Povertly, the «social question» and ways of addressing it

Abstract

In this paper we examine the different conceptions of poverty and the «social question», inherent in the liberal tradition, and the typical ways of addressing it in the context of nineteenth-century classical liberalism, twentieth-century Keynesianism, and neoliberalism from the current crisis of capital. Third-way, neo-developmentalist and post-modern theoretical-political trends of thought, presented as «alternative» approaches, are currently gaining popularity. We will evaluate these ways of thinking about poverty and their proposals for addressing it, considering if they truly offer alternatives to neoliberalism or are in fact complementary and functional. For this purpose, we offer a reflection on certain aspects that allow us to characterise poverty and the «social question» from a historical-critical perspective.