Before the emergence of capitalism, the majority of the world’s population was mired in extreme poverty. In 1820, approximately 90% of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty. Today, less than 10%. More remarkably, in recent decades the decline in poverty has accelerated at a rate never seen in any previous period in human history. In 1981, the absolute poverty rate was 42.7%; in 2000 it had fallen to 27.8%, and in 2021 it was below 10%.
It is this trend, which has persisted for decades, that is essential. Admittedly, poverty has increased again in the past two years. But that’s largely the result of the global Covid-19 pandemic, which has exacerbated the situation in countries where it was already relatively high.
To understand the issue of poverty, we need to look at history. Many people believe that capitalism is the root cause of poverty and famine in the world. They form a totally unrealistic image of the pre-capitalist era, shaped by classic works, including that of Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), The Situation of the Working Class in England. Engels denounces in the most drastic terms the working conditions of primitive capitalism and paints an idyllic picture of domestic workers before mechanical work and capitalism came to destroy their beautiful way of life: “The workers therefore vegetated throughout “a fairly comfortable existence, leading a just and peaceful life in all piety and probity; and their material situation was much better than that of their successors. They did not need to overwork themselves; they did no more than they they wanted to do, and yet earned what they needed.They had leisure to devote themselves to wholesome work in the garden or in the taking part in the pastimes and games of their neighbours, and all these games – bowling, cricket, football, etc. – contributed to their physical health and vigor. ns strong and well-built, whose physique showed little or no difference from that of their peasant neighbours. Their children were growing up in the fresh country air, and if they could help their parents at work, it was only occasionally, when it was out of the question for them to work eight or twelve hours.”
Country trip
The picture many people have of life before capitalism has been transfigured beyond recognition by these romantic descriptions and others like them. They imagine that life before capitalism was like a modern trip to the countryside. So let’s take a more objective look at the pre-capitalist era, in the years and centuries leading up to 1820.
“The small workers of the 18th century”, writes the Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton in his book The great Escape, were de facto trapped in a nutritional trap; they couldn’t earn much because they were physically very weak, and they couldn’t eat enough because, without work, they didn’t have enough money to buy food.” Some rave about the harmonious conditions before capitalism, where life was much slower, but this slowness was mainly the result of physical weakness due to permanent malnutrition.It is estimated that two hundred years ago, about 20% of the inhabitants from England and France were not able to work at all, simply because they were physically much too weak due to malnutrition.
German historian, sociologist and entrepreneur Rainer Zitelmann.
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The greatest man-made famines in the last hundred years have taken place under socialism. In the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian famine of 1921-1922 claimed the lives of five million people, according to official figures from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1927. The highest estimates put the figure at 10 to 14 million starvation deaths. Only ten years later, the socialist collectivization of agriculture and the “liquidation of the kulaks” by Joseph Stalin triggered the next great famine, which killed between six and eight million people. And Mao’s Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), the greatest socialist experiment in human history, cost the lives of 45 million people in China. When the term “famine” is used, most people think of Africa first. However, in the 20th century, 80% of famine victims died in China and the Soviet Union.
It’s a typical misconception: for people, “hunger and poverty” refers to capitalism rather than socialism, the system actually responsible for the greatest famines of the 20th century.
*Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist. He publishes In Defense of Capitalismtranslated into 30 languages.