How Marx’s thought has enlightened China’s struggle against poverty

马克思反贫困思想及其对中国减贫脱贫的启示

Sun Yumei Jumei Studies 2020.11.9

Marx’s anti-poverty thought holds that poverty originates from the alienated labor of workers under the condition of the capitalist private ownership, and that the employment labor system under the capitalist system is the root of the proletariat poverty, and the fundamental way were the root poverty lies in the found of the socialist public ownership. After the founding of new China, relying on the advantages of the socialist public ownership, China has entered an official stage concerning poverty . As a developing country with a large population size, China has made history contents in reducing poverty and lifting itself out of poverty, mainly because it has been founded by a socialist mechanism with Chinese characters under the guidance of The March anti-poverty ideology and has played a role in China’s institutional advantages in poverty. This paper mainly studies and explains china’s experience of getting rid of absolute poverty, and analyzes the historical tasks China faces in resolving relative poverty, such as social security and other problems. After eliminating absolute poverty, China should still base itself on March anti-poverty ideology, starting with economic security and social security, and give full play to China’s s institutional advantages in reducing poverty and lifting the level of all the population.

Author’s Profile: Sun Yumei (1968-), Chinese Associate, School of Economics, Chinese Min University, Researcher, Xi Jinping Institute of Socialism with Chinese Characters (Beijing 100872).

Introduction

Anti-poverty is an important subject facing human society. Poverty affects not only the survival and development of the poor families, but also social equity and the found of the goal of common prosperity. Since the founding of new China, China has promoted large-scale poverty people and development, lifting some 800 million million poor people out of poverty and more than 80% to the cause of poverty reduction in the world. Influenced by the level of productivity, China’s poverty reduction practice is based more on the measure of material (monetary) ,which has played a positive role in the rapid escape from absolute poverty.

Generally speaking, absolute poverty based on not material (monetary) means that the lack of income levels makes it difficult for workers to obtain the minimum means of subsistence they need to maintain themselves, which in turn leads to a state in which basic material life is unsustainable. However, with the increase in productivity levels, it is clear that is not enough to dissect poverty from a material (monetary) perspective alone. There is a need to shift awareness of the poverty from absolute to relative poverty and, while working to raise the income levels of the poor, to pay more attention to the important factors other than monetary variables, such as equality of access to education , the availability of the right to care, and effective restrictions on working hours and intensity.

Marx put forward the view that proletariat poverty originated from the capitalist system in the 1844 process of economics. He divided proletariat poverty into two forms of absolute poverty and relative poverty, and pointed out that only through “depriving the deprived” can the poverty situation face by the proletariat be complete resolved, that is, only through the found of public ownership of means of production, can the phenomenon be fundamentally eradicated. Since the founding of the new China more than 70 years, our country, based on the institutional basis of the socialist public ownership, has created a worldwide miracle of poverty reduction by relying on on large-scale poverty people and development, and the projected the advantages of public ownership to the world with iron facts. However, China is still facing challenges in resolving the problem of relative poverty, and in add to rising income, relative poverty such as as down labor security needs to be included in the poverty people perspective.

China’s fight against poverty is about to be won, and the miracle of poverty is recorded in the history of people. But there is still a long way to go to meet the people’s needs for a better life. The Four Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to “the totals of the poverty ingrown and establish a long-term mechanism to solve the relative poverty” and “to urgently formulate a system that is urgently needed for the life of the national governance systemand governance capacity to meet the people’s new expectations for a better life”. Starting from this requirement, there is an urgent need to break the throughs of poverty from the perspective of material income, scientifically deal with the structural challenges brought about by changes in production and demand, and focus on solving a series of new problems, such as the relative poverty of enough labor security.

