp the complexity and continuity of poverty, for instance, has reduced the poor to a homogenous community and resulted in “poor economics” as Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo − winners of the Noble Prize in Economics in 2019 − explain in their 2011 book with the same title. Such a complexity, therefore, stipulates definitions, measurements, and standards of both social concepts of wealth and poverty to “be adjusted… to remain socially relevant” (Lister, 2021:26; Niemietz, 2011:32). Hence, the necessity to re-examine perceptions of wealth and poverty in the contemporary world and as part of a deliberate effort to undo capitalism and to reconstruct values for a new social contract.

Is the poverty-wealth dichotomy a novel social phenomenon? The short answer is no!

Human societies have always been stratified (see Baldus, 2017 for origins of inequality in human societies). I can imagine early forms of social stratifications have been a result of biomimicry of the naturally occurring mineral stratifications in caves. After all, early humans created many of their tools through biomimicry of their surrounding environment.However, the narrative we are familiar with is accounted otherwise. David Graeber (the late American anthropologist and activist, 1961−2020) and David Wengrow (2018) reveal the fallacy of our shared narrative. They explain this narrative has told us humans lived in egalitarian communities until farming, private property, the Industrial Revolution, and modernity created capital, stratification, and social inequalities. Another example of a false narrative has, for instance, told us that Neanderthals were cognitively inferior to humans. This is being proved wrong (see Bellot-Gurlet et al., 2020). Similarly, recent evidence from archaeological sites is toppling the conventional narrative of pre-modern egalitarian human settlements that has also defined “our senses of political possibility” (ibid:1).

One such site is the Sungir settlement in central Russia − some 200 km from Moscow − containing four burials of modern Homo sapiens with a few goods and accessories. The findings in this Upper Palaeolithic (a period between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago) demonstrate several facts. It shows that social status and wealth were already used as identity symbols or what Bourdieu (1993) called symbolic capital . In effect, outfits and belongings of the buried bodies are “non-productive consumption goods” closely tied with “inequality based on lifestyle and social status” (Elmelech, 2021:20). The discovered remains in this site as well as those of the Neanderthal ancestors of Homo sapiens (e.g. the 50,000-year-old burial found in France, Abri du Maras − see Hardy et al., (2020) prove that burial ceremonies have certainly existed. The two sites reveal that burials differed for individuals from different social strata well before religions claimed these ceremonies as their own to further separate humans in sickness and in health till death, too, do us apart. Another site has divulged the fallacy of a persisting narrative that has long perpetuated gender inequality and resulted in the “feminisation of poverty” (Moghadam, 2005) as well as violence, discrimination, and human rights abuses against women (see United Nations: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2019). The Wilamaya Patjxa site in Southern Peru, for instance, includes the remains of WP16 (a woman hunter) buried with her hunting tools hence challenging the persisting gendered division of labour that has identified women as gatherers and men as hunters (Buonasera et al., 2020).

If not egalitarian, then what led to stratification in human societies? How poverty and wealth were experienced and defined at each period of human history? What prominent power dynamics and value systems constructed, maintained, and altered poverty and wealth? How culture and education (knowledge and arts) served as power instruments to embody or to change these values and definitions?

This chapter replies to these questions. It examines shifting definitions and perceptions that have continuously “differentiated the condition defined as (poverty) from other conditions (non-poverty)” (Lister, 2021:16), i.e., wealth-poverty dialectics across different regions and from the Middle Ages till the 1970s (the period after the 1970s is the topic of chapter 3). I have drawn on some literary works, arts, music, social revolutions, political upsurges, as well as philosophical, and religious texts, among others. This is to portray how cultural activities-production and consumption – and accumulation of knowledge by artists, philosophers, theorists, authors, public figures, activists, and the masses have either normalised and accepted or confronted and revamped dominant groups and their imposed definition of wealth and poverty. As such, this chapter's analysis depicts the role of education and culture as instruments of power. 

The chapter aims to take this “subject to pieces, like a soldier dismantling his rifle” and show “how the past and the future are one continuous present” (Yevgeny Vinokurov,¹ quoted in John Berger and Selçuk Demirel, (2019:10). As Bourdieu has explained in his book, The Field of Cultural Production (1993) , literary works, along with their authors, publishers, critics, agents, and academics, constantly change in accordance with structural changes in societies and are hence indicators of a system of values that legitimise them at any given context. Mikhail Bakhtin (Russian historian, 1895−1975) was of the same opinion (see Bakhtin, 1986). By including works of art, music, paintings, and literary texts, but also cases of collective bargaining in this chapter, I intend to emphasise (a) the significant role of culture and education in construction of values, social movements and realities; (b) the power of education and culture in awakening or even organising societies towards change; and to demonstrate that (c) each generation has engaged in a de- and reconstruction process to create a narrative best fitting the social reality of their own spatial-temporal setting. There has been distances but also continuity in the history of narratives.

There are a few limitations to this chapter. Some are intentional, others are not. The chapter remains, and intentionally too, within the domains of political economy and sociology. Economic data has rarely been included and is limited to a few instances where these have added value to the overall argument of this chapter. There exists an excellent body of work that focuses on poverty, for instance, from an economic perspective. Some examples are Raj and Slottje (1998), Tanzi and Schuknecht (2000), Alkire et al. (2015), and Ravallion (2016). I have not aimed for an economic analysis but a sociological one. I had to calculate and deliberately leave out some events or theories otherwise this chapter could very well be a book on its own. A future project perhaps!

There are two underpinnings to this chapter. Primarily, it is framed by an understanding that “the social world is accumulated history” (Bourdieu, 1986:241). Secondly, this accumulated history is complex and non-linear. Therefore, it is certain that intangible values and norms as well as tangible capital or socio-economic inequality are transferred (for transfer of socio-economic inequalities see Busso & Messina, 2020; OECD, 2018). However, there are intra and intergenerational reconstructions and repatterning.This chapter is chronologically divided into fourteenth to seventeenth centuries; seventeenth to eighteenth centuries; eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries; mid-late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries; and the post-WWII period.

2.2 The Era of Divine Rewards and Punishments and the Knowledge-Wealth Dichotomy (Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)

In the fourteenth century Europe − probably rooted in the story of the Jesus’ Cleansing of the Temple² and the expelling of the Jewish money changers and customers (Gospel of John, 2:13–16) − sumptuary laws were designed to control earning as well as an extravagant use or demonstration of wealth. At the time, wealth was considered to contradict a virtuous life − albeit only for the poor serfs. Such regulations did not apply to the corrupt Medieval church, the kings, or their military (knights). In fact, the Medieval church, as Mark (2019) explains, maintained a hegemonic relation with the ordinary serfs dictating every aspect of their lives from birth to death (see also Adamo & Lynch, 2014). As direct representatives of a punishing deity in the sky, they manipulated the serfs in close collaboration with their appointed Kings. Such a traditional-religious domination was ensured “by virtue of the sanctity of age-old rules…because of the “Eigenwürde” [traditional status] and was “based on personal loyalty” towards a “personal master” (Weber³, 1978:226–227). This traditional feudal domination was bolstered through self-serving interpretations of the Bible⁴ and coercive inquisition⁵ methods. This was while the Church also avoided paying taxes and demanded serfs to pay ten percent of their income to their Church − a tradition still well alive in Max Weber’s homeland, i.e. Germany for both Protestants and Catholics called “kirchensteuer”. The class-domination power theory proposed by Domhoff (2002) can expound domination dynamics of the feudal Europe. In fact, the answer to the three power indicators that he sets forth, i.e. “who benefits? Who governs? Who wins?” is quite straightforward without much of a hassle. The answer certainly does not include the ordinary serfs.

The traditional-religious hegemony of this period − both inside and outside Europe is reflected in literary and philosophical works of this era. The vanity of wealth accumulation was among the main topics of these works. The underpinning reasons and values differed, of course. They ranged from intentions to push for social change and political awareness to inciting a change of behaviour for collective interest to cautioning serfs and helping them or their kings to avoid the divine punishment.. In his book The Fine Satire of Sa’adi, Iraj Pezeshkzad⁶ (2002) compares Sa’adi Shirazi’s⁷ satire with that of Voltaire.⁸ There is certainly a difference in their satire − if not in the elegance of their style but in their worldviews. Voltaire criticised the French society in which he believed comfort of the rich depended upon an abundant supply of the illiterate and superstitious poor. He persuaded his compatriots to react, to broaden their knowledge and to change the world as expressed in his famous phrase “Let us cultivate our gardens” (Candide, 1759). His idea of poverty went beyond its economic manifestations and included superstition and fanatism among ordinary people; his famous account of Zadig is a contemplation on social and political issues of his day (see Voltaire, 1806). Sa’adi, on the contrary, based his arguments on the existence of a divine punishment. The tyrant king would be punished for the injustices he has inflicted upon his poor subjects, but once he steps down, Sa’adi enunciated. The king − selected by God − could not be punished! It would have been alluring if either or both were alive today. What satire Sa’adi would have composed for the small and big tyrants of his homeland gone unpunished for centuries even after they have stepped down? How about Voltaire?⁹ what he would have to say if he could see his name is a suffix to banks, insurance companies, and supermarkets in a Sans Caractère French border town annexed as dormitory and shopping spree to Geneva, Switzerland? − What satire Voltaire would have composed to describe his masked image during the CV-19 pandemic? (Fig. 2.1) Alas, the enigma remains. Yet, there is not much of a mystery in the contradiction of their worldviews and values. Voltaire was a revolted atheist who pushed for change in power relations through knowledge and education; Sa’adi was a believer in the traditional-religious contract and even if revolted trusted the power of divine punishment rather than the serfs. 

