In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, one of the founders of modern sociology, Max Weber, examines the link between wealth and virtue, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world. The idea here is that in Protestant cultures, financial prosperity would be a sign of God’s grace. Of course, we recognize in this portrait a large part of American and Canadian society.
With the historic strength of the Catholic Church in Quebec, the relationship to wealth, and therefore to poverty, is of course different. But we can argue that with the break of a large part of the population with Catholicism, this Quebec difference has faded. It is clear that, rather than considering that the “last will be first in the kingdom of God”, the Quebec elites have also internalized the Protestant ethic and the spirit of dominant capitalism. To be poor, for many, is necessarily a sign of vice.
In North America—including in Quebec, therefore—designating oneself as poor takes courage. The mythical “middle class” takes up so much space in our imaginations that we end up being unable to even put simple words to social inequalities. A household can reap three or four times the median income and still identify with the middle class. Similarly, a family that can’t pay their grocery bills will also continue to call themselves “average.”
Because poverty, in North America, we tend to see it primarily as a “bad patch”. A little as if each poor person were a potential bourgeois temporarily indisposed—and who will reveal to the world his true social habitus if he agrees to roll up his sleeves and “work hard”. To admit that one is poor and not “broken for the moment” would be to say that one lacks discipline, talent, work ethic – all virtues which, we are promised, guarantee access to comfort. material.
These beliefs are rubbish, of course. But a rubbish that plays a very specific role. Shame, under capitalism, makes it possible to avoid revolt. The embarrassment of his economic condition, the conviction that it is by personal default that one does not live better, the hesitation even to name his precariousness are essential to the maintenance of the apparent order. If it weren’t for these ideas taking hold of society, there would be tens of thousands of people on the streets, right now in Quebec, crying that they are hungry.
If it weren’t for this bullshit, you would be a crowd as far as the eye could see, in front of the parliaments, chanting that no, you are not lazy. No, with the current minimum wage, working full time, even more, does not necessarily allow you to get out of poverty. No, Christian holiday charity is not a viable way to solve the problem of hunger and malnutrition.
You would repeat that no, living in a “rich country” does not guarantee access to this said wealth for all. No, just because a person is disabled does not mean that they deserve nothing better than misery benefits for a lifetime. That no, it is not by conveying prejudices about people who benefit from social assistance that we will create a “productive” society. No, seniors who are no longer part of the “active population” do not deserve, overnight, to stop living in dignity.
Your fed up would take up so much space that politicians would have no choice but to propose at least some structural changes. After all, even the poor have the right to vote.
But we’re not there. We tell ourselves that the current hunger crisis is due to this damned inflation, to a potential occasional recession — and not to the very organization of society. We continue to tell ourselves that if people can’t make ends meet, it’s because they’re still going through one of those mythical “bad times” — and not because we continue to consider, in our society, the existence of poverty as a consequence of the lack of “effort” of an individual.
We prefer to remain surprised at each coming of an economic crisis, taken aback by the breaking of this promise of perpetual prosperity on which America was founded. We are patiently awaiting a return to economic “normal”. We refuse to see that, even under the regime of this “normal” economy, poverty and hunger have never ceased to be problems of rich countries as well.
We marked this week the 20e anniversary of the Act to combat poverty and social exclusion, a provincial law. The Collective for a Poverty-Free Quebec took the opportunity to publish a critical review of its application and take stock of it. People looking for concrete solutions can start looking in this direction.
There are many reasons why, 20 years later, we are still a long way from eliminating poverty. I don’t know what profound change we can hope for, unless shame ceases to be borne by the poor, and instead becomes the lot of those who impoverish.