The institutional solution of Marx’s anti-poverty thought

The study of poverty in western poverty theory is based on the rational human hypothesis, which divides and isolates human activities from social complex social relations and gives up all social relations except the pursuit of maximum benefit. Under this assumption, identity’s and social relationships between people are complete abstracted, and anyone bees a similarity, independent individual with model economic significance. In this way, the basic economic relationship between poverty and poverty is naturally abstracted. In the field of western poverty theory, the occurrence of the poverty is entirely due to individual reasons, and has nothing to do with system, system and other factors. Whether it’s Schultz’s neoclassical theory of human capital or Amartya Sen’s theory of viewability, the traceability of the root causes of poverty is nothing more than that. The view of poverty people derived from the western poverty theory is nothing more than the help of the law, want to achieve poverty by legally powering the poor. In contrast, Marx’s anti-poverty thought inherited the scientific component of classical economics, abandoned its vulgar composition, always rely to the total analysis and recognized the objective existence of class differences, and insisted on examining the gap between the rich and the poor from the notion of capitalist production. In this way, linking the root causes of poverty to the ownership of the means of production and the real social system provides the answer for science to reveal the nature of poverty. Similarly, this scientific and profound analysis is also a methodology guidance on how to use socialist public ownership to get rid of poverty.

The lack of workers’ rights caused by capitalist private ownership is root cause of poverty

Marx’s study of poverty at the institutional level originated from his concern about the disputes between the interests of poor farmers along the Moselle River. Marx, who published in the Rhine in January 1843 the “Defence of the Moselle Journalist”, the surveyed the poverty of the farmers who made wine along the Moselle River, and, through the appearance of the extreme material poverty of the working masses, was keenly aware of the real causes of peasant poverty, lashed out at Prussian social deism and openly defended the “politically.” and socially oppressed poor”. Marx later pointed out: “Between 1842 and 1843, as editor of the Rhine newspaper, I first encountered difficulties in expressing opinions on the so-called material interests.” Discussion in the Rhine Provincial Council on forest theft and property analysis… It was the first motivate for me to study the economic problems. In the debate on the law of forest theft, Marx first put forward the scientific thought of lifting the proletariat out of poverty by changing the ownership of the means of production.

Compared with many scholars who study poverty theory in the West, Marx’s analysis of the root causes of poverty is not limited to material poverty at the pure and erroneous level, but combines material poverty with material production, and always emphasizes the direct consequences and lasting effects of the possession of means of production on the living conditions of the working class. He pointed out that poverty is ostensibly restricted and played by the social division of labor, but the general poverty of the masses and the worsening of poverty can only come from capitalist private ownership. On this basis, Marx studied the objective existence of various classes in the process of social production and analyzed the distribution system of capitalism by analyzing the different positions and functions of different classes in the process of production, and scientifically revealed the root causes of the contradiction between labor as a source of wealth and workers falling into poverty under the capitalist private possession system.

Poverty is no longer an individual or partial problem of the proletariat here, but rather a confrontation between the right to produce and the right of workers to work. In Marx’s view, the reason why poverty is manifested in the alienation of workers lies in the employment labor system under the capitalist system, which causes the lack of the rights of the proletariat. Moreover, surplus value production based on employment also makes the accumulation of poverty a companion to capital accumulation, with a relative surplus of people exceeding the need for capital proliferation to continue to generate and fall below the poverty line. While the bourgeoisie has been completing the accumulation of wealth, the proletariat has been repeating the accumulation of poverty. Marx pointed out: “In the growth of society, the destruction and poverty of workers is the product of his labor and the wealth of his production.” “Poverty does not arise from the individual level of workers, but from the essence of modern labor itself. This is the absolute law of capitalist private ownership and the inevitable result of the employment labor system. Without the reform of the social and economic system, the rights and interests of workers cannot be realized, and poverty will be difficult to eliminate fundamentally.

The social division of labor under private ownership has aggravated the poverty of workers

In the view of historical materialism, the poverty of urban industrial workers has the same roots as that of farmers, but they are affected by more factors. Marx pointed out that the division of labor in society is an important reason for the opposition of the interests of social groups. The division of labor within a nation will promote the separation of industrial and commercial labor from agricultural production, which in turn will lead to the separation between urban and rural areas and the opposition between urban and rural interests. Compared with farmers, workers have less private property and are more influenced by modern production and way of life, which is determined by their position and role in the division of labour in society. Studying the poverty of urban industrial workers, Engels also points out: “These workers have no property at all, live on wages, and almost always have bare enough to make ends have to live.” This scattered society doesn’t care about them at all, let them support their own family, but don’t give them the means to live a normal life for a long time. ”

It is for this reason that Marx extended the idea of equal rights to a more detailed level. Capitalism, he points out, exacerbates urban-rural rivalries. Poverty eradication requires the promotion and maintenance of equality of rights between urban and rural areas. Common sense alone leads to the conclusion that in a society full of the poor and potentially social unrest, the potential of factors of production must not be fully stimulated or able to assume the central functions needed to promote socialized production, let alone develop advanced social productivity and sufficient social wealth to address poverty. The result can only be a vicious circle of unstable development and poverty that has plunged society as a whole.

