Poverty care: neoliberalism, neoconservative drift, and needs in Agnes Heller

Abstract

Introduction: The international organisms such as the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank base their discussion on poverty on capacities, skills, entitlements, agency and currently increased capacities.

Objective: Therefore, analyzing poverty from the theoretical proposal of the needs of Agnes Heller allows to deepen with regard to the production and reproduction of massive impoverishment in capitalism.

Method: In the midst of neoliberal policies related to an extended neoconservative political-cultural wave, we will reflect on the discourse of human development and Agnes Heller's theory of needs from a critical viewpoint, based on Marxism's theoretical-methodological approach. It's a critical perspective to how late-capitalist poverty care is supposed to work.

Results: The proposals about poverty from the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank seek to limit the wellness of people in poverty conditions, to biological minimums and citizenship thresholds (Álvarez 2005, 2008, 2011 and 2014). The above is understood, from the Agnes Heller theory of needs, as the way in which capitalism maintains millions of people in simple existential needs, making their development and emancipation impossible. It is assumed that they are neoliberal strategies to control poverty, and thus avoid any propitiated chaos caused by those who are bereft of all kinds of rights.

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