In the 50s and 60s, Oscar Lewis could easily have been the world’s most famous anthropologist. He wrote a whole series of painstaking ethnographies of poor families from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and India. My 12th-grade AP Government class actually made his Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty required reading. Only recently, though, have I realized that these books aren’t just fascinating in their own right; they’re also illuminating at the meta level.
Here’s how.
1. Lewis, an avowed Marxist, spends his career closely studying poor families. The resulting empirics are beyond bleak: Lewis describes social worlds full of impulsive sex, poor work habits, substance abuse, violence, and cruelty to children in appalling detail.
2. A few non-leftists notice that, despite his Marxist interpretation of his own findings (Capitalism has to be the root cause, right?), Lewis basically confirms their “reactionary” view that poverty is largely caused by irresponsible behavior of the poor themselves. After all, impulsive sex, poor work habits, substance abuse, violence, and cruelty to children are very bad ways to make extra money or stretch tight family budgets. Any sensible low-income person would avoid them like the plague.
3. Leftists hear what these “reactionaries” are saying – and lash out at Lewis for “blaming the victim.”
4. Other leftists push back, insisting that Lewis was a Marxist in good standing, full of sympathy for the poor, and therefore definitely not guilty of “blaming the victim.”
Before you dismiss this as a caricature, read Harvey and Reed’s “The Culture of Poverty: An Ideological Analysis” (Sociological Perspectives, 1996), which provides a well-written window into the whole Lewis affair. Here’s Harvey and Reed’s account (in blockquotes), with running commentary from me.
Background:
Lewis first introduced the idea of a subculture of poverty in July 1958, in San Jose, Costa Rica, at the International Congress of Americanists (Rigdon 1988:69). In the next decade his family studies and the subculture of poverty concept made him a public figure and gave him access to political personalities of the highest rank. Lewis’s celebrity brought him the kind of media attention few academics ever know. It is no secret his sudden renown exacerbated the already difficult relationships the abrasive Lewis had with many in his profession. These professional and personal jealousies must, however, remain a wild card in our account, for while they undoubtedly played a role in shaping scholarly criticism, it is difficult to assess the extent to which they actually influenced evaluations of his work. We do know, however, that these antagonisms, whatever their source, were kept relatively in check until the late 1960s. By then Lewis was approaching the zenith of his career.
And then:
On American campuses, these strains manifested themselves in the opening of a generation gap between New Deal Liberals and Old Left scholars, and the cadre of young faculty, graduate students, and gifted community organizers that made up the “New Left.” The latter saw their elders as getting cold feet as the government began to increase its activities against radicals on campus, while the former were increasingly dismayed by the ideological rigidity and growing intolerance of its progeny. It was at this juncture that an “ultra-bolshevism,” incipient among sectarian radicals for more than a decade, began to sweep the New Left.3 Sensing the tide was beginning to shift, and helpless to do much about it, many Leftists began to engage in a fruitless game of radical one-up-manship.
Chicago anthropologist Charles Valentine led the charge against Lewis:
Having situated his broadside both culturally and politically, Valentine then turns to the work of Oscar Lewis. Beginning his analysis of the subculture of poverty thesis with a series of technical criticisms of Lewis’s work, he quickly moves to his main point: Lewis, if not by design, then by inadvertence, has framed a model of poverty’s subculture whose very “negativity” lends itself to a “blaming the victim” interpretation of poverty. Valentine claims such a stance must eventually result in a call for the abolition of those deviant subcultures that are the alleged cause of poverty. As such, Lewis’s work belongs to that “pejorative tradition” of black family studies stretching from Frazier’s The Negro Family in the United States (1966[1939]) to Moynihan’s The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965). It is less dedicated to eliminating poverty than to eradicating a deviant subculture that offends bourgeois sensibilities.
A typical passage from Valentine:
Ultimately, [Lewis] is saying that the alleged culture patterns of the lower class are more important in their lives than the condition of being poor and, consistently, that it is more important for the power holders of society to abolish these lifeways than to do away with poverty-even if eradicating poverty can be done more quickly and easily.
What can be the basis for this set of judgments and valuations? It is difficult to imagine what this might be, except a profound implicit conviction that the life- ways of the poor are inherently deserving of destruction. If it is relatively easy to do away with poverty itself, then why not do so and then let the ex-poor live as they please? Or if we believe there is a “culture of poverty” which is not good for those who live by it, then why not first tackle the more tractable problem of relieving their material deprivation and then go on to build upon their more comfortable circumstances in order to save them from those more difficult and deep-seated culture patterns? No, it is the “culture” that must go first before the poor can be given what everybody else already possesses and many of us take for granted. In short, the poor must become “middle class,” perhaps through “psychiatric treatment,” and then we shall see what can be done about their poverty.