Marx pointed out that social sub-unions under capitalist private ownership exacerbate poverty. Because of the existence of the capital employment labor system, the working class in the social division of labor becomes an appendage of capital, ruled by materialized forces such as machines, and thus loses its own spiritual autonomy. Indeed, even at the material level, although the standard of living of the working class can be improved with the development of social production, the trend of relative poverty of the proletariat will become more and more serious, i.e. the proportion of proletariat income will become smaller and smaller than the income that the bourgeoisie earns through exploitation.

Engels’s study of poverty is combined with his realistic survey of capitalism. As early as 1842, he wrote the brilliant article The State of the Working Class in England. Through a survey of worker poverty in major industrial cities such as London, Liverpool, Manchester and Dublin, he objectively describes the reality of working-class poverty and its causes. This study not only predeceases the general scholars of the same period in history, but also reaches an unprecedented height in the depth and breadth of the investigation. In Engels’s study, material poverty, such as income levels, was always associated with the system, and Engels even pointed out the unreasonable oppression imposed on urban workers by bourgeois state forces in the process.

Like Marx, Engels linked the causes of poverty to the ownership of means of production and its corresponding social division of labor. According to Engels, capitalist society is essentially a war on capital, which makes “everyone see others as only available; With everything in hand, a large number of the weak, the poor, can barely survive”, and in order to survive, the weak have to “sacrifice the good qualities of their human nature” and make “hundreds of forces lurking in each of them suppressed”, It is this kind of capital exploitation that results in the loss of good quality and the suppression of power, which leads to the disadvantaged position of the poor in political and social life. The oppression of workers by capital and the suppression of their own capacity for development are the result of capitalists’ possession of all means of production and are exacerbated by the social division of labor in which workers are tied to private ownership.

The core of Marxist anti-poverty thought is the establishment of socialist public ownership

In the framework of Marxist theoretical analysis, behind the two classes of workers and capital owners is the opposite of the two rights: workers naturally have the right to pursue good living conditions and basic health, but “the nature of commodity exchange itself does not set any limits for working days, and therefore does not set any limits for surplus labor”, therefore, there is no economic principle to limit the bourgeoisie to extend the working hours of workers. When “rights are against rights, and both rights are equally recognized by the law of commodity exchange.” Between equal rights, power is the deciding factor”.

It is for these reasons that Marxism has never sought a solution to the problem of poverty within the framework of capitalist private ownership. Marx and Engels believed that under the condition of private ownership, the interests of farmers to the city to become workers, to safeguard their own interests is the primary reason for farmers to participate in the revolution. Lenin also pointed out that the basis of the union between the working class and the peasant class is the common interest, the proletariat regime should safeguard the interests of workers and peasants, and make full use of farmers’ concern for their own interests to mobilize farmers’ enthusiasm for production. Obviously, Marxism has always combined the anti-poverty problem with the liberation of the working class, that is, advocating the overthrow of bourgeois regime and capitalist mode of production through violent revolution, the establishment of socialist public ownership, in order to put an end to this “war with capital as a weapon”. The core of Marxist anti-poverty thought lies in the establishment of socialist public ownership and the root cause of poverty eradication. Historically, all countries that have established socialist systems, whether in the Soviet Union, North Korea or Eastern Europe, have achieved higher poverty eradication performance than developing countries with the same level of productivity during the same period. At present, China’s fight against poverty is often unprovoked by some people, but the advantages of the socialist system in poverty alleviation are unmatched by the capitalist system. To talk about China’s anti-poverty practice from the basis of the socialist public ownership system is obviously a departure from the reality of history.

China’s practice of poverty reduction and poverty alleviation transcends the Western view of poverty alleviation

Whether the anti-poverty theory is scientific or not needs to be tested not only in practice, but also in comparison and identification. The scientific nature of Marxist anti-poverty thought is shown by its sharp contrast with the western poverty theory. Only by understanding the theoretical limitations of the western view of poverty alleviation can we truly realize the rationality and historical progress of China’s poverty alleviation practice.

