Talk politics.

Poverty is a state where people are deprived of the ability to meet their basic needs due to lack of money. It has been observed in all societies since the dawn of human civilisation, and the fight against poverty is just as old. Historic sources tell us that the most famed rulers of antiquity, including Caesar and Octavian August invested much of their time and effort to develop large-scale projects aiming to address the problems caused by extreme poverty.

It is no surprise that the rulers have always tried to find ways to combat poverty, since that kind of approach tends to win over the masses, while failure or refusal to address the problem would often lead to mass riots and uprisings. The successful rule of one despot or another was often directly related on their efforts to eradicate poverty, a problem that has always been chronic for all societies. There have been various ways and forms of combating poverty through the ages, varying in intensity and depending on the cultural and religious particularities of the various societies - at times they were more successful than in other occasions, but they were never able to completely eradicate poverty.

Granted, there were times when poverty was a much more severe problem than it is today. It looked like something unsolvable, an unavoidable fact of reality that was there to stay forever. Things changed somewhat with the Industrial Revolution. New, advanced conditions and means of production and distribution of enormous amounts of goods and services came about, something that preceding generations would deem impossible. It is no surprise, then, that this was the time when the notion that poverty could actually be overcome, emerged. If a sufficiently fair way of distributing the goods could be invented, that is.

One could argue that all political ideologies of the modern era have largely been attempts of humankind to put both the positive and negative sides of industrialisation under control, and harness them to improve the lives of people, and finally put an end to poverty. Capitalism and socialism are two sides of the same coin, in that they are fundamentally materialistic philosophies aiming to re-distribute the goods in the fairest way possible. Almost the entire critique by Marxism and its derivative schools of thought against the global market economic order essentially boils down to the notion that this order causes poverty, inequality and exploitation.

On the other hand, the critique by the free-market proponents against the various forms of socialism is derived from the failure of the communist experiments in the 20th century, and their inability to fulfill their main goal of providing equal conditions to all people, ultimately bringing more poverty instead. No matter which paradigm is correct, and which of them will ultimately prevail, both their end goal is to achieve a "just" world without poverty.

It is no coincidence that the ideologies of the modern epoch are often being compared to religion, and the reason is not just in the fact that their followers are often more fanatical than religious fundamentalists. The truth is, some of the most popular religions like Islam and Christianity have principles in support of the poor, and that is a key part of the reason for their popularity among the masses.

That said, poverty has always shaped politics, and this is valid for the developed modern societies as well. The post-industrial powers of the modern age are capable of feeding and supporting even the poorest segments of their population, and yet poverty remains as a factor in those societies, too. Outside the societies of the so called First World, poverty of course plays an even more significant role, the more underdeveloped said society is, the more wide-spread poverty is there.

Although the Industrial Revolution brought new methods of combating poverty, the problem still persists in vast portions of the world, and its presence in politics has remained, shaping many countries' foreign policies as well. So it is important to look at the problem in more detail, so we could understand today's political processes on a global scale.

The first thing we should consider in order to understand poverty is what really causes it, although I'm aware a simple answer is impossible to formulate. In the future, traditional causes for poverty were natural disasters like drought and floods that destroyed the crops of the early agrarian societies. Today, the natural factors still have a role, but thanks to modern technology they seldom directly lead to mass poverty and starvation. The developing countries are an exception of course, as nature could often bring mass poverty, and the situation is made worse by the absence of adequate government structures that could aid the affected.

But let's face it, in the developed societies, the most frequent culprit for poverty is the economic system itself. An obvious downside of the current global world order is its proneness to financial crises that seem to strike suddenly roughly once in a decade, and lead to mass unemployment. An upside (for the developed economies anyway) is the fact that they could help their citizens in need thanks to their welfare systems, the wealthier said country is, the more capable it is of mitigating the negative effects of any sort of crisis. As a whole, poverty is a hugely bigger problem for the Third World, where a multitude of factors are dragging their coping capabilities down. In this sense, the technological advancement and economic growth of such under-developed societies is the only cure to the problem on a global scale, but that surely is much easier said than done.

A key problem for most developing countries is that they are mostly exporters of raw materials, bought cheaply by the relatively wealthier industrialising countries, which in turn sell them to the post-industrial countries of the First World, which then turn them into highly valuable end products that they sell back to the first two groups. All of this demonstrates the main reason that poverty is nowadays viewed as an international rather than domestic problem.

Although it "enriches" part of the world's economies, the Industrial Revolution has actually lead to a unprecedented rift in terms of wealth and capabilities. We could say those countries that have not yet gone through all the stages of industrialisation are still following 19th century standards in that respect. Which means that the solution of their problems should include intensive industrialisation through the mass modernisation of technologies and education, so they could use the innovations more efficiently. The problem is, the raw-material exporters are often caught in a vicious cycle where their governments make the mistake of solely focusing on the extraction of natural resource, which prove insufficient to pull their countries out of their predicament.

The next big problem logically follows from the first, since most foreign investment is also focused on the extraction of natural resources, and the foreign companies that are granted access to these, usually exploit them in a way that makes little revenue accessible to the actual local population.

Lastly, a factor that drags the Third World back is the regional conflicts leading to instability and mass poverty. Paradoxically, those wars (both domestic/civil and international) are mostly fought due to poverty and resource scarcity, and lack of access to resources.

We could add many other factors, like the environmental impact of intensively focusing on the extraction of raw materials rather than advanced, ecologically sustainable activities such as the tertiary sector. It's all really one huge vicious cycle.

All of the above outlines the prerequisites for much of the poverty around the world. Unfortunately, there are no signs of these problems getting tackled in a meaningful way anytime soon. Many ideologues, both hailing from Third World societies and their devout followers in the First World, believe the only solution is to adopt some extreme version of either a socialist or fascist system on a global scale, hoping it would solve the problems of the poor societies. Others counter that today's liberal market system is the best way to gradually raise the poorest from the bottom, and radical, abrupt changes to the world order would only hinder this process. So far, the answer to the fundamental question how to end poverty, remains unachievable.

Unfortunately, even if it were ever possible to completely eradicate poverty and social inequality, humankind is still very far from such utopia. No matter if that is achieved through socialism or capitalism one day, or through some other exotic economic theory like distributism for example, until the eventual solution of this problem, it will keep having a key significance for world politics.