Fig. 2.1

Voltaire before and during the pandemic. (The image on right was publicised during the pandemic by Ferney-Voltaire city municipality)

Similar logic to that of Sa’adi’s can be detected in other non-European folklore stories that are also riddled with deceit and immorality among the wealthy. The Zimbabwean folklore Mufaro’ Beautiful Daughters¹⁰ (best known as part of the literary work of John Steptoe,¹¹ 1987) contrasts two sisters Nyasha and Manyara to emphasise the significance of inner − as opposed to external − beauty which eventually helps Nyasha becoming the queen and positions Manyara as the servant to the queen. In the Caribbean and Western African folklore, Greedy Anansi¹² would eat from a magic pot without sharing with his hungry family and fellow-villagers until he is beaten by a magic stick and learns − the hard way obviously − to share and stop being greedy. Wealth, greed, and divine punishment are closely associated in these two folklore stories, while poverty is associated with inner beauty, patience, and an eventual reward. Similarly, Vietnamese folklore stories − that are heavily influenced by Confucianism¹³ − depict heavenly forces at work to reward the good poor and to punish the evil rich. This is the plot in the famous So Dua¹⁴ or The Coconut Skull. Although the plot is proper to the rich metaphors and mysticism of the Vietnamese culture, the story − like many others − does not persuade a collective revolt against the dominant groups. These stories resemble many of the good vs evil plots in the Western folklore stories such as Cinderella, The Princess and the Frog, and the religious account of Joseph and His Jealous Brothers.¹⁵

Symbolic capital, too, is intriguing and a matter of dichotomy between Europe and the rest of the world. As an example, in his Ghazaliyat,¹⁶ Sa’adi contrasts humane qualities with possession of wealth and elegant outfits in his infamous Sonnet 18. It roughly reads: “human body can only be noble by the soul of humanity; no extravagant outfit ever affords making a human noble”. This sonnet is in utter contrast with Vestis virum facit (clothes make the man) in Adagiorum Chiliades (1508−1536) − a proverb collection by the Catholic priest Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus.¹⁷ The proverb is rooted in a chain of thought passed down from ancient texts in Europe. It started in Homer’s Odyssey, the skilful deceiver; “In conjunction with his verbal deception, physical coverings mask the identity of Odysseus…mistaken identification based on his clothing confirms...the clothing reflects a truth” (Block, 1985:2). This was reiterated in Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Hamlet (1600) where he says, “The apparel oft proclaims the man”. Later, the importance of outfit as a symbolic and social status capital; resurfaced when the author of Huckleberry Fin and Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain (1835−1910) wearing his iconic white suit wrote: “Naked, what am I? A lank, skinny, spider-legged libel image of God…There is nothing imperial about this, nothing imposing, impressive, nothing to evoke awe and reverence….without his clothes a man would be nothing at all; that the clothes do not merely make the man, the clothes are the man; that without them he is a cipher, a vacancy, a nobody, a nothing…there is no power without clothes” (Twain, 1905: 331–333). Symbolic capital, therefore, is identified as a form or a manifestation of power both inside and outside Europe. Sa'adi negates it based on a belief system that positions divine power and humane characteristics above symbolic capital, i.e., worldly gain and its manifestations. The Western examples, however, embrace this symbolic capital to deceive and to revert power.

Dividing the West and the East as such may lead to a false assumption of homogeneity. This was not the case. General patterns can be detected − as observed in the examples above − and also for instance, in Judo-Christianism, Greco-Roman, Islamic, or Buddhist heritage. However, distances have also existed even within these categories. Some of these nuances are briefly discussed.

In France, for instance, perceptions of wealth, poverty, and inequality were constructed within or against the dominant religious-traditional power − just like elsewhere. However, there was also a tendency towards a pluralistic approach to include the masses’s realities − not as objects but as actors. For example, Molière’s (1622−1673) theatrical comedy pieces depict hypocrisy, insincere piety, greed, and vanity of the ordinary Medieval French in Tartuffe (The Impostor, 1669),¹⁸ and in L’Avare (The Miser, 1668).¹⁹ In The Hen with Golden Eggs (Book V, fable 13) Jean La Fontaine (1621−1695) depicts a greedy man killing his gold-laying hen in search of more gold and says: “in days of late we’ve seen, and not a few, beggars become twixt morn and noon, in seeking to be rich soon”. La Fontaine fables were inspired by the five books of Panchatantra²⁰ written in Sanskrit verse and prose (roughly 200 BCE). This original text, too, contrasted wisdom with wealth and included life lessons on poverty, wealth, virtue, knowledge and humanity. François Villon (French poet, 1431−1463), for instance, composed Le Petit and Le Grand Testament using street slangs and serf’s expressions, private jokes, and even full names of real people including royal officials, lawyers, and policemen. This was his attempt at the dominant value system that both divided the poor from the powerful wealthy but also glued the society together as everyone-regardless of their position- sought to gain more power and wealth.

Even more nuances can be detected within and between European and non-European thoughts. With a bit of a twist yet within the same logic, the Protestant theologian in Geneva, John Calvin (1509−1564) preached that the omnipresent God would choose those with virtues of hardwork, patience, self-denial, honesty, and duty demonstrated by an abstention of lavish life as detailed in his landmark text Institutes of the Christian Religion (Calvin, 1559). The Orthodox texts, for example, were more moderate compared to the Roman Catholic texts. The Golden Mouth, St. John Chrysostom (347–407 AD, the archbishop of Constantinople Eastern Orthodox Church) preached against abusive authority but did not demonise the wealthy. Similar to Sa’adi, he preferred to tame the wealthy by increasing their conscientious and preached that “wealth is not by itself a sin, particularly if acquired by honest means [or inherited as such] … God is the creator of all and the only one who has absolute ownership over them. Material goods are thus given to humans only to be managed by them, to benefit all people, regardless of faith and race” (Dumitrascu, 2010: 303–304). In sheer contrast to all the above examples is the teachings of Mahavira²¹ (Figure 2.2) in the scriptures of Jainism (a religion that started in North-East India (540 BCE) which was based on principles of chastity, no violence, no lying, no stealing, no possessions. In Jainism, all forms of possession were forbidden for followers − regardless of their social levels. Therefore, as part of their vow of non-acquisition, Jain monks had to memorise the texts as they were not even allowed to own the book of Agam Sutras.

Fig. 2.2

Mahavira on the façade of the Jain templesin Khajuraho, India: listed as UNESCO cultural heritage site

Although non-linear and complex, there is an enchantment and a lack of agency among the poor serfs during this period instilled in a logic of traditional-religious domination. Interestingly- except in exceptional cases- there is no full-fledged abstinence from wealth accumulation in the texts and tales of this period. There is but a schizophrenic duality in which financial wealth is both loathed and eulogised. The poor simultaneously desire and eschew wealth. They retaliated the “social patterns of symbolic injustice” (Nancy Fraser, 1997) by an imaginary richness and happiness that earthly wealth couldn’t buy. That promised divine reward was theirs. This was where they exercised their power to exclude and dominate. While in this world, though, they did not negotiate but rather accepted the traditional-religious domination and if they fought back it was not necessarily through artistic expressions or accumulation of knowledge but through intangible traits such as inner beauty, generosity, and good will. The Fable of Bees²² by the Dutch philosopher, Bernard Mandeville (1670−1733), provides an intriguing imagery of social relation of the time. At the time of its publishing, his fable led to public scandal as his satiric poetry was misunderstood and judged as shocking ramifications as Harth (1969) explains. It was revealing of a social reality brushed under the carpet by a mix of religious belief and inherited domination. He asserted that society holds together through “tenuous bonds of envy, competition and exploitation” (Hundert, 1994: 1) and not through common good, moral rectitude, or shared obligations. The social theory set forth in his novel had “strong influence on several French authors, such as Voltaire and Jean-François Melon”²³ (Muceni, 2015:449). His theory was reiterated − not sarcastically but as a regime of truth − in the Homo economicus arguments of neoliberalism in the 1970s which is discussed in the next chapter.

