A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE (Part 5). A review of The Nature of Mass Poverty by John Kenneth Galbraith
THE NATURE OF MASS POVERTY
Not from thought but from convenience
Harvard Professor John Kenneth Galbraith states in The Nature of Mass Poverty that “This book had its origins almost two decades ago in India. In those years, the early sixties, the United States had a large and costly program of assistance to Indian agriculture. Its purpose was to help increase Indian food supplies and to lessen, however slightly, the poverty which is the fate of nearly all in India who make their living from the land. One did not doubt that our motives were humane as well as sensibly self-interested. But I soon became persuaded that our efforts were sadly misguided and that the error extended on to the Indians with whom we worked. What we had decided were the causes of poverty with which the Indians and we sought to contend was derived not from thought but from convenience.”
We could supply two things
There were, broadly speaking, only two things we could provide to lessen the deprivation – we could supply capital and, in principle, useful technical knowledge. The causes of poverty were then derived from these possibilities – poverty was seen to be the result of a shortage of capital and an absence of technical skills. The remedy included the diagnosis. Having vaccine, we identified smallpox. Only by accident could a therapy so selected be successful. There was, alas, no such accident.
A more valid explanation of mass poverty
My thoughts, accordingly, turned to a more valid explanation of mass poverty and the associated remedial response, so far as one can reasonably be offered, and I continued to reflect on this after my return to Harvard in 1963, where I resumed courses that I had previously initiated on the problem of development in the poor lands. But I had first to finish The New Industrial State and Economics and the Public Purpose, the large enterprise on which I was launched before going to India. And there were other diversions, including politics and the continuing and highly unrewarding distraction of the Vietnam War.
Sensible explanations evaporate when tested against practical experience
These chapters originally were lectures that have been rewritten. I begin with consideration of the seemingly sensible explanation we now regularly offer of the poverty of the poor country and the way these causes evaporate when tested against practical experience.
Two kinds of poverty
To be poor is believed by many who are, and most who are not, to be an unpleasant thing. There is a strong possibility that in many societies the poor react to their economic situation with less anxiety than do the rich. Two forms of poverty can be distinguished. There is that which afflicts the minority in some societies and that which afflicts all but the few in other societies.
Poverty in communities where almost everyone is poor
My concern is with the causes of poverty in those communities, rural in practice, where almost everyone is poor – where, if there is wealth or affluence, it is the exceptional fortune of the few. To an astonishing degree, the causes are simply assumed. When explanations are sought, numerous and exceptionally confident answers are given. When examined, these answers have one feature in common: they are universally unsatisfactory. They are subject to contradiction by practical experience or they confuse cause with consequence or no one wishes to risk them in serious scientific discourse. They are selected not for their validity but for their convenience.
The most common explanation
The most common explanation of mass poverty is that the community, usually the country, is “naturally poor” – the soil is rocky, arid, or insufficient; there are few minerals, hydrocarbons, or other natural resources. Were Japan a poor country, its poverty would be explained along the lines just given, but its catastrophic natural endowment goes unmentioned only because it is rich.