Harvey and Reed remark, “What Valentine’s work said was not half as important as what it was – a set piece in a developing internecine struggle between two progressive factions, both of which were in crisis.” But Harvey and Reed are firmly in the pro-Lewis faction:
There are of course those on the left who see another Oscar Lewis. Personality and polemics aside, Lewis’s subculture of poverty thesis is seen in these quarters as an impassioned critique of capital’s destructive dialectic as it is lived out by the poor.
[…]
Indeed, it was not Mexico, but capitalism (“… a cash economy, wage labor, and production for profit”) that was the focus of Lewis’s concerns. Capitalism uses machines to revolutionize labor’s productivity as no other historical mode of production has. In transforming labor, however, a profound contradiction unfolds from within its mode of production. As capitalism produces ever greater quantities of material wealth, it also creates, of necessity, an industrial reserve army of the chronically unemployed and subemployed whose lives are continually haunted by poverty.
Note: Harvey and Reed clearly agree with the view they ascribe to Lewis. And frankly, it’s absurdly dogmatic. The irresponsible behavior that Lewis describes has existed in every known society, so how can you possibly blame it on “capitalism”? Far fewer lives are “continually haunted by poverty” in capitalist societies that in pre-capitalist or socialist societies, so again, how can this possibly be capitalism’s fault? Even if you believe capitalism is designed to keep workers obediently working for peanuts, where is the profit in fostering a subculture of impulsive sex, poor work habits, substance abuse, violence, and cruelty to children? From the viewpoint of the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, the ideal world is one where everyone – including the poor – internalizes the traditional work ethic and traditional family values, so disciplined workers bees can focus on doing their work and raising the next generation of disciplined worker bees.
For Lewis, the mechanics of capitalist production for profit, not the folkways of its victims, caused poverty. It was among the economically marginal and superfluous populations that Lewis lived and worked. When he wrote, he knew full well that his subculture of poverty thesis was placing the capitalist mode of production, not the poor, in the docket. If Lewis drew his examples of a culture of poverty from Third-World countries, the cited passage above makes it clear that for him the crux of the problem lay not with the poor and their subculture, but with the capitalist mode of production.
In other words, these defenders of Oscar Lewis are saying (probably accurately) that his anti-capitalist interpretation was a foregone conclusion. Even when his empirics match the dourest social conservative’s picture of the poor, Lewis never would have allowed his findings to make him question his worldview. And apparently in Harvey and Reed’s intellectual world, this is praise!
Am I reading too much into this? Keep going.
Though not as active as some in his generation, Lewis embraced Marxism in his youth, and retained a lifetime commitment to that world view. He was introduced to Marxism in his early teens by a friend who was a communist organizer. As he matured intellectually during the Great Depression, he was integrated into the radical culture of the 1930s intelligentsia and assimilated from it a commitment to the arts, intellectual excellence, and a passion for socialism. There is nothing in his biography to suggest Lewis ever abandoned these commitments or lost for long his faith in the proletarian cause. Even when he was humiliated during his study of the Cuban Revolution by party apparatchicks and forced to leave the country, he refused to express open disillusionment with Castro or with the principles of the Cuban revolution – although he had by then begun to reassess the length of time it would take for a revolution to rectify the evils of the past.
Again, this is Harvey and Reed praising Lewis for his devotion to not only the ideas of Marxism, but the practice of Marxist-Leninist regimes. The Soviet Union had been dead for five years, but righteousness is still on the side of the Soviet bloc’s life-long loyalists.
The adulation continues:
Lewis’s Marxism permeated both his ethnographic work and his subculture of poverty thesis. You will not find it, though, in a glib spouting of dialectics, or in a fatuous waving of rhetorical red banners. There seems to have been nothing in Lewis’s personality that would have predisposed him to such histrionics. Instead, Lewis’s Marxism, like that of so many of his generation, could be seen in his working class sympathies, in his support for unionism, and in his championing of the causes of the downtrodden.
By normal standards, of course, this grossly undermines any favorable thing Lewis has to say about the poor. If you’re a Marxist who idolizes the working class, unions, and “the downtrodden,” we should expect you to “find” that the poor are blameless victims of a wicked society.
Lewis’ research is credible precisely because his findings clash with his ideology and loyalties. And that’s why his left-wing critics are strategically wise to condemn him. When non-leftists say that irresponsible behavior is a major cause of poverty, you can plausibly object, “Sure, that’s what reactionaries like you find.” But when a life-long Marxist says the same, logic tells you to change your mind. Or kill the messenger.
READER COMMENTS
RPLong
Dec 17 2018 at 3:27pm
I read Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, and I loved it. One of my main takeaways from that book was that genetic factors influence life outcomes far more significantly than parenting does. In your book, you back this up with a wealth of data from twin and adoption studies to put parents at ease about “screwing their kids up.”