The backwardness of poverty alleviation view and its theory on the basis of western “empowerment”

The western poverty theory’s initial understanding of the root causes of poverty is that it is attributed to low income and poverty. The research began with the British scholars Bush and Longtree. They proposed in 1889 that a family was in poverty because of the minimum income it had to maintain its physiological function. This minimum requirement consists mainly of food, housing, clothing and other necessities. On this basis, they used the minimum living expenses as a criterion of judgement, and put forward the concept of the poverty line. The concept of the poverty line influenced later researchers and made the category of poverty directly equivalent to income shortfalls.

It should be noted that the “income poverty theorem” is somewhat deceptive, as it is based on the link at the bourgeois level and attributes poverty to differences in the individual abilities of workers, thus more in line with the needs of the bourgeoisie. This view was naturally welcomed by the bourgeoisie and became the mainstream theory leading the study of poverty in the West. However, this view will inevitably lead to poverty outside the material income to become a “blind spot” for poverty alleviation, which is precisely the problem that western poverty alleviation theory has always been difficult to solve. In fact, poverty reduction by raising incomes can only be effective against absolute poverty, but it does not cure relative poverty. A large number of facts also show that in Europe and the United States and other developed countries, although the traditional sense of absolute income poverty has been effectively curbed. However, with cyclical fluctuations in the economy, unemployment and the large increase in low-income groups, such as lack of welfare, job inability and other “new types of poverty”, have gradually become bottlenecks in poverty alleviation in developed countries. Even in highly developed countries such as the United States and Japan, there are still large numbers of poor people, and poverty sometimes worsens. Even if pro-poor policies based on income-based poverty are implemented, the problem will be difficult to resolve. Indeed, since the end of the Second World War, a large number of international organizations working to fight poverty on a global scale have been established, providing large amounts of monetary and material assistance to the poor, with little success (the less developed countries such as the Philippines and Kenya have struggled to fight poverty). It can be said that the poverty reduction dilemma in western countries has directly declared the theoretical bankruptcy of its view of poverty alleviation.

The traceability of poverty is also a realistic need of western poverty alleviation theory. In order to bridge the gap between theory and reality, some scholars such as Amartya Sen have put forward the theory of multi-dimensional poverty, extending the causes of poverty beyond income to many dimensions. Some Western governments have also re-examined their poverty-relief foundations and policies, such as the U.S. government’s classification of poverty into four categories: material poverty, capacity poverty, rights poverty and motivational poverty, depending on the development of social poverty. In the past, attention was focused only on material poverty, ignoring the underlying causes of material poverty, such as capacity poverty, rights poverty and motivational poverty, which is a state of poverty that lacks basic political, economic, cultural and social human rights and is accompanied by deprivation of self-welfare. Right poverty is at the heart of poverty, and material poverty is only a concrete appearance of poverty. Than other poverty, entitlement poverty should be corrected first, as it is most likely to trigger other poverty (e.g. welfare poverty, etc.) and more likely to cause serious social problems. Based on the above multi-dimensional analysis, the western poverty theory puts forward the idea of “empowering” poverty alleviation, that is, the path to solve poverty lies in the legal empowerment of the poor. In this case, the right refers to the license, recognition and guarantee of the act or inaction given by law to the subject of the right, and it is also the right of the laborer assigned by the labor law. It should be said that the multi-dimensional view of poverty has a certain positive significance, to a certain extent, to take care of the demands of the working class. However, this theory of poverty does not touch the core of private ownership of capitalist means of production and is destined to have congeniality. In practice, the implementation of this “good solution” to poverty reduction is not ideal because of the avoidance of basic economic systems. Amartyason et al. have done a lot of poverty research in some African countries, and their modern theory of poverty, although it won the Nobel Prize in economics, is still not convinced, and has done little in the African countries under investigation.

The progressive characteristics and priorities of China’s anti-poverty practice

Farmers are the main group of poverty in China, and the focus of poverty reduction and poverty alleviation in China is mainly in rural areas. In the more than 70 years since the founding of New China, China has played the advantages of socialist public ownership in the fight against poverty and made great achievements, lifting about 800 million absolute poor people (mainly farmers) out of poverty. China’s anti-poverty practice is characterized by a gradual and holistic approach to poverty eradication. First, we should attach importance to building the material basis of poverty alleviation as a whole, that is, to promote material accumulation on the premise of public ownership, secondly, China, in the process of industrialization, promote the orderly transfer of the working population from agriculture to industry, and finally, the rural collective economy and land collective ownership provide basic social security for the non-working population in the rural areas. There is no denying that a certain number of relatively poor people will still need support from anti-poverty policies after the end of poverty eradication in 2020. But unlike western countries and some developing countries, our existing poverty does not come from the poverty caused by capitalist private ownership itself. Socialist public ownership, relying on the advantages of its own system, can win the battle against poverty. It should also be noted that, as our country is in the primary stage of socialism, a variety of economic components coexist, labor conflicts still exist, and the lack of protection of workers’ rights and interests (such as the extension of workers’ working hours, increased labor intensity, lack of labor protection) is still aging and curing relative poverty. The existence of these factors has aggravated the complexity and difficulty of our country’s poverty alleviation work. Continuing to improve the quality of life and sustainable development of people living in poverty should be the focus of future poverty reduction efforts.

In The process of poverty reduction and poverty alleviation in China, the emergence of migrant workers has played a huge role. Migrant workers as a mobile group, they have agricultural hukou but engaged in non-agricultural labor, as surplus labor to work in the city, and some even completely settled in the city. With the improvement of migrant workers’ income level in recent years, they have basically got rid of the “absolute dilemma” of income type. The new problem, however, is that they still have to face the constraints of farmers’ status brought about by a binary economy and have difficulty in enjoying the same level of labour security as urban dwellers. Although migrant workers earn more than they earn from farming, they are still far below those of urban residents, a income gap that makes it difficult to escape from relative poverty. The deficiencies in social welfare and the improvement of working ability are also factors affecting the poverty situation of migrant workers. The main reason for this problem lies in the inequality of the rights and interests of urban and rural residents under the dual system of urban and rural areas in China. However, relying on the western anti-poverty theory of legal “empowerment” programs, it is clear that this problem can not be solved.

To further promote poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation, we also need to pay attention to migrant workers. By the end of 2019, there were more than 290 million migrant workers in China, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. This large number of rural migrants into the city, in fact, has two identities: first, agricultural workers with agricultural household registration, and second, new industrial workers in the city. The mobility and occupational instability of this group will affect the lasting effects of poverty alleviation in China and the future resolution of relative poverty. In this regard, we need to use Marx’s anti-poverty thought to objectively analyze the poverty problems faced by migrant workers. On the one hand, our country is still in the primary stage of socialism, under the condition that many economic components coexist, a large number of migrant workers are employed in private enterprises, they do not possess the means of production, and are vulnerable to the erosion of their interests by the capital side. On the other hand, China has established socialist public ownership, which is completely different from marx’s analysis of workers’ rights under the capitalist private ownership conditions, and the relative poverty such as the lack of labor security for migrant workers in China can be eliminated through the self-improvement and development of the socialist system.

The socialist market economic system provides an institutional advantage for poverty reduction and poverty alleviation

From a long-term and holistic perspective, poverty reduction and poverty eradication need to be based on the development of social productivity. The suitable production relations and good economic management system can promote the faster development of social productivity. Since the reform and opening up, China has gradually established and perfected the socialist market economy system in its exploration, which has provided employment opportunities for a large number of rural migrant workers. In the long-term anti-poverty practice, China has experienced three main stages, such as “laying a solid foundation against poverty through institutional reform”, “promoting broad poverty alleviation through economic development” and “comprehensive poverty eradication through precision poverty alleviation”, and has created “China experience” in the fight against poverty. This “Chinese experience” includes three aspects: first, adhering to the leadership of the Communist Party of China and strengthening the foundation of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics;

