Recognizing the political economy of capitalism? Toward a critical theory of global poverty

The present paper seeks to explore the issue of global poverty from the point of view of critical theory, assessing different theoretical perspectives and their normative foundations. By acknowledging their shortcomings, I argue for a comprehensive analysis of contemporary capitalism and its background conditions (Fraser 2022). To do so, the research is grounded on immanent social criticism and critical political economy. The paper begins by evaluating social critiques of poverty promoted by contemporary authors based on transcendent values or moral arguments. Peter Singer’s (2009) moral stance – according to which everyone of us has a moral obligation to help relieve global poverty – is analysed first. Instead, Thomas Pogge’s (2002) account relies on a justice-based theoretical framework that condemns poverty from a human rights perspective. Other scholars have also interpreted the issue of poverty through the lenses of Honneth’s theory of recognition (Schweiger 2020; Honneth 1996). I contend that both Singer’s and Pogge’s perspectives, as well as Honneth’s, can motivate a critical enquiry on the issue of global poverty, but nonetheless lose sight of the primary aim of a critique of the institutional conditions that help generate global poverty, namely the political-economic configuration of capitalism. In contrast to conventional economic and political theories that overlook the connection between poverty and the process of capitalist accumulation, I argue poverty is caused, among other, by interlocking practices and structures of capitalistic production and exchange at the global level, thus representing an inherent feature of the capitalist system (Harriss-White 2006). Drawing on Marx’s analysis, I do so by discussing how capitalism generates mass impoverishment, especially in the global South (Hickel et al. 2022). I then examine Marx’s concept of ‘primitive accumulation’, demonstrating its relevance in understanding contemporary poverty dynamics, as shown by Nancy Fraser (2016) and David Harvey (2004).