How the bourgeoisie’s quest for status placed blame for poverty on the poor

Abstract

Abstract From the rise of the state to the emergence of capitalism, the poor were seldom blamed for their poverty. Because everyone was born into essentially unchangeable status roles, legitimated by religions and a static understanding of the social world, they could take neither credit for their good economic fortune nor blame for their privation. Most traditional religions insisted that the well-off must be charitable to the poor. This changed with the rise of capitalism and the ideology that legitimated its institutions and practices. Following upon the works of Max Weber and Richard Tawney, the role of Protestantism in generating an ideology that blames the poor for their abject condition has been widely acknowledged. What has been less appreciated is that this ideology has its roots in a new bourgeois class’s struggle for respectability and social status and that this struggle was a principal force fuelling Protestantism’s doctrinal character and success. This ideology depicted the success of the bourgeoisie as the result of virtuous behaviour and the misery of the poor as a consequence of their moral failings. Secular political and economic thought that arose alongside Protestantism also expressed the attitudes and practices of the emerging bourgeoisie, equally blaming the poor for their poverty. Social respect is essential for self-respect, both of which the bourgeoisie realized. Doing so set in motion forces delegitimating ascriptive status. However, it did so at the cruel cost of further debasing the social condition of the poor, depriving them of social- and self-respect.