43

What's a thought pattern that's way too common and damaging to society?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 44 points 4 days ago

Believing that poverty is a moral failure. Though that's been an issue for millenia.

[-] FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago

It's really frustrating that so many people assume poor people are lazy and don't want to work when a lot of poor people are working multiple jobs and that's still not enough to "earn" the right to have their basic needs met

[-] GiorgioPerlasca@lemmy.ml 6 points 3 days ago

I guess it is more a thing of Western countries. Max Weber suggested that the Protestant Reformation, led to the belief that economic success was a sign of divine favor, legitimizing wealth inequality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism

In the case of the Soviet Union, Marxist-Leninist doctrine treated poverty as a product of class exploitation under capitalism rather than personal failure. Official discourse emphasized that unemployment, homelessness, and destitution were systemic features of bourgeois economies. Within Soviet society, this translated into a strong normative expectation that the state bore responsibility for guaranteeing employment, housing, and basic welfare. While in practice shortages and inequalities persisted, the cultural script did not legitimize blaming the poor; instead, marginalization was often interpreted as a failure of planning, bureaucracy, or remnants of pre-socialist class structures.

A comparable ideological orientation can be found in the People's Republic of China, particularly during the Maoist period. Under Mao Zedong, poverty was framed as the legacy of feudalism and imperialism. Campaigns such as land reform and collectivization were justified precisely on the premise that peasants were victims of structural oppression rather than agents of their own deprivation. Even in the post-1978 reform era, although market mechanisms reintroduced inequality, official rhetoric continues to stress “poverty alleviation” as a state-led responsibility, culminating in large-scale programs aimed at eradicating extreme poverty without moralizing the poor as individually culpable.

this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
43 points (95.7% liked)

Asklemmy

54223 readers
216 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS