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What can I know (if trust in knowledge has been lost)? 157
dissatisfaction was never the existence of differences in wealth in general,
but rather the want of the lower classes. Ihis can be eradicated by
technical progress and by the growth of the economy’s production
capacity and must in fact be eradicated, when the difficulties in the path
of accumulating profit no longer concern production of the mass of
goods, but rather its sale.
The identification of poverty with the lack of goods is not a harmless
theoretical error; it has fatal practical consequences. Curiously, for a long
time hardly anyone noticed that the number of people in serious want
has, far from decreasing, actually increased in both a relative and an
absolute sense in the age of successive technological revolutions and
soaring economic achievements. Maybe this is because poverty was
measured according to the indicators of mainstream economics: by the
development of national income per capita or by the data of the
consumption of products and services. Thus, could it occur that this
process clearly appeared to be one of development, closing the gap and
modernisation, as a result of which globally, on average, the populace
shops more, travels more, uses more power, has more electronics for
entertainment, takes more medicine, etc. than before. This applies to the
poor countries as well, to the lower classes as well, to the humiliated and
distressed. It is just to poverty that this does not have a necessary
connection.
And here I am not referring to the fact that never has such a great
proportion of humanity suffered from the terrible lack of nutrition and
drinking water, though all public remarks on this topic should probably
begin with this sentence. One must know, however, that their unbearable
situation, their hellish suffering and early deaths are not only the
consequences of social injustice in the traditional sense of the word.
Rather, the fact that the basic maintenance of life causes difficulty for
many hundreds of millions of people is a public manifestation of a
constantly growing poverty that effects a// humanity. (In past centuries,
this occurred only in times of war, plague or drought. It is also true that
then there was usually war, plague or drought.)
Yes, we inhabitants of Earth are growing poorer together and the
key reason for our impoverishment is exactly what is called economic
growth. As long as we fail to understand this, we will be unable to
comprehend the horrors that are occurring at the extremes, in the sub¬
social populace and in the hunger belts that are turning into deserts.
Let us therefore take the components of our poverty one by one.
We must start with the impoverishment of knowledge, not because of