The most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is the leadership of the Communist Party of China. The establishment and perfection of the socialist market economic system has always been inse three from the leadership of the Communist Party. In the long-term anti-poverty practice, the Communist Party of China plays a central role in leading the overall situation and coordinating all parties, effectively establishing a vertical management structure from the central to the local level to the grass-roots level, integrating the resources of all sectors of society, and carrying out the fight against poverty. On the basis of a comprehensive understanding of the world, national conditions, social conditions and people’s feelings, the Communist Party of China has applied Marxist anti-poverty ideas flexibly to the practice of poverty alleviation, established an institutional model that is most in line with China’s reality, and demonstrated unparalleled excellence. Only under the centralized and unified leadership of the Communist Party of China can the reform of the system be carried forward smoothly and effectively, and in other multi-party countries, regime change and change will be made, and the anti-poverty road will be difficult. The sustained growth brought about by reform and opening-up is the main driving force for China’s poverty eradication. More than 80% of China’s poor are concentrated in rural areas, and a series of reform measures since the reform and opening-up have provided a driving force for rural poverty alleviation, including the establishment of a two-tiered management system based on the family contract responsibility system, the development of rural commodity economy, and the establishment of a new market economy system. Through these reforms, China has basically solved the problem of food and clothing for the rural population and achieved the goal of reducing poverty through rapid economic growth.

The practice of poverty reduction and poverty alleviation in China enriches and expands the connotation of anti-poverty

Marxism holds that economic and social development is a natural historical process, and getting rid of poverty needs to be based on the development of productive forces, which can be realized through long-term social practice. This view of time and space of historical development determines that the cause of anti-poverty is not only phased, but also its connotation will be constantly expanded, and the cause of poverty reduction and poverty alleviation in China has been best explained. On the whole, China has experienced a glorious process of solving hunger, meeting food and clothing, large-scale poverty alleviation and development, and fighting poverty. In this process, the focus of anti-poverty work is constantly adjusted with the improvement of China’s productivity development level. Moreover, in each stage, the establishment of the central content of poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation work in our country is also formulated closely around the essence and requirements of socialism, so that poverty reduction in our country goes beyond the narrow vision of pure material poverty, and truly separates the poor from the deprivation of poverty and produces more sense of access and happiness.

China’s anti-poverty cause began with the founding of New China. In view of the widespread poverty phenomenon of “one poor, two whites” and “poor and weak”, Comrade Mao Zedong not only proposed to speed up socialist industrialization, but also stressed the importance of establishing cooperatives in rural areas. In the connotation of getting rid of poverty, Comrade Mao Zedong stressed the importance of food, and proposed to achieve the goal of “food-deficit households are no longer food-deficit” in rural areas, and that farmers should generally be transformed into “surplus grain households or self-supported households” and “no poor farmers in rural areas”. It can be seen that getting rid of poverty was initially directly related to solving the problem of “eating”, and that “getting out of poverty” should take precedence over “getting out of poverty”, which was also determined by China’s real conditions at that time. After the reform and opening-up, Comrade Deng Xiaoping put forward the idea that socialism should eliminate poverty, which for the first time highlighted the urgency of “getting rid of poverty” and encouraged some people to get rich first and push out of poverty by driving them out of poverty first. In the connotation of anti-poverty, Comrade Deng Xiaoping put forward two important concepts: “food and clothing” and “well-off”. The concept of “food and clothing” has greatly expanded the understanding that China is limited to “surplus grain households” and “self-supported households” in the problem of poverty. The concept of “well-off” is put forward, which directly integrates the concept of income level improvement and salary security into the perspective of poverty reduction and poverty alleviation, and further deepens China’s understanding of anti-poverty.

