The End of Poverty?

This is one of those documentary films you simply must see. Instead of trying to shock you or force you to do a specific action, it leaves the viewer to make the decision. It is not about poverty as a whole, and it doesn't try to solve the problem entirely. Instead it is about poverty in Third World Countries. The film uses nothing but facts and logic to make clear that it is caused by Europe and the US, who first took the lives of many, then took the resources, then used religion and forced economy ("fair" trade & such) to make sure those countries will never recover and forever be in debt. It is very good that something makes you realize what our (well, at least recent) leaders had been doing without us knowing. Maybe we are just stupid, letting this happen, I don't know.

I'm not really sure why those who made "The End of Poverty?" felt compelled to include a question mark in their title, since around 90% of the movie is devoted to defining the problem and only about 10% to offering solutions.

For much of the movie, director Philippe Diaz and narrator Martin Sheen keep hitting us with a litany of shocking and depressing statistics: that over 9,000,000 people die of starvation each year, that millions around the world earn less than a dollar a day, and that 60 to 80 million people work for nothing but room and board, making them virtual slaves in a 21st Century world. And that's just for starters. And just as you're about ready to throw in the towel and declare there's no hope for the world, the interviewees begin exploring possible answers (a fairer tax structure, returning land ownership to indigenous peoples, etc.), but it still seems an insurmountable task overall.

On an instructional level, the movie traces the roots of modern poverty to the colonial era that began with the discovery of America, when countries - and now mega-corporations with no moral compass beyond the bottom-line - could exploit someone else's resources and amass huge stores of wealth at the expense of the lower classes. And that doesn't even include the robbing of the culture and the feeling of self-worth from the indigenous peoples of these lands.

Diaz shows how the "haves" in the Northern Hemisphere have built and continue to build their fortunes primarily on the backs of the "have-nots" in the Southern Hemisphere. He interviews both economic theoreticians and common folk struggling for survival in both South America and Africa to drive home his point. He provides example upon example of how the policies of First World nations - neo-liberalism, unfettered free trade, multinational corporatism - have devastated the economies and peoples of the Third World.

It's a depressing experience sitting through this film, but the shards of hope it provides towards the end do provide some comfort. And you might even be inspired enough to rouse yourself off the sofa and work on doing something about the problem. Now, if only anyone knew what that solution was.

Just watched it last night at the Athens International Film Festival. This is the kind of documentary I love! It gives you an excellent overview of how the so-called First World has been exploiting the natural resources and human labour of Third World countries for the past 500 years and how the economics and politics behind this brutal exploitation work. This movie is completely different to the Michael Moore-style documentaries that seem to dominate the scene nowadays. Rather than using populism to impress the audience, it presents its case by providing both the opinion of highly respected economists, authors and political advisors, as well as the view of third world people that have been actually experiencing the consequences of the neo-liberal policies. An insight on the methods used by the West (the US in particular) to promote and impose their preferred policies to Third World countries is one of the strongest points of this movie. I am not going to expand on that as I do not want to spoil it for you! In any case, this is a brilliant documentary worth seeing by anyone who has the slightest interest in politics and economics.

The longer I live the more I value history.

I am less distracted with the tiny incidents of current events when I understand the historic context.

Our current reality is the result of thousands of chains of events that stretch back in time.

I have come to especially value videos that tell the stories that go back hundreds of years.

This offers a summary of major events over the globe during the centuries.

I do not agree with all that is said here but many major parts of the mural of history are presented well.

Phillipe Diaz's "The End of Poverty?" pretends to take up the cause of the world's oppressed. According to the short plot summary (written by producer Beth Portello) which appears on the main IMDb page for this film, it was "Inspired by the works of 19th century economist Henry George, who examined the causes of industrial depressions." The fact that the film methodically ignores the contributions of the far more influential and widely celebrated 19th century investigator of industrial depressions and poverty, Karl Marx, is but one indication of this film's intellectually shoddy and ultimately dishonest character.