2.3 Disenchantment of Wealth and Poverty: Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries and the Enlightenment Rationalisation

In the period of Enlightenment (1685−1815), financial wealth is demystified and rationalised in Europe. This is a long process that in fact starts in the Middle Ages.

A first step is taken by the Italian mathematician, Luca Pacioli (1445−1517), known as the father of accounting. In his book Summa de arithmetica − borrowing from Khayyam,²⁴ Euclid,²⁵ Boethius,²⁶ Fibonacci²⁷- Pacioli suggests arithmetic calculation of money is a science rather than a divine form of reward or punishment (see McCarthy et al., 2008 for more exploration of the content and significance of Picioli’s Venetian style book-keeping teachings).

Similar ideas are apparent in a few pioneering economic works in England. Influenced by the idea of Thomas Hobbes²⁸ (1588–1679) − who considered mathematics was the basis of all rational decisions − Sir William Petty²⁹ (1623–1687) pioneered political arithmetic or what is today called political economy. He authored several economic works including Verbum Sapienti (1691) which was ‘the first complete and consistent set of national accounts…and a national economic landmark’ (Slack, 2004:607) in seventeenth century England. Later, the great British statistician Gregory King (1648–1712) crated an elaborate estimation of wealth in England and Wales in 1688–1695 including four main categories: (a) territory, (b) daily labour of the people, (c) fixed and movable outputs from lands, and (d) money (ibid).

Mercantilism, therefore, gained grounds and replaced the political absolutism of the traditional − religious feudal period during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries in Europe. Although mercantilism did not appear as a terminology or a theory, its core ideas were promoted by figures such as Jean-Baptiste Colbert (the 1st French Minister of State, 1619–1683), Antonio Serra (the Italian philosopher and economist of late sixteenth century), and Thomas Mun (The English director of the East India Company, 1571–1641), among others. Mercantilism endorsed trade. To maximise income, it encouraged access or monopoly over more markets through governmental regulation, i.e., maximised export and limited imports through tariffs or if necessary, through military interventions. It considered a nation’s economy was the most important element in ensuring State’s power over rivals.

As wealth was disenchanted, the Enlightenment became a period of artistic works grounded in the Protestant thought. Max Weber (1905) has detailed the important role of protestant ethics in the development of economy in his seminal work Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of capitalism. The Protestant ethics valued hardworking merchants and serfs as well as their daily lives, arts, and handcrafts − although their leader, i.e. John Calvin, prohibited music that used instruments! A few examples include the paintings by the Dutch artist, Johannes Vermeer, e.g. The Milkmaid³⁰ (1658) (Fig. 2.3); The Lacemaker³¹ (1670) (Fig. 2.4); and The Peasant Wedding³² (1567) (Fig. 2.5) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painter.

Fig. 2.3

The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer

Fig. 2.4

The Lacemaker by Johannes Vermeer

Fig. 2.5

The Peasant Wedding by Pieter Bruegel

New ways of reflection on wealth and poverty are detected elsewhere in the world around the same period − although “there is no one thing called thinking…thinking is heterogenous” (Peferoen, 1989:717). It certainly didn’t follow the same trajectory of the Enlightenment that took place in Europe. There was a sluggish shift to deflate the divine overtone of wealth and poverty. Wealth remained a power instrument and a means of mass control for the traditional-religious regimes that persisted while new generations of merchants and petit bourgeoisie gradually came to be. The poor masses were to accept their destiny; they were to own nothing but their inability in controlling life − a fate that was apparently bigger than their scope of knowledge and power. They were to submit and find refuge in spirituality.

One telling example is Japan. Still in the seventeenth-century wealth remained an instrument of mass control. The nouveau riches merchants (Chönin) tended to conduct luxurious lives to show off their newly gained fortune − a trait that the nouveau riches have so dearly preserved till today regardless of their nationality or religion. At the time, the Japanese merchants were controlled through a set of minute sumptuary law with no parallel in the history of the Western world laws according to Britannica (2009). These laws favoured the higher class, i.e. the Samurai “hence visibly marking the existing social hierarchies” (Shammas, 2012).

The ink-wash (Suiboku) painting called Nen-zu “Catching a catfish with a gourd” by the Japanese zen artist-monk, Josetsu³³ (1405−1496) is a compelling case. The painting belongs to one of the most turbulent periods in the Japanese history (the Muromachi Period, 1333−1573) marked with frequent and violent feudal wars over territory and power (see A History of Japan (2011) by George Caiger & Richard Mason). It (Fig. 2.6) pictures a man in a shabby outfit trying to catch a slippery catfish with a gourd − reminiscent of the English idiom: slippery as an eel. It is a metaphor inviting viewers to be aware of the impossible and to achieve inner peace by accepting that impossible. It follows a Zen Buddhist school that appealed to the rough and uneducated Samurai and their code of honour (Bushido)³⁴ mainly because it denied the preceding theology of Buddhism and emphasised both mental and physical discipline. The painting may be alluding to a far-fetched and desired future when China and Japan could live peacefully as neighbours − they didn’t at the time. It could also be referring to the impossibility of the war-plagued Japan becoming a united territory. It could be a more general moralistic message to humans as “the catfish represents an unattainable object” (Taichirö, 1901−1963 quoted in Lippit, 2017:8); or “man’s inability to control earthquakes” (Kiyoteru, 1909–1974, ibid) knowing that catfishes represented earthquake in Japan. Regardless of the interpretations, the simplicity of this ink-wash painting contradicts the long-standing heritage of landowner aristocrats, strict grooming routines of Samurai tradition, or the whitened faces of the wealthy women and men − all as signs of social status and class. Its pale colours invite the viewer to simplicity, spirituality, and an unconditional submission to fate. The paining’s message is reiterated, I presume, in the Buddhist-inspired Japanese Wabi-Sabi worldview that is about accepting aesthetic imperfection and incompleteness as opposed to the Greek and Western ideals of perfection. Knowledge and awareness of life and its realities were to lead to inner peace and acceptance rather than attempts to change power regimes.

Fig. 2.6

Catching a catfish with a gourd by Josetsu

India is another enthralling case. The period between 1526 and 1857 is the Mughal³⁵ era. It is believed to have been a prosperous time in terms of political, cultural, architectural, and administrative advancements and a period of peaceful co-habitation of Muslims and Hindus. However, poverty prevailed as famines were recurrent in the populated subcontinent (see Allan et al., 2019). In his book The Mughal World: Life in India’s Last Golden Age, Abraham Eraly (2007) states “the Moghul Cosmos revolved around the emperor. Everyone else was either his servant or his subject” (ibid, 23). Discrimination among common people, if at all it existed, was because Hindus were habituated to discrimination “within Hindu society itself, because of caste and sectarian divisions, and due to the taboos and tyrannies associated with them…passivity was … a Hindu cultural trait. Their lot was their karma, Hindus believed, and by and large they fatalistically accepted their subject status” (ibid, 27). While subjects remained entangled in their karma and fate, the late 1620s and early 1630s was an era of drought, famine, and floods in Gujarat and Deccan. These events caused hunger, displacement, and death among the poor subjects; although the Moghul Empire is believed to have remained calm and stable until the eighteenth-century upheaval (Damodaran et al., 2019).

Are these examples a manifestation of a cycle of negation³⁶ in Karl Marx’s terms? Yes, in Europe there was a dialectical force; a mutual struggle. The traditional-religious domination generated inner contradictions that eventually defeated the purposes for which it was set up. It led to a pattern of accumulated negations manifested in the intellectual, philosophical, and scientific movement that dominated Europe during the Enlightenment. Diderot’s ³⁷ Encyclopaedia (first published in 1751) helped spread the ideas of the Enlightenment. Neoclassical architecture emerged around the 1800s to replace and simplify the previous Baroque and Rocco styles that had elaborate ornaments and decorations such as those in Versailles palace, for example. Classical music period (1730−1820) allowed lighter and more elegant seminal works by Ludwig Van Beethoven³⁸ (1770−1827), Franz Joseph Hyden³⁹ (1732−1809), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart⁴⁰ (1756−1791).

Did economic poverty vanish overnight in Europe due to such accumulation of knowledge, i.e;, literary works and arts? No, it certainly didn’t.

However, rationalisation of wealth gradually led to rational examination of the poor and poverty. As Keane (2016) explains, misery became an intellectual and a political target. “Starvation, indignity and unhappiness were denounced as unnecessary lights on the face of the world. Misery was no longer regarded God-given. It was seen to be contingent, remediable, for instance through generous changes of heart and mind, backed by tough social, legal and political reforms, even by means of revolution, if necessary”. The trend is telling of a departure from the Middle Ages’ conceptualisation of poverty and wealth as ways of being, i.e., divine decision. There was a gradual shift towards rationalisation of economic wealth as means to sustain a decent life.