After entering the 21st century, China put forward the strategic idea of poverty alleviation and development, and the anti-poverty practice gradually shifted from solving the problem of food and clothing to consolidating the effectiveness of poverty alleviation and accelerating poverty alleviation and getting rich. The rationalization of salary level and structure, as well as the issue of salary security, have become the new connotation of anti-poverty and the new focus of poverty alleviation. In rural areas, China’s poverty alleviation focus has shifted to emphasizing increased agricultural production and farmers’ income, focusing on lifting farmers out of poverty through industrial structure optimization and output growth, and encouraging the rapid transfer of the agricultural labor force to industries with higher labor efficiency and economic benefits, such as industry and service industries. In the urban and industrial sectors, it is mainly to grasp the wage security of workers, such as reasonable wage growth mechanism, full pay and timely payment. One of the priorities is to solve the problem of wage arrears. After years of efforts and strong intervention by the Government, the problem of unpaid wages for migrant workers has been solved as a whole.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era. China’s anti-poverty awareness has been further expanded, and the content of the work has undergone historic adjustment. While promoting poverty removal, China defines the basic requirements and core indicators of poverty alleviation as “two worries and three guarantees”, that is, no worries about eating, no worries about wearing, compulsory education, basic medical care and housing security, which breaks through the anti-poverty problem under the framework of the concept of “food and clothing” and “well-off”. Under the guidance of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s discussion on “precise poverty alleviation”, China has begun to attach importance to planning the fight against poverty as a whole, emphasizing the basic work of fighting poverty, focusing on solving the problems of poor people’s difficult road travel, water, electricity, schooling, medical treatment, communication, etc., and innovatively exploring new forms such as easy poverty alleviation and relocation. The practice of poverty reduction and poverty alleviation since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has for the first time brought our country out of absolute poverty into the official stage and completed an unprecedented leap.

The Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed that the mechanism of resolving relative poverty should be gradually explored, so that the anti-poverty in the new era has room for further expansion in connotation. The first is to further improve and improve the economic security of workers. Under the premise of guaranteeing workers’ right to employment, the problem of economic security mainly involves three factors: first, the difference of labor remuneration, the need to solve the problem of “un ethic pay for equal work”; To avoid the labor process on the physical and mental health of workers, increase the cost of manual recovery and health care costs. In addition to economic security, with the improvement of China’s economic development level and the improvement of the socialist market economic system, social security for workers outside the wage income has increasingly become an important issue to be solved urgently in poverty reduction and poverty alleviation. Social security issues mainly involve two prominent factors: from the medical point of view, some workers due to occupational diseases, low level of medical security and other reasons, it is difficult to afford the cost of treatment of major diseases led to relative poverty; In addition, there is also an imbalance in the distribution of labor security rights within the labor force, which is relatively poor in the labor security category from within the labor group, mainly due to differences in geographical division of labor, differences in types of work (benefits), differences in personal skills and differences in labor output. In short, the solution of relative poverty will still be a long-term task due to the co-existing effects of various economic components in China and the differences between industries, industries, urban and rural areas and labor groups caused by the division of labor in society.

We will improve the socialist market economic system and enhance the advantages of China’s poverty reduction and poverty alleviation system

We must realize that the lack of social security will also cure the low-income situation of workers. Therefore, according to the essential requirements of socialism and the concept of shared development, we should further improve the socialist market economy system by resolving the relative poverty of labor security.

Adhere to Marxist anti-poverty ideology and continue to give full play to the advantages of poverty reduction in socialist public ownership

Marx believed that the establishment of socialist public ownership is the fundamental guarantee for the elimination of private ownership of means of production, the elimination of exploitation and the realization of fairness and justice in human society, as well as the fundamental path of poverty eradication. In order to cope with the complex poverty problem that has existed for a long time in history, China has made decades of hard work after the founding of New China and the reform and opening-up, and through large-scale poverty alleviation and development work, China has not only achieved a substantial decline in the number of absolute poor people, but also explored many valuable “Chinese experiences” and “Chinese wisdom” for the world’s anti-poverty practice. China’s poverty reduction cause has been able to achieve great achievements, thanks to the theory and practice of following and practicing the Marxist anti-poverty thought, adhere to the adjustment of productivity development and production relations, the Marxist theory and China’s poverty alleviation practice organic combination, through the socialist state and the powerful power of the public economy, to achieve the effective transfer of social surplus to the poor groups, so that it can finally get rid of poverty. Of course, in the process of poverty reduction policy-making and practical exploration in China, it also draws on the neoclassical and structural poverty reduction theory to a certain extent, paying more attention to absolute poverty and not paying enough attention to relative poverty, which makes it face further challenges in the future. In this regard, China should adhere to the Marxist anti-poverty thought, dialectically analyze the root causes of poverty and find the fundamental way to solve poverty, guide poverty reduction with systematic theory and dynamic view, need to pay more attention to the advantages and role of public ownership, and truly explore the mechanism to resolve relative poverty.

