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