"The End of Poverty?" is structured as a series of three intermixed components, which goes on for nearly all of a seemingly endless 106 minutes: (1) interviews with impoverished people in the "Third World," which, here, is synonymous with the "South"; (2) interviews with historians, economists and political thinkers (mostly from the "First World") who sketch out some of the history of European colonialism and its effects on the colonized peoples and (3) full-screen, white-on-black statistical statements like "X percent of the world's people consume Y percent of the world's energy" etc. Along the way, some of the commentators point out that the rise of capitalism was based on — and a large share of its profits continues to be based on — the ruthless exploitation of the colonial world. Although the talking heads often use the circumspect word "system," references to "capitalism" appear more frequently as the film progresses. Thus, the viewer might reasonably expect the film to culminate with a call for the end (overthrow?) of the system which causes all this misery: capitalism. Don't hold your breath!

The film's portrait of the world's wretched is peculiarly skewed. Most of the interviews with poor people and footage of pitiful living conditions are from South America, notably Bolivia. The time allotted to Africa is a distant second and focuses on Kenya, with a much smaller Tanzanian component. There is precious little footage from — or mention of — Asia. Most of the interviewed poor are or were connected to the land in some way. Industrial workers are essentially ignored. Causes of poverty such as war and ethnic victimization are similarly overlooked. "Does poverty exist even within the over-consuming 'North' as well?" one might ask. As far as "The End of Poverty?" is concerned, the latter is invisible. Other viewers might be forgiven for wondering about the effects on poverty of the overthrow of capitalism in the Soviet Union, China and Cuba (the "Second World"?). Again, silence reigns. Thus, as a study of the world's misery, the film is impressively inadequate.

As the film enters its final stage, there is a half-hearted invocation of the long-forgotten U.S. economic philosopher, Henry George. In his 1879 "Progress and Poverty," George proposed that poverty could be eliminated(!) by the abolition of ground rent and of all taxes save one: a tax on land. Not only was this panacea unoriginal (it had been advocated for more than 50 years by the followers of classical British economist David Ricardo), it was wacky. Karl Marx thought that George's theory was "the more unpardonable in him because he ought to have put the question to himself in just the opposite way: How did it happen that in the United States, where . . . in comparison with civilised Europe, the land was accessible to the great mass of the people, . . . capitalist economy and the corresponding enslavement of the working class have developed more rapidly and shamelessly than in any other country!" For Marx, adherents of George's view ". . . try to bamboozle . . . the world into believing that if ground rent were transformed into a state tax, all the evils of capitalist production would disappear of themselves. The whole thing is therefore simply an attempt . . . to save capitalist domination and indeed to establish it afresh on an even wider basis than its present one." (See Marx's letter to F. A. Sorge, June 20, 1881.) The film does not make so bold as to try to resurrect George's single-tax panacea. Instead, it offers an updated version: the "Commons" paradigm. Supporters of this liberal nostrum believe that the solution for the world's poor is to remove all of the land from private ownership and to hold it in common. Unsurprisingly, they do not explain how to achieve this little miracle.

In the film's last few minutes, some of the commentators raise the specter of the supposed limitations (as judged by what standard — present-day capitalist production?) of the world's resources and the excessive and unequal consumption of those resources by the "North." The real aim of Diaz & Co. here is to guilt-trip gullible people in the industrialized countries into adopting moralistic "use less energy" schemes, as if conscience-stricken lowering of consumption in the "First World" will magically increase consumption in the "Third." The accelerating global descent into depression, triggered by the unprecedentedly massive "mortgage securities" fraud perpetrated by the U.S.'s financial sector, will, no doubt, achieve Diaz's aim of lowering consumption in the "North." Does he actually believe this will benefit the world's poor?

For Diaz & Co., the "North" is an undifferentiated entity. Its working class, whose exploitation remains necessary for the survival of the capitalist system and which regularly loses some of its ranks into the maelstrom of poverty, does not figure in their calculations. And this is the most pernicious omission of their retreaded Malthusian ideology. For it is ONLY the working class of the developed countries — once it becomes conscious of its historic class interests — which has the SOCIAL POWER to reorganize production on a rationally-planned, world-wide, for-need basis, in order to lift itself AND the colonial masses out of the chain of misery. Because "The End of Poverty?" conceals this vital knowledge from anyone who is interested in ending poverty, it is, finally, an obstacle to achieving that goal.

Barry Freed