Attach great importance to the workers’ right to employment and protect the workers’ right to reasonable income

Get rich in labor is the fundamental means to get rid of poverty, and it is inextricable to attach importance to the right to employment and to safeguard the rights and interests of labor. Under the condition of socialist market economy, our country should not only guarantee workers’ labor rights, but also actively expand workers’ employment, employment channels and upgrade their employment skills. On this basis, to promote the people of workers’ income to achieve rationalization. Mandatory of labor value holds that labor is the only source of value creation, and income distribution must respect labor’s contribution value creation. For China, a socialist country with public ownership of means of means of production as main body, workers’ income should occupy more part in the distribution. At present, although the income of ordinary workers in our country is constantly rising, it is necessary to guide labor relations right under the socialist market economy system, so that Workers can take the initiative in labor relations, adjust the content of labor income and capital income moderately, and increase the part of workers’ income. Practice also shows that under the premise that wage rights and interests are justly protected, are workers less likely to experience material poverty, and the standard of living has increased greatly with income. This show that set of special government agencies to help low-income workers, such as help to improve their living standards, but also more conducive to help them eliminate relative poverty, to prevent the transformation of the relative poverty to absolute poverty. In addition, we carrying should out of the poverty programmed policy put forward by Secretary General Xi Jinping, “Helping the poor first, helping the poor first”, help the poor people improve their ability to increase their income and get rich, and help that poor people get rid of the synth poverty and consciousness poverty.

Found a relatively sound socialist education system and a medical security system

In modern society, education and medical care are important factors affecting the cost of living, and are also important areas directly related to poverty. Take the migrant workers group as an example, because of the nature of the work and labor characters, they need to change the workplace frequent, which brings difficulties to the education of the workers’ children, but a heavy burden, increases the cost of survival. In this regard, we should give full play to the advantages of the socialist public ownership, increase public transfer support, increase the construction of schools for working children in education , effectively solve the problem of migrant workers’ children’s schooling, enrich their spiritual life. Improving the education system will also help to improve the quality of workers, create conditions for improving labor skills and income, and lay the foundation for the resolution of the relative Poverty. Health care is also the focus of the poverty problem. If workers generally face overtime labor pressure, long-term overtime, overwork, their physical health is bound to worry. Especially for some lower-income workers, a major hospital may make their families unaffordable, falling from relative poverty to absolute poverty. The imperfect medical system and the fact that minor diseases can easily drag on to majors will also bring the poverty of workers and disrupt poverty reduction and poverty theory. In this regard, through the found and change of social security system, to block the transmission and transformation of the relative poverty to absolute poverty.

Supervise the implement of the overtime pay mechanism for workers by employers

Time saving is the essence of all social saving. Strict regulation of working days and regulation of working hours are of great for workers to get rid material and spiritual poverty. At present, in China’s private enterprise workers, a considerable number of people work more than than 10 hours a day, and a week work more than than 5 working days, so that that continuous high-intensity heavy physical labor makes some workers physical and mental health affected, so that their right right to leave is deprived. Therefore, the government’s program of overtime pay for workers will help to safeguard the right rights and interests of workers and improve the quality of life of Migrant workers.

In short, only by better protecting the economic and social just rights and interests of migrant workers, can we avoid many of the workers repeated fall into the “out of poverty and back.” to poverty” dilemma. Only by working hard to implement iron anti-poverty ideology, give full play to the advantages of the socialist public ownership, respect for labor respect for workers can we achieve finally the goal of eradicating poverty in an all-round around way.

References:

Marx: 1844 1844 D.D. Of Economics, Beijing: People’s Press, 2018.

Amartya Sen: Poverty and Ed, translated by Wang Yu and Wang Wenyu, Beijing: Business Press, 2001.

Angus Deaton: Economics and Consumer Behaviour, translated by Zhai Zhimin, Beijing: Chinese University Press, 2015.

Hou Weimin: Analysis of multi-dimensionality of migrant workers in the process of urbanization, Journal of Hebei University of Economics and Trade, No. 3 of 2015.

Wang Chunchao and Ye Qin: The Evolution of Multi-dimensional Poverty between Migrant Workers in China – An Investigation Based on Income and Dimensions, Economic Research No. 12 of 2014.

Lin Na: Study on the Poverty of Migrant Workers from a Multi-dimensional Perspective, The Journal of the Party School of the Fujian Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, No. 1 of 2009.

Source: March Studies, No. 7 of 2020