Outside Europe, as mentioned above, traditional-religious domination prevailed. One revealing text is The Persian Letters (1721) by Montesquieu (1689−1755). It is inscribed by cultural relativism illustrating the complexities of two different societies and its people. The Enlightenment ideals of reason, science, and justice are woven into the plot of the story. These are manifest in Montesquieu’s criticism of the French society and its self-absorbed vanity and slavery, as well as the role of the king (Louis XIV) as a divine representative, and obscurity of religion. Simultaneously, it also depicts the mentality of two Persian travellers. Usbek’s reactions and worldviews are quite revealing of the hegemony of traditional-religious domination in his homeland. He is older, respectful to authority, and a convicted religious man. He is astonished by the fact that the French dare questioning the King or God. He thinks this is a lack of faith. Indeed, ever since Sassanid Empire (third to seventh centuries AD), Persians endured despotic sovereignty consecrated by religious cult. Keddie (1980) explains the official − and not the popular religion − mixed with inherited domination of kings inculcated the serfs with submissive obedience. Questioning the King was equal to questioning God, as this was the case in the Medieval Europe. Oppositions did emerge, such as that of the Manichean,⁴¹ the Mazdakite,⁴² or the Ismailis;⁴³ none, though renounced religion. At best, they were religious heresies opposing the official religion and the king. (See Ghazi Moradi, 2001; Alamdari, 2009; Godazgar, 2008.)

It is evident that there is a bifurcation between Europe and other spatial-temporal contexts. The period resonates with opposing standpoints that disparage the divine connotation of wealth and poverty. There is a heuristic conflict. On one side, there is an Epicurean⁴⁴ tradition of luxury, pleasure of existing, and pursuing happiness by fulfilling one’s basic and natural urges. On the other side, there is a Stoic⁴⁵ approach, i.e. pursuing virtuous life in harmony with nature realising and accepting many events are out of human’s control. The examples I could afford to include in this short analysis are to portrait this period of dissonance and gradual bifurcation. They divulge a gradual disenchantment from the divine and mystical perception of wealth and poverty that was the tradition in the precedent era. The shift is certainly there, maybe still with a Hellenistic brush of unattainable sageness for humans, but it is indeed closer down to earth compared to the previous inalterable divine decisions made in heavens. In Europe, this trend takes quite a sharp turn based on science, reason, and humanism as Parker (2018) explains − it is also reflected in artistic and literary works − while outside Europe social stratifications, hegemony of religion or spirituality, and class-domination prevailed.

2.4 The Birth of Capital and Social Class Struggles (Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries)

Totality shift − to use Marx’s term − is what best characterises the period of the eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Totality shift takes place when negating ideas accumulate in quantity until a saturation phase is reached leading to a change in quality, or a social change.

The previous dichotomy of religion vs science developed to a trichotomy including duties to God, to others, and to oneself in Europe in this era when negating quantities increased and accumulated further. Each concept had its followers consequently fuelling the fire of contradictory thoughts and movements (see, e.g. Colin Heydt, (2018) Moral Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain: God, Self, and Other). Giambattista Vico (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries Italian philosopher and the father of constructivist epistemology), for instance, considered the reductionist and rationalist thoughts of his time to be appalling. Jeremy Bentham (1748−1832) pioneered utilitarianism and the pursuit of maximised happiness for oneself as well as reforms in administrative apparel of the government and its prisons. There were conflicts between those that detected a natural order in the world, e.g. Charles Darwin (1809−1882) and those who believed humans’ understanding was the source of a general law of nature, e.g. Immanuel Kant (1724−1804). A few stepped out of this trichotomy to observe and analyse the materialistic world of capitalism and its consequent social inequalities as Karl Marx (1818−1883) did.

In 1776 England, the writings of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is yet another step towards rationalisation and demystification of wealth and therefore of poverty and other social conditions such as illiteracy that went with it. Before further exploring this period, I need to pause and share a reflection on Adam Smith.Today, a re-reading of his book is necessary to debunk the neoliberal use of “the invisible hand”. This has forged Smith’s idea as a justification for deregulated neoliberal free market for political interests (See Paul Sagar’s (2018) book, The opinion of Mankind: Sociability and Theory of the State from Hobbes to Smith; and Johnson et al. (2011) Erasing the Invisible Hand: Essays on the Elusive and Misused Concept in Economics). Adam Smith’s use of the invisible hand appears in Book IV, Chapter II. He states:

Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it… he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand [italics added] to promote an end which was no part of his intention …very few words need to be employed in dissuading them from it.

The invisible hand is certainly not the same as the divine invisible hand. If not beguiled to appropriate neoliberal objectives, it is built around economic activity and its positive externalities.

The concept of externalities in macroeconomics is well-known. Positive externality − as opposed to negative externality − is a situation where a third party, outside the transaction, benefits from a market transaction. Adam Smith is clearly referring to positive externalities of economic transactions which benefit the whole society. The neoliberal ideology − discussed in next chapter − has appropriated Adam Smith’s ides of bigger economy, specialisation of labour, and the invisible hand to accumulate capital to the extent that “Modern Man cannot understand the spirit of a society that is not centred in property and greed” (Fromm, 1997:17). Smith’s invisible hand is more about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and ethics in business rather than anything else. He counted on the businesspersons’ goodwill and knowledge to create public good. This is not to canonise Adam Smith; it is just to persuade re-reading and providing a contextualised understanding of his writing. For instance, he also assumed poverty and starvation were necessary for population control when he said “scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species” (Smith, 1776:182). Shall we also adapt this interpretation of his and starve people as means of birth control? I reckon, like many other intellectuals, his work was simply an attempt to decode and theorise wealth and poverty at his time and within his scope of knowledge and worldview proper to that period too. We shall give his invisible hand a rest.

The period between 1782 and 1913 is recognised as the Great Divergence period when the socioeconomic conditions in the Western world allowed overcoming pre-modern constraints and the emergence of wealthy and powerful civilisations. There are different theories that explain the Great Divergence (see Grinin & Korotayev, 2015; but these are beyond the focus of this chapter. The importance of the Great Divergence − here − is that it is a period when wealth and poverty are revisited and are further rationalised in the core industrialised countries. Simultaneously, folklore arts and music, philosophical works, and literary works vividly depict poverty and the living conditions of the poor.Power struggles, in this Great Divergence period, were more explicit as expressed in two important events, i.e., the American Revolution (1756−1783) and the 1798 French Revolution.

The American Revolution embodied John Locke’s (1632−1704) ideas of humans as equally created by God − hence, their inalienable and equal rights to life, liberty, and freedom to pursuit their goals. While Hobbes social contract justified monarchy, Locke’s social contract required governments to be legitimised through explicit consent of those they governed (see Simmons, 1992, The Lokean Theory of Rights). The American Revolution was a clear quest for equality and freedom, however, in reality, “between 1774 and 1800 American incomes rose only very modestly in real per-capita terms, so that the rapid growth in the 1790s appears to have barely made up for a very steep wartime decline” (Lindert & Willimason, 2011).

Some historians (e.g. Soboul, 1953) have interpreted the French Revolution as a Bourgeoisie movement that sought to replace feudalism and establish capitalism. However, “there are equally important facts that contradict any economically grounded version of the “bourgeois revolution” thesis. In fact, the Revolution almost certainly hindered capitalist industrialisation in France as much as it facilitated it” (Skocpol, 1979:176). In effect, overseas trade, which was important to the pre-revolution period in France, collapsed because of the Revolution and the “socioeconomic structure that emerged from the revolutionary upheavals featured a nonindustrial bourgeoisie and a securely entrenched peasantry” (ibid). The French Revolutionary song ça ira, for instance, reflects the the optimism of the masses in subverting the traditional-religious dominance and in constructing a social contract where equality and freedom would reign.

Another telling example of this period is the Great Britain, the land of the Industrial Revolution (1760−1830). This is where an earlier rationalisation of wealth − as delineated earlier in this chapter − provided the basis of renewed perceptions of poverty. The rise of capitalism further dismantled previous social relations between peasants, their families, and communities with lords or the king which − at least to some extent − relied on human contact, negotiations, and compromises. Being poor suddenly lost its previous Medieval glorification. The promise of an eternal wealth and happiness soon vanished beneath the capitalist smog of relentless production, intensive ageless labour, and an increasing number of urban poor. Here below is a brief overview of the social construction of poverty and the poor in the 19th century Britain.

