(5) Why Poverty Exists: With Help From Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wills Wilde
A year and a day after the murder of a homeless woman, Polly Nichols, in Buck’s Row, Whitechapel, two of Britain’s best-known authors, met at the Langham Hotel.
On August 31st 1889, American Joseph Marshall Stoddart, publisher and editor of Lippincott’s Magazine, invited Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde to dine at the Langham Hotel in Portland Place, London.
Westminster Green Plaque at the Langham Hotel commemorating the meeting of Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle
On Friday, March 19th 2010 a commemorative Westminster green plaque was unveiled on the outside wall of the Langham restaurant.
Stoddart commissioned two works to be published in serial form in Lippincott’s Magazine.
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the second story featuring Sherlock Holmes, The Sign Of Four, which was published in book form in 1890, and Oscar Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Grey, which was published in book form in 1891.
The notoriety of the 1888 murders that grew as a result of the frenzy of mass hysteria that the newspaper coverage created was not missed by Wilde as he wrote his novel.
Wilde himself, like his eponymous hero, Dorian Grey, found entertainment among the poor who resided in London’s East End around St George’s in the East and Whitechapel.
In 1891, the same year that saw the publication of the book version of The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde wrote:
“The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty would be impossible.”
The quote appeared in an essay titled The Soul of Man Under Socialism. It examined the widespread and abject poverty that existed.
In it, he says:
"The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this.”
I’m sure some would argue that the Mother Theresas of this world do not “spoil their lives” by dedicating their lives to relieving the suffering of the poor.
However, it is hard to argue against Wilde when he says:
“But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.”
I’m writing this in mid-2024, 133 years after he wrote those words. It proves his point. The remedies have not cured the disease - poverty is still with us.
133 years later, London poverty might not be quite so hideous as it was in 1888, but food banks, temporary accommodation and 700,000 children living in poverty indicate that poverty is still with us.
Many would say:
‘Of course, poverty is still with us. Haven’t you heard the poor will always be with us?’
It would seem, though, that more than a century before Oscar was writing and more than two centuries before our present time, some highly intelligent men believed poverty should not always be with us.
On July 4 1776, their opinions were made clear when they declared:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
To achieve Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness doesn’t seem difficult.
To achieve all of that, “it is self-evident that all men” need - not want, not desire - but need a comfortable and secure home, appropriate clothing, nutritious food, clean water, care if things go wrong, opportunity to learn skills and then the opportunity to enjoy recreation and entertainment.
That surely is all that any human needs to operate effectively. Or, in the words of the founding fathers of the United States of America, they need “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It would appear to be an easy task for every society on earth to be able to deliver that.
Every society has enough labour power - that is, people - to build well-designed homes and provide clothing, good food, water, care, education and entertainment.
Why has that proved to be so difficult?
I suppose the answer is that a society that provides those basic needs for all would be ‘Utopian’.
Why that should be the case I hope to discover.
Off the top of my head, I could suggest that the problem is that what humans have created since they took over from Mother Nature is not ‘society’.
The dictionary definition of society is:
“companionship, friendly association with others’): from French société, from Latin societas, from socius ‘companion.”
Obviously, companions in ‘friendly association’ would not have ended up with the situation that politicians in the Houses of Parliament, the United States Congress, and indeed, it would appear every other seat of government on the planet are promising to deal with.
A friendly association of companions would not need food banks, temporary and unhealthy accommodations for families, polluted rivers and seas, overcrowded prisons, a stressed-out education system, a health service suffering from cardiac arrest and a history of indiscriminate bombing going back to when General Curtis LeMay said:
“We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another, and some in South Korea, .. . . . Over a period of three years or so, we killed off - what- twenty per cent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure?
The extract is from page 88 of:
Can anyone say Margaret Thatcher was wrong when she said:
“There is no such thing as society.”
If by society we mean ‘a friendly association of companions’, then she was right. There is no such thing as society.
So Oscar Wilde might have got it wrong when he said: “The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty would be impossible.”
Wrong because what existed was not a ‘society’.
It wasn’t reconstructing that was needed
It was inventing and creating something that did not exist: that is, a friendly association of companions, which we might call ‘society’.
What Wilde was writing about when he came up with the idea of eliminating poverty was socialism. A movement that had its roots around 70 years before Oscar Wilde offered his thoughts on it.
Oscar’s chief concern was what would happen to the soul of man if the idea became a reality.
The idea is still alive so I want to look at what Oscar had to say about it in the next blog post.
Supporters of socialism believe it is an alternative to capitalism, an alternative that would indeed “recreate society on such a basis that poverty would be impossible.”
I’m curious because obviously, if poverty had been impossible in the 19th century, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly might well have been “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
And, of course, if they had been endowed with those inalienable rights, they might not have ended up alone and defenceless among the slums of Queen Victoria’s London.