How not to victimize the poor

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Some 20 years ago, as an anthropology student, I conducted a small study about the perceptions of the poor and the rich among fourth graders in elementary school. The task was simple: the children were supposed to draw how they imagined a poor person and a rich person. Results were striking. The faces of the poor conveyed genuine goodness, with warm but sad or tearful eyes. Their clothes were modest and covered in patches. In contrast, the faces of the rich conveyed genuine badness, with eyes that were evil and insidious. Their appearance had all the visible signs of affluence: heavy golden necklaces, expensive suits, and big diamond rings. Long before the children understood money, markets or work, they had already learned a pattern: poverty means goodness, wealth means suspicion.

At the beginning of 2000, when I conducted this research, Serbia had been recovering from Slobodan Milosevic’s regime and socialist past, struggling to establish liberal markets and democratic governments. Back then, common beliefs, transferred to children, were still trapped in a strong socialist doctrine, which despised and distrusted the rich and sympathized with the poor.  When I moved to Switzerland, I expected a different attitude, where being rich is not despised but valued and appreciated. I was wrong. I realized that rich people have similar reception among the broader population. The only difference was that while in Serbia no one cares for the poor, except the proclaimed nanny state, the poor in Switzerland are the project in itself. They are the darlings who need to be taken care of and compensated for their misfortune or taught how they should live their lives better.

«while in Serbia no one cares for the poor, except the proclaimed nanny state, the poor in Switzerland are the project in itself. They are the darlings who need to be taken care of and compensated for their misfortune or taught how they should live their lives better.»

Two common but wrong beliefs

Why does capitalism, the type of economy now found in most countries, fail to be seen as a natural ally of the poor, despite the extensive evidence of improving life expectancy, living conditions, and enrichment of nations on the global level? Why are markets seen as a means of enslaving the poor rather than liberating them?

The crucial problem lies in two common beliefs so deeply engraved in the heads of the fourth graders as well as adults. The first is that capitalism despises the poor; the second is that the poor need to change to fit the capitalist economy. Both are wrong and look down on the poor. And both beliefs are captured in one of the two consensual projects. Either the poor should be safeguarded against capitalist evils, or they should be taught how to adjust to the capitalist economy.

Here, I will focus on the second group of projects usually fostered by global development cooperation programmes. They tend to reinvent the poor by giving them plenty of ideas on how to “scale up or add value” to whatever they’re doing to make them a better fit for the capitalist economy. In most cases, such programs show a striking lack of knowledge about the poor, which results in their large-scale failure.

A long-term perspective

From my extensive research experience among the poor participating in development cooperation programmes, I can say this:

1) The poor can generate capital. They know how to do it. Yet what they don’t have is a long-term perspective that could sustain their lives or businesses during periodic crises. The absence of long-term perspectives makes them prone to sudden and sometimes unexpected shifts in decision-making, which leads to abandoning places or ongoing businesses. It disrupts continuity so essential for any progress. The most important thing, thus, is to discover how the poor can establish and maintain a long-term perspective.

«The poor can generate capital. Yet what they don’t have is a long-term perspective that could sustain their lives or businesses during periodic crises»

2) The poor who are running some petty businesses are mostly survival entrepreneurs. Yet development cooperation projects often confuse their resilience with entrepreneurship. The very fact that the poor skillfully navigate the hardship does not make them good entrepreneurs. They act as survival entrepreneurs until a better opportunity emerges, which is usually through migration to more affluent cities or Western countries. Trying to convert these people into entrepreneurs in most cases leads to failure.

3) Informal networks, culturally determined ways of getting things done, including businesses, are vital as networks of support and exchange of knowledge and information. For many poor, this is the only system they rely on because they are cut off from formal networks and systems of support. But reformatory projects see the informal networks and practices the poor rely on as corrupt and harmful. Integration of the poor into the formal institutional flows is seen as the only way forward. It is rarely considered that the implementation of reformatory projects in a rigid way may cause the loss of a great resource of knowledge and ingenuity of the poor. Preservation of such a resource of knowledge could, in fact, help new capital creation and more innovation. It is necessary to show more tolerance for informal networks and customary practices of the poor and harmonize them with formal institutions.

4) The poor know where they are going and what they want. They have their own agency. But in many projects that promote their well-being, the agency of the poor is not acknowledged, mainly because it is considered unfit for the vision someone else set for them.

«in many projects that promote their well-being, the agency of the poor is not acknowledged, mainly because it is considered unfit for the vision someone else set for them.»

Dignity and agency

Capitalism has never thrived because people were told what they should do, but because it enabled them to have a go and design their lives as they see fit. Instead of changing the poor and teaching them how to “add value to their lives”, a more important task would be to remove the constraints they face every day.

Removing constraints for the poor is the most important and noble task of global capitalism. People and organizations interested in helping the poor should identify where these constraints are and, through individual work, make sure to contribute to their collapse. Cuddling and patronizing the poor will not help them, but removing constraints certainly will.

That is the chance for reestablishing the most natural alliance between capitalism and the poor. And essentially, it rests on acknowledging the individual dignity and agency of the poor.