The British Poor Law was amended in the 1834 Act. This was originally created in the sixteenth century fixing quotas for parishes to keep their own “lame, impotent, old, blind, and the poor” from wandering around the country. By the 19th century, the poor were already being criticised by Thomas Malthus⁴⁶ (1766−1834) and David Ricardo⁴⁷ (1772−1823) as undeserving, undisciplined, and morally failing while Robert Owen⁴⁸ and Thomas Paine⁴⁹ criticised the Poor Law for its categorical failure to be universal and more humane. The 1834 Amendment followed the utilitarian notions of discipline and frugality of Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Malthus. It was to make the poor more responsible for their own well-being and to calm the rich British capitalists who complained about the rising taxes they had to pay to support the Poor Law benefits. The poorhouses or workhouses created by this Law mainly aimed at keeping the poor − demonised and resented by the economic and political elites − off the public dole. The draconian conditions and the hypocrisy of the British society are brilliantly depicted in the masterpieces of Charles Dickens (1812−1870) including in Oliver Twist (Fig. 2.7), A Christmas Carol, and Bleak House (Fig. 2.8).

Fig 2.7

A scene from Oliver Twist novel by Charles Dickens

Fig 2.8

A scene from Bleak House novel by Charles Dickens

While the poor in the Middle Ages were the beggars and peasants who have lost their lands, or were disabled or orphans − cared for by the church and through donations, the poor in the capitalist nineteenth-century Britain were the labourers, those who worked with their hands (De Pennington, 2011). An extract from Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Sybil (1845) is quite revealing of the nineteenth-century British rural and urban poor and the social relations of the poor and the wealthy. It says, the British poor and the rich are “two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by different breeding, are fed by different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws”.

The power struggles continued to be explicit- both in debates and on streets and led to further shifts in understandings and measurements of poverty. The term “unemployment”, for instance, first appeared in the 1880s when poverty and violent demonstrations in London defied both the politicians and the capitalists. There was a need to understand poverty − as a social reality. Charles Booth, the British social reformer (1840−1916), was the first to conduct a door-to-door survey among the East London poor. As a result, he proposed "the line of poverty” explaining “by the word poor I mean to describe those who have a fairly regular though bare income, such as 18s to 21s per week for a moderate family, and by ‘very poor’ those who fall below this standard, whether from chronic irregularity of work, sickness, or a large number of young children” (Simey & Simey, 1960:184). Joseph Rowntree,⁵⁰ an English Quaker philanthropist and businessman from York (1836−1925), has already studied “pauperism” and taken his son Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree to the poorest parts of cities like Newcastle. Therefore, when Seebohm read Booth’s study from London, it motivated him to investigate and figure if the same poverty lines applied elsewhere outside London. His study led to a ground-breaking measurement of causes of poverty, the level of income and nutrition a labourer needed to function, and the life cycle of poverty (see Glennerster et al. (2004) One Hundred Years of Poverty and Policy).

In this period, wealth as different forms of financial capital and economic progress are further normalised. The capitalist industrial system, Fromm (1997:3) suggests had two psychological premises: “1) that the aim of life is happiness, that is maximum pleasure, defined as the satisfaction of any desire or subjective need a person may feel (radical hedonism); 2) that egotism, selfishness, and greed − as the system needs to generate them in order to function − lead to harmony and peace”. While the French and British higher society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for instance, pursued such radical hedonism, the poor population kept growing through rural-urban or cross-country migration flows, still mostly with no to little education and very limited cultural capital. Social hierarchies remained rigid both inside and outside Europe, particularly as the capitalist Europeans sought resources and markets outside Europe and collaborated with tyrant oligarchs outside the continent. The masses were aware of their social status and did struggle to change it − through disruptive revolutions but also songs, and folklore stories. Who benefited, who governed, who won? Capitalists did mainly − but not everywhere (for instance not in France) and there were also some gains for the masses when and where the elite engaged in philanthropy and charity or where they paid taxes to finance public services.

2.5 Social Revolutions, Engaged Arts, and the Pursuit of Social Justice: Mid-late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries

In Europe, a gradual trajectory towards accumulation of wealth (capital), private property, and individualism and a denial of the hegemony of the Church starts as of the eighteenth century − as discussed above. Philosophical and literary works mirrored such a shift. A few examples are included here.

In effect, wealth and poverty were further demystified and debated as social reality. Many theorists and authors focused on the impacts of capitalism, i.e., accumulation of wealth and power. For instance, Friedrich Nietzsche⁵¹ (1844−1900) in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra talked of God’s death. This was to warn against nihilism. At the modern age of superman (übermensch), religion and God − as values − were defied and abrogated by a value system that prioritised love for life and of the world, he believed. Similarly, Karl Marx’s primitive accumulation is evoked by William Foster Lloyd⁵² (1833) in his Tragedy of the Commons where he points at capital owners neglecting the well-being of the larger society in pursuit of their own happiness. Lloyd’s ideas were, in turn, reflected in the permanent revolution theory of Leon Trotsky⁵³ (1879−1940) who believed that if the poor created a united front, this could lead to the establishment of egalitarian societies. Likewise, Max Weber focused on social stratification, i.e. inaccessibility of resources and lack of social mobility for those lower in social stratifications. And so did Emile Durkheim⁵⁴ (1858−1917) too. He analysed the impacts of capitalism on society where people were richer but utterly miserable in his 1879 book, Suicide. While demystifying wealth and poverty, many of these intellectuals delved into capital distribution, class struggles, organisation of labour, social stratification, and the significance of collective consciousness. This period is, therefore, marked by the economic impacts and social construction of wealth and poverty. This was a clear deviation from previous perceptions of poverty and wealth – of course based on a gradual and continuous accumulation of knowledge. In the feudal period, poverty was a divinely distributed fate, i.e., a fixed way of being that was beyond the understanding and power of the masses to change. Rationalisation of poverty and wealth that started in the 17th century eventually gave way to realistic and contextualised perceptions of poverty and wealth mixing “having” with an elucidated “being” as witnessed in the above sociological and philosophical works.

The literary and artistic movements of this period, certainly, demonstrated similar trends. Although unsystematic, the early nineteenth century literary work adapted Romanticism − underpinned by the pursuit of utopic ideals in the American and the French Revolutions. It embodied a subtle rejection of reality, a glorification of the past and of nature. Alexander Pushkin (1799−1837), for instance, romanticised the Caucasian-Russian cultural conflicts in his poem Prisoner of the Caucasus. The famous Slovak poet, France Preseren (1800−1849), composed “thunder out of heaven strike down and smite our wanton foe…thus again will honour reign to justice pledged in our domain” in his poem A Toast (The World’s Poetry Archive, 2012:10). Romanticism was underpinned by the political and social events of the time including the American and the French Revolutions and a pursuit of justice. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Realism took precedence revealing the real face of poverty, inequality, power relations, and a never-ending class struggle that altered social relations and policies (see Anthology of Romanticism by Ernest Bernbaum, 1948; and Romantics, Realists, Revolutionaries: Masterpieces of nineteenth century German paintings from the Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig by Helga Aurisch & Dietulf Sander, 2000). Realism uncovered the ugly face of the “gilded Age”.⁵⁵ Realism was there to divulge greed, extravagance, corruption, and exploitation (Fig. 2.9); it was to empower and inform the masses.

Fig. 2.9

Joseph Keppler: The Bosses of the Senate (1889)

As a literary movement, realism was there to divulge revealed values attached to poverty and wealth and depicted life as experienced by the growing number of middle classes. In one of his masterpieces, War and Peace (1867), the realist Leo Tolstoy (Russian author, 1828−1910) portrayed poverty and its impact on life trajectories: Rostov Family pushed their son Pierre to marry a rich girl to avoid bankruptcy. In his Tolstoian realist style, he also touched on another more delicate challenge. Through the protagonist of his story, i.e. Natasha, Tolstoy criticised the normalised social judgments of women’s behaviour − based on religion and morality. As such, he persuaded the reader to sympathise with Natasha and develop a humanistic understanding of an individual’s needs and personality − regardless of their gendered role or wealth. In several other novels of this period, there is a “Madam Bovary Syndrome” − as Jules De Gaultier (French philosopher, 1858−1942) calls it. Similarly, plots of stories manifested dissatisfaction, helplessness, and despair of the middle-class women protagonists who failed to control their lives. This started in Gustave Flaubert’s⁵⁶ Madam Bovary and was later adapted in George Sand’s⁵⁷ Indiana; The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman;⁵⁸ and The Awakening by Kate Chopin,⁵⁹ among others. Victor Hugo (1802−1885) in his Les Misérables depicted poverty as a social reality and asked (in Chapter XX) if God was blind to the miseries of the masses.

