Capitalist philosophy contends that individuals must fend for themselves. If the individual "fails" miserably at doing so, then their families should look after them, and if they have no family or the family is in dire straits as well, then the local community and charities should do something. The capitalist society should not be involved at all. Government can intervene in the economic affairs but must do so only minimally, that is, when it concerns helping the capitalists themselves. The introduction of social welfare was merely to help a section of the capitalists who could sell their goods and services to the most impoverished at the fastest speed at a cost to the taxpayers themselves. The notion pushed under capitalism is that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed if only they have the energy and initiative to do so. The reality that poverty and unemployment have always existed under capitalism is ascribed to individual human failure, not to any basic contradiction within the capitalist system itself. According to the apologists of capitalism, if only people would get off their butts, work hard and behave themselves there would be no unemployment or poverty. This was the argument in the 1830s in England to discontinue the "poor relief" that had been constantly growing from the start of the industrial revolution - to "end welfare as they knew it." The urban centers of Britain and France were teeming with "vagabonds" and "rogues" who had been recently forced from the countryside. The economists of the time, such as Reverend Malthus, argued that to give them poor relief destroyed their incentive and demoralized those who were working. Malthus and others believed that capitalism would eventually find work for all if there was no "safety net" to allow people to avoid working. One hundred and sixty years later, permanent unemployment is even worse and the absolute numbers of poor are growing. Either people refuse to change their ways, "enjoy being poor and indolent" or there is something inherently wrong with capitalism. The Poor Laws of the 1830s which attacked welfare became all the rage throughout Europe provoked a revolutionary upsurge of the working class in 1848 that toppled almost every government. But, in spite of all the positive experience of socialism (especially during the Great Depression when the Soviet Union experienced unprecedented growth) that proves that socialist society can overcome all these ills, the capitalists continue to carry the self-serving propaganda that the "poor" have to rid their condition of poverty themselves or else! The social welfare fund which was used to finance the slum landlord and the local retail capitalist is now needed somewhere else. It is being directed elsewhere while the propaganda guns carry on shooting at their target, the poor. Nonetheless, as long as there is capitalism there will be poor. The working class has no choice but to reckon with this fact right now. Shawgi Tell University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education [EMAIL PROTECTED]