(6) Why Poverty Exists: With Help From Oscar Wilde - 2
Image of women in a Victorian common lodging house known as a doss house.
At around one o’clock in the morning of August 31st 1888, Polly Nichols was in the kitchen of Wilmott’s Lodging House on Thrawl Street in the Spitalfields area of Whitechapel.
The afternoon before had seen a thunderstorm pass over London, and showers of rain had continued after that. At one o’clock in the morning, the temperature outside Wilmott’s was 8 Celsius - 46 Fahrenheit.
At 1:30, the Deputy Keeper at Wilmott’s asked Polly for her doss money. Polly had no money, so she was told to leave.
Two hours later, she was dead. Somebody severed her left carotid artery as she lay in a gateway in Buck’s Row. She died without a struggle.
At around one o’clock in the morning of September 8th 1888, Annie Chapman was in the kitchen of Crossingham’s Lodging House on Dorset Street in the Spitalfields area of Whitechapel.
The temperature outside Crossingham’s was 6 Celsius - 43 Fahrenheit.
At 1:50, the Deputy Keeper at Crossingham’s asked Annie for her doss money. Annie had no money, so she was told to leave.
A couple of hours later, she was dead. Somebody severed her left carotid artery as she lay between a fence and a doorway in a yard behind 29 Hanbury Street. She died without a struggle.
On both those nights and every night, around 8,000 homeless people paid fourpence to get a bed in one of more than 200 common lodging houses or doss houses in Spitalfields.
Around two thousand other homeless people like Polly and Annie had not ended the day with money to pay for a bed. Those people found doorways, stairways, lavatories, rubbish bins or anywhere they could snatch some rest.
Poverty considerably shortened the lives of all these people.
In 1891, Oscar Wilde described a life “surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation.”
He was writing “The Soul of Man under Socialism”. He said:
“The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody .”
“The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism . . . 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. . . .they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see.”
“But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.”
For Wilde, “the chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism” is not that people would no longer live lives of “hideous poverty,” “hideous ugliness,” and “hideous starvation.”
The chief advantage of socialism for Oscar was that it “would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others . . . by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.”
At first reading, it sounds a little strange. It is not the poor who suffer from poverty so much as the better classes who are coerced into self-sacrificing altruism.
However, Oscar explains that this self-sacrificing altruism is not a solution. It merely ensures the survival of poverty.
History has proved that to be true.
Oscar says, “The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.”
Unfortunately, he says, “the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim.”
“Under Socialism, all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings.”
“ Each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a frost comes, no one will practically be anything the worse.”
Oscar here appears convinced of who will get his vote.
However, there is a ‘but’ for Oscar.
“But for the full development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed. What is needed is Individualism.”
And there’s the rub.
“If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first. “
It’s not much of a choice. ‘Authoritarian Socialism’ or ‘Vulture Capitalism’, to borrow Grace Blakeley’s phrase.
In favour of capitalism, Oscar writes:
“At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism.”
“They are either under no necessity to work for their living or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them and gives them pleasure.”
“These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture – in a word, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation.”
But there is a price to pay. Oscar writes:
“Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want.”
“These are the poor, and amongst them, there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life.”
“From their collective force, Humanity gains much in material prosperity. But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance.”
“He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him: indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient.”
Oscar clearly gave this a lot of thought. The next post will discuss more.
But remembering what was said in the previous post:
“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 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.
Why is that so difficult to achieve?
Why was - and is - the only choice between ‘Authoritarian Socialism’ or ‘Vulture Capitalism’?