In a similar vein, the Impressionist artists of this period challenged the previous Realists. The Impressionists shifted away from the imposed strict colours and lines of realism by using live colours, incoherent lines, naked bodies, as well as manifestations of poverty and elitism (Fig. 2.10). In their work Poverty and Painting: Representations in Nineteenth Century Europe (2002), Philippa Howden-Chapman and Johan Mackenbach (2002:1502) trace Emile Durkheim’s “collective or common conscience” in paintings of this period; i.e., a value system or mindset fabricated by the dominant groups which artists had to portray and confront in their paintings. They propose a typology of paintings that included “images of sin and charity; poor housing; evictions; crime; and lifestyle risks; disease; and death; and revolution and visionary societies”.

Fig. 2.10

Abraham Arkhipov, The Laundresses 1901

Of course, these philosophical, literary, and artistic trends were not global. The Great Divergence period, Jeffrey G. Williamson (2008:4–6) argues was a time of “liberal trade policy, transport revolutions and fast manufacturing” that created a “gap between the rich European core and the poor periphery before 1913”. This made countries in the periphery “increasingly specialised in one or two primary products, reduced production of manufactures, and imported them in exchange” (ibid). It eventually created a protectionist backlash that swept across Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Of course petit bourgeoisie, particularly merchants involved in trade with the West, gradually gained grounds in the periphery countries and sought more education and cultural products. Witness to their social position and relaxed lifestyles, for instance in Japan, are the colourful paintings of Geishas in Edo (today’s Tokyo) by Kitagawa Utamaro (1806).

Generally, this imperialist world order created − what Williamson (2011) calls − a Dutch Disease − an economic concept. It refers to the causal relationship between economic development in one sector or place that leads to decline in others. In effect, in the core countries, labour and capital concentrated on commodity export rather than domestic manufacturing. In the peripheric countries, it created poverty and loss of human and natural resources. As social realities were differently shaped in the periphery countries so were the local perceptions of power relations and values that created wealth and poverty. These led to social movements and revolutions either against external colonising powers or national political systems − rife with corruption- that failed to defend the interests of nations. Consequently, literary works and intellectual debates were shaped by these social realities. This is briefly discussed below.

The capitalist order that created unemployment, massive internal migration, urban shanty towns, and poverty, but also some forms of capitalist philanthropy in the core countries, transformed the periphery countries into its raw material magic lamp of provision. This was propelled through colonisation , protracted land and trade disputes, bribery, and complaisance with authoritarian oligarchs and even wars. The first Opium War (1839−1842) between the British and China and the second war (1856−1860) of the French and the British against China is only one example of external powers gaining unequal treaties over the national resources of a peripheric country after devastating wars. Other similar examples include the annexation of Vietnam by the French in 1883; the exploitation of India by the British East India Company; discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1884) in South Africa which spurred wealth and intensified conflicts between the two old colonising powers, i.e. the British and the Dutch causing further misery among indigenous groups in the country; the German colonisation of Namibia (1884−1919); the Portuguese colonisation of Angola (1655−1951); the US Commodore Perry’s Black Fleet that forced the Japanese to open their borders to trade with the USA and the West to avoid being burned down to dust; and the Spanish colonisation of Mexico and Chile in Latin America.

In these colonised peripheric countries, although with contextual differences, the poor were practically the whole population except for the corrupt local oligarchs and a handful of merchants as intermediaries. Colonisation remained a source of wealth for the colonising powers. It particularly thrived through slave trade and resource extraction but also through low to no access to education and culture for ordinary people − although folklore songs and stories and some forms of community education existed. As a consequence, widespread poverty − in terms of natural, human, and cultural resources − prevailed in the colonised islands and countries. Of course, as Acemoglu and Robinson (2017b) explain, colonialism as a source of wealth or poverty was a heterogeneous phenomenon based on the economic and political institutions of the colonising and the colonised countries. Colonised societies indeed experienced different realities, for instance, under the rule of the British where the parliament had more democratic power compared to Spain where the monarch assumed a top-down power relation with all his subjects inside and outside the country. However, difference among colonised countries was not entirely due to the colonising powers’ approaches. This was due, also, to the already existing conditions of each colonised country as Acemoglu, and Robinson (2012) explain. For instance, “when British colonisers found Latin-American-like circumstances in South Africa, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, they were perfectly capable of and interested in setting up…extractive institutions, based on the control of and extraction of rents from indigenous people” (Acemoglu and Robinson in Michalopoulos & Papaionnou, 2017a:82).

Colonisation, although normalised for a while, started being condemned as of the eighteenth century. Edward Said (1991) explains, e.g. in the case of Britain, that even the literary works normalised the superiority of the colonising power till then. He says: “never in the novel, in that world beyond seen except as subordinate and dominated, the English presence viewed as regulative and normative”. Fisher (1943) even refers to slave sale newspaper advertisements on the British soil. However, slavery abolition movement was indeed also pioneered by figures from among the colonisers such as the British citizens Granville Sharp (1735−1813) and William Murray, First Earl of Mansfield (1705−1793), who were revolted by poverty and living conditions of the slaves. Harriet Martineau⁶⁰ (1802−1876) also joined the abolition movement (1783−1888) and wrote her 1841 novel on slavery in The Hour and the Man (see Caroline Roberts 2002, The Woman and the Hour: Harriet Martineau and Victorian Ideology for a critique of Martineau’s work). The American David Wilmot (1814−1868), as another example, was the first to legally prohibit slavery in Mexico during the American-Mexican war (1846−1848).

The abolition bill passed in the UK (1830) and in the USA (1856 – 13th amendment). However, it did not end poverty, lack of access to education and culture in the periphery countries. Even today, many of these countries − now sovereign States − are lands of corruption and inequalities. In agreement with Albertini (2011:51), however, I would say, such persisting socio-political and economic failures cannot be simplified and explained through the theory of path dependency because “it serves as an alibi…too easily holding foreign powers…responsible for one’s difficulties and problems”. As Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) explain thoroughly in their book Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, extractive economic together with political institutions and oligarchy have hindered progress towards equality and eradication of poverty across these previously-colonised countries.

Back in the Western world, the impacts of the Dutch Disease were also apparent. Therefore, by the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, poverty was considered a structural issue perpetuated by the Smithsonian classical liberalism. Social liberalism that emerged in this period contradicted the laissez-faire approach of the classical liberals that − as already discussed − blamed the poor for their failure in pulling themselves out of misery with minimal governmental aid. New liberalism or social liberalism cherished individual freedom as did the classical liberals. But it rightfully asserted that individual freedom can be hindered by disease, discrimination, ignorance, inequality, and laissez-faire capitalism. For individuals to be free, such obstacles were to be removed by the policies of the welfare States. John Maynard Keynes (1883−1946) ideas on the role of the State as “stabilising power” were, hence, welcome at the time. In the UK, for instance, Liberalism (1911), a book by the feminist, democratic, and secularist sociologist Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864−1929) fuelled a shift towards such a welfare State during David Lloyd George (1863−1945), the Prime Minister minister of the UK. The welfare State objectives, according to Marcuzzo (2005), were to support living standards, reduce inequality, avoid cost explosion, and deter behaviour conductive to moral hazards. In the USA and during the presidency of William McKinley (1879−1901), protective tariffs were introduced to ensure prosperity of the American industries (Fig. 2.11).

Fig. 2.11

Mckinley prosperity

The idea of the welfare State appealed elsewhere leading to the introduction of several social services taming the industrial slavery practiced under Fordism and Taylorism. Such socially egalitarian approaches have remained in the socio-historical memory of countries such as Denmark, Sweden , and France until today but have been – relatively − low in countries such as the USA, Japan, or South Korea, for instance. Some examples of social advancements obtained in this era include regulations of workers’ compensation (Germany, 1884), public funding of education and health, and regulation of working hours (the UK, in 1847, the USA in the 1870s, Australia in the 1850s, and in the 1920s in most of Europe). Working hours were regulated across the world following the ILO C001 − Hours of Work (Industry) Convention, 1919 (no.1) which set “8-hours day or 48-hour week” criteria. However, it shall be noticed that “welfare States are about social insurance, social rights, social provision, and the regulation of economic action − the chief beneficiaries of which are not the poor but the middle classes and those in employment” (Garland, 2016:3 cited in Giddens & Sutton, 2021).

If the Welfare State prevailed in the context of modern and wealthy countries and led to a general amelioration of living conditions, it did not extend to many of the periphery countries. Lack of social welfare, access to education, and poverty led to social uprisings but also some public initiatives that were inspired by the Western Social Welfare.

