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Social Contradictions Of Poverty

Decent Essays

Poverty does not solely pertain to individuals without the money to sustain themselves. Rather, poverty refers to the conditions of individuals or groups of people who only possess limited means to have and raise their children, care for their loved ones, maintain households, or contribute to their communities. In “Contradictions of Capital and Care,” Nancy Fraser identifies these social needs as the key capacities of social reproduction that are necessary for culture, political organization, and the creation of self-expanding value via economic production. Individuals lose these social capacities due to the contradiction between economic production and social reproduction that is inherent in capitalism; once these capacities are lost, individuals remain stuck in the cycle of poverty because of their limited abilities within the existing societal structures and hierarchies that subjugate them. The only way to significantly reduce and eventually end poverty is thus to restructure society, so that social reproduction and economic production are no longer contradictory and are recognized as inter-dependent spheres.
While poverty has numerous causes that create and reinforce it, the central cause of poverty is the contradiction between social reproduction and economic production. In capitalist society, economic production outweighs social reproduction, simply because economic production brings in money, which is what gives individuals purchasing power and the ability to

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