The.
result is called feminism and its success is the last best hope for our bi-gendered species. .
Hope is also best described by its opposite. Its opposite is paralysis. Only hope activates the.
human will. Only possible good motors our affections and stirs us to action. Without hope, we are.
catatonic. Even Sisyphus had to be hoping for something or he would have left that rock where he.
found it. Poverty suffocates hope for it repeatedly shows possibility to be illusory. Infants reach.
for hope starting with their birth and the infants of the poor already show with their eyes that.
there is no hope for them. Hunger and pain have already told them that their humanity does not.
count. .
The stripping of respect and hope from the poor is well systematized. Capitalism from its start had.
poverty in its train. Serfs in the feudal, pre-capitalist system did often have a kind of paternalistic.
social security. They were part of a unit that shared the essentials out of a kind of practical.
necessity. With the dawn of modern capitalism, the serfs were cast out to look for work and.
security. Capitalism had two choices from the beginning, either to correct its deficiencies and care.
for those who were cast out by the blind mechanisms of the market or to embark on the.
systematic vilification of the poor, implying that their plight was their own doing and not an.
indictment of the system. Capitalism embraced the second alternative with passion. .
The Statute of Laborers in 1349 in England made it a crime to give alms to the poor. In modern.
terms this meant cutting off welfare from these "lazy drones" who opted freely for idleness. This.
same spirit emerged in The Poor Law Reform Bill in England in 1834, which said explicitly that.
the main cause of poverty was the indiscriminate giving of aid which destroyed the desire to work.
Again, there was nothing wrong with the system, only with those left out by the system. Of this.
1834 bill Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli would say decades later, "It made it a crime to be.