One important social movement of this period is the Arab Renaissance or The Nahda (late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries). It was a movement that took over the Arabic-speaking countries of the Ottoman Empire including Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. The movement took place following the Ottoman Western-inspired constitutional shifts. Its leaders were from among educated elites who would − upon return from studying in Europe − search to find remedies to crippling poverty, inequalities, and illiteracy in their homelands. Attempting to transform their countries, they pioneered modernisation, constitutionalist transformations, and even language reforms. Alghazi (1990:470) explains “the French Revolution and its revolutionary principles bear a significant impact on a great number of Arab intellectuals, mainly Muslims, who would later be recognised as the pioneers of the Arab intellectual Renaissance, The Nahda”. Hayreddin Pasha (1820−1890) is one of these leading figures. He was a political reformer from Tunisia who became the Grand Vizir (equivalent to prime minister) of the Ottoman Empire. Based on his observation of the European systems of governance, he prioritised public interest and justice as the guiding principle of his government. The Lebanese Ahmad Faris Al-Shidyaq (1806−1887) was another important figure. He believed that modernisation of the Arab-speaking Muslim societies could be achieved if language was modernised and rendered more accessible. He was also concerned with Turkisation of the Arabic language . He became one of the founding fathers of the modern Arabic literature. The Syrian Francis Marrash (1835−1874) considered “without education, man is a mindless beast” (Alghazi, 1990:480) and hence promoted the importance of education and literacy in his works. For these intellectuals, financial poverty was not as important as poverty in learning, language, and in mindset of the masses.

The fight for freedom and justice was hence a new form of “wealth of nations” particularly in the peripheric countries. The famous poem by the Cuban José Marti (1853−1859) − a revolutionary philosopher − “yo soy un hombre sincere” is one example. Social revolutions that ravaged the world in the twentieth century were “basically due to the occurrence in a society of widespread , intense, and multifaceted relative deprivations that touched both masses and elite aspirants”, as Theda Skocpol (1979:10) explains. An equivalent reform to the Nahda movement, for example, was initiated in Iran by the Qajar prime minister, Mirza-Taghi-Khan Amir Kabir⁶¹ (1807−1852) who considered poverty and ignorance were caused by illiteracy, superstition, and the meddling of foreign powers (the Russians and the British). He founded the first polytechnic school in (1851) called Dar-al-Funun to counter these maledictions and to train engineers and military experts necessary to national progress. Activists such as Malk-ol-Shoa’ra-Bahar⁶² (1886−1951) joined the constitutional movement of 1906 in Iran revolting against social injustices. Educated elites − particularly those who have acquired journalism and publication methods from their Turkish counterparts created newspapers,⁶³ and revolted for constitutional reforms − although the position of the king and religion were preserved in continuity with a historical mentality of submission to authority even among the most radical of the activists. In China (1910−1920s), the New Culture Movement (Chinese Renaissance) was born and criticised classical Chinese culture while pursuing disillusionment of Confucianism and a renewal based on science and Western culture.

Ongoing social class struggles, rise of an educated and politically active elite, and the fight against the incapacitated and corrupt monarchies that failed to protect their people led to several social revolutions in pursuit of justice and constitutional reforms. Some examples include the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (1905) against the Romanovs, the 1906 revolution in Iran against the Qajars, and in Turkey the rise of the Young Turks against the Ottomans (1908), in Portugal (1910) the Republican Party revolution against the de Braganza dynasty, in China (1911) the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing dynasty, and in Mexico the overthrowing of the dictator Porfirio Diaz Mori in (1911) − noting that the case of Mexico is different from others in its length and dimension and led to a long civil war. Nader Sohrabi (1995) has compared the Russian, the Young Turks, and the Iranian revolutions. He indicates that all three aimed at political change through constitutionalism, but their results differed due to extra-parliamentarian support. Zücher (2019:488), too, compares these outbreaks − except the case of Mexico. He believes there is − what Jack Goldstone has called − “horizontal continuity ” among these events. They all took place “because of the inability of the Russian, Ottoman, Persian and Chinese empires to compete effectively in the fierce inter-imperial rivalry of the Edwardian age and protect the interests of their subjects. This seems to have been a common factor that undermined the legitimacy of the imperial regimes and thus set the stage for revolution”.

While revolutions were taking place elsewhere, Philipp Blom (2010) details The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900–1914, as a “living moment with all its complexity and its contradictions , its hopes, and fears, and with an open future, just as was lived by people at the time” (ibid:4). He skilfully depicts events including a decline in nobility, a dismantling of previous artistic trends, rapid technological shifts, and women’s increasing sociopolitical participation in the European society − some of which resemble the rapid changes following the CV-19 pandemic.

The period of WWI and WWII is a socially complex period. It is a period caught between a first global carnage and a second atrocity ending the Belle Epoque which was a period of industrial and social advancements between late nineteenth century and the WWI (1914) in Europe. In effect, the period before the WWI was marked by “elegant soirée” (painted by Victor Gabriel Gilbert, 1890), the Universal Paris Exposition, the Suffragette movement (1903), but also the persisting rigid social class hierarchies and the fight of the working classes through anarchism (classical anarchism period: 1860−1939) and Marxism − which Parkin (1979) argues − and rightfully too − had a weak theoretical performance in analysing social conflicts tied to ethnicity, religion, race, and gender. The working poor were better informed and politically active, although their relations with what was considered “high culture” still remained − somehow − distant.

Artistic and literary trends of the time reflected the global quest for freedom and progress. In arts, post-impressionism, Cubism, and Art Nouveau pushed back many of the established conventions in painting to reflect the beauty and the richness of peripheric culture. Cubism is indeed revealing of such a new trend. It is influenced by African Arts. It is less apparent in Modigliani’s works and more so in Picasso’s although Picasso himself repeatedly denied such an influence (see Segy, 1962). Cubism does borrow from African arts and is hence telling of a decolonised perspective that does not conquer but one that adapts and is equally influenced by the outside world. (Fig. 2.12, an example of African art and Fig. 2.13, a cubist painting.). Kazimir Severinovich (Russian avant-garde artist, 1879−1935), too, was breaking traditional rules through his abstract masterpieces reflecting the masses’ revolutionary aspirations. This was also a time of Naturalist and Modernist approaches in the works of authors and poets such as Emile Zola (1840−1902) and Guillaume Apollinaire (1880−1918) whose writings touched upon injustices and inequalities of their period. Some of the fascinating technological advancements of the time include Graham Bell’s telephone in 1876; Cinema by Léon Guillaume, 1892; and the Wright brothers’ invention of airplane, 1903. Knowledge and culture were increasingly instruments of power questioning dominant values. Symbolic capital and status prevailed among a greater number of middle classes in central and periphery countries; arts and literary works were inspired by freedom and equality.

Fig. 2.12

African Fang Masks

Fig. 2.13

Les demoiselles d’Avignon. (Pablo Picasso – 1907)

Between the two wars, many countries in the world experienced rising poverty and unemployment. The Great Depression (1929−1939) and the US protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930⁶⁴ caused a “trade war” and the rebirth of the “twin devils”, i.e. unemployment and inflation and massive migration across the world.⁶⁵ For instance, in Canada, starting from the last half of the nineteenth century, urbanisation and early industrialisation increased the number of unemployed poor, while the 1930s Depression caused a sharp increase in poverty and unemployment (Baskerville & Sager, 2007). This period is also identified by human-inflicted atrocities including the Armenian genocide (1915−1916), the Jewish genocide by the Nazis (1933 to the end of WWII, 1944), and smuggling and sexual slavery of the so-called Korean “comfort women” by the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII.

This was a time of famine and poverty. Famine during WWI, Collingham (2011) explains led to the Nazi’s Hunger plan during WWII to secure food (scarce during previous war) and bring enemies to their knees. Involved in the war or not, many countries experienced famine, from the German-occupied Netherlands to the Soviet Russia to Iran. Michael Harrington’s The Other America (1962) revealed that even in a seemingly affluent economy, poverty − as invisible as it can be − remained extensive and tenacious. Among literary and artistic works that focused on increasing poverty and famine reference can be made to “The Good Earth” (1931) by Pearle S. Buck depicting social struggles of women and the poor in rural China.

2.6 The Post-WWII Period, Reforms, Rise of Equality, and Cultural Wars

The period after the WWII is marked by the pre-war technological advancements and the post-war competitions but also a desire to reconstruct a better world by the powerful nations. The United Nations and its charter (1948), the Bretton Woods institutions (International Monetary Fund and the World Bank), the US aid, i.e. Marshall plan to Europe, are among the initiatives taken at the time to change a failing world order. In his book, Wealth (2021), Yuval Elmelech (2021: 8) has an argument regarding the shift in distribution of the value, composition, and distribution of wealth since the mid-1940s − with which I agree. He refers to two phases of transformation in the West. “The first phase starts after World War II and is characterised by wealth equality and the acceptance of home ownership and personal wealth as key features of a newly formed middle class. The second phase begins in the 1980s and is marked by the financialisation of household wealth portfolios and the rising concentration of wealth”. The first phase is the background against which capitalism started thriving. It was a period when equal importance was attached to education and culture but also symbolic capital in powerful countries, such as the USA. The second phase started as the Welfare State failed and is briefly explained below.

The Welfare State survived after the WWII, but the social rigidities that marked the era before the war persisted. Countries started recovering from war and a new middle class emerged during this “Golden Age of Capitalism”, as Marglin and Schor (1990) explain. The American dream of equality by the people and for the people was revitalised in James Truslow Adams’ (1878−1949) book, The Epic of America (1931) − more so following the war. He wrote: “If the dreams of the early imperialists had been to create an empire, to singe the beard of the king of Spain and to make shrewd thrust at the Pope, the hope that now dwelt in the breasts of the individual emigrants of all classes was to escape from conditions overseas and to prosper in a new land. They came from prisons, from hovels, from little farm cottages, from town shops, from country manor houses and rectories, but never from palaces. The aristocracy remained in England… These earliest Americans were laborers, tradesmen, artisans, and such… They came to make homes” (ibid, 31–32). The American Dream survived to make the masses better off until a global neoliberalist ideology revitalised the classical “blaming of the poor” tradition.

Elsewhere, poverty did not disappear as quickly. For instance, the partition of Korea in 1984 did not change the devastated mainly agrarian economy of either the North or the South particularly as the 1950−1953 war increased poverty. Korean women, for instance, had to export or sell their hair in exchange for food or money. The rapid growth of South Korea in 1960s is indeed interesting, although the World Bank believed the prospects of change to its then near-zero GDP were very low at the time (see Lone & McCormack 1993; Seth, 2017). The growth happened due to a mix of central government’s aid to businesses, while forbidding unionisation of overworked labourers and remittances that were sent back home by the Korean “war brides” (the Korean spouses of the US military) who immigrated to the USA during 1951−1964.

Poverty and inequality remained − to different extent − across Africa as well. The French and the British gradually started the decolonisation process but the Portuguese didn’t. In their colonies, e.g. Angola and Mozambique, liberation wars devastated people as Salazar considered these colonies as an extension of Portugal. He defied the self-determination article of the UN charter until he was overthrown and negotiations started with the liberation movements in 1975 (see Abbott, 1988).

Elsewhere, the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966−1976) under Mao subverted the previous New Culture Movement and replaced it with banning of arts and music, prosecution of artists, crashing freedom of speech through nation-making propaganda, while the population suffered of famine and poverty but were promised better days (see Jasper Becker, 1996). Lin Yutang (Chinese philosopher, 1859−1976), a member of the New Culture Movement, authored several works about Chinese Cultural Revolution and the ugly reality of indoctrination and prosecution in the Maoist China (see Chang et al., 2010). A similar Cultural Revolution was copied in Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution that led to the closure of universities, gender-based division of study fields, illegal confiscations, and prosecution and a total tranformation or banning of music, arts, theater, and formal education. Both cultural revolutions seem to incarnate a delayed Medieval revolt of the poor against the wealthy only to recreate oligarchs at a later stage.

The trajectories of Eastern and Western Europe started to bifurcate. In Eastern Europe, the Soviet regime was increasingly failing to deliver its utopic communist values, and the Catholic Church was actively renewing its domination through Young Catholics (1950s−1970s). The Catholic Solidarity Movement (1980s−1990s) denied the communist understanding of humans as means of production and tended to replace it with morality and empowerment of the poor. Meanwhile, in Italy (1960s−1970s), for instance, Arte Povera (Poor Arts Movement, Fig. 2.14) renewed the European quest for breaking traditional codes, practices, and materials that were depriving artists of their wealth of imagination and expression. A bifurcation took place setting East and West Europe on two differing trajectories.

Fig. 2.14

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Muro di stracci (Wall of Rags), 1968

The 20th century writings and theories are, inarguably, about deliberate confrontations with dominant ideas and groups. Capital, wealth, and poverty fuelled sociological and political debates until a later recuperation by economists in a more pronounced manner in the later part of the twentieth century. Equality and justice took centre stage across literary and intellectual works of Antoni Gramsci (1891−1937) and his concept of hegemony in his Prison Notebook (printed in English in 1957); John Rawls (1921−2002) in his A Theory of Justice (1971): Pierre Bourdieu (1930−2002) and his critical sociological books Distinction (1979) and The Field of Cultural Production (1993); Michel Foucault (1926−1984) and his Surveillance and Punishment (1975); Jean-Paul Sartre and his existentialist philosophy in his book Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946); and Hanna Arendt and her conceptualisation of “banality of evil” in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) depicted also in the protagonist murderer in Alberts Camus’ novel Stranger (1942); Paulo Freire (1921−1997) and his concept of Education of the Oppressed (1968); and This House is Black (1962) on the neglected leprosy-stuck colony in Tabriz, Iran, by Forough Farokhzad (1935−1967).

The rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s is an episode that demands more scrutiny in order to understand its impact on values, wealth, culture, education, and power relations that define their boundaries. The capitalist social contract and its tenets (as of the 1970s) are discussed in Chap. 3.

2.7 Conclusion

Wealth, poverty, inequalities, and capital have, although contested, continuously shaped social reality across the world and since humans have gathered in settlements. Wealth has remained − in one way or another − an instrument of influence and power for those higher in the social ladder. However, it is the very rationalisation of wealth that has rendered poverty visible in previous centuries leading to power struggles between classes and groups, shifts in arts, education, and even motivating social unrest.

Wealth has constantly remained − despite some short periods − an economic topic and a matter of possession. It has generally referred to financial and tangible assets of a person or the goods and services produced annually in a country (GDP). Elmelech (2021:16) suggests that wealth has three main foci, i.e. “wealth as private property, wealth as portfolio, and wealth as net worth”. Wealth as private property, he argues “even those of modest value − is associated with a heightened sense of economic security, control over life, and personal efficacy” and a “social construction of future possibilities” (Sherraden, 1999 quoted in Elmelech 2021:17). Non-productive or symbolic wealth − as opposed to functional wealth − as it was demonstrated, has been a matter of demonstrating one’s social status rather than anything cultural or philosophical per se. And as it was discussed, it is mostly this type of non-productive wealth that has been subjected to strict bans and regulations, or praise and promotion depending on the value systems, philosophies, religious belief and socio-cultural setting of each context. The wealthy have indeed used knowledge and power to their advantage regardless of spatial-temporal contexts in which they lived. For the masses, though, knowledge has carried different connotations. It has paved the road towards acceptance and submission to a higher order or king but has also led to awareness and uprisings. In any case, knowledge and education, as well as arts have been considered as a form of wealth both by the elite and the masses − although with spatial-temporal differences. 

Simultanously, policies and theories that have focused on poverty have oscillated between “blaming the poor” and “blaming the system”. Poverty, unlike wealth, has not been limited to having or not having but also capabilities, being, functioning, and becoming. Poverty has meant a given way of being- by divine distribution- but has shifted to be scientifically studied and measured. Poverty has remained an economic condition but increasingly a subject of sociological and political scrutiny up until today. For instance, Brian Nolan and Christopher Whelan (1996: 188) define poverty as “the inability to participate in society owing to lack of resources”. Gordon et al. (2000:91) hold that “someone is ‘poor’ when they have both a low standard of living and a low income”. In their famous capability approach, Nussbaum and Sen (1993) define poverty as deprivation of an individual from their “functioning” and “capabilities”, i.e. being and doing. In fact, the meaning of poverty shifts while “we constantly manufacture new forms of poverty as we drive forward the living standards of the majority without thinking what we are doing to those who cannot keep pace” (Donninson, 1982:226 cited in Lister, 2021:26). As it was demonstrated in this chapter, poverty (in knowledge and in its economic form) has been the subject of literary and philosophical works but also paintings. 

A return to Rovelli (2018: 17–18) with whose ideas this chapter started is germane to the aims of this chapter and the book, in general. He asserts: “Past and future are different from each other. Cause precedes effect. Pain comes after a wound, not before it. The glass shatters into a thousand pieces, and the pieces do not reform into a glass. We cannot change the past; we can have regrets, remorse, and memories. The future instead is uncertainty, desire, anxiety, open space, and destiny, perhaps. We can live towards it, shape it, because it does not yet exist. Everything is still possible . . . Time is not a line with two equal directions: it is an arrow with different extremities”. This chapter which was a stroll in the socio-cultural, economic, and political history of wealth, poverty, and value systems is not about regrets. It is rather about understanding the bits and pieces of this past that are inherited and are affecting our values today. Some of the past values and traditions shall be dismantled and abolished as they are irrelevant today; others shall be cherished and revitalised. The choice is ours − based on our collective wealth of capabilitie.