Don’t you think there is some tension between the arguments made in Selfish Reasons… and the arguments you make when you talk about the cultural/behavioral sources of poverty? After all, culture is typically seen as an environmental influence, not a genetic one.
It is possible to reconcile the two arguments. You could argue that genetics determines the same traits that determine wealth or poverty. In that case, some of us are equipped with pro-wealth genes and others are genetically predisposed to engage in “impulsive sex, poor work habits, substance abuse, violence, and cruelty to children.”
If that’s true, however, wouldn’t it be inaccurate to call this a culture of poverty? After all, we don’t often talk about “a culture of cystic fibrosis” or “a culture of sickle-cell anemia.”
Where does that leave us?
gmm
Dec 17 2018 at 8:15pm
In Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, Bryan says writes “The most important weakness of behavioral genetics, though, is simply that research focuses on middle-class families in First World countries. The results might not generalize.” He also notes there’s a selective screening process so that only certain types of people are allowed to adopt (that’s part of why he says the studies focus on middle-class families).
From his other posts on the benefits of international adoption (e.g. this one), I think Bryan would not agree that poverty such as is being discussed in this post is mainly due to genetics.
David Henderson
Dec 17 2018 at 4:42pm
Bryan,
Excellent post.
“And apparently in Harvey and Reed’s intellectual world, this is praise!”
Great line. My idea of hell is coming up with strong evidence that conflicts with my ideological priors and feeling strong pressure, both externally and internally, not to change my priors.
I think that RPLong above makes a good point. I would love to see you address it.
gmm
Dec 17 2018 at 8:16pm
I attempted to reply above with what I thought Bryan might write, since he never seems to reply to comments.
MarkW
Dec 17 2018 at 5:20pm
Even if you believe capitalism is designed to keep workers obediently working for peanuts, where is the profit in fostering a subculture of impulsive sex, poor work habits, substance abuse, violence, and cruelty to children? From the viewpoint of the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, the ideal world is one where everyone – including the poor – internalizes the traditional work ethic and traditional family values
Yes. At one point, Henry Ford attempted to do exactly this with his Ford Sociology Department:
https://jalopnik.com/when-henry-fords-benevolent-secret-police-ruled-his-wo-1549625731
Joseph Hertzlinger
Dec 18 2018 at 12:46am
If people in the lower classes believe that any capital accumulation will be stolen by the upper classes then it makes sense to be be improvident and, more important, it makes sense to signal improvidence.
The culture of poverty might simply be a matter of mistaken opinions.
Thaomas
Dec 18 2018 at 10:47am
If Lewis had been a neo liberal he would have looked for intervention points that could improve outcomes and in time the culture.
Mark Z
Dec 18 2018 at 3:27pm
An important question here: are countries ‘suffering’ under a ‘culture of poverty’ really poor by historical standards? Or are they, like most relatively poor countries today, far wealthier than they used to be, and only poor in the sense of being poorer than other contemporary societies?
If the latter, then if the rise of the ‘culture of poverty’ is in fact a recent phenomenon, it cannot be said that capitalism has made them poorer, because in fact it has made them wealthier. Their cultural habits are essentially the equivalent of having a lower savings rate relative to other cultures that would become wealthier. Consider the analogy of two workers who each gets a pay increase. One reinvests and keeps working the same number of hours, enjoying less leisure time, or works less but takes the increase leisure time to search for productive innovations, while the other worker simply takes more leisure time for immediate consumption. Both are wealthier, but the former will, in time become much wealthier than the latter, because he values future consumption relative to current consumption more than the other worker.
The difference between ‘bourgeois’ culture and ‘culture of poverty’ can therefore be thought of as simply the expression of different subjective valuations of future consumption relative to current consumption, where people in a ‘culture of poverty’ tend to value current consumption more than ‘bourgeois’ cultures. Now, why certain cultures cultivate a greater or lesser valuation of current consumption is an interesting sociological question, but it would be a mistake to blame the difference on capitalism (really, on modern prosperity). In the case of the two workers who get a pay raise, the pay raise it not the cause of the one worker’s preference for current consumption; his preference pre-exists the pay raise. His decision to work less and consume more leisure time after the pay increase merely revealed an existing preference.
Thomas Sewell
Dec 20 2018 at 12:26am
It sounds like the only solution which would satisfy to Marxists would be for things like “impulsive sex, poor work habits, substance abuse, violence, and cruelty to children” to be subsidized, or rewarded financially. Otherwise behavior would have to change or else it will result under “Capitalism” in more poverty and inequality. Basically paying people who have these bad habits in order to compensate them for the lost wealth from having them.
If a logical conclusion of your work is that the government needs to financially reward people for being violent and cruel to children, you may want to reconsider your underlying assumptions, or at least consider the incentives created by your economic system.
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