Ending Poverty (Fifth of Series)

BIMBO CABIDOG

Enterprise by the poor, business at the grassroots

Stop-gap measures of the government will never be able to bail out the poor. Neither will the mantra of inclusive growth, which is just charity by another name. The millions of Filipinos who wallow in misery can only start leaving the poverty threshold by setting in motion two pivotal developments:

1.    Taking up enterprise that will create wealth in their hands and propel local economic growth
2.   Setting the country in the direction of genuine Industrialization.

Under the macro-economic order that perpetuates the root cause of their social status, the poor cannot hope for deliverance. Their only recourse is to embark on an economic revolution that will terminate the vicious cycle of underdevelopment and the indigence of the masses. Such is the real war against poverty. How is it going to be waged?

The poor have one inherent power in their possession that has made the world what it is now. It is the power to create the wealth of nations, according to the father of economics Adam Smith. When they are relegated to the state of idleness in the ranks of the industrial reserve army, and have no employment to secure a means of living, they can wield it all the more. They can use it no longer to make the rich richer, but to make their lives better. This is by getting out of the predatory regime of creating wealth for a few, while depriving themselves and their families the enjoyment of life.

That power is labor. And the revolution is enterprise at the grassroots, or enterprise of the poor.

A simple paradigm shift makes it happen. The workers, the possessors of labor power, transform their social and economic character from wage-earner or industrial labor reserve under the employ of the capitalists into self-employed producers of value and creators of wealth. They apply labor to the production of goods and services by them, and for their primary benefit. They do so as entrepreneur.

Instead of looking for job, or lining up in the long queue of applicants for it, only to end up waiting much longer for news if he got hired or not, the industrial labor reserve may take the path of self-help initiative. Or the company to offer it might take another generation to materialize and finally pop up the wished-for opportunity. Wait no more. Pull the opportunity, make things happen. In short, the industrial reserve, the job seeker, employs himself by creating his own job.

Self-employment upends the old social order that dictates the industrial labor reserve can only live if he/she works, but he/she can only work if it produces profit for the capitalists. Now, the worker no longer sells his labor power in the modern industrial slave market, he overturns the economic dictum by working for his own profit (economic gain) in order to live. The new condition happens when the worker assumes the role of worker-entrepreneur.

Allow this essay some minting of words: labor entrepreneurship. This is when a worker gets into business, instead of hiring off for wage-labor. It means the worker, as industrial labor reserve, instead of seeking job embarks on an enterprise. He puts up and operates business.

The pivot may be a small matter at first sight or on the surface. But it represents a big leap in the usual order of things. First, the move offers an immediate solution to poverty, which is taking an age to crystallize. It doesn’t wait for the macro economy to generate jobs. Experience shows that the wait could be interminably and agonizingly prolonged. Even then, finally having a job still doesn’t necessarily mean ending poverty.

Second, labor entrepreneurship offers the prospect of pulling the community up from the doldrums of economic inactivity to the dynamics of production and market expansion. Enterprise increases the community’s output. But besides upping productivity, it employs idle workforce, puts money in their pockets, and therefore builds a robust market. Hence, it becomes an engine of local economic growth.

Finally, there is the social justice angle. Labor entrepreneurship paves the way to equitable wealth distribution. The wealth creators enjoy the whole fruit of their labor by first of all getting most of the wealth they create. Because of the new scheme of things also, the gains of progress stay in the locality to fuel sustainable development.

The new economic paradigm distinguishes itself most clearly by the fact that the underlying factor of development is no longer the financial wealth of the rich at the top, but the forces and resources of the local folks below. The principal determinant of whether or not the lives of the people will improve is no longer the institutional arrangements that shape the bigger economy at large, but the proactive decision and collective action of the very ones themselves who need their lives to become better.

With the poor taking the road of self-help initiative onward to enterprise, ending poverty doesn’t bank anymore on the false hope that the rich embracing the myth of inclusive growth will come down to the rescue. It banks on the result from doing something about their lot themselves. The resolution of the war against poverty doesn’t wait and wait and just wait for some rich guy to dare to spend millions of his wealth on business to provide jobs for poor folks. That is tough luck, and never happens.

Job creation has been touted as the means to solve poverty. But what does this entail? It entails the decision of a capitalist or group of capitalists to put up business by probably building a factory that will employ many people. That decision ponders two essential things: how much money to invest, and whether the business is worth it. Of course, the would-be proprietors are not going to decide on these things on the basis of whether or not the company they will be building will provide jobs to the poor. They are going to decide on the basis of whether or not the millions of pesos or dollars they will be pouring in will generate equally millions of pesos or dollars in profit.

In short, it is a decision that is not dictated by pity for some people who are in misery. It is dictated by pragmatism, that is: the certainty of getting profit, with minimal risk of losing. The jobless can spend ages waiting for the decision. Sans the assurance of hefty profit, it will never come. Yet oftentimes, making profit also simply means making folks perennially poor. 

Such is what the formula of job creation in solving poverty is all about. It is a prescription that twiddles the fate of the masses on the vagaries of the market and the uncertainties of business. The poor have waited for it to throw in the net of redemption. But it doesn’t happen simply because they need redemption. It happens, because the rich need to get richer.

The people and they alone can make their liberation from poverty happen. They are the principal forces to make such change. Only they have the best reason and the most enduring strength to bring it to the finish, having virtually nothing to lose, and everything to gain. And it calls on them just to take the initiative of helping themselves, acquire skills, pool the resources lying around – many of which idle, deploy them into the arena of their economic war by turning them into capital, turning capital into goods or services, and the latter into incomes.

Enterprise in the community, enterprise of the poor, and enterprise for development as engine of economic growth – such is the sure-fire weapon at winning the war against poverty.