From the Editors – «Underclass» (C.R.)

In an episode of the American television series Life Goes On, shown in Poland over ten years ago, one could see a scene in which a happy father of family living in suburban Chicago takes out the garbage and suddenly sees a silhouette of someone rummaging the garbage bins for food. Both men look at each other and realize that they were together in college. In the ensuing conversation, the one who was just a moment ago rummaging the garbage says that until not long ago he lived a happy life: he owned a company, had a family, a house and a car, and enjoyed his part in the “American dream.” Then, suddenly, he lost everything. The other one, looking at his interlocutor, realizes: Tomorrow it can be me, the dividing line between his situation and mine is not very strong, neither is it set once and forever.
Only a few decades ago, here in Poland, we would not even consider that the relatively wealthy people in the West may be filled with such anxieties. We had other problems. With the exception of a tiny minority of those who became servile to the communist regime and thus enjoyed some privilleges, Poles demonstrated solidarity against the totalitarian system and while sharing their plight, they remained people of limited means, although one could hardly say that they were poverty stricken. Even Card. Stefan Wyszyński, the Primate of Poland, once, during a trip abroad, interviewed about the poverty in Poland, distanced himself from such an approach to this issue: “There is enough bread for everyone,” he replied to the question from a Western journalist. Indeed, the most overwhelming was not the fear of poverty, but rather the lack of perspectives for the future, such as no possibility for a young couple to have an apartment of their own. Today, the situation has changed, apartments have become available, but together with this change a new anxiety has appeared: Will I be able to pay the mortgage? Will the economic situation not worsen? The anxiety suffered by the American father of family in the mentioned television series has in a way become also ours.
A volunteer working for a charity project to provide aid for the poor in Poland was lately speaking in public about her observations: when you visit the needy in their homes, you may not even notice their poverty. Everything looks normal, there is even a new television set, usually bought on instalments before the economic situation changed. But the situation did change. Once the man lost his job, paying the monthly debit to the bank and the rent has become beyond the financial possibilities of the family. While things may still look more or less the way they looked before, the children can already feel the anxiety of their parents. It is embarrassing for these people that their poverty is «invisible,» while they indeed need help. The worst thing though is their fear of the future and of their continuing dependence on the aid provided by charity organizations.
The English word «underclass» denotes all those in a welfare society who cannot find a place for themselves within the system, who do not have acces to the labor market, and thus do not partake of numerous material goods, eduaction or culture, and remain dependent on social aid. Being part of the underclass denotes being outside the network of relations and institutions in which the so−called normal majority of citizens functions. Moreover, the more developed a given society is and the better it is organized, the more acutely poverty and exclusion, as well as being part of the underclass, are experienced by those whom they affect. It is probably no coincidence that in the societies that are most highly developed in the civilizational sense one can see no beggars or homeless people in the streets, but the suicide rate there is very high.
The current volume of Ethos is devoted to the problems of poverty today. And «today» means at the time of an economic crisis engulfing the entire Europe, including Poland, and the world as such. For many of us, its first manifestation is the feeling of uncertainty, the fear of tomorrow and the threat that all of a sudden we may become part of the underclass. Thus the volume opens with an extract from the address Pope John Paul II delivered to the poor of the Brazilian favelas in 1980, in which he expressed the evangelical solidarity of the Church and the Pope with the poor, while simultaneously stressing that poverty is not God’s will. It can be so only in situations when, for an important reason (for the Kingdom of God), a human being chooses modest forms of life, for instance religious poverty. In this context, it is worthwhile paying attention to the article contributed by Bernard Sawicki, OSB, abbot in the Benedictine Abbey in Tyniec, who confronts the ideal of religious poverty with the demands of market economy, in the context of which religious congregations must live today.
Yet poverty as a chosen life style by means of which a human being aims at his or her personal fulfillment, renouncing some goods in order to accomplish and multiply others, dramatically differs from the kind of poverty that cuts a human persons away not only from material goods, but also from those that are crucial to their personal, social and civic fulfillment. In this context, we recommend the article by Card. Reinhard Marx from Munich, author of the famed book Das Kapital: Ein Plädoyer für den Menschen, who addresses the issue of poverty in a welfare state, a problem which after a long time has «knocked at the door» of the affluent German state.
While today’s crisis is strictly bound to the problems of financial institutions, the key issue for an average human person who fears falling into poverty is that of labor. Precisely this theme is undertaken in Ethos by Flavio Felice, who explains why work still has the fundamental significance for the growth of the human person. Another important problem is approached by Gerald J. Beyer, who while describing the role of Catholic universities in Poland and in the United States, points to the significance of the access to education for overcoming poverty and remaining secure from it. It is noteworthy that while preparing his contribution for Ethos, this American author thoroughly studied the economic situation of Polish students, in particular of those coming from poor backgrounds.
Yet the authors of the current volume by no means disregarded the issues which directly concern the cirisis of financial institutions and financial markets recurring within the last years. Even if we acknowledge that ethical considerations concerning the economic issues are not at all easy, as they are susceptible to simplification and moralizing, it does not mean that they should be completely abandoned. Apparently, the authors of the current volume have succeeded in escaping the trap of simplification and hasty instruction. Thus it is worthwhile focusing the attention on the analyses and conclusions put forward by Wilfried Ver Eecke and Jakub Kuriata.
In the current volume, the readers willl also find a section of articles focused on the social teaching of the Catholic Church, in particular of the teaching Pope Benedict XVI offered in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate. The common denominator of the articles included in that section is that their authors stress, as does the Pope, on the one hand the global nature of the relations and dependencies obtaining in today’s world between individuals and societies, and on the other the postulate to return to the anthropological and moral foundations of social life, without which all the strategies of overcoming the crisis may only have shortterm effects. An interesting and inspiring addition to this last postulate is the article by Agnieszka Lekka−Kowalik, who proposes a philosophical foundation of the research on poverty and the strategies to overcome it.
It is certainly impossible to describe or analyze the many complex phenomena covered by the title “Poverty Today.” The editors of Ethos have been fully aware of this fact and they consider the articles submitted to their rearders merely as a voice in a broader debate; they are also aware that the conclusions proposed by the authors may raise further questions. Indeed, the issue which is subject to the debate in the current volume is not unchanging; on the contrary, it constantly evolves and depends on numerous factors which are not infrequently difficult to grasp. Moreover, even if the discussion in question is continued on the level of theory, its conclusions are ultimately of practical nature and their purpose is to determine how to give a helping hand to those who are underclass, as well as to those who fear such a prospect. Throughout the debate, however, we must not forget that Poland is the country where solidarity once turned out the gate to freedom for all the citizens.

Translated by Dorota Chabrajska