Holly Sklar argues that instead of writing about “poverty,” progressive authors should write about “impoverishment” to highlight the economic processes through which people are made poor and kept poor. In her essay "The Dying American Dream and the Snake Oil of Scapegoating," Sklar writes:

As the American Dream has become more impossible for more people, scapegoating is being used to deflect blame from the economic system and channel anger to support reactionary political causes. Talk-show demagogues have built their careers on a rising volume of hate.

The cycle of unequal opportunity is intensifying. Its beneficiaries often slander those most systematically undervalued, underpaid, underemployed, underfinanced, underinsured, underrated, and otherwise underserved and undermined--as undeserving and underclass, impoverished in moral values, and lacking the proper "work ethic."~2

Sociologists Somers and Block see the growth of “market fundamentalism” as the continuation of an ideology long promoted by some conservatives.~3 To demonstrate this, they picked two examples of legislation—in 1834 and 1966—in which “existing welfare regimes were overturned by market-driven ones.” They concluded that “Despite dramatic differences across the cases, both outcomes were mobilized by "the perversity thesis"—a public discourse that reassigned blame for the poor's condition from "poverty to perversity."~4 In this way, says Somers and Block:

…structural blame for poverty is discredited as empiricist appearance while the real problem is attributed to the corrosive effects of welfare's perverse incentives on poor people themselves—they become sexually promiscuous, thrust aside personal responsibility, and develop longterm dependency. This claim enables market fundamentalism to delegitimate existing ideational regimes, to survive disconfirming data, and to change the terms of debate from social problems to the timeless forces of nature and biology.

Fundamentalist Calvinists and Free Market ideologues may seem like strange bedfellows, but under the sheets they share some basic body parts, and both end up screwing the poor.

Notes

1 Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; Chip Berlet, "Calvinism, Capitalism, Conversion, and Incarceration.”

2 Sklar, “The Dying American Dream and the Snake Oil of Scapegoating.”

3 This section is pilfered from Berlet and Chamberlain, Running Against Sodom and Osama: The Christian Right, Values Voters, and the Culture Wars in 2006.

4 Somers and Block, “From Poverty to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and Institutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate.”

References

Chip Berlet and Pam Chamberlain, 2006, Running Against Sodom and Osama: The Christian Right, Values Voters, and the Culture Wars in 2006. A Report from Political Research Associates, October, 2006, http://www.publiceye.org/christian_right/values-voters/vv-toc.html

Holly Sklar. 1995. “The Dying American Dream and the Snake Oil of Scapegoating.” In Chip Berlet (Ed.), Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash (pp. 113–134). Boston: South End Press, online at http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/hs_econo.html

Margaret R. Somers and Fred Block, “From Poverty to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and Institutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate,” American Sociological Review (70)2, (April 2005): 260-287. See also, Alexander Hicks, “Comment on Somers and Block, Free-Market and Religious Fundamentalists versus Poor Relief,” American Sociological Review (71)3, (June 2006): 503-510; Margaret R. Somers and Fred Block, “Reply to Hicks: Poverty and Piety,” American Sociological Review (71)3, (June 2006): 511-513.

Max Weber. [1930] 1999. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcot Parsons. New York: Routledge. See also, Chip Berlet, "Calvinism, Capitalism, Conversion, and Incarceration,” The Public Eye, Political Research Associates (18)3, (Winter 2004), http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v18n3/berlet_calvinism.html.

See Also:

God, Calvin, and Social Welfare: A Series

Fundamentalists Embrace Darwin!

The Christian Right, Calvinism, and Free Market Ideology